The Illuminatus! Trilogy полностью

Saul sat upright, tears gleaming in his eyes. "I've killed men. I've sent them to the electric chair. Seventeen times. Seventeen suicides. The savages who cut off fingers or toes or ears for their gods are more sensible. We cut off whole egos, thinking they are not ourselves but separate. God God God," and he burst in sobs.

Mavis rushed forward and held him, cradling his head to her breast. "Let it out," she said. "Let it all out. It's not true unless it makes you laugh, but you don't understand until it makes you weep."

QUEENS. Psychoanalysts in living cells, moving in military ordure, and a shitty outlook on life and sex, dancing coins in harry's krishna. It all coheres, even if you approach it bass ackwards. It coheres.

"Gruad the grayface!" Saul screamed, weeping, beating his fist against the pillow as Mavis held his head, stroked his hair. "Gruad the damned! And I have been his servant, his puppet, sacrificing myselves on his electric altars as burnt offerings."

"Yes, yes," Mavis cooed in his ear. "We must learn to give up our sacrifices, not our joys. They have taught us to give up everything except our sacrifices, and those are what we must give up. We must sacrifice our sacrifices."

"The Grayface, the life-hater!" Saul shrieked. "The bastard motherfucker! Osiris, Quetzalcoatl, I know him under all his aliases. Grayface, Grayface, Grayface! I know his wars and his prisons, the young boys he shafts up the ass, the George Dorns he tries to turn into killers like himself. And I have served him all my life. I have sacrificed men on his bloody pyramid!"

"Let it out," Mavis repeated, holding the old man's trembling body "Let it all out, baby…"

NOTHUNG. Woden you gnaw it, when you herd those flying sheeps with Wagner's loopy howls? Hassan walked this loony valley, he had to wake up by himself. August 23, 1966: before he ever heard of the SSS, the Discordians, the JAMs or the Illuminati: stoned and beatific, Simon Moon is browsing in a Consumer Discount store on North Clark street, digging the colors, not really intending to buy anything. He stops in a frieze, mesmerized by a sign above the timeclock:

NO EMPLOYEE MAY, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, PUNCH

THE TIME CARD FOR ANY OTHER EMPLOYEE.

ANY DEVIATION WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION.

THE MGT.

"God's pajamas," Simon mutters, incredulous.

"Pajamas? Aisle seven," a clerk says helpfully.

"Yes. Thanks," Simon speaks very distinctly, edging away, hiding his high. God's pajamas and spats, he thinks in a half-illuminated trance, either I'm more stoned than I think or that sign is absolutely the whole clue to how the show runs.

RAGS. Hail Ghoulumbia, her monadmen are fled and all she's left now is a bloody period. "The funny part," Saul said, smiling while a few tears still flowed, "is that I'm not ashamed of this. Two days ago I would have rather died than be seen weeping- especially by a woman."

"Yes," Mavis said, "especially by a woman."

"That's it- isn't it?" Saul gasped. 'That's their whole gimmick. I couldn't see you without seeing a woman. I couldn't see that editor, Jackson, without seeing a Negro. I couldn't see anybody without seeing the attached label and classification."

"That's how they keep us apart," Mavis said gently. "And that's how they train us to keep our masks on. Love was the hardest bond for them to smash, so they had to create patriarchy, male supremacy, and all that crap- and the 'masculine protest' and 'penis envy" in women came in as a result- so even lovers couldn't look at one another without seeing a separate category."

"O my God, my God," Saul moaned, beginning to weep heavily again. " 'A rag, a bone, a hank of hair.' O my God. And you were with them!" he cried suddenly, raising his head. "You're a former Illuminatus- that's why you're so important to Hagbard's plan. And that's why you have that tattoo!"

"I was one of the Five who run the U.S.," Mavis nodded. "One of the Insiders, as Robert Welch calls them. I've been replaced now by Atlanta Hope, the leader of God's Lightning."

"I've got it, I've got it!" Saul said, laughing, "I looked every way but the right way before. He's inside the Pentagon. That's why they build it in that shape, so he couldn't escape. The Aztecs, the Nazis… and now us…"

"Yes," Mavis said grimly. "That's why thirty thousand Americans disappear every year, without trace, and their cases end up in the unsolved files. He has to be fed."

" 'A man, though naked, may be in rags." Saul quoted. "Ambrose Bierce knew about it."

"And Arthur Machen," Mavis added. "And Lovecraft. But they had to write in code. Even so, Lovecraft went too far, mentioning the Necronomicon by name. That's why he died so suddenly when he was only forty-seven. And his literary executor, August Derleth, was persuaded to insert a note in every edition of Lovecraft's works, claiming that the Necronomicon doesn't exist and was just part of Lovecraft's fantasy."