Cities of the Red Night (12 page)

“Put your shit where the boys were. Radiant Boys is a special strike of death. The ghost lacks water. And a powerful odor filled the RB Project. Half-hanged half-bodies, the smell is pawing us over. Sweet rotten musky smell like. Then some smart-pants-come-lately pulls the radiant ass out from under you and makes shavetail out of it. Facts of life in the army. Uncorks the old army game screwing tech sergeant like me.”

Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories—as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.

*   *   *

Captain Nordenholz Disembarks at Port Roger

There he is standing on a ruined pier left over from the English, in some uniform of his own devising. He is flanked by Opium Jones, the de Fuentes twins and Captain Strobe, all looking like a troupe of traveling players a bit down on their luck but united in determination to play out their assigned roles. Boys trail behind them, carrying an assortment of bags, cases, and chests. They walk across the beach and disappear one after another into a wall of leaves.

I don't know what gave me such an impression of shabbiness about this procession, since they all must have chests of gold and precious stones, but for a moment they appeared to my eyes as seedy players with grand roles but no money to pay the rent. The jewels and the gold are false, the curtains patched and shredded and torn, the theater long closed. I was smitten by a feeling of sadness and desolation, as the words of the Immortal Bard came to my mind:

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air.…

We have landed. Captain Strobe meets us on the beach emerging from a picture puzzle, his shirt and pants splotched with green and brown, stirring slightly in the afternoon breeze. We follow him as he walks towards a seemingly unbroken line of undergrowth. He pushes aside branches to reveal a winding path through a tangle of bamboo and thorn.

We walk for perhaps a quarter-mile as the path winds upward and ends in a screen of bamboo. We are quite close before I realize that the bamboo trees are painted on a green door that swings open like the magic door in a book I have seen somewhere long ago. We step through into the town of Port Roger.

We are standing in a walled enclosure like a vast garden, with trees and flowers, paths and pools. I can see buildings along the sides of the square, all painted to blend with the surroundings so that the buildings seem but a reflection of the trees and vines and flowers stirring in a slight breeze that seems to shake the walls, the whole scene insubstantial as a mirage.

This first glimpse of Port Roger occurred just as some hashish candy I had ingested on the boat started to take effect, producing a hiatus in my mind and the interruption of verbal thought, followed by a sharp jolt as if something had entered my body. I caught a whiff of perfume and a sound of distant flutes.

*   *   *

A long cool room with a counter, behind which are three generations of Chinese. A smell of spices and dried fish. An Indian youth, naked except for a leather pouch that cups his genitals, is leaning forward on the counter examining a flintlock rifle, his smooth red buttocks protruding. He turns and smiles at us, showing white teeth and bright red gums. He has a gardenia behind his ear and his body gives off a sweet flower smell. Hammocks, blankets, machetes, cutlasses and flintlocks are on the counter.

Outside in the square, Strobe introduces me to a man with a strong square face, light blue eyes, and curly iron-gray hair. “This is Waring. He painted the town.”

Waring gives me a smile and a handshake. He makes no secret of his dislike for Captain Strobe. Dislike is perhaps too strong a word since there is no hatred involved on either side. They meet as emissaries of two countries whose interests do not coincide at any point. I do not yet know what countries they represent.

Up to this moment I have been so completely charmed by Strobe's nonchalance that I have never stopped to ask myself: What is the source of this poise? Where did he buy it, and what did he pay? I see now that Strobe is an official and so is Waring, but they don't work for the same company. Perhaps they are both actors who never appear onstage together, their relationship limited to curt offstage nods.

“I'll show you to your digs,” says Strobe.

We go through a massive studded door into a patio, cool and shady with trees, flowering shrubs, and a pool. The patio is a miniature version of the town square. My attention is immediately arrested by a youth who is standing about thirty feet from the entrance executing a dance step, one hand on his hip and the other above his head. He has his back towards us and as we enter the courtyard he freezes in midstep, turning his hand to point towards us. At this moment, everyone in the patio looks at us.

The youth pivots and advances to meet us. He is wearing a purple silk vest which is open in front, and his arms are bare from the shoulders. His arms and torso are dark brown, lean and powerful, and he moves with the grace of a dancer. His complexion is dark, his hair black and kinky; one eye is gray-green, the other brown. A long scar runs down the left cheekbone to the chin. He makes a mock obeisance in front of Captain Strobe, who acknowledges it with his cool enigmatic smile. Then the youth turns to Bert Hansen: “Ah, the son of family…” he sniffs. “The smell of gold is always welcome.”

I notice that he can be warm and friendly from one eye and at the same time cold and mocking from the other. The effect is most disturbing. Bert Hansen, not knowing how to respond, smiles uncomfortably, and his smile is immediately mimicked by the youth with such precision that it seems for a moment they have switched places.

He ruffles the cabin boy's hair. “An Irish leprechaun.” To Paco he says something in Portuguese. I recognize him as the regimental or shipboard joker and Master of Ceremonies, and Paco tells me his name is Juanito. I have no doubt that Juanito can, if necessary, back his sharp tongue with knife or cutlass.

Now it is my turn. I extend my hand, but instead of shaking it he turns it over and pretends to read the palm. “You are going to meet a handsome stranger.” He beckons over his shoulder and calls out: “Hans.” A boy who is standing by the pool throwing bits of bread to the fish turns and walks towards me. Wearing only blue trousers, he is shirtless and barefoot, with yellow hair and blue eyes. His tanned torso is smooth and hairless.

“Noah, the gunsmith, meet Hans, the gunsmith.”

Hans brings his heels together and bows from the waist as we shake hands. He invites me to move into his room.

The patio is completely surrounded by a two-story wooden building. The second-floor rooms open onto a porch which runs all around the upper story and overhangs the ground floor. The rooms have no doors but at the top of the entrance there is a roll of mosquito netting which is lowered at twilight. The rooms are bare whitewashed cubicles with hooks for slinging hammocks and in the walls wooden pegs for clothes.

I take my gear to a room on the second floor and Hans introduces me to an American boy from Middletown who also shares the room. His name is Dink Rivers. His extraordinarily clear and direct gray eyes convey a shock of surprise and recognition as if we had known one another from somewhere else, and for a second I am in a dry streambed and he says: “If you still want me you'd better take me up soon.” Next second I am back in the room at Port Roger, we are shaking hands and he is saying:

“Nice to see you.”

When I inquire as to his trade, he says that he is in physical education. Hans explains that he is a student and instructor in body control.

“He can stop the pulse, jump from twenty feet, stay under water five minutes and”—Hans grins—“go off no hands.”

When I asked the boy to make a demonstration, he looked at me very earnestly without smiling and said that he would do so when the time came.

There are four latrines: two for the ground floor and two for the upper floor, with toilets that can be flushed from a water tank which fills with rainwater drained off the roof. The patio contains a number of fig, orange, mango, and avocado trees and a menagerie of cats, iguanas, monkeys, and strange gentle animals with long snouts. On the ground floor there is a communal dining room, a kitchen, and a large bath where hot water is drawn into buckets. This is an Arab-style bath known as a
haman.

The dancing boys are spreading mats under the portico, lighting their hashish pipes and brewing the sweet mint tea they drink constantly. Chinese youths are smoking opium. The entire crew of
The Siren
is housed here, and it is a mixed company: English, Irish, American, Dutch, German, Spanish, Arabs, Malay, Chinese, and Japanese. We stroll about, talking and introducing ourselves among the murmur of many tongues.

Old acquaintances are renewed and bonds of language and common places of origin discovered. There are some boys from New York who had been river pirates, and it turns out that they know Guy, Bill, and Adam. Five huge Nubians, liberated by Nordenholz from a slave ship, speak a language known only to themselves. Now word is passed along through Kelley and Juanito the Joker that Nordenholz will entertain us all for dinner in his house.

Hans looks at me with a knowing smile.
“Fräuleins.”
He punches his finger in and out of his fist. The word echoes through the patio in many languages. Hans explains that there will be a number of women at the party who have come for the purpose of becoming impregnated.

MOTHER IS THE BEST BET

At twilight we make our way towards the house of Skipper Nordenholz, which is outside the town on higher ground overlooking the bay. He receives us in a large courtyard covered with lattice and mosquito netting. He has a thin aristocratic face, green eyes, a continual ironic smile, and an oblique way of talking and glancing down his nose at the same time.…

“Most glad to welcome you to Port Roger. Hope that your quarters are convenient.…” His English is almost perfect except for a slight inflection. “And now”—he glances down his nose and smiles as he gestures towards a table twenty feet long, laden with food: fish, oysters, shrimp, turkey, venison, wild pig, heaping bowls of rice, yams, corn, mangoes, oranges, and kegs of wine and beer—
“chacun pour soi.”

Everyone helps himself as Skipper Nordenholz indicates the seating arrangements. I am to sit at his table with Captain Strobe, the de Fuentes or Iguana twins as they are called, Opium Jones, Bert Hansen, Clinch Todd, Hans, and Kelley, and a Doctor Benway.

I will attempt to report as accurately as my memory permits the conversation at the dinner table. It was all concerned with weaponry and tactics but on a level I had never thought possible outside my lonely adolescent literary endeavors—for I have always been a scribbler and during the long shut-in winters filled notebook after notebook with lurid tales involving pirates from other planets, copulations with alien beings, and attacks of the Radiant Boys on the Citadel of the Inquisition. These notebooks with illustrations by Bert Hansen are in my possession, locked in a small chest. The conversation at the dinner table gave me the feeling that my notebooks were coming alive.

“For the benefit of you
Great White
boys”—Skipper Nordenholz looked down at the table and his eyes glinted with irony—“I would like to say that our enemy in this area is Spain, and our most powerful weapon is the freedom hopes of captive peoples now enslaved and peonized under the Spanish. But this weapon alone is not enough. First we must develop more efficient firearms and artillery. For this task we are depending on our able gunsmiths. We must also bear in mind that there are many different types of weapons. Opium Jones, we would be interested to hear your report.”

Opium Jones got up and pulled down a map about six feet square on a roller, speaking in his dead opium voice.

“As you know, we have imported a quantity of poppy seed. We already have fields in these areas. Many other areas are suitable for cultivation. We are sending out opium advisers. Missionary work, we call it.”

“And what do you see as the long-range effects of this brotherly project?” asked Nordenholz.

“In commercial terms, we can undersell eastern opium and take over the opium trade for the Americas, Canada, and the West Indies. Of course, we can expect a percentage of addicts in the areas of cultivation.…”

“What advantages and disadvantages do addicts present from the military point of view?”

“We can ensure loyalty by impounding the opium crop. Addicts are more tolerant than non-addicts of cold, fatigue, and discomfort. They have a strong resistance amounting to virtual immunity to rheums, coughs, consumption, and other respiratory complaints. On the other hand, they are incapacitated if the opium supply is cut off.”

“You also distribute hashish?”

“Certainly. A measure of seed with any purchase at our trading posts. Unlike opium it grows anywhere.” Jones made a sweeping gesture. “The whole area is full of it.”

Doctor Benway got up.

“Sickness has killed more soldiers than all the wars of history. We can turn illness to account. If your enemy is sick and you are well, the victory is yours. Healthy vultures can kill a sick lion. For example, my learned colleague Opium Jones has pointed out the immunity of addicts to respiratory afflictions. And I may add that periodic users who need not become addicted are equally immune. Consider the advantages conferred in an epidemic of the deadly Spanish influenza.”

“Is there any way in which such an epidemic could be induced?”

“There are no problems. All respiratory complaints are transmitted by spitting, sneezing, and coughing. We need only collect these exudations and convey them into the enemy area. Consider other potential allies.…” He pointed to areas on the map. “Malaria and yellow fever … both imported from the Old World and flourishing in the New. My researches have convinced me that these illnesses are conveyed by mosquitoes. Mosquito netting, pine incense, oil of citronella rubbed on exposed skin areas … these simple precautions—not, of course, infallible—will give us an advantage of fifty enemy cases to one. Dysentery, jaundice, typhoid fever … these even more reliable allies are conveyed by the ingestion of infected excrement, which can be collected and introduced into the enemy water supply. Boiling all drinking water and abstaining from uncooked foods or unpeeled fruits yields one-hundred-percent immunity. We must, of course, always be careful not to encourage an illness for which we do not have a remedy or means of avoidance.”