Cities of the Red Night (13 page)

“Magical weapons?”

The Iguana girl spoke in her cool remote voice: “All religions are magical systems competing with other systems. The Church has driven magic into covens where practitioners are bound to each other by a common fear. We can unite the Americas into a vast coven of those who live under the Articles, united against the Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant. It is our policy to encourage the practice of magic and to introduce alternative religious beliefs to break the Christian monopoly. We will set up an alternative calendar with non-Christian holidays. Christianity will then take its place as one of many religions protected from persecution by the Articles.”

“Economic weapons?”

Strobe glanced through some notes: “We can, of course, undersell Eastern opium … and no doubt various other products such as tea, silk, and spices. But our most powerful monopoly is sugar and rum. Europe will pay our price for sugar.”

My appetite was sharpened by hashish and I was the better able to savor the excellent repast: clams and oysters baked on hot coals with a dry white wine, wild turkey, pigeons, venison with a vintage Bordeaux, yams, corn, squash, and beans, avocados, mangoes, oranges and coconuts.

After the company had eaten their fill, Skipper Nordenholz tapped a glass for silence. He stood up in front of the map, speaking in a self-effacing manner with pauses and unfinished sentences as he gestured from time to time to the map with his long beautifully kept gambler's fingers.

“For the benefit of newcomers … old hands may also profit … a few indications and guidelines. We have already established fortified settlements … as you see, practically unlimited. We need artisans, soldiers, sailors and farmers to man the settlements already founded and to establish new centers from the Bering Strait to the Cape. Breeding is encouraged … is in fact a duty, I hope not too unpleasant. We expect that some of you will raise families. In any case, mothers and children … well cared for, you understand. We need families to operate as intelligence agents in areas controlled by the enemy. We solicit those of you who are skilled as cooks, hotel keepers, doctors, and pharmacists … strategic occupations. One of our aims is to addict the Spanish to opium, thereby making them dependent on supplies which we can, at a crucial moment, cut off.… And now there are some uh young ladies who have been waiting to meet you.”

He sprinkled some powder onto a brazier and a dense cloud of smoke arose with a sound of thunder. Skipper Nordenholz, Captain Strobe, Opium Jones, Doctor Benway, and the Iguana twins disappeared.

Now a wind sweeps through the courtyard of Skipper Nordenholz's house at Port Roger, extinguishing the candles. When they are relit, fifty girls and women are standing along the south wall of the courtyard. The men and boys range themselves along the north wall, facing the women.

Juanito, the joker and Master of Ceremonies, prances out to the middle of the courtyard and holds up his hands for silence.

“And now we will separate
los maridos,
the husbands, from
los hombres conejos,
the rabbit men, who fuck”—he does a speed-up bump and grind—“and run”—he does a pantomime of running, swinging his arms and pumping his legs. “All rabbit men will move to the east wall.”

Hans grins and puts his hands to the sides of his head making rabbit ears and trots to the east wall followed by four German friends. A Berber boy with yellow hair, blue eyes and pointed ears plays the flute as he walks to the east wall. Jerry and the dancing boys hop along behind him chewing carrots. Bert Hansen pulls a rabbit out of a hat, bows and runs for the east wall to a chorus of boos from the women and applause from the east-wall boys. I wriggle my ears and twitch my nose and show my teeth and scamper for the east wall followed by Brady, Paco, Clinch Todd, Guy and Adam.… It's a landslide for the east wall.… Juanito looks around as if bewildered.…

“
Esperan esperan.…
Wait wait.…” He dances behind a screen and pops out naked except for a rabbit mask. He looks at the women. His ears quiver and point east.…

“
Y yo el más conejo de los conejos …
the rabbitest of the rabbits.” He screeches and leaps for the east wall in great hops.

He doffs his rabbit mask and advances again to the center of the courtyard and places an hourglass on a little table. He turns to the prospective husbands who still stand by the north wall.…

“You have two minutes to think.”

He goes back to stand by the east wall. As the sand trickles I study these faces. If we are the fish, they are the water in which we will swim. They will hide us, provide us with weapons, guides, and information. They will carry out missions of sabotage behind enemy lines. Some of them will run inns catering to officials, priests, and generals. Others will become doctors and druggists. They are skilled in the use of subtle drugs and poisons. They will implement Benway's program of germ warfare. A few last-minute rabbits as the sand runs out. Then wives and husbands pair off and retire to private rooms.

Juanito leaps up and does a flamenco dance as we move back to the north wall facing the women, of whom thirty remain. They present a wide variety of physical types: blondes, redheads, Indian, Chinese, Negro, Portuguese, Spanish, Malay, Japanese, and some of mixed blood. Preparations are under way. The dancing boys whisk away plates and lay down pallets. Incense burners are lit, musical instruments appear, props and costumes are laid out: the goatskins of Boujeloud, skeleton suits, wings, animal and god masks. Two hangman's nooses dangle from a beam, the rope passing through two pulleys to facilitate suspension. I note that the ropes are elastic, and the nooses covered in soft leather.

Juanito announces: “Rabbit men and rabbit women, prepare to meet your makers.” He leads the way into a locker room opening off the east wall. The boys strip off their clothes, giggling and comparing erections, and they dance out into the courtyard in a naked snake-line. The women are also naked now. What follows is not an unconstrained orgy but rather a series of theatrical performances.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will now witness the mating of the God Pan and the Goddess Aisha.”

A backdrop of Moroccan hills with a full moon lit from behind by a lamp casting a golden glow over our naked bodies as the music of Pan fills the courtyard. Six dancing boys with whips put on goatskin leggings and caps and dance opposite six girls clad in swirling robes of thin blue silk. The faces of the boys are remote and impersonal, yet their bodies quiver and shake as if possessed by wild spirits. The boys rip the robes from Aisha, who tries to flee. They whip her buttocks and she falls on all fours as they fuck her in a crescendo of drums and pipes and a strange perfume fills the air.

“And now we present for your entertainment: Half-Hanged Kelley and Half-Hanged Kate in the Gallows Fling.”

Backdrop of a leering crowd. Kate has red hair down to her waist, blazing green eyes, and the raw red hemp marks around her neck. The story is that she was being hanged for witchcraft and other crimes against nature when the officials and spectators were dispersed by banshee wails, whereupon she was cut down and revived by leprechauns.

Kate and Kelley take a bow. A sandy-haired boy I have seen on the boat plays the bagpipes as they go into a wild jig, her hair twisting around her like flames from Hell, dancing under the waiting nooses which they adjust around each other's necks with idiot grins. He squirms it into her, kicking out spasms in the air, as they are hauled off the ground by smirking hangmen. Now their eyes light up in the gallows flash and the two bodies are encased in a blazing egg of blue-white light. They are lowered to the mat and little boys covered with green paint revive them. They stand up and take a bow.

A backdrop of sea and sand and palm trees. Idiot Hawaiian music as Hans does a hula fuck with a lithe Malay girl while his four friends, on their backs, legs in the air, applaud with their feet. Now the palm trees, with boys inside them, go into the hula. The effect is irresistibly comic and there is much laughter. Finally all the actors, including the palm trees, take a bow.

Thirteen dancing boys fuck to Gnaoua drums and clappers. Gnaoua music drives out evil spirits who might try to enter the womb. You can see the future child in a rush of liquid gold as the spirit of Hassan i Sabbah, Master of the Djinns, Master of the Assassins, guides the writhing bodies and rapt empty faces riding the drums like a bucking horse of flame. All the boys come at once as the wolfish face of Pan blazes in the young faces like a shooting star.

“The Rape of the Valkyrie,” announces Juanito.

A Swedish girl with long blonde hair is against a backdrop of Northern Lights. She is riding a horse which suddenly collapses under her and two blond youths with Viking helmets wriggle out, tying her hands with a gold rope. One fucks her as the other caresses her nipples. The boys grin at each other showing all their teeth.

I am trying to figure what sort of act I could put on that would have the necessary concentration of purpose to make a child. Clinch Todd helps me out of my quandary. His father was a veterinarian and he found that sperm collected from a prize pig, horse, bull, dog, or cat could be injected into the vagina resulting in a pregnancy for which the bride must pay a handsome dowry. Furthermore, one milking could provide enough sperm for many little happenings and he had jars of this muck stored in the icehouse. I made the rounds with him once for kicks. There he is jacking-off prize pigs and squirting it into the sow—impersonal as if he were trimming a hedge. He had the touch: the animal was randy as soon as he got his hands on it. But he got to using opium and his touch failed him. He was kicked in the head and killed by a stallion.

This is the answer. Clinch lines up five girls of different racial stock—black, Chinese, Malay, Indian, Berber—who will be indirectly impregnated, thus sparing me contacts for which I have little inclination. I will play the young Corn God with a corn headdress. A boy from Yucatán with black skin, straight hair, and classical Mayan features will stand in as a Black Captain, one of the Mayan war gods, and fuck me standing up, as Jerry, cast as Ganymede the cupbearer, gathers the seed in an alabaster goblet.

The girls will proceed to the remote inland communes to await delivery. They will all receive a handsome dowry should they wish to marry and the children will be trained from childhood in the use of weapons and fitted to take their part in the task of liberation.

*   *   *

Pages from the diary of Hirondelle de Mer:

I am a sorceress and a warrior. I do not relish being treated as a breeding animal. Would this occur to Skipper Nordenholz? No force, he says, has been applied—but I am forced by my circumstances, cast up here without a peso, and by my Indian blood which compels me to side with all enemies of Spain. The child will be brought up a sorcerer or sorceress.

Now, a short rundown on these shabby adventurers plotting to appropriate a continent and remake it to their taste. They are all
puto
queer
maricones.
Look at that Juanito—
el más maricón de los maricones. El más puto de los putos.
Nordenholz was selling his ass in Hamburg twenty years ago. Old story: sea captain takes a liking to him, signs him on as fourth mate.

And Strobe with his well-rehearsed Eton accent. Circus people. Mother and father were aerialists and they did this high-wire hanging act with angel wings: he takes off the noose, extends his wings, and goes into a dazzling aerial act with his angel wife. It attracted a lot of attention and the Strobes were taken up by the best people but not for long. Soon the lordliness of their manners, talking to royalty as if they were being nice to the servants, rendered them absolutely insufferable. Their American origins were discovered and they were sent to the colonies, where they decided the angel act was too exotic for American tastes and booked as the Singing Aerialists. Soon they added other instruments, throwing them from one to another on tightropes—a high-wire musical juggling act it was. Young John learned his poise on the high wire and his swordsmanship as well. But show biz wasn't for him, and he shipped out with Nordenholz.

The Iguana twins have some claim to aristocratic birth. They came from an old landed family, impoverished and dispossessed. They were brought up to act rich at all times—“act like you've got it and you'll get it,” Mother always said. You can't lay it on too thick in Mexico. With preposterous forged titles and
pistoleros
on credit they seized an estate in northern Mexico and hit a silver vein.

Nordenholz is a good organizer. He saw at once that a single settlement would inevitably be discovered and wiped out. His plan called for a series of settlements, so that if one were taken they could retreat to another fortified position while bands of thirty men or so cut supply lines, contaminated the enemy water supply, conducted hit-and-run raids, and eventually forced the enemy to fight on two fronts when they laid siege to the next position. Sound strategy. With every victory, more people flocked to the Articles.

Suppose the Spanish have been driven out or brought under the Articles? Suppose, too, similar uprisings in North America and Canada have shattered the English and French rule. What now? Can this vast territory be held without the usual machinery of government, ambassadors, standing army and navy? They can only plan to hold the area by sorcery. This is a sorcerers' revolution. I must find my part as a sorceress.

QUIÉN ES?

We flew back with a three-hour stopover at Orly. I had decided what I was going to do. I was going to refund Mr. Green's retainer, minus travel expenses, and tell him the actual killers were dead in a plane crash. The Greek police consider the case closed. Nothing further I can do.

Back in my New York loft I called the Greens. “This is Clem Snide calling. I'd like to speak to Mr. Green, please.”