Cities of the Red Night (21 page)

“Spermers!”

Audrey drops on one knee, raking the slope with his spark gun. The Spermers scream, rolling down the slope, clothes burning, setting the grass on fire. The truck is burning. Audrey and Cupid sprint on as the gas tank explodes behind them.

THE UNCONSCIOUS IMITATED BY A CHEESECAKE

The Double Gallows is
the
late place in Tamaghis. At 11:30 it is still nearly empty. The bartender is checking bottles and polishing glasses. Some character is freaking out at the bar.

“We're all a bunch of dirty rotten vampires!” he screams. The bouncer throws him out.

“We don't like that in here. I mean it.”

A Siren undulates in and trills for service.

“You see that sign, lady?” The bartender points to a picture of a Siren with a noose: “…
will not be served here.”
The bouncer hustles her out.

It's an exclusive-type place where
everybody
goes. What do people do in Tamaghis? They see the Show. They all come here and see the big Show. There's a hanging show every night. The bar is filling up now, because this is Flasher Night. The chic clients make their entrances through trapdoors in the floor and ceiling, or through disguised side entrances, and even now they are popping up through the floor in green drag screaming like mandrakes, dropping down through the ceiling in gauzy parachutes or with ropes around their necks, slithering in through mirrors and screens. Some are completely naked but most wear at least cowboy chaps, or scarves, or capes, or masks, or body paint, or sarongs, or snakeskin jockstraps, or Mercury sandals, or Scythian boots, or Etruscan helmets, or space suits with transparent ass and crotch.

Noose peddlers circulate among the clients, stopping here and there as a table of young aristocrats feel the nooses, which are of various grades and materials—silk in all colors, hemp cured and softened in rare unguents, tingle nooses burning with a soft blue flame, leather nooses made from sniffhound hide.

Audrey drops a noose languidly and waves to Jim across the room. Jim comes over and sits at his table. Audrey introduces him to Rubble Blood Pu, a slim elegant youth dressed in expensive nineteenth-century clothes with a red rope mark around his neck, and to Captain Strobe, the Gentleman Spermer, in eighteenth-century clothes, his yellow hair in a pigtail. Strobe too has the hemp marks around his neck. Cupid Mount Etna with a cupid-bow mouth, yellow goat eyes, and curly hair, is naked except for goat-hoof sandals. Blindish Wasp, black sideburns, eyebrows that completely cover the eye sockets, thin purple lips, is shaped like a wasp—thin rounded chest, a waist so narrow Jim could have put his hands around it, long thin legs. His skin is dead white and shiny, his cock pointed. He is naked except for a black skullcap and black pointed shoes of soft leather. He gives off a sharp aromatic odor.

The guests are becoming impatient.
“Pop Pop Pop,”
they scream.

Lights go on in a little alcove and there is the double gallows. It's a hologram and it makes you queasy to look at it floating there in stagnant rotten air like a solid mirage you can almost drink out of and almost smell. The star is a dummy called Whitey because he cost as much as the white shark in
Jaws.
A door opens on the gallows and Whitey is led in by a red demon as the clients caper around the gallows, standing on tiptoe and twisting their heads to one side and making clicking sounds with their tongues.

Now Whitey stands with the noose around his neck, pelvis tilted forward, cock almost hard, pupils pinpointed. The platform falls and he hangs there ejaculating and a blaze of light flashes out his eyes.

“A Flasher! a Flasher!” The clients throw up their arms and wriggle their hips forward ecstatically, bathing in the flash, pushing each other aside, wallowing about in heaps.

The gallows disappears. In an old silent film 1920s guests are jumping into a swimming pool.

“Come along to our digs, old sport,” says Rubble Blood Pu. “This place is getting vulgar.”

Pu leads the way through an area of vacant lots, rubble, and half-demolished buildings overgrown with weeds, scrub, and vines.

“Here we are.”

He stops in front of a three-story building. The two lower floors are torn down to the girders and concrete stairs lead to the third floor. Pu unlocks a heavy door.

The third floor is furnished in Moroccan style with rugs and cushions and low tables. Five of the kraut kids, all naked, are smoking hash. One gets up and does a belly dance while the others, at the four points of the compass, roll on their backs, legs in the air, clapping with their feet as they sing.

They wear no clothes

And they dance up on their toes

And the dance they do

Is enough to kill a Jew

Rubble Blood Pu and Captain Strobe are both very slender, with small aristocratic genitals, and they manage to look elegantly attired and perfectly poised when naked. A boy with long flaxen hair and flaring ears, naked except for a helmet, brings a tray of mint tea.

Pu shows Jim how to hold the glass by top and bottom so as not to burn his hand.… “Come along and I'll show you around the house.”

The kraut kids trail along, laughing and goosing each other.

“And here is the gallows room … all modern and convenient, as you can see … our subjects wear hanging helmets … show him, Igor.”

Igor walks up grinning. The helmet extends around the neck and down to the collarbone, glares around the ears, and covers the shaven scalp.

“You see there are wires for brain waves to be recorded over here; throat mikes in the helmet … and this.” He holds up a little ring of transparent elastic. “Always tailor-made, of course … and these magnetic tingle disks for the nipples. And the noose, scented with the subject's special smells—you know, his dirty underwear and jacked-off-in handkerchiefs. We've always been vampires, old sport.… It's in the family.” He takes a last look around. “The best that money can buy … still it's a bit confining, old sport—if you know what I mean. All in the mind, you know.…”

The room behind him turns into Gatsby's booklined study.

*   *   *

“One of your dizzy spells?”

Hans takes my arm. The boys have sated themselves for the moment. They are sitting around, shoulder to shoulder, passing cannabis cigarettes.

“Cuidado, hombre.”

A boy brushes a spark from his naked thigh … soft distant voices in the warm dusk. We are walking back through the stale air of Panama that eddies around our bodies and settles behind us. No fresh breezes stir here. The city is like a closed room, full of stale flowers and stagnant water.

*   *   *

“And now, old sport, there is someone I want you to meet … better nip in here first.” He opens the door into a luxurious bathroom. “See you in the drawing room.”

When Jim gets to the drawing room, he sees a red-haired girl looking like Jerry's twin sister, dressed in red silk pajamas. The kraut kids sprawl in front of her, jacking off like she is a pinup.

Audrey looks at his wristwatch. He is on patrol with Cupid Mount Etna. Time to hit the street.

WE ARE COORDINATED
THE GUARD IS MANIFOLD

Kelley, Clinch Todd, Hans, and myself proceed now to the garrison to review the captured soldiers. Massive walls with four gun towers surround a courtyard along which living quarters are ranged. Hans and I, flanked by ten partisans carrying razor-sharp machetes, step into the courtyard while Kelley, Todd, and Jon remain in the wardroom behind the bars.

“Ten
shun
!” They understand that in any language.

The soldiers shamble into a ragged line. Dirty, unshaven, frightened, they would seem to pose no threat. I walk slowly up and down, looking at each face in turn. A sorry lot for the most part, stupid and brutal, many of them showing the ravages of drink and disease. But two faces do stand out: a thin hawk-faced youth with piercing gray eyes who meets my regard steadily, and a pimply boy with red hair who gives me an ingratiating smile.

“How many of you can read?”

The hawk-faced youth and two others raise their hands. A fourth raises his hand halfway.

“Well, can you read or can't you?”

“Well, yes sir, but it takes me some time.”

“You'll have plenty of that.” I point to the Articles. “I want those of you who can read to read what is written there. I want you to read it carefully. Then I want you to explain what is written there to those who can't read. Is that clear?”

The hawk-faced youth nods with a slight smile.

“I'll be back later to see if what is written there has been read and understood.”

We then proceed to the house where the women are held, to be greeted by a chorus of shrewish complaints. No one will talk to them or tell them what had happened to their sons, husbands, and brothers. They have been denied medical attention and prevented from going to Mass.

I apologize smoothly for the temporary inconvenience and assure them that their husbands, sons, and brothers are safe and being well cared for. I tell them that I am a qualified physician, and that if any of them are suffering from any pains or illnesses I will be glad to receive them one by one in a room I have set up as my office. I have also brought a priest who will hear confession, grant absolutions, or perform any other priestly offices of which they are in need. The “priest” is none other than Half-Hanged Kelley, his hemp marks covered by a clerical collar.

One by one, they troop into my office complaining of headaches, backaches, toothaches, chills and fever, shingles, flatulence, cramps, palpitations, catarrhs, varicose veins, fainting spells, neuralgia, and other ailments difficult to classify. To each I give a draft containing four grains of opium, with instructions to repeat the dose if their trouble returns, which of course it will at the end of eight hours when the opium wears off. Needless to say, Kelley is also kept busy by the pious
señoras.

Returning to the garrison, I call the soldiers to attention. I walk down the line directing the three readers and the half-reader to stand forward. I then pick out six more, looking for faces and bodies that are reasonably well favored or show some signs of adaptability, intelligence, and good character. These ten being brought to the wardroom, I ask if they have read the Articles or had the Articles explained to them.

“‘Article One: No man may be imprisoned for debt.' What does this Article mean to you?”

A fresh-faced boy with an impudent smile and reddish hair speaks up: “Suppose I run up a bill in the
cantina
and can't pay?”

I explain that debts to an innkeeper fall into a special category. If no one paid, there would be no
cantinas
and no wine.

The hawk-faced boy asks: “Does this mean that you intend to release all peons even though they stand in debt to the
patrón
?”

“It means exactly that. We intend to abolish the peonage system.”

A mulatto boy looks at me suspiciously. Blank faces of the others show me they know nothing of the peonage system or how it operates.

“‘Article Two: No man may enslave another.' What does this mean to you?”

“Does this mean we get out of the army?” the pimply boy asks.

I explain that the Spanish army does not exist in areas we control. Our army consists entirely of volunteers.

“What do you pay?”

“We pay in freedom and equal shares of any booty we take. The gold we have taken here in Panama will be shared equally among the soldiers who took part in the operation.”

“I want to volunteer.” He smiled and rubbed his crotch. Not intelligent exactly, but quick, intuitive, and brazen. A shameless one.

“What's your name?”

“Paco.”

“Yes, Paco, you can volunteer.”

“You mean you're going to abolish slavery?” the mulatto youth asked suspiciously.

“I mean exactly that.”

“I'll believe it when I see it.”

“‘No man may interfere in any way with the religious beliefs or practices of another.' What does this mean to you?”

“We don't have to go to Mass?”

“That's right. Nor may you prevent anyone else from doing so.”

“That would apply to other religions? To Moors and Jews?” the hawk-faced boy asked.

“Of course … ‘Article Four: No man may be subjected to torture for any reason.'”

“How will you get information from prisoners?”

“There are easier ways of doing that, as you will see. ‘Article Five: No man may interfere with the sexual practices of another or force any sexual act on another against his or her will.' What does this mean to you?”

“You mean if I fuck another boy in the ass no one can say anything?”

“They can say what they like but they cannot interfere. If they do you would be justified in taking whatever measures were necessary to protect your freedom and your person, and anyone under the Articles would be bound to assist you.”

The half-reader spoke up for the first time. “Sergeant Gonzalez and Corporal Hassanavitch kicked two soldiers to death for sodomy.”

“Did they indeed?”

“If the sergeant finds out I told you that he'll have a knife in me.”

“A knife?”

“Yes sir. He has a knife strapped to his leg.”

“Interesting … ‘Article Six: No man may be put to death except for violation of the Articles. All officers of the Inquisition stand condemned under this Article and subject to immediate execution.' Do any of you know of any such officers present in Panama City?”

“Father Domingo and Father Gomez are officers of the Inquisition,” said the hawk-faced youth. “Sent here to deal with pirates. They wanted to burn the English pirate as a heretic.”

“Thank you. You will be rewarded for the information.” The hawk-faced boy looked at me haughtily.