Cities of the Red Night (35 page)

Ten minutes later, Audrey was down with Cotton Fever. Teeth chattering, his whole body shaking, he lay on the bed, knees up to his chin, hands clenched in front of his face.

Finally, he got two Nembutals down and the shivering stopped. He went to sleep.

He dreamed he was back in Saint Louis as a child. He was eating orange ice very fast for the sharp headache and the relief that comes from sipping a little water. Just as he reached for the water, he woke up with a pounding searing headache, his body burning with fever. He knew that he was very sick, perhaps dying.

He tried to get up and fell on his knees by Jerry's bed. He shook Jerry's shoulder. The flesh was burning-hot. Jerry muttered something.

“Wake up, Jerry. We have to get help.”

The door opened. The light was turned on. Three Greek cops and the proprietor were watching from the doorway. The cops pointed to the boys and said something in excited Greek. They backed out of the room stuffing handkerchiefs in front of their faces. Leaving one cop at the door, they called an ambulance.

Audrey vaguely remembered being lifted onto a stretcher by masked figures. As he was carried down the stairs, he saw words in front of his eyes: a lattice of black words on white paper shifting and rotating. He could make out the first sentence:

“The name is Clem Snide. I am a private asshole.”

The nurse stood by his bed with a thermometer. She put it in his mouth and left the room. She came back with a breakfast tray. She drew out the thermometer and looked at it. “Well, almost down to normal now.”

Audrey sat up in bed, drank the orange juice greedily, ate a boiled egg and a piece of toast and was drinking his coffee when Doctor Dimitri came in. The face looked familiar and seemed to stir and concentrate the vague shapes of the dream. Of course, Audrey thought. I've been delirious and he was the doctor.

“Well, I see you're a lot better. You should be out of here in a few days now.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Ten days. You've been very sick.”

“What was it?”

“Don't know exactly … a virus … new ones keep turning up. We thought at first it was scarlet fever but when there was no reaction to antibiotics, we shifted to purely symptomatic treatment. I don't mind telling you it was a close thing … temperatures up to a hundred and six … your two friends are here … exactly the same syndrome.”

“And I've been delirious all this time?”

“Completely. Do you remember any of it?”

“Last thing I remember is being carried out of the hostel.”

“The remarkable thing is that you, Jerry, and John all seemed to be in the same delirium. I've made a few notes.…” He flipped open a small loose-leaf notebook. “Does this mean anything to you? Tamaghis … Ba'dan … Yass-Waddah … Waghdas … Naufana … or Ghadis?”

“No.”

“Cities of the Red Night?”

Audrey glimpsed a red sky and mud walls.… “Just a flash.”

“And now, there is the matter of my fee.”

“My father will pay you.”

“He has already agreed to do so but he has refused to pay the hospital costs—pleading his income tax. This is awkward. However, if you will sign an agreement to pay … your father suggests that you apply to the American Embassy for repatriation.…”

*   *   *

The boys are at the reception desk of the hospital, signing papers. Doctor Dimitri stands there in a dark suit.

Audrey looks around: something very strange about this hospital … for one thing, no one seems to be wearing white uniforms. Perhaps, he thinks egocentrically, they are all waiting for us to go home so they can leave—but then another shift would be coming on. In fact, he decides, this doesn't look like a hospital at all … more like the American Embassy.

A cab pulls up under the portico. Doctor Dimitri shakes hands with a rapidly disappearing smile.

As soon as the boys are gone, he walks through a series of doors, each guarded by an armed security man who nods him through.

He is in a room with a computer panel attached to a battery of tape recorders. He flicks a switch.

“The Consul will see you now.”

A black wooden slate on the desk said “Mr. Pierson.” The Consul was a thin young man in a gray seersucker suit with an ascetic disdainful Wasp face and very cold gray eyes.

He stood up, shook hands without smiling, and motioned the three boys to chairs. He spoke in a cultivated academic voice from which all traces of warmth had been carefully excised. “You realize that there is a considerable hospital bill outstanding?”

“We have signed an agreement to pay.”

“The Greek authorities could prevent you from leaving the country.”

The three boys spoke at once:

Audrey: “It wasn't our fault.…”

Jerry: “We got sick.…”

John: “It was…”

Audrey: “A virus…”

Jerry: “A new virus.” He smiled seductively at the Consul, who did not smile back.

All together: “We almost died!” They rolled their eyes back and made a death-rattle sound.

“The police found evidence of drug-taking in your room. You are lucky not to be in jail.”

“We're certainly grateful to you, Mr. Pierson. And lucky to be here—like you say,” said Audrey. He tried to sound impulsive and boyish but it came out all slimy and insinuating.

The others nodded in agreement.

“Don't thank me,” said the Consul dryly. “It was Doctor Dimitri who put in a word with the police. He is interested in your
case.
A new virus, it seems.…” He looked at the boys severely, as if they had committed some gross breach of decorum.

“Doctor Dimitri is quite an influential man.”

All together, plaintively: “We want to go home.”

“I daresay. And who will pay for that?”

“We will—when we can,” said Audrey.

The others nodded in agreement.

“And when will that be? Have you ever thought about working?” asked Mr. Pierson.

“Thought about it,” said Audrey.

“In an abstract sort of way…” said Jerry.

“Like death and old age…” said John.

“Doesn't happen to people one knows…” said Audrey feeling like a Fitzgerald character. The sun came out from behind a cloud and filled the room with light.

The Consul leaned forward and spoke in confidential tones. “For example … for
example
 … you could
work
your way home. There's a ship in Piraeus now that can use three deckhands. Any sailing experience?”

“Reef the mizzenmast!” said Audrey.

“Scuttle the bilge!” said John.

“And pour hot tar on the companionway!” said Jerry.

“Good.” The Consul wrote something down on a slip of paper and passed it to Audrey. “When you get to
The Billy Celeste,
ask for Captain Nordenholz.”

The boys stood up and said in chorus: “Thank you, Mr. Pierson.” They flashed toothpaste smiles.

Mr. Pierson looked down at his desk and said nothing. The boys walked out.

As he stepped out of the office, Audrey got a whiff of that unmistakable hospital smell. A young man in a white coat was chatting with a nurse at the reception desk. A taxi pulled up for them at the door.

In the office, Doctor Pierson picked up the phone: “Doctor Pierson here.… Yes, no question about it.” He picked up the slides and studied them. “B-23 all right.… The boy Jerry is obviously the original carrier.… Active? Like a plutonium pile.… There is, of course, the uh delicate and sensitive question of differential racial or ethnic susceptibility … with further research, perhaps … Could not commit myself on the basis of present findings … theoretically possible, of course. On the other hand, uncontrolled mutation cannot be ruled out … sure? How can I be sure? After all it's not in my district.”

Late afternoon in the cabin of
The Billy Celeste.
Audrey and the boys have just signed on.

Skipper Nordenholz glanced down at the names. “Well uh Jerry, Audrey, and John … you have made a wise choice. I hope you are quite fit?”

“Oh yes, Captain.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“The doctor said we made a
remarkable
recovery.”

“Good. We will be sailing within the hour.… Tunis, Gibraltar … Lisbon for Halifax. Incidentally, we will be passing the exact spot off the Azores where
The Mary Celeste
was found in 1872—all sails set, completely undamaged, nobody on board.” His green eyes glinted with irony as he smiled slightly and added, “The mystery was never solved.”

“Perhaps it was just the basic mystery of life, Skipper,” Audrey said cheekily. “Now you see it—now you don't.”

MINUTES TO GO

We call ourselves the Destroying Angels. Our target is the rear-end of Yass-Waddah, if it could be said to have one. We feel rather like the Light Brigade. All the bad characters of history are gathered in Yass-Waddah for a last-ditch stand: the Countess de Gulpa, heavy and cold as a fish under tons of gray shale; the Countess de Vile, eyes glowing, face flushed from the ecstasy of torture; the Ugly Spirit; the Black Abbot; and the Council of the Selected—all with their guards and minions and torture chambers. How can we prevail against this wall of icy purpose?

We got the message on the teleflash from Ba'dan. Yass-Waddah has completed nuclear device ahead of schedule. All-out aid requested.

We are still 150 miles from Yass-Waddah. Four days hard marching. We don't have that much time.

WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF YOU

Woke up in the silent wolf lope. There is the river. No sign of Yass-Waddah. I must be above or below it.

I reach the bank. Across the river I can see the rotting piers and sheds of East Ba'dan. To my right is what remains of a bridge, the upper structure rotted away, leaving only the piles protruding from green water.

I am standing where Yass-Waddah used to be. The water looks green and cold and dirty and curiously artificial, like a diorama in the Museum of Natural History.

A blond boy enters from my right where the bridge used to be, walking on the green-brown water. He moves with a stalking gait as if he were playing some part in a play, mimicking some actor with a touch of parody.

The boy is wearing a white T-shirt with a yellow calligram on the chest surrounded by a circle of yellow light, rainbow-colored at the edges. He is wearing white gym shorts and white tennis shoes.

A dark boy in identical white gym clothes is standing to my left on the bank at the top of a grassy hillock. He has planted a banner in the ground beside him and holds the shaft with one hand. The banner is the calligram in the rainbow circle stirring gently in a wind that ruffles his shorts around smooth white thighs.

The blond boy walks up from the water and stands in front of his dark twin. The dark boy begins to talk in soft flute calls, clean and sweet and joyful with a sound like laughter, wind in the trees, birds at dawn, trickling streams. The blond boy answers in the same language, sweetly inhuman voices from a distant star.

Now I recognize the dark boy as Dink Rivers, the boy from Middletown, and the other as myself. This is a high school play. We have just taken the west side of the river. This is the conquest of Yass-Waddah.

Good evening, our chap. A good crossing. Yass-Waddah disintegrated.

A slow insouciant shrug of rocks and stones and trees spreads a golf course along the river now several hundred yards away. Two caddies stand in a sand trap. One rubs his crotch and the other makes a jack-off gesture. Music from the country club on a gust of wind. Red brick buildings, cobblestone streets. It is getting darker. Dusty ticket booth.

A sign:

The Billy Celeste High School presents:

C
ITIES OF THE
R
ED
N
IGHT

I lead the way through rooms stacked with furniture and paintings, passageways, partitions, stairways, booths, cubicles, elevators, ramps and ladders, trunks full of costumes and old weapons, bathtubs, toilets, steam rooms, and rooms open in front.…

A boy jacks off on a yellow toilet seat … catcalls and scattered applause.

We are in a cobblestone alley. I look at my companion. He is about eighteen. He has large brown eyes with amber pupils, set to the side of his face, and a long straight Mayan nose. He is dressed in blue-and-brown-striped pants and shirt.

I open a rusty padlock into my father's workshop. We strip and straddle a pirate chest, facing each other. His skin is a deep brownish-purple gray underneath. A sharp musty smell pulses from his erect phallus with its smooth purple head. His eyes converge on me like a lizard's.

“What scene do you want me to act in?”

“Death Baby fucks the Corn God.”

We open the chest. He takes out a necklace of crystal skulls and puts it on. There is a reek of decay as he drapes me in the golden flesh of the young Corn God.

We are in a vast loft-attic-gymnasium-warehouse. There are chests and trunks, costumes, mirrors, and makeup. Boys are taking out costumes, trying them on, posing and giggling in front of mirrors, moving props and backdrops.

The warehouse seems endless. A maze of rooms and streets, cafés, courtyards and gardens. Farm rooms, with walnut bedsteads and hooked rugs, open onto a pond where boys fish naked on an improvised raft. A Moroccan patio is animated with sand foxes and a boy playing a flute … stars like wilted gardenias across the blue night sky.

A number of performances are going on at the same time, in many rooms, on many levels. The spectators circulate from one stage to another, putting on costumes and makeup to join a performance and the performers all move from one stage to another. There are moving stages and floats, platforms that descend from the ceiling on pulleys, doors that pop open, and partitions that slide back.