Cities of the Red Night

of snow, swamps, and deserts where vast red mesas tower into the sky, fragile aircraft over burning cities, flaming arrows, dimming to mauves and grays and finally—in a last burst of light—the enigmatic face of Waring as his eyes light up in a blue flash. He bows three times and disappears into the gathering dusk.

Return to Port Roger

This must be it. Warped planks in a tangle of trees and vines. The pool of the Palace is covered with algae. A snake slithers into the green water. Weeds grow through the rusty shell of a bucket in the haman. The stairs leading to the upper porch have fallen. Nothing here but the smell of empty years. How many years? I can't be sure.

I am carrying a teakwood box with a leather handle. The box is locked. I have the key but I will not open the box here. I take the path to Dink's house. Sometimes paths last longer than roads.

There it is on the beach, just as I remember it. Sand has covered the steps and drifted across the floor. Smell of nothing and nobody there. I sit down on the sand-covered steps and look out to the harbor at the ship that brought me here and that will take me away. I take out my key and open the box and leaf through the yellow pages. The last entry is from many years ago.

We were in Panama waiting for the Spanish. I am back in the fort watching the advancing soldiers through a telescope, closer and closer to death.

'Go back!' I am screaming without a throat, with a tongue—'Get in your galleons and go back to Spain!'

Hearing the final sonorous knell of Spain as church bells silently implode into Sisters of Mary, Communions, Confessions ...

'Paco ... Joselito ... Enrique.'

Father Kelley is giving them absolution. There is pain in his voice, It's too easy. Then our shells and mortars rip through them like a great iron fist. A few still take cover and return fire.

Paco catches a bullet in the chest. Sad shrinking face. He pulls my head down as the gray lips whisper—'I want the priest.'

I didn't want to write about this or what followed. Guayaquil, Lima, Santiago and all the others I didn't see. The easiest victories are the most costly in the end.

I have blown a hole in time with firecracker. Let others step through. Into what bigger and bigger firecrackers? Better weapons led to better and better weapons, until the earth is a grenade with the fuse burning.

I remember a dream of my childhood. I am in a beautiful garden. As I reach out to touch the flowers they wither under my hands. A nightmare feeling of foreboding and desolation comes over me as a great mushroom-shaped cloud darkens the earth. A few may get through the gate in time. Like Spain, I am bound to the past.

'Not only Burrough's best work, but a logical ripening extension of all Burrough's great work'

Ken Keasy

'Burroughs is an awe-inspiring poetic magicians. I believe Cities of the Red Night is his masterpiece'

Christopher Isherwood

'The outrageousness of Cities of the Red Night suggests it was written in collusion with Swift, Baudelaire, Schopenhauer, Orwell, Lenny Bruce, General Patton and John Calvin . . . Burroughs may just turn out to be a hipster Moses leading his children of darkness through debauched deserts into the promised land'

San Francisco Chronicle

'Elliptical, startling and very funny'

Time Out

'Burroughs's nightmares render Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four as innocuous as The Archers'

Heathcote Williams, Guardian

'He has created an obsessive landscape which lingers in the mind as a fundamental statement about the possibilities of human life, hopelessly lost and yet so much to be hoped for. I don't expect to read a better novel this year'

Peter Ackroyd, Sunday Times