Cities of the Red Night

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 his 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 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 boy 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 boy 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 at his house.

Hans looks at me with a knowing smile. 'Frauleins.' 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 attempts 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