Cities of the Red Night

On the eastern seaboard, we have every chance of a decisive sea victory. Here we have The Siren and The Great White, both now equipped with maneuverable cannons and exploding projectiles. No doubt all the British and French pirates and privateers in the West Indian area will gather like sharks at the smell of Cartagena gold. Our Destroyers will be operating long the coasts and land partisans will make the landing of troops extremely costly. On the Pacific side, our sea forces are negligible, consisting of only a few Destroyers in the Pearl Islands vicinity. We have, therefore, decided to evacuate Panama City at the approach of the Spanish galleons and let them land as many troops as they wish. In fact, the more they land, the better we like it. The Spanish, confident of victory, will then move north and south relying on heavy reinforcements from the east.

Back in the barracks, the fifteen who are to receive partisan training are lined up. I study each fact in turn: Rodriguez, the haw-faced boy with intense gray eyes, very intelligent, highly literate staff-officer material ... Juanito, a little Filipino, always smiling, eager to please ... the mulatto reader Jose, a solid reliable face, steady nerves in combat ... Kiki, the half-reader with a Mongoloid face and straight black hair, nicknamed El Chino ... Paco with his impudent ingratiating smile ... Nemo, a slender yellow-skinned buck-toothed youth with a dancer's grace ... Nimun, a curiously archaic youth part Negro with red hair, brown freckles, and a blank expression—he looks like one of the first mutant redheads from prehistoric times ... Pedro, a handsome broad-faced boy with high cheekbones and a smooth reddish face. The others are less distinguished, country faces from farm families who have enlisted to escape grinding poverty.

'You have been selected for partisan training. Your instruction begins tomorrow. During ten days of training, you will be paid five times your present pay. As soon as you join partisans in the field, the rate will be ten times present pay and an equal share of any booty taken. You will be wearing cadet uniforms from now on. You can come and go as you like after training hours.'

Hans walks up and down measuring the boys with his eyes and writing measurements down on a clipboard. He hands the list to partisans, who return with a stack of uniforms and boots which they dump on a table.

We direct the boys to strip and bathe.

The boys are drawing water from the cistern and pouring it over each other with the usual horseplay and merriment. Paco sidles in behind Nemo and pretends to fuck him, rolling his eyes and showing his teeth and snorting like a horse. 'Cabron!' Nemo screams, dodging away as he empties a bucket of water over Paco's head.

I am the eternal spectator, separated by unbridgeable gaps of knowledge, feeling the sperm gathering in tight nuts, the quivering rectums, smelling the iron reek of sex, sweat, and rectal mucus, watching the writhing brown bodies in the setting sun, torn with an ache of disembodied lust and the searing pain of disintegration.

Silver spots boil in front of my eyes. I am standing in the empty ruined courtyard hundreds of years from now, a sad ghostly visitant in a dead city, smell of nothing and nobody there.

The boys are flickering shadows of memory, evoking bodies that have long since turned to dust. I am calling, calling with a throat, without a tongue, calling across the centuries: 'Paco ... Joselito ... Enrique.'

Screen play/part one

It is on the second floor. A brass plaque: 'Blum & Krup.' A metal door. A bell. I ring. A cold-eyed young Jew opens the door a crack.

'Yes? You are client of salesman?'

'Neither.' I hand him my card. He closes the door and goes away. He comes back.

'Mr. Blum and Mr. Krup will see you now.'

He ushers me into an office decorated in the worst German taste with pictures of youths and maidens swimming with swans in northern lakes, the carpets up to my ankles. There, behind a huge desk, are Blum and Krup. A vaudeville team. Blum is Austrian and Jewish, Krup is Prussian and German.

Krup bows stiffly without getting up. 'Krup von Nordenholz.'

Blum bustles out from behind the desk. 'Sit down, Mr. Snide. I am the master here. Have a cigar.'