Cities of the Red Night

by William S. Burroughs

  “Frog boys from underground rivers…” the guide throws over his shoulder.

  Audrey notices that his guide and most of the other people he passes carry at their belts a tool like a little crowbar hooked at one end. Now a ripple passes along the street, actors and musicians are gathering up instruments and props behind him as the word moves from lip to lip.

  “HIP.” (Heroid Patrol)

  People are dodging into doorways, prising up manhole covers with their tools, and scrambling down ladders into a maze of tunnels where the Heroids do not dare to venture. Audrey follows his guide through twisting tunnels, past youths on roller skates, scooters, and skateboards.

  The tunnels open here and there into caverns where people live in stalactite-and-quartz houses and tend pools of blind fish. Up twisting iron ladders are Turkish baths, lodgings, houses and brothels. Privies open into restaurants and patios.

  Down a rope ladder is a dusty gymnasium where boys are practicing with various weapons as they wait for an assignment: Jerry and Rubble Blood Pu, Cupid Mount Etna, Dahlfar, Jimmy Lee, and the Katzenjammer Kids, as we call the German boys. They drift over to greet him.

  “How’d you make out with the Eyetie?”

  “Easy and greasy and lots of fun … the look on his lousy wise-guy face when he knew. It was tasty.”

  Audrey sees a number of the little people climbing up and down ropes and swinging from rings with great agility. He is amazed to see that some of them have long prehensile tails and retractable claws on their feet and hands that enable them to scramble up trees like squirrels.

  As he watches, one boy drops thirty feet to the floor, lighting like a cat. The other boys are constantly trying to touch the little people but they are skittish of contact, dodging away from outstretched hands or snapping with their sharp little teeth.

  All of them are expert assassins, deadly with knife and strangling cord, dropping on their victims from trees or roofs or climbing into seemingly inaccessible windows. They are also highly proficient with firearms, using a tiny revolver that shoots naillike projectiles and a rifle that shoots poison darts with a range of two hundred yards.

  The subtlest assassins among them are the Dream Killers or Bangutot Boys. They have the ability to invade the REM sleep of the target, fashion themselves from the victim’s erection, and grow from his sexual energy until they are solid enough to strangle him.

  Audrey finds Toby in the locker room, sitting naked and pensive on a worn wooden bench. He looks up absently and pats the bench beside him. Audrey sits down and they both stare vacantly at the wall for several minutes.

  Finally Audrey asks, “Is Arn around?”

  Toby looks at him blankly from an empty space. “I never heard of it.”

  “I uh thought … I mean this morning…”

  “Well, my scent glands are so potent sometimes people hallucinate,” Toby tells him smugly. “Perhaps you dreamed up the whole thing.”

  “Well, maybe.” He puts his arms around Toby’s shoulders hoping to excite him so he will give out the smell which is like exquisite perfumed poppers.

  Toby’s cock begins to stir and stiffen as he stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back, looking thoughtfully at his toes. Two little people come in rubbing against his legs like cats. They give off a delicate sand fox smell that floats on the heavier male scents of the locker room like a pousse-café.

  A thirteen-year-old in the black suit and straw hat of an English public school “fag” sticks his head in and calls to Audrey:

  “The Shrink wants to see you.” He pushes his eyes up at the corners to make a Chinese face and adds in falsetto, “Chop-chop!”

  After a few general questions about space lag, the Doctor asks with elaborate casualness: “Would you please tell me in your own words everything you remember about this uh Arn.” He glances down at a file in front of him.

  Audrey tries to comply but he encounters blanks in his memory like trying to recall a dream that hovers just out of reach on the edge of perception, skittering away as you try to grasp it, erasing memory traces with a little broom that fades out, in turn wiping away footprints in distant sand.

  The Doctor leans across the table and breaks an ampule under his nose. “Just relax now and breathe in deeply.”

  Audrey finds himself on a table looking up at masked faces.

  “That’s right now—count up to fifty.…”

  When Audrey wakes up he finds a shaved spot at the back of his head that is slightly sore to his touch.

  “Well, Audrey,” the Doctor explains, “we’ve installed a separator. Might come in handy if you ever need to be in two places at once.…” He pats Audrey’s shoulder. “You can leave the hospital tomorrow morning. Now I’m going to give you an injection.”

  The days seem to flash by like a speeded-up chase scene in a 1920s comedy … patrols always behind them, bullets thudding into flesh, bombs in Middletown bars and theaters and restaurants. A wake of glass, blood and brains and the hot meaty smell of entrails remind Audrey of a rabbit he had once seen dissected in biology class. A girl had fainted. He could see her slump to the floor with a soft plop.

  Shatter Day always closer …

  MOVES AND CHECKS AND SLAYS

  Like many riots, the Ba’dan riots began with a “peaceful demonstration,” but neither side had any intention of letting it end that way.

  The Anschluss with Yass-Waddah was to be put to a plebiscite. Those most directly concerned, namely the inhabitants of the Casbah, were disfranchised. But they had obtained permission from the Town Council to make a peaceful demonstration in Courthouse Square around which most of the government buildings were located.

  Meanwhile, Yass-Waddan agents were arming and organizing paramilitary forces in Middletown, intending to catch the “Arabs,” as they called them, between the Heroid Police and the armed vigilantes and wipe them out. After which, they would demolish the Casbah and drop poison gas down the tunnels and occupy Portland.

  Dimitri had his own plans. After delicate negotiations, he had made contacts in Portland. Portland officials are supposed to keep out of local politics except in cases of “dire emergency.” But the Anschluss posed such a threat to their continued function, if not to their personal safety, as to constitute a “dire emergency” and all Dimitri asked was for a customs agent to look the other way for a few seconds when the containers of heroin for the Heroid Police were being passed through customs, while Dimitri’s agents substituted identical containers filled with a short-acting opiate antagonist.

  Dimitri also had promises of arms caches in the courthouse building provided by certain wealthy families who preferred to avoid more direct involvement. None of the old families wanted the Anschluss. It was a threat to their power and Yass-Waddan agents were talking openly about “parasites” and “traitors.”

  Audrey knew the battle plan. Even if it went according to plan, there would be close fighting and heavy casualties. So he had these special codpieces made up of a tough plasticlike material and issued them to his team, which was very good for morale. He was in charge of a commando group who were supposed to break through the line of Heroids like a football scrimmage then race upstairs to a room in the courthouse where a cache of arms was to be waiting and then take over the courthouse building.

  On the appointed day, the demonstrators from the Casbah, after passing a metal detector and a hand search for weapons, made their way towards the square past snarling middies. So many things could go wrong: the guns aren’t there … they are in the wrong place … the keys don’t work.

  As they filed into the square, he saw the line of impassive Heroids in front of the courthouse armed with 9-M grease guns. Sandbags and heavy machine guns on tripods were at the windows and on the roof.

  The provocation was carefully planted: crowbars and a stack of cobblestones from street repairs. Audrey glanced at his watch. Two minutes to countdown.

  Muscular youths snatch up cobblestones. Jeers and catcalls explode
from the demonstrators. Automatic weapons are raised. This is it.

  And something is happening to the Heroids. A composite groan is followed by the sound of emptying bowels and a reek of excrement. Instead of responding with deadly accurate machine-gun fire, the Heroids are going down like tenpins as the cobblestones hit. So far, Dimitri’s plan is working.

  On duty when there is no time for injections, the Heroids function on heroin capsules that dissolve at different rates, releasing a dosage every few hours. However, what is dissolving now is not heroin but a short-acting opiate antagonist. Withdrawal symptoms that would be severe enough spread over several days are compacted into minutes, resulting in immediate incapacity and, in many cases, death from shock and circulatory collapse.

  A boy throws a football block into a Heroid in front of Audrey. The gun flies out of his hand and Audrey catches it in the air. Now they are racing for the gangway. Two Heroids in front of the main door are trying to raise their weapons. Audrey gives them a burst as he runs past.

  A heavy iron door. The key works. Now down the gangway. Side door is open as it should be. Upstairs and this must be the room.

  Key works and there are M-16s, ammo, grenades and grenade launchers, and a few bazookas. (The Paries he knows are equipped with the older and more cumbersome M-15s and some even with Garands.)

  Immediately Audrey’s team spreads out in groups of five to take over the gun emplacements in the building and on the roof. Audrey and four others fan into a room. A machine gun is on a tripod behind sandbags. The crew, sprawled on the floor and over the sandbags, is completely disabled. Two are dead.

  Audrey kneels beside a young Heroid who is lying on his back, his deathly pale face covered with sweat, his pants sticking up at the fly. Audrey whips out a Syrette containing a quarter-grain of pure heroin and injects it into the boy’s arm. Now the second part of Dimitri’s plan is going into effect: the conversion of the Heroids. This is why he did not simply substitute a quick-acting poison for the heroin.

  The boy sits up.

  “Welcome to our cause, comrade,” says Audrey.

  The first shots in the area signal the Paries, under the command of General Darg, to pour out of side streets into the square, where they expect to catch the fleeing unarmed demonstrators on the flank. Instead, they run into a hail of machine-gun fire from the demonstrators who have seized weapons from the fallen Heroids. Even deadlier sniper fire strikes down from the windows and roof of the courthouse. To conserve ammunition, Audrey’s commandos keep their weapons on semiautomatic, making sure of a hit with every shot.

  In a few seconds, Darg’s forces have suffered several hundred casualties. He hastily withdraws to seize and fortify buildings on the opposite side of the square and along the side streets leading into the square. He dispatches troops to cover the entrances from the Casbah and to patrol Fun City to prevent more men and weapons being brought into action.

  By the end of the first day, the rioters are in control of most of the buildings on the south side of the square. They are, however, unable to open a passage to the Casbah.

  Meanwhile, there is much rejoicing in Yass-Waddah. The courtiers are planning a torture festival for the captives, camping around in costumes and, of course, there will be a prize for the most ingenious torture device. The tortured captives will be rendered down into the most exquisite condiments and sweetmeats: raw quivering brains served with a piquant sauce, candied testicles, sweet-and-sour penis, rectums boiled in chocolate.

  The Countess de Gulpa admonishes her courtiers to bear in mind that only the ringleaders deserve exemplary punishment. The rank and file will make useful slaves.

  “Oh, Minny is so kind,” coo the courtiers. “Minny is so kind.”

  Reports are coming in. The rioters have been surrounded and will surrender in a few hours. These reports have been sent out by General Darg, who is certain of a final victory and does not want the Green Guards or, worse still, a regiment of useless courtiers getting in the way and tarnishing his glory. On the other end, the reports are further falsified to curry favor with the countesses.

  The Empress of Yass-Waddah holds aloof from these rejoicings. She knows that whatever the outcome of the battle, her power is gone. She is, in fact, making plans to flee the city in disguise with a handful of faithful eunuchs.

  The Empress intends to leave behind a little present for the countesses, a basket of sleeping kundu.

  The dreaded kundu is a species of flying scorpion. The body is covered by needle-sharp back-slanting red spines. The jaws are razor-sharp and designed for burrowing like a mole cricket’s. The venom that drips from the hairs and the tail-stinger causes instant paralysis. Then the kundu sheds its wings and burrows its way up body orifices and deposits its larvae in the intestines, the liver, the kidneys and spleen so that the paralyzed victim is eaten alive. Unlike other scorpions the kundu is diurnal, remaining comatose during the cold desert nights and being slowly roused to activity by the heat of the day

  Perhaps I will win the torture contest in absentia, the Empress thinks.

  The second day saw substantial gains for the insurgents. The little people who can climb like monkeys, moving from roof to roof with their poison dart guns, carrying cylinders of chlorine and sulfur dioxide, flushed the Paries out of the buildings around the square, which were then occupied by the insurgents and the renegade Heroids. Darg and his troop, however, remained in occupation of the buildings along the side streets and continued to block entrances from the Casbah. Dimitri knew better than to attempt to force a passage through these narrow streets with troops on the roofs of the buildings five and six stories in height—an error that cost the police heavy casualties in the New York Draft Riots of 1863. Then rioters on the roofs of buildings along the narrow streets of lower Manhattan defeated armed police contingents with cobblestones and other missiles.

  General Darg, still sure of ultimate victory, even if a long siege was involved, refused to ask for reinforcements and sent back reports that the situation was under control. However, there were still a few pockets of resistance.

  The third day dawned like a bleary red eye. An old woman brought a basket of exquisite golden figs to the kitchen door of the Countess’s palace. Under the figs, the kundu were still comatose from the icy chill of the night.

  WILL HOLLYWOOD NEVER LEARN

  In Ba’dan both sides are looking for a showdown. Darg, because he knows that he cannot conceal the actual state of affairs much longer. Dimitri, because he feels that a state of siege is not to his advantage owing to the numerical superiority of the enemy and their readier access to supplies and weapons. So both generals evoke every aid they can summon through magic rituals.

  As the sun climbs higher, the square looks like Hollywood gone berserk. Roman legionnaires under Quintus Curtius are fighting French riot police. Vikings and pirates battle crusaders and Texas Rangers. Old western gunfighters shoot it out with the Black and Tans and Kenya Special Police. Hannibal’s elephants charge a train of 1920s Marines on their way to protect the assets of the United Fruit Co. Battle cries and songs ring out. Peons with machetes decapitate lynch mobs … mucho bouncing heads, meester. Battle cries and songs ring out with grunts and bellows, war whoops, bagpipes, the reek of horses, chili and garlic.…

  “La cucaracha la cucaracha

  Ya no quiere caminar

  Porque no tiene porque le falta

  Marijuana por fumar.”

  Pancho Villa’s men shoot down a helicopter from Operation Intercept. An army of Chinese waiters charge out of a false-front chop-suey joint with meat cleavers, screaming: “Fluck you! Fluck you! Fluck you!” They reduce narcs and Mafiosi to hamburger. Poison darts from Indian blowguns wipe out a Klan rally. Nigger-killing southern lawmen are hacked to pieces by naked Scythians on horseback.

  Audrey is in the very thick of it, changing costumes every few minutes. Now he leads a detachment of amok Malay youths with krisses against the Shah’s Savak. Next Audrey, on a great black horse i
n medieval armor, charges down the streets of Middletown skewering religious women and lawmen on his lance. Then he is a shootist with his custom-made 44 double-action revolver leading the Wild Bunch to break up an auto-da-fé in Lima. Now he boards a Spanish man-of-war with cutlass and laser gun. Machine-gun bullets, poison darts, arrows, spears, boomerangs, bolos, throwing knives, cobblestones. Rockets whistle through the air, sharp smell of weeds and dry heat from old westerns, snow and ice with Viking ships, amok Malays trail muggy heat and jungle smells, pirates blow in with a sea wind and a whiff of rum and spices, pitchmen and camp followers spread out their wares, false-front saloons, whorehouses, taco stands, carny booths with root beer and spun sugar, sod-roofed huts serving chicha, chick-peas and roast guinea pig, street performers passing around the hat and picking pockets—pea under the shell, now you see it now you don’t … shift partners round and round—Malay youths with krisses skewering religious women, shootist with custom-made Kenya Special Police in his nostrils, southern lawmen are hacked to Hollywood and gone, and a grinning boy passes around a bloody Stetson.

  “Nominate your poison, gents.”

  Klansmen clutch their throats and turn black.

  “We don’t serve niggers in here!” thunders the bartender. “Take them outside because they stink. Take them to the Nigger Morgue.”

  Boys in medieval codpieces have set up a catapult. Roman soldiers break down doors with battering rams, impervious to the bullets, which break against clear classic light with a whiff of ozone.

  Raids and prisoners … Rape of the Sabine … Romans sweep in on a women’s rally and carry the bitches away, screaming and kicking, an old western posse is lynching a Neanderthal man, KGB and CIA agents bustle scientists and enemy agents into cars or sweep down and hook them into a silent chopper like actors pulled offstage, Inquisition Police drag jet-setters out of cocktail lounges, and the Green Guards are busy with their nets.