Cities of the Red Night (22 page)

“I want no reward.”

“Good.” I turned to the half-reader. “And don't worry about the sergeant. I am having him removed from the garrison.” The others were similarly processed in groups of ten. Only fifteen were suitable to be trained as partisans. Ten were obviously incorrigible rogues and troublemakers, chief among them being Sergeant Gonzalez, a snarling buck-toothed two-hundred-pound hulk, and Corporal Hassanavitch, a rat-faced gypsy. These ten bastards were marched to the guardhouse adjacent to the garrison and locked in. In taking leave of them I gave Sergeant Gonzalez a bottle of anise-flavored
aguardiente
containing enough opium to kill five men, enjoining him to share it equally with his companions. He leered at me showing his yellow teeth.

“Síííí, Señor Capitán.”

At the prison I summoned the resident clergymen to a small interrogation room. I was seated behind a desk examining papers, armed partisans ranged behind me. Kelley, in accordance with his clerical costume, had left his gun in a corner.

“Gentlemen, this is Father Kelley from Ireland.” Kelley smiled and nodded unctuously.

I studied a file in front of me, drumming my fingers on the desk. I looked up.

“Father Gomez?”

“I am Father Gomez.” A plump face, near-sighted yellowish eyes behind spectacles, a cruel absentminded expression.

“Father Domingo?”

“I am Father Domingo.” A thin sour face, autos-dafé smoldering in sulfurous gray eyes.

“You are officers of the Inquisition?” I inquired mildly.

“We are clergymen. Priests of God,” said Domingo, glaring at me. He was not used to being on the receiving end.

“You are dogs of the Inquisition. Sent here from Lima. You urged that our companion Captain Strobe be burned as a heretic instead of hanged as a pirate. You were overruled by Bishop Gardenas and Father Herera. No doubt you are biding your time to revenge yourself on these honest men for their humanity.”

Without more ado I drew my double-barreled pistol and shot them both in the stomach. Placing the smoking pistol on the desk, I snapped my fingers.

“Father Kelley! Extreme unction!”

The other clergymen gasped and turned pale. However, they could not conceal their relief when I told them that as decent clergymen they had nothing to fear. I reloaded my pistol as Kelley delivered his bogus unction.

“Well, I think you gentlemen could do with a drink.” I poured for each a small glass of anise spirits containing four grains of opium.

*   *   *

Sitting on a balcony overlooking the bay, sipping a rum punch as the sun went down, I reflected that the exercise of power conveys a weird sensation of ease and tranquility. (I wonder how many of the ten men in the guardhouse will be alive tomorrow. It amuses me to think of them cutting each other's throats over a bottle of poisoned spirits.)

The summary dispatching of the two Inquisitors was based on a precept long used by the Inquisition itself, which is in fact the way they were able to maintain their power despite widespread opposition and hatred. Brutal sanctions against a minority from which one is generically exempt cannot but produce a measure of satisfaction in those who are spared such treatment: “As decent clergymen you have nothing to fear.” Thus the burning of Jews, Moors, and sodomites produces a certain sense of comfort in those who are not Jews, Moors, or sodomites:
“This won't happen to me.”
To turn this mechanism back on the Inquisitors themselves gives me a feeling of taking over the office of fate. I am become the bad karma of the Inquisition. I am allowing myself also the satisfaction that derives from a measure of hypocrisy, rather like the slow digestion of a good meal.

*   *   *

Troublemakers:

Any body of men will be found to contain ten to fifteen percent of incorrigible troublemakers. In fact, most of the misery on this planet derives from this ten percent. It is useless to try and reeducate them, since their only function is to harm and harass others. To maintain them in prisons is a waste of personnel and provisions. To addict them to opium takes too long, and in any case they are not amenable to useful work. There is but one sure remedy. In future operations, as soon as these individuals are discovered, either by advance intelligence or by on-the-spot observation, they will be killed on any pretext. In the words of the Bard, “Only fools do those villains pity who are punished ere they have done their mischief.”

*   *   *

Today Hans is the City Commandante: all spit and polish, bathed and shaved, green-jacketed with silver skull-and-crossbones on his shoulders, khaki pants, his soft brown boots carefully shined.

At the guardhouse, five of the prisoners are dead. It is easy to reconstruct what happened. Sergeant Gonzalez, attempting to keep all the liquor for himself, was attacked by Corporal Hassanavitch and an accomplice. The sergeant killed them both with his knife and then drained about half the spirits, holding the rest at bay. The sergeant soon being overcome, the others took his knife and cut his throat. The victors then drank the remains of the bottle, which killed three of them.

“Well, get them out of here.” Hans gestures to the corpses.

The partisans lead the way, planting shovels in the ground. We leave the prisoners digging graves like sullen Calibans and proceed to the barracks, where we are greeted by the smell of cannabis. The soldiers are laughing and talking, more relaxed now that ten wrong men have been removed.

“Achtung!”

The way Hans can say it anyone would believe it.

The men are now brought to the wardroom one at a time. The hawk-faced youth, whose name is Rodriguez, acts as clerk, writing down answers as Hans fires the questions.

“Name? Age? Place of birth? Length of service? Locations and times of previous service? What training have you received as a soldier?”

“Training?” The man looks blank.

“What did you do all day?”

“Well, we had to drill and clean the barracks, cook and wash dishes, work in the Captain's gardens.…”

“What about your guns? You received instruction in their use? There was daily target practice?”

“We fired them only at fiestas and parades.”

“Was there instruction in knife and sword fighting? In unarmed combat?”

“No, nothing like that. We could get a citation for fighting.”

“Field exercises?”

“Qué es eso?”

“That means you go into jungles or mountains to learn the terrain and pretend to fight a war.”

“We never left the city.”

“So you have no idea of conditions and terrain ten miles outside Panama City?”

“No, sir.”

“During the time of your service here, have you been sick?”

“Various times,
señor.
”

“And what sicknesses have you had?”

“Well, sir, chills and fever, cramps and loose bowels.…”

“Pox?”

“Yes, sir. The whores here are rotten with it.”

“And what treatment did you receive?”

“Not much. The doctor gave me some pills for the pox that made me feel worse. There was a sort of tea for the fever that helped a little.…”

“You were formerly stationed at Cartagena. What was the situation there as regards sickness?”

“Much worse, sir. A thousand soldiers died of the yellow sickness. That was when I was transferred.”

“Was the work there the same?”

“More or less, except we had to guard the mule train.”

“So you did leave the city at times?”

“Yes, sir. Sometimes for a week.”

“And what was the mule train carrying? You don't need to tell me. Gold. What else interests the Spanish? Well now, all that gold to protect … the garrison must have been larger than here … perhaps a thousand?”

“Ten thousand, sir,” says the soldier proudly.

Hans pretends to be impressed and whistles softly.

“And galleons no doubt to take away the gold? When all those sailors came ashore there must have been some right brawls in Cartagena,
verdad
?”

“Verdad, señor.”

BIG PICTURE CALLING SHIFTY

We return to staff headquarters, which we have set up in the Governor's spacious bedroom on the ground floor. This is the coolest room in the house but even so the heat is oppressive and we must keep the windows covered with mosquito netting which cuts off the occasional eddy of air that is the closest approximation to a breeze. There is a huge ornate curtained bed where exhausted partisans who arrive with dispatches can rest, where the staff officers can catch an hour's sleep or satisfy the sudden sex hungers that occur during long hours of intense mental concentration without sleep.

We often work naked in the Governor's bedroom, seeing the maps with our whole bodies, performing ritual copulations in front of the maps, animating the maps with our sperm. The key map is Big Picture, showing the present area of occupation from Cartagena on the Atlantic seaboard to the Pearl Islands in the Pacific and northwards to a point a hundred miles north of Panama City. Green pins on the map show cities occupied by the partisans. Black pins designate areas occupied by the Spanish.

The key to Big Picture are ledger books.… We are now transcribing into the ledger books information obtained from the prisoners.

Cartagena. Location on map. Black pin. Estimated strength of garrison: ten thousand soldiers. Strongly fortified. Has resisted a number of pirate attacks. Gold terminal. Heavily armed convoys pick up gold here. Hygienic conditions worse than Panama. Recent epidemic of yellow fever.

These ledgers indicate not only the strength of garrisons and the movement of ships, but also the whole way of life of the enemy, what the soldiers do, what the officers do, what food they eat, what illnesses they suffer from, how they think, and what they can be expected to do. Rather like studying past performance to pick the winner of a horse race.

But the Spanish, since they consist entirely of past performance, are much more predictable than horses. Massively encased in their colonial architecture, their forts and galleons, their uniforms, gold, portraits and religious processions, they move like ponderous armored knights to ends that we can predetermine.

In addition to Big Picture, there are also much more detailed maps of smaller areas showing locations of arms caches, farmhouses belonging to partisans, streams, wells, and sketches of animals native to the region. As messages come in, the green pins are spreading north and east and south along the Pacific coast. The whole southern isthmus of Panama is now in our hands.

We study the maps, concentrating on Big Picture. What exactly will the Spanish do? No doubt respond after their kind—heavy, massive, and slow as their galleons. They will dispatch galleons from Cartagena to land troops on the east coast, who will then move west towards Panama City. They will dispatch galleons from Lima to the Bay of Panama to land troops above and below Panama City, in what they fondly think is a crushing pincer movement.

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 along the coasts and land partisans will make the landing of the 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 face in turn: Rodriguez, the hawk-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 José, 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 time … 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.
“Cabrón!”
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.