Cities of the Red Night

by William S. Burroughs

  “I will.”

  “Your presence in South America would be most valuable. It so happens that a client who wishes to remain anonymous is prepared to retain you in this connection. You will find thirty thousand dollars deposited to your bank account in Lima.”

  “Well, I haven’t finished this case yet.”

  “Perhaps you can bring the Everson case to a speedy conclusion.” He rang off.

  It would seem that I had been called upon to act. I got out a map and couldn’t find the Callejón de la Esperanza. There are small streets in Mexico City you won’t find on a map. I had a general idea as to where it was and I wanted to walk around. I’ve cracked cases like this with nothing to go on, just by getting out and walking around at random. It works best in a strange town or in a town you haven’t visited for some time.

  We took a taxi to the Alameda, then started off in a northwesterly direction. Once we got off the main streets I saw that the place hadn’t changed all that much: the same narrow unpaved streets and squares with booths selling tacos, fried grasshoppers, and peppermint candy covered with flies; the smell of pulque, urine, benzoin, chile, cooking oil, and sewage; and the faces—bestial, evil, beautiful.

  A boy in white cotton shirt and pants, hair straight, skin smoky black, smelling faintly of vanilla and ozone. A boy with bright copper-red skin, innocent and beautiful as some exotic animal, leans against a wall eating an orange dusted with red pepper … a maricón slithers by with long arms and buck teeth, eyes glistening … man with a bestial Pan face reels out of a pulquería … a hunchback dwarf shoots us a venomous glance.

  I was letting my legs guide me. Calle de los Desamparados, Street of Displaced Persons … a farmacia where an old junky was waiting for his Rx. I got a whiff of phantom opium. Postcards in a dusty shop window … Pancho Villa posing with scowling men … gun belts and rifles. Three youths hanging from a makeshift scaffold, two with their pants down to the ankles, the other naked. The picture had been taken from behind—soldiers standing in front of them watching and grinning. Photos taken about 1914. The naked boy looked American—you can tell a blond even in black and white.

  My legs pulled me in, Jim and Kiki following behind me. When I opened the door a bell echoed through the shop. Inside, the shop was cool and dim with a smell of incense. A man came through a curtain and stood behind the counter. He was short and lightly built and absolutely bald, as if he had never had hair on his head; the skin a yellowish brown, smooth as terra-cotta, the lips rather full, eyes jet-black, forehead high and sloping back. There was a feeling of age about him, not that he looked old but as if he were a survivor of an ancient race—Oriental, Mayan, Negroid—all of these, but something else I had never seen in a human face. He was strangely familiar to me and then I remembered where I had seen that face before. It was in the Mayan collection of the British Museum, a terra-cotta head about three inches in height. His lips moved into a slow smile and he spoke in perfect English without accent or inflection, eerie and remote as if coming from a great distance.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

  “Could I see that postcard in the window?”

  “Certainly. That is what you have come for.”

  It occurred to me that this must be Dimitri’s contact, but this was not the address he had given.

  “The Callejón de la Esperanza? The Blind Alley of Hope was destroyed in the earthquake. It has not been rebuilt. This way, gentlemen.”

  He ushered us through a heavy door behind the curtain. When the door closed, it shut out all noise from the street. We were in a bare whitewashed room with heavy oak furniture lit by a barred window that opened onto a patio. He motioned us to chairs and got an envelope from a filing case and handed me a picture. It was an eight-by-ten replica of the postcard in the window. As I touched the picture, I got a whiff of the fever smell.

  Three youths were hanging from a pole supported by tripods, arms strapped to their sides by leather belts. There were two overturned sawhorses and a plank on the ground below them. The blond boy was in the middle, two dark youths hanging on each side of him. The other two had their pants down to their ankles. The blond boy was completely naked. Five soldiers stood in front of a barn looking up at the hanged men. One of the soldiers was very young, sixteen or seventeen, with down on his chin and upper lip. He was looking up with his mouth open, his pants sticking out at the fly.

  The proprietor handed me a magnifying glass. The hanged boys quivered and writhed, necks straining against the ropes, buttocks contracting. Standing to one side, face in shadow, was the officer. I studied this figure through the glass. Something familiar … Oh yes—the Dragon Lady from “Terry and the Pirates.” It was a woman. And she bore a slight resemblance to young Everson.

  I pointed to the blond boy. “Do you have a picture of his face?”

  He laid a picture on the table. The picture showed the boy’s face and torso, his arms strapped to his sides. He was looking at something in front of him with a slack look on his face, as if he had just received an overwhelming shock and understood it completely. It was John Everson, or a close enough resemblance to be his twin brother.

  I showed him a snapshot of Everson I had in my pocket. He looked at it and nodded. “Yes it seems to be the same young man.”

  “Do you know who these people were?”

  “Yes. The three boys were revolutionaries. The blond boy was the son of an American miner and a Spanish mother. His father returned to America shortly after his birth. He was born and raised in Durango and spoke no English. He was hanged on his twenty-third birthday: September 24, 1914. The woman officer was his half-sister, three years older. She was finally ambushed and killed by Pancho Villa’s men. I can assure you that young Everson is alive and well. He has simply forgotten his American identity. His memory can be restored. Unlike Jerry Green, he fell into comparatively good hands. You will meet them tonight … Lola La Chata is holding her annual party.”

  “Lola? Is she still operating?”

  “She has her little time concession. You will be back in the days of Allende. The Iguana twins will be there. They will take you to Everson. And now…” He showed us out the back way onto an unpaved street. “I think you will get a ride to Lola’s.”

  Lola’s was quite a walk from where we were, and it was not an area for taxis. Also I was a little confused as to directions. A Cadillac careened around the corner and screamed to a stop in a cloud of dust. A man in a glen plaid suit leaned out of the front seat.

  “Going to the party? Get in, cabrones!”

  We got into the back seat. There were two machos in the front seat and two on the jump seats. As we sped through the dirt streets they blasted at cats and chickens with their 45s, missing with every shot as the vecinos dove for cover.

  POR CONVENCIÓN ZAPATA

  The General’s car stops in front of Lupita’s place, which in a slum area of unpaved streets, looks like an abandoned warehouse. The door is opened by an old skull-faced pistolero with his black jacket open, a tip-up 44 Smith & Wesson strapped to his lean flank.

  The pistolero steps aside and we walk into a vast room with a high-beamed ceiling. The furniture is heavy black oak and red brocade, suggesting a Mexican country estate. In the middle of the room is a table with platters of tamales and tacos, beans, rice, and guacamole, beer in tubs of ice, bottles of tequila, bowls of marijuana and cigarette papers. The party is just starting and a few guests stand by the table puffing marijuana and drinking beer. On a smaller table syringes are laid out with glasses of water and alcohol. Along one wall are curtained booths.

  Lola La Chata sits in a massive oak chair facing the door, three hundred pounds cut from the mountain rock of Mexico, her graciousness underlining her power. She extends a massive arm: “Ah, Meester Snide … El Puerco Particular … the Private Pig…” She shakes with laughter. “And your handsome young assistants…” She shakes hands with Jim and Kiki. “You do well by yourself, Meester Snide.”

  “And you, Lola.
… You are younger, if anything.”

  She waves a hand to the table. “Please serve yourselves.… I think an old friend of yours is already here.”

  I start towards the table and recognize Bernabé Abogado.

  “Clem!”

  “Bernabé!”

  We go into an embrace and I can feel the pearl-handled 45 under his glen plaid jacket. He is drinking Old Parr scotch and there are four bottles on the table. He pours scotch into glasses as I introduce Jim and Kiki. “Practically everybody in Mexico drinks scotch.” Then he laughs and pounds me on the back. “Clem, meet the Iguanas … this very good friend.”

  I shake hands with two of the most beautiful young people I have ever seen. They both have smooth greenish skin, black eyes, a reptilian grace. I can feel the strength in the boy’s hand. They are incredibly poised and detached, their faces stamped with the same ancient lineage as the shop proprietor. They are the Iguana twins.

  Junkies arrive and pay court to Lupita. She rewards them with papers of heroin fished from between her massive dugs. They are fixing at the table of syringes.

  “Tonight everything is free,” says the Iguana sister. “Mañana es otra cosa.”

  The room is rapidly filling with whores and thieves, pimps and hustlers. Uniformed cops get in line and Lupita rewards each of them with an envelope. Plainclothesmen come in and shove to the head of the line. Their envelopes are thicker.

  Bernabé beckons to a young Indian policeman who has just received a thin envelope. The policeman approaches shyly. Bernabé pounds him on the back. “This cabrón get cockeyed borracho and kill two people.… I get him out of jail.”

  Other guests are arriving: the glamorous upper crust and jet set from costume parties. Some are in Mayan and Aztec dress. They bring various animals: monkeys, ocelots, iguanas, and a parrot who screams insults. The machos chase a terrified squealing peccary around the room.

  A rustle of excitement sweeps through the guests:

  “Here’s Mr. Coca-Cola.”

  “He’s the real thing.”

  Mr. Coca-Cola circulates among the guests selling packets of cocaine. As the cocaine takes effect the tempo of the party accelerates. The General turns to a spider monkey perched on top of his chair.

  “Here, cabrón, have a sniff.” He holds up a thumbnail with a pinch of cocaine. The monkey bites his hand, drawing blood. The cocaine spills down his coat. “CHINGOA YOU SON OF A WHORE!” The General leaps up and jerks out his 45, blasting at the monkey from a distance of a few feet and missing with every shot as the guests hit the deck, dodge behind chairs, and roll under the table.

  Lupita lifts a finger. Fifty feet away across the room, the old pistolero draws his long-barreled 44, aims and fires in one smooth movement, killing the monkey. This display of power intimidates even the machos and there is a moment of silence as a servant removes the dead monkey and wipes up the blood. A number of couples and some trios retire to the curtained booths.

  Another contingent of guests has arrived among whom I recognize American narcotics agents. One of them is talking with a Mexican lawyer. “I feel so sorry for these American boys in jail here for the cocaína,” the lawyer says. “And for the girls, even sorrier. I do what I can to get them out but it is most difficult. Our laws are very strict. Much stricter than yours.”

  In a search booth, which is also one of the booths at Lupita’s party, a naked American girl with two uniformed police. The General and the lawyer enter from a door at the rear of the booth. One of the cops points to a packet of cocaine on a shelf. “She have it in her pussee, señores.” At a gesture from the General the cops exit, grinning like monkeys.

  “We feel so sorry for your pussee—frozen in the snow,” says the General taking off his pants. “I am the beeg thaw.”

  A giggling macho pulls aside the curtain in front of the booth. “Good pussee, cabrones?”

  Two Chapultepec blondes nudge each other and chant in unison: “Isn’t he marvelous? Never repeats himself.”

  The macho pulls aside the curtain of the next booth. “He fuck her in the dry hole.”

  “Never repeats himself.”

  In the end booth Ah Pook, the Mayan God of Death, is fucking the young Corn God. As the curtains are jerked aside they reach orgasm and the young Corn God is spattered with black spots of decay. A nitrous haze like vaporized flesh steams off their bodies. The macho gasps, coughs, and drops dead of a heart attack.

  “Never repeats himself.”

  Lupita gestures. Indian servants load the body onto a stretcher and carry it out. The party resumes at an even more hectic pace. The gas released by the copulation of life and death acts on the younger guests like catnip. They strip off their clothes, rolling around on mattresses which are spread out on the floor by wooden-faced servants. They exchange masks and do stripteases with scarves while others roll on their backs, legs in the air, applauding with their feet.

  The Iguana touched my arm. “Will you and your two helpers please come with me? We have matters to discuss in private.”

  She led us through a side door and down a long corridor to an elevator. The elevator opened onto a short hall at the end of which was another door. She motioned us into a large loft apartment furnished in Moroccan and Mexican style with rugs, low table, a few chairs, and couches. I declined a drink but accepted a joint.

  “The postcard vendor tells me you can help us locate John Everson,” I began.

  She nodded. I remembered that I had not heard her brother say anything. He had nodded and smiled when we were introduced. He sat beside her now on a low couch looking serene rather than bored. Jim, Kiki, and I sat opposite in three cedar chairs from Santa Fe.

  “We have many places here.…” A wave of her hand brought the benzoin smell of New Mexico into the room. “It was a lovely place but they had to spoil it with their idiotic bombs. Oh yes, John Everson … such a nice boy, modern and convenient. You found him so, of course?” She turned to her brother, who smiled and licked his lips. “Well, he is in Durango with relatives … in excellent condition, considering the transfer of identities. Such operations may leave the patient a hospital case for months. This generally means that the operation has not been skillfully performed, or that discordant entities have been lodged in the same body.…

  “In John Everson’s case, there have been no complications. We had to give the Mexican identity sufficient time for a transfer to take place. Now it only remains to blend the two and he will recover his own identity, with fluent Spanish and a knowledge of rural Mexico which will be useful in his profession.

  “In this case, the two identities are so similar that there will be no disharmony. And the spirit of El Gringo now has a home. He could not enter the cycle of rebirth because his karma required a duplicate death. This was done by electric brain stimulation which seems completely real to the patient. As you know, a difficulty in organ transplants is that they are rejected as a foreign body. Drugs must be administered to suspend the rejection. In this case, the shared experience of being hanged will dissolve the rejection that would otherwise occur, giving rise to the phenomenon of multiple personalities, where only one personality can occupy the body at one time. The hanging experience acts as a solvent. The two personalities will blend into one. John Everson will contact his parents, and tell them that he suffered a lapse of memory owing to a light concussion but is now completely recovered.”

  I leaned back. “Well, that wraps that case up.”

  “You have been retained to act against the Countess … thirty thousand dollars. Does that seem enough to you?”

  “Well, considering what we are expected to do—no.”

  “And considering that you are all inexperienced and susceptible, this is virtually a suicide mission. I am prepared to retain you at a fair price and provide contacts which will give you at least some chance of success.”

  She led the way into a bare room with chairs, a long table, and filing cabinets along one wall. I recognized the room as a replica of
the room in back of the postcard vendor’s shop. She went to the filing cabinet and handed me a short pamphlet bound in heavy parchment. On the cover in red letters:

  CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT.

  CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT

  The Cities of the Red Night were six in number: Tamaghis, Ba’dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, and Ghadis. These cities were located in an area roughly corresponding to the Gobi Desert, a hundred thousand years ago. At that time the desert was dotted with large oases and traversed by a river which emptied into the Caspian Sea.

  The largest of these oases contained a lake ten miles long and five miles across, on the shores of which the university town of Waghdas was founded. Pilgrims came from all over the inhabited world to study in the academies of Waghdas, where the arts and sciences reached peaks of attainment that have never been equaled. Much of this ancient knowledge is now lost.

  The towns of Ba’dan and Yass-Waddah were opposite each other on the river. Tamaghis, located in a desolate area to the north on a small oasis, could properly be called a desert town. Naufana and Ghadis were situated in mountainous areas to the west and south beyond the perimeter of usual trade routes between the other cities.

  In addition to the six cities, there were a number of villages and nomadic tribes. Food was plentiful and for a time the population was completely stable: no one was born unless someone died.

  The inhabitants were divided into an elite minority known as the Transmigrants and a majority known as the Receptacles. Within these categories were a number of occupational and specialized strata and the two classes were not in practice separate: Transmigrants acted as Receptacles and Receptacles became Transmigrants.

  To show the system in operation: Here is an old Transmigrant on his deathbed. He has selected his future Receptacle parents, who are summoned to the death chamber. The parents then copulate, achieving orgasm just as the old Transmigrant dies so that his spirit enters the womb to be reborn. Every Transmigrant carries with him at all times a list of alternative parents, and in case of accident, violence, or sudden illness, the nearest parents are rushed to the scene. However, there was at first little chance of random or unexpected deaths since the Council of Transmigrants in Waghdas had attained such skill in the art of prophecy that they were able to chart a life from birth to death and determine in most cases the exact time and manner of death.