Juanito, the joker and Master of Ceremonies, prances out to the middle of the courtyard and holds up his hands for silence.
"And now we will separate los maridos, the husbands, from los hombres conejos, the rabbit men, who fuck"—he does a speed-up bump and grind—"and run"—he does a pantomime of running, swinging his arms and pumping his legs. "All rabbit men will move to the east wall."
Hans grins and puts his hands to the sides of his head making rabbit ears and trots to the east wall followed by four German friends. A Berber boy with yellow hair, blue eyes and pointed ears plays the flute as he walks to the east wall. Jerry and the dancing boys hop along behind him chewing carrots. Bert Hansen pulls a rabbit out of a hat, bows and runs for the east wall to a chorus of boos from the women and applause from the east-wall boys. I wriggle my ears and twitch my nose and show my teeth and scamper for the east wall followed by Brady, Paco, Clinch Todd, Guy and Adam.... It's a landslide for the east wall.... Juanito looks around as if bewildered....
"Esperan esperan.... Wait wait...." He dances behind a screen and pops out naked except for a rabbit mask. He looks at the women. His ears quiver and point east....
"Y yo el más conejo de los conejos ... the rabbitest of the rabbits." He screeches and leaps for the east wall in great hops.
He doffs his rabbit mask and advances again to the center of the courtyard and places an hourglass on a little table. He turns to the prospective husbands who still stand by the north wall....
"You have two minutes to think."
He goes back to stand by the east wall. As the sand trickles I study these faces. If we are the fish, they are the water in which we will swim. They will hide us, provide us with weapons, guides, and information. They will carry out missions of sabotage behind enemy lines. Some of them will run inns catering to officials, priests, and generals. Others will become doctors and druggists. They are skilled in the use of subtle drugs and poisons. They will implement Benway's program of germ warfare. A few last-minute rabbits as the sand runs out. Then wives and husbands pair off and retire to private rooms.
Juanito leaps up and does a flamenco dance as we move back to the north wall facing the women, of whom thirty remain. They present a wide variety of physical types: blondes, redheads, Indian, Chinese, Negro, Portuguese, Spanish, Malay, Japanese, and some mixed blood. Preparations are under way. The dancing boys whisk away plates and lay down pallets. Incense burners are lit, musical instruments appear, props and costumes are laid out: goatskins of Boujeloud, skeleton suits, wings, animal and god masks. Two hangman's nooses dangle from a beam, the rope passing through two pulleys to facilitate suspension. I note that the ropes are elastic, and the nooses covered in soft leather.
Juanito announces: "Rabbit men and rabbit women, prepare to meet your makers." He leads the way into a locker room opening off the east wall. The boys strip off their clothes, giggling and comparing erections, and they dance out into the courtyard in a naked snake-line. The women are also naked now. What follows is not an unconstrained orgy but rather a series of theatrical performances.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we will now witness the mating of the God pan and Goddess Aisha."
A backdrop of Moroccan hills with a full moon lit from behind by a lamp casting a golden glow over our naked bodies as the music of Pan fills the courtyard. Six dancing boys with whips put on goatskin leggings and caps and dance opposite six girls clad in swirling robes of thin blue silk. The faces of the boys are remote and impersonal, yet their bodies quiver and shake as if possessed by wild spirits. The boys rip the robes from Aisha, who tries to flee. They whip her buttocks and she falls on all fours as they fuck her in a crescendo of drums and pipes and a strange perfume fills the air.
"And now we present for your entertainment: Half-Hanged Kelley and Half-Hanged Kate in the Gallows Fling."
Backdrop of a leering crowd. Kate has red hair down to her waist, blazing green eyes, and the raw red hemp marks around her neck. The story is that she was being hanged for witchcraft and other crimes against nature when the officials and spectators were dispersed by banshee wails, whereupon she was cut down and revived by leprechauns.
Kate and Kelley take a bow. A sandy-haired boy I have seen on the boat plays the bagpipes as they go into a wild jig, her hair twisting around her like flames from Hell, dancing under the waiting nooses which they adjust around each other's necks with idiot grins. He squirms it into her, kicking out spasms in the air, as they are hauled off the ground by smirking hangmen. Now their eyes light up in the gallows flash and the two bodies are encased in a blazing egg of blue-white light. They are lowered to the mat and little boys covered with green paint revive them. They stand up and take a bow.
A backdrop of sea and palm trees. Idiot Hawaiian music as Hans does a hula fuck with a lithe Malay girls while his four friends, on their backs, legs in the air, applaud with their feet. Now the palm trees, with boys inside them, go into the hula. The effect is irresistibly comic and there is much laughter. Finally all the actors, including the palm trees, take a bow.
Thirteen dancing boys fuck to Gnaoua drums and clappers. Gnaoua music drives out evil spirits who try to enter the womb. You can see the future child in a rush of liquid gold as the spirit of Hassan i Sabbah, Master of the Djinns, Master of the Assassins, guides the writhing bodies and rapt empty faces riding the drums like a bucking horse of flame. All the boys come at once as the wolfish face of Pan blazes in the young faces like a shooting star.
"The Rape of the Valkyrie," announces Juanito.
A Swedish girl with long blonde hair is against a backdrop of Northern Lights. She is riding a horse which suddenly collapses under her and two blond youths with Viking helmets wriggle out, tying her hands with a gold rope. One fucks her as the other caresses her nipples. The boys grin at each other showing all their teeth.
I am trying to figure what sort of act I could put on that would have the necessary concentration of purpose to make a child. Clinch Todd helps me out of my quandary. His father was a veterinarian and he found that sperm collected from a prize pig, horse, bull, dog, or cat could be injected into the vagina resulting in a pregnancy for which the bride must pay a handsome dowry. Furthermore, one milking could provide enough sperm for many little happenings and he had jars of this much stored in the icehouse. I made the rounds with him once for kicks. There he is jacking-off prize pigs and squirting it into the sow—impersonal as if he were trimming a hedge. He had the touch: the animal was randy as soon as he got his hands on it. But he got to using opium and his touch failed him. He was kicked in the head and killed by a stallion.
This is the answer. Clinch lines up five girls of different racial stock—black, Chinese, Malay, Indian, Berber—who will be indirectly impregnated, thus sparing me contacts for which I have little inclination. I will play the young Corn God with a corn headdress. A boy from Yucatán with black skin, straight hair, and classical Mayan features will stand in as Black Captain, one of the Mayan war gods, and fuck me standing up, as Jerry, cast as Ganymede the cupbearer, gathers the seed in an alabaster goblet.
The girls will proceed to the remote inland communes to await delivery. They will all receive a handsome dowry should they wish to marry and the children will be trained from childhood in the use of weapons and fitted to take their part in the task of liberation.
Pages from the diary of Hirondelle de Mer: