Mr. Clarinet

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Saggar said nothing. He looked down at the ground.

'Don't look at your feet, captain?look at your daughter. Good. Now, imagine I raped your daughter. Can you?' Paul looked at the officer. 'Picture the scene: me and my buddies are driving down the street one day. There are eight of us. We see Meena, walking, on her own. We stop and talk to her. We ask her to come for a ride with us. She refuses, but we take her anyway. Right there, in broad daylight, plenty of witnesses to identify us, but no one to stop us because we're in military uniform and we have guns.

'Oh, I forgot to mention this minor point?in our spare time we're UN peacekeeping troops. We're here to protect you. Only the people we're protecting are actually terrified of us. You know why? Because we're always snatching young girls like Meena off the street.'

Saggar was looking back at the ground, head hung, shoulders slumped, stance crumbling: fear and guilt, but not yet resignation to his fate. He couldn't believe Paul was going to kill him and his men. That hadn't registered. Max knew he was. He'd given the leader of the gang that had kidnapped Manuela a similar speech. He'd used the guy's kid sister as an example, trying to throw the crime back in his face, personalize it, make him feel it, the damage, the pain. It hadn't gone to plan. The gang leader told Max he'd got so wasted on crack and PCP one time he'd fucked his kid sister in the ass. Five months later he'd started pimping her out to the local pedophile. Max had blown the motherfucker's brains out without regret or remorse.

'We drive your daughter to an isolated place. She's a brave girl?a gutsy girl?your daughter?Meena. She's a fighter. She bites one of my buddies, almost takes his finger off. So he caves her teeth in with his rifle butt. And then he grabs her by her ears and forces his cock down her throat while another of my guys holds his gun to her head. Everyone has their turn. Everyone except me and the driver. I'm above all that. You know, if I want pussy I put on two condoms and go to one of those Dominican whores near my barracks. As for the driver? He refuses to join in.

'When my guys are done in her mouth, they rape little Meena. Twice. Each. We take her virginity?we really rip the little bitch open, tear her apart inside. Literally. She's hemorrhaging. We notice?obviously. So what do we do? Stop and take her to a doctor? No. We turn her over and fuck her in the ass. Twice. Each. Then, you know what we do? We piss on her and drive off, looking for the next girl.

'Meena's found two days later. Nearly dead. Do you know how many stitches it takes, just to sew up her vagina? One hundred and eighty-three! And she's thirteen years old.'

Saggar started crying.

'I-I-I?I didn't do anything,' he whimpered.

'You stood by and let it happen. They're your men, under your command. One word from you and they would've stopped. You have to accept full responsibility.'

'Look?report me to my superior. I sign confession. They vill?'

'?'Discipline you in accordance with UN military regulations'? ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING WAY!' Paul shouted. 'The Le Fen family went to your superiors before they came to me. Did you know that? And what did your superiors do? They made you send a written apology to the family. So what'll they do this time? Sentence you to washing my car?'

'Please,' Saggar said, falling to his knees. 'Please don't kill me.'

'If that had been your daughter you'd want to kill me, wouldn't you?'

'Please,' he blubbered.

'Answer my question.'

'I vood turn you over to justice,' Saggar bawled.

'Do you know we have no laws here in Haiti? No laws for absolutely anything? Bill Clinton's torn up our Constitution so he can pay his Arkansas lawyer clique to write us a new one? So, while we're waiting for Bill to play Moses, why don't we give you some Bangladeshi justice? Tell me, captain. What is the penalty for rape in your country?'

Saggar didn't reply.

'Come on. You know.'

Saggar sobbed but didn't answer.

'You know I know. I looked it up,' Paul said. 'I just want to hear you say it.'

'D-d-d-death.'

'Sorry?'

'Death penalty.'

'So rape is judged so extreme a crime in your country it's punishable by death, but you think it's OK here? Is that it?'

'You said dere is no justice here.'

'Only among Haitians. You see, this is our country. Not yours. You can't come over here and treat us like this. Not without consequences. And I am those consequences.'

'My men just vanted to have zome fun. Dey not mean to hurt de girl.'

'Try explaining that to her, will you? Do you know you bastards didn't just ruin her face forever, you ruptured her spine, so she'll never be able to walk properly again? She won't be able to carry anything on her back. Women carry everything in this country. So she's as good as dead when she grows up. You ruined her life. You might as well have killed her,' Paul said.

Saggar's face was shiny with tears.

Paul pointed to the right. 'Go and stand over there.' Saggar stumbled forward. 'Stop. Stay.' One of Paul's men trained a rifle on the captain's head.

Paul went up to the Bangladeshis and grabbed one of them by the arm. He inspected his hand and then jerked him out of the line. The soldier didn't have time to move his feet. His legs went limp and Paul dragged him along the ground by his shirtfront and stood him up where Saggar had been.

'What's your name?'

'Sanjay Veja!' the soldier shouted. He was the only bald and clean-shaven man in the group.

'She bit your finger so you broke her face with your rifle. You were the first one in. The one who hurt her the most. Do you have anything to say to that?'

'No,' Veja said.

'Take off your trousers.'

'V-vat?'

'Your trousers,' Paul pointed and repeated slowly, 'Take?them?off.'

Veja looked at his fellow soldiers. None of them looked back at him. He complied. Paul stepped away from him and began rummaging on the ground, picking up, weighing, and rejecting rocks until he found what he wanted?two large, flat, smooth ones that he just about got his huge hands around.

'And your underwear. That too,' Paul said, without turning around.

After another look back at his comrades in arms, Veja timidly stepped out of his white boxers.

Paul went up to him, arms behind his back.

'Hold up your dick.' Paul looked to make sure he'd complied. 'Now stand at ease.'

Max watched Paul lower himself into a tensed-up catcher's crouch, eye-to-eye with the soldier. He took a deep breath through his nose, and then, at the speed of a blink, he whipped his rock-holding hands around from behind his back and slammed them together on Veja's dangling scrotum. Max heard two sounds?the loud crack of the rocks impacting and, right behind it, a strained, wet pop.

The soldier's mouth dropped wide-open, as if all his jaw muscles had dissolved. His eyes pushed up out to the rims of his sockets, and every vein and artery in his skull bulged up in a network of thick, gorged knots.

Veja first screamed in an unnaturally low register. Then, as the realization of what had happened to him caught up with the pain, the scream cracked into a rush of terrible, terrifying howls, delivered in searing bursts from the pit of his soul. Max felt Veja's cries all the way down deep inside of him and wanted to puke. Some of the soldier's comrades did just that, while two fainted and the rest?including Captain Saggar?wept, whimpered, and pissed themselves.

Paul wasn't finished. He jerked his arms sharply to the left, until his elbow was in line with his neck and his whole body shook with the strain and effort. Max saw the soldier's naked right leg lifted up off the ground, his foot shaking. Paul repeated the whole motion with his right side, before bringing his arms back down and then twisting them rapidly back and forth, as if he was wringing out wet clothes.

He stopped. He gulped down air, filling and clearing his airways with great big breaths before he uttered a heavy, exhausted grunt and tore Veja's mangled scrotum from his body with a massive backward lurch. The sound of it going reminded Max of stitches popping and tight fistfuls of feathers being simultaneously ripped out of