Empire of the Senseless. Кэти Акер

it.’ Among themselves, also, pirates’re murderous. ‘But after I come when you’re dead, you can do whatever you want.’

      Fatty dove in, ground and pounded his cock up into the so tight it was almost impenetrable asshole. He pound and ground until the brat started wiggling; then thrust hard. Thrust fast. Living backbone. Jewel at top of hole. The asshole opened involuntarily. The kid screeched like nerves. After a while the kid felt Fatty become still. After a few more minutes he asked Fatty if he had come.

      ‘Shut up. Shut. Up.’ As it dropped out the final bit of sperm enflamed the top of his cockhole.

      Barely mumbling ‘Now it’s time for me now it’s time for what I want’, the pirate who had just been fucked bent over the child tightly bound in ropes, already raped. His hands reached for her breasts. While sperm which resembled mutilated oysters dropped out of his asshole, he touched the breasts.

      The three pirates turned away from the child. They went back to their work of gnawing and gorging themselves on Nestle’s almonds, Cadbury chocolate flakes, barbecued tortilla chips, green benas, toffeed vanilla, Lucozade, and Mars bars. They guzzled down can after can of swill.

      The Captain, me, walked on deck. ‘What a group of pigs! Didn’t your teachers in all the nice boarding schools you went to, which you never talk about, teach you about nutrition?’

      ‘This ship isn’t a public school,’ Fatty blurted out through showers of Coca-Cola mixed with beer. ‘This shit is a pirate ship. And this is a philanthropic association.’

      ‘Sure,’ Captain Thivai, me, sneered. ‘I’m a sweet socialist government so I’m paying you to sit on your asses in the sun and get suntanned just so that you are so happy you will not revolt against my economic fascism.’

      Fatty dared to oppose me. ‘No way. This ship is our philanthropic association, our place of safety, our baby crib. Since they have enough dough to be our charity donors, all the people outside it, all the people outside us here, are our enemies.

      ‘Since we live on this ship, we’re orphans. Orphans are dumb and stupid.’ Fatty was epileptic. ‘Since we’re stupid, we don’t know how to conduct ourselves in decent (monied) society and we kill people for no reason.’

      ‘Historically, weren’t some of the most violent political murderers,’ the punk added, ‘aristocrats?’

      ‘Do all of you have parents?’ I asked my crew, for I was astounded. ‘Do you generally come from good backgrounds?’

      ‘How can I answer a generality? So how can I answer any question?’ Fatty obviously came from a superior background.

      ‘Do you,’ pointing my finger at the youngest therefore the weakest of the lot, ‘do you, personally, have parents?’

      ‘I don’t have no parents.’

      ‘Me neither.’

      ‘Him also?’

      ‘No one.’

      ‘None.’

      ‘No one has nothing anymore.’

      ‘Then who’d you come out of and where d’you come from?’ I wasn’t going to be fooled by the scum.

      ‘That’s our business. Each one of us.’

      The English pirate answered, ‘We’re not used to discussing private affairs. It’s not your business on whom we piss.’

      I had to agree with the English, for it was necessary for me to trust my crew about whom I knew nothing except that they were not the scum of the earth, they were the scum of the now scum-filled seas.

      And the next day, when the ship stopped near a shore on which a bordello was stretching out its claws, I jumped ship. A cock cried on the top of a hill. Roosters’ red crests jumped through the weighted-down grasses. A guard and his heavy gun descended. I hid from him.

      Where there were buildings huge trees had showered dew on to their red roofs. My fear dried up my throat. My hands lay over my stomach for protection.

      The sun …

      Fear disintegrated my throat …

      Stunned …

      I woke. I was no longer free. Words woke me. ‘It’s me, Xaintrilles. This afternoon the General Staff’ll interrogate you. Good luck ’n all that. I’m leaving for Ait Saada.’

      I didn’t speak.

      Xaintrilles squatted down on his haunches and looked at the bars. He saw a young man spread flat on the floor, still, his knees apart, a sackcloth jacket over only part of his stomach. ‘Thivai, aren’t you listening to me? Maybe you can’t hear anymore?’

      I recognized despair enough to open my senses only inside me. Lice gnawed my cropped head. Xaintrilles carried this body inside, chafed hands and knees.

      In the deep river firemen and convoy soldiers washed themselves. Mud scintillated around the decaying bath-house.

      I lovingly rubbed my skull, the light wounds the hair-chopper had made. ‘Shave me. To the flesh,’ I said.

      The gentle hair-cutter, as soon as his officer had left, positioned the straight razor at the front of the forehead. ‘Thivai, I can’t. There’s not enough left.’

      Upon returning, the officer looked at the prisoner and ordered the barber to shave him totally.

      I smiled, I lowered my head, the barber trembled, my flesh peeled off my head and the tip of my ear, the officer by his red leather boot crushed my shoeless foot; the cutter wiped his fingers on the linen knotted around my neck. Then he went back to his cutting. My hairs dropped off like flies. As they were cut, they brushed by the ears, the holes of the nostrils, caught in the eyebrows, mommy, I only went to the hairdresser to cut off a lock of hair, my matchstick, mommy’s sitting in the armchair, mommy’s holding my knee, mommy’s picking up a magazine, mommy puts it on her knees. Véronique’s behind the mirror. Véronique stands upright. Then the hairdresser pushes her down while Véronique makes signs which the mirror reflects. The cut hairs brush past the beehive I’ve hidden in my shirt; mommy leaves, forgetting her purse. She walks through the rain along the river. Am I dreaming? The haircutter looks around him, he puts his hand on the hot flannel of my pants, his hand climbs up my thigh, I look at Véronique, it’s she who’s raping me it’s she who’s touching me, mommy’s screaming out loud and crying in the rain. Dock workers drag barbed wire sheets through the slush. Mommy bites her soaked scarf The haircutter’s hand sinks between my knees; again I push it away; his other hand travels down my stomach; my knees hit the marble washbasin which nevertheless maintains its balance; the haircutter’s hand rests openly on my obviously palpitating stomach. The hairdresser looks behind him.

      Under the door, mommy’s drying her shoes. She enters the room. Night fell. Her wet hands hold my small ones, I fall into the armchair; mommy pays the hairdresser; he presses me against the door.

      Mommy drags me out, down black streets until we reach the river. The dock workers’re trying to warm themselves by standing as close as possible to a fire made out of charcoal dust. Mommy, holding me in her arms, jumps into the thicker mist. She mounts the jetty and runs over the rocks. Snow is covering the rocks. I try to writhe myself away, but she’s pressing me into her hips. So I bite her hand, while a tug-boat whose bright port dead-lights are throwing glimmers on a black oily sea, moves down the estuary; mommy throws herself, …, I bite her hand, as her arms let go, I fall down the rocks, rolling down the rocks, mommy falls into the sea (my mother’s suicide), the foam finds and recovers her, I twist my body round toward the rocks. There a wave carries my mother’s head. Her palms slide along a sleek, slightly glittering rock. The tug-boat bears the other way, then stops; a sailor runs on to a bridge; he unfastens a yawl, runs back on board; they row toward the jetty. Between the clouds the stars’re shining. My head’s bathing in a small abandoned puddle. A sailor jumps on to the jetty, lifts me in his strong arms, up, and strokes