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or your own? Most men would rather not hear what their fellows have done, what
people who may indeed be very like them are capable of. Do you prefer not to
think about such things, DeWar? Do you think that you are so different? Or do
you become secretly excited at the idea?'
'Lady, I gain no benefit or pleasure at all from the subject.'
'Are you sure, DeWar? And if you are, do you really think you speak for the
majority of your sex? For are women not supposed to resist even those they
would happily surrender to, so that when they resist a more brutal violation
how can the man be sure that any struggle, any protestation is not merely for
show?'
'You must believe that we are not all the same. And even if all men might be
said to have
. . . base urges, we do not all give in to them, or pay them any respect, even
in secret. I
cannot tell you how sorry I am to hear what happened to you. . .'
'But you have not heard, DeWar. You have not heard at all. I have implied that
I was raped. That did not kill me. That alone might have killed the girl I was
and replaced her
with a woman, with a bitter one, with an angry one, or one who wished to take
her own life, or attempt to take the life of those who violated her, or one
who simply became mad.
'I think I might have become angry and bitter and I would have hated all men,
but I think
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I would have survived and might have been persuaded, by the good men I knew in
my own family and in my own town, and perhaps by one good man in particular
who must now for ever remain in my dreams, that all was not lost and the world
was not quite so terrible a place.
'But I never had that opportunity to recover, DeWar. I was pushed so far down
in my despair I could not even tell in which direction the way back up lay.
What happened to me was the least of it, DeWar. I watched my father and my
brothers butchered, after they had been forced to watch my mother and my
sisters being fucked time after time by a fine and numerous company of
high-ranking men. Oh! You look down! Does my language upset you? Are you
offended? Have I violated your ears with my intemperate, soldiers'
words?'
'Perrund, you must believe that I am sorry for what happened to you . . .'
'But why should you be sorry? It was not your fault. You were not there. You
assure me that you disapprove, so why should you be sorry?'
'I would be bitter in your place.'
'In my place? How could that be, DeWar? You are a man. In the same place you
would be, if not one of the violators, one of those who looked away, or
remonstrated with their comrades afterwards.'
'If I was the age you were then, and a pretty youth '
'Ah, so you can share what happened to me. I see. That is good. I am
comforted.'
'Perrund, say anything you want to me. Blame me if it will help, but please
believe I . . .'
'Believe you what, DeWar? I believe you feel sorry for me, but your sympathy
stings like salty tears in a wound because I am a proud ghost, you see. Oh
yes, a proud ghost. I am an enraged shade, and a guilty one, because I have
come to admit to myself that I resent what was done to my family because it
hurt me, because I was raised to expect everything to be done for me.
'I loved my parents and my sisters in my own way, but it was not a selfless
love. I loved them because they loved me and made me feel special. I was their
baby, their chosen beloved. Through their devotion and protection I learned
none of the lessons that children usually learn, about the way the world
really works and the way that children are used within it, until that single
day, that one morning when every fond illusion I held was torn from me and the
brutal truth forced into me.
'I had come to expect the best of everything, I had come to believe that the
world would always treat me as I had been treated in the past and that those I
loved would be there to
love me in return. My fury at what happened to my family is partly caused by
that expectation, that happy assumption, being defiled and obliterated. That
is my guilt.'
'Perrund, you must know that should not be a cause for guilt. What you feel is
what any decent child feels when they realise the selfishness they have felt
when they were younger still. A selfishness that is only natural to children,
especially those who have been loved so intensely. The realisation occurs, it
is felt briefly and then it is rightly set aside. You have not been able to
set yours aside because of what those men did to you, but '
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