Andrew Vachss - Strega

"Oh, yeah. He's protected-they had a guard in the room with me- I don't even know his name.

"Too bad," said Pablo.

"His time is coming," I said. "From the people who are protecting him now. But that's not the thing-he tells me he's going to keep doing what he does. Forever. It's what he wants to do. He says he loves the kids."

"And you don't understand?"

"Do you?"

"Yesbut what I understand is the rationalization, not the drive.

The medical profession knows a good deal about the workings of the human body, but the study of the mind is essentially political."

I raised my eyebrows-Pablo thinks "No Parking" signs are political.

"It is true, hermano . We no longer treat physical diseases with leeches, but we still treat mental disorders as though they exist in a vacuum. This is not logical, but it is comforting to the citizens. If we say that mental illness is biochemical, then people believe that the correct medication is the answer to all questions."

"Like methadone?"

"Sure. You understand. Of course, heroin addiction is a product of many, many thingsbut heroin was first really introduced into this country by the United States government. After World War I, too many of our soldiers returned addicted to morphine. Heroin was the wonder drug that would make them all well again.

"It sure raised hell with the fighting gangs," I said.

"You remember the heroin monster, sweeping through our communities, turning young people into zombies? This was because the street gangs had begun to reach a kind of political awareness.

"Some political awareness," I said. "I came up in the fifties-all we ever wanted to do was keep other clubs off our turf, drink a little wine, play with the girls. Nobody even mentioned politics."

"Not then," Pablo said, "but soon after. The fighting gangs were in every part of the city. Independent units, yes? If they had ever combined "

"Not a chance," I told him. "I don't think I ever knew a word for a black guy except 'nigger' until I was out of reform school."

"Racism is like heroin, Burke-it divides people from their true needs-it pacifies them with promises of foolishness."

I held up a hand like a traffic cop. "Hold it, brother. You're going too fast for me. What's this got to do with a baby-raper?"

"It's the same thing. Politics controls the reality which is presented to the public. Look, Freud taught that sex between children and adults was simply a fantasy-something in the minds of the children-something they imagined as a way of dealing with their own sexual feelings toward their parents. Now we know these feelings actually exist-the Oedipus complex, for example. But just because all children have such thoughts does not mean that reports of actual incest were a fantasy. It took us a long time to learn this truth. Politically, it was better that incest be thought of as a fantasy. This meant we gave treatment to the victim, but this 'treatment' was bogus-it made the children believe a lie and doubt the reality of their own senses.

"That would make them…"

"Crazy. Yes, that is what it did do. And those children who acted crazy were displayed as proof of the fact that they were crazy to begin with. Comprende ?"

"But why? Who wants to protect people who fuck their own kids?"

Pablo sighed, disgusted as always with my political ignorance. "Look at it this way. Suppose a slave were to escape from the South and make it to New York. Suppose we put him into psychotherapy-suppose we convinced him that the whole experience of slavery was nothing more than a bad dream-do you not see the political value? We would not have to confront the slave-keepers-we could continue to practice trade and commerce with them, maintain our own self-interest economically. Yes?"

"But slaves…" I said, groping for the clincher to prove Pablo wrong, "they'd still have the scars…"

"You think an incest victim would not have scars?" he said.

I lit a cigarette, thinking of Flood and the scars she made on herself to replace the brand of a rapist-how she poured gasoline on herself over the tattoo the gang put on her, lit a match, and held on to her one friend in the world until the fire made them free. "What good would it do to trick a kid like that?" I asked.

"Children don't vote," he said.

"And Freud said there was no such thing as incest?"

"Freud did not make a conscious decision to accept the women stories as fantasies-he lived within a political climate and he responded to it."

"But we know it happens."

"Now we know. But to truly know it then, you had to experience it.

"So if you thought the experience was all in your mind…"

"Yes," said Pablo, grateful that I was finally seeing the light that shone so brightly for him.

I got to my feet, pacing uncomfortably in the small room. "Forget politics for a minute," I said. "We know people do these things to kids, okay? Do we know why ?"

Pablo tilted his head until he was gazing at the ceiling. "I will tell you everything we actually know-it won't take long. We know people have sex with children-the children of strangers and also their own. We know this has something to do with power-the power grown people have over children. In fact, sex with children is not sex as you would understand it, Burke. It is not, for example, the kind of adaptive mechanism which could cause a man to turn to other men when there are no women-like in prison. This is another dimension entirely. The pedophile-the one who has sex with children-he may be able to have sex with women, or with grown men. But he does not prefer to do this. The more intelligent the pedophile, the more skillfully he may rationalize his behavior, but the truth is really simple-he knows what he does is wrong and he does it anyway."

"I thought those freaks couldn't help themselves?"

"No! They can stop-they choose not to."

"It can't be that simple," I told him. "Who the fuck would choose to pass up women and force little kids to?"

"All that is within them is within you and me, my friend. If every man who felt sexual violence toward a woman acted on that feeling, New York would not be a city-it would be a graveyard."

"You mean it's not?"

"You joke when you do not understand. Just because some of the lower beasts walk our streets does not make our community into a jungle- not so long as people struggle against the beasts."

Pablo took a dark bottle down from a shelf and poured himself a glass of that jungle juice he drinks all the time. I passed up his offer with a shake of my head.

"To rehabilitation!" he said, tossing down half the glass.

"You ever try that with one of these freaks?" I asked him.

"One time. One time we did just that," he mused, his eyes somewhere else. "My people brought a man in here years ago. He had been molesting children in the neighborhood, and it was thought best to turn him over to our clinic.

"Why not the cops?"

"My people wanted justice, Burke. And they knew the man would probably never be prosecuted. His victims were not important."

"What did they expect you to do?"

"The man agreed to go into treatment with us. He made a specific contract that he would cease his activity while we tried to do something about his behavior."

"Behavior?"

"Only his acts were a danger to our community-his motivations are so deep inside him that it would take years of treatment for them to surface. And even then we could probably do nothing about them. We asked only that he stop."

"Did he?"

"No. We cannot know why he made his choice-what forces were within him. We can only assume that he tried to walk the line. One day he slipped and fell."

"What did you do then?"