Gris asks Ters (evil laugh) where Ahmed/Deplor/the taxi driver is off to, and is told that he's "giving Utanc new car [sic] a test drive." A new Mercedes-Benz, sold by Ahmed/Deplor/the taxi driver's friend. And it's only now, after a month or more wasted with random women in the back seat of a limousine, that Gris realizes that Utanc hasn't come crawling to him at any point. But gee, where could she be getting enough money for a Mercedes?
Gris thinks "credit cards," by the way.
So he gets Ters (evil laugh) to take him to his cheating "concubine," who happens to be at the Agricultural Station where Faht Bey's office is located. And it's only now, after months of being goaded into huge purchases of questionable worth by his friend the taxi driver, that Gris wonders "Was this some sort of plot to impoverish me?"
He finds Faht Bey surrounded by Turkish civilians, one of whom Gris recognizes from the backseat of his limo. Faht Bey meets with Gris privately and reveals that Utanc just came by to let him know that some people were out to see Gris, "something about pregnancy," and advises him to come back later. Gris promises that "it can be handled!" and heads to the hospital.
If one of those women was pregnant, the answer was very plain. I had not been a Rockecenter family "spi" without learning anything. You handled pregnancy with abortion every time! And Prahd was the man to see on this. I would get his agreement to do an abortion on that woman and everything would be all right."
A cheap birth control pill from Wal-Mart costs, according to Yahoo Answers, $15-$20. An abortion, according to Answers.com, costs anywhere from $200 to a thousand dollars.
Rockecenter is not only evil, he is literally throwing money away to be evil.
Also note that Gris' interactions with Rockecenter amount to an hour or two, tops, while his time as the family "spi" was mostly spent interacting with Madison or getting tortured by a lesbian sadist. Also also note that Gris realized Rockecenter was insane the first time he met the man, but this revelation has had no effect on Gris' willingness to follow Rockecenter's ideals.
There's so much concentrated Stupid in these books that you could carve bricks out of it for cheap building material.
Well, turns out old Prahd Bittlestiffender is expecting Gris, and when the agent blurts out "Pregnancy!" he sadly remarks how "I am glad you finally come to confess." And then there's a paragraph of confusion until Gris realizes that they aren't talking about the woman from the limo, but
"Nurse Bildirjin," said Prahd. "Oh, Officer Gris, to think that you would contribute to the delinquency of a minor behind my back, to leap on her and rape her--"
"Hold it!" I cried. "If we're talking about Nurse Bildirjin, SHE raped me!"
"You just confessed that she was just lying there and you could not resist jumping on her!"
"No, no! That was somebody else!" My head was spinning. Suddenly I got a grip on it. "Wait, you sleep with Nurse Bildirjin all the time!"
"No, no," said Prahd. "I take the most careful precautions. You don't think a qualified cellologist would take a chance like that--she being a minor and all."
There you have it, folks, straight from the good doctor: statutory rape is fine so long as you don't get her preggers. Presumably pedophilia is even more fine because you don't have to take those precautions in the first place.
So Prahd scolds Gris for "run[ning] around impregnating women left and right, day in and day out. And on two different planets too!", conveniently forgetting he was the one who got the Widow Tayl pregnant on Gris' behalf. He also refuses to perform an abortion, taking a firm Pro-Life stance and declaring it an act of murder. Prahd's got morals, understand? Surprise surgical modifications and nonconsensual pregnancies aside.
Prahd has fun describing how Bildirjin's father is both a leading doctor and a hunstman who will send whoever defiled his daughter (besides Prahd) to Turkish prison, after blowing off his testicles. Fearing for his 'nads, Gris flees for his villa and hides in his room, but someone knocks on his "secret" tunnel exit who turns out to be Faht Bey. He's got some news for Gris, and a bullet for him to chomp down on while being told it. See, Ahmed the taxi driver is going to testify that everything he did was at Gris' orders, and oh the things he did...
"For the past several weeks," said Faht Bey, "the taxi driver has been going out with this Turkish murderer in that car with your name all over it. The way they worked was to go to a farm and look over the women, and if they found a good-looking one, they would tell her husband and the family that it was at your orders that they burn the whole farm down unless the woman consented to spend an evening with you in your car. And that if anyone went to the police that farm, nearby farms and the closest village would be put to the torch."
And it never occurred to these farmers to grab some guns and some kin and murder the hell out of these two once they returned with the victimized woman.
I bit on the bullet. The taxi driver had been keeping that fee for himself!
"That's not all," said Faht Bey. "They told the husband that if she hadn't pleased you, they would murder her husband."
I clamped down harder on the bullet. That explained those beseeching looks I had mistake for a plea to be with me again in the future!
"This all came out because they thought I knew you and somebody suggested they come see me for advice."
Utanc!
Utanc? And not any of the dozens of other villa staff members or Apparatus personnel who hate you? You somehow know it's Utanc?
In a jealous rage, she had set them on me!
"But that's not all," said Faht Bey. "When the taxi driver and Ters came to the rendezvous, first Ahmed and then Ters raped the woman first."
My teeth were sinking deeper and deeper into the brass. No wonder the women had been so tired. No wonder they had always been so moist!
And there's the little detail we were never told about that turned out to be a crucial clue to the mystery that was solved in the same chapter we finally learned the detail: the level of moisture in a woman's nethers.
...I'm just going to take a moment to boggle how this book made led me to write "crucial clue" and "level of moisture in a woman's nethers" in the same sentence. Thanks, Hubbard.
Those (bleeped) (bleepards) had kept me waiting for half an hour while they both (bleeped) away and then they had called me to take their leavings! They must have been shrieking with laughter over it!
Especially since you never noticed what you were, to put things delicately, getting into. Must've been dark in the back of the limo... wait, Gris kept having trouble with the overhead light or farmers shining lanterns through the windows...
Also, let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that this narrative is censoring the naughty language in a paragraph about three men's month-long raping spree.
"One more thing," said Faht Bey. "This is adultery. In the Qur'an it states that the punishment shall be one hundred lashes for unmarried persons. But these women were married, so the punishment for you would be completely different. The Qur'an states that in such a case the offender shall be stoned to death."
Yeah, about that: Turkey is a country of Muslims, but not quite a Muslim country, y'know? That Ataturk fellow was big on secularization, after all. So adultery is not to my knowledge a crime in Turkey - in fact, there was a hubbub when they tried to criminalize it a few years ago. Supposedly even back in the days of the Ottoman Empire there were no recorded instances of punishment for adultery, Qur'an or no Qur'an. Which isn't to say that sufficiently fundamentalist folks couldn't do some unofficial stoning. But this sounds a wee bit unlikely. Suspicious, even. Especially on the heels of the apparently premeditated mutiny of Gris' agents during last chapter.
But Gris at least has reached a conclusion.
That settled it. The powder in the cartridge case spilled bitterly into my mouth as my teeth pierced it through.
I would have to leave Turkey.
There was no other way.
And I would have to leave Turkey AT ONCE!
If you'll recall, the only reason Gris started this book in Turkey was because last book the aforementioned lesbian torture sessions led him to flee the United States. Now the possibility of execution for thirty-plus acts of adultery (but not rape!) is convincing him to flee the other direction. So if you're seeing a pattern and wondering if Gris will be involved in some new atrocity that could ever drive him to return to Turkey... well, I know for sure you're right about the atrocity part.
But we've still got about fifty pages to go before we get to that. And murder. Lots of murder.
Back to Chapter Five
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