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Coriolanus Snow had first raped a girl at twenty-one. Not out of lust, of course, but under the sharp whip of duty. He had been a young and strapping Peacekeeper then, enlisted to clear the northern hinterlands of rebel encampments. They were a baser form of humanity, those rats who fled the Districts and riddled the hills. It was imperative to clear the infestation. But as Coriolanus knew from his rat-killing childhood days, you cannot simply cut the heads off the beasts. You have to poison the nests. That was what the rape was for.
He and his platoon eradicated the soldiers with bullets and the buildings with bombs. How he had loved those cluster munitions that released their secret presents into the spines of unsuspecting civilians. But it was not enough to burn their homes, their schools, their hospitals. One had to salt the earth.
True, he had been conflicted, at first. His commander and his comrades had erupted into a rebel-occupied village—parched farmland, wooden matchstick houses, a smattering of terrified chickens, stinking stables—and the men had whooped with delight as they broke down the houses and claimed their prizes. Coriolanus busied himself slitting the throats of the horses as he heard the screams of women.
His commander had found him there and clapped him on the back. ‘Coriolanus. Why do you linger here? We all must take our prize. It is good for morale.’
‘My morale is perfectly intact,’ he had replied, with his always-charming hollow smile.
His commander’s fingers had been heavy on his shoulder. ‘Nonetheless, lad, it is important. We need to drive these pigs from their stolen land. We must reclaim this earth. Furrow the women. Reseed the land. It is an act of purification. We do this for the state.’
And so, with reluctance, Coriolanus had taken a crowbar to a boarded house and prised his way inside. There he found three children hiding in a closet, and a woman who begged him not to hurt them. Hurt the children? Not necessary. They would be removed to the nearest District and forcibly reassimilated into Panem. It was too late for the mother.
So Coriolanus Snow did his duty. It was difficult, that first time. Fumbling. She managed to scratch him a terrible amount, and when he beat her about the temple she defecated in fear. Remaining erect was a chore, and orgasm uncomfortable. But he was a patriot. Did not his body belong to the state? His sinews, his muscles, his brain, his strong calves, his penis, every drop of semen he might produce: all was to serve great and glorious Panem.
The rebels did not return to the village. The children were taken, the soldiers killed, and the raped women and girls left on their own. It became a haunted land. It was not the last rape he would commit; there would be more, some in gangs among his brethren, some on his own when it was expected of him. Mostly against peasants, but sometimes against the wives and daughters of political enemies. Slender cupfuls of semen deposited in the wombs of the daughters of the enemy, just as Panem demanded. He learned to appreciate it, if not enjoy it. His compatriots rejoiced in the depravity; but for him, it was simply duty. Love for his country. There was no immorality to such acts; his semen belonged to the motherland, whether it spilled on the soil or inside a screaming woman’s belly. This was for the good of the country, after all. And Panem deserved her glory.
As Coriolanus Snow had aged, had grown his career, had cultivated power like a garden of brimming roses, he learned the value of rape. It became one of many cruel and cutting tools in his arsenal: starvation, blitz, torture, propaganda… and the Hunger Games, of course. Brilliant shining levers he could pull to direct the country. Each effective in their slender silver way, if used correctly. His personal use of rape was not excessive and never base. By the age of fifty, as President and Grand Ruler, he could have had any woman he wanted, of course. He could have had an endless carriage of frightened naked girls in his bed. But Coriolanus Snow was not a selfish man. As President, he was the state—and the state was him. He would not sully himself with lusts. He abstained. He dedicated himself to his garden.
It therefore took careful and painstaking consideration to reach the conclusion that he ought to rape Katniss Everdeen.
She was a problem that needed to be solved. He would normally resort to more prosaic methods to ensure obedience—threats against family, or torture—but Katniss Everdeen was different. This girl was special.
This girl was like him.
For rape was a tool with many uses. As military strategy, yes, it was impeccable for destabilization, humiliation, cleansing—but as a psychological tool for the individual? Ah, here it had more specific uses. For rape did not always break a person. Oh no, as Coriolanus Snow knew all too well, rape could be a crucible. It was a sharpening. For special people like himself and Katniss Everdeen, trauma made one so great! As a child, he had not appreciated the process. Dead mother, dead father, dead bodies eaten in the streets, strange meats, shivering with his cousin through the nuclear night… He had felt as though he were being peeled, pieces of bark stripped back to the birch-bone. Now he knew better. To be cut was to be carved into something better. And how he gleamed now!
Katniss Everdeen had already been magnificently chipped at. The loss of her father had hacked something out of her; years of starvation and survival had whittled her further. Deep inside the rock of that young Seam girl was a ruby, desperate to be freed from the mud. She did not know it now, but what a rare and fantastic kindness it would be to rape her. It was time to put his old and faithful tool to use once more.
He considered possible locations. Her bedroom? A wonderful possibility. In her safest, most intimate place? Where she would fall asleep with thoughts of him inside her? Ah, for rape was the magic spell that transformed a teenage bedroom into a temple. But what about the forest? Was that not her safe space, wild thing that she was? He could rape her there, for the forest was as much Panem as was the Victors’ Village. The trees were Panem, and the birds were Panem, and the animals getting killed or eaten or fucked were all Panem.
He dreamed of it, the night after her coronation. Plucking apart the golden petals of her thighs. Sinking his plough into the red soil of her. Kissing with rapture her growing breasts, for her body was the body of Panem—as was his! There was no more noble thing to bring them together, to sup at her blood and her milk as if he fed directly from the soil. It was the right thing to do for the country; it was her purpose and his, a metaphysical morality, a plane of pure and ruthless purpose that found its most sweet and dreadful logic between the legs of a screaming, bleeding child…
He woke in sweat. The tomb of his bedroom gaped wide about his vast and empty bed, only his lone, increasingly frail figure set sail amongst the silk sheets. His panting filled the grey, dim room; his heart beat feverishly in his now weak chest. With the dreamy edge of panic, he fumbled for the button beneath his bedside table that would summon his security.
Two guards were in the room within three seconds; within a minute, another dozen would convene here. Coriolanus waved at them dismissively, hauling air into his tight lungs. It had been many decades since his asthma bothered him… It had been so triggered by those cats that were banned from the presidential grounds…
‘Is everything alright, sir?’
‘Egeria,’ he gasped. ‘Just fetch Egeria.’
They did as they were bade. Coriolanus let his head fall against the plump goose-down pillow. Oh, God, he was old. It came upon you suddenly, in stabs: you are old, and you are going to die. The moment one became accustomed to one life stage, one had already been rudely shoved into the next. And here he was, knocking at the door of death, and his dreams swelled with the image of raping a sixteen-year-old girl.
He heaved himself from the bed and covered his rotten body in a robe, then he combed his hair and sat at the small window table where he sometimes took early morning coffee. He twitched open the curtains and then cracked open the window. Before him stretched the colossal slate grey of the gardens at night, and the twinkling skyscrapers of the city beyond. Huge fat black things, their lights like radioactive confetti. So many people out there crawling through the hive of his city, each of them in their right place. Many of them living out stupid and tiny lives—but necessary, nonetheless, to the function of the great machine. Consumers, workers, little tools. Performing purposes they could not know, but performing them with the efficiency Panem demanded. So beautiful.
Egeria knocked before entering, but did not wait to be invited inside. They knew one another’s rhythms. She had worked for him for twenty five years, after all.
‘Sir?’
He inclined his head to the opposite chair. ‘Sit.’
She did so. He indulged himself in several minutes more study of the city as she waited. Panem, seething Panem: his noble and glorious mistress. How he loved to watch it glitter for him.
Finally, he looked at Egeria. She was as she always was: placid, obedient, always very slightly afraid of him. He did not know why; he had never harmed her. He almost cared for her, as much as a creature like him could care for anybody.
‘I wanted to ask your opinion,’ he said. ‘Before you worked for me, you worked in the Capitol pleasure pits. You are familiar with the experience of being raped, yes?’
Her dark eyes blinked once, but she betrayed no other inner feeling. ‘I am.’
‘And yet every year you watch me sell a new Victor—a child—into those same pits to be raped again. What do you think about that?’
Her voice was a deep green lake, and perfectly still. ‘I’m not paid to think about it, sir.’
‘Very wise. But I am asking sincerely. ‘Do you think it’s worth it? Keeping the Victors in their place, preventing them from amassing social power? Is the rape of so many children a great and wonderful thing for Panem?’
To her credit, she gave the question serious consideration. Her answer was careful. ‘I believe that you think it is worth it, sir. And I trust your opinion above mine.’
‘I don’t do it because I like it, you understand. Seeing them sold off like that does not please me. It’s a necessary evil.’
‘It seems we have so many necessary evils,’ she said diplomatically.
He leaned into her. She smelled of spice. If he wished it, he could have his guards lie her down, strip her clothing, and restrain her as he had his wild and bitter way with her lovely dark flesh. And she would come to work the next day with her same calm demeanor and they would never speak of it. But he would never do such a thing.
‘It takes a particular kind of man to wield these moralities,’ he explained. ‘To elevate the unacceptable. To transform the unspeakable into poetry. To make a useful tool of rape. Few are capable of this. I learned that I was at a young age. I committed rape with duty, but never pleasure. And it is that unique and golden ability that makes me so suited to run this beautiful country.’
‘For the greater good, sir.’
A frown flickered in him. ‘No. No, not for anything good, greater or otherwise. I dispensed of such childish morality a very long time ago. It is for stability, Egeria. For the unchanging tradition. For the people of this nation to wake up every day and see that their world is the same as it was before. Do you see? This is the greatest gift one can offer the world: the rejection of decay, deterioration, damage… Panem is a flower in amber, in perfect stasis. No more war, only day after magical day, frozen in time. The rejection of the fall. A nation above gravity. Rome fell, Egypt fell, North America fell—but not Panem. Panem is forever.’
She could not keep the irony from her smile. ‘Glory to Panem.’
‘Glory to our homeland,’ he quipped back. ‘But I wanted to tell you…’ He sought the words with curiosity. He could smell her sweet breath. He tapped his fingernail upon the tabletop. ‘I was thinking about raping Katniss Everdeen myself.’ He held aloft his hand as though he could grasp something within it—the moon, or the country, or the soul of an adolescent girl. ‘I thought I should initiate her. And I saw in that girl… I saw something rare. And I knew that she would not be cowed by rape. I knew that it would transform her, that it would do something magnificent. That trauma would make her glorious, the way this country has become so glorious.’ His gaze sought out Egeria’s, and hers was unreadable. ‘What is your opinion? Is it the right thing to do, for me to rape this girl?’
It took time for her to answer. Distantly, cars churned through city streets. Above, there was a burst of stars like dandelion seeds. Coriolanus’ bedroom was his perfect preferred temperature—just a little bit too cold. Just enough to make you shiver.
Egeria said, ‘I think that rape is always a terrible thing, sir. I do not think good can come of it.’
‘Oh come now,’ he smiled. ‘We cannot be so immature in our morality. We are not children; we do not think in absolutes. We consider the tools at our disposal. And rape is a very particular scalpel. There is great value in it. Rape keeps the Victors in line. Otherwise, we would have to kill them. The Games keep the Districts subdued. This ensures the production of food which feeds the nation. Without these tools, there would be chaos. Civil war. You are too old to remember the Dark Days. You cannot imagine the horrors.’
Her handsome face remained held high as she stared into him. ‘Was there rape?’
‘Of course. And of a far more barbaric nature. My neighbor was raped to death by soldiers. Fathers sold the bodies of their daughters for food. Girls became prostitutes as soon as they were old enough to understand the concept—and sometimes younger.’
Still, those dark eyes smoldered blackly. ‘Were you ever raped?’
‘As a boy? No, no. I was fortunate, I was from a good family. I witnessed it, of course, but I was spared myself. No, I wasn’t raped until my early twenties, as a soldier.’
‘I see.’
‘It was very common,’ he continued. ‘Both sides wished to humiliate the enemy. We raped their women, and in turn they defiled us. There was a particular incident… Most of my troop was killed… The enemy must have believed me dead, but I survived…’ White fog filled his memory. ‘I cannot recall the details… But when I came to, the evidence of their crimes was obvious.’
A sluggish night breeze disturbed wisps of Egeria’s hair. She blinked once, slowly, like a cat.
‘I am sorry that you experienced that, sir.’
He shrugged. ‘I do not care. It only bothers me in the sense that it was an offense against the state. You rape a woman who belongs to the rebels, and you reclaim her for the state: this is just. To rape state soldiers is an insult, one that cannot go unanswered. We carpet bombed their towns after that. So many who could have been spared… Children who could have become valuable citizens of the country…’ He released a sigh. ‘But so it goes. Such is the logic of war. I remain grateful that we kill only twenty-three children a year now.’
‘And those in the Districts who die of starvation?’
‘The Districts who comply and serve the nation do not face food shortages,’ he said sharply. ‘The state is everything. What is the life of any citizen against the state? What is my life? What is yours? What value has the sexual innocence of Katniss Everdeen?’
‘A great deal of value, sir,’ said Egeria. ‘Else you would not wish to take it.’
Coriolanus cracked a smile. ‘But in taking it, Egeria, I will snap her disobedience in two, and I will bind her to me. She will not be some incidental casualty of war. It will make her spectacular.’
‘You believe this rape will be… good for her?’
‘Of course,’ he said, with some surprise. ‘It will transform her. Help to make her perfect, as so many rapes have made perfect this great nation.’
Coriolanus did not know what pity looked like in Egeria’s eyes, for he had never seen it there before. But, perhaps, it looked something like this.
‘I think that rape is always a very sad thing,’ she said.
‘But there has to be value in it,’ he pressed. ‘There has to be that sliver of gold in the wound, yes? Otherwise… If there was nothing valuable in it, then…’ In a flash, he saw a memory that was not really a memory: he and his cousin in a beautiful field, fat with wildflowers, and a family who loved them, and green grass and good earth that had never been split with a bomb or smeared with blood. A place he had never been, a time that had never happened. He shook his head and the dream dissolved. ‘I must believe it was all done with purpose,’ he said. ‘I must believe that. After all, what alternative is there?’
‘I do not know, sir.’
He suddenly felt so incredibly tired. He loved his country more than anything, certainly more than himself. And what was a self to the state? What was a body? Always, he had done his beautiful duty, and it had been worth it. Every dead soldier, every torn apart woman, every raped child was a block in the edifice of the most glorious country that ever was or ever would be. Hail to Panem, now and forever.
‘I think,’ Coriolanus said, and his tongue found a new, young mouth sore. ‘I think that I will wait for now. There is no urgency to this. The Katniss Everdeen situation can wait, for now. After all, she has her romance with Peeta Mellark to maintain.’
‘Indeed, sir.’ Was there relief in Egeria’s voice?
‘It means nothing, you understand,’ he warned. ‘To save one child means nothing. That is the most seductive of lies: that one life saved of pain has any meaning at all in the scope of a country. Do not allow yourself to feel relief or compassion. They are the lies our bodies whisper to us to prevent us from doing the right thing.’
‘It is hard to prevent relief, sir.’ Her mouth smiled, and Coriolanus smiled back.
‘Perhaps. But do your best.’ He stood abruptly, and Egeria followed suit. ‘Thank you for discussing this with me at such a late hour, Egeria. You are invaluable to me.’
She bowed her head. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
‘It is. My orders can wait until the morning. Go back to sleep.’
‘I was not asleep, sir,’ she said, on her way to the door. She paused at the threshold. Her beautiful ageing face looked sad. ‘I never sleep the night after the Hunger Games.’
She left him there. Coriolanus remained in his seat for some time, staring into the deep, black distance of the night of Panem. For it was Panem’s night: never had the stars shone so bright above another empire, never had the world turned beneath a nation’s feet with such certainty. Let a hundred thousand die, let a million burn, let billions upon billions of families die starving and screaming beneath a hail of bombs brought by the righteous and unerring machine of Panem! For what other purpose could there possibly be? No, nothing—nothing else in the world of worth but the sweet motherland, and the endless shadows cast by her Capitol that stood eternal upon the sacred and gleaming soil.