Rape
by Marcus Van Heller
GC-272
Published 1955
Rape, in author Van Heller's (John Stevenson's) own words: "is a very simple story about a man with an obsession. A man searching for an ideal woman; for a satisfaction and content the orgasm seems to offer but constantly witholds." This book was an instant success for Stevenson (and the Olympia Press), leading many a soldier or naval crewman to write to Girodias, asking when the next Van Heller was coming out.
An English girl in the noonday sun....
"Please!" she said, at last sharply pulling at my hand. I grinned at her, keeping my hand firmly in place, kneading her flesh with my fingers. I was slightly amazed at my bruitishness, but I couldn't stop myself.
"I'm afraid you'll find it was false economy not to have got that train," I said, eyes gleaming at her.
Somewhere in my subconscious was a feeling that the whole thing might have been better staged, but my whole body had now worked up into the heat of an alcoholic fighting against deprivation of his liquor. Nothing could have stopped me.
* * *
INTRODUCTION by Curtis L. Roche, Ph.D.
Marcus Van Heller's remarkable work, Rape, is an ingeniously wrought study of a sexual psychopath. Within the pages of this fast-paced book the reader will find himself transported along in the sociopathic mind of Londoner Harvey Crawford, a protagonist whose somewhat remarkable narrative explores the innermost reaches of consciousness. Through this consciousness we are able to understand something of the machinations of the mind of a criminal rapist.
When society is better able to understand how the mind of a rapist works, perhaps legislators will be encouraged to enact laws which will provide for the care and rehabilitation of sexual psychopaths, and also to take measures to investigate new and better methods of dealing with the problem with a view to developing preventive programs.
"Harvey Crawford of London, artist, forger, rapist, murderer," is typical of his sort of juvenile mentality in an adult's body. His need for constant sexual relief is not really a seeking for gratification of a normal biological urge, but is, instead, a craving to prove to the world that he is a man, and is to be admired for his manhood. He uses whiskey as a crutch, more or less to excuse his licentious behavior. With a few drinks in him he becomes a sadist and a rapist. Whether this reaction is psychopathic or pathological is of little consequence, because all he can do to satisfy his urge is to violate any woman who rejects him, raping her in a brutal fashion.
Because he has spent most of his adult life in search of sexual gratification, going to any length to get it, the protagonist is fully aware of his inability to remain constant to any woman for long. Driven by feelings of inadequacy, Crawford goes from woman to woman in an effort to alleviate this complex and the increasing anxiety it creates within him. Deeper than that, he is subconsciously aware of a need to find "the lost part of me I needed to be a whole man." Just what this is, he has no idea.
As he reflects back on his life, Crawford realizes that his unconscious mind is beyond his grasp and he cannot understand the symbolism by which it occasionally tries to awaken him to the meaning of his search for fulfillment. He knows only that through his "massive" penis he is able to assert his masculinity.
He does not realize that his search for sexual fulfillment is also a denial of the real motivation which impells him to do what he does; this is the guilt motivation which goads him into seeking conquest after conquest to prove that he is a real man-a fact he unconsciously doubts, but cannot face. He is incapable of facing reality per se. He must live in a fantasy world, preoccupied with sex. Even in his painting he is not given the satisfaction of appreciation, except for the recognition of the sexual character of his work by those who criticize what he does.
The symbolic meaning of the rape scene at the opening of Van Heller's work is made somewhat more apparent as the book ends. We recognize it as the beginning of the end, as if through the crime of raping the college-girl hitchhiker he had picked up, the protagonist seals his own doom and brings to an end the horrible persecution with which his sexuality beset him.
Although the novel's sexual content is brutal and often highly descriptive, it is by no means conducive to prurience. The discerning, sophisticated reader will readily see that Van Heller has something to say and is saying it through the characterization and actions of his protagonist.
We are able to understand something of the fugue state into which the criminal mind enters when an antisocial act is about to commence or when it takes place. At the point when he brutally seizes his victim and strips her, Crawford also denudes her, and himself as well, symbolically. When in this fugue state, he leaves clues about in a helter-skelter fashion which are tantamount to an expression of his wish to be caught and punished. Intellectually he knows he is doing wrong and will be caught eventually and made to pay for his crime; but emotionally and psychologically he does not see himself as a rapist and wrong-doer-he sees himself as a life force, driven and driving through an antisocial society that is hostile and cruel to him. His victim symbolizes that hostile society, and he uses his sex organ as a cudgel with which to flail it as it uses him.
During the act of rape he fancies that his penis becomes larger and more massive, bearing out the truth of the sexual symbolism. He derives pleasure from the sex act not like a normal individual finds satisfaction, but rather as a lust-driven, senseless animal. He is erudite and quite intelligent, but this innate intelligence and personality cannot provide him with the wherewithal to control his sexual behavior. He must rape because he is compelled to do so, because in turn he unconsciously wishes to be punished. Obviously he has become a miscreant because he is insecure in a hostile society-he failed as an artist, so he became a forger; he wasn't punished because of his crimes as a forger, so he did worse things; he raped, and finally murdered. And for this he received the masochistic ultimate ... no further escape.
Instead of remorse, after the rape, Crawford's mind dwells on the voluptuous details for a time; then he becomes aware of the fact that "I had acted extremely foolishly." He is not sorry, nor at any time does he regret having violated the innocent girl. All he can think of is himself.
First he blames the whiskey. Then he admits he has raped a girl, for the first time in his life. Then he begins to think about the penalties of the law he may have to pay. And finally, after thinking about the girl, he considers himself safe, rationalizing that she was the sort who would hate being involved in such an affair, and who "would clean herself up and say nothing about it to anyone. On the other hand, in such an extreme situation she might blurt the whole thing out to the first person who appeared, or, failing that, break down and admit it to someone close, perhaps her mother. Anyway, I doubted whether she'd have noticed the number of the car or much in the way of details to connect me with the rape."
Then Crawford's true character is revealed when he states: "Well, I wasn't going to worry unduly about initiating an attractive girl into the ways of the world. And by the time I had reached my studio in Bloomsbury I had put the whole thing into the back of my mind."
The fact that he fancies himself as having the power of one who initiates an attractive girl into the ways of the world is not mere egoism or idle boasting; it goes deeper than that. Crawford here reveals the clue to it all: The "ways of the world" into which he introduced her are symbolic of the way the world has raped him-or at least the way Crawford sees it. He identifies with the girl in an unconscious way, revealing that he too had been an idealist and a virgin, but the world and its cruelties violated his person.
There is more. Crawford, through his sheer brutality and constant seeking of sexual relief, is in reality proving that he is not effeminate-which he happ
ens to be, at the latent, unconscious level. He must go from woman to woman, occasionally using them brutally, and finally raping one, just to prove that he isn't a homosexual. After all, a man who has so many women, and who rapes a woman ... surely he cannot be construed to be effeminate, can he? Thus Crawford is driven to use his penis to prove his identity as a man.
Later, when he takes pleasure in using his mistress and another woman, we see reflected in the Crawford mentality a quality of disillusionment and frustration. Only when he is witnessing the rape and degradation of his mistress does he realize that he takes pleasure in seeing another man's organ, and in the sexual abuse he witnesses. He is brutally beaten by three men who take revenge on him for taking advantage of a woman who was drunk. He seems to find a painful ecstasy in being kicked and beaten into unconsciousness, and finds that it was all somewhat "infinitesimal." He says, "They'd be sorry if they knew how lightly I'd got off." He means by this that once again he has proved his manhood; he was more a man than they were. It is the little boy boasting loudly, "Naw, he couldn't hurt me one bit!"
Crawford begins to realize the police are looking for him. He has fled London and is in Paris, and though he fears being caught, he goes to Cannes with an American couple who give him a lift. He has an affair with the wife, and after a few days must finally return to Paris, where he is certain he will be caught.
He had another reason for fleeing Paris: He took revenge on the woman and her boy friend who had had him beaten and his girl friend abused. He trussed them both up at gunpoint and then, before her bound lover's eyes, used the woman anally and vaginally. He seemed to derive an erotic satisfaction from showing his organ to the other man and performing sexually before him. Again, Crawford was asserting his manhood, emphasizing it by finally beating the rape victim and then having intercourse with her a few inches from the seething face of the humiliated, helpless lover.
Still another exhibitionistic episode takes place when Crawford has intercourse with a married woman on a beach while an old man, unknown to the woman, hides in the trees and masturbates while watching. Crawford appears to derive a great deal of pleasure from this, again proving that he is more a man than someone else.
Finally, driven by an inexplicable compulsion to return to Paris, where he knows he will be caught, he goes there anyway. He learns that the girl he raped has come to Paris with her father, and they are searching for him in order to bring him to justice.
Despite this knowledge, and after he and his mistress have been safe and snug in their love nest for a few days, Crawford goes out in search of his accusers. Although he is armed, he fully expects to confront them.
Finally, while going from tourist bar to tourist bar on the streets of Paris, he meets the young rape victim and her father. The girl tells her father what happened, and the chase begins.
Even before the chase, Crawford has known all along what the outcome will be. Nevertheless, he does that which any unthinking man must do under the circumstances-he runs. But he runs in such a way that capture will be inevitable.
He grabs the girl at gunpoint and forces a cab driver to flee with them.
At this point the fine characterization the author has drawn begins its involuntary disintegration. We see the mind of Harvey Crawford approaching the breaking point. The fugue state began at the moment of confrontation; no longer was Crawford able to act as a sane man. He behaved in an unpredictable, confused, irrational manner. With the onset of the fugue state, Crawford's intellect clouds over as imminent capture threatens.
Cornered in a barn with the girl, surrounded by the police, who give him until dawn to surrender, still another symbol is triggered. Society is to punish him at dawn, the birth of a new day: The death of men who die before firing squads; the way of the world. Now he is about to be further initiated into the way of the world, and he cannot accept this, nor can he stand the anxiety any longer of waiting. Some vague hope that he can use the girl to bargain for his freedom is still his, yet intellectually he knows this is pointless and futile. All is lost. He wonders how many hours there are until dawn. He puts his automatic to a hole in the barn door and fires wildly, blindly, emptying the gun. This too is symbolic of what he has been trying to achieve with his life. The gun, the phallic symbol, is empty, the bullets spent; all that is left is a hole in the barn door.
Shortly before dawn he returns to the girl. He does not undress her, but magically the girl is nude. Once again he mounts her. Once again "Her legs were splayed and wide open to my need, and this was all that was important." While he is raping her his head begins to throb, and he becomes increasingly more aware of the painful thundering. "I was right inside her, my penis a long probing, searching need. She writhed and twisted, but my hands were quietening her."
Here we find the true motive behind the criminal compulsion of the protagonist. He is not attaining orgasm, but death. He is not comforting her, but quietening (British spelling) her-forever. He has progressed along the road of mental disintegration, seeking first one minor crime after another as a means of psychical gratification; after experiencing these he has progressed to the ultimate-rape, then murder. The thing must end as only it can, and this the inner man craves, while the outer man, in conflict with his unconscious, cannot admit that he yearns for this. Hence, torn apart by such emotions, the psyche of Harvey Crawford finally splits into two distinctly separate spheres: the sane and the insane. This schizoid division was a long time in coming, probably having had its beginnings early in childhood.
Now we recognize the power and intent of the author's premise-in the magnificent portrayal of the workings of the mind of a psychopathic individual, for we see that had the protagonist been given the opportunity at an early age to develop his mind (instead of practicing the Judo he often alludes to, another symbol), he most certainly would not have fallen to the depths to which he fell.
Van Heller has achieved that which he has set out to do. He has shown us the frailties of man. He has shown us madness. He has shown us that pure sexuality in and of itself does not exist, except in the minds of the emotionally ill or the immature, for man needs more than pure carnality in order to rise above sheer animalism. He needs affection, love and understanding, and when he is in need of emotional help or psychiatric aid, there ought to be some way to provide that help-notwithstanding the fact that there ought to be a way of recognizing when an individual needs such help, before it is too late.
It is hoped that the reader will reflect on the moral of the author's story rather than the protagonist's escapades, for the reader who does, will most certainly find that the author had something to say, and said it.
Curtis L. Roche, Ph.D.
My name is Harvey Crawford of London, artist, forger, rapist, murderer. I am also a bit of dipso and maybe if I'd had one whisky fewer that day I wouldn't have had some of these tags after my name. But maybe I would. Because I've spent the major portion of my life looking for sex and going to any lengths to get it. Not that a regular accompaniment of the act to my life has been the object of my search because I've never had any difficulty in finding women all too ready to flop into bed. But, invariably familiarity has eventually bred in me an indifference to and sometimes an actual distaste for the woman of the moment.
An old bachelor friend of mine used to say you could get nothing from a woman that you couldn't get from a prostitute, and that would seem to be the best attitude. For, no matter what the initial delusion of attraction, these things always end in recognition of lust as their aim.
But, impelled by some great feeling of lack, I've gone on looking through woman after woman as if somewhere, in one of them, I'd find the lost part of me I needed to be a whole man.
Unsatisfied, however, I've come to the end of my search and, perhaps in a couple of hours I'll find the peace of mind I've been seeking and come to the end of my search-if only in oblivion.
But to get back to that fateful day on which things might have turned out differently, if onl
y....
It was a hot day. The heat haze on the horizon of the grass-verged country road made a brain-muzzing complement to the quivering heat of the whisky in my body as the car cruised, self-driven, it seemed, at a lazy 45.
Still, blinding yellow fields languishing around my solitary movement, cows drooping and flicking in the warm shade of trees, cyclists sweating and collapsing to the verges. Everything being burned and beaten by the sun.
Unconsciously I was giving way to a drowsy torpor when I became aware of the dash of red animating in the haze ahead. Forcing my eyes into exact focus, I saw growing nearer into my vision the red headscarf of a girl walking on the edge of the road ... into focus the lithe-moving slimness ... white blob becoming white blouse, tight white cotton skirt ... the sun shining transparently through the summer flimsiness revealing neat ridges of briefs underneath, the pertly pressing buttocks, their roundness, protrusion, made clean with the skirt creasing around them as she walked ... the slim, brown legs. I felt the chill spin in my loins and with the whisky inside me would have stopped anyway, but as I drove towards her, the girl changed her rucksack from one shoulder to the other and looking back raised her thumb. A hitchhiker.
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