The Female of the Species

by Lionel Shriver

  “So what happened?”

  “I will give Il-Ororen this much: the gun is a startling thing, and even the sharp arrows are not much good against it, and the man Corgie made this clear with great swiftness.”

  “How many people did he shoot?”

  “We do not know. Yet this Corgie is of interest, Msabu, for in my studies the white man does plenty of foolish things, and Hassatti is amazed that the Corgie could fly into the crevice and set up a kingdom as a god and not soon disappoint his disciples, even if they were only Puddle people.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Gray, beginning to get excited, for if Hassatti was telling the truth—that there was a tribe out there that had never been in contact with Western civilization before—then he was talking about an anthropological gold mine. The discovery of the peoples of New Guinea in the twenties had made several careers, and that was supposed to be the last frontier…Gray was on the edge of her chair. “This man Corgie stayed? Didn’t go back and tell anyone?”

  “No, he still reigns there. He shoots those who disobey. Hassatti has no respect for such a tribe, superstitious and easily trapped, but they were once Masai and now they are servants to this ungentle visitor, so Hassatti has come to his old friend Richasan so that the Corgie may be flushed out of the crevice and brought to justice.”

  “How did you hear about Corgie?”

  “There was a boy of the Puddle who had two brothers. They had been playing on a sacred square of dirt and made the Corgie angry. I know this seems ridiculous to you and me, but this boy spoke of some area of their compound that was worshipped and made perfectly flat, marked with mysterious lines he believed to be about the stars. His brothers disrupted the surface of this square and were killed; the boy, too, had been party to the gouging of the sacred flatness, and fled the village, climbed the cliffs, forded rivers, and finally wandered into my own kraal. It took him much time to talk at all, for he was frightened of the Masai, as he was of this Corgie—he supposed the Puddle to be all the world’s people. I did not blame him, either, for fearing the Masai. We are a great and strong people raised on meat and blood, and he was weak and scratched dirt and ate ants. He huddled in the corner of my hut for some days and would not speak, and no one of us could say where he was from. He was stunted, and had none of the earrings, markings, or clothing of my people. Though old enough, he was not circumcised. He would not eat the meat or milk we put before him, but when our backs were turned he would tear the insects from the ground and the roots from the trees.

  “We thought he was a savage, but when he spoke at last he did not speak Swahili or Kikuyu, but a garbled tongue with words we recognized. With these and pictures, we pieced together his story. We might not have believed it but for the occasional rumor we Masai ourselves sometimes heard of a warrior who got lost in the far bush and returned telling tales of a gnomish clan in the wrinkles of the mountains who offered him no meat and no milk and no wife to share, but shut him out of their compound. And when this boy first saw white people in our midst, he screeched like a flamingo and hid in my hut. To this day I do not believe I have convinced him that your people are not gods. Forgive, Msabu, but the fallibility of your people seems so self-evident to me that I have to conclude the boy is a complete dwarf in the head.”

  “Why have you come to Richardson? Why didn’t you go after Corgie yourselves?”

  “Would that we could, Msabu. It pains Hassatti, but for the Masai to take action against a white man is dangerous. It is best for a tribe to discipline its own.”

  Gray nodded. Richardson would be salivating if he were here. He’d be on the phone already, chartering a plane to Nairobi.

  “Hassatti…” said Gray slowly, “you know how it is customary for boys to go out on the plains and slaughter a lion that’s been killing Masai cattle, and when he returns with the tail and paws he’s considered a man?”

  “Yez.”

  “Any man—or woman, Bwana—wants to pass such a test, Masai or not. I have yet to pass my test. I want to, desperately. Dr. Richardson has passed many. He is ol-moruo, an old man, now. Let me have Corgie, as you would send a young warrior to kill a beast when the elder has killed several.”

  Hassatti looked at her hard. “You? Go after Corgie?”

  Gray’s face flushed and her heart beat. “I am very tall,” she said simply, “and very strong and very brilliant.”

  Errol could see it, hear it; he liked to play this moment over in his mind: I am very tall and very strong and very brilliant. Her ears scarlet, her eyes that piercing blue-gray.

  Hassatti kept looking at her. “Perhaps—Richasan should decide.”

  “Dr. Richardson wouldn’t trust me, and he never will. He will never believe I’m that grown up, just as your father will never believe you’re a man.”

  “Ah.” Hassatti nodded and smiled. Gray was only twenty-two, but she already understood how much psychology crossed cultures. Fathers condescended the world over.

  “Richardson may never let me hunt my lion,” said Gray. “Will you?”

  Hassatti shook his head with incredulity, reached over, and touched her cheek. “Ol-changito,” he said. “’L-oo-lubo.”

  He had called her a wild animal; an impala, though translated literally “’l-oo-lubo” means “that which is not satisfied.”

  Gray replied, “Ol-murani.”

  Hassatti shook his head. “E-ngoroyoni.”

  “Ol-murani o-gol,” Gray reasserted.

  Hassatti shook his head again and smiled. “E-ngoroyoni na-nana.”

  There was a conflict of interpretations here. Gray claimed to be a warrior, as Errol knew she saw herself. “Ol-murani” was an old joke with her, though they both knew it was no joke, not really. Yet Hassatti had called her something else, and wouldn’t take it back.

  “You have,” said Hassatti, “a great deal to learn, ’l-oo-lubo. And as long as Msabu claims she is ol-murani o-gol and not e-ngoroyoni na-nana, she will not understand what even such a clever antelope must master.”

  “And what is that?”

  “To pour is to fill, Msabu. Ol-changito, to pour is to fill.”

  “I’ll remember that,” said Gray.

  “No, you will not,” he assured her. “This is to be understood, not remembered, fleet one. The words have already flown from your head like birds of different flocks to separate trees.

  “However,” said Hassatti. “Since ’l-oo-lubo is such a costly creature, and she will not accept the twelve cows, perhaps Msabu will accept from Hassatti: one lion.”

  Gray smiled. “And you won’t tell Richardson where I’ve gone?”

  “No more,” he said, “than I would show him the food in my mouth.” Hassatti then wrote the name of his tribe and where it was currently located; he drew her a map and gave her the name of his family. “Now you will bring me the paws and tail of Corgie when you return?”

  “You mean I should deliver the witch’s slippers?”

  “The Corgie wears slippers—?”

  “Never mind. I’ll bring you his gun, how’s that?”

  “Most of all for Hassatti ’l-oo-lubo must go out and become wise. Then come back and we will talk of becoming Hassatti’s wife.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be that wise,” said Gray.

  “Neither do I,” said Hassatti. “I tell you, Msabu, it will take you a long time, longer than most e-ngoroyoni. Know from Hassatti that this will cost you. It is like when a boy waits too long and becomes all grown before he is circumcised. There is much pain, and slow healing.”

  It was five in the morning. Hassatti said he would wait for his friend Richardson; Gray would find an airplane. They spoke in Masai.

  “Well, I am about to go,” said Gray.

  “Aiya naa, sere! Goodbye. Pray to God, accost only the things which are safe, and meet no one but blind people.”

  “Lie down,” said Gray, “with honey wine and milk.”

  “So be it.”

  Hassatti followed her
out the door to watch that long, sweeping stride of hers, listening to the clean click of her heels against the linoleum like the clop of small hooves. Gray never seemed to be walking fast, but she covered ground quickly, like a languorous, leggy animal across the plain. Strange she was not Masai. She had the bones of his own people. Hassatti could see her ranging into the bush, standing spear-straight to meet this ghostlike white man and his many guns. Though he had just arrived in this new country and had much to study, Hassatti almost went after her down the hall, for this was a scene he would have given much to see.

  Gray returned that morning to her apartment, having arranged her trip to Nairobi for the following day. She sat at her desk and composed three notes. First, to Richardson, she wrote: “On good advice I am off to become wise.—Gray Kaiser.”

  Second, she wrote the man she was dating. Most certainly he wanted to marry her, too. “Dear Dan,” she jotted. “I’ve been called out of town. May be gone for a long time. Don’t hold your breath. —G.”

  So you put a stamp on it, Gray, what was it, three cents then? That’s how much it cost you. What did it cost him, though? You didn’t even know. Set on the corner of your desk, it was one more of those easy dismissals of a man who adored you. Ever since she was fifteen, men had been proposing to her, and she’d learned early to whisk them away like so many flies. How many times had Errol himself watched her discard prostrate admirers? He’d enjoyed watching, yet it pained him a little. Errol truly believed she didn’t understand how they felt, and for an anthropologist that was a failing.

  The third letter she sent to her father, and it was the one note of consideration she struck all morning. Gray enclosed a copy of Hassatti’s map, just in case she didn’t return. Perhaps Gray feared as Errol did each time they returned to Kenya that ol-changito, let loose on those hard-packed plains, would lope across the white horizon to graze under acacia trees, to bolt between watering holes, to sniff the hard brilliant air and so give up on English and coffee and little efficient notes in the mail altogether.

  More likely she knew the situation she was walking into was dangerous. Even Gray now admitted that going on this expedition by herself had been pigheaded. But ol-murani was planning on shouldering her pack and her spear and her wooden club and launching off into the sunset to find her lion…Gray had seen too many Westerns, and you knew she identified, not with the simpering prairie wives, but with the sharpshooters.

  Gray took out her tent and began to reroll it to fit into its insanely small bag. So it was dangerous. So he had guns. Gray paused at the thought for one tiny, intelligent moment. She took a breath and kept on going. Fine. Here was a woman who had spent the better part of World War II thinking. Enough was enough. She was tired of having men tell stories about dragging their best friends for ten miles on their backs under fire, all the while Gray feeling abstracted and left out. It was time to begin a life in which actions could have consequences.

  Besides. Gray shot a look up at the mirror that hung on her door and caught her own face looking keenly back at her. You didn’t look at a face like that without staring for a second, even if it was yours. Not bad hair. Kind of strange the way that collarbone stood out, but interesting, too…No, he wouldn’t shoot her. Not right away, she was sure. Gray wrapped the straps around the tent summarily; it fit in the bag.

  Gray did own a handgun, and considered taking it. The gun had been a gift from an earlier suitor, the one he’d captured in the war. (It chilled Errol how often Gray was given weapons as presents, all over the world. As if she weren’t destructive enough already.) Yet finally Gray decided to leave the gun behind. To prepare for a military encounter was to create one. As many movies as she might have seen, Gray knew she would not succeed in her mission by hiding behind a boulder and picking off the troops. That hair and collarbone would surely prove more powerful weapons than her German Luger.

  Throwing the rest of her gear together through the day, Gray thought about the Great White Corgie. She already had a strong sense of the man. He was arrogant. Ruthless. Racist. Brave, she conceded. But cruel and condescending.

  And for some reason she decided he was handsome.

  3

  Hassatti’s mother also called Gray ’l-oo-lubo, taking her into the family like a stray from the plains—isolated from the herd, difficult, but a fine specimen, and tamable.

  The boy from the Land of Corgie, Osinga, was as terrified of Gray as Hassatti had predicted, but bent on his brothers’ revenge; after repeated reassurances, Osinga agreed to guide her to Toroto. Hiking out, however, he insisted on walking behind her, which made it awkward for Gray to follow him.

  Errol could easily imagine Gray on this trip. Many was the time he himself had hiked behind her while a voice screamed in his head, “Go ahead, Gray, say, ‘I am tired.’ Say, ‘My muscles are killing me, Errol.’” But Gray would keep going silently in front of him, until finally Errol would growl in irascible defeat about needing a break, and Gray would answer smoothly, never out of breath, “Oh, would you like to stop, Errol? Of course. Maybe I’ll do a few push-ups while you’re resting…”

  She was too goddamned much.

  Toward dusk, Osinga speared mongooses and brought them to Gray like sacramental offerings. She skinned and gutted them quickly and without queasiness, for Gray enjoyed butchery. Errol had watched her take animals apart before. She liked to study the muscles glistening underneath the skin of a fresh kill, and move the joints in their sockets to see how they worked. She never called small prey “cute,” and when the glazed eyes of a mongoose in her hands rolled up, her face never softened.

  Nights Gray slept fitfully, dreaming of Corgie. The dreams flipped from terror to pleasure and back again. Corgie would reach for her in her sleep, and she wouldn’t know if he meant to caress or strangle her until the moment his fingers wrapped around her neck.

  The bush got thicker and more hazardous as they advanced. Through thorn trees Osinga stared at Gray’s hands, surprised that they bled. Yet she didn’t cry out or complain when the thorns stuck far into her flesh, so he assumed she felt no pain. All her life people had made this mistake with Gray.

  When she stepped on a trail of fire ants and they swept up her legs, Osinga stood back and watched as she rapidly picked the insects off. At last she stamped angrily and shouted for him to help her, and he was surprised that these small animals could hurt such a thing. She seemed impregnable; she seemed that way to everyone.

  There came a moment when Osinga looked up at a particular mountain and went wild-eyed. He wouldn’t go any farther; he’d only point. Gray walked the last length alone.

  Once she’d climbed to the top ridge, Gray looked down into a deep valley with cliffs shooting steeply up on all sides and waterfalls sweeping down in white rushes. Finding only trees below, she worried whether this was the right place. Yet as she inched down the steep cliff toward the valley, grabbing scraggly trees and sometimes crawling on all fours, Gray could gradually discern one odd structure jutting from the foliage below, a strange, towerlike thing in blond wood. When she was nearly down, manyatta after manyatta also appeared among the trees. Aside from these traditionally constructed mud-and-dung compounds, Gray could now see three other blond-wooded buildings, large and angular and queer even by Western standards.

  The rest of her way to the village Gray walked slowly, with her head high, nose to the wind. Gone was the smell of curling pages. Smoke drifted from the huts, and colors flushed beside her. Gray Kaiser was alive and in Africa and something was happening at last. When she glided past the mud-packed walls, children fled before her; men and women swept into their compounds and posts cracked against the gates inside.

  As Gray drew into view of the blond tower, natives stopped carrying wood, froze mid-circle as they lashed joints on the tower with vine, left off mid-sentence as they called in their gnarled Masai. In the stillness, one figure kept jabbing angrily from the ground at a man on the third story. He was the last to turn to her, following the line of t
he native’s gaze as he might have tracked a fuse to dynamite.

  “What doesn’t belong in this picture?”

  “I don’t,” said Gray. “You don’t, either.”

  “You don’t feel a little the lost sheep?” he asked. “Astray.”

  It was a big comedown from antelope to sheep. “On the contrary,” said Gray, “I’ve found my way quite nicely. I have arrived.”

  “I was unaware we’d become a tourist attraction.”

  “Oh yes,” said Gray. “I’m here to help you set up a hot-dog concession. I thought you’d want to get in on the ground floor.”

  The man smiled a little, perhaps in spite of himself. Gray took the moment to assess him more closely. Errol had seen several brownish photographs of Charles Corgie. He always wore a wide hat with a sloppy brim. His coloring was dark, his bearing sultry. His eyes flickered as if long ago someone had done something terrible to him for which he had planned a perfect revenge; when it came due he would laugh without sympathy or regret. In a few of these snapshots he was smiling, like now, though always with both humor and disdain, as if the two of you could have a high old time if he would only let you in on the joke. Of course, he was not about to.