Casually, Corgie pointed his rifle at Gray. Through their interchange he played with the gun distractedly, as people will toy with an object on a coffee table in a conversation that is sometimes awkward.
Gray nodded at his tattered khaki. “So you deserted.”
“I got lost.”
“And you still haven’t found your way home? You must not have tried very hard.”
“I tried clicking my heels together three times,” he said congenially. “It didn’t work.” Corgie turned and said something in Il-Ororen to one of the natives. The man shrank back and shook his head. Corgie repeated himself in a steelier tone; it was a voice that made all present, even Gray, take a breath. The native approached Gray and frisked her sides with a gingerly touch. “Raise your hands over your head, would you?”
Gray did not. “I’m unarmed.”
“If that’s true, then you’re very foolish. But it’s not necessarily true. White people aren’t to be trusted.”
“I’ve found that people’s generalizations are largely illuminating about themselves.”
“So what kind of generalizations do you make?”
“I’m more inclined to see people as judicious and reasonable. Unless presented with evidence to the contrary.” She raised her eyebrows at Corgie. “Which I sometimes am.”
“Some woman who can see the human race as judicious and reasonable in light of World War II.”
“What concerns me about World War II is that barbarity on such a scale seems to make smaller, everyday barbarity petty and unimportant. Actually, it’s just as important. It’s the same thing.”
“You wouldn’t be making any accusations, would you? Being our guest?”
“Oh no,” said Gray mildly. “We’re just being philosophical, aren’t we, Mr. Corgie?”
“Lieutenant. But I’m sure I would have remembered meeting such a lovely woman. I could swear we haven’t been introduced.”
“Funny. I feel as if I know you incredibly well.”
“Pretty and telepathic, too! Do you have any other special powers? They could come in useful here.”
“Certainly. I can receive disembodied transmissions, produce mirages, steal voices. All that old stuff. I’m sure you’ve covered it. But I did bring one thing you could probably use.”
“Decent tobacco.”
“Moral sensibility.”
“You remind me of aunts at Christmas who gave me socks.”
Gray nodded at his threadbare clothing. “It looks as if you could use those, too.”
Suddenly Corgie said with a smile, “Osinga!”
“Lieutenant, you of all people should have enough respect for magic not to spoil the trick.”
“I respect tricks on other people. My tricks.”
“Well, your tricks made quite an impression on the boy. He thinks quite a lot of you.”
“I bet he does. I made a bigger impression on his brothers.”
“About an inch wide and several inches deep. A cheap way to impress people.”
“It works.”
“It’s not very elegant.”
“You have far too many opinions.”
Gray stopped and looked at him. “Yes.” That’s all she said. It was an awkward moment. It is always awkward when people have nothing else to add or refute; when they agree.
“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Corgie abruptly.
“I’m an anthropologist. I came to study these people.”
“By yourself?”
Gray looked at the mouth of Corgie’s gun. It would be wise to create troops in the rear. “Yes,” said Gray defiantly.
“And who knows you’re here?”
“A few Masai.”
Corgie smiled. “You didn’t have to admit that. Though even alone you do present something of a problem.”
“How?”
“They think I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past or something. Jesus. Gary Cooper. One of a kind, anyway. Like Zeus. Now we are two.”
“Even godheads come in two sexes. You’re not up on your mythology.”
“But of course Little Miss Anthropologist is. It is Miss?”
It would be wise to be Mrs. Anthropologist. “Yes, Miss,” said Gray.
They glared in silence.
“Well, what are you going to do with me?” asked Gray.
Corgie stroked the stubble on his chin. “Charlie has to think about it.”
“Charlie had better,” said Gray. “If you shoot me they might figure out that thing would work on you. Rather blows the immortality business all to pieces.”
Corgie’s eyes sharpened.
“And if you keep me prisoner,” she went on reasonably, “they might decide you couldn’t walk through walls yourself. You see,” she explained cheerfully, “I could be of some use to you. In anthropology I’ve learned a few things, Lieutenant. For instance, that human savvy runs across cultures. If my hallowed white flesh will bleed, won’t yours?”
Corgie looked at her steadily. “You get yourself into a fix, you think you can just weasel your way out of it, don’t you?”
“Charles. Wouldn’t you do the same thing?”
“I did. Already.”
“By deserting your brigade?”
Corgie worked his jaw back and forth. “Miss—?”
“Kaiser.”
“Miss Kaiser. I left one war and walked right into another. In this one I’m president to private, the whole shebang. I’ve maintained my borders for five years now. I think that makes me quite the little soldier, with no R&R. ‘On the seventh day he rested’ is crap. Gods don’t get a day off, ever.”
“It must be exhausting, creating animals, deciding on the weather. Doling out floods and locusts—”
“It is exhausting. You’ll see.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a deity. Maybe I’m happier as an anthropologist.”
“You’ll be a god, all right. I may not be able to use this rifle on you, but I gave earlier exhibitions. My parishioners remember them. If they get the idea that Charlie has been, ah, misrepresenting his authority, then Charlie and even his cute little girlfriend might not stay too healthy. Are you getting the picture?”
Gray nodded. “Mutual ransom.”
Corgie toured her around his buildings, explaining that he’d been an architect before the war. Each was blond, precise, and remarkable. In his cabin he showed her their scale models made from chips of wood and strips of bark. A child would have loved them, with the bits of furniture and rope swings and knitted hammocks. Dark figures in black clay strode across the plans, though in each scene there was one figure of a siltier soil, a paler concoction; it stood taller and straighter than the rest, and wore a hat.
In the first of these models, of this cabin, the figure in white mud was isolated from the black ones, but there were tiny manyattas on either side with whole families having meals and couples trysting in corners. In the second, though—of Corgie’s gymnasium—there were fewer natives, and some of these were smashed or dismembered. There were no families or couples. The blacks still standing walked starkly and singly across the ground like Giacometti bronzes. In the third model, of Corgie’s “cathedral,” there were no more dark figures at all, only the white one; his clay was of a dimmer cast and had no head and face, only a hat. The architecture in this model was more beautiful and refined than ever, but the little white man in the middle of it looked squat; his limbs had shortened, his pose caved in. In the fourth and final model, of the tower, there were no figures at all, not even a white one. There was only a building. The progression of the projects themselves had gone from the lyrical or even quaint—a quality this cabin retained, with its small details and attention to comfort—to harsher angles and harder edges, until this last project was jagged to the point of cruelty and inventive to the point of desperation.
Returning to the unfortunate black clay splayed in the dirt of the gymnasium, Gray asked, “Do you consider yourself at all—disturbed?”
“No,�
�� said Corgie, not seeming to take offense. “Mostly bored. That was a bad time,” he admitted, gesturing to the gym. “They didn’t understand what I was doing. The equipment. The courts. Sports aren’t big here. I think they found it intriguing in a useless, mystical sort of way, but the crops were bad that year, which was hard on the old religion. I kept telling them they didn’t get rain because they weren’t cooperating.”
“You sound as if you believe that yourself.”
“Maybe I do.” Corgie shot her a quick, mysterious smile. “Anyway, I’d come back here at night after haggling with shoddy labor all day, and I’d smash one of those little clay men with my thumb: squash. Sometimes I’d do that instead of shooting one of them. I thought it was nicer. Don’t you approve?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Charles smiled and added wryly, “Of course, it’s just shy of voodoo. I’ve been here too long.” He looked fondly down at the scene, wiping some dust off the gymnasium roof. “I always liked miniatures, even as a kid. I liked balsa airplanes and Erector sets. I had a terrific model train, with lights inside the caboose—”
“I bet you spent whole afternoons wrecking it to pieces.”
“How did you guess? And I liked to put little signalmen on the tracks and run them over.”
“I suppose the nice thing about miniatures is that they make you feel so big.”
Charles turned to Gray and looked at her hard. “Have you always been like this?”
“Like what?”
“Running a fellow down all the time. Why don’t you give a guy a break?”
“It doesn’t seem to me that you need a break.”
“Why the hell not? Who the hell doesn’t?”
“Any man with a thousand loyal fans outside his door.”
Charles waved his hand in dismissal. “Yeah. A thousand of my closest friends.” He tapped the arm of his chair and stared at his models. “You know, I’ll tell you,” he began. “The funny thing is—” He stopped. He closed his mouth abruptly.
“What.”
Charles sat.
“What is the funny thing?”
Charles licked his lips, and went on reluctantly. “When that feeling…the way you feel around these models. The little houses. The little people. The way you look down on them. Put them places. When—”
“What?”
“When you walk outside to the regular-size place? And it’s no different. That’s what funny. When you’re around life-size shit and it all still feels like—toys.” Charles couldn’t look Gray in the eye. “Animals seem stuffed. People seem like dolls. My own house looks like the station in my train set. With spikes around it. Like Popsicle sticks.” Charles cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, looking up at Gray with an indefinite smile, as if maybe he was pulling her leg. He laughed an unsettling little laugh. “You are here, aren’t you? Say something.”
“Something,” said Gray dully.
“An old kid’s joke. Not very helpful. You’re supposed to say something that makes me feel normal-sized. In the big village. With the actual people.”
“Isn’t that the trouble? That you’re not sure they’re actual people?”
Charles stood up. “I don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.” Charles rang a homemade bell; its clacker scrabbled in the tin. A native appeared below, by the stilts of the cabin. Charles ordered dinner—with one more look at Gray to make sure she was still there—for two.
At the end of the meal, roasted game with mangoes and banana, Charles rang his dented tin bell and the native climbed up to his doorway to take the plates away. Once the servant had climbed back down, Charles pulled the ladder up and set it against the outside wall. Charles invited Gray to his veranda, which looked out on the cliffs. He lit an oil lantern on the porch. Gray climbed into a hammock and stared up; the stars were brighter and more numerous than she’d ever seen. She felt peculiarly content. When she glanced down, Gray noticed that the sides of the porch were covered with long, sharpened wooden spikes. Charles explained, “They help me sleep nights.”
Corgie himself leaned back in a broad cane armchair, and they both sipped honey wine. Smoke rose from the manyattas on either side, and the lantern, which burned animal fat, gave off a meaty smell, like a barbecue. The hoot of night birds echoed between the cliffs. Gray relaxed into the netting of her hammock; it creaked gently when she moved. The wine was sweet and potent. The flame flickered beside Charles Corgie and lit his profile as he stared off into the black bush. He breathed deeply and held the wine in his mouth a long time before swallowing. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
“What’s your name?” he asked at last. “Your first name.”
“Gray.”
“Soft, for you.”
“It strikes most people as dour.”
“No, soft. Gentle.”
“That’s surprising?”
Charles reached over and rapped against her outstretched leg with his knuckles. “Hear that? Bong, bong, bong. That’s what it’s like when you knock against the side of a tank.” He went back to staring out into the forest. Gray stared, too. The foliage pulsed as her eyes fought to focus, to pick up any object however slight. The trees bloomed on the edges in explosions of black. There’s nothing like African darkness. It eats your eyes.
“Are you insulting me?” asked Gray.
“I’m not sure.”
Gray decided to change the subject. “I can’t believe you haven’t asked me about the war. Don’t you care what happened?”
“Kaiser—I left.”
“It’s over.”
“You don’t say. Who won?”
“I don’t know if you’ll be disappointed or not. Whose side were you on?”
Charles considered, leaning farther back in his chair and setting his boots up on the railing. “Adolf isn’t my style. I don’t like the way he moves, know what I mean? The guy’s too excitable.”
“And maybe you didn’t like like the way his uniform was tailored.”
“Actually,” said Charles, looking over at her with his black eyes gleaming quietly under the looming ridge of his brow, “the tie—with the shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck—I prefer a dictator with an open collar.”
“Clearly,” said Gray. Charles’s own shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, where the hair was thick and black like his eyes, and gleamed just as defiantly in the lantern light, with drops of honey wine.
“You did use the past tense,” Charles observed.
“Adolf isn’t that excitable anymore.”
“And Benito? Hirohito?” Gray shook her head. Charles shrugged. “Just as well. Me, I’m a Napoleon man.”
“Why’s that?”
“Those losers wouldn’t know what to do with a joint once they’d got hold of it. Bonaparte had plans. I liked his projects. But that slouch Speer built some nasty, hulking places. What a no-talent. Everything he put together looked like a goddamned morgue.”
Charles pulled out a packet and rolled himself a cigarette in a leaf, quickly and expertly into a long, tight spleef. “Tobacco ran out first week,” he explained. “But I found a weed—sweet, but with an edge to it. Wasn’t common, though, so I’ve got the flock growing some over there. Doing pretty well, too. They dry it and crush it and wrap it up in packets. I miss my tins of Prince Albert, but what can you do?” Charles lit up with the lamp, then exhaled in a long, slow whistle. “The laymen aren’t supposed to smoke any, but they do. I’ll let them get away with it, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Catch one occasionally and make an example. See, they think this stuff gives them knowledge. Actually, it doesn’t even get you doped up.” Charles took another hit. “Besides,” he said with a smile, “it suits me if they keep looking for knowing with smoke.”
“So you have them growing weeds instead of crops they could eat.”
Charles rolled his eyes. “Let’s not talk about agriculture. I like you better as the voice of the free world than as an anthropologist.
So,” said Charles, leaning back with an imperial air, “did Franklin D. string our boy Adolf from the top of the Washington Monument?”
“Roosevelt is dead. Hitler killed himself. —This is like Reader’s Digest Condensed World Wars,” said Gray with frustration.
“Go on.”
Gray decided to save the atomic bomb for later.
Then she realized she could leave it out altogether if she felt like it. She could even have told Charles that Hitler now ruled Eurasia, the United States, and South America, and then this would be the truth in Toroto. It was a curious little moment of power.
“A number of Nazis are on trial right now in Nuremberg for war crimes,” she continued, thinking it was a little late in the day for inventing a whole new ending to an awfully big story.
“On trial?”
“Why not?”
“Seems pretty feeble is all. Why not shoot the guys and be done with it?”
“Out of respect for legal process. To reinstitute order.”
“Come on. Laws are just to give you an excuse for shooting somebody when you were going to shoot them anyway.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Gray.
“Nope. I know about laws. I make them.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about?”
“Not that I know about.” He added, “Except. I don’t know about you.”
Whenever he turned the conversation to her, Gray got inexplicably nervous. They sat in silence again.
“Hitler—” she ventured.
“Hmm?”
“He killed six million Jews.”
Charles looked up. “No shit,” he said noncommittally.
“Not in battles. In factories.”
“Huh,” said Charles.
Gray watched his face. “What do you think of that project?”
“Well,” said Charles, snuffing out his cigarette on the arm of his chair. “Seems like a real—waste of time, anyway.” He shot Gray a shrug.
Gray looked back at him in stony silence until she couldn’t take it anymore and started to laugh.
“I missed the joke,” said Charles.
“You are the joke! You’ve been trying to impress me, haven’t you?”
The Female of the Species Page 4
