The Female of the Species

by Lionel Shriver

  “’L-oo-lubo,” said Hassatti affectionately, raising her chin back up with his forefinger. “The eyes of the impala have spent their bullets, yez? So tall? So strong? So—brilliant, yez?” He rolled the r in “brilliant” with relish. “Ol-changito has changed a small bit? Ol-murani?”

  “Not so much—ol-murani,” Gray faltered.

  “Ah.” Hassatti nodded, and Errol could see that, though the man might not have seen Gray Kaiser for nearly thirty-eight years, he came to her with the warmth of a great friend, and would do her any favor in his power. “Perhaps—e-ngoroyoni?”

  “E-ngoroyoni na-nana,” said Gray with a sigh. Errol knew Masai, and knew Gray, and so understood her concession was a great one. She’d admitted to being a woman. Na-nana, a gentle one. “And maybe,” she added, “wise.”

  “You like?”

  “Wisdom—this kind.” She was having difficulty. “It must be necessary. But I don’t think it’s the sort of thing one likes.”

  She smiled weakly, and Hassatti helped her out of the auditorium. She rested a hand on his shoulder and he kept a hand lightly at her back, as if she were an old woman whose strength was failing and whose balance was poor. Errol walked after her, and had to admit that she was very nearly hobbling out the door. Time was going fast now. Errol, Raphael, and Gray were aging, tangibly, by the day.

  24

  The next week Errol was awakened in the middle of the night by a loud cry from down the hall. He sat up in bed. Errol was reminded of nights on the veldt, when he would come out of a deep sleep to hear a lion far away, or the shriek of a wildebeest the lion had discovered.

  As he woke, though, Errol had to revise this impression. That was not the sound of an animal, if there were distinctions to be made between animals and men. Coming from down the hall was a quintessentially human sound, and it was powerful enough to fill Errol’s bedroom even with the door closed. Errol rose and put on his robe, and stepped tentatively out of his room. There the sound was louder, and echoed down the staircase to well in the foyer. Errol tiptoed down the hall. It was coming from Gray’s bedroom, yet her voice, deep as it was for a woman’s, loud as he’d heard it when she shouted over a crowd or across a plain, was not that deep or quite that forceful. Errol heard that night the unmistakable suffering of his same sex.

  As Errol approached the door to her room, the sound grew louder and more terrible. He imagined at first that Raphael was having a nightmare, but the body didn’t sleep and exert itself so.

  Something had happened to Gray. Errol remembered her uneven heartbeat when the phone rang, her pasty complexion when she passed out lifting weights, and put his hand on the doorknob. He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong. Just as he was about to shout and force his way in, though, he detected the steady, rhythmic creak of Gray’s old box spring. He closed his mouth and took his hand off the doorknob and went back to bed. After a time the cries peaked and subsided. Though he was relieved not to have barged in, after all, Errol knew he would never forget that sound, the open-throated anguish raking through the halls of that house, nor would he ever look at Raphael after that night in quite the same way again, knowing, incredibly, that this was the man who had made it.

  25

  The following morning Errol got up at six, for he wasn’t sleeping well. No one, it seemed, was sleeping well that night, for as he walked toward the stairs he noticed the hall light was on and Gray’s door was open. Intending to glance in and keep going, instead Errol paused.

  Raphael was lying on his stomach, with one arm dangling over the side of the bed. Somnambulant as Raphael so often seemed during the waking day, Errol had rarely seen him asleep. Certain edges of his face were rounded; as a result, he looked not only gentler, but sad—sad in a large, exhausted, world-weary way. His hair lay wild on the pillow, splayed and tangled as if during the night he’d run a great distance. The blankets were drawn up only to his lower back, so with his other hand over his head the muscles along his spine were drawn into soft, velvety ripples.

  Gray stood beside him in her dressing gown. She was being very quiet. Only a series of tiny clicks came from the open door. She would take a step away, a step toward, a step to the side. Each time she put her foot down gradually, to keep the wooden floor from creaking. When she moved in only a foot from his face, the soft shuttering sound was close enough to his ear to make him stir. Gray started guiltily and quickly focused one more time before hiding her camera back in its drawer and slipping back to bed.

  Errol was out all that day. When he returned to the manse that evening, all the lights were out on the first floor. In a pensive mood, Errol enjoyed the dark, and walked softly into the den to stare out his usual window. There was no moon or walkside lamp tonight, only shadow and deeper shadow. The wind whistled through the bare trees on the lawn. There was a heaviness in this house now such as there had never been. Gray was keeping the heat up extraordinarily high; the air was thick and sooty, exhausting to take in, difficult to expel. Errol sighed a couple of times and tried to empty his lungs completely of the black air, but he felt its tarry residue remain. He said out loud, “God, when is this going to be over?”

  “Soon.”

  Errol jumped. He turned to find a shape at his elbow, in an adjacent chair. There was a small red light floating over the shape. It glowed brighter, then died. The smoke in the air got thicker.

  “Ralph?” asked Errol tentatively.

  “That’s right,” said the voice. “This is Ralph. Good old Ralph.”

  “Since when do you smoke?”

  “Since about an hour ago.”

  “And what moved you to cigarettes?”

  “I just felt like it. Funny. I’ve never felt like smoking before. Isn’t life just jam-packed with new and exciting experiences.”

  “Gray won’t like it.”

  “Gray K. won’t like a lot of things. What’s one more?”

  Raphael took another hit, and the glow of the cigarette reflected oddly around his eyes.

  “Ralph, are you wearing dark glasses?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s nine o’clock at night, Ralph.”

  “Sometimes,” said Raphael, “it doesn’t get dark enough for me. Like now. Even with these glasses. It’s too light out. Some kids were afraid of the dark. I liked it. I used to climb into closets. The line of light under the door drove me insane. I’d stuff a towel in the crack. But there was always light from somewhere. I hardly ever got myself real dark. But I tried. It gets tiring, McEchern, looking at shit all the time.”

  “Looking isn’t what tires me,” said Errol. “It’s thinking. And talking. Between the two of them, whole days become one incessant yammer. I don’t care so much about dark. But I’m big on quiet.”

  “I’ve disturbed your quiet, then.”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t matter. My head won’t shut up. It’s been clamoring all night.”

  “You think in words, McEchern?”

  “I suppose. Mostly.”

  Raphael took another drag and blew the smoke out slowly. “I don’t so much. I look out this window: nothing. Too much light. But no words. I just look. If I could stop seeing I could become a complete cipher.”

  “Even blind I don’t think you’d make a very good nonentity, Ralph.”

  “That’s a compliment?”

  “Almost.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. I’d make a great one. I go blank sometimes. Like on those medical shows when the patient’s on the operating table and there’s a blip blip blip sound. And suddenly the EKG goes flat. There’s a solid straight line on the machine. No more blips. Just a hum. I can get like that. The doctors on the program go crazy, but I always look at the guy on the table. He doesn’t seem to have any problem with it at all.”

  “So you like it?”

  “I don’t like it; I don’t dislike it. When you’re blank you don’t like or dislike anything. In that way, sure, it’s nice.”

  “Are you blank now?”

&nb
sp; “No. This place isn’t good for blankness. Too many words, for one. That’s why I asked you that, about thinking. Since I’ve come here I think more in words than I used to.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “Nothing bothers me, McEchern. It’s just a change, that’s all.”

  “If you’re not blank,” said Errol cautiously, “what have you been sitting here thinking about?”

  “Darkness. And some practical matters.”

  “Such as.”

  “Tomorrow her recommendations for that Ford Fellowship are due. She’s filling out the forms tonight.”

  “Are you worried that because the grant would send you to the Pacific she’ll withhold your name?”

  “No. She’s threatened to go with me.”

  “Uh-huh.” This was news to Errol. “Do you have any other reason to think she wouldn’t select you?”

  “Oh no. She’ll select me.”

  “So what’s there to think about?”

  “I’m just thinking,” said Raphael with an edge. “Do I have to think something about it?”

  “So what else,” asked Errol, after a pause, “have you been thinking?”

  “Let’s see. My mother. I was thinking about trying to find my mother.”

  “Are you going to do that?”

  “No.”

  “Would she be hard to locate?”

  “Not at all.”

  “So why not find her?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “I thought you were thinking about it.”

  “I was. What I was thinking was that I didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t care.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Then don’t strain yourself, McEchern.”

  “—You’re going through that whole pack.”

  “That’s right.”

  Raphael sat and smoked. Errol stared out the window for two or three minutes, until just as he was about to make a casual exit Raphael said, “You’re not going to ask me anything more?”

  “What else should I ask you?”

  “About what I was thinking. Ask me what else.”

  “What else were you thinking, Ralph?” asked Errol obediently.

  “I was thinking,” said Raphael, “about you. And about her. About my mother and father and Ida and Walter. About a lot of women you don’t know. I was thinking about me, even. I was thinking about practically everyone I’ve ever met, McEchern—it’s been one of those evenings.”

  “Did you think anything in particular about these people, or did your mind simply get crowded?”

  “I was wondering,” said Raphael, “why nothing works out.”

  “Nothing works out?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You mean between men and women?”

  “Between anyone and anyone. But that, too.”

  “And what did you conclude?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, let me know what you decide,” said Errol. “I’m curious myself.”

  “I won’t decide anything,” said Raphael. “I don’t like to think like this. I won’t soon.”

  “Back to blankness?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, good luck, Ralph.”

  “You, too, McEchern.”

  Errol had the strangest feeling of saying goodbye in some large way, though no doubt they would see each other later that night. Still, when Errol began to walk out of the room Raphael called after him, “McEchern!” and Errol turned around as if to receive a final blessing or parting advice. They stood facing each other in the dark for a moment or two, Errol waiting, Raphael silent, until finally Raphael seemed to think better of it and said, “Nothing,” a word which had come out of his mouth in the last two minutes with curious frequency.

  Errol went upstairs to Gray’s office and found her surrounded by fellowship applications. She’d done a number of interviews that fall, narrowing the stack down to fifty, but there were only five awards to give out. She’d started four stacks: yes, no, maybe, and Raphael.

  “Looks as if you’re going to be up late,” said Errol.

  “Arabella agreed to stay and type up my final recommendations in case you’re worried this will land on you.”

  “Still pulling all-nighters like a freshman in college.”

  “Irresponsibility keeps me young.”

  Errol wandered over and picked Raphael’s application off her desk. “Well.”

  She shook her head and spread her hands.

  “You really haven’t decided?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “It amuses me you even ask.”

  “You’re short on amusement lately. You’re due.”

  “You’re going to let me lambaste him. As a favor.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Errol felt a peculiar reluctance, and stalled, flapping the pages in his hand. “I’ve seen better,” he said weakly.

  “I’ve seen much better.”

  “This project any good?”

  “Depends on the execution.”

  “How would he execute it?”

  “With me, splendidly. Alone, maybe he’d take the check and no one would ever see him again. Who knows.”

  “A really solid investment.”

  She shrugged. “He has great capacity. He won’t necessarily choose to use it.”

  “But all in all, how does he stack up against the other applicants?”

  “How does anyone stack up against anyone else?” said Gray with exasperation. “A whole array of these people aren’t better or worse, just different. Maybe Raphael’s is the one recommendation I can make with any confidence at all.”

  “Professional confidence?”

  “Professionalism is a myth. If we aren’t paying back favors, we’re at least rewarding people we like.”

  “A convenient theory tonight.” Errol fingered the application in his hand. “But people know about your liaison by now, Gray. For your own sake—”

  “I’m Gray Kaiser. I can get away with whatever I like. They’ll give the money to whomever I say—to my lover, my nephew, my dog. So I’m asking what you think I should do.”

  Errol opened his mouth. Nothing came out. All the acid invective he’d been storing for months seemed to have been oddly neutralized. All he could see was Ralph standing before Ida in Cleveland Cottons with his finger between his eyes; boarding up those windows and prying them open again; setting those glasses gently on the table, on the sill, even if he’d later thrown them twice against masonry.

  “Do what you want,” said Errol. “This has nothing to do with anthropology.”

  Gray got up and roamed around the room. “I have an idea—we could go to that island and work together. Do interviews, take pictures, film a documentary. On our off hours shoot takes of each other, swim. Stay lean and tan and salty, with sand in our scalps. Eat fruit. Learn local dances. Run down long beaches at the foam line…At night we could build fires and roast meat on a spit and say absolutely nothing, which always makes him happy. Maybe we’d send in the film, and then I’d take off, Errol. I’d quit for a while. A whole year, maybe, and see no one from Boston. I’d write a book about what it’s like to be a regular person—just to eat and sleep and run and make love and think tiny little thoughts, about dinner and tides and seedpods. I’d like to play games with children. I’d like to read nothing but fairy tales and science fiction. I’d like to talk about strong winds and the price of papayas; to use clichés and say things like ‘That boy favors his father.’ I wouldn’t really mind getting old. I’d sit on porches. I could take up weaving baskets or dyeing rugs. Oh, Errol!” She turned to him with her eyes shining. “I’d live a long time. I’d support him if he wanted, travel wherever he wanted to go, just as long as I could watch him walk off down the beach and smile and catch the sun in his teeth. I’m sorry, I know this sounds weak, but I’d give anything, lose any game, just to watch him
fall asleep in the sand every day, with water beading on his chest and the hair curling as it dries…”

  “You don’t want to go to Ghana, do you?” asked Errol heavily. “With me. And do what we’ve always done.”

  “I don’t want squalor! I don’t want conflict and hatred and divisiveness. I just want to be around healthy, vibrant people, and not as their observer, either. I think I could give up anthropology altogether. Because I’ve missed out, Errol. I’ve watched the way people love and have families and resolve differences, and it’s time I did it myself and stopped taking notes. Only now, Errol, am I ready to live my life. I’m tired of being strong. If someone says something mean to me, I want to weep. And I don’t want power unless I can use it to help people I care about.”

  “So go ahead,” said Errol sadly. “Give him the money. Then you can comb beaches and give the Goji a vocabulary lesson. I can be a carpenter with a checked tablecloth and read tabloids. And Ralph—Ralph can watch medical shows on TV and go blank.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. It’s just odd to me that while Ralph’s the one applying for the island paradise fellowship, he’s downstairs in sunglasses in a dark room and you’re the one up here raving about sea foam and sand dollars, you know? It’s just odd.”

  “What are you getting at? Doesn’t he want to go?”

  “I don’t know what he wants.”

  “What did he tell you?” she asked urgently.

  “Just that nothing ‘works out.’ He seemed distressed about it.”

  “He’s nervous about this fellowship,” she said, rubbing her hands. “I haven’t told him what I’ll do.”

  Something hissed in the corner.

  “That ferret hates me,” said Errol.

  “Lately Solo hates everybody,” said Gray. She stooped down and called for the animal as it huddled under a chair. It scrabbled. She reached for it and pulled it out; the ferret squirmed. There was a look in its eyes that Errol had never seen before—like the wide, reflective glare of Raphael’s sunglasses. “Ow!” She dropped him and held her hand. “He bit me, Errol. Solo hasn’t done that since I first got him.”