The Female of the Species. Lionel Shriver

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ