The Female of the Species. Lionel Shriver

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СКАЧАТЬ did not seem to hate Il-Corgie, and took Gray into their homes with deference but no anger. Corgie’s murder of their husband seemed to make sense to them. Unlike most of the Masai tribe, Il-Ororen had no problem with killing, as long as it worked to your advantage and you got away with it. The wives clearly admired Corgie for felling such an imposing man as their husband, and spoke of the scene of his death not with grief but with awe.

      The sons, however, kept their distance. The oldest, Odinaye, regarded Gray with suspicion when she came to the hut. Even for a Masai he was tall and grave. His eyes smoldered before the fire while she built her vases. He would stare silently at Gray for hours through the smoky haze between them. Gray couldn’t shake the feeling that he was waiting for her to make a mistake. She would sometimes try to make conversation with Odinaye, but he never responded with anything but even keener scrutiny.

      Gray began to notice Odinaye in her vicinity too often. She would look down from the porch when she was eating lunch and find him staring up at her with steady, unblinking accusation. She would lose her appetite, and go inside.

      With Odinaye so often a few paces away, Gray found it increasingly difficult to slip off into the bush alone to attend to her all too mortal toilet. When she and Corgie had their dry, cryptic tiffs in the middle of the compound, Gray would turn and find Odinaye watching from the sidelines. Gray found herself talking more softly; though they were using English, she had the eerie sensation of being overheard.

      “I’m being followed,” Gray finally told Charles. “By Odinaye. I dream about him now. He’s there every time I turn around.”

      “Maybe he’s in love,” said Charles.

      “This is serious.”

      “Isn’t everything serious lately?”

      “What should I do?”

      “Why come to me? You’ve got a problem. So take care of it.”

      It was an ordinary afternoon. Gray was struggling with a large water jug. She’d gotten the clay too wet; the sides were collapsing. Odinaye’s presence on the other side of the hut, crouching and staring as usual, was especially irritating. She couldn’t help suspecting—was it only the play of smoke between them?—that there was a wisp of a smile on his face today. She was sure he could see she was having trouble—well, any idiot could see that; the thing was falling apart.

      Gray decided to take advantage of her role as the leader of the avant-garde and cave in the sides intentionally. She composed her expression. When one side fell in again, she looked down at it archly and revised a dent here and there, as if that was exactly what the goddess of modern pottery had in mind. Imperiously, she told Odinaye to give her the wooden paddle beside him; she would bat in the other side, too.

      “Here it is,” said Odinaye, handing her the paddle readily.

      Gray accepted the paddle before she went white. Now that he was closer, his small grim smile was unmistakable.

      The daring of the avant-garde potter left Gray entirely. Awkwardly she used the paddle to bat the collapsed side back out again. Using props inside the jar, she secured the sides and quickly put it aside to dry out. When she dipped her hands in a pot of water to rinse off the clay, she noticed they were shaking. Not saying another word, she ducked out the doorway and went straight to Charles Corgie.

      “What’s going on?” asked Charles, leaning on his bed with a cigarette as Gray paced the room. “Why can’t you sit still?”

      “Would you stop worrying about the way I move for once and listen to me?” Gray whispered.

      “I’ll listen if you talk loudly enough for me to hear you—”

      “Shsh! Talk more quietly.”

      “WHY?” Charles boomed.

      “Shut up!”

      Charles rolled his eyes. “Shoot.”

      “I was working on a pot that wasn’t going very well—”

      “So your pot didn’t come out pretty and now you’re mad?”

      Gray looked at him; there must have been something in her face to make him sit up without quite the same sultry boredom and put out his cigarette.

      “Odinaye was there, naturally,” she went on in a low voice. “I said, ‘Hand me that paddle,’ and he picked it up and said, ‘Here it is.’”

      Charles waited. Gray didn’t go on. “And?”

      “That’s it.”

      “Some story,” said Charles.

      “Yes,” said Gray. “It is.”

      “I guess it’s one of those subtle narratives that depends on texture.”

      “Charles,” said Gray. “He said ‘Here it is’ in English.”

      Corgie sat up. “No.”

      “Yes.”

      Corgie stood and paced. “Well,” he reasoned, taking out another cigarette, “one phrase. Big deal.”

      “No, he knows at least two, Charles. I made a mistake. I asked for the paddle in English, too. And I didn’t point. He knew the word ‘paddle.’”

      “So? Here it is. Paddle. So?”

      “How do we know how many other words he’s picked up, Charles? What else has he heard?”

      Charles grunted. He smoked fast, as if his cigarette were hard work to get over with. “Damn it.” He paced some more. “Jesus, we’re gonna have to be careful.” He was speaking more softly now himself.

      Gray sighed. “He obviously figured out the language by watching us interact.”

      “When have we been doing that?”

      “We do still fight sometimes.”

      Charles sunk into a chair. “So—what? We’re going to talk even less than we’ve been doing? I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

      “Do you know any other languages? French, German, Latin?”

      “Nope. But you do, of course.”

      “That wouldn’t do any good if you don’t know them, too.”

      “Why not? We could have our own separate languages. You could walk around speaking German. I can definitely see it, Kaiser.”

      “Well, say. How’s your English vocabulary?”

      “Me? The poor uneducated architect? All I know is damn, fuck, and shit. Jane-loves-Puff. Go-Timmy-go. You know that.”

      “Stop it. We have to work on this. I mean, we have to—cogitate on our—contretemps.”

      “Say what?”

      “Odinaye may have learned go-Timmy-go. But he hasn’t СКАЧАТЬ