The Female of the Species. Lionel Shriver

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      “You know, Kaiser,” said Corgie softly, brushing the matted hair away from her forehead, “we’re going to have to put that bone of yours back. You might need it someday.”

      Gray nodded, and tried to smile. “I had,” she said, “grown rather attached—”

      “Shut up,” said Charles fondly.

      Outside, there were shouts. For a few bars the crowd struck up a chorus. Its words were unmistakable: “White skin! Red blood!” Il-Ororen shouted. “White skin! Red blood!”

      Charles acted as if he heard nothing. “I’m going to get you some honey wine. I’d give my right arm right now—if you’ll forgive the expression—for a good bottle of brandy, but then it would also be nice to have morphine and a hospital and the entire faculty of Yale Medical School. Wine will have to do.” Corgie started out the door, paused, turned back to take his gun. As he walked out of the cabin the crowd grew silent.

      “Dugon.” He spoke calmly in Il-Ororen to one of the natives in the front row. “Bring me two jugs of honey wine.”

      Dugon looked at the warriors on either side of him and then at the ground. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

      “Dugon,” said Corgie with exaggerated patience, “did you hear me? I meant now.”

      “Il-Cor-gie,” said Dugon, not looking Charles in the eye, “is it true about Ol-Kai-zer? That her bones break and her flesh bleeds?”

      “Dugon,” said Charles, bearing down on the warrior with those eyes of his that could do their work awfully well when they had to—even if Dugon was already convinced that Charles was a mere mortal, he was discovering it didn’t make much difference. “You changed the subject. We were speaking of wine.”

      Yet Dugon was surrounded by warriors who made small motions of discouragement; Dugon looked up at Corgie with an expression of appeal.

      Charles let his gun dangle down toward Dugon’s head. “Remember this?” Dugon nodded. “Do you doubt my magic enough to test it? Because whether or not Ol-Kai-zer bleeds may be in question; whether or not you do is not.”

      Dugon bolted from the crowd. Corgie watched him go, and waited for his wine serenely, looking down at Il-Ororen as if holding court.

      “Odinaye claims Ol-Kai-zer bleeds!” a native braved at last. “Show us the arm of Ol-Kai-zer!”

      “Since when,” said Corgie, “do you tell me to do anything?”

      Since never. His eyes razed the crowd, rich and dangerous. Il-Ororen went silent, back in church. Corgie stood over them, his eyes rather than his gun poised, aimed at them, cocked, until Dugon ran back with a jug of wine sloshing in each hand. He stopped, breathing hard, and then lifted them reverently to Corgie on his porch. With one final freezing glance, Corgie turned his back on Il-Ororen and returned to Gray.

      “Intimidation isn’t going to hold them very long,” said Gray dully from the bed.

      “Why not? It’s held them for five years. Now, drink this.” Gray had several sips, then shook her head. “More.” He poured it in her mouth until the wine dribbled down her chin.

      “Just like a man,” said Gray, wiping the wine away with her good arm. “Trying to get me drunk.”

      “That’s right,” said Charles, “this is what I should have done to you a long time ago.” Charles leaned over and kissed her lightly between the eyes. “Now drink some more.”

      “No, Charles, I can’t. It’s just making me sick. Besides, it’s not going to make that much difference and you know it.”

      Charles stood up and sighed; Gray realized that he was interested in getting her drunk partly in order to put off resetting her arm. Charles looked down at it, its temporary dressing beginning to show red; his face paled.

      “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

      “I bluff with them all the time,” said Corgie, gesturing outside. “This …”

      “You’re not in your train set anymore.”

      Charles looked up and down the length of Gray Kaiser, as if memorizing her hard. “You do seem life-size.”

      “Go ahead, Charles.”

      It was one thing to shoot a piece of clay in the chest; it was quite another to work the bone back into the skin of a woman who actually existed. Corgie took a long swig of wine.

      Corgie picked up her arm and put it down again. Breathed. Tried again. Breathed.

      Charles did it. He straightened her arm, and worked that horrible red thing back inside her limb, closing the folds of her flesh over the bone, burying the secret of her mortality back where it belonged. He took one of the sticks from his model monument as a splint and swathed the break with parachute silk. When he was finished, the sweat was pouring down his cheeks as freely as down Gray’s. Breathing heavily, they wiped the moisture from each other’s face.

      The chant outside had changed. “Show the arm of Ol-Kaizer!”

      “Maybe we should show it to them,” said Charles. “They might be impressed. I did a good job.” And Charles did seem more proud of this achievement than she had ever seen him be of his dominance over Il-Ororen, or even of his precious architecture.

      The tone of the gathering outside was angrier now. It sounded like nothing less than a lynch mob. Once in a while a stone hit the side of the cabin.

      Gray lay on the bed, trying to keep her mind steady, for she felt she’d need a clear head soon. She was right. Corgie began to clean his gun.

      “I’m sorry,” said Gray.

      “For what?”

      “For that uproar. It’s my fault.”

      Corgie stopped oiling his trigger. “It’s not your fault you broke your goddamned arm. I mean, you’re not a god, are you? Isn’t that the whole goddamned problem? I swear, you get into this stuff too deep, you start believing it, and you look down at a cut on your arm and, sure, the natives are surprised you bleed, but the thing is, so are you. Well, we bleed. And it’s hard enough to go around bleeding all over the goddamned place without feeling guilty about it. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Kaiser, doesn’t it hurt?”

      Gray shrugged, winced, let her shoulders carefully back down.

      Charles went back to cleaning his gun, ramming the rod down its barrel. “I’m telling you,” he continued, thrusting the rod in and out, “you’ve seen too many real, real stupid movies, Kaiser. The old ones, maybe, without any sound. God, give me a woman who screams once in a while. Give me a woman who cries sometimes, and who throws her arms around your goddamned neck and begs for forgiveness—”

      “Forgiveness!”

      “Woman looks down at a broken arm as if she’s some kind of robot with a few wires cut. Comes in here to be repaired. Practically took out my soldering iron by mistake, Kaiser.”

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