The Female of the Species. Lionel Shriver

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      “We want you out of my country.”

      Gray nodded. “I’ve done some work for Kenyan independence myself.”

      “The lady has not worked so hard, then,” said the Masai dryly. “You are still there.”

      “Well, who in Kenya would listen to a woman?”

      “Yez.”

      “We’re not the same tribe, you know. As the English.”

      “No, you are the same. This becomes clear with Corgie.”

      “Who is Corgie?”

      The Masai did not respond.

      “How do you plan to get the whites out?”

      “Masai—” He raised his chin high. “We like to put the man to sleep with steel, the woman with wood. But the gun … Kikuyu think we best fight with talk. Kikuyu talk so much, this is all Kikuyu know,” said the Masai with disdain. “But this time Kikuyu right. I begin my study already. This white man smart with his gun, not so smart in his head.”

      “Don’t underestimate your opponent,” said Gray pointedly.

      “We get most whites out with talk. Talk take time. One will not wait. I come to Richasan.”

      “Whom do you want to get rid of?”

      The Masai folded his arms.

      Gray released a tolerant sigh. She went back to her chair, settling in for the duration. “Where did you learn English?”

      “Richasan. He come to my country. I save his life,” said the warrior grandly.

      “How?” Gray hadn’t heard this story.

      “Richasan make this picture. My people want to kill him with steel. They think this camera, it take the soul away. Ridiculous. I have worked this camera. Ridiculous to think a man could take your soul.”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” said Gray quietly, with a slight smile. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

      The Masai looked down at her with new interest, though he didn’t press her to explain. “So I stop the killing of Richasan. I help with his work. He teach me English. My English excellent.”

      Gray shrugged. “It’s all right.”

      “My English vedy, vedy excellent,” he reasserted with feeling.

      “Your English is very excellent.”

      “Yez.”

      “No, I mean you left out the verb. You said it wrong.”

      The Masai answered angrily in his own language.

      “You’re quite right,” said Gray. “To outstrip a foreigner in one’s home tongue is weak and easy. But you were being arrogant, and I don’t think I deserved that kind of language.”

      The Masai stared at her and said nothing, as if doubting his ears. Gray had responded in Masai—correct, intelligible, and beautifully spoken. As he was silent, she went on, “If you were more comfortable in your own language, you should have said so.”

      The Masai stared, and she was concerned she’d angered him—Masai were easily offended. Still, she went on, enjoying the language she so rarely got to use, its lilting, playful, vowelridden sound: “And I don’t think I bear the least resemblance to a hyena, in heat or not.” Hyena, “ol-ngyine,” she took care to pronounce just as he had.

      The Masai began to laugh. He extended his hand over the table and clasped hers. “Good, Msabu.” His grip was strong and dry. “Vedy, vedy good, Msabu. Hassatti. Pleasure, big pleasure.” Hassatti took a seat opposite Gray. “How you learn Masai?”

      “Richasan.”

      “Msabu must like my people,” he said with satisfaction.

      “You’re a powerful and magnificent tribe. Straight. Angry. You bow to no one. I’ve studied and admired you a great deal.”

      “So why you treat Hassatti from so high? Change his English?”

      “What I admire I also embrace. I also bow to no one, even Masai.”

      “Ah.” Hassatti nodded. “Now tell Hassatti. In America United States, this woman is different thing? Yez?”

      “I’m different. Yes.”

      Hassatti’s brow rumpled. “Richasan, he do not warn me of this … Why Msabu has no husband? Your father ask too many cows?”

      “I strike my own bargains.”

      Hassatti reached out and touched Gray’s fine honey hair, pulling a strand toward him across the table and running it between his fingers with a smile. “Eight, ten. Beautiful fine strong cows. Barely bled.”

      “I’m very flattered, but why don’t you just tell me why you’re here?”

      “It is man’s business.”

      “I’ll strain my brain.”

      “You want twelve?” asked Hassatti, incensed. “Twelve cuts Hassatti’s herd in half—”

      Gray held up her hand. “I don’t judge by wealth but by what you consider a man’s business.”

      That seemed to make sense to Hassatti. “I come in kindness,” he said loftily. “These are not my people.”

      “That’s admirable.”

      So encouraged, Hassatti stood and strode about the small room. Gray watched him with pleasure. There was nothing like the unabashed self-glorification of a Masai warrior, even in a gray suit. Hassatti switched completely to Masai, and told his story with style and drama, as he might have to a gathering in his own kraal. Gray could imagine the fire flashing up shadows against the mud-and-dung walls, the long faces row on row, huddled in their hides, baobabs creaking in the wind.

      “When the sea washes forward over stones and withdraws again,” he began, “sometimes cupfuls are caught between the rocks and the water remains. So the Masai washed long ago over the peaks of Kilimanjaro into the highest hills, the deepest creases. A small party got separated from their tribe and caught in a pocket, with the hills reaching steeply on all sides. Tired and lost and with no cattle, they erected their kraals and remained cut off like a puddle.

      “As a puddle will grow scummy, dead, and dark with no stream to feed it, so did this people stagnate and grow stupid. Their minds blackened and clouded, and they no longer remembered their brother Masai. Caught in the crevices of Kilimanjaro, these warriors had sons who dismissed the talk of other tribes as superstition. They called themselves Il-Ororen, The People, as if there were no others. With no cows to tend, they scraped the soil like savages; the clay from the roots and insects on which they fed filled their heads, and their thoughts stuck together like feet against СКАЧАТЬ