The Female of the Species. Lionel Shriver

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СКАЧАТЬ tribe for dead. My people had greater troubles: a scourge of pale and crafty visitors infested the highlands. As we discussed, Msabu, they still do. Forgive, Msabu, but white like grubs, haired like beasts, they played many tricks, trying to trade silly games for the fine heifers of the Masai. These grubs tried to herd and fence my people as we do our cows, making rules against the raids on the Kikuyu with which a man becomes a warrior. The white people liked to show off their games like magic, but the wise of the Masai were not fooled. Hassatti has learned,” he said archly, “to work the dryer of hair. Hassatti has flown in the airplane.

      “Yet the Puddle was lucky for a long time. Your people, Msabu, did not discover them. The trees and hills obscured their muddy kraals. Arrogant and dull, Il-Ororen continued to think they were the only humans in the world. Imagine their surprise, then, Msabu, when one of your own warriors landed his small airplane in the thick of this crevice and emerged from its cockpit with his hat and his clothing, with all its zippers and pockets, and his face blanched like the sky before snow—”

      “Hassatti, when was this? What year?”

      Hassatti looked annoyed. To place the story within a particular time was somehow to make it tawdrier and more ordinary. “Nineteen hundred and forty-three, perhaps,” said Hassatti, “though the boy from whom this story was taken is an idiot of the Puddle and cannot be trusted. Who knows if he can count seasons.”

      “Sorry to interrupt,” said Gray. “Go on.”

      “Well, the wise Masai of the highlands always knew what your people were—clever, but often weak and fat; with no feeling for cows, but good with metal. Granted your women store their breasts in cups and your men grow fur, but you copulate and excrete; you bleed and die, though—excuse, Msabu—not often enough for Hassatti’s tastes. All this my people could see. Yet Il-Ororen of the Puddle had grown superstitious and easily awed. With the constant looming of the cliffs on all sides, shadows played over their heads and made them fearful. When the white warrior stepped into their bush they quivered. They imagined he was a ghost or a god. They bowed down and cast away their spears, or ran into the forest. They had eaten clay for too long and their smiths made dull arrows, their women made pots with holes; their minds would hold no more cleverness than their pots would hold water. They had forgotten how to raid and be warriors, since there was no one from whom to steal cattle, and their boys were no longer circumcised.”

      “So what happened?”

      “I will give Il-Ororen this much: the gun is a startling thing, and even the sharp arrows are not much good against it, and the man Corgie made this clear with great swiftness.”

      “How many people did he shoot?”

      “We do not know. Yet this Corgie is of interest, Msabu, for in my studies the white man does plenty of foolish things, and Hassatti is amazed that the Corgie could fly into the crevice and set up a kingdom as a god and not soon disappoint his disciples, even if they were only Puddle people.”

      “Let me get this straight,” said Gray, beginning to get excited, for if Hassatti was telling the truth—that there was a tribe out there that had never been in contact with Western civilization before—then he was talking about an anthropological gold mine. The discovery of the peoples of New Guinea in the twenties had made several careers, and that was supposed to be the last frontier … Gray was on the edge of her chair. “This man Corgie stayed? Didn’t go back and tell anyone?”

      “No, he still reigns there. He shoots those who disobey. Hassatti has no respect for such a tribe, superstitious and easily trapped, but they were once Masai and now they are servants to this ungentle visitor, so Hassatti has come to his old friend Richasan so that the Corgie may be flushed out of the crevice and brought to justice.”

      “How did you hear about Corgie?”

      “There was a boy of the Puddle who had two brothers. They had been playing on a sacred square of dirt and made the Corgie angry. I know this seems ridiculous to you and me, but this boy spoke of some area of their compound that was worshipped and made perfectly flat, marked with mysterious lines he believed to be about the stars. His brothers disrupted the surface of this square and were killed; the boy, too, had been party to the gouging of the sacred flatness, and fled the village, climbed the cliffs, forded rivers, and finally wandered into my own kraal. It took him much time to talk at all, for he was frightened of the Masai, as he was of this Corgie—he supposed the Puddle to be all the world’s people. I did not blame him, either, for fearing the Masai. We are a great and strong people raised on meat and blood, and he was weak and scratched dirt and ate ants. He huddled in the corner of my hut for some days and would not speak, and no one of us could say where he was from. He was stunted, and had none of the earrings, markings, or clothing of my people. Though old enough, he was not circumcised. He would not eat the meat or milk we put before him, but when our backs were turned he would tear the insects from the ground and the roots from the trees.

      “We thought he was a savage, but when he spoke at last he did not speak Swahili or Kikuyu, but a garbled tongue with words we recognized. With these and pictures, we pieced together his story. We might not have believed it but for the occasional rumor we Masai ourselves sometimes heard of a warrior who got lost in the far bush and returned telling tales of a gnomish clan in the wrinkles of the mountains who offered him no meat and no milk and no wife to share, but shut him out of their compound. And when this boy first saw white people in our midst, he screeched like a flamingo and hid in my hut. To this day I do not believe I have convinced him that your people are not gods. Forgive, Msabu, but the fallibility of your people seems so self-evident to me that I have to conclude the boy is a complete dwarf in the head.”

      “Why have you come to Richardson? Why didn’t you go after Corgie yourselves?”

      “Would that we could, Msabu. It pains Hassatti, but for the Masai to take action against a white man is dangerous. It is best for a tribe to discipline its own.”

      Gray nodded. Richardson would be salivating if he were here. He’d be on the phone already, chartering a plane to Nairobi.

      “Hassatti …” said Gray slowly, “you know how it is customary for boys to go out on the plains and slaughter a lion that’s been killing Masai cattle, and when he returns with the tail and paws he’s considered a man?”

      “Yez.”

      “Any man—or woman, Bwana—wants to pass such a test, Masai or not. I have yet to pass my test. I want to, desperately. Dr. Richardson has passed many. He is ol-moruo, an old man, now. Let me have Corgie, as you would send a young warrior to kill a beast when the elder has killed several.”

      Hassatti looked at her hard. “You? Go after Corgie?”

      Gray’s face flushed and her heart beat. “I am very tall,” she said simply, “and very strong and very brilliant.”

      Errol could see it, hear it; he liked to play this moment over in his mind: I am very tall and very strong and very brilliant. Her ears scarlet, her eyes that piercing blue-gray.

      Hassatti kept looking at her. “Perhaps—Richasan should decide.”

      “Dr. Richardson wouldn’t trust me, and he never will. He will never believe I’m that grown up, just as your father will never believe you’re a man.”

      “Ah.” Hassatti nodded and smiled. Gray was only twenty-two, but she already understood how much psychology crossed cultures. Fathers condescended the world over.

      “Richardson may never let me hunt my lion,” said Gray. “Will you?”

      Hassatti СКАЧАТЬ