The Female of the Species. Lionel Shriver
him against the wall of the hut.
Gray put her hand on Corgie’s shoulder. “Charles, we’ve got it back now—”
Corgie brushed her hand off and, with astonishingly little ceremony for a god, took the rifle to his shoulder and shot the thief against the wall, right in the heart.
The shot echoed back and forth between the cliffs of the valley, but died quickly; so did Login. Corgie slung his gun back over his shoulder and left Il-Ororen behind him blithely, the way he might walk away from one of his models with the dark clay figures posed in their attitudes of worship or chagrin. With one glance at Odinaye, who looked back at her with a stiff, unfazed resolve that seemed oddly familiar, Gray trailed after Charles, carrying the hallowed tape recorder. That’s right. That look, it was Corgie’s.
When Gray walked into the cabin Corgie had his back to her and was looking out the window. “Go ahead,” he said shortly, not turning around. “I’m ready.”
Gray stood staring at Corgie’s back, watching those broad shoulders heave up and down from the kind of breathing he might do before battle. For a time she said nothing. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t rallied the disgust she would need now. It must have been disturbing to enter a room with a man whose gun was still warm, with a dead fourteen-year-old down below, and not feel sufficient revulsion. Gray was shaken, but right now her deepest wish was to sink her fingers into the bands of his neck and relax the muscles, to rearrange his frayed black hair. Gray must have been asking herself what Errol had always wondered, too: how could she overlook that Charles Corgie murdered people? Maybe she wasn’t a “warm, gooey-hearted darling,” but she had her limits and one of them had always been shooting a young boy at five paces. No, she didn’t go for that. How could she go for that in Corgie? Was she actually attracted to a man who shot fourteen-year-olds for stealing tape recorders? Did that impress her? Or did she understand that he didn’t know what he was doing? That Charles’s vision was narrowed enough that for him firing at natives was no different from shooting down ducks at a county fair? Could she forgive that poor eyesight? Yet even if people are born a certain way and end up a certain way for reasons out of their control, aren’t there actions you hold them accountable for, regardless? Wouldn’t Charles be convicted posthaste at Nuremberg? Or would Gray Kaiser be the one stolid juror who would vote to let him off the hook?
Errol had never answered these questions to his satisfaction.
It was with reluctance, then, that Gray began now, though there was one long moment when she actually considered keeping quiet and massaging his neck; in that same moment she also understood that he was tired and upset and would have let her. Instead, she said for the second time, still from across the room, “Charles. It was only a tape recorder.”
Corgie sighed at the window. His body slumped, as if he could feel the fingers withdrawing from his neck. So it was this again. They were both good soldiers, but there were days—Gray, why can’t we shut up? It was hard enough to shoot that boy. Why can’t we drop it? But instead he said, “What was I supposed to do, Gray? Slap his hand and send him to his room? Or sit him down and ask him, If everybody did that, what kind of world would we live in?” He turned around. “Gray darling, we’re not in school anymore. We’re in the middle of Africa. Keeping up this immortality stuff isn’t just a game.”
“It is in a way,” said Gray. “You set the rules. Didn’t you choose to be immortal?”
“That’s right, to save my ass. I saved it, I have to keep saving it. Haven’t we been through this?” Their talk was still without heat. The argument was tired. “In Toroto religion is a matter of life and death. It is for me. So it is for them. It’s only fair.”
“All of which fails to explain why you had to shoot a fourteen-year-old boy—”
“All of which does explain it!” Corgie at last took a few steps toward her, at last gave his voice some edge, some pitch. “I swear, Kaiser, you just don’t want to understand, do you? You just have to be against me. Have to be on the other side.”
“Of this, yes.”
“Of everything and you know it. Kaiser, the irony of this whole business is that I have never met a woman more like me in my life. Lady, you surpass me! I mean it! You bitch all the time, but you took to divinity like a fish to water!”
Gray’s chin rose a little higher. The idea of massaging this man’s neck was now out of the question. “I have done here,” she said coldly, “what I had to do. For my work and for my own survival.”
“Which is what I said, but it doesn’t wash when I say it.”
“I haven’t killed people.”
“You haven’t had to! I do it for you! Why do you think they’re afraid of you, Kaiser? Why do you think you’re still alive? Why do you think nobody’s stolen your lousy tape recorder before now? Darling, you’ve cashed in. Your ticket was already paid for.”
Gray shut her mouth.
“But come on, Kaiser. It hasn’t been so bad, has it? Ordering guys around? Being revered?”
“Actually,” said Gray, “I’ve found it quite uncomfortable.”
“You’re so full of shit!” shouted Corgie. Gray took a step back. For all the reluctance with which this argument began, it was in full swing now; she’d never seen Corgie so angry. “You eat it up, don’t you think I can see that? Oh, you’re nicer than I am, I’ll give you that, but that’s because having them worship you isn’t enough, is it? You have to get them to like you, too. You want them to worship and adore you. At least I have the humility to let them hate me as long as they bring me my supper every night.”
Their voices were carrying. Outside, the sky started to rumble; after a moment it poured. “Convenient,” said Gray. “The gods are fighting. Venting their wrath on Il-Ororen.”
“If there is a real one,” said Corgie, “He’s on our side. We’ve been lucky. You are dangerous. You may have a good time playing Jesus Christ, but I’ve never met more of a human being in my life.”
“That should be a compliment, but it doesn’t sound like one.”
“Oh, cut the humanism shit, will you? For a minute? I mean the reason you’re dangerous is that you’re so jealous. And that’s one big giveaway. That’s the most mortal emotion I know.”
“Jealous of what?” asked Gray incredulously, raising her voice over the rain.
“You can’t stand it that I got here first, can you? You can’t stand not having this whole shebang to yourself, can you?”
“That is—” Gray turned red. “That is the most ridiculous accusation I have ever heard—”
“Miss Gray Kaiser, valiant, beloved anthropologist—everyone goes to you, bows down, asks for advice, but Miss Kaiser doesn’t need anyone, no—”
“You mean I don’t need you.”
The two of them stood face to face. Perhaps they were gods now, at this moment, and this was omnipotence: to know exactly how little they cared. Glaring at each other silently, both Gray and Charles recited together their real credo: Who cares about you, or anyone? Who needs you, or anyone? I blink and you disappear. I turn my back on you and all I see is the door that I can walk out of, always. I am tall and smart and powerful without you. I can make jokes and laugh, and then they are funny. I can write down thoughts and read them back and nod, and then they are wise. I put my hands over my ears and hum, and the things you say that so upset me could be birdcalls or the radio or a fly. You think I want you, and sometimes even I think that, but you are wrong and that is weakness in me, for I am stronger than even I know. I am a god. I am making it rain now. So if I want you to evaporate like a shallow puddle in the bright heat of my brain, then you will shimmer in this room and dissolve into the heavy air and I will not care—I will be thinking about what I would like for dinner; I will be thinking about my important work; I will sleep well at night and get up the next