The Female of the Species

  “Msabu wish to land? There is not space—”

  “No,” said Gray. “Take it back up. Take me to Nairobi.”

  “If Msabu wish to more look—”

  “No,” said Gray. “I’ve seen enough.”

  The small plane soared back up, its passengers’ ears popping. Below, the long, narrow valley grew smaller, but Gray couldn’t help but see even as the plane rose quite high the four black scars of charred flat earth and a few wisps of smoke trailing from these patches, like the last sad smoldering of crematory ash.

  6

  Errol scanned the compound in the dying light. The sites of Corgie’s projects had seeded nicely and were overgrown. Despite their disregard for history, none among Il-Ororen had yet dared plant his own manyatta in these clearings. The patches remained plush and tangled, like small city parks.

  So far this return visit was going well, and Errol fought off his own wistfulness. Errol had a peculiar weakness for other people’s nostalgia. This helped him as an anthropologist but confused him as himself. He wondered that he never found his own memories as compelling as those of other people. This was a gift, he supposed; there were certainly enough people walking around absorbed in their own lives. While his imagination was sometimes out of control, Errol preferred that to being trapped with his quiet father, his dominating older sister, and his attachment to Gray long past the age he should have been anyone’s protégé. Errol’s own life made him feel claustrophobic, and these departures relieved him, as the long breaths of cooling air did now while he watched the sun drain behind the cliffs. It was a romantic setting, he had to admit.

  So far their return had unearthed a few interesting postscripts. Odinaye had taken over the tribe after Corgie, but he’d made a mistake. When you institute a new regime, it mustn’t look too much like the old one. Yet Odinaye had tried to become Corgie II. Before he burned it to the ground, he ransacked the cabin for mementos. When he rose to prominence, he donned the red baseball cap, leather flight jacket, and aviator goggles he had found there. He wrapped the remains of Corgie’s parachute regally around him, and used many of the words he’d learned from listening to Gray and Charles: Here it is. Give me that paddle. Il-Ororen were impressed for a while, but they’d heard this before, and in better style.

  Furthermore, Odinaye was no architect. Early in his reign he commanded a palace of his own, to be taller than Corgie’s tower. Halfway through construction, the place crumpled into a heap. Corgie’s true disciple, Odinaye blamed the workmen and had them executed; wisely, he didn’t try another palace and stayed quietly in his own hut.

  It was the radio that felled him. Odinaye had made sure to salvage the device before the arson, but in lugging it away, he must have disconnected a wire. When he staged his own service—remembering many of Corgie’s ads for Campbell’s soup and a couple of verses from “Liddle Rabid Foo-Foo”—he turned at its climax to the wondrous supernatural machine and—silence. There was a riot. The radio was destroyed, along with its ineffectual new master.

  Soon after, Gray’s study hit the Western press, which not only sent her career hurtling to eventually overtake Richardson’s—who was now only a fortunate footnote in Gray Kaiser’s life—but also sent a phalanx of Western civilization down on Il-Ororen. Surprise, more airplanes; surprise, better radios; surprise, English. Surprise, just a lot of strange, pale primates—so many of them, as Hassatti might have warned, disappointments.

  Il-Ororen revisited were a slightly defeated people, though nicer, as Gray herself had remarked. They had lost their existential edge, and in its place was an attractive relaxation with being unimportant. They smiled more. They sat more. There were more fat people.

  And, boy, did they talk about Charles Corgie. Corgie stories were a local pastime. While Il-Ororen may have mellowed, they still had that malicious streak in them from way back—their favorites were about the fires. As they told these tales, their eyes flecked with yellow light. Best of all, they loved to tell of Corgie’s last gesture. When the bullets had ceased their regular reproof overhead, Il-Ororen had finally climbed up the stilts of the cabin, suffering by now highly exaggerated injuries from the protective spikes skirting the porch, and bursting into the main room to find both Il-Cor-gie and Ol-Kai-zer no longer there. Nervous but inflamed, guerrilla parties scoured the area, though they needn’t have; Gray was well up the cliffs by now, and Corgie sent up a flare. Standing on top of the carcass of his plane, Charles fired in the air. A large crowd gathered. In his most terrifying voice, he ordered them from the plane. Gradually they backed off, Corgie training his gun on the group until every villager had withdrawn. Only then did he shift the rifle from the crowd and point it at a tear in the tail of his plane. With one bullet, as if he’d rehearsed this before and knew where precisely to aim, he detonated a bomb he never dropped on the Germans, and Charles Corgie left Il-Ororen in a blaze.

  It was Corgie’s warning rather than the splendor of his departure that made an impression on Gray. Errol, too, was surprised that Charles urged the villagers away from the plane. It seemed out of character. In Errol’s experience with egomaniacs, they liked to take as much of the world down with them as possible; in a time of nuclear weapons this was a chilling thought. Yet Charles, in a moment of peculiar humility, left by himself.

  While Gray was relieved to hear of Corgie’s consideration, she didn’t have much of a taste for these stories. In fact, Errol had to admit she didn’t have much of a taste for this whole project. Gray was still in her hut, no doubt flat on her mat, with eyes of stone. If this torpor of hers went on much longer, they would have to pack it in.

  Yet the air tingled. Errol’s breath quickened. In the indeterminate gray light Errol felt edgy and could not stand still. The story of Charles Corgie rooted and tangled in his mind, as if it were not quite over. His eyes darted across the compound; always something seemed to be moving in his periphery, but when he looked over he found only trees. The light was funny. It was still bright enough to see, but not, it seems, what was actually there. Errol felt a strange nervous grip under his rib cage; he had the unreasonable feeling he should be pacing before Gray’s hut, standing guard.

  Oh, Gray, Errol thought, looking back on this evening much later. It had been too early to be asleep. Dusk is a time to be preyed upon. Wise herds are astir, on their feet with their heads high and eyes open, but Gray stayed in bed with her long, bony head at a forlorn angle against the mat, picking up the pattern of the tortured weave in her cheek. The brush outside the compound rustled. It was not the wind. Bare feet pattered across the hard-packed earth of Toroto. Old women spoke in low whispers. They’d been frightened before, and this was ridiculous. Weren’t Il-Ororen savvy now? They ate Almond Joys and Pez candies. They complained in their own language about static and weak stations. They knew the word “tape recorder” and how little magic it really was, without money. Some even had guns, and no longer particularly admired them. Yet anthropology is not about nothing. There was a culture here, and it rose. It believed in ghosts, despite Pez candies. And here their protector slept with her head on the mat, as if, because Charles Corgie had been “just” a man, there were no more mysteries.

  You couldn’t blame them for being frightened, though once again they’d made a mistake. Il-Ororen needed no protection. He was coming for a woman “very tall and very strong and very brilliant,” though a woman with her length reaching toward she didn’t know what anymore, her strength turning to an irritation, her brilliance casting about in the dark until it shattered aimlessly into a disappointed dispersion across the night sky.

  It was dark now. Errol was surrounded by whispers and running feet. When he felt a hand on his arm, he started.

  “He is alive!” It was Elya, with her voice low. “He has returned!”

  “What?”

  “I tell you, he has come back! And he has not grown older.”

  “Who?”

  “Il-Cor-gie!” she said breathlessly.

  Errol’s mout
h twisted, and he was glad she couldn’t see his face in the dark. Sometimes Errol was not a perfect anthropologist, and all this admirable myth and culture soured into native weirdness. It was late, and Errol had had a hard day. What in Christ’s name was she talking about, anyway. “Maybe you’d better talk to Ol-Kai-zer,” said Errol. He’d worked on this dialect before the trip, but maybe he wasn’t understanding her right. Besides, this was annoying and Errol wasn’t in the mood—he’d finished that interview himself, and Gray was just lying there. Do a little work, Kaiser. On your feet.

  But another woman had already run into Gray’s hut and was dragging her out the door. Gray, too, looked confused in the light of the woman’s lantern. Several women clustered behind her as she approached Errol.

  “What’s all this about?” asked Gray, with the same unanthropological annoyance.

  “Damned if I know. Something about Corgie still being alive if I heard right.”

  The women tugged on Errol and Gray, with a strange combination of fear and excitement. “He is back!” they kept saying. “Il-Cor-gie has returned to us!”

  As Errol and Gray went with the women, the natives pushing them toward the center of the village, Errol muttered quietly to Gray, “Why do I feel as if I’m in the middle of a New Testament reading?” Gray laughed.

  It was getting chilly. Gray and Errol rubbed their arms. Amid the chatter and the quickened air and the odd, unexplained secret they were approaching, the evening had an offbeat holiday atmosphere. There was a glow in the center of Toroto that proved to be a bonfire. Its light cast brilliantly on an unfamiliar figure with such intensity that the man with his hands held gently before the fire seemed to be aflame himself.

  As they drew nearer, Gray slowed. The man in the flames looked straight at her. Gray stopped. Took a step. Stopped. The sound of her breathing at Errol’s side cut off altogether, as if she’d forgotten to inhale. Finally she herself stepped into the surreal molten glow of the fire, and stood, once more a statue; stone.

  Errol looked away from his mentor to the man on the other side of the fire. Flames licked across his line of vision; the face burned among the yellow tongues. Errol found it hard to swallow.

  But Charles Corgie was dead. Charles Corgie had fired his gun at his own bomb and exploded. Or were Il-Ororen lying again? Had they allowed Corgie to escape and made up that final episode? Then how would they have known about bombs to make up such a story?

  On the other side of the fire there was a tall, dark Caucasian with a hat. His hair was black, his stubble heavy and rising, his eyes sharp and unblinking, but he could not be more than twenty-five. Even if Corgie had slunk away to rule another tribe, or moved to Nairobi and sold car insurance for thirty-seven years, he would still be over sixty now.

  Errol started to speak, but Gray shook her head. She smiled more sweetly than he’d ever seen. In the hiss of escaping steam and the pop of knots, Gray seemed lost in a dream from which she had little eagerness to wake.

  “What is your name?” asked Gray at last.

  “Sarasola,” said the man. “Raphael Sarasola.”

  Now, thought Errol. Wrong name. The joke is over. But Errol did not sense the feeling in the air change.

  “I was unaware,” said Gray with evident pleasure, “we’d become a tourist attraction.”

  “You made it one,” said Raphael.

  “You read my book?”

  “The parts that interested me,” he answered coolly. It was something Charles would have said.

  Several women crept up to Raphael and laid offerings of bananas and dried meat at his feet and scurried away. Raphael looked at them without enough surprise, as if he was used to being given things. He picked up a banana, and peeled it.

  Gray could not take her eyes off him. “How did B.U. happen to send me an assistant who hasn’t even read the whole book?”

  “There are other ways of getting what you want besides spending a lot of time in the library.”

  “You’ll have to explain those sometime.”

  “I won’t have to. But I might.” Errol thought distinctly, He doesn’t behave like a graduate student. “Don’t worry, though,” said Raphael. “They sent you the right man, all right.”

  “Yes,” said Gray. “I think they did.”

  There was more silence; the fire popped. Errol was beginning to feel something he’d never felt before. Terror.

  “I’ve been traveling for two days,” said Raphael. He threw the skin of his banana into the fire and watched it sizzle. “I’m tired.”

  Gray led Raphael to the hut where she and Errol were staying. Errol trailed after them.

  “That’s my mat,” Errol mumbled when Gray showed the new assistant where to sleep. Gray didn’t seem to hear. “That’s my pillow,” he said more loudly as Raphael unrolled his sleeping bag.

  “You can live without it for the night,” said Gray quietly. “He hasn’t slept in days.” She whispered good night and walked softly out of the hut, pulling Errol with her, as if leaving a sleeping child.

  They ambled back toward the fire. “You didn’t introduce me,” said Errol after a time.

  “Sorry,” said Gray, not paying the slightest attention.

  They sat down on the warm stones before the bonfire, and though she’d been in bed only an hour before, “absolutely disgusted and tired and stupid,” Gray’s eyes were alive now, and she sat on the edge of the stone rubbing her hands together. “You know, I’m getting a lot of ideas for this film,” she said. “It could be exciting.”

  But Errol was an ordinary person. He had plenty of excitement already.

  Errol scared up another mat but didn’t sleep well without a pillow. When he woke the next morning, Gray was already up and dressed and was spending longer than usual fixing her hair. Raphael was out cold. Gray kept shooting quick, incredulous looks at her new assistant.

  She looked different this morning, as if those fatigues were new, but she was wearing the same clothes she’d worn the day before.

  When Errol stretched, dressed, and walked outside, he found a cluster of natives at the door with trays of food. “You will take this to Il-Cor-gie and Ol-Kai-zer?” asked the woman, holding a tray out to Errol like a cook to a waiter.

  “I will not,” said Errol. He stalked away to make his own breakfast.

  When he finished mopping up his fried bananas, which had come out too greasy, he glanced over to find two of Il-Ororen scouring away over pails of water. When he looked more closely, he recognized the fabric in their hands. Of course. They were washing the clothes of “Il-Cor-gie.”

  “Before he gets up we need to talk.”

  Errol turned to find no more torpor, no more stone. The mind behind those blue-gray eyes was going a mile a minute. “I’ve been thinking about this documentary all night,” she went on. “About format. I think we should question the whole interview and voice-over decision. It’s dreary. It’s a PBS-change-the-channel sort of thing. I think that’s why I’ve been so reluctant lately.”

  “Sure,” said Errol. “Format has been the whole problem.”

  “Why don’t we use a more narrative structure? Bring in a larger crew. Build some sets. Film it scene by scene. Il-Ororen love these stories; we’d have extras galore. I’m sure it would have more popular appeal.”

  “And what gave you this idea?”

  “He’s a dead ringer for Charles Corgie and you know it.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can act.”

  “If I don’t miss my guess, he won’t have to.”

  “Well, who’s going to play you?”

  “What?”

  “Gray, you’re fifty-nine now. You can hardly play yourself at twenty-two.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You forgot you were fifty-nine?”

  “For a night, I suppose.”

  “Allow me to remind you.”

  “Thanks a lot, Errol.” She didn’t sound very grateful.

  “I’m skeptical, Gray, of this
whole concept.”

  “Somehow I knew you would be. How is it that I’m twelve years older than you are and you stick so much more frequently in the mud?”

  “You mean, why don’t I glom on to your every idea?”

  “I do not mean that.”

  Raphael had walked out of the hut now and was blithely watching them fight. His shirt was off; with a basin and compact mirror, he began to shave.

  “Gray,” said Errol, “we just don’t have the money, crew, or equipment to film an epic adventure movie.”

  “I didn’t say it had to be Lawrence of Arabia. It could be done simply, but I don’t want to do another one of those dour documentaries that Charles himself would never watch.”

  “You don’t have to worry about what Charles would think of it. Charles is dead.”

  “Thanks so very much, Errol,” said Gray, now furious. “You’re really bringing in all my favorite data: I’m fifty-nine, and Charles is dead.”

  “Il-Cor-gie!” cried Elya down the road.

  “Brother,” said Errol, and went for a very long walk.

  On his return Errol got a better look at Raphael Sarasola. Gray had told her assistant to spend the day getting to know Toroto; Errol watched as Il-Ororen offered the man pottery and candy bars through the afternoon. Raphael had every reason to find these gifts disconcerting, but he accepted them without question. He declined only cigarettes, and Il-Ororen were surprised that he no longer smoked.

  Well, if this was Charles Corgie incarnate, perhaps Errol had gotten Corgie wrong and the man hadn’t been as broad, loud, and bawdy as Errol imagined. Raphael was contained, poised. He stood with a slight tremble, like a well-tuned sports car at a light. If this was Charles Corgie, then Corgie was quiet. Raphael would lick his lips, take a breath, raise his eyebrows, and—nothing. He seemed always about to say something and then to think better of it; sometimes he’d smile as if what he might have said amused him. Maybe what Errol had most failed to capture in his version of Charles Corgie—if this was, as Il-Ororen claimed, his ghost—was his precision. He wouldn’t have made mistakes. He’d never have made a joke that fell flat, tripped, or stepped on a rock that proved unstable; he’d never have reached for the sleeve of his coat behind his back and missed the hole.