The Female of the Species

“What is the funny thing?”

Charles licked his lips, and went on reluctantly. “When that feeling … the way you feel around these models. The little houses. The little people. The way you look down on them. Put them places. When—”

“What?”

“When you walk outside to the regular-size place? And it’s no different. That’s what funny. When you’re around life-size shit and it all still feels like—toys.” Charles couldn’t look Gray in the eye. “Animals seem stuffed. People seem like dolls. My own house looks like the station in my train set. With spikes around it. Like Popsicle sticks.” Charles cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, looking up at Gray with an indefinite smile, as if maybe he was pulling her leg. He laughed an unsettling little laugh. “You are here, aren’t you? Say something.”

“Something,” said Gray dully.

“An old kid’s joke. Not very helpful. You’re supposed to say something that makes me feel normal-sized. In the big village. With the actual people.”

“Isn’t that the trouble? That you’re not sure they’re actual people?”

Charles stood up. “I don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.” Charles rang a homemade bell; its clacker scrabbled in the tin. A native appeared below, by the stilts of the cabin. Charles ordered dinner—with one more look at Gray to make sure she was still there—for two.

At the end of the meal, roasted game with mangoes and banana, Charles rang his dented tin bell and the native climbed up to his doorway to take the plates away. Once the servant had climbed back down, Charles pulled the ladder up and set it against the outside wall. Charles invited Gray to his veranda, which looked out on the cliffs. He lit an oil lantern on the porch. Gray climbed into a hammock and stared up; the stars were brighter and more numerous than she’d ever seen. She felt peculiarly content. When she glanced down, Gray noticed that the sides of the porch were covered with long, sharpened wooden spikes. Charles explained, “They help me sleep nights.”

Corgie himself leaned back in a broad cane armchair, and they both sipped honey wine. Smoke rose from the manyattas on either side, and the lantern, which burned animal fat, gave off a meaty smell, like a barbecue. The hoot of night birds echoed between the cliffs. Gray relaxed into the netting of her hammock; it creaked gently when she moved. The wine was sweet and potent. The flame flickered beside Charles Corgie and lit his profile as he stared off into the black bush. He breathed deeply and held the wine in his mouth a long time before swallowing. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“What’s your name?” he asked at last. “Your first name.”

“Gray.”

“Soft, for you.”

“It strikes most people as dour.”

“No, soft. Gentle.”

“That’s surprising?”

Charles reached over and rapped against her outstretched leg with his knuckles. “Hear that? Bong, bong, bong. That’s what it’s like when you knock against the side of a tank.” He went back to staring out into the forest. Gray stared, too. The foliage pulsed as her eyes fought to focus, to pick up any object however slight. The trees bloomed on the edges in explosions of black. There’s nothing like African darkness. It eats your eyes.

“Are you insulting me?” asked Gray.

“I’m not sure.”

Gray decided to change the subject. “I can’t believe you haven’t asked me about the war. Don’t you care what happened?”

“Kaiser—I left.”

“It’s over.”

“You don’t say. Who won?”

“I don’t know if you’ll be disappointed or not. Whose side were you on?”

Charles considered, leaning farther back in his chair and setting his boots up on the railing. “Adolf isn’t my style. I don’t like the way he moves, know what I mean? The guy’s too excitable.”

“And maybe you didn’t like like the way his uniform was tailored.”

“Actually,” said Charles, looking over at her with his black eyes gleaming quietly under the looming ridge of his brow, “the tie—with the shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck—I prefer a dictator with an open collar.”

“Clearly,” said Gray. Charles’s own shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, where the hair was thick and black like his eyes, and gleamed just as defiantly in the lantern light, with drops of honey wine.

“You did use the past tense,” Charles observed.

“Adolf isn’t that excitable anymore.”

“And Benito? Hirohito?” Gray shook her head. Charles shrugged. “Just as well. Me, I’m a Napoleon man.”

“Why’s that?”

“Those losers wouldn’t know what to do with a joint once they’d got hold of it. Bonaparte had plans. I liked his projects. But that slouch Speer built some nasty, hulking places. What a no-talent. Everything he put together looked like a goddamned morgue.”

Charles pulled out a packet and rolled himself a cigarette in a leaf, quickly and expertly into a long, tight spleef. “Tobacco ran out first week,” he explained. “But I found a weed—sweet, but with an edge to it. Wasn’t common, though, so I’ve got the flock growing some over there. Doing pretty well, too. They dry it and crush it and wrap it up in packets. I miss my tins of Prince Albert, but what can you do?” Charles lit up with the lamp, then exhaled in a long, slow whistle. “The laymen aren’t supposed to smoke any, but they do. I’ll let them get away with it, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Catch one occasionally and make an example. See, they think this stuff gives them knowledge. Actually, it doesn’t even get you doped up.” Charles took another hit. “Besides,” he said with a smile, “it suits me if they keep looking for knowing with smoke.”

“So you have them growing weeds instead of crops they could eat.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “Let’s not talk about agriculture. I like you better as the voice of the free world than as an anthropologist. So,” said Charles, leaning back with an imperial air, “did Franklin D. string our boy Adolf from the top of the Washington Monument?”

“Roosevelt is dead. Hitler killed himself. —This is like Reader’s Digest Condensed World Wars,” said Gray with frustration.

“Go on.”

Gray decided to save the atomic bomb for later.

Then she realized she could leave it out altogether if she felt like it. She could even have told Charles that Hitler now ruled Eurasia, the United States, and South America, and then this would be the truth in Toroto. It was a curious little moment of power.

“A number of Nazis are on trial right now in Nuremberg for war crimes,” she continued, thinking it was a little late in the day for inventing a whole new ending to an awfully big story.

“On trial?”

“Why not?”

“Seems pretty feeble is all. Why not shoot the guys and be done with it?”

“Out of respect for legal process. To reinstitute order.”

“Come on. Laws are just to give you an excuse for shooting somebody when you were going to shoot them anyway.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Gray.

“Nope. I know about laws. I make them.”

“Is there anything you don’t know about?”

“Not that I know about.” He added, “Except. I don’t know about you.”