The Female of the Species

“That’s it.”

“Some story,” said Charles.

“Yes,” said Gray. “It is.”

“I guess it’s one of those subtle narratives that depends on texture.”

“Charles,” said Gray. “He said ‘Here it is’ in English.”

Corgie sat up. “No.”

“Yes.”

Corgie stood and paced. “Well,” he reasoned, taking out another cigarette, “one phrase. Big deal.”

“No, he knows at least two, Charles. I made a mistake. I asked for the paddle in English, too. And I didn’t point. He knew the word ‘paddle.’”

“So? Here it is. Paddle. So?”

“How do we know how many other words he’s picked up, Charles? What else has he heard?”

Charles grunted. He smoked fast, as if his cigarette were hard work to get over with. “Damn it.” He paced some more. “Jesus, we’re gonna have to be careful.” He was speaking more softly now himself.

Gray sighed. “He obviously figured out the language by watching us interact.”

“When have we been doing that?”

“We do still fight sometimes.”

Charles sunk into a chair. “So—what? We’re going to talk even less than we’ve been doing? I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

“Do you know any other languages? French, German, Latin?”

“Nope. But you do, of course.”

“That wouldn’t do any good if you don’t know them, too.”

“Why not? We could have our own separate languages. You could walk around speaking German. I can definitely see it, Kaiser.”

“Well, say. How’s your English vocabulary?”

“Me? The poor uneducated architect? All I know is damn, fuck, and shit. Jane-loves-Puff. Go-Timmy-go. You know that.”

“Stop it. We have to work on this. I mean, we have to—cogitate on our—contretemps.”

“Say what?”

“Odinaye may have learned go-Timmy-go. But he hasn’t learned perambulate-Timmy-perambulate.”

“Let me get this straight. When I hit my thumb with a hammer, I’m supposed to yell, ‘Oh, coitus!’?”

“Exactly.”

“This is going to be disgusting, Kaiser.”

“Or fun. As long as we can’t be heard we can drop it, but if we have to talk to each other in public we should only palaver, parley, or discourse.”

“Or lately, harangue, wrangle, or contend.”

Gray laughed as Charles leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Maybe their learning English is all for the best,” said Gray softly. “Maybe they’ll finally appreciate that your invocation is a Wrigley’s spearmint-gum commercial.” With a rare moment of affection, Gray reached out with a wistful smile and tousled his hair.

The plan seemed to work to a degree. When Gray and Charles were in earshot of Odinaye, they switched to their most professorial language, and Gray could tell by the light panic with which Odinaye’s eyes followed the conversation that he was no longer picking much up.

The whole vocabulary scam might have issued in an era of reconciliation, but Gray’s lexicon was considerably larger than Corgie’s. When she used a word he didn’t know, he would furiously stalk off in the middle of her definition. To her credit, Gray wasn’t trying to impress him but simply to use an effective scramble on their broken code. To her these multisyllabic marathons were an entertainment, like crossword puzzles.

Charles had his eye on another sport they could share, though; he waited impatiently toward the end of the season for a few dry days in a row. Finally the rain did let up for a week, and the ground was hard enough for Corgie to introduce Gray to the pleasures of his tennis court.

Charles claimed to have played an excellent game back in New York before he was drafted, and told Gray it was tennis he missed more than any other element of Western civilization. After setting a full work crew to refurbishing his court, he walked Gray proudly around its hard-packed clay. He’d had the crew lay down the sacred white lines with ash and string up the heavy hemp net the women of the tribe had woven. He showed her two rackets—laminated strips, soaked and bent and bound at the bottom with a leather grip. Carved at their throats were antelopes on one, lions on the other. They’d been strung with wet gut; as the gut dried it tightened, so the tension on the strings was surprisingly high. The rackets were a little heavy, but lovingly made, and beautiful.

Corgie’s most controversial achievements were his tennis balls. He’d scrounged rubber out of the carcass of his plane and bound it with hide. They were, Gray conceded, miraculously spherical, but the bounce was another matter. “But they do bounce,” said Corgie, taking his ball back from her ungrateful hands. “You try to make a tennis ball.”

Corgie led Gray happily to his court, swishing the air with his racket, the lions at its throat in a position of yowling victory. Charles stretched out before the game with large animal glee, like a predator who’s been cooped up in his lair too long and is ready for a hunting spree.

Il-Ororen gathered around the court with enthusiasm, and Gray called Corgie’s attention to Odinaye’s presence in the front row. “Heed your vernacular.”

Charles snorted and went to his side. He didn’t know the word “vernacular.”

“I attempted to—instruct this—population,” said Corgie after a couple of rather handsome warm-up serves, “on this—pastime. They didn’t—comprehend it. Every—primitive I—inculcated—played a lob game.” He went on quickly, irritated with the vocabathon. “I like a good hard rally, Kaiser. This counts.”

When she tried to return his serve, it thudded into the net.

“You ever—indulge yourself in this—diversion before, Kaiser?”

“Once or twice,” said Gray. That was all she said for the rest of their play.

On Corgie’s second point he double-faulted, but on the third Gray socked the ball into the net again; Corgie looked archly sympathetic, though he should have noticed that she’d nearly gotten the ball across this time. “It takes time to—accustom yourself to the—facilities,” said Charles. “First game’s practice.”

Gray did win one point in their practice game, and Corgie was elaborately congratulatory. Compliments can be far more insulting than criticism; she hadn’t won on a very good shot. Still, Gray gathered her lips together and said nothing.

Later, Corgie no doubt regretted his concession on the first game as practice, for Gray “accustomed herself to the facilities” quite readily. And Gray didn’t play a lob game.

Corgie stopped making conversation. He lay into the ball with his full weight, but consistently started driving it into the net. His eyes blackened; his stroke got more desperate; his game plummeted. In fact, the whole set was over in short order. Corgie strode with steely control past Gray, his grip on his racket tight and sweaty. The lions at its throat were whining.

“You don’t desire to consummate the entire match?” asked Gray.

“No, I do not desire to consummate the entire match,” Corgie mimicked her through his teeth. “You didn’t tell me you were some kind of all-Africa tennis champion.”

“You didn’t inquire.”