The Female of the Species
The first novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk about Kevin is a compelling and provocative story of love and how we suffer for it.Still unattached and childless at fifty-nine, world-renowned anthropologist Gray Kaiser is seemingly invincible—and untouchable. Returning to make a documentary at the site of her first great triumph in Kenya, she is accompanied by her faithful middle-aged assistant, Errol McEchern, who has loved her for years in silence.When young graduate assistant Raphael Sarasola arrives on the scene, Gray is captivated and falls hopelessly in love—before an amazed Errol's eyes. As he follows their affair with jealous fascination, Errol watches helplessly from the sidelines as a proud and fierce woman is reduced to miserable dependence through miserable dependence.
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The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1988
Copyright © Lionel Shriver 1987
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Lionel Shriver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007564019
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007564026
Version: 2015-01-13
To Jonathan Galassi, whom I owe not only for this novel, but for a life.
The envy of any housewife up to her ears in dish towels and phone bills, the women of the Lone-luk had their water carried, their children watched and wiped, their meals prepared and their plates cleaned, while they sat in judgment, sculpted and wove, led religious services, and oversaw the production of goods for trade. However, one could recognize in them, as in equivalent patriarchal oppressors, the cold boredom of domination.
GRAY KAISER,
Ladies of the Lone-luk, 1955
Il-Ororen thought they were it. Yet they did not have the celebratory abandon of a culture that saw itself as the pinnacle of creation; rather, they were a sour, even embittered lot. If these were all the people in the world, then people were not so impressive.
… I have wondered if they took Charles in as readily as they did because they were lonely.
GRAY KAISER,
Il-Ororen: Men without History, 1949
I remember, in a rare moment of simple dispassionate clarity toward the end with Ralph, she said to me, “You win and you lose; you lose and you lose; you lose.”
“Some choice,” I said.
She was a beautiful woman, and she was tired.
ERROL MCECHERN,
American Warrior: The Life of Gray Kaiser, 2032
Table of Contents
Errol, I’m tired of being a character.” Gray leaned back in her chair. “When I meet people they expect, you know, Gray Kaiser.”
“You are Gray Kaiser.”
“I’m telling you it’s exhausting.”
“Only today, Gray. Today is exhausting.”
They both sat, breathing hard.
“You think I’m afraid of getting old?” asked Gray.
“Most people are.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I’ve planned on being a magnificent old lady since I was twelve. Katharine Hepburn: frank, arrogant, abusive. But I’ve been rehearsing that old lady for about fifty years, and now she bores me to death.”
“When I first saw you in front of that seminar twenty-five years ago I didn’t think, ‘What a magnificent old lady.’”
“What did you think?”
Errol McEchern stroked his short beard and studied her perched in her armchair: so tall and lean and angular, her neck long and arched, her gray-blond hair soft and fine as filaments, her narrow pointed feet held in pretty suede heels. Was it possible she’d hardly changed in twenty-five years, or could Errol no longer see her?
“That first afternoon,” said Errol, “I didn’t hear a word of your lecture. I just thought you were beautiful. Over and over again.”
Gray blushed; she didn’t usually do that. “Am I special, or do you do this for everyone’s birthday?”
“No, you’re special. You’ve always known that.”
“Yes, Errol,” said Gray, looking away. “I guess I always have.”
They paused, gently.
“What did you think of me, Gray? When we first met?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “I thought you were an intelligent, serious, handsome young man. I don’t actually remember the first time I met you.”
“Oh boy.”
“You want me to lie?”
“Yes,” said Errol. “Why not.”
Errol found himself looking around the den nostalgically. Yet he’d be here again, surely. He was at Gray’s house every day. His office was upstairs, with a desk full of important papers. And though he kept his own small apartment, he slept here most nights. Still, he seemed to be taking in the details of the room as if to mark them in his memory: the ebony masks and walking sticks and cowtail flyswitches on the walls, the totem pole in the corner, the little soapstone lion on the desk, and of course the wildebeest skeleton hung across the back of the room, leering with mortality. In fact, it was a cross between a den and a veldt. The furniture was animate: the sofa’s arms had sharp claws, its legs poised on wide paws; the heads of goats scrolled off the backs of chairs. In the paintings, leopards feasted. The carpet and upholstery were blood red. The lampshade by Gray’s head was crimson glass and gave her skin a meaty cast. “I am an animal,” Gray had said more than once. “Sometimes when I watch a herd of antelope streak over Tsavo I think I could take off with them and you’d never see me again.”
