“What?”
“Do you want to wait until Saturday,” he said impatiently, “or do you want to go tomorrow if there’s a flight?”
“What?”
Errol rolled his eyes. “Lenny, I’m going to have to get back to you. Meanwhile, see what you can scavenge for tomorrow. We’re miracle packers when we have to be. Otherwise, as soon as possible. Thanks.”
He hung up and turned to Gray, tired of humoring her. He was a sympathetic person, but he wished she would snap out of this and do her job. “I know this is a blow, Gray. And one of several lately. But you’re going to have to get into gear. We’ll have to move fast the next few days.”
“Why?”
Errol felt as if he were talking to a retarded child. “It’s bad enough we weren’t there yesterday. This next week is going to be incredible. We should bring the movie cameras. Frankly, if Lenny can swing it, I think we should fly tomorrow.”
“Nnno.”
Somehow they weren’t communicating.
“What can’t you wrap up? Leave the documentary. The world has waited all these years, it can live without Charles Corgie for a few months more.”
“But I can’t,” she said quietly.
“What?”
She got up and paced aimlessly about the den. “It would be months, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but it was going to be months originally, so just move the whole project up. Cancel what you have to. You haven’t been making appointments with anyone, anyway—”
Gray picked up the phone. “Lenny? Gray. Make that a booking for three. And Lenny? Don’t pay for them until you hear from me, understand?—Definitely not before Saturday. Errol is a little optimistic about our ability to extricate ourselves so easily. Yes. I’ll call. Thanks. Goodbye.”
“Three?” Errol inquired sourly.
“We always bring an assistant.”
“Oh? Arabella will be delighted you thought of her.”
“Arabella will not be delighted.”
Errol made another drink, very stiff. With his back to her he was thinking an unpleasant question, and by the time he asked it he was furious, for there was a time not long ago when such a question would have insulted her.
He turned around. “And what if he says no?”
She shrank back. “Why would he do that?”
“Why would he do anything? Do you know him? Can you ever predict what he’ll do?”
Her nostrils quivered.
“How many orders has he been taking lately, Gray? He wasn’t much of a soldier even in Toroto, as I remember.”
“Not orders. The opportunity—with Gray Kaiser—” She seemed to have trouble delivering her own name with the proper sense of importance.
“Ralph has his own plans, doesn’t he? He’s going to the Pacific. To lie in the sun and avoid difficult vocabulary. In February, when the weather’s so unpleasant here. Had you forgotten? You’re funding him.”
“Not yet I haven’t. My recommendations aren’t due for two months.”
“So would you hold that over his head? To get him to go to Ghana?”
Errol really did seem to be driving her toward despair; this gave him some sadistic satisfaction. “I don’t care for that kind of leverage,” said Gray. “I’d want him to come to Ghana because he wanted to be with me.”
“Too bad. With Ralph that’s the kind of leverage that works, and you know it.”
“No,” she said feebly. “Not only.”
“It’s November. The Lone-luk is a six-month project, maybe more. You’re asking him to put off his trip for yours. Is he likely to do that, Gray? Really.”
“I’ll simply ask him,” she said faintly, “tomorrow.”
“You didn’t answer my question: What if he says no?”
She bowed her head. “I won’t go.”
The den swallowed her admission into a vast silence. The heat came on; the furnace purred below them, throaty and luxurious. Hot air wafted from the vents like the bloody breath of a successful predator; the wildebeest bones shone white and bare.
Errol picked up the smug soapstone lion and brought it down on the desk with anger. Gray jumped. “This is the limit,” said Errol, and left the room to phone upstairs. He returned to the den to announce, “We’re taking a trip, Gray. Right now.”
“To Ghana—?”
“A good deal closer. But maybe it will get you to Ghana at that. Put on your coat. Let’s go.” He actually took her arm and pulled her to the rack in the foyer.
“What are you talking about? Where are you taking me?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m tired and have a lot of thinking to do and would like a drink and a fire and some peace and quiet—”
Errol pointed his finger, just the way Raphael had pointed at Walter. It worked. She froze. “You’re coming with me, Gray Kaiser. I’ve put up with a lot from you lately, doing more than my share of the work around here, and you know it. Meanwhile, you waste away lamely pasting together shots of Charles Corgie while you’re waiting for the phone to ring. I’m the one who’s tired. This may be your project, but I’ve put in a lot of work on this matriarchy study, and I’m not going to have it botched. I don’t want to get our most important material secondhand or not at all because you want to be with your boyfriend. You owe me,” said Errol. “So are you coming or not?”
Gray looked at him like an outpatient, but she did get her coat. Errol almost smiled. He hadn’t spent all these months around Ralph for nothing.
At the car, though, she insisted on getting out again. “I’ll come back,” she said, angrily shaking his hand off her arm. “I want to get my ferret.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I’d like some warm companionship. That’s obviously not going to come from you at the moment.”
So Errol waited for Gray to get Solo; she wrapped him around her neck, and the animal glared at Errol with his usual hostility. All the way there he hissed when Errol changed gears.
“Dr. Katrakis?”
“Anita. And may I call you Errol? Ellen’s spoken so much about you; I feel as if we’re old friends.”
Errol was surprised that Ellen had mentioned him at all, but pleased, too. He led Gray inside the apartment, which was attractive though dissettlingly clean, like the rooms of the retired. When he introduced Gray, Anita nodded with a small, dense smile.
“Have a seat and let me get tea.” Errol watched her go. He’d imagined her as a nervous, fragile character, and Anita was no such thing; yet there was something slightly peculiar about the way she moved. Her timing was off. There was a lag to every gesture that made her motions seem infused with effort.
Reminding himself that this was Ralph’s most recent discard, Errol assessed her looks. Though her clothes weren’t flattering, she was dark and interesting-looking. If this were his teacher, Errol would definitely come to class.
When she brought in the tea tray, Errol explained, “Gray is on the board to determine who’s awarded the Ford Anthropology Fellowships. One of your old students has somehow”—Errol shot Gray a look—“come near the top of the list, and we were hoping you could shed some light on his qualities. He has become the object of some controversy.”
“You must mean—Raphael.” She said his name with that same lag of hers. She leaned back in her chair and breathed the steam from her tea.
“Did you know him well?” asked Errol deftly.
This time she didn’t hesitate, though she spoke to Gray. “I had an affair with him.”
Gray looked over at Errol in dull horror; she put her cup down hard in its saucer. Tea slurped over its side.
“You knew that, didn’t you?” Anita asked Errol. “That’s why you’re here.”
“True,” Errol admitted. “But it’s kind of you to be so forthright.”
That dense smile again. “Not that kind. Still, everyone knows, Errol. There’s no point in pretending.” The smile turned to a wan one. “I know all about pr
etending, so I’m not very keen on it anymore.”
“Does it distress you to talk about this?”
“Distress me?” She drew a finger thoughtfully to her chin. “I am distressed.” She leaned forward toward Errol as if they shared a secret. “That’s all that matters in the end, isn’t that right? Just the facts.”
She sat back in her chair, a little crooked but relaxed. Errol supposed that the one nice thing about being disappointed about what mattered to you most in the world was that you could not be disappointed anymore; to be immersed in your own pain was perhaps to overcome it. Nothing, after all, was going to come knocking at the door that would fell this woman, for no one could push you down if you were already on the floor.
“We were wondering,” said Errol slowly, “did Raphael Sarasola use you in any way?”
“In every way,” she returned with a shrug. “For my sailboat. My money. My connections. You name it. Up to the very end.” She added wistfully, “Beyond the end, even.”
“How do you mean?”
“This last February Raphael hadn’t called me for a long time. I’d lost my job, and was still unemployed. Out of the blue he showed up at my door. With no apology—he doesn’t do that—he told me he’d read a passage that had struck his eye. Funny, he wasn’t at all well read, but single sentences could have more impact on him than whole books on other people.”
“What had so struck him?” asked Gray.
“Some story about a man in Africa. He told me a last-minute assistantship had been posted for fieldwork in Kenya. He was dying to go. I know it’s difficult to imagine Raphael dying to do anything, but he had an urgency I’d never seen—I certainly never saw it in his arrangements to see me…” She took a sip of her tea. “Anyway, he knew I had some close friends in anthropology, and asked me to do what I could.”
“And you did?” asked Errol incredulously.
“I can’t explain if you don’t understand.”
“He used your connections to go to Kenya? He used you to leave you.”
“That’s right,” she agreed without heat. “He left the continent within a few days, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
Errol was getting frustrated with her mildness. “Doesn’t this make you angry?”
“No. He used me. I allowed it. It was my fault. Or my choice, anyway. Why should I be angry?”
“That sounds to me as if you’re taking too much responsibility.”
“Raphael was responsible,” she responded reasonably. “He was faithfully the person I knew he was from the moment I met him. When you know someone, you know what they’ll do to you. You accept that, or not.”
So Anita had refined responsibility, just as Ida (people put themselves in the situations they put themselves) had refined blame. Ida would say: “You asked for it.” Anita would say: “Yes, I did.” Ida would hit her; Anita would say: “I knew you would do that.” Ida would say: “Yes, you did.” They would get along famously.
“By that way of thinking,” Errol pointed out, “the behavior of everyone in your life is your fault.”
“Maybe it is,” said Anita, as if the assertion weren’t the least farfetched. “But especially Raphael’s. It’s easy to know what he’ll do, because he doesn’t even lie. He never told me he loved me, not once.”
Gray squirmed on the couch. “Maybe he has a hard time saying such a thing.”
Anita looked at Gray sympathetically. “Or maybe it wasn’t true. I knew that. I also knew,” she went on with a sigh, “that maybe he couldn’t ever say that to anyone. So if I still insisted on believing that he loved me anyway, that was my own weakness. He was hardly to blame for that.”
“Errol,” said Gray, in a funny, strangled voice, “maybe we should go, please?”
“Before you leave,” said Anita, “what is that?”
“A ferret,” said Gray heavily.
“May I hold it?”
“Well,” said Gray reluctantly. “He’s very fond of me, and well behaved. With other people he can be unpredictable. He sometimes bites.”
“I’ll brave it,” said Anita. She reached for the pet with hunger, as if she hadn’t touched anything warm and animate for a long time. Gray looked disappointed when Solo acted with Anita exactly as he did with Gray—he was tolerant of being fondled and rested placidly in her hands. Anita stroked him, purring, “There. I’m not so different from your master, am I? I’m not so bad.” She looked up. “These can be vicious. You’ve got him well tamed.”
“I hope so,” said Gray, taking Solo back and walking toward the door.
“I was glad to finally meet you, Errol. And Dr. Kaiser—”
“Yes?”
“I just wanted to extend my—congratulations, in a way. He’s a hard catch.”
“Pardon?” asked Gray coldly.
“But you also have my sympathy.”
“I don’t need your sympathy.”
“You will. You’re already suffering. I can see it around your eyes. Why are you here, after all? You shouldn’t have had to ask me if Raphael used me. He would tell you himself. It’s one of the things that’s most appalling, isn’t it? He answers questions. But you can’t afford to ask him something like that anymore, can you?” She pressed Gray’s hand. “I’ll pray for you tonight.”
Errol had the strange sensation as they parted that she hadn’t always been a religious woman.
Gray ran down the stairs; Errol had trouble catching up with her. “Gray!” he called. “The car’s right here!”
She kept walking. The ferret was sitting on her shoulder and stared back at Errol with black, mocking eyes. Errol ran up and stopped her with a hand on her arm. She wouldn’t look at him. “Why did you do that to me?” she asked, looking straight ahead.
“I didn’t do it to you. I did it for you.”
“You lost me.”
Tact was beside the point now. “The sooner you get away from the man, the better, and you know it.”
“I know it? That sounds strangely like your opinion.”
“And the opinion of anyone who’s ever known him or seen you two together. The man is poison, and even Dr. Impervious can’t swill that kind of arsenic week after week without getting a little woozy.”
“I was wondering when you’d pull this.”
“I’m your best friend. To keep quiet any longer would be to do you a disservice—”
“That’s very considerate, but I can live without your little revelations, thank you.”
“He’s doing you in!”
“But I want him to!” Gray stood and breathed.
Errol’s hands fell to his sides. She wanted to be done in? Gray had no idea what she was talking about, but Errol did. He wanted to save her. He wanted to save her from what his own life was like.
“The point is,” he explained practically, “especially knowing what kind of man he is—”
“You have no idea what kind of man he is, and neither does she.”
“—You cannot allow him to affect your work.”
“So that’s it. Work. The great sacred icon, isn’t it? The untouchable Work. The one real God in Gray Kaiser’s life, isn’t that right?” For someone who didn’t believe in regret, she sounded awfully bitter. “Imagine a mere man interfering with the study of man. Let me ask you this,” she said, with an almost ugly insight. “What if I asked you to go live with the Lone-luk by yourself? What if I told you to go ahead and fly there tomorrow? Since Work is so hallowed, so all-important?”
Errol drew himself up. “I would say,” he said icily, “absolutely not. This is your project, and I’ve done plenty more than my share already. If you think you can shove me off to Africa so you can ruin your life and your career with total abandon—”
“I wouldn’t be ditching you, Errol. You and that sister of yours!”
“You would, too! But you’re not packing your only conscience off to do your work for you just because Ralphie isn’t up to Ghana this month—”
“We may all
be packing off to Ghana if you would just give me a chance to ask the man to go.”
“What if I told you that if he goes, I’m staying here?”
“Is that what you’re telling me?”
Errol stopped, frightened of his own ultimatum. He stammered, “I have to think about it.”
“You do that, Errol. I’m going for a walk. Goodbye.” She wrapped the ferret around her neck and turned on her heel. Errol turned on his, and they both walked militantly in opposite directions back to back, as if marking off paces in a duel. Yet neither turned around and fired; instead, Gray rounded a corner and did not return home until late at night. As for Errol, he drove to his office and spent the whole evening typing letters.
22
There was a mirror in the foyer that reflected a panoramic view of the den. Errol had noticed this before, but because information so frequently bounded over him uninvited, he’d rarely resorted to this wide screen. As Errol walked downstairs that next Friday evening, though, the mirror had the same enticing quality of drive-in movies that one passes on the highway; of big, unbidden human anguish splashed up beside the road. Errol paused.
“Frankly, I’m surprised you asked,” said Raphael, leaning back on the couch.
“You shouldn’t be. What else was I to do?” Gray had that brave look. She faced Raphael on the couch with her head high, the way Barbara Stanwyck might face into a stiff prairie wind.
“But you must know the answer,” said Raphael.
“I don’t presume anything with you.”
“What would I do?”
“Collect data. Talk to people. Live as they do and take notes. Find out what it’s like, how the power structure has shifted.”
“Why would it make any difference that I was there?”
“You’re younger,” said Gray, in a passable imitation of her most professional voice. “You could make contact more easily with the young adult and adolescent population. And—” She shrugged.
“And what?”
“Why do I always have to spell things out?”
“We don’t have to do anything. We could both”—Raphael smiled—“just sit here.”
The Female of the Species Page 35