The Female of the Species Read Online Free PDF Page A

that wise,” said Gray.
    “Neither do I,” said Hassatti. “I tell you, Msabu, it will take you a long time, longer than most e-ngoroyoni . Know from Hassatti that this will cost you. It is like when a boy waits too long and becomes all grown before he is circumcised. There is much pain, and slow healing.”
    It was five in the morning. Hassatti said he would wait for his friend Richardson; Gray would find an airplane. They spoke in Masai.
    “Well, I am about to go,” said Gray.
    “ Aiya naa, sere! Goodbye. Pray to God, accost only the things which are safe, and meet no one but blind people.”
    “Lie down,” said Gray, “with honey wine and milk.”
    “So be it.”
    Hassatti followed her out the door to watch that long, sweeping stride of hers, listening to the clean click of her heels against the linoleum like the clop of small hooves. Gray never seemed to be walking fast, but she covered ground quickly, like a languorous, leggy animal across the plain. Strange she was not Masai. She had the bones of his own people. Hassatti could see her ranging into the bush, standing spear-straight to meet this ghostlike white man and his many guns. Though he had just arrived in this new country and had much to study, Hassatti almost went after her down the hall, for this was a scene he would have given much to see.
     
    Gray returned that morning to her apartment, having arranged her trip to Nairobi for the following day. She sat at her desk and composed three notes. First, to Richardson, she wrote: “On good advice I am off to become wise.—Gray Kaiser.”
    Second, she wrote the man she was dating. Most certainly he wanted to marry her, too. “Dear Dan,” she jotted. “I’ve been called out of town. May be gone for a long time. Don’t hold your breath. —G.”
    So you put a stamp on it, Gray, what was it, three cents then? That’s how much it cost you . What did it cost him, though? You didn’t even know. Set on the corner of your desk, it was one more of those easy dismissals of a man who adored you. Ever since she was fifteen, men had been proposing to her, and she’d learned early to whisk them away like so many flies. How many times had Errol himself watched her discard prostrate admirers? He’d enjoyed watching, yet it pained him a little. Errol truly believed she didn’t understand how they felt, and for an anthropologist that was a failing.
    The third letter she sent to her father, and it was the one note of consideration she struck all morning. Gray enclosed a copy of Hassatti’s map, just in case she didn’t return. PerhapsGray feared as Errol did each time they returned to Kenya that ol-changito , let loose on those hard-packed plains, would lope across the white horizon to graze under acacia trees, to bolt between watering holes, to sniff the hard brilliant air and so give up on English and coffee and little efficient notes in the mail altogether.
    More likely she knew the situation she was walking into was dangerous. Even Gray now admitted that going on this expedition by herself had been pigheaded. But ol-murani was planning on shouldering her pack and her spear and her wooden club and launching off into the sunset to find her lion…Gray had seen too many Westerns, and you knew she identified, not with the simpering prairie wives, but with the sharpshooters.
    Gray took out her tent and began to reroll it to fit into its insanely small bag. So it was dangerous. So he had guns. Gray paused at the thought for one tiny, intelligent moment. She took a breath and kept on going. Fine. Here was a woman who had spent the better part of World War II thinking. Enough was enough. She was tired of having men tell stories about dragging their best friends for ten miles on their backs under fire, all the while Gray feeling abstracted and left out. It was time to begin a life in which actions could have consequences.
    Besides. Gray shot a look up at the mirror that hung on her door and caught her own face looking