Lionel Shriver - Game Control

Back at the table, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she’d thrown it away, but she didn’t regale him with tales of the grateful needy either. Instead she sulked, quieter and less entertaining than ever. At the end of the meal, Calvin inquired, with that delicate ironic smile he had refined even as a young man, whether her friends outside would like dessert. Eleanor glowered and asked for tea.

They had taken a walk and ended up in Calvin’s room at the Norfolk, and at three in the morning he had had to ring room service for sandwiches when Eleanor confessed she was famished.

I’ll grant that was histrionic,” she recalled, studying the glistening red game on her fork while the waiter filled her wine glass with an obsequious flourish. “But I still feel self-conscious, eating in places like this. I may finish my dinner, but I haven’t changed my mind that it’s unfair.”

“So tell me,” asked Calvin, “if you had your way, you’d make the world over into one big Scandinavia? Generous dole, long paid maternity leaves and every meal with a compulsory salad. Where every can is recycled and the rivers run clean.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Justice is a bore. Order is a bore. No one on this planet has any vision.”

“Well, we’re hardly in danger of all that perfection.”

“They are in Scandinavia. And look at them: they shoot themselves in the head.”

“So you think it’s better, less boring, that we sit carving slices of kongoni with good silver while half this city can’t find a pawpaw tonight?”

“You’re focused on the wrong level, Eleanor,” he said impatiently. “Prawns to beggars. Your sensation of unfairness doesn’t help anyone, does it?”

“I’m still ashamed,” she said staunchly.

“But it is not white, well-off Eleanor who feels ashamed, it is Eleanor. If you were Number Two wife grinding maize, you would feel ashamed—of your shabby clothes, of the woeful prospects for your ten malnourished children, of the fact you could not read. By what, really, are you so mortified?”

She shrugged. “Being here, I guess. Not Africa, anywhere. In some regards I’ve chosen perfectly the wrong field, though I doubt by accident. We all talk about over-population, but most of us don’t regard the problem as applying to ourselves. We think that means there are too many of them . I don’t. I think it includes me. I feel unnecessary. I feel a burden. I think that’s my biggest fear, too, being a burden. I’m constantly trying to make up for something, to lighten the load of my existence. I never quite do enough. I use non-returnable containers and non-biodegradable plastic and non-renewable petroleum for my car. I cost too much. I’m not worth the price.”

“Is this what they mean by low self-esteem ?”

Eleanor laughed.

“Why not jump off a bridge?”

“That would hurt my parents. I’m trapped.”

“You can’t possibly have persuaded yourself this shame of yours has the least thing to do with environmental degradation and African poverty?”

“Some,” she defended. “I know that sounds pretentious. At any rate they make it worse.”

“So you have not remained passionate. You realize what you do for a living doesn’t make a hair’s dent in population growth, which is the only thing that would pull this continent’s fate out of the fire. You refuse to become jaded. So what has happened to you? I haven’t seen you in sixteen years.”

She smiled wanly. “I think it’s called ordinary depression. And,” she groped, “I get angry, a little. Instead of helping the oppressed, I seem to have joined them: they oppress me. And after all these years in Africa, I’ve grown a little resentful. OK, I’m white, but I didn’t colonize this place and I was never a slave trader and I didn’t fashion a world where some people eat caviare and the rest eat corn. It’s not my fault. It’s not my personal fault. Anger may be too strong a word, but I am getting annoyed.”

“You are finished, madam?” He had been waiting for her to conclude for five minutes.

“Yes, it was very good. I’m sorry I couldn’t eat it all, perhaps you could—”

“Don’t even think about it,” Calvin interrupted.

It was true that a doggie bag back at her hotel would only rot. “Never mind,” she added. “But thank you. The food was lovely. Asante sana, bwana .” The waiter shot her a smile that suggested he was not used to being thanked, though she couldn’t tell if he thought she was especially nice or especially barmy.

“If you want my advice,” Calvin continued. “You’re not married, are you?”

He might have asked earlier. “No.”

“You could use some small, private happiness.”

“Right,” Eleanor muttered, “mail order.”

“At least buy yourself a new dress.”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

“It’s too long and dark and the neck is much too high. And at your age, should you still be wearing bangs?”

“I’ve always worn bangs!”

“Exactly. And do you realize that you do not have to look at the world the way you have been taught? There are perspectives from which starving people in Africa do not matter a toss. Because your dowdy sympathy is not helping them, and it is certainly not helping you.”

They ordered coffee and Calvin cheerfully popped chocolates. “I am advising that you don’t merely have to get married,” he pursued. “There are intellectual avenues at your disposal. You can allow yourself to think abominations . There are a few ineffectual restraints put on what you may do, but so far no one can arrest you for what goes on in your head.”

“I don’t see what kind of solution that is, to get nasty.”

“This is a short life, Eleanor—thank God.” He spanked cocoa from his hands. “And what happens in it is play. Rules are for the breaking. If you knew what I thought about, you’d never speak to me again.”

She ran her thumb along her knife. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

“I hope so. You’re better off avoiding my company. It has even occurred to me—this we share—that I should no longer be here myself.”

“You mean Africa?”

“I do not mean Africa.”

“What are all these atrocities in your head you think would put me off?”

“For starters, I’m no longer persuaded by good and evil.”

“That’s impossible. You can’t live without morality.”

“It’s quite possible, and most people do. They manipulate morality to their advantage, but that is a process distinct from being guided by its principles. Moreover—” His fingers sprang against each other and his eyes were shining—“I don’t like human beings.”

“Thanks.”

“Astute of you to take it personally. Most people imagine I mean everyone but them.”

“You’re trying awfully hard to ensure I don’t dine with you again. Why isn’t it working?”

“Because you agree with me on much of what I’ve said, and especially on what I haven’t. All these dangers you skirt, Eleanor—cynicism, apathy, fatigue: the pits in which you fear you’ll stumble—they are all yourself. You are an entirely different person than you pretend, Ms Merritt, and I suppose that is frightening. Though my advice would be, of course: jump in the pit.

“Alternatively, you can claim, no Dr. Piper, I really am a prim, right-thinking spinster, and I will die of malaria in the bush helping improve maternal health. As well you may.”

The waiter brought the bill, folded in leather and presented on a silver tray like an extra treat. Eleanor asked, “How do you make a living now?”

“Spite.”

“I don’t know that paid.”

“It doesn’t pay for one’s victims, that’s definite.”