J. Coetzee - Disgrace

`That's very philosophical.'

`Yes. When all else fails, philosophize.'

`But you have a weapon.'

‘I have a rifle. I'll show you. I bought it from a neighbour. I haven't ever used it, but I have it.'

`Good. An armed philosopher. I approve.'

Dogs and a gun; bread in the oven and a crop in the earth.

Curious that he and her mother, cityfolk, intellectuals, should have produced this throwback, this sturdy young settler. But perhaps it was not they who produced her: perhaps history had the larger share. She offers him tea. He is hungry: he wolfs down two blocklike slices of bread with prickly-pear jam, also home-made. He is aware of her eyes on him as he eats. He must be careful: nothing so distasteful to a child as the workings of a parent's body.

Her own fingernails are none too clean. Country dirt: honourable, he supposes. He unpacks his suitcase in Helen's room. The drawers are empty; in the huge old wardrobe there is only a blue overall hanging. If Helen is away, it is not just for a while.

Lucy takes him on a tour of the premises. She reminds him about not wasting water, about not contaminating the septic tank. He knows the lesson but listens dutifully. Then she shows him over the boarding kennels. On his last visit there had been only one pen. Now there are five, solidly built, with concrete bases, galvanized poles and struts, and heavy-gauge mesh, shaded by young bluegum trees. The dogs are excited to see her: Dobermanns, German Shepherds, ridgebacks, bull terriers, Rottweilers.

'Watchdogs, all of them,' she says. 'Working dogs, on short contracts: two weeks, one week, sometimes just a weekend. The pets tend to come in during the summer holidays.'

‘And cats? Don't you take cats?'

`Don't laugh. I'm thinking of branching into cats. I'm just not set up for them yet.'

`Do you still have your stall at the market?'

`Yes, on Saturday mornings. I'll take you along.'

This is how she makes a living: from the kennels, and from selling flowers and garden produce. Nothing could be more simple.

'Don't the dogs get bored?' He points to one, a tan-coloured bulldog bitch with a cage to herself who, head on paws, watches them morosely, not even bothering to get up.

'Katy? She's abandoned. The owners have done a bunk. Account unpaid for months. I don't know what I'm going to do about her. Try to find her a home, I suppose. She's sulking, but otherwise she's all right. She gets taken out every day for exercise. By me or by Petrus. It's part of the package.'

Petrus?'

'You will meet him. Petrus is my new assistant. In fact, since March, co-proprietor. Quite a fellow.'

He strolls with her past the mud-walled dam, where a family of ducks coasts serenely, past the beehives, and through the garden: flowerbeds and winter vegetables - cauliflowers, potatoes, beetroot, chard, onions. They visit the pump and storage dam on the edge of the property. Rains for the past two years have been good, the water table has risen.

She talks easily about these matters. A frontier farmer of the new breed. In the old days, cattle and maize. Today, dogs and daffodils. The more things change the more they remain the same. History repeating itself, though in a more modest vein. Perhaps history has learned a lesson. They walk back along an irrigation furrow. Lucy's bare toes grip the red earth, leaving clear prints. A solid woman, embedded in her new life. Good! If this is to be what he leaves behind - this daughter, this woman - then he does not have to be ashamed.

'There's no need to entertain me,' he says, back in the house. 'I've brought my books. I just need a table and chair.'

'Are you working on something in particular?' she asks carefully. His work is not a subject they often talk about.

'I have plans. Something on the last years of Byron. Not a book, or not the kind of book I have written in the past. Something for the stage, rather. Words and music. Characters talking and singing.'

'I didn't know you still had ambitions in that direction.'

'I thought I would indulge myself. But there is more to it than that. One wants to leave something behind. Or at least a man wants to leave something behind. It's easier for a woman.'

'Why is it easier for a woman?'

'Easier, I mean, to produce something with a life of its own.'

'Doesn't being a father count?'

'Being a father . . . I can't help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business. But let us wait and see what comes. If something does come, you will be the first to hear. The first and probably the last.'

'Are you going to write the music yourself?'

'I'll borrow the music, for the most part. I have no qualms about borrowing. At the beginning I thought it was a subject that would call for quite lush orchestration. Like Strauss, say. Which would have been beyond my powers. Now I'm inclining the other way, toward a very meagre accompaniment - violin, cello, oboe or maybe bassoon. But it's all in the realm of ideas as yet. I haven't written a note - I've been distracted. You must have heard about my troubles.'

'Roz mentioned something on the telephone.'

'Well, we won't go into that now. Some other time.'

'Have you left the university for good?'

'I have resigned. I was asked to resign.'

'Will you miss it?'

'Will I miss it? I don't know. I was no great shakes as a teacher. I was having less and less rapport, I found, with my students. What I had to say they didn't care to hear. So perhaps I won't miss it. Perhaps I'll enjoy my release.'

A man is standing in the doorway, a tall man in blue overalls and rubber boots and a woollen cap. 'Petrus, come in, meet my father,' says Lucy. Petrus wipes his boots. They shake hands. A lined, weathered face; shrewd eyes. Forty? Forty-five?

Petrus turns to Lucy. 'The spray,' he says: 'I have come for the spray.'

It's in the kombi. Wait here, I'll fetch it.'

He is left with Petrus. 'You look after the dogs,' he says, to break the silence.

'I look after the dogs and I work in the garden. Yes.' Petrus gives a broad smile. 'I am the gardener and the dog-man.' He reflects for a moment. 'The dog-man,' he repeats, savouring the phrase.

'I have just travelled up from Cape Town. There are times when I feel anxious about my daughter all alone here. It is very isolated.'

'Yes,' says Petrus, 'it is dangerous.' He pauses. 'Everything is dangerous today. But here it is all right, I think.' And he gives another smile.

Lucy returns with a small bottle. 'You know the measurement: one teaspoon to ten litres of water.'

'Yes, I know.' And Petrus ducks out through the low doorway. 'Petrus seems a good man,' he remarks.

'He has his head screwed on right.'

'Does he live on the property?'

'He and his wife have the old stable. I've put in electricity. It's quite comfortable. He has another wife in Adelaide, and children, some of them grown up. He goes off and spends time there occasionally.'

He leaves Lucy to her tasks and takes a stroll as far as the Kenton road. A cool winter's day, the sun already dipping over red hills dotted with sparse, bleached grass. Poor land, poor soil, he thinks. Exhausted. Good only for goats. Does Lucy really intend to spend her life here? He hopes it is only a phase.

A group of children pass him on their way home from school. He greets them; they greet him back. Country ways. Already Cape Town is receding into the past.

Without warning a memory of the girl comes back: of her neat little breasts with their upstanding nipples, of her smooth flat belly. A ripple of desire passes through him. Evidently whatever it was is not over yet. He returns to the house and finishes unpacking. A long time since he last lived with a woman. He will have to mind his manners; he will have to be neat.