J. Coetzee - Disgrace

On Donkin Square stallholders are already setting up trestle tables and laying out their wares. There is a smell of burning meat. A cold mist hangs over the town; people rub their hands, stamp their feet, curse. There is a show of bonhomie from which Lucy, to his relief, holds herself apart. They are in what appears to be the produce quarter. On their left are three African women with milk, masa, butter to sell; also, from a bucket with a wet cloth over it, soup-bones. On their right are an old Afrikaner couple whom Lucy greets as Tante Miems and Oom Koos, and a little assistant in a balaclava cap who cannot be more than ten. Like Lucy, they have potatoes and onions to sell, but also bottled jams, preserves, dried fruit, packets of buchu tea, honeybush tea, herbs.

Lucy has brought two canvas stools. They drink coffee from a thermos flask, waiting for the first customers.

Two weeks ago he was in a classroom explaining to the bored youth of the country the distinction between drink and drink up, burned and burnt. The perfective, signifying an action carried through to its conclusion. How far away it all seems! I live, I have lived, I lived.

Lucy's potatoes, tumbled out into a bushel basket, have been washed clean. Koos and Miems's are still speckled with earth. In the course of the morning Lucy takes in nearly five hundred rand. Her flowers sell steadily; at eleven o'clock she drops her prices and the last of the produce goes. There is plenty of trade too at the milk-and-meat stall; but the old couple, seated side by side wooden and unsmiling, do less well. Many of Lucy's customers know her by name: middle-aged women, most of them, with a touch of the proprietary in their attitude to her, as though her success were theirs too. Each time she introduces him: 'Meet my father, David Lurie, on a visit from Cape Town.'

'You must be proud of your daughter, Mr Lurie,' they say. 'Yes, very proud,' he replies.

'Bev runs the animal refuge,' says Lucy, after one of the introductions. 'I give her a hand sometimes. We'll drop in at her place on the way back, if that is all right with you.'

He has not taken to Bev Shaw, a dumpy, bustling little woman with black freckles, close-cropped, wiry hair, and no neck. He does not like women who make no effort to be attractive. It is a resistance he has had to Lucy's friends before. Nothing to be proud of: a prejudice that has settled in his mind, settled down. His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean. But he does not care to do so, or does not care enough.

The Animal Welfare League, once an active charity in Grahamstown, has had to close down its operation. However, a handful of volunteers led by Bev Shaw still runs a clinic from the old premises. He has nothing against the animal lovers with whom Lucy has been mixed up as long as he can remember. The world would no doubt be a worse place without them. So when Bev Shaw opens her front door he puts on a good face, though in fact he is repelled by the odours of cat urine and dog mange and Jeyes Fluid that greet them.

The house is just as he had imagined it would be: rubbishy furniture, a clutter of ornaments (porcelain shepherdesses, cowbells, an ostrich-feather flywhisk), the yammer of a radio, the cheeping of birds in cages, cats everywhere underfoot. There is not only Bev Shaw, there is Bill Shaw too, equally squat, drinking tea at the kitchen table, with a beet-red face and silver hair and a sweater with a floppy collar. 'Sit down, sit down, Dave,' says Bill. 'Have a cup, make yourself at home.'

It has been a long morning, he is tired, the last thing he wants to do is trade small talk with these people. He casts Lucy a glance. 'We won't stay, Bill,' she says, 'I'm just picking up some medicines.'

Through a window he glimpses the Shaws' back yard: an apple tree dropping wormridden fruit, rampant weeds, an area fenced in with galvanized-iron sheets, wooden pallets, old tyres, where chickens scratch around and what looks uncommonly like a duiker snoozes in a corner.

'What do you think?' says Lucy afterwards in the car.

'I don't want to be rude. It's a subculture of its own, I'm sure. Don't they have children?'

'No, no children. Don't underestimate Bev. She's not a fool. She does an enormous amount of good. She's been going into D Village for years, first for Animal Welfare, now on her own.'

'It must be a losing battle.'

'Yes, it is. There is no funding any longer. On the list of the nation's priorities, animals come nowhere.'

'She must get despondent. You too.'

'Yes. No. Does it matter? The animals she helps aren't despondent. They are greatly relieved.'

'That's wonderful, then. I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.'

He is surprised by his outburst. He is not in a bad temper, not in the least.

'You think I ought to involve myself in more important things,' says Lucy. They are on the open road; she drives without glancing at him. 'You think, because I am your daughter, I ought to be doing something better with my life.'

He is already shaking his head. 'No . . . no ... no,' he murmurs.

`You think I ought to be painting still lives or teaching myself Russian. You don't approve of friends like Bev and Bill Shaw because they are not going to lead me to a higher life.'

'That's not true, Lucy.'

'But it is true. They are not going to lead me to a higher life, and the reason is, there is no higher life. This is the only life there is. Which we share with animals. That's the example that people like Bev try to set. That's the example I try to follow. To share some of our human privilege with the beasts. I don't want to come back in another existence as a dog or a pig and have to live as dogs or pigs live under us.'

'Lucy, my dearest, don't be cross. Yes, I agree, this is the only life there is. As for animals, by all means let us be kind to them. But let us not lose perspective. We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher, necessarily, just different. So if we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we feel guilty or fear retribution.'

Lucy draws a breath. She seems about to respond to his homily, but then does not. They arrive at the house in silence.

NINE

HE IS SITTING in the front room, watching soccer on television. The score is nil-all; neither team seems interested in winning.

The commentary alternates between Sotho and Xhosa, languages of which he understands not a word. He turns the sound down to a murmur. Saturday afternoon in South Africa: a time consecrated to men and their pleasures. He nods off.

When he awakes, Petrus is beside him on the sofa with a bottle of beer in his hand. He has turned the volume higher.

'Bushbucks,' says Petrus. 'My team. Bushbucks and Sundowns.'

Sundowns take a corner. There is a melee in the goalmouth. Petrus groans and clasps his head. When the dust clears, the Bushbucks goalkeeper is lying on the ground with the ball under his chest. 'He is good! He is good!' says Petrus. 'He is a good goalkeeper. They must keep him.'

The game ends scoreless. Petrus switches channels. Boxing: two tiny men, so tiny that they barely come up to the referee's chest, circle, leap in, belabour each other.

He gets up, wanders through to the back of the house. Lucy is lying on her bed, reading. 'What are you reading?' he says. She looks at him quizzically, then takes the earplugs out of her ears.

'What are you reading?' he repeats; and then, 'It's not working out, is it? Shall I leave?'