J. Coetzee - Disgrace

'Yes.'

'Wake up, David. This is the country. This is Africa.'

There is a snappishness to Lucy nowadays that he sees no justification for. His usual response is to withdraw into silence. There are spells when the two of them are like strangers in the same house. He tells himself that he must be patient, that Lucy is still living in the shadow of the attack, that time needs to pass before she will be herself. But what if he is wrong? What if, after an attack like that, one is never oneself again? What if an attack like that turns one into a different and darker person altogether?

There is an even more sinister explanation for Lucy's moodiness, one that he cannot put from his mind.

'Lucy,' he asks the same day, out of the blue, 'you aren't hiding something from me, are you? You didn't pick up something from those men?'

She is sitting on the sofa in pyjamas and dressing-gown, playing with the cat. It is past noon. The cat is young, alert, skittish. Lucy dangles the belt of the gown before it. The cat slaps at the belt, quick, light paw-blows, one-two-three-four.

'Men?' she says. 'Which men?' She flicks the belt to one side; the cat dives after it. Which men? His heart stops. Has she gone mad? Is she refusing to remember?

But, it would appear, she is only teasing him. 'David, I am not a child any more. I have seen a doctor, I have had tests, I have done everything one can reasonably do. Now I can only wait.'

'I see. And by wait you mean wait for what I think you mean?'

'Yes.'

'How long will that take?'

She shrugs. 'A month. Three months. Longer. Science has not yet put a limit on how long one has to wait. For ever, maybe.'

The cat makes a quick pounce at the belt, but the game is over now.

He sits down beside his daughter; the cat jumps off the sofa, stalks away. He takes her hand. Now that he is close to her, a faint smell of staleness, unwashedness, reaches him. 'At least it won't be for ever, my dearest,' he says. 'At least you will be spared that.'

The sheep spend the rest of the day near the dam where he has tethered them. The next morning they are back on the barren patch beside the stable.

Presumably they have until Saturday morning, two days. It seems a miserable way to spend the last two days of one's life. Country ways - that is what Lucy calls this kind of thing. He has other words: indifference, hardheartedness. If the country can pass judgment on the city, then the city can pass judgment on the country too.

He has thought of buying the sheep from Petrus. But what will that accomplish? Petrus will only use the money to buy new slaughter-animals, and pocket the difference. And what will he do with the sheep anyway, once he has bought them out of slavery? Set them free on the public road? Pen them up in the dog-cages and feed them hay?

A bond seems to have come into existence between himself and the two Persians, he does not know how. The bond is not one of affection. It is not even a bond with these two in particular, whom he could not pick out from a mob in a field. Nevertheless, suddenly and without reason, their lot has become important to him.

He stands before them, under the sun, waiting for the buzz in his mind to settle, waiting for a sign. There is a fly trying to creep into the ear of one of them. The ear twitches. The fly takes off; circles, returns, settles. The ear twitches again.

He takes a step forward. The sheep backs away uneasily to the limit of its chain. He remembers Bev Shaw nuzzling the old billy-goat with the ravaged testicles, stroking him, comforting him, entering into his life. How does she get it right, this communion with animals? Some trick he does not have. One has to be a certain kind of person, perhaps, with fewer complications. The sun beats on his face in all its springtime radiance. Do I have to change, he thinks? Do I have to become like Bev Shaw?

He speaks to Lucy. 'I have been thinking about this party of Petrus's. On the whole, I would prefer not to go. Is that possible without being rude?'

'Anything to do with his slaughter-sheep?'

'Yes. No. I haven't changed my ideas, if that is what you mean. I still don't believe that animals have properly individual lives.

Which among them get to live, which get to die, is not, as far as I am concerned, worth agonizing over. Nevertheless . . 'Nevertheless?'

'Nevertheless, in this case I am disturbed. I can't say why.'

'Well, Petrus and his guests are certainly not going to give up their mutton chops out of deference to you and your sensibilities.'

'I'm not asking for that. I would just prefer not to be one of the party, not this time. I'm sorry. I never imagined I would end up talking this way.'

'God moves in mysterious ways, David.'

'Don't mock me.'

Saturday is looming, market day. 'Should we run the stall?' he asks Lucy. She shrugs. 'You decide,' she says. He does not run the stall.

He does not query her decision; in fact he is relieved.

Preparations for Petrus's festivities begin at noon on Saturday with the arrival of a band of women half a dozen strong, wearing what looks to him like churchgoing finery. Behind the stable they get a fire going. Soon there comes on the wind the stench of boiling offal, from which he infers that the deed has been done, the double deed, that it is all over.

Should he mourn? Is it proper to mourn the death of beings who do not practise mourning among themselves? Looking into his heart, he can find only a vague sadness.

Too close, he thinks: we live too close to Petrus. It is like sharing a house with strangers, sharing noises, sharing smells.

He knocks at Lucy's door. 'Do you want to go for a walk?' he asks.

'Thanks, but no. Take Katy.'

He takes the bulldog, but she is so slow and sulky that he grows irritated, chases her back to the farm, and sets off alone on an eight-kilometre loop, walking fast, trying to tire himself out. At five o'clock the guests start arriving, by car, by taxi, on foot. He watches from behind the kitchen curtain. Most are of their host's generation, staid, solid. There is one old woman over whom a particular fuss is made: wearing his blue suit and a garish pink shirt, Petrus comes all the way down the path to welcome her.

It is dark before the younger folk make an appearance. On the breeze comes a murmur of talk, laughter and music, music that he associates with the Johannesburg of his own youth. Quite tolerable, he thinks to himself-quite jolly, even.

'It's time,' says Lucy. 'Are you coming?'

Unusually, she is wearing a knee-length dress and high heels, with a necklace of painted wooden beads and matching earrings. He is not sure he likes the effect.

‘All right, I'll come. I'm ready.'

'Haven't you got a suit here?'

'No.'

'Then at least put on a tie.'

'I thought we were in the country.'

'All the more reason to dress up. This is a big day in Petrus's life.'

She carries a tiny flashlight. They walk up the track to Petrus's house, father and daughter arm in arm, she lighting the way, he bearing their offering.

At the open door they pause, smiling. Petrus is nowhere to be seen, but a little girl in a party dress comes up and leads them in.

The old stable has no ceiling and no proper floor, but at least it is spacious and at least it has electricity. Shaded lamps and pictures on the walls (Van Gogh's sunflowers, a Tretchikoff lady in blue, Jane Fonda in her Barbarella outfit, Doctor Khumalo scoring a goal) soften the bleakness. They are the only whites. There is dancing going on, to the old-fashioned African jazz he had heard. Curious glances are cast at the two of them, or perhaps only at his skullcap. Lucy knows some of the women. She commences introductions. Then Petrus appears at their side. He does not play the eager host, does not offer them a drink, but does say, 'No more dogs. I am not any more the dog-man,' which Lucy chooses to accept as a joke; so all, it appears, is well.