J. Coetzee - Disgrace

For Petrus that seems to clinch the argument. Heavily he settles on one knee and begins to work the coupling over the outlet pipe.

'Petrus, my daughter wants to be a good neighbour - a good citizen and a good neighbour. She loves the Eastern Cape. She wants to make her life here, she wants to get along with everyone. But how can she do so when she is liable to be attacked at any moment by thugs who then escape scot-free? Surely you see!'

Petrus is struggling to get the coupling to fit. The skin of his hands shows deep, rough cracks; he gives little grunts as he works; there is no sign he has even heard.

'Lucy is safe here,' he announces suddenly. 'It is all right. You can leave her, she is safe.'

But she is not safe, Petrus! Clearly she is not safe! You know what happened here on the twenty-first.'

`Yes, I know what happened. But now it is all right.'

'Who says it is all right?'

'I say.'

'You say? You will protect her?'

'I will protect her.'

'You didn't protect her last time.'

Petrus smears more grease over the pipe.

`You say you know what happened, but you didn't protect her last time,' he repeats. 'You went away, and then those three thugs turned up, and now it seems you are friends with one of them. What am I supposed to conclude?'

It is the closest he has come to accusing Petrus. But why not? 'The boy is not guilty,' says Petrus. 'He is not a criminal. He is not a thief '

'It is not just thieving I am speaking of. There was another crime as well, a far heavier crime. You say you know what happened. You must know what I mean.'

'He is not guilty. He is too young. It is just a big mistake.'

'You know?'

'I know.' The pipe is in. Petrus folds the clamp, tightens it, stands up, straightens his back. 'I know. I am telling you. I know.'

'You know. You know the future. What can I say to that? You have spoken. Do you need me here any longer?'

'No, now it is easy, now I must just dig the pipe in.'

Despite Petrus's confidence in the insurance industry, there is no movement on his claim. Without a car he feels trapped on the farm.

On one of his afternoons at the clinic, he unburdens himself to Bev Shaw. 'Lucy and I are not getting on,' he says. 'Nothing remarkable in that, I suppose. Parents and children aren't made to live together. Under normal circumstances I would have moved out by now, gone back to Cape Town. But I can't leave Lucy alone on the farm. She isn't safe. I am trying to persuade her to hand over the operation to Petrus and take a break. But she won't listen to me.'

'You have to let go of your children, David. You can't watch over Lucy for ever.'

'I let go of Lucy long ago. I have been the least protective of fathers. But the present situation is different. Lucy is objectively in danger. We have had that demonstrated to us.'

'It will be all right. Petrus will take her under his wing.'

'Petrus? What interest has Petrus in taking her under his wing?'

'You underestimate Petrus. Petrus slaved to get the market garden going for Lucy. Without Petrus Lucy wouldn't be where she is now. I am not saying she owes him everything, but she owes him a lot.'

'That may be so. The question is, what does Petrus owe her?'

'Petrus is a good old chap. You can depend on him.'

'Depend on Petrus? Because Petrus has a beard and smokes a pipe and carries a stick, you think Petrus is an old-style kaffir. But it is not like that at all. Petrus is not an old-style kaffir, much less a good old chap. Petrus, in my opinion, is itching for Lucy to pull out. If you want proof, look no further than at what happened to Lucy and me. It may not have been Petrus's brainchild, but he certainly turned a blind eye, he certainly didn't warn us, he certainly took care not to be in the vicinity.'

His vehemence surprises Bev Shaw. 'Poor Lucy,' she whispers: 'she has been through such a lot!'

'I know what Lucy has been through. I was there.'

Wide-eyed she gazes back at him. 'But you weren't there, David. She told me. You weren't.'

You weren't there. You don't know what happened. He is baffled. Where, according to Bev Shaw, according to Lucy, was he not? In the room where the intruders were committing their outrages? Do they think he does not know what rape is? Do they think he has not suffered with his daughter? What more could he have witnessed than he is capable of imagining? Or do they think that,where rape is concerned, no man can be where the woman is? Whatever the answer, he is outraged, outraged at being treated like an outsider.

He buys a small television set to replace the one that was stolen. In the evenings, after supper, he and Lucy sit side by side on the sofa watching the news and then, if they can bear it, the entertainment. It is true, the visit has gone on too long, in his opinion as well as in Lucy's. He is tired of living out of a suitcase, tired of listening all the while for the crunch of gravel on the pathway. He wants to be able to sit at his own desk again, sleep in his own bed. But Cape Town is far away, almost another country. Despite Bev's counsel, despite Petrus's assurances, despite Lucy's obstinacy, he is not prepared to abandon his daughter. This is where he lives, for the present: in this time, in this place. He has recovered the sight of his eye completely. His scalp is healing over; he need no longer use the oily dressing. Only the ear still needs daily attention. So time does indeed heal all. Presumably Lucy is healing too, or if not healing then forgetting, growing scar tissue around the memory of that day, sheathing it, sealing it off. So that one day she may be able to say, 'The day we were robbed,' and think of it merely as the day when they were robbed.

He tries to spend the daytime hours outdoors, leaving Lucy free to breathe in the house. He works in the garden; when he is tired he sits by the dam, observing the ups and downs of the duck family, brooding on the Byron project.

The project is not moving. All he can grasp of it are fragments. The first words of the first act still resist him; the first notes remain as elusive as wisps of smoke. Sometimes he fears that the characters in the story, who for more than a year have been his ghostly companions, are beginning to fade away. Even the most appealing of them, Margarita Cogni, whose passionate contralto attacks hurled against Byron's bitch-mate Teresa Guiccioli he aches to hear, is slipping. Their loss fills him with despair, despair as grey and even and unimportant, in the larger scheme, as a headache. He goes off to the Animal Welfare clinic as often as he can, offering himself for whatever jobs call for no skill: feeding, cleaning, mopping up.

The animals they care for at the clinic are mainly dogs, less frequently cats: for livestock, D Village appears to have its own veterinary lore, its own pharmacopoeia, its own healers. The dogs that are brought in suffer from distempers, from broken limbs, from infected bites, from mange, from neglect, benign or malign, from old age, from malnutrition, from intestinal parasites, but most of all from their own fertility. There are simply too many of them. When people bring a dog in they do not say straight out, 'I have brought you this dog to kill,' but that is what is expected: that they will dispose of it, make it disappear, dispatch it to oblivion. What is being asked for is, in fact, Lцsung (German always to hand with an appropriately blank abstraction): sublimation, as alcohol is sublimed from water, leaving no residue, no aftertaste.

So on Sunday afternoons the clinic door is closed and locked while he helps Bev Shaw lцsen the week's superfluous canines. One at a time he fetches them out of the cage at the back and leads or carries them into the theatre. To each, in what will be its last minutes, Bev gives her fullest attention, stroking it, talking to it, easing its passage. If, more often than not, the dog fails to be charmed, it is because of his presence: he gives off the wrong smell (They can smell your thoughts), the smell of shame. Nevertheless, he is the one who holds the dog still as the needle finds the vein and the drug hits the heart and the legs buckle and the eyes dim.