J. Coetzee - Disgrace

Years ago, when he lived in Italy, he visited the same forest between Ravenna and the Adriatic coastline where a century and a half before Byron and Teresa used to go riding. Somewhere among the trees must be the spot where the Englishman first lifted the skirts of his eighteen-year-old charmer, bride of another man. He could fly to Venice tomorrow, catch a train to Ravenna, tramp along the old riding-trails, pass by the very place. He is inventing the music (or the music is inventing him) but he is not inventing the history. On those pine-needles Byron had his Teresa - 'timid as a gazelle,' he called her - rumpling her clothes, getting sand into her underwear (the horses standing by all the while, incurious), and from the occasion a passion was born that kept Teresa howling to the moon for the rest of her natural life in a fever that has set him howling too, after his manner.

Teresa leads; page after page he follows. Then one day there emerges from the dark another voice, one he has not heard before, has not counted on hearing. From the words he knows it belongs to Byron's daughter Allegra; but from where inside him does it come? Why have you left me? Come and fetch me! calls Allegra. So hot, so hot, so hot! she complains in a rhythm of her own that cuts insistently across the voices of the lovers.

To the call of the inconvenient five-year-old there comes no answer. Unlovely, unloved, neglected by her famous father, she has been passed from hand to hand and finally given to the nuns to look after. So hot, so hot! she whines from the bed in the convent where she is dying of la mal'aria. Why have you forgotten me?

Why will her father not answer? Because he has had enough of life; because he would rather be back where he belongs, on death's other shore, sunk in his old sleep. My poor little baby! sings Byron, waveringly, unwillingly, too softly for her to hear. Seated in the shadows to one side, the trio of instrumentalists play the crablike motif, one line going up, the other down, that is Byron's.

TWENTY-ONE

ROSALIND TELEPHONES. 'Lucy says you are back in town. Why haven't you been in touch?'

‘I'm not yet fit for society,' he replies. 'Were you ever?' comments Rosalind drily. They meet in a coffee-shop in Claremont. 'You've lost weight,' she remarks. 'What happened to your ear?'

'It's nothing,' he replies, and will not explain further.

As they talk her gaze keeps drifting back to the misshapen ear. She would shudder, he is sure, if she had to touch it. Not the ministering type. His best memories are still of their first months together: steamy summer nights in Durban, sheets damp with perspiration, Rosalind's long, pale body thrashing this way and that in the throes of a pleasure that was hard to tell from pain. Two sensualists: that was what held them together, while it lasted.

They talk about Lucy, about the farm. 'I thought she had a friend living with her,' says Rosalind. 'Grace.'

'Helen. Helen is back in Johannesburg. I suspect they have broken up for good.'

'Is Lucy safe by herself in that lonely place?'

'No, she isn't safe, she would be mad to feel safe. But she will stay on nevertheless. It has become a point of honour with her.'

'You said you had your car stolen.'

'It was my own fault. I should have been more careful.'

'I forgot to mention: I heard the story of your trial. The inside story.

'My trial?'

'Your inquiry, your inquest, whatever you call it. I heard you didn't perform well.'

'Oh? How did you hear? I thought it was confidential.'

'That doesn't matter. I heard you didn't make a good impression. You were too stiff and defensive.'

'I wasn't trying to make an impression. I was standing up for a principle.'

'That may be so, David, but surely you know by now that trials are not about principles, they are about how well you put yourself across. According to my source, you came across badly. What was the principle you were standing up for?'

'Freedom of speech. Freedom to remain silent.'

'That sounds very grand. But you were always a great self-deceiver, David. A great deceiver and a great self-deceiver. Are you sure it wasn't just a case of being caught with your pants down?'

He does not rise to the bait.

'Anyway, whatever the principle was, it was too abstruse for your audience. They thought you were just obfuscating. You should have got yourself some coaching beforehand. What are you going to do about money? Did they take away your pension?'

'I'll get back what I put in. I am going to sell the house. It's too big for me.'

'What will you do with your time? Will you look for a job?'

'I don't think so. My hands are full. I'm writing something.'

'A book?'

'An opera, in fact.'

'An opera! Well, that's a new departure. I hope it makes you lots of money. Will you move in with Lucy?'

'The opera is just a hobby, something to dabble at. It won't make money. And no, I won't be moving in with Lucy. It wouldn't be a good idea.'

'Why not? You and she have always got on well together. Has something happened?'

Her questions are intrusive, but Rosalind has never had qualms about being intrusive. 'You shared my bed for ten years,' she once said - 'Why should you have secrets from me?'

'Lucy and I still get on well,' he replies. 'But not well enough to live together.'

'The story of your life.'

'Yes.'

There is silence while they contemplate, from their respective angles, the story of his life.

'I saw your girlfriend,' Rosalind says, changing the subject. 'My girlfriend?'

'Your inamorata. Melanie Isaacs - isn't that her name? She is in a play at the Dock Theatre. Didn't you know? I can see why you fell for her. Big, dark eyes. Cunning little weasel body. Just your type. You must have thought it would be another of your quick flings, your peccadilloes. And now look at you. You have thrown away your life, and for what?'

'My life is not thrown away, Rosalind. Be sensible.'

'But it is! You have lost your job, your name is mud, your friends avoid you, you hide out in Torrance Road like a tortoise afraid to stick its neck out of its shell. People who aren't good enough to tie your shoelaces make jokes about you. Your shirt isn't ironed, God know who gave you that haircut, you've got - ' She arrests her tirade. 'You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.'

'I'm going to end up in a hole in the ground,' he says. 'And so are you. So are we all.'

'That's enough, David, I'm upset as it is, I don't want to get into an argument.' She gathers up her packages.

'When you are tired of bread and jam, give me a call and I'll cook you a meal.'

The mention of Melanie Isaacs unsettles him. He has never been given to lingering involvements. When an affair is over, he puts it behind him. But there is something unfinished in the business with Melanie. Deep inside him the smell of her is stored, the smell of a mate. Does she remember his smell too? Just your type, said Rosalind, who ought to know. What if their paths cross again, his and Melanie's? Will there be a flash of feeling, a sign that the affair has not run its course?

Yet the very idea of reapplying to Melanie is crazy. Why should she speak to the man condemned as her persecutor? And what will she think of him anyway - the dunce with the funny ear, the uncut hair, the rumpled collar?

The marriage of Cronus and Harmony: unnatural. That was what the trial was set up to punish, once all the fine words were stripped away. On trial for his way of life. For unnatural acts: for broadcasting old seed, tired seed, seed that does not quicken, contra naturam. If the old men hog the young women, what will be the future of the species? That, at bottom, was the case for the prosecution. Half of literature is about it: young women struggling to escape from under the weight of old men, for the sake of the species. He sighs. The young in one another's arms, heedless, engrossed in the sensual music. No country, this, for old men. He seems to be spending a lot of time sighing. Regret: a regrettable note on which to go out.