J. Coetzee - Disgrace

Until two years ago the Dock Theatre was a cold storage plant where the carcases of pigs and oxen hung waiting to be transported across the seas. Now it is a fashionable entertainment spot. He arrives late, taking his seat just as the lights are dimming. 'A runaway success brought back by popular demand': that is how Sunset at the Globe Salon is billed in its new production. The set is more stylish, the direction more professional, there is a new lead actor. Nevertheless, he finds the play, with its crude humour and nakedly political intent, as hard to endure as before.

Melanie has kept her part as Gloria, the novice hairdresser. Wearing a pink caftan over gold lame tights, her face garishly made up, her hair piled in loops on her head, she totters onstage on high heels. The lines she is given are predictable, but she delivers them with deft timing in a whining Kaaps accent. She is altogether more sure of herself than before - in fact, good in the part, positively gifted. Is it possible that in the months he has been away she has grown up, found herself? Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger. Perhaps the trial was a trial for her too; perhaps she too has suffered, and come through. He wishes he could have a sign. If he had a sign he would know what to do. If, for instance, those absurd clothes were to burn off her body in a cold, private flame and she were to stand before him, in a revelation secret to him alone, as naked and as perfect as on that last night in Lucy's old room. The holidaymakers among whom he is seated, ruddy-faced, comfortable in their heavy flesh, are enjoying the play. They have taken to Melanie-Gloria; they titter at the risque jokes, laugh uproariously when the characters trade slurs and insults.

Though they are his countrymen, he could not feel more alien among them, more of an impostor. Yet when they laugh at Melanie's lines he cannot resist a flush of pride. Mine! he would like to say, turning to them, as if she were his daughter.

Without warning a memory comes back from years ago: of someone he picked up on the N1 outside Trompsburg and gave a ride to, a woman in her twenties travelling alone, a tourist from Germany, sunburnt and dusty. They drove as far as Touws River, checked into a hotel; he fed her, slept with her. He remembers her long, wiry legs; he remembers the softness of her hair, its feather-lightness between his fingers. In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images of women he has known on two continents, some from so far away in time that he barely recognizes them. Like leaves blown on the wind, pell-mell, they pass before him. A fair field full of-folk: hundreds of lives all tangled with his. He holds his breath, willing the vision to continue. What has happened to them, all those women, all those lives? Are there moments when they too, or some of them, are plunged without warning into the ocean of memory? The German girl: is it possible that at this very instant she is remembering the man who picked her up on the roadside in Africa and spent the night with her?

Enriched: that was the word the newspapers picked on to jeer at. A stupid word to let slip, under the circumstances, yet now, at this moment, he would stand by it. By Melanie, by the girl in Touws River; by Rosalind, Bev Shaw, Soraya: by each of them he was enriched, and by the others too, even the least of them, even the failures. Like a flower blooming in his breast, his heart floods with thankfulness. Where do moments like this come from? Hypnagogic, no doubt; but what does that explain? If he is being led, then what god is doing the leading?

The play is grinding on. They have come to the point where Melanie gets her broom tangled in the electric cord. A flash of magnesium, and the stage is suddenly plunged into darkness. 'Jesus Christ, jou dom meid!' screeches the hairdresser.

There are twenty rows of seats between himself and Melanie, but he hopes she can at this moment, across space, smell him, smell his thoughts.

Something raps him lightly on the head, calling him back to the world. A moment later another object flits past and hits the seat in front of him: a spitball of paper the size of a marble. A third hits him in the neck. He is the target, no doubt of that.

He is supposed to turn and glare. Who did that? he is supposed to bark. Or else stare stiffly ahead, pretending not to notice.

A fourth pellet strikes his shoulder and bounces into the air. The man in the next seat steals a puzzled glance.

On stage the action has progressed. Sidney the hairdresser is tearing open the fatal envelope and reading aloud the landlord's ultimatum. They have until the end of the month to pay the back rent, failing which the Globe will have to close down. 'What are we going to do?' laments Miriam the hair-washing woman.

'Sss,' comes a hiss from behind him, soft enough not to be heard at the front of the house. Sss.'

He turns, and a pellet catches him on the temple. Standing against the back wall is Ryan, the boyfriend with the ear-ring and goatee. Their eyes meet. 'Professor Lurie!' whispers Ryan hoarsely. Outrageous though his behaviour is, he seems quite at ease. There is a little smile on his lips. The play goes on, but there is around him now a definite flurry of unrest. Sss,' hisses Ryan again. 'Be quiet!' exclaims the woman two seats away, directing herself at him, though he has uttered not a sound. There are five pairs of knees to fight past ('Excuse me .. . Excuse me'), cross looks, angry murmurings, before he can reach the aisle, find his way out, emerge into the windy, moonless night. There is a sound behind him. He turns. The point of a cigarette glows: Ryan has followed him into the parking lot.

'Are you going to explain yourself?' he snaps. 'Are you going to explain this childish behaviour?'

Ryan draws on his cigarette. 'Only doing you a favour, prof. Didn't you learn your lesson?'

'What was my lesson?'

'Stay with your own kind.'

Your own kind: who is this boy to tell him who his kind are? What does he know of the force that drives the utmost strangers into each other's arms, making them kin, kind, beyond all prudence? Omnis gens quaecumque se in se pecere vult. The seed of generation, driven to perfect itself, driving deep into the woman's body, driving to bring the future into being. Drive, driven.

Ryan is speaking. Let her alone, man! Melanie will spit in your eye if she sees you.' He drops his cigarette, takes a step closer. Under stars so bright one might think them on fire they face each other. 'Find yourself another life, prof. Believe me.'

He drives back slowly along the Main Road in Green Point. Spit in your eye: he had not expected that. His hand on the steering wheel is trembling. The shocks of existence: he must learn to take them more lightly. The streetwalkers are out in numbers; at a traffic light one of them catches his eye, a tall girl in a minute black leather skirt. Why not, he thinks, on this night of revelations?

They park in a cul-de-sac on the slopes of Signal Hill. The girl is drunk or perhaps on drugs: he can get nothing coherent out of her. Nonetheless, she does her work on him as well as he could expect. Afterwards she lies with her face in his lap, resting. She is younger than she had seemed under the streetlights, younger even than Melanie. He lays a hand on her head. The trembling has ceased. He feels drowsy, contented; also strangely protective.

So this is all it takes!, he thinks. How could I ever have forgotten it?

Not a bad man but not good either. Not cold but not hot, even at his hottest. Not by the measure of Teresa; not even by the measure of Byron. Lacking in fire. Will that be the verdict on him, the verdict of the universe and its all-seeing eye?

The girl stirs, sits up. 'Where are you taking me?' she mumbles. 'I'm taking you back to where I found you.'