J. Coetzee - Disgrace

TWENTY-TWO

HE STAYS IN contact with Lucy by telephone. In their conversations she is at pains to assure him that all is well on the farm, he to give the impression that he does not doubt her. She is hard at work in the flowerbeds, she tells him, where the spring crop is now in bloom. The kennels are reviving. She has two dogs on full board and hopes of more. Petrus is busy with his house, but not too busy to help out. The Shaws are frequent visitors. No, she does not need money.

But something in Lucy's tone nags at him. He telephones Bev Shaw. 'You are the only person I can ask,' he says. 'How is Lucy, truthfully?'

Bev Shaw is guarded. 'What has she told you?'

'She tells me that everything is fine. But she sounds like a zombie. She sounds as if she is on tranquillizers. Is she?'

Bev Shaw evades the question. However, she says - and she seems to be picking her words carefully - there have been `developments'.

'What developments?'

'I can't tell you, David. Don't make me. Lucy will have to tell you herself '

He calls Lucy. 'I must make a trip to Durban,' he says, lying. 'There is the possibility of a job. May I stop off for a day or two?'

`Has Bev been speaking to you?'

'Bev has nothing to do with it. May I come?'

He flies to Port Elizabeth and hires a car. Two hours later he turns off the road on to the track that leads to the farm, Lucy's farm, Lucy's patch of earth.

Is it his earth too? It does not feel like his earth. Despite the time he has spent here, it feels like a foreign land.

There have been changes. A wire fence, not particularly skilfully erected, now marks the boundary between Lucy's property and Petrus's. On Petrus's side graze a pair of scrawny heifers. Petrus's house has become a reality. Grey and featureless, it stands on an eminence east of the old farmhouse; in the mornings, he guesses, it must cast a long shadow.

Lucy opens the door wearing a shapeless smock that might as well be a nightdress. Her old air of brisk good health is gone. Her complexion is pasty, she has not washed her hair. Without warmth she returns his embrace. 'Come in,' she says. 'I was just making tea.

They sit together at the kitchen table. She pours tea, passes him a packet of ginger snaps. 'Tell me about the Durban offer,' she says.

`That can wait. I am here, Lucy, because I am concerned about you. Are you all right?'

'I'm pregnant.'

'You are what?'

'I'm pregnant.'

`From whom? From that day?'

`From that day.'

'I don't understand. I thought you took care of it, you and your GP.

'No.'

'What do you mean, no? You mean you didn't take care of it?'

'I have taken care. I have taken every reasonable care short of what you are hinting at. But I am not having an abortion. That is something I am not prepared to go through with again.'

'I didn't know you felt that way. You never told me you did not believe in abortion. Why should there be a question of abortion anyway? I thought you took Ovral.'

'This has nothing to do with belief. And I never said I took Ovral.'

'You could have told me earlier. Why did you keep it from me?'

'Because I couldn't face one of your eruptions. David, I can't run my life according to whether or not you like what I do. Not any more. You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn't make an appearance until halfway through. Well, contrary to what you think, people are not divided into major and minor. I am not minor. I have a life of my own, just as important to me as yours is to you, and in my life I am the one who makes the decisions.'

An eruption? Is this not an eruption in its own right? 'That's enough, Lucy,' he says, taking her hand across the table. 'Are you telling me you are going to have the child?'

'Yes.'

'A child from one of those men?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Why? I am a woman, David. Do you think I hate children? Should I choose against the child because of who its father is?'

'It has been known. When are you expecting it?'

'May. The end of May.'

'And your mind is made up?'

'Yes.'

'Very well. This has come as a shock to me, I confess, but I will stand by you, whatever you decide. There is no question about that. Now I am going to take a walk. We can talk again later.'

Why can they not talk now? Because he is shaken. Because there is a risk that he too might erupt. She is not prepared, she says, to go through with it again. Therefore she has had an abortion before. He would never have guessed it. When could it have been? While she was still living at home? Did Rosalind know, and was he kept in the dark?

The gang of three. Three fathers in one. Rapists rather than robbers, Lucy called them - rapists cum taxgatherers roaming the area, attacking women, indulging their violent pleasures. Well, Lucy was wrong. They were not raping, they were mating. It was not the pleasure principle that ran the show but the testicles, sacs bulging with seed aching to perfect itself. And now, lo and behold, the child! Already he is calling it the child when it is no more than a worm in his daughter's womb. What kind of child can seed like that give life to, seed driven into the woman not in love but in hatred, mixed chaotically, meant to soil her, to mark her, like a dog's urine?

A father without the sense to have a son: is this how it is all going to end, is this how his line is going to run out, like water dribbling into the earth? Who would have thought it! A day like any other day, clear skies, a mild sun, yet suddenly everything is changed, utterly changed!

Standing against the wall outside the kitchen, hiding his face in his hands, he heaves and heaves and finally cries.

He installs himself in Lucy's old room, which she has not taken back. For the rest of the afternoon he avoids her, afraid he will come out with something rash.

Over supper there is a new revelation. 'By the way,' she says, 'the boy is back.'

'The boy?'

'Yes, the boy you had the row with at Petrus's party. He is staying with Petrus, helping him. His name is Pollux.'

'Not Mncedisi? Not Nqabayakhe? Nothing unpronounceable, just Pollux?'

'P-O-L-L-U-X. And David, can we have some relief from that terrible irony of yours?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Of course you do. For years you used it against me when I was a child, to mortify me. You can't have forgotten. Anyway, Pollux turns out to be a brother of Petrus's wife's. Whether that means a real brother I don't know. But Petrus has obligations toward him, family obligations.'

'So it all begins to come out. And now young Pollux returns to the scene of the crime and we must behave as if nothing has happened.'

'Don't get indignant, David, it doesn't help. According to Petrus, Pollux has dropped out of school and can't find a job. I just want to warn you he is around. I would steer clear of him if I were you. I suspect there is something wrong with him. But I can't order him off the property, it's not in my power.'

'Particularly - ' He does not finish the sentence.

'Particularly what? Say it.'

'Particularly when he may be the father of the child you are carrying. Lucy, your situation is becoming ridiculous, worse than ridiculous, sinister. I don't know how you can fail to see it. I plead with you, leave the farm before it is too late. It's the only sane thing left to do.'

'Stop calling it the farm, David. This is not a farm, it's just a piece of land where I grow things - we both know that. But no, I'm not giving it up.'

He goes to bed with a heavy heart. Nothing has changed between Lucy and himself, nothing has healed. They snap at each other as if he has not been away at all.

It is morning. He clambers over the new-built fence. Petrus's wife is hanging washing behind the old stables. 'Good morning,' he says. 'Molo. I'm looking for Petrus.'