Disgrace Read online

  ‘I am going to telephone the police,’ he repeats to Petrus. Petrus is stony-faced.

  In a cloud of silence he returns indoors, where Lucy stands waiting. ‘Let’s go,’ he says.

  The guests give way before them. No longer is there friendliness in their aspect. Lucy has forgotten the flashlight: they lose their way in the dark; Lucy has to take off her shoes; they blunder through potato beds before they reach the farmhouse.

  He has the telephone in his hand when Lucy stops him. ‘David, no, don’t do it. It’s not Petrus’s fault. If you call in the police, the evening will be destroyed for him. Be sensible.’

  He is astonished, astonished enough to turn on his daughter. ‘For God’s sake, why isn’t it Petrus’s fault? One way or another, it was he who brought in those men in the first place. And now he has the effrontery to invite them back. Why should I be sensible? Really, Lucy, from beginning to end I fail to understand. I fail to understand why you did not lay real charges against them, and now I fail to understand why you are protecting Petrus. Petrus is not an innocent party, Petrus is with them.’

  ‘Don’t shout at me, David. This is my life. I am the one who has to live here. What happened to me is my business, mine alone, not yours, and if there is one right I have it is the right not to be put on trial like this, not to have to justify myself – not to you, not to anyone else. As for Petrus, he is not some hired labourer whom I can sack because in my opinion he is mixed up with the wrong people. That’s all gone, gone with the wind. If you want to antagonize Petrus, you had better be sure of your facts first. You can’t call in the police. I won’t have it. Wait until morning. Wait until you have heard Petrus’s side of the story.’

  ‘But in the meantime the boy will disappear!’

  ‘He won’t disappear. Petrus knows him. In any event, no one disappears in the Eastern Cape. It’s not that kind of place.’

  ‘Lucy, Lucy, I plead with you! You want to make up for the wrongs of the past, but this is not the way to do it. If you fail to stand up for yourself at this moment, you will never be able to hold your head up again. You may as well pack your bags and leave. As for the police, if you are too delicate to call them in now, then we should never have involved them in the first place. We should just have kept quiet and waited for the next attack. Or cut our own throats.’

  ‘Stop it, David! I don’t need to defend myself before you. You don’t know what happened.’

  ‘I don’t know?’

  ‘No, you don’t begin to know. Pause and think about that. With regard to the police, let me remind you why we called them in in the first place: for the sake of the insurance. We filed a report because if we did not, the insurance would not pay out.’

  ‘Lucy, you amaze me. That is simply not true, and you know it. As for Petrus, I repeat: if you buckle at this point, if you fail, you will not be able to live with yourself. You have a duty to yourself, to the future, to your own self-respect. Let me call the police. Or call them yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  No: that is Lucy’s last word to him. She retires to her room, closes the door on him, closes him out. Step by step, as inexorably as if they were man and wife, he and she are being driven apart, and there is nothing he can do about it. Their very quarrels have become like the bickerings of a married couple, trapped together with nowhere else to go. How she must be rueing the day when he came to live with her! She must wish him gone, and the sooner the better.

  Yet she too will have to leave, in the long run. As a woman alone on a farm she has no future, that is clear. Even the days of Ettinger, with his guns and barbed wire and alarm systems, are numbered. If Lucy has any sense she will quit before a fate befalls her worse than a fate worse than death. But of course she will not. She is stubborn, and immersed, too, in the life she has chosen.

  He slips out of the house. Treading cautiously in the dark, he approaches the stable from behind.

  The big fire has died down, the music has stopped. There is a cluster of people at the back door, a door built wide enough to admit a tractor. He peers over their heads.

  In the centre of the floor stands one of the guests, a man of middle age. He has a shaven head and a bull neck; he wears a dark suit and, around his neck, a gold chain from which hangs a medal the size of a fist, of the kind that chieftains used to have bestowed on them as a symbol of office. Symbols struck by the boxful in a foundry in Coventry or Birmingham; stamped on the one side with the head of sour Victoria, regina et imperatrix, on the other with gnus or ibises rampant. Medals, Chieftains, for the use of. Shipped all over the old Empire: to Nagpur, Fiji, the Gold Coast, Kaffraria.

  The man is speaking, orating in rounded periods that rise and fall. He has no idea what the man is saying, but every now and then there is a pause and a murmur of agreement from his audience, among whom, young and old, a mood of quiet satisfaction seems to reign.

  He looks around. The boy is standing nearby, just inside the door. The boy’s eyes flit nervously across him. Other eyes turn toward him too: toward the stranger, the odd one out. The man with the medal frowns, falters for a moment, raises his voice.

  As for him, he does not mind the attention. Let them know I am still here, he thinks, let them know I am not skulking in the big house. And if that spoils their get-together, so be it. He lifts a hand to his white skullcap. For the first time he is glad to have it, to wear it as his own.

  SIXTEEN

  ALL OF THE next morning Lucy avoids him. The meeting she promised with Petrus does not take place. Then in the afternoon Petrus himself raps at the back door, businesslike as ever, wearing boots and overalls. It is time to lay the pipes, he says. He wants to lay PVC piping from the storage dam to the site of his new house, a distance of two hundred metres. Can he borrow tools, and can David help him fit the regulator?

  ‘I know nothing about regulators. I know nothing about plumbing.’ He is in no mood to be helpful to Petrus.

  ‘It is not plumbing,’ says Petrus. ‘It is pipefitting. It is just laying pipes.’

  On the way to the dam Petrus talks about regulators of different kinds, about pressure-valves, about junctions; he brings out the words with a flourish, showing off his mastery. The new pipe will have to cross Lucy’s land, he says; it is good that she has given her permission. She is ‘forward-looking’. ‘She is a forward-looking lady, not backward-looking.’

  About the party, about the boy with the flickering eyes, Petrus says nothing. It is as though none of that had happened.

  His own role at the dam soon becomes clear. Petrus needs him not for advice on pipefitting or plumbing but to hold things, to pass him tools – to be his handlanger, in fact. The role is not one he objects to. Petrus is a good workman, it is an education to watch him. It is Petrus himself he has begun to dislike. As Petrus drones on about his plans, he grows more and more frosty toward him. He would not wish to be marooned with Petrus on a desert isle. He would certainly not wish to be married to him. A dominating personality. The young wife seems happy, but he wonders what stories the old wife has to tell.

  At last, when he has had enough, he cuts across the flow. ‘Petrus,’ he says, ‘that young man who was at your house last night – what is his name and where is he now?’

  Petrus takes off his cap, wipes his forehead. Today he is wearing a peaked cap with a silver South African Railways and Harbours badge. He seems to have a collection of headgear.

  ‘You see,’ says Petrus, frowning, ‘David, it is a hard thing you are saying, that this boy is a thief. He is very angry that you are calling him a thief. That is what he is telling everyone. And I, I am the one who must be keeping the peace. So it is hard for me too.’

  ‘I have no intention of involving you in the case, Petrus. Tell me the boy’s name and whereabouts and I will pass on the information to the police. Then we can leave it to the police to investigate and bring him and his friends to justice. You will not be involved, I will not be involved, it will be a matter for the law.’

&nb
sp; Petrus stretches, bathing his face in the sun’s glow. ‘But the insurance will give you a new car.’

  Is it a question? A declaration? What game is Petrus playing? ‘The insurance will not give me a new car,’ he explains, trying to be patient. ‘Assuming it isn’t bankrupt by now because of all the car-theft in this country, the insurance will give me a percentage of its own idea of what the old car was worth. That won’t be enough to buy a new car. Anyhow, there is a principle involved. We can’t leave it to insurance companies to deliver justice. That is not their business.’

  ‘But you will not get your car back from this boy. He cannot give you your car. He does not know where your car is. Your car is gone. The best is, you buy another car with the insurance, then you have a car again.’

  How has he landed in this dead-end? He tries a new tack. ‘Petrus, let me ask you, is this boy related to you?’

  ‘And why’, Petrus continues, ignoring the question, ‘do you want to take this boy to the police? He is too young, you cannot put him in jail.’

  ‘If he is eighteen he can be tried. If he is sixteen he can be tried.’

  ‘No, no, he is not eighteen.’

  ‘How do you know? He looks eighteen to me, he looks more than eighteen.’

  ‘I know, I know! He is just a youth, he cannot go to jail, that is the law, you cannot put a youth in jail, you must let him go!’

  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, Lösung (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 lösen 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.

  He had thought he would get used to it. But that is not what happens. The more killings he assists in, the more jittery he gets. One Sunday evening, driving home in Lucy’s kombi, he actually has to stop at the roadside to recover himself. Tears flow down his face that he cannot stop; his hands shake.

  He does not understand what is happening to him. Until now he has been more or less indifferent to animals. Although in an abstract way he disapproves of cruelty, he cannot tell whether by nature he is cruel or kind. He is simply nothing. He assumes that people from whom cruelty is demanded in the line of duty, people who work in slaughterhouses, for instance, grow carapaces over their souls. Habit hardens: it must be so in most cases, but it does not seem to be so in his. He does not seem to have the gift of hardness.