Disgrace Read online

  ‘You said you made arrests.’

  ‘Two guys. We got them on a tipoff. Found a whole house full of stolen goods. TVs, videos, fridges, you name it.’

  ‘Where are the men now?’

  ‘They’re out on bail.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have made more sense to call me in before you set them free, to have me identify them? Now that they are out on bail they will just disappear. You know that.’

  The detective is stiffly silent.

  They stop before a white Corolla. ‘This is not my car,’ he says. ‘My car had CA plates. It says so on the docket.’ He points to the number on the sheet: CA 507644.

  ‘They respray them. They put on false plates. They change plates around.’

  ‘Even so, this is not my car. Can you open it?’

  The detective opens the car. The interior smells of wet newspaper and fried chicken.

  ‘I don’t have a sound system,’ he says. ‘It’s not my car. Are you sure my car isn’t somewhere else in the lot?’

  They complete their tour of the lot. His car is not there. Esterhuyse scratches his head. ‘I’ll check into it,’ he says. ‘There must be a mixup. Leave me your number and I’ll give you a call.’

  Lucy is sitting behind the wheel of the kombi, her eyes closed. He raps on the window and she unlocks the door. ‘It’s all a mistake, he says, getting in. ‘They have a Corolla, but it’s not mine.’

  ‘Did you see the men?’

  ‘The men?’

  ‘You said two men had been arrested.’

  ‘They are out again on bail. Anyway, it’s not my car, so whoever was arrested can’t be whoever took my car.’

  There is a long silence. ‘Does that follow, logically?’ she says.

  She starts the engine, yanks fiercely on the wheel.

  ‘I didn’t realize you were keen for them to be caught,’ he says. He can hear the irritation in his voice but does nothing to check it. ‘If they are caught it means a trial and all that a trial entails. You will have to testify. Are you ready for that?’

  Lucy switches off the engine. Her face is stiff as she fights off tears.

  ‘In any event, the trail is cold. Our friends aren’t going to be caught, not with the police in the state they are in. So let us forget about that.’

  He gathers himself. He is becoming a nag, a bore, but there is no helping that. ‘Lucy, it really is time for you to face up to your choices. Either you stay on in a house full of ugly memories and go on brooding on what happened to you, or you put the whole episode behind you and start a new chapter elsewhere. Those, as I see it, are the alternatives. I know you would like to stay, but shouldn’t you at least consider the other route? Can’t the two of us talk about it rationally?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I can’t talk any more, David, I just can’t,’ she says, speaking softly, rapidly, as though afraid the words will dry up. ‘I know I am not being clear. I wish I could explain. But I can’t. Because of who you are and who I am, I can’t. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about your car. I’m sorry about the disappointment.’

  She rests her head on her arms; her shoulders heave as she gives in.

  Again the feeling washes over him: listlessness, indifference, but also weightlessness, as if he has been eaten away from inside and only the eroded shell of his heart remains. How, he thinks to himself, can a man in this state find words, find music that will bring back the dead?

  Sitting on the sidewalk not five yards away, a woman in slippers and a ragged dress is staring fiercely at them. He lays a protective hand on Lucy’s shoulder. My daughter, he thinks; my dearest daughter. Whom it has fallen to me to guide. Who one of these days will have to guide me.

  Can she smell his thoughts?

  It is he who takes over the driving. Halfway home, Lucy, to his surprise, speaks. ‘It was so personal,’ she says. ‘It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was . . . expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’

  He waits for more, but there is no more, for the moment. ‘It was history speaking through them,’ he offers at last. ‘A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down from the ancestors.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it easier. The shock simply doesn’t go away. The shock of being hated, I mean. In the act.’

  In the act. Does she mean what he thinks she means?

  ‘Are you still afraid?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Afraid they are going to come back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you think, if you didn’t lay a charge against them with the police, they wouldn’t come back? Was that what you told yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what?’

  She is silent.

  ‘Lucy, it could be so simple. Close down the kennels. Do it at once. Lock up the house, pay Petrus to guard it. Take a break for six months or a year, until things have improved in this country. Go overseas. Go to Holland. I’ll pay. When you come back you can take stock, make a fresh start.’

  ‘If I leave now, David, I won’t come back. Thank you for the offer, but it won’t work. There is nothing you can suggest that I haven’t been through a hundred times myself.’

  ‘Then what do you propose to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. But whatever I decide I want to decide by myself, without being pushed. There are things you just don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t I understand?’

  ‘To begin with, you don’t understand what happened to me that day. You are concerned for my sake, which I appreciate, you think you understand, but finally you don’t. Because you can’t.’

  He slows down and pulls off the road. ‘Don’t,’ says Lucy. ‘Not here. This is a bad stretch, too risky to stop.’

  He picks up speed. ‘On the contrary, I understand all too well,’ he says. ‘I will pronounce the word we have avoided hitherto. You were raped. Multiply. By three men.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You were in fear of your life. You were afraid that after you had been used you would be killed. Disposed of. Because you were nothing to them.’

  ‘And?’ Her voice is now a whisper.

  ‘And I did nothing. I did not save you.’

  That is his own confession.

  She gives an impatient little flick of the hand. ‘Don’t blame yourself, David. You couldn’t have been expected to rescue me. If they had come a week earlier, I would have been alone in the house. But you are right, I meant nothing to them, nothing. I could feel it.’

  There is a pause. ‘I think they have done it before,’ she resumes, her voice steadier now. ‘At least the two older ones have. I think they are rapists first and foremost. Stealing things is just incidental. A side-line. I think they do rape.’

  ‘You think they will come back?’

  ‘I think I am in their territory. They have marked me. They will come back for me.’

  ‘Then you can’t possibly stay.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because that would be an invitation to them to return.’

  She broods a long while before she answers. ‘But isn’t there another way of looking at it, David? What if . . . what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves.’

  ‘I am sure they tell themselves many things. It is in their interest to make up stories that justify them. But trust your feelings. You said you felt only hatred from them.’

  ‘Hatred . . . When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone strange – when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, pu
t all your weight on her – isn’t it a bit like killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood – doesn’t it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?’

  You are a man, you ought to know: does one speak to one’s father like that? Are she and he on the same side?

  ‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘Sometimes. For some men.’ And then rapidly, without forethought: ‘Was it the same with both of them? Like fighting with death?’

  ‘They spur each other on. That’s probably why they do it together. Like dogs in a pack.’

  ‘And the third one, the boy?’

  ‘He was there to learn.’

  They have passed the Cycads sign. Time is almost up.

  ‘If they had been white you wouldn’t talk about them in this way,’ he says. ‘If they had been white thugs from Despatch, for instance.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. I am not blaming you, that is not the point. But it is something new you are talking about. Slavery. They want you for their slave.’

  ‘Not slavery. Subjection. Subjugation.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s too much, Lucy. Sell up. Sell the farm to Petrus and come away.’

  ‘No.’

  That is where the conversation ends. But Lucy’s words echo in his mind. Covered in blood. What does she mean? Was he right after all when he dreamt of a bed of blood, a bath of blood?

  They do rape. He thinks of the three visitors driving away in the not-too-old Toyota, the back seat piled with household goods, their penises, their weapons, tucked warm and satisfied between their legs – purring is the word that comes to him. They must have had every reason to be pleased with their afternoon’s work; they must have felt happy in their vocation.

  He remembers, as a child, poring over the word rape in newspaper reports, trying to puzzle out what exactly it meant, wondering what the letter p, usually so gentle, was doing in the middle of a word held in such horror that no one would utter it aloud. In an art-book in the library there was a painting called The Rape of the Sabine Women: men on horseback in skimpy Roman armour, women in gauze veils flinging their arms in the air and wailing. What had all this attitudinizing to do with what he suspected rape to be: the man lying on top of the woman and pushing himself into her?

  He thinks of Byron. Among the legions of countesses and kitchenmaids Byron pushed himself into there were no doubt those who called it rape. But none surely had cause to fear that the session would end with her throat being slit. From where he stands, from where Lucy stands, Byron looks very old-fashioned indeed.

  Lucy was frightened, frightened near to death. Her voice choked, she could not breathe, her limbs went numb. This is not happening, she said to herself as the men forced her down; it is just a dream, a nightmare. While the men, for their part, drank up her fear, revelled in it, did all they could to hurt her, to menace her, to heighten her terror. Call your dogs! they said to her. Go on, call your dogs! No dogs? Then let us show you dogs!

  You don’t understand, you weren’t there, says Bev Shaw. Well, she is mistaken. Lucy’s intuition is right after all: he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?

  From the solitude of his room he writes his daughter a letter:

  ‘Dearest Lucy, With all the love in the world, I must say the following. You are on the brink of a dangerous error. You wish to humble yourself before history. But the road you are following is the wrong one. It will strip you of all honour; you will not be able to live with yourself. I plead with you, listen to me.

  ‘Your father.’

  Half an hour later an envelope is pushed under his door. ‘Dear David, You have not been listening to me. I am not the person you know. I am a dead person and I do not know yet what will bring me back to life. All I know is that I cannot go away.

  ‘You do not see this, and I do not know what more I can do to make you see. It is as if you have chosen deliberately to sit in a corner where the rays of the sun do not shine. I think of you as one of the three chimpanzees, the one with his paws over his eyes.

  ‘Yes, the road I am following may be the wrong one. But if I leave the farm now I will leave defeated, and will taste that defeat for the rest of my life.

  ‘I cannot be a child for ever. You cannot be a father for ever. I know you mean well, but you are not the guide I need, not at this time.

  ‘Yours, Lucy.’

  That is their exchange; that is Lucy’s last word.

  The business of dog-killing is over for the day, the black bags are piled at the door, each with a body and a soul inside. He and Bev Shaw lie in each other’s arms on the floor of the surgery. In half an hour Bev will go back to her Bill and he will begin loading the bags.

  ‘You have never told me about your first wife,’ says Bev Shaw. ‘Lucy doesn’t speak about her either.’

  ‘Lucy’s mother was Dutch. She must have told you that. Evelina. Evie. After the divorce she went back to Holland. Later she remarried. Lucy didn’t get on with the new stepfather. She asked to return to South Africa.’

  ‘So she chose you.’

  ‘In a sense. She also chose a certain surround, a certain horizon. Now I am trying to get her to leave again, if only for a break. She has family in Holland, friends. Holland may not be the most exciting of places to live, but at least it doesn’t breed nightmares.’

  ‘And?’

  He shrugs. ‘Lucy isn’t inclined, for the present, to heed any advice I give. She says I am not a good guide.’

  ‘But you were a teacher.’

  ‘Of the most incidental kind. Teaching was never a vocation for me. Certainly I never aspired to teach people how to live. I was what used to be called a scholar. I wrote books about dead people. That was where my heart was. I taught only to make a living.’

  She waits for more, but he is not in the mood to go on.

  The sun is going down, it is getting cold. They have not made love; they have in effect ceased to pretend that that is what they do together.

  In his head Byron, alone on the stage, draws a breath to sing. He is on the point of setting off for Greece. At the age of thirty-five he has begun to understand that life is precious.

  Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt: those will be Byron’s words, he is sure of it. As for the music, it hovers somewhere on the horizon, it has not come yet.

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ says Bev Shaw. Her head is against his chest: presumably she can hear his heart, with whose beat the hexameter keeps step. ‘Bill and I will look after her. We’ll go often to the farm. And there’s Petrus. Petrus will keep an eye out.’

  ‘Fatherly Petrus.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lucy says I can’t go on being a father for ever. I can’t imagine, in this life, not being Lucy’s father.’

  She runs her fingers through the stubble of his hair. ‘It will be all right,’ she whispers. ‘You will see.’

  NINETEEN

  THE HOUSE IS part of a development that must, fifteen or twenty years ago, when it was new, have seemed rather bleak, but has since been improved with grassed sidewalks, trees, and creepers that spill over the vibracrete walls. No. 8 Rustholme Crescent has a painted garden gate and an answerphone.

  He presses the button. A youthful voice speaks: ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Isaacs. My name is Lurie.’

  ‘He’s not home yet.’

  ‘When do you expect him?’

  ‘Now-now.’ A buzz; the latch clicks; he pushes the gate open.

  The path leads to the front door, where a slim girl stands watching him. She is dressed in school uniform: marine-blue tunic, white knee-length stockings, open-necked shirt. She has Melanie’s eyes, Melanie’s wide cheekbones, Melanie’s dark hair; she is, if anything, more beautiful. The younger sister Melanie spoke of, whose name he cannot for the mom
ent recollect.

  ‘Good afternoon. When do you expect your father home?’

  ‘School comes out at three, but he usually stays late. It’s all right, you can come inside.’

  She holds the door open for him, flattening herself as he passes. She is eating a slice of cake, which she holds daintily between two fingers. There are crumbs on her upper lip. He has an urge to reach out, brush them off; at the same instant the memory of her sister comes over him in a hot wave. God save me, he thinks – what am I doing here?

  ‘You can sit down if you like.’

  He sits down. The furniture gleams, the room is oppressively neat.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asks.

  ‘Desiree.’

  Desiree: now he remembers. Melanie the firstborn, the dark one, then Desiree, the desired one. Surely they tempted the gods by giving her a name like that!

  ‘My name is David Lurie.’ He watches her closely, but she gives no sign of recognition. ‘I’m from Cape Town.’

  ‘My sister is in Cape Town. She’s a student.’

  He nods. He does not say, I know your sister, know her well. But he thinks: fruit of the same tree, down probably to the most intimate detail. Yet with differences: different pulsings of the blood, different urgencies of passion. The two of them in the same bed: an experience fit for a king.

  He shivers lightly, looks at his watch. ‘Do you know what, Desiree? I think I will try to catch your father at his school, if you can tell me how to get there.’

  The school is of a piece with the housing estate: a low building in face-brick with steel windows and an asbestos roof, set in a dusty quadrangle fenced with barbed wire. F.S. MARAIS says the writing on the one entrance pillar, MIDDLE SCHOOL says the writing on the other.

  The grounds are deserted. He wanders around until he comes upon a sign reading OFFICE. Inside sits a plump middle-aged secretary doing her nails. ‘I’m looking for Mr Isaacs,’ he says.

  ‘Mr Isaacs!’ she calls: ‘Here’s a visitor for you!’ She turns to him. ‘Just go in.’

  Isaacs, behind his desk, half-rises, pauses, regards him in a puzzled way.