Disgrace Page 6

  He ignores it, pressing on into the crowded lobby, where people turn to stare at the tall man hurrying from his pursuers.

  Someone bars his way. ‘Hold it!’ she says. He averts his face, stretches out a hand. There is a flash.

  A girl circles around him. Her hair, plaited with amber beads, hangs straight down on either side of her face. She smiles, showing even white teeth. ‘Can we stop and speak?’ she says.

  ‘What about?’

  A tape recorder is thrust toward him. He pushes it away.

  ‘About how it was,’ says the girl.

  ‘How what was?’

  The camera flashes again.

  ‘You know, the hearing.’

  ‘I can’t comment on that.’

  ‘OK, so what can you comment on?’

  ‘There is nothing I want to comment on.’

  The loiterers and the curious have begun to crowd around. If he wants to get away, he will have to push through them.

  ‘Are you sorry?’ says the girl. The recorder is thrust closer. ‘Do you regret what you did?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I was enriched by the experience.’

  The smile remains on the girl’s face. ‘So would you do it again?’

  ‘I don’t think I will have another chance.’

  ‘But if you had a chance?’

  ‘That isn’t a real question.’

  She wants more, more words for the belly of the little machine, but for the moment is at a loss for how to suck him into further indiscretion.

  ‘He was what by the experience?’ he hears someone ask sotto voce.

  ‘He was enriched.’

  There is a titter.

  ‘Ask him if he apologized,’ someone calls to the girl.

  ‘I already asked.’

  Confessions, apologies: why this thirst for abasement? A hush falls. They circle around him like hunters who have cornered a strange beast and do not know how to finish it off.

  The photograph appears in the next day’s student newspaper, above the caption ‘Who’s the Dunce Now?’ It shows him, eyes cast up to the heavens, reaching out a groping hand toward the camera. The pose is ridiculous enough in itself, but what makes the picture a gem is the inverted waste-paper basket that a young man, grinning broadly, holds above him. By a trick of perspective the basket appears to sit on his head like a dunce’s hat. Against such an image, what chance has he?

  ‘Committee tight-lipped on verdict,’ reads the headline. ‘The disciplinary committee investigating charges of harassment and misconduct against Communications Professor David Lurie was tight-lipped yesterday on its verdict. Chair Manas Mathabane would say only that its findings have been forwarded to the Rector for action.

  ‘Sparring verbally with members of WAR after the hearing, Lurie (53) said he had found his experiences with women students “enriching”.

  ‘Trouble first erupted when complaints against Lurie, an expert on romantic poetry, were filed by students in his classes.’

  He has a call at home from Mathabane. ‘The committee has passed on its recommendation, David, and the Rector has asked me to get back to you one last time. He is prepared not to take extreme measures, he says, on condition that you issue a statement in your own person which will be satisfactory from our point of view as well as yours.’

  ‘Manas, we have been over that ground. I – ’

  ‘Wait. Hear me out. I have a draft statement before me which would satisfy our requirements. It is quite short. May I read it to you?’

  ‘Read it.’

  Mathabane reads: ‘I acknowledge without reservation serious abuses of the human rights of the complainant, as well as abuse of the authority delegated to me by the University. I sincerely apologize to both parties and accept whatever appropriate penalty may be imposed.’

  ‘“Whatever appropriate penalty”: what does that mean?’

  ‘My understanding is, you will not be dismissed. In all probability, you will be requested to take a leave of absence. Whether you eventually return to teaching duties will depend on yourself, and on the decision of your Dean and head of department.’

  ‘That is it? That is the package?’

  ‘That is my understanding. If you signify that you subscribe to the statement, which will have the status of a plea in mitigation, the Rector will be prepared to accept it in that spirit.’

  ‘In what spirit?’

  ‘A spirit of repentance.’

  ‘Manas, we went through the repentance business yesterday. I told you what I thought. I won’t do it. I appeared before an officially constituted tribunal, before a branch of the law. Before that secular tribunal I pleaded guilty, a secular plea. That plea should suffice. Repentance is neither here nor there. Repentance belongs to another world, to another universe of discourse.’

  ‘You are confusing issues, David. You are not being instructed to repent. What goes on in your soul is dark to us, as members of what you call a secular tribunal if not as fellow human beings. You are being asked to issue a statement.’

  ‘I am being asked to issue an apology about which I may not be sincere?’

  ‘The criterion is not whether you are sincere. That is a matter, as I say, for your own conscience. The criterion is whether you are prepared to acknowledge your fault in a public manner and take steps to remedy it.’

  ‘Now we are truly splitting hairs. You charged me, and I pleaded guilty to the charges. That is all you need from me.’

  ‘No. We want more. Not a great deal more, but more. I hope you can see your way clear to giving us that.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t.’

  ‘David, I can’t go on protecting you from yourself. I am tired of it, and so is the rest of the committee. Do you want time to rethink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well. Then I can only say, you will be hearing from the Rector.’

  SEVEN

  ONCE HE HAS made up his mind to leave, there is little to hold him back. He clears out the refrigerator, locks up the house, and at noon is on the freeway. A stopover in Oudtshoorn, a crack-of-dawn departure: by mid-morning he is nearing his destination, the town of Salem on the Grahamstown–Kenton road in the Eastern Cape.

  His daughter’s smallholding is at the end of a winding dirt track some miles outside the town: five hectares of land, most of it arable, a wind-pump, stables and outbuildings, and a low, sprawling farmhouse painted yellow, with a galvanized-iron roof and a covered stoep. The front boundary is marked by a wire fence and clumps of nasturtiums and geraniums; the rest of the front is dust and gravel.

  There is an old VW kombi parked in the driveway; he pulls up behind it. From the shade of the stoep Lucy emerges into the sunlight. For a moment he does not recognise her. A year has passed, and she has put on weight. Her hips and breasts are now (he searches for the best word) ample. Comfortably barefoot, she comes to greet him, holding her arms wide, embracing him, kissing him on the cheek.

  What a nice girl, he thinks, hugging her; what a nice welcome at the end of a long trip!

  The house, which is large, dark, and, even at midday, chilly, dates from the time of large families, of guests by the wagonful. Six years ago Lucy moved in as a member of a commune, a tribe of young people who peddled leather goods and sunbaked pottery in Grahamstown and, in between stands of mealies, grew dagga. When the commune broke up, the rump moving on to New Bethesda, Lucy stayed behind on the smallholding with her friend Helen. She had fallen in love with the place, she said; she wanted to farm it properly. He helped her buy it. Now here she is, flowered dress, bare feet and all, in a house full of the smell of baking, no longer a child playing at farming but a solid countrywoman, a boervrou.

  ‘I’m going to put you in Helen’s room,’ she says. ‘It gets the morning sun. You have no idea how cold the mornings have been this winter.’

  ‘How is Helen?’ he asks. Helen is a large, sad-looking woman with a deep voice and a bad skin, older than Lucy. He has never been able to understand what Lucy sees
in her; privately he wishes Lucy would find, or be found by, someone better.

  ‘Helen has been back in Johannesburg since April. I’ve been alone, aside from the help.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that. Aren’t you nervous by yourself?’

  Lucy shrugs. ‘There are the dogs. Dogs still mean something. The more dogs, the more deterrence. Anyhow, if there were to be a break-in, I don’t see that two people would be better than one.’

  ‘That’s very philosophical.’

  ‘Yes. When all else fails, philosophize.’

  ‘But you have a weapon.’

  ‘I have a rifle. I’ll show you. I bought it from a neighbour. I haven’t ever used it, but I have it.’

  ‘Good. An armed philosopher. I approve.’

  Dogs and a gun; bread in the oven and a crop in the earth. Curious that he and her mother, cityfolk, intellectuals, should have produced this throwback, this sturdy young settler. But perhaps it was not they who produced her: perhaps history had the larger share.

  She offers him tea. He is hungry: he wolfs down two blocklike slices of bread with prickly-pear jam, also home-made. He is aware of her eyes on him as he eats. He must be careful: nothing so distasteful to a child as the workings of a parent’s body.

  Her own fingernails are none too clean. Country dirt: honourable, he supposes.

  He unpacks his suitcase in Helen’s room. The drawers are empty; in the huge old wardrobe there is only a blue overall hanging. If Helen is away, it is not just for a while.

  Lucy takes him on a tour of the premises. She reminds him about not wasting water, about not contaminating the septic tank. He knows the lesson but listens dutifully. Then she shows him over the boarding kennels. On his last visit there had been only one pen. Now there are five, solidly built, with concrete bases, galvanized poles and struts, and heavy-gauge mesh, shaded by young bluegum trees. The dogs are excited to see her: Dobermanns, German Shepherds, ridgebacks, bull terriers, Rottweilers. ‘Watchdogs, all of them,’ she says. ‘Working dogs, on short contracts: two weeks, one week, sometimes just a weekend. The pets tend to come in during the summer holidays.’

  ‘And cats? Don’t you take cats?’

  ‘Don’t laugh. I’m thinking of branching into cats. I’m just not set up for them yet.’

  ‘Do you still have your stall at the market?’

  ‘Yes, on Saturday mornings. I’ll take you along.’

  This is how she makes a living: from the kennels, and from selling flowers and garden produce. Nothing could be more simple.

  ‘Don’t the dogs get bored?’ He points to one, a tan-coloured bulldog bitch with a cage to herself who, head on paws, watches them morosely, not even bothering to get up.

  ‘Katy? She’s abandoned. The owners have done a bunk. Account unpaid for months. I don’t know what I’m going to do about her. Try to find her a home, I suppose. She’s sulking, but otherwise she’s all right. She gets taken out every day for exercise. By me or by Petrus. It’s part of the package.’

  ‘Petrus?’

  ‘You will meet him. Petrus is my new assistant. In fact, since March, co-proprietor. Quite a fellow.’

  He strolls with her past the mud-walled dam, where a family of ducks coasts serenely, past the beehives, and through the garden: flowerbeds and winter vegetables – cauliflowers, potatoes, beetroot, chard, onions. They visit the pump and storage dam on the edge of the property. Rains for the past two years have been good, the water table has risen.

  She talks easily about these matters. A frontier farmer of the new breed. In the old days, cattle and maize. Today, dogs and daffodils. The more things change the more they remain the same. History repeating itself, though in a more modest vein. Perhaps history has learned a lesson.

  They walk back along an irrigation furrow. Lucy’s bare toes grip the red earth, leaving clear prints. A solid woman, embedded in her new life. Good! If this is to be what he leaves behind – this daughter, this woman – then he does not have to be ashamed.

  ‘There’s no need to entertain me,’ he says, back in the house. ‘I’ve brought my books. I just need a table and chair.’

  ‘Are you working on something in particular?’ she asks carefully. His work is not a subject they often talk about.

  ‘I have plans. Something on the last years of Byron. Not a book, or not the kind of book I have written in the past. Something for the stage, rather. Words and music. Characters talking and singing.’

  ‘I didn’t know you still had ambitions in that direction.’

  ‘I thought I would indulge myself. But there is more to it than that. One wants to leave something behind. Or at least a man wants to leave something behind. It’s easier for a woman.’

  ‘Why is it easier for a woman?’

  ‘Easier, I mean, to produce something with a life of its own.’

  ‘Doesn’t being a father count?’

  ‘Being a father . . . I can’t help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business. But let us wait and see what comes. If something does come, you will be the first to hear. The first and probably the last.’

  ‘Are you going to write the music yourself?’

  ‘I’ll borrow the music, for the most part. I have no qualms about borrowing. At the beginning I thought it was a subject that would call for quite lush orchestration. Like Strauss, say. Which would have been beyond my powers. Now I’m inclining the other way, toward a very meagre accompaniment – violin, cello, oboe or maybe bassoon. But it’s all in the realm of ideas as yet. I haven’t written a note – I’ve been distracted. You must have heard about my troubles.’

  ‘Roz mentioned something on the telephone.’

  ‘Well, we won’t go into that now. Some other time.’

  ‘Have you left the university for good?’

  ‘I have resigned. I was asked to resign.’

  ‘Will you miss it?’

  ‘Will I miss it? I don’t know. I was no great shakes as a teacher. I was having less and less rapport, I found, with my students. What I had to say they didn’t care to hear. So perhaps I won’t miss it. Perhaps I’ll enjoy my release.’

  A man is standing in the doorway, a tall man in blue overalls and rubber boots and a woollen cap. ‘Petrus, come in, meet my father,’ says Lucy.

  Petrus wipes his boots. They shake hands. A lined, weathered face; shrewd eyes. Forty? Forty-five?

  Petrus turns to Lucy. ‘The spray,’ he says: ‘I have come for the spray.’

  ‘It’s in the kombi. Wait here, I’ll fetch it.’

  He is left with Petrus. ‘You look after the dogs,’ he says, to break the silence.

  ‘I look after the dogs and I work in the garden. Yes.’ Petrus gives a broad smile. ‘I am the gardener and the dog-man.’ He reflects for a moment. ‘The dog-man,’ he repeats, savouring the phrase.

  ‘I have just travelled up from Cape Town. There are times when I feel anxious about my daughter all alone here. It is very isolated.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Petrus, ‘it is dangerous.’ He pauses. ‘Everything is dangerous today. But here it is all right, I think.’ And he gives another smile.

  Lucy returns with a small bottle. ‘You know the measurement: one teaspoon to ten litres of water.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ And Petrus ducks out through the low doorway.

  ‘Petrus seems a good man,’ he remarks.

  ‘He has his head screwed on right.’

  ‘Does he live on the property?’

  ‘He and his wife have the old stable. I’ve put in electricity. It’s quite comfortable. He has another wife in Adelaide, and children, some of them grown up. He goes off and spends time there occasionally.’

  He leaves Lucy to her tasks and takes a stroll as far as the Kenton road. A cool winter’s day, the sun already dipping over red hills dotted with sparse, bleached grass. Poor land, poor soil, he thinks. Exhausted. Good only for goats. Does Lucy really intend to spend her life here? He hopes it is only a ph
ase.

  A group of children pass him on their way home from school. He greets them; they greet him back. Country ways. Already Cape Town is receding into the past.

  Without warning a memory of the girl comes back: of her neat little breasts with their upstanding nipples, of her smooth flat belly. A ripple of desire passes through him. Evidently whatever it was is not over yet.

  He returns to the house and finishes unpacking. A long time since he last lived with a woman. He will have to mind his manners; he will have to be neat.

  Ample is a kind word for Lucy. Soon she will be positively heavy. Letting herself go, as happens when one withdraws from the field of love. Qu’est devenu ce front poli, ces cheveux blonds, sourcils voûtés?

  Supper is simple: soup and bread, then sweet potatoes. Usually he does not like sweet potatoes, but Lucy does something with lemon peel and butter and allspice that makes them palatable, more than palatable.

  ‘Will you be staying a while?’ she asks.

  ‘A week? Shall we say a week? Will you be able to bear me that long?’

  ‘You can stay as long as you like. I’m just afraid you’ll get bored.’

  ‘I won’t be bored.’

  ‘And after the week, where will you go?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Perhaps I’ll just go on a ramble, a long ramble.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome to stay.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to say so, my dear, but I’d like to keep your friendship. Long visits don’t make for good friends.’

  ‘What if we don’t call it a visit? What if we call it refuge? Would you accept refuge on an indefinite basis?’

  ‘You mean asylum? It’s not as bad as that, Lucy. I’m not a fugitive.’

  ‘Roz said the atmosphere was nasty.’

  ‘I brought it on myself. I was offered a compromise, which I wouldn’t accept.’

  ‘What kind of compromise?’

  ‘Re-education. Reformation of the character. The code-word was counselling.’

  ‘And are you so perfect that you can’t do with a little counselling?’

  ‘It reminds me too much of Mao’s China. Recantation, self-criticism, public apology. I’m old-fashioned, I would prefer simply to be put against a wall and shot. Have done with it.’