Disgrace (10 page)

Lucy draws a breath. She seems about to respond to his homily, but then does not. They arrive at the house in silence.

NINE

H
E IS SITTING
in the front room, watching soccer on television. The score is nil-all; neither team seems interested in winning.

The commentary alternates between Sotho and Xhosa, languages of which he understands not a word. He turns the sound down to a murmur. Saturday afternoon in South Africa: a time consecrated to men and their pleasures. He nods off.

When he awakes, Petrus is beside him on the sofa with a bottle of beer in his hand. He has turned the volume higher.

‘Bushbucks,' says Petrus. ‘My team. Bushbucks and Sundowns.'

Sundowns take a corner. There is a mêlée in the goalmouth. Petrus groans and clasps his head. When the dust clears, the Bushbucks goalkeeper is lying on the ground with the ball under his chest. ‘He is good! He is good!' says Petrus. ‘He is a good goalkeeper. They must keep him.'

The game ends scoreless. Petrus switches channels. Boxing: two tiny men, so tiny that they barely come up to the referee's chest, circle, leap in, belabour each other.

He gets up, wanders through to the back of the house. Lucy is lying on her bed, reading. ‘What are you reading?' he says. She looks at him quizzically, then takes the earplugs out of her ears. ‘What are you reading?' he repeats; and then, ‘It's not working out, is it? Shall I leave?'

She smiles, lays her book aside.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
: not what he would have expected. ‘Sit down,' she says.

He sits on the bed, idly fondles her bare foot. A good foot, shapely. Good bones, like her mother. A woman in the flower of her years, attractive despite the heaviness, despite the unflattering clothes.

‘From my point of view, David, it is working out perfectly well. I'm glad to have you here. It takes a while to adjust to the pace of country life, that's all. Once you find things to do you won't be so bored.'

He nods absentmindedly. Attractive, he is thinking, yet lost to men. Need he reproach himself, or would it have worked out like that anyway? From the day his daughter was born he has felt for her nothing but the most spontaneous, most unstinting love. Impossible she has been unaware of it. Has it been too much, that love? Has she found it a burden? Has it pressed down on her? Has she given it a darker reading?

He wonders how it is for Lucy with her lovers, how it is for her lovers with her. He has never been afraid to follow a thought down its winding track, and he is not afraid now. Has he fathered a woman of passion? What can she draw on, what not, in the realm of the senses? Are he and she capable of talking about that too? Lucy has not led a protected life. Why should they not be open with each other, why should they draw lines, in times when no one else does?

‘Once I find things to do,' he says, coming back from his wanderings. ‘What do you suggest?'

‘You could help with the dogs. You could cut up the dog-meat. I've always found that difficult. Then there is Petrus. Petrus is busy establishing his own lands. You could give him a hand.'

‘Give Petrus a hand. I like that. I like the historical piquancy. Will he pay me a wage for my labour, do you think?'

‘Ask him. I'm sure he will. He got a Land Affairs grant earlier this year, enough to buy a hectare and a bit from me. I didn't tell you? The boundary line goes through the dam. We share the dam. Everything from there to the fence is his. He has a cow that will calve in the spring. He has two wives, or a wife and a girlfriend. If he has played his cards right he could get a second grant to put up a house; then he can move out of the stable. By Eastern Cape standards he is a man of substance. Ask him to pay you. He can afford it. I'm not sure I can afford him any more.'

‘All right, I'll handle the dog-meat, I'll offer to dig for Petrus. What else?'

‘You can help at the clinic. They are desperate for volunteers.'

‘You mean help Bev Shaw.'

‘Yes.'

‘I don't think she and I will hit it off.'

‘You don't need to hit it off with her. You have only to help her. But don't expect to be paid. You will have to do it out of the goodness of your heart.'

‘I'm dubious, Lucy. It sounds suspiciously like community service. It sounds like someone trying to make reparation for past misdeeds.'

‘As to your motives, David, I can assure you, the animals at the clinic won't query them. They won't ask and they won't care.'

‘All right, I'll do it. But only as long as I don't have to become a better person. I am not prepared to be reformed. I want to go on being myself. I'll do it on that basis.' His hand still rests on her foot; now he grips her ankle tight. ‘Understood?'

She gives him what he can only call a sweet smile. ‘So you are determined to go on being bad. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I promise, no one will ask you to change.'

She teases him as her mother used to tease him. Her wit, if anything, sharper. He has always been drawn to women of wit. Wit and beauty. With the best will in the world he could not find wit in Meláni. But plenty of beauty.

Again it runs through him: a light shudder of voluptuousness. He is aware of Lucy observing him. He does not appear to be able to conceal it. Interesting.

He gets up, goes out into the yard. The younger dogs are delighted to see him: they trot back and forth in their cages, whining eagerly. But the old bulldog bitch barely stirs.

He enters her cage, closes the door behind him. She raises her head, regards him, lets her head fall again; her old dugs hang slack.

He squats down, tickles her behind the ears. ‘Abandoned, are we?' he murmurs.

He stretches out beside her on the bare concrete. Above is the pale blue sky. His limbs relax.

This is how Lucy finds him. He must have fallen asleep: the first he knows, she is in the cage with the water-can, and the bitch is up, sniffing her feet.

‘Making friends?' says Lucy.

‘She's not easy to make friends with.'

‘Poor old Katy, she's in mourning. No one wants her, and she knows it. The irony is, she must have offspring all over the district who would be happy to share their homes with her. But it's not in their power to invite her. They are part of the furniture, part of the alarm system. They do us the honour of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.'

They leave the cage. The bitch slumps down, closes her eyes.

‘The Church Fathers had a long debate about them, and decided they don't have proper souls,' he observes. ‘Their souls are tied to their bodies and die with them.'

Lucy shrugs. ‘I'm not sure that I have a soul. I wouldn't know a soul if I saw one.'

‘That's not true. You are a soul. We are all souls. We are souls before we are born.'

She regards him oddly.

‘What will you do with her?' he says.

‘With Katy? I'll keep her, if it comes to that.'

‘Don't you ever put animals down?'

‘No, I don't. Bev does. It is a job no one else wants to do, so she has taken it upon herself. It cuts her up terribly. You underestimate her. She is a more interesting person than you think. Even in your own terms.'

His own terms: what are they? That dumpy little women with ugly voices deserve to be ignored? A shadow of grief falls over him: for Katy, alone in her cage, for himself, for everyone. He sighs deeply, not stifling the sigh. ‘Forgive me, Lucy,' he says.

‘Forgive you? For what?' She is smiling lightly, mockingly.

‘For being one of the two mortals assigned to usher you into the world and for not turning out to be a better guide. But I'll go and help Bev Shaw. Provided that I don't have to call her Bev. It's a silly name to go by. It reminds me of cattle. When shall I start?'

‘I'll give her a call.'

TEN

T
HE SIGN OUTSIDE
the clinic reads
ANIMAL WELFARE LEAGUE W
.
O
. 1529. Below is a line stating the daily hours, but this has been taped over. At the door is a line of waiting people, some with animals. As soon as he gets out of his car there are children all around him, begging for money or just staring. He makes his way through the crush, and through a sudden cacophony as two dogs, held back by their owners, snarl and snap at each other.

The small, bare waiting-room is packed. He has to step over someone's legs to get in.

‘Mrs Shaw?' he inquires.

An old woman nods toward a doorway closed off with a plastic curtain. The woman holds a goat on a short rope; it glares nervously, eyeing the dogs, its hooves clicking on the hard floor.

In the inner room, which smells pungently of urine, Bev Shaw is working at a low steel-topped table. With a pencil-light she is peering down the throat of a young dog that looks like a cross between a ridgeback and a jackal. Kneeling on the table a barefoot child, evidently the owner, has the dog's head clamped under his arm and is trying to hold its jaws open. A low, gurgling snarl comes from its throat; its powerful hindquarters strain. Awkwardly he joins in the tussle, pressing the dog's hind legs together, forcing it to sit on its haunches.

‘Thank you,' says Bev Shaw. Her face is flushed. ‘There's an abscess here from an impacted tooth. We have no antibiotics, so – hold him still,
boytjie!
– so we'll just have to lance it and hope for the best.'

She probes inside the mouth with a lancet. The dog gives a tremendous jerk, breaks free of him, almost breaks free of the boy. He grasps it as it scrabbles to get off the table; for a moment its eyes, full of rage and fear, glare into his.

‘On his side – so,' says Bev Shaw. Making crooning noises, she expertly trips up the dog and turns it on its side. ‘The belt,' she says. He passes a belt around its body and she buckles it. ‘So,' says Bev Shaw. ‘Think comforting thoughts, think strong thoughts. They can smell what you are thinking.'

He leans his full weight on the dog. Gingerly, one hand wrapped in an old rag, the child prises open the jaws again. The dog's eyes roll in terror. They can smell what you are thinking: what nonsense! ‘There, there!' he murmurs. Bev Shaw probes again with the lancet. The dog gags, goes rigid, then relaxes.

‘So,' she says, ‘now we must let nature take her course.' She unbuckles the belt, speaks to the child in what sounds like very halting Xhosa. The dog, on its feet, cowers under the table. There is a spattering of blood and saliva on the surface; Bev wipes it off. The child coaxes the dog out.

‘Thank you, Mr Lurie. You have a good presence. I sense that you like animals.'

‘Do I like animals? I eat them, so I suppose I must like them, some parts of them.'

Her hair is a mass of little curls. Does she make the curls herself, with tongs? Unlikely: it would take hours every day. They must grow that way. He has never seen such a
tessitura
from close by. The veins on her ears are visible as a filigree of red and purple. The veins of her nose too. And then a chin that comes straight out of her chest, like a pouter pigeon's. As an ensemble, remarkably unattractive.

She is pondering his words, whose tone she appears to have missed.

‘Yes, we eat up a lot of animals in this country,' she says. ‘It doesn't seem to do us much good. I'm not sure how we will justify it to them.' Then: ‘Shall we start on the next one?'

Justify it? When? At the Great Reckoning? He would be curious to hear more, but this is not the time.

The goat, a fullgrown buck, can barely walk. One half of his scrotum, yellow and purple, is swollen like a balloon; the other half is a mass of caked blood and dirt. He has been savaged by dogs, the old woman says. But he seems bright enough, cheery, combative. While Bev Shaw is examining him, he passes a short burst of pellets on to the floor. Standing at his head, gripping his horns, the woman pretends to reprove him.

Bev Shaw touches the scrotum with a swab. The goat kicks. ‘Can you fasten his legs?' she asks, and indicates how. He straps the right hind leg to the right foreleg. The goat tries to kick again, teeters. She swabs the wound gently. The goat trembles, gives a bleat: an ugly sound, low and hoarse.

As the dirt comes away, he sees that the wound is alive with white grubs waving their blind heads in the air. He shudders. ‘Blowfly,' says Bev Shaw. ‘At least a week old.' She purses her lips. ‘You should have brought him in long ago,' she says to the woman. ‘Yes,' says the woman. ‘Every night the dogs come. It is too, too bad. Five hundred rand you pay for a man like him.'

Bev Shaw straightens up. ‘I don't know what we can do. I don't have the experience to try a removal. She can wait for Dr Oosthuizen on Thursday, but the old fellow will come out sterile anyway, and does she want that? And then there is the question of antibiotics. Is she prepared to spend money on antibiotics?'

She kneels down again beside the goat, nuzzles his throat, stroking the throat upward with her own hair. The goat trembles but is still. She motions to the woman to let go of the horns. The woman obeys. The goat does not stir.

She is whispering. ‘What do you say, my friend?' he hears her say. ‘What do you say? Is it enough?'

The goat stands stock still as if hypnotized. Bev Shaw continues to stroke him with her head. She seems to have lapsed into a trance of her own.

She collects herself and gets to her feet. ‘I'm afraid it's too late,' she says to the woman. ‘I can't make him better. You can wait for the doctor on Thursday, or you can leave him with me. I can give him a quiet end. He will let me do that for him. Shall I? Shall I keep him here?'