Disgrace

As for the actual trading, there is little for him to do. Petrus is the one who swiftly and efficiently lays out their wares, the one who knows the prices, takes the money, makes the change. Petrus is in fact the one who does the work, while he sits and warms his hands. Just like the old days: _baas en Klaas_. Except that he does not presume to give Petrus orders. Petrus does what needs to be done, and that is that.

Nevertheless, their takings are down: less than three hundred rand. The reason is Lucy's absence, no doubt about that. Boxes of flowers, bags of vegetables have to be loaded back into the kombi. Petrus shakes his head. 'Not good,' he says.

As yet Petrus has offered no explanation for his absence. Petrus has the right to come and go as he wishes; he has exercised that right; he is entitled to his silence. But questions remain. Does Petrus know who the strangers were? Was it because of some word Petrus let drop that they made Lucy their target rather than, say, Ettinger? Did Petrus know in advance what they were planning?

In the old days one could have had it out with Petrus. In the old days one could have had it out to the extent of losing one's temper and sending him packing and hiring someone in his place. But though Petrus is paid a wage, Petrus is no longer, strictly speaking, hired help. It is hard to say what Petrus is, strictly speaking. The word that seems to serve best, however, is neighbour. Petrus is a neighbour who at present happens to sell his labour, because that is what suits him. He sells his labour under contract, unwritten contract, and that contract makes no provision for dismissal on grounds of suspicion. It is a new world they live in, he and Lucy and Petrus. Petrus knows it, and he knows it, and Petrus knows that he knows it.

In spite of which he feels at home with Petrus, is even prepared, however guardedly, to like him. Petrus is a man of his generation. Doubtless Petrus has been through a lot, doubtless he has a story to tell. He would not mind hearing Petrus' story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mould of English, Petrus' story would come out arthritic, bygone.

What appeals to him in Petrus is his face, his face and his hands. If there is such a thing as honest toil, then Petrus bears its marks. A man of patience, energy, resilience. A peasant, a paysan, a man of the country. A plotter and a schemer and no doubt a liar too, like peasants everywhere. Honest toil and honest cunning.

He has his own suspicions of what Petrus is up to, in the longer run. Petrus will not be content to plough forever his hectare and a half. Lucy may have lasted longer than her hippie, gypsy friends, but to Petrus Lucy is still chickenfeed: an amateur, an enthusiast of the farming life rather than a farmer. Petrus would like to take over Lucy's land. Then he would like to have Ettinger's too, or enough of it to run a herd on. Ettinger will be a harder nut to crack. Lucy is merely a transient; Ettinger is another peasant, a man of the earth, tenacious, eingewurzelt. But Ettinger will die one of these days, and the Ettinger son has fled. In that respect Ettinger has been stupid. A good peasant takes care to have lots of sons.

Petrus has a vision of the future in which people like Lucy have no place. But that need not make an enemy of Petrus. Country life has always been a matter of neighbours scheming against each other, wishing on each other pests, poor crops, financial ruin, yet in a crisis ready to lend a hand.

The worst, the darkest reading would be that Petrus engaged three strange men to teach Lucy a lesson, paying them off with the loot. But he cannot believe that, it would be too simple. The real truth, he suspects, is something far more - he casts around for the word - anthropological, something it would take months to get to the bottom of, months of patient, unhurried conversation with dozens of people, and the offices of an interpreter.

On the other hand, he does believe that Petrus knew something was in the offing; he does believe Petrus could have warned Lucy. That is why he will not let go of the subject. That is why he continues to nag Petrus.

Petrus has emptied the concrete storage dam and is cleaning it of algae. It is an unpleasant job. Nevertheless, he offers to help. With his feet crammed into Lucy's rubber boots, he climbs into the dam, stepping carefully on the slick bottom. For a while he and Petrus work in concert, scraping, scrubbing, shovelling out the mud. Then he breaks off.

'Do you know, Petrus,' he says, 'I find it hard to believe the men who came here were strangers. I find it hard to believe they arrived out of nowhere, and did what they did, and disappeared afterwards like ghosts. And I find it hard to believe that the reason they picked on us was simply that we were the first white folk they met that day. What do you think? Am I wrong?'

Petrus smokes a pipe, an old-fashioned pipe with a hooked stem and a little silver cap over the bowl. Now he straightens up, takes the pipe from the pocket of his overalls, opens the cap, tamps down the tobacco in the bowl, sucks at the pipe unlit. He stares reflectively over the dam wall, over the hills, over open country. His expression is perfectly tranquil.

'The police must find them,' he says at last. 'The police must find them and put them in jail. That is the job of the police.'

'But the police are not going to find them without help. Those men knew about the forestry station. I am convinced they knew about Lucy. How could they have known if they were complete strangers to the district?'

Petrus chooses not to take this as a question. He puts the pipe away in his pocket, exchanges spade for broom.

'It was not simply theft, Petrus,' he persists. 'They did not come just to steal. They did not come just to do this to me.' He touches the bandages, touches the eye-shield. 'They came to do something else as well. You know what I mean, or if you don't know you can surely guess. After they did what they did, you cannot expect Lucy calmly to go on with her life as before. I am Lucy's father. I want those men to be caught and brought before the law and punished. Am I wrong? Am I wrong to want justice?'

He does not care how he gets the words out of Petrus now, he just wants to hear them.

'No, you are not wrong.'

A flurry of anger runs through him, strong enough to take him by surprise. He picks up his spade and strikes whole strips of mud and weed from the dam-bottom, flinging them over his shoulder, over the wall. You are whipping yoursef into a rage, he admonishes himself: Stop it! Yet at this moment he would like to take Petrus by the throat. If it had been your wife instead of my daughter, he would like to say to Petrus, you would not be tapping your pipe and weighing your words so judiciously. Violation: that is the word he would like to force out of Petrus. Yes, it was a violation, he would like to hear Petrus say; yes, it was an outrage.

In silence, side by side, he and Petrus finish off the job.

This is how his days are spent on the farm. He helps Petrus clean up the irrigation system. He keeps the garden from going to ruin. He packs produce for the market. He helps Bev Shaw at the clinic. He sweeps the floors, cooks the meals, does all the things that Lucy no longer does. He is busy from dawn to dusk.

His eye is healing surprisingly fast: after a mere week he is able to use it again. The burns are taking longer. He retains the skullcap and the bandage over his ear. The ear, uncovered, looks like a naked pink mollusc: he does not know when he will be bold enough to expose it to the gaze of others.

He buys a hat to keep off the sun, and, to a degree, to hide his face. He is trying to get used to looking odd, worse than odd, repulsive - one of those sorry creatures whom children gawk at in the street. 'Why does that man look so funny?' they ask their mothers, and have to be hushed.

He goes to the shops in Salem as seldom as he can, to Grahamstown only on Saturdays. All at once he has become a recluse, a country recluse. The end of roving. Though the heart be still as loving and the moon be still as bright. Who would have thought it would come to an end so soon and so suddenly: the roving, the loving!

He has no reason to believe their misfortunes have made it on to the gossip circuit in Cape Town. Nevertheless, he wants to be sure that Rosalind does not hear the story in some garbled form. Twice he tries to call her, without success. The third time he telephones the travel agency where she works. Rosalind is in Madagascar, he is told, scouting; he is given the fax number of a hotel in Antananarivo.

He composes a dispatch: 'Lucy and I have had some bad luck. My car was stolen, and there was a scuffle too, in which I took a bit of a knock. Nothing serious - we're both fine, though shaken. Thought I'd let you know in case of rumours. Trust you are having a good time.' He gives the page to Lucy to approve, then to Bev Shaw to send off To Rosalind in darkest Africa.

Lucy is not improving. She stays up all night, claiming she cannot sleep; then in the afternoons he finds her asleep on the sofa, her thumb in her mouth like a child. She has lost interest in food: he is the one who has to tempt her to eat, cooking unfamiliar dishes because she refuses to touch meat.

This is not what he came for - to be stuck in the back of beyond, warding off demons, nursing his daughter, attending to a dying enterprise. If he came for anything, it was to gather himself, gather his forces. Here he is losing himself day by day.

The demons do not pass him by. He has nightmares of his own in which he wallows in a bed of blood, or, panting, shouting soundlessly, runs from the man with the face like a hawk, like a Benin mask, like Thoth. One night, half sleepwalking, half demented, he strips his own bed, even turns the mattress over, looking for stains.

There is still the Byron project. Of the books he brought from Cape Town, only two volumes of the letters are left - the rest were in the trunk of the stolen car. The public library in Grahamstown can offer nothing but selections from the poems. But does he need to go on reading? What more does he need to know of how Byron and his acquaintance passed their time in old Ravenna? Can he not, by now, invent a Byron who is true to Byron, and a Teresa too?

He has, if the truth be told, been putting it off for months: the moment when he must face the blank page, strike the first note, see what he is worth. Snatches are already imprinted on his mind of the lovers in duet, the vocal lines, soprano and tenor, coiling wordlessly around and past each other like serpents. Melody without climax; the whisper of reptile scales on marble staircases; and, throbbing in the background, the baritone of the humiliated husband. Will this be where the dark trio are at last brought to life: not in Cape Town but in old Kaffraria?

FIFTEEN

THE TWO YOUNG sheep are tethered all day beside the stable on a bare patch of ground. Their bleating, steady and monotonous, has begun to annoy him. He strolls over to Petrus, who has his bicycle upside down and is working on it. 'Those sheep,' he says - 'don't you think we could tie them where they can graze?'

'They are for the party,' says Petrus. 'On Saturday I will slaughter them for the party. You and Lucy must come.' He wipes his hands clean. 'I invite you and Lucy to the party.'

'On Saturday?'

'Yes, I am giving a party on Saturday. A big party.'

'Thank you. But even if the sheep are for the party, don't you think they could graze?'

An hour later the sheep are still tethered, still bleating dolefully. Petrus is nowhere to be seen. Exasperated, he unties them and tugs them over to the damside, where there is abundant grass.

The sheep drink at length, then leisurely begin to graze. They are black-faced Persians, alike in size, in markings, even in their movements. Twins, in all likelihood, destined since birth for the butcher's knife. Well, nothing remarkable in that. When did a sheep last die of old age? Sheep do not own themselves, do not own their lives. They exist to be used, every last ounce of them, their flesh to be eaten, their bones to be crushed and fed to poultry.

Nothing escapes, except perhaps the gall bladder, which no one will eat. Descartes should have thought of that. The soul, suspended in the dark, bitter gall, hiding.

'Petrus has invited us to a party,' he tells Lucy. 'Why is he throwing a party?'

'Because of the land transfer, I would guess. It goes through officially on the first of next month. It's a big day for him. We should at least put in an appearance, take them a present.'

'He is going to slaughter the two sheep. I wouldn't have thought two sheep would go very far.'

'Petrus is a pennypincher. In the old days it would have been an ox.'

'I'm not sure I like the way he does things - bringing the slaughter-beasts home to acquaint them with the people who are going to eat them.'

'What would you prefer? That the slaughtering be done in an abattoir, so that you needn't think about it?'

'Yes.'

'Wake up, David. This is the country. This is Africa.'

There is a snappishness to Lucy nowadays that he sees no justification for. His usual response is to withdraw into silence. There are spells when the two of them are like strangers in the same house.

He tells himself that he must be patient, that Lucy is still living in the shadow of the attack, that time needs to pass before she will be herself. But what if he is wrong? What if, after an attack like that, one is never oneself again? What if an attack like that turns one into a different and darker person altogether?

There is an even more sinister explanation for Lucy's moodiness, one that he cannot put from his mind. 'Lucy,' he asks the same day, out of the blue, 'you aren't hiding something from me, are you? You didn't pick up something from those men?'

She is sitting on the sofa in pyjamas and dressing-gown, playing with the cat. It is past noon. The cat is young, alert, skittish. Lucy dangles the belt of the gown before it. The cat slaps at the belt, quick, light paw-blows, one-two-three-four.

'Men?' she says. 'Which men?' She flicks the belt to one side; the cat dives after it.

Which men? His heart stops. Has she gone mad? Is she refusing to remember?

But, it would appear, she is only teasing him. 'David, I am not a child any more. I have seen a doctor, I have had tests, I have done everything one can reasonably do. Now I can only wait.'

'I see. And by wait you mean wait for what I think you mean?'

'Yes.'

'How long will that take?'

She shrugs. 'A month. Three months. Longer. Science has not yet put a limit on how long one has to wait. For ever, maybe.'

The cat makes a quick pounce at the belt, but the game is over now.

He sits down beside his daughter; the cat jumps off the sofa, stalks away. He takes her hand. Now that he is close to her, a faint smell of staleness, unwashedness, reaches him. 'At least it won't be for ever, my dearest,' he says. 'At least you will be spared that.'

The sheep spend the rest of the day near the dam where he has tethered them. The next morning they are back on the barren patch beside the stable.

Presumably they have until Saturday morning, two days. It seems a miserable way to spend the last two days of one's life. Country ways - that is what Lucy calls this kind of thing. He has other words: indifference, hardheartedness. If the country can pass judgment on the city, then the city can pass judgment on the country too.

He has thought of buying the sheep from Petrus. But what will that accomplish? Petrus will only use the money to buy new slaughter-animals, and pocket the difference. And what will he do with the sheep anyway, once he has bought them out of slavery? Set them free on the public road? Pen them up in the dog-cages and feed them hay?

A bond seems to have come into existence between himself and the two Persians, he does not know how. The bond is not one of affection. It is not even a bond with these two in particular, whom he could not pick out from a mob in a field. Nevertheless, suddenly and without reason, their lot has become important to him.

He stands before them, under the sun, waiting for the buzz in his mind to settle, waiting for a sign.

There is a fly trying to creep into the ear of one of them. The ear twitches. The fly takes off; circles, returns, settles. The ear twitches again.

He takes a step forward. The sheep backs away uneasily to the limit of its chain.

He remembers Bev Shaw nuzzling the old billy-goat with the ravaged testicles, stroking him, comforting him, entering into his life. How does she get it right, this communion with animals? Some trick he does not have. One has to be a certain kind of person, perhaps, with fewer complications.

The sun beats on his face in all its springtime radiance. Do I have to change, he thinks? Do I have to become like Bev Shaw?

He speaks to Lucy. 'I have been thinking about this party of Petrus's. On the whole, I would prefer not to go. Is that possible without being rude?'

'Anything to do with his slaughter-sheep?'

'Yes. No. I haven't changed my ideas, if that is what you mean. I still don't believe that animals have properly individual lives. Which among them get to live, which get to die, is not, as far as I am concerned, worth agonizing over. Nevertheless...'

'Nevertheless?'

'Nevertheless, in this case I am disturbed. I can't say why.'

'Well, Petrus and his guests are certainly not going to give up their mutton chops out of deference to you and your sensibilities.'

'I'm not asking for that. I would just prefer not to be one of the party, not this time. I'm sorry. I never imagined I would end up talking this way.'

'God moves in mysterious ways, David.'

'Don't mock me.'

Saturday is looming, market day. 'Should we run the stall?' he asks Lucy. She shrugs. 'You decide,' she says. He does not run the stall.

He does not query her decision; in fact he is relieved.

Preparations for Petrus' festivities begin at noon on Saturday with the arrival of a band of women half a dozen strong, wearing what looks to him like churchgoing finery. Behind the stable they get a fire going. Soon there comes on the wind the stench of boiling offal, from which he infers that the deed has been done, the double deed, that it is all over.

Should he mourn? Is it proper to mourn the death of beings who do not practise mourning among themselves? Looking into his heart, he can find only a vague sadness.

Too close, he thinks: we live too close to Petrus. It is like sharing a house with strangers, sharing noises, sharing smells.

He knocks at Lucy's door. 'Do you want to go for a walk?' he asks.

'Thanks, but no. Take Katy.'

He takes the bulldog, but she is so slow and sulky that he grows irritated, chases her back to the farm, and sets off alone on an eight-kilometre loop, walking fast, trying to tire himself out.

At five o'clock the guests start arriving, by car, by taxi, on foot. He watches from behind the kitchen curtain. Most are of their host's generation, staid, solid. There is one old woman over whom a particular fuss is made: wearing his blue suit and a garish pink shirt, Petrus comes all the way down the path to welcome her.

It is dark before the younger folk make an appearance. On the breeze comes a murmur of talk, laughter and music, music that he associates with the Johannesburg of his own youth. Quite tolerable, he thinks to himself - quite jolly, even.

'It's time,' says Lucy. 'Are you coming?'

Unusually, she is wearing a knee-length dress and high heels, with a necklace of painted wooden beads and matching earrings. He is not sure he likes the effect.

'All right, I'll come. I'm ready.'

'Haven't you got a suit here?'

'No.'

'Then at least put on a tie.'

'I thought we were in the country.'

'All the more reason to dress up. This is a big day in Petrus' life.'

She carries a tiny flashlight. They walk up the track to Petrus' house, father and daughter arm in arm, she lighting the way, he bearing their offering.

At the open door they pause, smiling. Petrus is nowhere to be seen, but a little girl in a party dress comes up and leads them in.

The old stable has no ceiling and no proper floor, but at least it is spacious and at least it has electricity. Shaded lamps and pictures on the walls (Van Gogh's sunflowers, a Tretchikoff lady in blue, Jane Fonda in her Barbarella outfit, Doctor Khumalo scoring a goal) soften the bleakness.

They are the only whites. There is dancing going on, to the old-fashioned African jazz he had heard. Curious glances are cast at the two of them, or perhaps only at his skullcap.

Lucy knows some of the women. She commences introductions. Then Petrus appears at their side. He does not play the eager host, does not offer them a drink, but does say, 'No more dogs. I am not any more the dog-man,' which Lucy chooses to accept as a joke; so all, it appears, is well.

'We have brought you something,' says Lucy; 'but perhaps we should give it to your wife. It is for the house.'

From the kitchen area, if that is what they are to call it, Petrus summons his wife. It is the first time he has seen her from close by. She is young - younger than Lucy - pleasant-faced rather than pretty, shy, clearly pregnant. She takes Lucy's hand but does not take his, nor does she meet his eyes.

Lucy speaks a few words in Xhosa and presents her with the package. There are by now half a dozen onlookers around them. 'She must unwrap it,' says Petrus.

'Yes, you must unwrap it,' says Lucy.

Carefully, at pains not to tear the festive paper with its mandolins and sprigs of laurel, the young wife opens the package. It is a cloth in a rather attractive Ashanti design. 'Thank you,' she whispers in English.

'It's a bedspread,' Lucy explains to Petrus.

'Lucy is our benefactor,' says Petrus; and then, to Lucy: 'You are our benefactor.'

A distasteful word, it seems to him, double-edged, souring the moment. Yet can Petrus be blamed? The language he draws on with such aplomb is, if he only knew it, tired, friable, eaten from the inside as if by termites. Only the monosyllables can still be relied on, and not even all of them.

What is to be done? Nothing that he, the one-time teacher of communications, can see. Nothing short of starting all over again with the ABC. By the time the big words come back reconstructed, purified, fit to be trusted once more, he will be long dead.

He shivers, as if a goose has trodden on his grave.

'The baby - when are you expecting the baby?' he asks Petrus' wife.

She looks at him uncomprehendingly.

'In October,' Petrus intervenes. 'The baby is coming in October. We hope he will be a boy.'

'Oh. What have you got against girls?'

'We are praying for a boy,' says Petrus. 'Always it is best if the first one is a boy. Then he can show his sisters - show them how to behave. Yes.' He pauses. 'A girl is very expensive.' He rubs thumb and forefinger together. 'Always money, money, money.'

A long time since he last saw that gesture. Used of Jews, in the old days: money-money-money, with the same meaningful cock of the head. But presumably Petrus is innocent of that snippet of European tradition.

'Boys can be expensive too,' he remarks, doing his bit for the conversation.

'You must buy them this, you must buy them that,' continues Petrus, getting into his stride, no longer listening. 'Now, today, the man does not pay for the woman. I pay.' He floats a hand above his wife's head; modestly she drops her eyes. 'I pay. But that is old fashion. Clothes, nice things, it is all the same: pay, pay, pay.' He repeats the finger-rubbing. 'No, a boy is better. Except your daughter. Your daughter is different. Your daughter is as good as a boy. Almost!' He laughs at his sally. 'Hey, Lucy!'

Lucy smiles, but he knows she is embarrassed. 'I'm going to dance,' she murmurs, and moves away.

On the floor she dances by herself in the solipsistic way that now seems to be the mode. Soon she is joined by a young man, tall, loose-limbed, nattily dressed. He dances opposite her, snapping his fingers, flashing her smiles, courting her.

Women are beginning to come in from outside, carrying trays of grilled meat. The air is full of appetizing smells. A new contingent of guests floods in, young, noisy, lively, not old fashion at all. The party is getting into its swing.

A plate of food finds its way into his hands. He passes it on to Petrus. 'No,' says Petrus - 'is for you. Otherwise we are passing plates all night.'

Petrus and his wife are spending a lot of time with him, making him feel at home. Kind people, he thinks. Country people.

He glances across at Lucy. The young man is dancing only inches from her now, lifting his legs high and thumping them down, pumping his arms, enjoying himself.

The plate he is holding contains two mutton chops, a baked potato, a ladle of rice swimming in gravy, a slice of pumpkin. He finds a chair to perch on, sharing it with a skinny old man with rheumy eyes. I am going to eat this, he says to himself. I am going to eat it and ask forgiveness afterwards.

Then Lucy is at his side, breathing fast, her face tense. 'Can we leave?' she says. 'They are here.'

'Who is here?'

'I saw one of them out at the back. David, I don't want to kick up a fuss, but can we leave at once?'

'Hold this.' He passes her the plate, goes out at the back door.

There are almost as many guests outside as inside, clustered around the fire, talking, drinking, laughing. From the far side of the fire someone is staring at him. At once things fall into place. He knows that face, knows it intimately. He thrusts his way past the bodies. I am going to be kicking up a fuss, he thinks. A pity, on this of all days. But some things will not wait.

In front of the boy he plants himself. It is the third of them, the dull-faced apprentice, the running-dog. 'I know you,' he says grimly.

The boy does not appear to be startled. On the contrary, the boy appears to have been waiting for this moment, storing himself up for it. The voice that issues from his throat is thick with rage. 'Who are you?' he says, but the words mean something else: By what right are you here? His whole body radiates violence.

Then Petrus is with them, talking fast in Xhosa.

He lays a hand on Petrus' sleeve. Petrus breaks off, gives him an impatient glare. 'Do you know who this is?' he asks Petrus.

'No, I do not know what this is,' says Petrus angrily. 'I do not know what is the trouble. What is the trouble?'

'He - this thug - was here before, with his pals. He is one of them. But let him tell you what it is about. Let him tell you why he is wanted by the police.'

'It is not true!' shouts the boy. Again he speaks to Petrus, a stream of angry words. Music continues to unfurl into the night air, but no one is dancing any longer: Petrus' guests are clustering around them, pushing, jostling, interjecting. The atmosphere is not good.

Petrus speaks. 'He says he does not know what you are talking about.'

'He is lying. He knows perfectly well. Lucy will confirm.'

But of course Lucy will not confirm. How can he expect Lucy to come out before these strangers, face the boy, point a finger, say, Yes, he is one of them. He was one of those who did the deed?

'I am going to telephone the police,' he says.

There is a disapproving murmur from the onlookers.

'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' 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' 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' 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.'

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' 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' 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' 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.

His whole being is gripped by what happens in the theatre. He is convinced the dogs know their time has come. Despite the silence and the painlessness of the procedure, despite the good thoughts that Bev Shaw thinks and that he tries to think, despite the airtight bags in which they tie the newmade corpses, the dogs in the yard smell what is going on inside. They flatten their ears, they droop their tails, as if they too feel the disgrace of dying; locking their legs, they have to be pulled or pushed or carried over the threshold. On the table some snap wildly left and right, some whine plaintively; none will look straight at the needle in Bev's hand, which they somehow know is going to harm them terribly.

Worst are those that sniff him and try to lick his hand. He has never liked being licked, and his first impulse is to pull away. Why pretend to be a chum when in fact one is a murderer? But then he relents. Why should a creature with the shadow of death upon it feel him flinch away as if its touch were abhorrent? So he lets them lick him, if they want to, just as Bev Shaw strokes them and kisses them if they will let her.

He is not, he hopes, a sentimentalist. He tries not to sentimentalize the animals he kills, or to sentimentalize Bev Shaw. He avoids saying to her, 'I don't know how you do it,' in order not to have to hear her say in return, 'Someone has to do it.' He does not dismiss the possibility that at the deepest level Bev Shaw may be not a liberating angel but a devil, that beneath her show of compassion may hide a heart as leathery as a butcher's. He tries to keep an open mind.

Since Bev Shaw is the one who inflicts the needle, it is he who takes charge of disposing of the remains. The morning after each killing session he drives the loaded kombi to the grounds of Settlers Hospital, to the incinerator, and there consigns the bodies in their black bags to the flames.

It would be simpler to cart the bags to the incinerator immediately after the session and leave them there for the incinerator crew to dispose of. But that would mean leaving them on the dump with the rest of the weekend's scourings: with waste from the hospital wards, carrion scooped up at the roadside, malodorous refuse from the tannery - a mixture both casual and terrible. He is not prepared to inflict such dishonour upon them.

So on Sunday evenings he brings the bags to the farm in the back of Lucy's kombi, parks them overnight, and on Monday mornings drives them to the hospital grounds. There he himself loads them, one at a time, on to the feeder trolley, cranks the mechanism that hauls the trolley through the steel gate into the flames, pulls the lever to empty it of its contents, and cranks it back, while the workmen whose job this normally is stand by and watch.

On his first Monday he left it to them to do the incinerating. Rigor mortis had stiffened the corpses overnight. The dead legs caught in the bars of the trolley, and when the trolley came back from its trip to the furnace, the dog would as often as not come riding back too, blackened and grinning, smelling of singed fur, its plastic covering burnt away. After a while the workmen began to beat the bags with the backs of their shovels before loading them, to break the rigid limbs. It was then that he intervened and took over the job himself.

The incinerator is anthracite-fuelled, with an electric fan to suck air through the flues; he guesses that it dates from the 1950s, when the hospital itself was built. It operates six days of the week, Monday to Saturday. On the seventh day it rests. When the crew arrive for work they first rake out the ashes from the previous day, then charge the fire. By nine a.m. temperatures of a thousand degrees centigrade are being generated in the inner chamber, hot enough to calcify bone. The fire is stoked until mid-morning; it takes all afternoon to cool down.

He does not know the names of the crew and they do not know his. To them he is simply the man who began arriving on Mondays with the bags from Animal Welfare and has since then been turning up earlier and earlier. He comes, he does his work, he goes; he does not form part of the society of which the incinerator, despite the wire fence and the padlocked gate and the notice in three languages, is the hub.

For the fence has long ago been cut through; the gate and the notice are simply ignored. By the time the orderlies arrive in the morning with the first bags of hospital waste, there are already numbers of women and children waiting to pick through it for syringes, pins, washable bandages, anything for which there is a market, but particularly for pills, which they sell to muti shops or trade in the streets. There are vagrants too, who hang about the hospital grounds by day and sleep by night against the wall of the incinerator, or perhaps even in the tunnel, for the warmth.

It is not a sodality he tries to join. But when he is there, they are there; and if what he brings to the dump does not interest them, that is only because the parts of a dead dog can neither be sold nor be eaten.

Why has he taken on this job? To lighten the burden on Bev Shaw? For that it would be enough to drop off the bags at the dump and drive away. For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway?

For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

The dogs are brought to the clinic because they are unwanted: because we are too many. That is where he enters their lives. He may not be their saviour, the one for whom they are not too many, but he is prepared to take care of them once they are unable, utterly unable, to take care of themselves, once even Bev Shaw has washed her hands of them. A dog-man, Petrus once called himself. Well, now he has become a dog-man: a dog undertaker; a dog psychopomp; a harijan.

Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. There must be other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world, or to an idea of the world. One could for instance work longer hours at the clinic. One could try to persuade the children at the dump not to fill their bodies with poisons. Even sitting down more purposefully with the Byron libretto might, at a pinch, be construed as a service to mankind.

But there are other people to do these things - the animal welfare thing, the social rehabilitation thing, even the Byron thing. He saves the honour of corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it. That is what he is becoming: stupid, daft, wrongheaded.

SEVENTEEN

THEIR WORK AT the clinic is over for the Sunday. The kombi is loaded with its dead freight. As a last chore he is mopping the floor of the surgery.

'I'll do that,' says Bev Shaw, coming in from the yard. 'You'll be wanting to get back.'

'I'm in no hurry.'

'Still, you must be used to a different kind of life.'

'A different kind of life? I didn't know life came in kinds.'

'I mean, you must find life very dull here. You must miss your own circle. You must miss having women friends.'

'Women friends, you say. Surely Lucy told you why I left Cape Town. Women friends didn't bring me much luck there.'

'You shouldn't be hard on her.'

'Hard on Lucy? I don't have it in me to be hard on Lucy.'

'Not Lucy - the young woman in Cape Town. Lucy says there was a young woman who caused you a lot of trouble.'

'Yes, there was a young woman. But I was the troublemaker in that case. I caused the young woman in question at least as much trouble as she caused me.'

'Lucy says you have had to give up your position at the university. That must have been difficult. Do you regret it?'

What nosiness! Curious how the whiff of scandal excites women. Does this plain little creature think him incapable of shocking her? Or is being shocked another of the duties she takes on - like a nun who lies down to be violated so that the quota of violation in the world will be reduced?

'Do I regret it? I don't know. What happened in Cape Town brought me here. I'm not unhappy here.'

'But at the time - did you regret it at the time?'

'At the time? Do you mean, in the heat of the act? Of course not. In the heat of the act there are no doubts. As I'm sure you must know yourself '

She blushes. A long time since he last saw a woman of middle age blush so thoroughly. To the roots of her hair.

'Still, you must find Grahamstown very quiet,' she murmurs. 'By comparison.'

'I don't mind Grahamstown. At least I am out of the way of temptation. Besides, I don't live in Grahamstown. I live on a farm with my daughter.'

Out of the way of temptation: a callous thing to say to a woman, even a plain one. Yet not plain in everyone's eyes. There must have been a time when Bill Shaw saw something in young Bev. Other men too, perhaps.

He tries to imagine her twenty years younger, when the upturned face on its short neck must have seemed pert and the freckled skin homely, healthy. On an impulse he reaches out and runs a finger over her lips.

She lowers her eyes but does not flinch. On the contrary, she responds, brushing her lips against his hand - even, it might be said, kissing it - while blushing furiously all the time.

That is all that happens. That is as far as they go. Without another word he leaves the clinic. Behind him he hears her switching off the lights.

The next afternoon there is a call from her. 'Can we meet at the clinic, at four,' she says. Not a question but an announcement, made in a high, strained voice. Almost he asks, 'Why?', but then has the good sense not to. Nonetheless he is surprised. He would bet she has not been down this road before. This must be how, in her innocence, she assumes adulteries are carried out: with the woman telephoning her pursuer, declaring herself ready.

The clinic is not open on Mondays. He lets himself in, turns the key behind him in the lock. Bev Shaw is in the surgery, standing with her back to him. He folds her in his arms; she nuzzles her ear against his chin; his lips brush the tight little curls of her hair. 'There are blankets,' she says. 'In the cabinet. On the bottom shelf.'

Two blankets, one pink, one grey, smuggled from her home by a woman who in the last hour has probably bathed and powdered and anointed herself in readiness; who has, for all he knows, been powdering and anointing herself every Sunday, and storing blankets in the cabinet, just in case. Who thinks, because he comes from the big city, because there is scandal attached to his name, that he makes love to many women and expects to be made love to by every woman who crosses his path.

The choice is between the operating table and the floor. He spreads out the blankets on the floor, the grey blanket underneath, the pink on top. He switches off the light, leaves the room, checks that the back door is locked, waits. He hears the rustle of clothes as she undresses. Bev. Never did he dream he would sleep with a Bev.

She is lying under the blanket with only her head sticking out. Even in the dimness there is nothing charming in the sight. Slipping off his underpants, he gets in beside her, runs his hands down her body. She has no breasts to speak of. Sturdy, almost waistless, like a squat little tub.

She grasps his hand, passes him something. A contraceptive. All thought out beforehand, from beginning to end.

Of their congress he can at least say that he does his duty. Without passion but without distaste either. So that in the end Bev Shaw can feel pleased with herself. All she intended has been accomplished. He, David Lurie, has been succoured, as a man is succoured by a woman; her friend Lucy Lurie has been helped with a difficult visit.

Let me not forget this day, he tells himself, lying beside her when they are spent. After the sweet young flesh of Melanie Isaacs, this is what I have come to. This is what I will have to get used to, this and even less than this.

'It's late,' says Bev Shaw. 'I must be going.'

He pushes the blanket aside and gets up, making no effort to hide himself. Let her gaze her fill on her Romeo, he thinks, on his bowed shoulders and skinny shanks. It is indeed late. On the horizon lies a last crimson glow; the moon looms overhead; smoke hangs in the air; across a strip of waste land, from the first rows of shacks, comes a hubbub of voices. At the door Bev presses herself against him a last time, rests her head on his chest. He lets her do it, as he has let her do everything she has felt a need to do. His thoughts go to Emma Bovary strutting before the mirror after her first big afternoon. I have a lover! I have a lover! sings Emma to herself. Well, let poor Bev Shaw go home and do some singing too. And let him stop calling her poor Bev Shaw. If she is poor, he is bankrupt.

EIGHTEEN

PETRUS HAS BORROWED a tractor, from where he has no idea, to which he has coupled the old rotary plough that has lain rusting behind the stable since before Lucy's time. In a matter of hours he has ploughed the whole of his land. All very swift and businesslike; all very unlike Africa. In olden times, that is to say ten years ago, it would have taken him days with a hand-plough and oxen.

Against this new Petrus what chance does Lucy stand? Petrus arrived as the dig-man, the carry-man, the water-man. Now he is too busy for that kind of thing. Where is Lucy going to find someone to dig, to carry, to water? Were this a chess game, he would say that Lucy has been outplayed on all fronts. If she had any sense she would quit: approach the Land Bank, work out a deal, consign the farm to Petrus, return to civilization. She could open boarding kennels in the suburbs; she could branch out into cats. She could even go back to what she and her friends did in their hippie days: ethnic weaving, ethnic pot-decoration, ethnic basket-weaving; selling beads to tourists.

Defeated. It is not hard to imagine Lucy in ten years' time: a heavy woman with lines of sadness on her face, wearing clothes long out of fashion, talking to her pets, eating alone. Not much of a life. But better than passing her days in fear of the next attack, when the dogs will not be enough to protect her and no one will answer the telephone.

He approaches Petrus on the site he has chosen for his new residence, on a slight rise overlooking the farmhouse. The surveyor has already paid his visit, the pegs are in place.

'You are not going to do the building yourself, are you?' he asks.

Petrus chuckles. 'No, it is a skill job, building,' he says. 'Bricklaying, plastering, all that, you need to be skill. No, I am going to dig the trenches. That I can do by myself. That is not such a skill job, that is just a job for a boy. For digging you just have to be a boy.'

Petrus speaks the word with real amusement. Once he was a boy, now he is no longer. Now he can play at being one, as Marie Antoinette could play at being a milkmaid.

He comes to the point. 'If Lucy and I went back to Cape Town, would you be prepared to keep her part of the farm running? We would pay you a salary, or you could do it on a percentage basis. A percentage of the profits.'

'I must keep Lucy's farm running,' says Petrus. 'I must be the farm manager.' He pronounces the words as if he has never heard them before, as if they have popped up before him like a rabbit out of a hat.

'Yes, we could call you the farm manager if you like.'

'And Lucy will come back one day.'

'I am sure she will come back. She is very attached to this farm. She has no intention of giving it up. But she has been having a hard time recently. She needs a break. A holiday.'

'By the sea,' says Petrus, and smiles, showing teeth yellow from smoking.

'Yes, by the sea, if she wants.' He is irritated by Petrus' habit of letting words hang in the air. There was a time when he thought he might become friends with Petrus. Now he detests him.

Talking to Petrus is like punching a bag filled with sand. 'I don't see that either of us is entitled to question Lucy if she decides to take a break,' he says. 'Neither you nor I.'

'How long I must be farm manager?'

'I don't know yet, Petrus. I haven't discussed it with Lucy, I am just exploring the possibility, seeing if you are agreeable.'

'And I must do all the things - I must feed the dogs, I must plant the vegetables, I must go to the market - '

'Petrus, there is no need to make a list. There won't be dogs. I am just asking in a general way, if Lucy took a holiday, would you be prepared to look after the farm?'

'How I must go to the market if I do not have the kombi?'

'That is a detail. We can discuss details later. I just want a general answer, yes or no.'

Petrus shakes his head. 'It is too much, too much,' he says.

Out of the blue comes a call from the police, from a Detective-Sergeant Esterhuyse in Port Elizabeth. His car has been recovered. It is in the yard at the New Brighton station, where he may identify and reclaim it. Two men have been arrested.

'That's wonderful,' he says. 'I had almost given up hope.'

'No, sir, the docket stays open two years.'

'What condition is the car in? Is it driveable?'

'Yes, you can drive it.'

In an unfamiliar state of elation he drives with Lucy to Port Elizabeth and then to New Brighton, where they follow directions to Van Deventer Street, to a flat, fortress-like police station surrounded by a two-metre fence topped with razor wire. Emphatic signs forbid parking in front of the station. They park far down the road.

'I'll wait in the car,' says Lucy.

'Are you sure?'

'I don't like this place. I'll wait.'

He presents himself at the charge office, is directed along a maze of corridors to the Vehicle Theft Unit. Detective-Sergeant Esterhuyse, a plump, blond little man, searches through his files, then conducts him to a yard where scores of vehicles stand parked bumper to bumper. Up and down the ranks they go.

'Where did you find it?' he asks Esterhuyse.

'Here in New Brighton. You were lucky. Usually with the older Corollas the buggers chop it up for parts.'

'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 fmd 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, put 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 he 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 moment 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.

'Do you remember me? David Lurie, from Cape Town.'

'Oh,' says Isaacs, and sits down again. He is wearing the same overlarge suit: his neck vanishes into the jacket, from which he peers out like a sharp-beaked bird caught in a sack. The windows are closed, there is a smell of stale smoke.

'If you don't want to see me I'll leave at once,' he says.

'No,' says Isaacs. 'Sit. I'm just checking attendances. Do you mind if I finish first?'

'Please.'

There is a framed picture on the desk. From where he sits he cannot see it, but he knows what it will be: Melanie and Desiree, apples of their father's eye, with the mother who bore them.

'So,' says Isaacs, closing the last register. 'To what do I owe this pleasure?'

He had expected to be tense, but in fact finds himself quite calm.

'After Melanie lodged her complaint,' he says, 'the university held an official inquiry. As a result I resigned my post. That is the history; you must be aware of it.'

Isaacs stares at him quizzically, giving away nothing.

'Since then I have been at a loose end. I was passing through George today, and I thought I might stop and speak to you. I remember our last meeting as being... heated. But I thought I would drop in anyway, and say what is on my heart.'

That much is true. He does want to speak his heart. The question is, what is on his heart?

Isaacs has a cheap Bic pen in his hand. He runs his fingers down the shaft, inverts it, runs his fingers down the shaft, over and over, in a motion that is mechanical rather than impatient.

He continues. 'You have heard Melanie's side of the story. I would like to give you mine, if you are prepared to hear it.

'It began without premeditation on my part. It began as an adventure, one of those sudden little adventures that men of a certain kind have, that I have, that keep me going. Excuse me for talking in this way. I am trying to be frank.

'In Melanie's case, however, something unexpected happened. I think of it as a fire. She struck up a fire in me.'

He pauses. The pen continues its dance. A sudden little adventure. Men of a certain kind. Does the man behind the desk have adventures? The more he sees of him the more he doubts it. He would not be surprised if Isaacs were something in the church, a deacon or a server, whatever a server is.

'A fire: what is remarkable about that? If a fire goes out, you strike a match and start another one. That is how I used to think. Yet in the olden days people worshipped fire. They thought twice before letting a flame die, a flame-god. It was that kind of flame your daughter kindled in me. Not hot enough to burn me up, but real: real fire.'

Burned - burnt - burnt up.

The pen has stopped moving. 'Mr Lurie,' says the girl's father, and there is a crooked, pained smile on his face, 'I ask myself what on earth you think you are up to, coming to my school and telling me stories - '

'I'm sorry, it's outrageous, I know. That's the end. That's all I wanted to say, in self-defence. How is Melanie?'

'Melanie is well, since you ask. She phones every week. She has resumed her studies, they gave her a special dispensation to do that, I'm sure you can understand, under the circumstances. She is going on with theatre work in her spare time, and doing well. So Melanie is all right. What about you? What are your plans now that you have left the profession?'

'I have a daughter myself, you will be interested to hear. She owns a farm; I expect to spend some of my time with her, helping out. Also I have a book to complete, a sort of book. One way or another I will keep myself busy.'

He pauses. Isaacs is regarding him with what strikes him as piercing attention.

'So,' says Isaacs softly, and the word leaves his lips like a sigh: 'how are the mighty fallen!'

Fallen? Yes, there has been a fall, no doubt about that. But mighty? Does mighty describe him? He thinks of himself as obscure and growing obscurer. A figure from the margins of history.

'Perhaps it does us good', he says, 'to have a fall every now and then. As long as we don't break.'

'Good. Good. Good,' says Isaacs, still fixing him with that intent look. For the first time he detects a trace of Melanie in him: a shapeliness of the mouth and lips. On an impulse he reaches across the desk, tries to shake the man's hand, ends up by stroking the back of it. Cool, hairless skin.

'Mr Lurie,' says Isaacs: 'is there something else you want to tell me, besides the story of yourself and Melanie? You mentioned there was something on your heart.'

'On my heart? No. No, I just stopped by to find out how Melanie was.' He rises. 'Thank you for seeing me, I appreciate it.' He reaches out a hand, straightforwardly this time. 'Goodbye.'

'Goodbye.'

He is at the door - he is, in fact, in the outer office, which is now empty - when Isaacs calls out: 'Mr Lurie! Just a minute!' He returns.

'What are your plans for the evening?'

'This evening? I've checked in at a hotel. I have no plans.'

'Come and have a meal with us. Come for dinner.'

'I don't think your wife would welcome that.'

'Perhaps. Perhaps not. Come anyway. Break bread with us. We eat at seven. Let me write down the address for you.'

'You don't need to do that. I have been to your home already, and met your daughter. It was she who directed me here.' Isaacs does not bat an eyelid. 'Good,' he says.

The front door is opened by Isaacs himself. 'Come in, come in,' he says, and ushers him into the living-room. Of the wife there is no sign, nor of the second daughter.

'I brought an offering,' he says, and holds out a bottle of wine.

Isaacs thanks him, but seems unsure what to do with the wine. 'Can I give you some? I'll just go and open it.' He leaves the room; there is a whispering in the kitchen. He comes back. 'We seem to have lost the corkscrew. But Dezzy will borrow from the neighbours.'

They are teetotal, clearly. He should have thought of that. A tight little petit-bourgeois household, frugal, prudent. The car washed, the lawn mowed, savings in the bank. All their resources concentrated on launching the two jewel daughters into the future: clever Melanie, with her theatrical ambitions; Desiree, the beauty.

He remembers Melanie, on the first evening of their closer acquaintance, sitting beside him on the sofa drinking the coffee with the shot-glass of whisky in it that was intended to - the word comes up reluctantly - lubricate her. Her trim little body; her sexy clothes; her eyes gleaming with excitement. Stepping out in the forest where the wild wolf prowls.

Desiree the beauty enters with the bottle and a corkscrew. As she crosses the floor towards them she hesitates an instant, conscious that a greeting is owed. 'Pa?' she murmurs with a hint of confusion, holding out the bottle.

So: she has found out who he is. They have discussed him, had a tussle over him perhaps: the unwanted visitor, the man whose name is darkness.

Her father has trapped her hand in his. 'Desiree,' he says, 'this is Mr Lurie.'

'Hello, Desiree.'

The hair that had screened her face is tossed back. She meets his gaze, still embarrassed, but stronger now that she is under her father's wing. 'Hello,' she murmurs; and he thinks, My God, my God!

As for her, she cannot hide from him what is passing through her mind: So this is the man my sister has been naked with! So this is the man she has done it with! This old man!

There is a separate little dining-room, with a hatch to the kitchen. Four places are set with the best cutlery; candles are burning. 'Sit, sit!' says Isaacs. Still no sign of his wife. 'Excuse me a moment.' Isaacs disappears into the kitchen. He is left facing Desiree across the table. She hangs her head, no longer so brave.

Then they return, the two parents together. He stands up. 'You haven't met my wife. Doreen, our guest, Mr Lurie.'

'I am grateful to you for receiving me in your home, Mrs Isaacs.'

Mrs Isaacs is a short woman, growing dumpy in middle age, with bowed legs that give her a faintly rolling walk. But he can see where the sisters get their looks. A real beauty she must have been in her day.

Her features remain stiff, she avoids his eye, but she does give the slightest of nods. Obedient; a good wife and helpmeet. And ye shall be as one flesh. Will the daughters take after her?

'Desiree,' she commands, 'come and help carry.'

Gratefully the child tumbles out of her chair.

'Mr Isaacs, I am just causing upset in your home,' he says. 'It was kind of you to invite me, I appreciate it, but it is better that I leave.'

Isaacs gives a smile in which, to his surprise, there is a hint of gaiety. 'Sit down, sit down! We'll be all right! We will do it!' He leans closer. 'You have to be strong!'

Then Desiree and her mother are back bearing dishes: chicken in a bubbling tomato stew that gives off aromas of ginger and cumin, rice, an array of salads and pickles. Just the kind of food he most missed, living with Lucy.

The bottle of wine is set before him, and a solitary wine glass. 'Am I the only one drinking?' he says.

'Please,' says Isaacs. 'Go ahead.'

He pours a glass. He does not like sweet wines, he bought the Late Harvest imagining it would be to their taste. Well, so much the worse for him.

There remains the prayer to get through. The Isaacs take hands; there is nothing for it but to stretch out his hands too, left to the girl's father, right to her mother. 'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful,' says Isaacs. 'Amen,' say his wife and daughter; and he, David Lurie, mumbles 'Amen' too and lets go the two hands, the father's cool as silk, the mother's small, fleshy, warm from her labours.

Mrs Isaacs dishes up. 'Mind, it's hot,' she says as she passes his plate. Those are her only words to him.

During the meal he tries to be a good guest, to talk entertainingly, to fill the silences. He talks about Lucy, about the boarding kennels, about her bee-keeping and her horticultural projects, about his Saturday morning stints at the market. He glosses over the attack, mentioning only that his car was stolen. He talks about the Animal Welfare League, but not about the incinerator in the hospital grounds or his stolen afternoons with Bev Shaw.

Stitched together in this way, the story unrolls without shadows. Country life in all its idiot simplicity. How he wishes it could be true! He is tired of shadows, of complications, of complicated people. He loves his daughter, but there are times when he wishes she were a simpler being: simpler, neater. The man who raped her, the leader of the gang, was like that. Like a blade cutting the wind.

He has a vision of himself stretched out on an operating table. A scalpel flashes; from throat to groin he is laid open; he sees it all yet feels no pain. A surgeon, bearded, bends over him, frowning. What is all this stuff? growls the surgeon. He pokes at the gall bladder. What is this? He cuts it out, tosses it aside. He pokes at the heart. What is this?

'Your daughter - does she run her farm all alone?' asks Isaacs.

'She has a man who helps sometimes. Petrus. An African.' And he talks about Petrus, solid, dependable Petrus, with his two wives and his moderate ambitions.

He is less hungry than he thought he would be. Conversation flags, but somehow they get through the meal. Desiree excuses herself, goes off to do her homework. Mrs Isaacs clears the table.

'I should be leaving,' he says. 'I am due to make an early start tomorrow.'

'Wait, stay a moment,' says Isaacs.

They are alone. He can prevaricate no longer.

'About Melanie,' he says.

'Yes?'

'One word more, then I am finished. It could have turned out differently, I believe, between the two of us, despite our ages. But there was something I failed to supply, something' - he hunts for the word - 'lyrical. I lack the lyrical. I manage love too well. Even when I burn I don't sing, if you understand me. For which I am sorry. I am sorry for what I took your daughter through. You have a wonderful family. I apologize for the grief I have caused you and Mrs Isaacs. I ask for your pardon.'

Wonderful is not right. Better would be exemplary.

'So,' says Isaacs, 'at last you have apologized. I wondered when it was coming.' He ponders. He has not taken his seat; now he begins to pace up and down. 'You are sorry. You lacked the lyrical, you say. If you had had the lyrical, we would not be where we are today. But I say to myself, we are all sorry when we are found out. Then we are very sorry. The question is not, are we sorry? The question is, what lesson have we learned? The question is, what are we going to do now that we are sorry?'

He is about to reply, but Isaacs raises a hand. 'May I pronounce the word God in your hearing? You are not one of those people who get upset when they hear God's name? The question is, what does God want from you, besides being very sorry? Have you any ideas, Mr Lurie?'

Though distracted by Isaacs's back-and-forth, he tries to pick his words carefully. 'Normally I would say', he says, 'that after a certain age one is too old to learn lessons. One can only be punished and punished. But perhaps that is not true, not always. I wait to see. As for God, I am not a believer, so I will have to translate what you call God and God's wishes into my own terms. In my own terms, I am being punished for what happened between myself and your daughter. I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused. I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?'

'I don't know, Mr Lurie. Normally I would say, don't ask me, ask God. But since you don't pray, you have no way to ask God. So God must find his own means of telling you. Why do you think you are here, Mr Lurie?'

He is silent.

'I will tell you. You were passing through George, and it occurred to you that your student's family was from George, and you thought to yourself, Why not? You didn't plan on it, yet now you find yourself in our home. That must come as a surprise to you. Am I right?'

'Not quite. I was not telling the truth. I was not just passing through. I came to George for one reason alone: to speak to you. I had been thinking about it for some time.'

'Yes, you came to speak to me, you say, but why me? I'm easy to speak to, too easy. All the children at my school know that. With Isaacs you get off easy - that is what they say.' He is smiling again, the same crooked smile as before. 'So who did you really come to speak to?'

Now he is sure of it: he does not like this man, does not like his tricks.

He rises, blunders through the empty dining-room and down the passage. From behind a half-closed door he hears low voices. He pushes the door open. Sitting on the bed are Desiree and her mother, doing something with a skein of wool. Astonished at the sight of him, they fall silent.

With careful ceremony he gets to his knees and touches his forehead to the floor.

Is that enough? he thinks. Will that do? If not, what more?

He raises his head. The two of them are still sitting there, frozen. He meets the mother's eyes, then the daughter's, and again the current leaps, the current of desire.

He gets to his feet, a little more creakily than he would have wished. 'Good night,' he says. 'Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for the meal.'

At eleven o'clock there is a call for him in his hotel room. It is Isaacs. 'I am phoning to wish you strength for the future.' A pause. 'There is a question I never got to ask, Mr Lurie. You are not hoping for us to intervene on your behalf, are you, with the university?'

'To intervene?'

'Yes. To reinstate you, for instance.'

'The thought never crossed my mind. I have finished with the university.'

'Because the path you are on is one that God has ordained for you. It is not for us to interfere.'

'Understood.'

TWENTY

HE RE-ENTERS Cape Town on the N2. He has been away less than three months, yet in that time the shanty settlements have crossed the highway and spread east of the airport. The stream of cars has to slow down while a child with a stick herds a stray cow off the road. Inexorably, he thinks, the country is coming to the city. Soon there will be cattle again on Rondebosch Common; soon history will have come full circle.

So he is home again. It does not feel like a homecoming. He cannot imagine taking up residence once more in the house on Torrance Road, in the shadow of the university, skulking about like a criminal, dodging old colleagues. He will have to sell the house, move to a flat somewhere cheaper.

His finances are in chaos. He has not paid a bill since he left. He is living on credit; any day now his credit is going to dry up.

The end of roaming. What comes after the end of roaming? He sees himself, white-haired, stooped, shuffling to the corner shop to buy his half-litre of milk and half-loaf of bread; he sees himself sitting blankly at a desk in a room full of yellowing papers, waiting for the afternoon to peter out so that he can cook his evening meal and go to bed. The life of a superannuated scholar, without hope, without prospect: is that what he is prepared to settle for?

He unlocks the front gate. The garden is overgrown, the mailbox stuffed tight with flyers, advertisements. Though well fortified by most standards, the house has stood empty for months: too much to hope for that it will not have been visited. And indeed, from the moment he opens the front door and smells the air he knows there is something wrong. His heart begins to thud with a sick excitement.

There is no sound. Whoever was here is gone. But how did they get in? Tiptoeing from room to room, he soon finds out. The bars over one of the back windows have been torn out of the wall and folded back, the windowpanes smashed, leaving enough of a hole for a child or even a small man to climb through. A mat of leaves and sand, blown in by the wind, has caked on the floor.

He wanders through the house taking a census of his losses. His bedroom has been ransacked, the cupboards yawn bare. His sound equipment is gone, his tapes and records, his computer equipment. In his study the desk and filing cabinet have been broken open; papers are scattered everywhere. The kitchen has been thoroughly stripped: cutlery, crockery, smaller appliances. His liquor store is gone. Even the cupboard that had held canned food is empty.

No ordinary burglary. A raiding party moving in, cleaning out the site, retreating laden with bags, boxes, suitcases. Booty; war reparations; another incident in the great campaign of redistribution. Who is at this moment wearing his shoes? Have Beethoven and Janácek found homes for themselves or have they been tossed out on the rubbish heap?

From the bathroom comes a bad smell. A pigeon, trapped in the house, has expired in the basin. Gingerly he lifts the mess of bones and feathers into a plastic packet and ties it shut.

The lights are cut off, the telephone is dead. Unless he does something about it he will spend the night in the dark. But he is too depressed to act. Let it all go to hell, he thinks, and sinks into a chair and closes his eyes.

As dusk settles he rouses himself and leaves the house. The first stars are out. Through empty streets, through gardens heavy with the scent of verbena and jonquil, he makes his way to the university campus.

He still has his keys to the Communications Building. A good hour to come haunting: the corridors are deserted. He takes the lift to his office on the fifth floor. The name-tag on his door has been removed. DR S. OTTO, reads the new tag. From under the door comes a faint light.

He knocks. No sound. He unlocks the door and enters.

The room has been transformed. His books and pictures are gone, leaving the walls bare save for a poster-size blowup of a comic-book panel: Superman hanging his head as he is berated by Lois Lane.

Behind the computer, in the half-light, sits a young man he has not seen before. The young man frowns. 'Who are you?' he asks.

'I'm David Lurie.'

'Yes? And?'

'I've come to pick up my mail. This used to be my office.' In the past, he almost adds.

'Oh, right, David Lurie. Sorry, I wasn't thinking. I put it all in a box. And some other stuff of yours that I found.' He waves. 'Over there.'

'And my books?'

'They are all downstairs in the storage room.'

He picks up the box. 'Thank you,' he says.

'No problem,' says young Dr Otto. 'Can you manage that?'

He takes the heavy box across to the library, intending to sort through his mail. But when he reaches the access barrier the machine will no longer accept his card. He has to do his sorting on a bench in the lobby.

He is too restless to sleep. At dawn he heads for the mountainside and sets off on a long walk. It has rained, the streams are in spate. He breathes in the heady scent of pine. As of today he is a free man, with duties to no one but himself. Time lies before him to spend as he wishes. The feeling is unsettling, but he presumes he will get used to it.

His spell with Lucy has not turned him into a country person. Nonetheless, there are things he misses - the duck family, for instance: Mother Duck tacking about on the surface of the dam, her chest puffed out with pride, while Eenie, Meenie, Minie and Mo paddle busily behind, confident that as long as she is there they are safe from all harm.

As for the dogs, he does not want to think about them. From Monday onward the dogs released from life within the walls of the clinic will be tossed into the fire unmarked, unmourned. For that betrayal, will he ever be forgiven?

He visits the bank, takes a load of washing to the laundry. In the little shop where for years he has bought his coffee the assistant pretends not to recognize him. His neighbour, watering her garden, studiously keeps her back turned.

He thinks of William Wordsworth on his first stay in London, visiting the pantomime, seeing Jack the Giant Killer blithely striding the stage, flourishing his sword, protected by the word Invisible written on his chest.

In the evening he calls Lucy from a public telephone. 'I thought I'd phone in case you were worried about me,' he says. 'I'm fine. I'll take a while to settle down, I suspect. I rattle about in the house like a pea in a bottle. I miss the ducks.'

He does not mention the raid on the house. What is the good of burdening Lucy with his troubles?

'And Petrus?' he asks. 'Has Petrus been looking after you, or is he still wrapped up in his housebuilding?'

'Petrus has been helping out. Everyone has been helpful.'

'Well, I can come back any time you need me. You have only to say the word.'

'Thank you, David. Not at present, perhaps, but one of these days.'

Who would have guessed, when his child was born, that in time he would come crawling to her asking to be taken in?

Shopping at the supermarket, he finds himself in a queue behind Elaine Winter, chair of his onetime department. She has a whole trolleyful of purchases, he a mere handbasket. Nervously she returns his greeting.

'And how is the department getting on without me?' he asks as cheerily as he can.

Very well indeed - that would be the frankest answer: We are getting on very well without you. But she is too polite to say the words. 'Oh, struggling along as usual,' she replies vaguely.

'Have you been able to do any hiring?'

'We have taken on one new person, on a contract basis. A young man.'

I have met him, he might respond. A right little prick, he might add. But he too is well brought up. 'What is his specialism?' he inquires instead.

'Applied language studies. He is in language learning.'

So much for the poets, so much for the dead masters. Who have not, he must say, guided him well. Aliter, to whom he has not listened well.

The woman ahead of them in the queue is taking her time to pay. There is still room for Elaine to ask the next question, which should be, And how are you getting on, David?, and for him to respond, Very well, Elaine, very well.

'Wouldn't you like to go ahead of me?' she suggests instead, gesturing toward his basket. 'You have so little.'

'Wouldn't dream of it, Elaine,' he replies, then takes some pleasure in observing as she unloads her purchases on to the counter: not only the bread and butter items but the little treats that a woman living alone awards herself - full cream ice cream (real almonds, real raisins), imported Italian cookies, chocolate bars - as well as a pack of sanitary napkins.

She pays by credit card. From the far side of the barrier she gives him a farewell wave. Her relief is palpable. 'Goodbye!' he calls over the cashier's head. 'Give my regards to everyone!' She does not look back.

As first conceived, the opera had had at its centre Lord Byron and his mistress the Contessa Guiccioli. Trapped in the Villa Guiccioli in the stifling summer heat of Ravenna, spied on by Teresa's jealous husband, the two would roam through the gloomy drawing-rooms singing of their baulked passion. Teresa feels herself to be a prisoner; she smoulders with resentment and nags Byron to bear her away to another life. As for Byron, he is full of doubts, though too prudent to voice them. Their early ecstasies will, he suspects, never be repeated. His life is becalmed; obscurely he has begun to long for a quiet retirement; failing that, for apotheosis, for death. Teresa's soaring arias ignite no spark in him; his own vocal line, dark, convoluted, goes past, through, over her.

That is how he had conceived it: as a chamber-play about love and death, with a passionate young woman and a once passionate but now less than passionate older man; as an action with a complex, restless music behind it, sung in an English that tugs continually toward an imagined Italian.

Formally speaking, the conception is not a bad one. The characters balance one another well: the trapped couple, the discarded mistress hammering at the windows, the jealous husband. The villa too, with Byron's pet monkeys hanging languidly from the chandeliers and peacocks fussing back and forth among the ornate Neapolitan furniture, has the right mix of timelessness and decay.

Yet, first on Lucy's farm and now again here, the project has failed to engage the core of him. There is something misconceived about it, something that does not come from the heart. A woman complaining to the stars that the spying of the servants forces her and her lover to relieve their desires in a broom-closet - who cares? He can find words for Byron, but the Teresa that history has bequeathed him - young, greedy, wilful, petulant - does not match up to the music he has dreamed of, music whose harmonies, lushly autumnal yet edged with irony, he hears shadowed in his inner ear.

He tries another track. Abandoning the pages of notes he has written, abandoning the pert, precocious newlywed with her captive English Milord, he tries to pick Teresa up in middle age. The new Teresa is a dumpy little widow installed in the Villa Gamba with her aged father, running the household, holding the purse-strings tight, keeping an eye out that the servants do not steal the sugar. Byron, in the new version, is long dead; Teresa's sole remaining claim to immortality, and the solace of her lonely nights, is the chestful of letters and memorabilia she keeps under her bed, what she calls her reliquie, which her grand-nieces are meant to open after her death and peruse with awe.

Is this the heroine he has been seeking all the time? Will an older Teresa engage his heart as his heart is now?

The passage of time has not treated Teresa kindly. With her heavy bust, her stocky trunk, her abbreviated legs, she looks more like a peasant, a contadina, than an aristocrat. The complexion that Byron once so admired has turned hectic; in summer she is overtaken with attacks of asthma that leave her heaving for breath.

In the letters he wrote to her Byron calls her My friend, then My love, then My love for ever. But there are rival letters in existence, letters she cannot reach and set fire to. In these letters, addressed to his English friends, Byron lists her flippantly among his Italian conquests, makes jokes about her husband, alludes to women from her circle with whom he has slept. In the years since Byron's death, his friends have written one memoir after another, drawing upon his letters. After conquering the young Teresa from her husband, runs the story they tell, Byron soon grew bored with her; he found her empty-headed; he stayed with her only out of dutifulness; it was in order to escape her that he sailed off to Greece and to his death.

Their libels hurt her to the quick. Her years with Byron constitute the apex of her life. Byron's love is all that sets her apart. Without him she is nothing: a woman past her prime, without prospects, living out her days in a dull provincial town, exchanging visits with women-friends, massaging her father's legs when they give him pain, sleeping alone.

Can he find it in his heart to love this plain, ordinary woman? Can he love her enough to write a music for her? If he cannot, what is left for him?

He comes back to what must now be the opening scene. The tail end of yet another sultry day. Teresa stands at a second-floor window in her father's house, looking out over the marshes and pine-scrub of the Romagna toward the sun glinting on the Adriatic. The end of the prelude; a hush; she takes a breath. Mio Byron, she sings, her voice throbbing with sadness. A lone clarinet answers, tails off, falls silent. Mio Byron, she calls again, more strongly.

Where is he, her Byron? Byron is lost, that is the answer. Byron wanders among the shades. And she is lost too, the Teresa he loved, the girl of nineteen with the blonde ringlets who gave herself up with such joy to the imperious Englishman, and afterwards stroked his brow as he lay on her naked breast, breathing deeply, slumbering after his great passion.

Mio Byron, she sings a third time; and from somewhere, from the caverns of the underworld, a voice sings back, wavering and disembodied, the voice of a ghost, the voice of Byron. Where are you? he sings; and then a word she does not want to hear: secca, dry. It has dried up, the source of everything.

So faint, so faltering is the voice of Byron that Teresa has to sing his words back to him, helping him along breath by breath, drawing him back to life: her child, her boy. I am here, she sings, supporting him, saving him from going down. I am your source. Do you remember how together we visited the spring of Arqui Together, you and I. I was your Laura. Do you remember?

That is how it must be from here on: Teresa giving voice to her lover, and he, the man in the ransacked house, giving voice to Teresa. The halt helping the lame, for want of better.

Working as swiftly as he can, holding tight to Teresa, he tries to sketch out the opening pages of a libretto. Get the words down on paper, he tells himself. Once that is done it will all be easier. Then there will be time to search through the masters - through Gluck, for instance - lifting melodies, perhaps - who knows? - lifting ideas too.

But by steps, as he begins to live his days more fully with Teresa and the dead Byron, it becomes clear that purloined songs will not be good enough, that the two will demand a music of their own. And, astonishingly, in dribs and drabs, the music comes. Sometimes the contour of a phrase occurs to him before he has a hint of what the words themselves will be; sometimes the words call forth the cadence; sometimes the shade of a melody, having hovered for days on the edge of hearing, unfolds and blessedly reveals itself. As the action begins to unwind, furthermore, it calls up of its own accord modulations and transitions that he feels in his blood even when he has not the musical resources to realize them.

At the piano he sets to work piecing together and writing down the beginnings of a score. But there is something about the sound of the piano that hinders him: too rounded, too physical, too rich. From the attic, from a crate full of old books and toys of Lucy's, he recovers the odd little seven-stringed banjo that he bought for her on the streets of Kwa Mashu when she was a child. With the aid of the banjo he begins to notate the music that Teresa, now mournful, now angry, will sing to her dead lover, and that pale-voiced Byron will sing back to her from the land of the shades.

The deeper he follows the Contessa into her underworld, singing her words for her or humming her vocal line, the more inseparable from her, to his surprise, becomes the silly plink-plonk of the toy banjo. The lush arias he had dreamed of giving her he quietly abandons; from there it is but a short step to putting the instrument into her hands. Instead of stalking the stage, Teresa now sits staring out over the marshes toward the gates of hell, cradling the mandolin on which she accompanies herself in her lyric flights; while to one side a discreet trio in knee-breeches (cello, flute, bassoon) fill in the entr'actes or comment sparingly between stanzas.

Seated at his own desk looking out on the overgrown garden, he marvels at what the little banjo is teaching him. Six months ago he had thought his own ghostly place in Byron in Italy would be somewhere between Teresa's and Byron's: between a yearning to prolong the summer of the passionate body and a reluctant recall from the long sleep of oblivion. But he was wrong. It is not the erotic that is calling to him after all, nor the elegiac, but the comic. He is in the opera neither as Teresa nor as Byron nor even as some blending of the two: he is held in the music itself, in the flat, tinny slap of the banjo strings, the voice that strains to soar away from the ludicrous instrument but is continually reined back, like a fish on a line.

So this is art, he thinks, and this is how it does its work! How strange! How fascinating!

He spends whole days in the grip of Byron and Teresa, living on black coffee and breakfast cereal. The refrigerator is empty, his bed is unmade; leaves chase across the floor from the broken window. No matter, he thinks: let the dead bury their dead.

Out of the poets I learned to love, chants Byron in his cracked monotone, nine syllables on C natural; but life, I found (descending chromatically to F), is another story. Plink-plunk-plonk go the strings of the banjo. Why, O why do you speak like that? sings Teresa in a long reproachful arc. Plunk-plink-plonk go the strings.

She wants to be loved, Teresa, to be loved immortally; she wants to be raised to the company of the Lauras and Floras of yore. And Byron? Byron will be faithful unto death, but that is all he promises. Let both be tied till one shall have expired.

My love, sings Teresa, swelling out the fat English monosyllable she learned in the poet's bed. Plink, echo the strings. A woman in love, wallowing in love; a cat on a roof, howling; complex proteins swirling in the blood, distending the sexual organs, making the palms sweat and voice thicken as the soul hurls its longings to the skies. That is what Soraya and the others were for: to suck the complex proteins out of his blood like snake-venom, leaving him clear-headed and dry. Teresa in her father's house in Ravenna, to her misfortune, has no one to suck the venom from her. Come to me, mio Byron, she cries: come to me, love me! And Byron, exiled from life, pale as a ghost, echoes her derisively: Leave me, leave me, leave me be!

Years ago, when he lived in Italy, he visited the same forest between Ravenna and the Adriatic coastline where a century and a half before Byron and Teresa used to go riding. Somewhere among the trees must be the spot where the Englishman first lifted the skirts of his eighteen-year-old charmer, bride of another man. He could fly to Venice tomorrow, catch a train to Ravenna, tramp along the old riding-trails, pass by the very place. He is inventing the music (or the music is inventing him) but he is not inventing the history. On those pine-needles Byron had his Teresa - 'timid as a gazelle,' he called her - rumpling her clothes, getting sand into her underwear (the horses standing by all the while, incurious), and from the occasion a passion was born that kept Teresa howling to the moon for the rest of her natural life in a fever that has set him howling too, after his manner.

Teresa leads; page after page he follows. Then one day there emerges from the dark another voice, one he has not heard before, has not counted on hearing. From the words he knows it belongs to Byron's daughter Allegra; but from where inside him does it come? Why have you left me? Come and fetch me! calls Allegra. So hot, so hot, so hot! she complains in a rhythm of her own that cuts insistently across the voices of the lovers.

To the call of the inconvenient five-year-old there comes no answer. Unlovely, unloved, neglected by her famous father, she has been passed from hand to hand and finally given to the nuns to look after. So hot, so hot! she whines from the bed in the convent where she is dying of la mal'aria. Why have you forgotten me?

Why will her father not answer? Because he has had enough of life; because he would rather be back where he belongs, on death's other shore, sunk in his old sleep. My poor little baby! sings Byron, waveringly, unwillingly, too softly for her to hear. Seated in the shadows to one side, the trio of instrumentalists play the crablike motif, one line going up, the other down, that is Byron's.

TWENTY-ONE

ROSALIND TELEPHONES. 'Lucy says you are back in town. Why haven't you been in touch?'

'I'm not yet fit for society,' he replies.

'Were you ever?' comments Rosalind drily.

They meet in a coffee-shop in Claremont. 'You've lost weight,' she remarks. 'What happened to your ear?'

'It's nothing,' he replies, and will not explain further.

As they talk her gaze keeps drifting back to the misshapen ear. She would shudder, he is sure, if she had to touch it. Not the ministering type. His best memories are still of their first months together: steamy summer nights in Durban, sheets damp with perspiration, Rosalind's long, pale body thrashing this way and that in the throes of a pleasure that was hard to tell from pain. Two sensualists: that was what held them together, while it lasted.

They talk about Lucy, about the farm. 'I thought she had a friend living with her,' says Rosalind. 'Grace.'

'Helen. Helen is back in Johannesburg. I suspect they have broken up for good.'

'Is Lucy safe by herself in that lonely place?'

'No, she isn't safe, she would be mad to feel safe. But she will stay on nevertheless. It has become a point of honour with her.'

'You said you had your car stolen.'

'It was my own fault. I should have been more careful.'

'I forgot to mention: I heard the story of your trial. The inside story.'

'My trial?'

'Your inquiry, your inquest, whatever you call it. I heard you didn't perform well.'

'Oh? How did you hear? I thought it was confidential.'

'That doesn't matter. I heard you didn't make a good impression. You were too stiff and defensive.'

'I wasn't trying to make an impression. I was standing up for a principle.'

'That may be so, David, but surely you know by now that trials are not about principles, they are about how well you put yourself across. According to my source, you came across badly. What was the principle you were standing up for?'

'Freedom of speech. Freedom to remain silent.'

'That sounds very grand. But you were always a great self-deceiver, David. A great deceiver and a great self-deceiver. Are you sure it wasn't just a case of being caught with your pants down?'

He does not rise to the bait.

'Anyway, whatever the principle was, it was too abstruse for your audience. They thought you were just obfuscating. You should have got yourself some coaching beforehand. What are you going to do about money? Did they take away your pension?'

'I'll get back what I put in. I am going to sell the house. It's too big for me.'

'What will you do with your time? Will you look for a job?'

'I don't think so. My hands are full. I'm writing something.'

'A book?'

'An opera, in fact.'

'An opera! Well, that's a new departure. I hope it makes you lots of money. Will you move in with Lucy?'

'The opera is just a hobby, something to dabble at. It won't make money. And no, I won't be moving in with Lucy. It wouldn't be a good idea.'

'Why not? You and she have always got on well together. Has something happened?'

Her questions are intrusive, but Rosalind has never had qualms about being intrusive. 'You shared my bed for ten years,' she once said - 'Why should you have secrets from me?'

'Lucy and I still get on well,' he replies. 'But not well enough to live together.'

'The story of your life.'

'Yes.'

There is silence while they contemplate, from their respective angles, the story of his life.

'I saw your girlfriend,' Rosalind says, changing the subject.

'My girlfriend?'

'Your inamorata. Melanie Isaacs - isn't that her name? She is in a play at the Dock Theatre. Didn't you know? I can see why you fell for her. Big, dark eyes. Cunning little weasel body. Just your type. You must have thought it would be another of your quick flings, your peccadilloes. And now look at you. You have thrown away your life, and for what?'

'My life is not thrown away, Rosalind. Be sensible.'

'But it is! You have lost your job, your name is mud, your friends avoid you, you hide out in Torrance Road like a tortoise afraid to stick its neck out of its shell. People who aren't good enough to tie your shoelaces make jokes about you. Your shirt isn't ironed, God knows who gave you that haircut, you've got - ' She arrests her tirade. 'You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.'

'I'm going to end up in a hole in the ground,' he says. 'And so are you. So are we all.'

'That's enough, David, I'm upset as it is, I don't want to get into an argument.' She gathers up her packages. 'When you are tired of bread and jam, give me a call and I'll cook you a meal.'

The mention of Melanie Isaacs unsettles him. He has never been given to lingering involvements. When an affair is over, he puts it behind him. But there is something unfinished in the business with Melanie. Deep inside him the smell of her is stored, the smell of a mate. Does she remember his smell too? Just your type, said Rosalind, who ought to know. What if their paths cross again, his and Melanie's? Will there be a flash of feeling, a sign that the affair has not run its course?

Yet the very idea of reapplying to Melanie is crazy. Why should she speak to the man condemned as her persecutor? And what will she think of him anyway - the dunce with the funny ear, the uncut hair, the rumpled collar?

The marriage of Cronus and Harmony: unnatural. That was what the trial was set up to punish, once all the fine words were stripped away. On trial for his way of life. For unnatural acts: for broadcasting old seed, tired seed, seed that does not quicken, contra naturam. If the old men hog the young women, what will be the future of the species? That, at bottom, was the case for the prosecution. Half of literature is about it: young women struggling to escape from under the weight of old men, for the sake of the species.

He sighs. The young in one another's arms, heedless, engrossed in the sensual music. No country, this, for old men. He seems to be spending a lot of time sighing. Regret: a regrettable note on which to go out.

Until two years ago the Dock Theatre was a cold storage plant where the carcases of pigs and oxen hung waiting to be transported across the seas. Now it is a fashionable entertainment spot. He arrives late, taking his seat just as the lights are dimming. 'A runaway success brought back by popular demand': that is how Sunset at the Globe Salon is billed in its new production. The set is more stylish, the direction more professional, there is a new lead actor. Nevertheless, he finds the play, with its crude humour and nakedly political intent, as hard to endure as before.

Melanie has kept her part as Gloria, the novice hairdresser. Wearing a pink caftan over gold lame tights, her face garishly made up, her hair piled in loops on her head, she totters onstage on high heels. The lines she is given are predictable, but she delivers them with deft timing in a whining Kaaps accent. She is altogether more sure of herself than before - in fact, good in the part, positively gifted. Is it possible that in the months he has been away she has grown up, found herself? Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger. Perhaps the trial was a trial for her too; perhaps she too has suffered, and come through.

He wishes he could have a sign. If he had a sign he would know what to do. If, for instance, those absurd clothes were to burn off her body in a cold, private flame and she were to stand before him, in a revelation secret to him alone, as naked and as perfect as on that last night in Lucy's old room.

The holidaymakers among whom he is seated, ruddy-faced, comfortable in their heavy flesh, are enjoying the play. They have taken to Melanie-Gloria; they titter at the risqué jokes, laugh uproariously when the characters trade slurs and insults.

Though they are his countrymen, he could not feel more alien among them, more of an impostor. Yet when they laugh at Melanie's lines he cannot resist a flush of pride. Mine! he would like to say, turning to them, as if she were his daughter.

Without warning a memory comes back from years ago: of someone he picked up on the N1 outside Trompsburg and gave a ride to, a woman in her twenties travelling alone, a tourist from Germany, sunburnt and dusty. They drove as far as Touws River, checked into a hotel; he fed her, slept with her. He remembers her long, wiry legs; he remembers the softness of her hair, its feather-lightness between his fingers.

In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images of women he has known on two continents, some from so far away in time that he barely recognizes them. Like leaves blown on the wind, pell-mell, they pass before him. A fair field full of folk: hundreds of lives all tangled with his. He holds his breath, willing the vision to continue.

What has happened to them, all those women, all those lives? Are there moments when they too, or some of them, are plunged without warning into the ocean of memory? The German girl: is it possible that at this very instant she is remembering the man who picked her up on the roadside in Africa and spent the night with her?

Enriched: that was the word the newspapers picked on to jeer at. A stupid word to let slip, under the circumstances, yet now, at this moment, he would stand by it. By Melanie, by the girl in Touws River; by Rosalind, Bev Shaw, Soraya: by each of them he was enriched, and by the others too, even the least of them, even the failures. Like a flower blooming in his breast, his heart floods with thankfulness.

Where do moments like this come from? Hypnagogic, no doubt; but what does that explain? If he is being led, then what god is doing the leading?

The play is grinding on. They have come to the point where Melanie gets her broom tangled in the electric cord. A flash of magnesium, and the stage is suddenly plunged into darkness. 'Jesus Christ, jou dom meid!' screeches the hairdresser.

There are twenty rows of seats between himself and Melanie, but he hopes she can at this moment, across space, smell him, smell his thoughts.

Something raps him lightly on the head, calling him back to the world. A moment later another object flits past and hits the seat in front of him: a spitball of paper the size of a marble. A third hits him in the neck. He is the target, no doubt of that.

He is supposed to turn and glare. Who did that? he is supposed to bark. Or else stare stiffly ahead, pretending not to notice.

A fourth pellet strikes his shoulder and bounces into the air. The man in the next seat steals a puzzled glance.

On stage the action has progressed. Sidney the hairdresser is tearing open the fatal envelope and reading aloud the landlord's ultimatum. They have until the end of the month to pay the back rent, failing which the Globe will have to close down. 'What are we going to do?' laments Miriam the hair-washing woman.

'Sss,' comes a hiss from behind him, soft enough not to be heard at the front of the house. 'Sss.'

He turns, and a pellet catches him on the temple. Standing against the back wall is Ryan, the boyfriend with the ear-ring and goatee. Their eyes meet. 'Professor Lurie!' whispers Ryan hoarsely. Outrageous though his behaviour is, he seems quite at ease. There is a little smile on his lips.

The play goes on, but there is around him now a definite flurry of unrest. 'Sss,' hisses Ryan again. 'Be quiet!' exclaims the woman two seats away, directing herself at him, though he has uttered not a sound.

There are five pairs of knees to fight past ('Excuse me... Excuse me'), cross looks, angry murmurings, before he can reach the aisle, find his way out, emerge into the windy, moonless night.

There is a sound behind him. He turns. The point of a cigarette glows: Ryan has followed him into the parking lot.

'Are you going to explain yourself?' he snaps. 'Are you going to explain this childish behaviour?'

Ryan draws on his cigarette. 'Only doing you a favour, prof. Didn't you learn your lesson?'

'What was my lesson?'

'Stay with your own kind.'

Your own kind: who is this boy to tell him who his kind are? What does he know of the force that drives the utmost strangers into each other's arms, making them kin, kind, beyond all prudence? _Omnis gens quaecumque se in se pecere vult_. The seed of generation, driven to perfect itself, driving deep into the woman's body, driving to bring the future into being. Drive, driven.

Ryan is speaking. 'Let her alone, man! Melanie will spit in your eye if she sees you.' He drops his cigarette, takes a step closer. Under stars so bright one might think them on fire they face each other. 'Find yourself another life, prof. Believe me.'

He drives back slowly along the Main Road in Green Point. Spit in your eye: he had not expected that. His hand on the steering wheel is trembling. The shocks of existence: he must learn to take them more lightly.

The streetwalkers are out in numbers; at a traffic light one of them catches his eye, a tall girl in a minute black leather skirt. Why not, he thinks, on this night of revelations?

They park in a cul-de-sac on the slopes of Signal Hill. The girl is drunk or perhaps on drugs: he can get nothing coherent out of her. Nonetheless, she does her work on him as well as he could expect. Afterwards she lies with her face in his lap, resting. She is younger than she had seemed under the streetlights, younger even than Melanie. He lays a hand on her head. The trembling has ceased. He feels drowsy, contented; also strangely protective.

So this is all it takes!, he thinks. How could I ever have forgotten it?

Not a bad man but not good either. Not cold but not hot, even at his hottest. Not by the measure of Teresa; not even by the measure of Byron. Lacking in fire. Will that be the verdict on him, the verdict of the universe and its all-seeing eye?

The girl stirs, sits up. 'Where are you taking me?' she mumbles. 'I'm taking you back to where I found you.'

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'. On Petrus' side graze a pair of scrawny heifers. Petrus' 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' 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' 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' wife is hanging washing behind the old stables. 'Good morning,' he says. 'Molo. I'm looking for Petrus.'

She does not meet his eyes, but points languidly toward the building site. Her movements are slow, heavy. Her time is near: even he can see that.

Petrus is glazing windows. There is a long palaver of greetings that ought to be gone through, but he is in no mood for it. 'Lucy tells me the boy is back again,' he says. 'Pollux. The boy who attacked her.'

Petrus scrapes his knife clean, lays it down. 'He is my relative,' he says, rolling the r. 'Now I must tell him to go away because of this thing that happened?'

'You told me you did not know him. You lied to me.'

Petrus sets his pipe between his stained teeth and sucks vigorously. Then he removes the pipe and gives a wide smile. 'I lie,' he says. 'I lie to you.' He sucks again. 'For why must I lie to you?'

'Don't ask me, ask yourself, Petrus. Why do you lie?'

The smile has vanished. 'You go away, you come back again - why?' He stares challengingly. 'You have no work here. You come to look after your child. I also look after my child.'

'Your child? Now he is your child, this Pollux?'

'Yes. He is a child. He is my family, my people.'

So that is it. No more lies. My people. As naked an answer as he could wish. Well, Lucy is his people.

'You say it is bad, what happened,' Petrus continues. 'I also say it is bad. It is bad. But it is finish.' He takes the pipe from his mouth, stabs the air vehemently with the stem. 'It is finish.'

'It is not finished. Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. It is not finished. On the contrary, it is just beginning. It will go on long after I am dead and you are dead.'

Petrus stares reflectively, not pretending he does not understand. 'He will marry her,' he says at last. 'He will marry Lucy, only he is too young, too young to be marry. He is a child still.'

'A dangerous child. A young thug. A jackal boy.'

Petrus brushes aside the insults. 'Yes, he is too young, too young. Maybe one day he can marry, but not now. I will marry.'

'You will marry whom?'

'I will marry Lucy.'

He cannot believe his ears. So this is it, that is what all the shadow-boxing was for: this bid, this blow! And here stands Petrus foursquare, puffing on the empty pipe, waiting for a response.

'You will marry Lucy,' he says carefully. 'Explain to me what you mean. No, wait, rather don't explain. This is not something I want to hear. This is not how we do things.'

We: he is on the point of saying, We Westerners.

'Yes, I can see, I can see,' says Petrus. He is positively chuckling. 'But I tell you, then you tell Lucy. Then it is over, all this badness.'

'Lucy does not want to marry. Does not want to marry a man. It is not an option she will consider. I can't make myself clearer than that. She wants to live her own life.'

'Yes, I know,' says Petrus. And perhaps he does indeed know. He would be a fool to underestimate Petrus. 'But here', says Petrus, 'it is dangerous, too dangerous. A woman must be marry.'

'I tried to handle it lightly,' he tells Lucy afterwards. 'Though I could hardly believe what I was hearing. It was blackmail pure and simple.'

'It wasn't blackmail. You are wrong about that. I hope you didn't lose your temper.'

'No, I didn't lose my temper. I said I would relay his offer, that's all. I said I doubted you would be interested.'

'Were you offended?'

'Offended at the prospect of becoming Petrus' father-in-law? No. I was taken aback, astonished, dumbfounded, but no, not offended, give me credit for that.'

'Because, I must tell you, this is not the first time. Petrus has been dropping hints for a while now. That I would find it altogether safer to become part of his establishment. It is not a joke, not a threat. At some level he is serious.'

'I have no doubt that in some sense he is serious. The question is, in what sense? Is he aware that you are...?'

'You mean, is he aware of my condition? I have not told him. But I am sure his wife and he will have put two and two together.'

'And that won't make him change his mind?'

'Why should it? It will make me all the more part of the family. In any event, it is not me he is after, he is after the farm. The farm is my dowry.'

'But this is preposterous, Lucy! He is already married! In fact, you told me there are two wives. How can you even contemplate it?'

'I don't believe you get the point, David. Petrus is not offering me a church wedding followed by a honeymoon on the Wild Coast. He is offering an alliance, a deal. I contribute the land, in return for which I am allowed to creep in under his wing. Otherwise, he wants to remind me, I am without protection, I am fair game.'

'And that isn't blackmail? What about the personal side? Is there no personal side to the offer?'

'Do you mean, would Petrus expect me to sleep with him? I'm not sure that Petrus would want to sleep with me, except to drive home his message. But, to be frank, no, I don't want to sleep with Petrus. Definitely not.'

'Then we need not discuss it any further. Shall I convey your decision to Petrus - that his offer is not accepted, and I won't say why?'

'No. Wait. Before you get on your high horse with Petrus, take a moment to consider my situation objectively. Objectively I am a woman alone. I have no brothers. I have a father, but he is far away and anyhow powerless in the terms that matter here. To whom can I turn for protection, for patronage? To Ettinger? It is just a matter of time before Ettinger is found with a bullet in his back. Practically speaking, there is only Petrus left. Petrus may not be a big man but he is big enough for someone small like me. And at least I know Petrus. I have no illusions about him. I know what I would be letting myself in for.'

'Lucy, I am in the process of selling the house in Cape Town. I am prepared to send you to Holland. Alternatively I am prepared to give you whatever you need to set yourself up again somewhere safer than here. Think about it.'

It is as if she has not heard him. 'Go back to Petrus,' she says. 'Propose the following. Say I accept his protection. Say he can put out whatever story he likes about our relationship and I won't contradict him. If he wants me to be known as his third wife, so be it. As his concubine, ditto. But then the child becomes his too. The child becomes part of his family. As for the land, say I will sign the land over to him as long as the house remains mine. I will become a tenant on his land.'

'A bywoner.'

'A bywoner. But the house remains mine, I repeat that. No one enters this house without my permission. Including him. And I keep the kennels.'

'It's not workable, Lucy. Legally it's not workable. You know that.'

'Then what do you propose?'

She sits in her housecoat and slippers with yesterday's newspaper on her lap. Her hair hangs lank; she is overweight in a slack, unhealthy way. More and more she has begun to look like one of those women who shuffle around the corridors of nursing homes whispering to themselves. Why should Petrus bother to negotiate? She cannot last: leave her alone and in due course she will fall like rotten fruit.

'I have made my proposal. Two proposals.'

'No, I'm not leaving. Go to Petrus and tell him what I have said. Tell him I give up the land. Tell him that he can have it, title deed and all. He will love that.'

There is a pause between them.

'How humiliating,' he says finally. 'Such high hopes, and to end like this.'

'Yes, I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.'

'Like a dog.'

'Yes, like a dog.'

TWENTY-THREE

IT IS MID-MORNING. He has been out, taking the bulldog Katy for a walk. Surprisingly, Katy has kept up with him, either because he is slower than before or because she is faster. She snuffles and pants as much as ever, but this no longer seems to irritate him.

As they approach the house he notices the boy, the one whom Petrus called my people, standing with his face to the back wall. At first he thinks he is urinating; then he realizes he is peering in through the bathroom window, peeping at Lucy.

Katy has begun to growl, but the boy is too absorbed to pay heed. By the time he turns they are upon him. The flat of his hand catches the boy in the face. 'You swine!' he shouts, and strikes him a second time, so that he staggers. 'You filthy swine!'

More startled than hurt, the boy tries to run, but trips over his own feet. At once the dog is upon him. Her teeth close over his elbow; she braces her forelegs and tugs, growling. With a shout of pain he tries to pull free. He strikes out with a fist, but his blows lack force and the dog ignores them.

The word still rings in the air: Swine! Never has he felt such elemental rage. He would like to give the boy what he deserves: a sound thrashing. Phrases that all his life he has avoided seem suddenly just and right: Teach him a lesson, Show him his place. So this is what it is like, he thinks! This is what it is like to be a savage! He gives the boy a good, solid kick, so that he sprawls sideways. Pollux! What a name!

The dog changes position, mounting the boy's body, tugging grimly at his arm, ripping his shirt. The boy tries to push her off, but she does not budge. 'Ya ya ya ya ya!' he shouts in pain. 'I will kill you!' he shouts.

Then Lucy is on the scene. 'Katy!' she commands.

The dog gives her a sidelong glance but does not obey.

Falling to her knees, Lucy grips the dog's collar, speaking softly and urgently. Reluctantly the dog releases her grip.

'Are you all right?' she says.

The boy is moaning with pain. Snot is running from his nostrils. 'I will kill you!' he heaves. He seems on the point of crying.

Lucy folds back his sleeve. There are score-marks from the dog's fangs; as they watch, pearls of blood emerge on the dark skin.

'Come, let us go and wash it,' she says. The boy sucks in the snot and tears, shakes his head.

Lucy is wearing only a wrapper. As she rises, the sash slips loose and her breasts are bared.

The last time he saw his daughter's breasts they were the demure rosebuds of a six-year-old. Now they are heavy, rounded, almost milky. A stillness falls. He is staring; the boy is staring too, unashamedly. Rage wells up in him again, clouding his eyes.

Lucy turns away from the two of them, covers herself. In a single quick movement the boy scrambles to his feet and dodges out of range. 'We will kill you all!' he shouts. He turns; deliberately trampling the potato bed, he ducks under the wire fence and retreats toward Petrus' house. His gait is cocky once more, though he still nurses his arm.

Lucy is right. Something is wrong with him, wrong in his head. A violent child in the body of a young man. But there is more, some angle to the business he does not understand. What is Lucy up to, protecting the boy?

Lucy speaks. 'This can't go on, David. I can cope with Petrus and his aanhangers, I can cope with you, but I can't cope with all of you together.'

'He was staring at you through the window. Are you aware of that?'

'He is disturbed. A disturbed child.'

'Is that an excuse? An excuse for what he did to you?' Lucy's lips move, but he cannot hear what she says.

'I don't trust him,' he goes on. 'He is shifty. He is like a jackal sniffing around, looking for mischief. In the old days we had a word for people like him. Deficient. Mentally deficient. Morally deficient. He should be in an institution.'

'That is reckless talk, David. If you want to think like that, please keep it to yourself. Anyway, what you think of him is beside the point. He is here, he won't disappear in a puff of smoke, he is a fact of life.' She faces him squarely, squinting into the sunlight. Katy slumps down at her feet, panting lightly, pleased with herself; with her achievements. 'David, we can't go on like this. Everything had settled down, everything was peaceful again, until you came back. I must have peace around me. I am prepared to do anything, make any sacrifice, for the sake of peace.'

'And I am part of what you are prepared to sacrifice?'

She shrugs. 'I didn't say it, you said it.'

'Then I'll pack my bags.'

Hours after the incident his hand still tingles from the blows. When he thinks of the boy and his threats, he seethes with anger. At the same time, he is ashamed of himself. He condemns himself absolutely. He has taught no one a lesson - certainly not the boy. All he has done is to estrange himself further from Lucy. He has shown himself to her in the throes of passion, and clearly she does not like what she sees.

He ought to apologize. But he cannot. He is not, it would seem, in control of himself. Something about Pollux sends him into a rage: his ugly, opaque little eyes, his insolence, but also the thought that like a weed he has been allowed to tangle his roots with Lucy and Lucy's existence.

If Pollux insults his daughter again, he will strike him again. Du musst dein Leben ändern!: you must change your life. Well, he is too old to heed, too old to change. Lucy may be able to bend to the tempest; he cannot, not with honour.

That is why he must listen to Teresa. Teresa may be the last one left who can save him. Teresa is past honour. She pushes out her breasts to the sun; she plays the banjo in front of the servants and does not care if they smirk. She has immortal longings, and sings her longings. She will not be dead.

He arrives at the clinic just as Bev Shaw is leaving. They embrace, tentative as strangers. Hard to believe they once lay naked in each other's arms.

'Is this just a visit or are you back for a while?' she asks.

'I am back for as long as is necessary. But I won't be staying with Lucy. She and I aren't hitting it off. I am going to find a room for myself in town.'

'I'm sorry. What is the problem?'

'Between Lucy and myself? Nothing, I hope. Nothing that can't be fixed. The problem is with the people she lives among. When I am added in, we become too many. Too many in too small a space. Like spiders in a bottle.'

An image comes to him from the Inferno: the great marsh of Styx, with souls boiling up in it like mushrooms. Vedi l'anime di color cui vine l'ira. Souls overcome with anger, gnawing at each other. A punishment fitted to the crime.

'You are talking about that boy who has moved in with Petrus. I must say I don't like the look of him. But as long as Petrus is there, surely Lucy will be all right. Perhaps the time has come, David, for you to stand back and let Lucy work out solutions for herself. Women are adaptable. Lucy is adaptable. And she is young. She lives closer to the ground than you. Than either of us.'

Lucy adaptable? That is not his experience. 'You keep telling me to stand back,' he says. 'If I had stood back from the beginning, where would Lucy be now?'

Bev Shaw is silent. Is there something about him that Bev Shaw can see and he cannot? Because animals trust her, should he trust her too, to teach him a lesson? Animals trust her, and she uses that trust to liquidate them. What is the lesson there?

'If I were to stand back,' he stumbles on, 'and some new disaster were to take place on the farm, how would I be able to live with myself?'

She shrugs. 'Is that the question, David?' she asks quietly.

'I don't know. I don't know what the question is any more. Between Lucy's generation and mine a curtain seems to have fallen. I didn't even notice when it fell.'

There is a long silence between them.

'Anyway,' he continues, 'I can't stay with Lucy, so I am looking for a room. If you happen to hear of anything in Grahamstown, let me know. What I mainly came to say is that I am available to help at the clinic.'

'That will be handy,' says Bev Shaw.

From a friend of Bill Shaw's he buys a half-ton pickup, for which he pays with a cheque for R 5000 and another cheque for R7000 postdated to the end of the month.

'What do you plan to use it for?' says the man.

'Animals. Dogs.'

'You will need rails on the back, so that they won't jump out. I know someone who can fit rails for you.'

'My dogs don't jump.'

According to its papers the truck is twelve years old, but the engine sounds smooth enough. And anyway, he tells himself, it does not have to last for ever. Nothing has to last for ever.

Following up an advertisement in Grocott's Mail, he hires a room in a house near the hospital. He gives his name as Lourie, pays a month's rent in advance, tells his landlady he is in Grahamstown for outpatient treatment. He does not say what the treatment is for, but knows she thinks it is cancer.

He is spending money like water. No matter.

At a camping shop he buys an immersion heater, a small gas stove, an aluminium pot. Carrying them up to his room, he meets his landlady on the stairs. 'We don't allow cooking in the rooms, Mr Lourie,' she says. 'In case of fire, you know.'

The room is dark, stuffy, overfurnished, the mattress lumpy. But he will get used to it, as he has got used to other things.

There is one other boarder, a retired schoolteacher. They exchange greetings over breakfast, for the rest do not speak. After breakfast he leaves for the clinic and spends the day there, every day, Sundays included.

The clinic, more than the boarding-house, becomes his home. In the bare compound behind the building he makes a nest of sorts, with a table and an old armchair from the Shaws and a beach umbrella to keep off the worst of the sun. He brings in the gas stove to make tea or warm up canned food: spaghetti and meatballs, snoek and onions. Twice a day he feeds the animals; he cleans out their pens and occasionally talks to them; otherwise he reads or dozes or, when he has the premises to himself, picks out on Lucy's banjo the music he will give to Teresa Guiccioli.

Until the child is born, this will be his life.

One morning he glances up to see the faces of three little boys peering at him over the concrete wall. He rises from his seat; the dogs start barking; the boys drop down and scamper off whooping with excitement. What a tale to tell back home: a mad old man who sits among the dogs singing to himself?

Mad indeed. How can he ever explain, to them, to their parents, to D Village, what Teresa and her lover have done to deserve being brought back to this world?

TWENTY-FOUR

IN HER WHITE nightdress Teresa stands at the bedroom window. Her eyes are closed. It is the darkest hour of the night: she breathes deeply, breathing in the rustle of the wind, the belling of the bullfrogs.

'Che vuol dir,' she sings, her voice barely above a whisper - 'Che vuol dir questa solitudine immensa? Ed io,' she sings - 'che Sono?'

Silence. The solitudine immensa offers no reply. Even the trio in the corner are quiet as dormice.

'Come!' she whispers. 'Come to me, I plead, my Byron!' She opens her arms wide, embracing the darkness, embracing what it will bring.

She wants him to come on the wind, to wrap himself around her, to bury his face in the hollow between her breasts. Alternatively she wants him to arrive on the dawn, to appear on the horizon as a sun-god casting the glow of his warmth upon her. By any means at all she wants him back.

Sitting at his table in the dog-yard, he harkens to the sad, swooping curve of Teresa's plea as she confronts the darkness. This is a bad time of the month for Teresa, she is sore, she has not slept a wink, she is haggard with longing. She wants to be rescued - from the pain, from the summer heat, from the Villa Gamba, from her father's bad temper, from everything.

From the chair where it rests she picks up the mandolin. Cradling it like a child, she returns to the window. Plink-plunk goes the mandolin in her arms, softly, so as not to wake her father. Plink-plunk squawks the banjo in the desolate yard in Africa.

Just something to dabble at, he had said to Rosalind. A lie. The opera is not a hobby, not any more. It consumes him night and day.

Yet despite occasional good moments, the truth is that Byron in Italy is going nowhere. There is no action, no development, just a long, halting cantilena hurled by Teresa into the empty air, punctuated now and then with groans and sighs from Byron offstage. The husband and the rival mistress are forgotten, might as well not exist. The lyric impulse in him may not be dead, but after decades of starvation it can crawl forth from its cave only pinched, stunted, deformed. He has not the musical resources, the resources of energy, to raise Byron in Italy off the monotonous track on which it has been running since the start. It has become the kind of work a sleepwalker might write.

He sighs. It would have been nice to be returned triumphant to society as the author of an eccentric little chamber opera. But that will not be. His hopes must be more temperate: that somewhere from amidst the welter of sound there will dart up, like a bird, a single authentic note of immortal longing. As for recognizing it, he will leave that to the scholars of the future, if there are still scholars by then. For he will not hear the note himself, when it comes, if it comes - he knows too much about art and the ways of art to expect that. Though it would have been nice for Lucy to hear proof in her lifetime, and think a little better of him.

Poor Teresa! Poor aching girl! He has brought her back from the grave, promised her another life, and now he is failing her. He hopes she will find it in her heart to forgive him.

Of the dogs in the holding pens, there is one he has come to feel a particular fondness for. It is a young male with a withered left hindquarter which it drags behind it. Whether it was born like that he does not know. No visitor has shown an interest in adopting it. Its period of grace is almost over; soon it will have to submit to the needle.

Sometimes, while he is reading or writing, he releases it from the pen and lets it frisk, in its grotesque way, around the yard, or snooze at his feet. It is not 'his' in any sense; he has been careful not to give it a name (though Bev Shaw refers to it as Driepoot); nevertheless, he is sensible of a generous affection streaming out toward him from the dog. Arbitrarily, unconditionally, he has been adopted; the dog would die for him, he knows.

The dog is fascinated by the sound of the banjo. When he strums the strings, the dog sits up, cocks its head, listens. When he hums Teresa's line, and the humming begins to swell with feeling (it is as though his larynx thickens: he can feel the hammer of blood in his throat), the dog smacks its lips and seems on the point of singing too, or howling.

Would he dare to do that: bring a dog into the piece, allow it to loose its own lament to the heavens between the strophes of lovelorn Teresa's? Why not? Surely, in a work that will never be performed, all things are permitted?

On Saturday mornings, by agreement, he goes to Donkin Square to help Lucy at the market stall. Afterwards he takes her out to lunch.

Lucy is slowing down in her movements. She has begun to wear a self-absorbed, placid look. She is not obviously pregnant; but if he is picking up signs, how much longer before the eagle-eyed daughters of Grahamstown pick them up too?

'How is Petrus getting on?' he asks.

'The house is finished, all but the ceilings and the plumbing. They are in the process of moving in.'

'And their child? Isn't the child just about due?'

'Next week. All very nicely timed.'

'Has Petrus dropped any more hints?'

'Hints?'

'About you. About your place in the scheme.'

'No.'

'Perhaps it will be different once the child' - he makes the faintest of gestures toward his daughter, toward her body - 'is born. It will be, after all, a child of this earth. They will not be able to deny that.'

There is a long silence between them.

'Do you love him yet?'

Though the words are his, from his mouth, they startle him.

'The child? No. How could I? But I will. Love will grow - one can trust Mother Nature for that. I am determined to be a good mother, David. A good mother and a good person. You should try to be a good person too.'

'I suspect it is too late for me. I'm just an old lag serving out my sentence. But you go ahead. You are well on the way.'

A good person. Not a bad resolution to make, in dark times.

By unspoken agreement, he does not, for the time being, come to his daughter's farm. Nonetheless, one weekday he takes a drive along the Kenton road, leaves the truck at the turnoff, and walks the rest of the way, not following the track but striking out over the veld.

From the last hillcrest the farm opens out before him: the old house, solid as ever, the stables, Petrus' new house, the old dam on which he can make out specks that must be the ducks and larger specks that must be the wild geese, Lucy's visitors from afar.

At this distance the flowerbeds are solid blocks of colour: magenta, carnelian, ash-blue. A season of blooming. The bees must be in their seventh heaven.

Of Petrus there is no sign, nor of his wife or the jackal boy who runs with them. But Lucy is at work among the flowers; and, as he picks his way down the hillside, he can see the bulldog too, a patch of fawn on the path beside her.

He reaches the fence and stops. Lucy, with her back to him, has not yet noticed him. She is wearing a pale summer dress, boots, and a wide straw hat. As she bends over, clipping or pruning or tying, he can see the milky, blue-veined skin and broad, vulnerable tendons of the backs of her knees: the least beautiful part of a woman's body, the least expressive, and therefore perhaps the most endearing.

Lucy straightens up, stretches, bends down again. Field-labour; peasant tasks, immemorial. His daughter is becoming a peasant.

Still she is not aware of him. As for the watchdog, the watchdog appears to be snoozing.

So: once she was only a little tadpole in her mother's body, and now here she is, solid in her existence, more solid than he has ever been. With luck she will last a long time, long beyond him. When he is dead she will, with luck, still be here doing her ordinary tasks among the flowerbeds. And from within her will have issued another existence, that with luck will be just as solid, just as long-lasting. So it will go on, a line of existences in which his share, his gift, will grow inexorably less and less, till it may as well be forgotten.

A grandfather. A Joseph. Who would have thought it! What pretty girl can he expect to be wooed into bed with a grandfather? Softly he speaks her name. 'Lucy!'

She does not hear him.

What will it entail, being a grandfather? As a father he has not been much of a success, despite trying harder than most. As a grandfather he will probably score lower than average too. He lacks the virtues of the old: equanimity, kindliness, patience. But perhaps those virtues will come as other virtues go: the virtue of passion, for instance. He must have a look again at Victor Hugo, poet of grandfatherhood. There may be things to learn.

The wind drops. There is a moment of utter stillness which he would wish prolonged for ever: the gentle sun, the stillness of midafternoon, bees busy in a field of flowers; and at the centre of the picture a young woman, das ewig Weibliche, lightly pregnant, in a straw sunhat. A scene ready-made for a Sargent or a Bonnard. City boys like him; but even city boys can recognize beauty when they see it, can have their breath taken away.

The truth is, he has never had much of an eye for rural life, despite all his reading in Wordsworth. Not much of an eye for anything, except pretty girls; and where has that got him? Is it too late to educate the eye?

He clears his throat. 'Lucy,' he says, more loudly.

The spell is broken. Lucy comes erect, half-turns, smiles. 'Hello,' she says. 'I didn't hear you.'

Katy raises her head and stares shortsightedly in his direction. He clambers through the fence. Katy lumbers up to him, sniffs his shoes.

'Where is the truck?' asks Lucy. She is flushed from her labours and perhaps a little sunburnt. She looks, suddenly, the picture of health.

'I parked and took a walk.'

'Will you come in and have some tea?'

She makes the offer as if he were a visitor. Good. Visitorship, visitation: a new footing, a new start.

Sunday has come again. He and Bev Shaw are engaged in one of their sessions of Lösung. One by one he brings in the cats, then the dogs: the old, the blind, the halt, the crippled, the maimed, but also the young, the sound - all those whose term has come. One by one Bev touches them, speaks to them, comforts them, and puts them away, then stands back and watches while he seals up the remains in a black plastic shroud.

He and Bev do not speak. He has learned by now, from her, to concentrate all his attention on the animal they are killing, giving it what he no longer has difficulty in calling by its proper name: love.

He ties the last bag and takes it to the door. Twenty-three. There is only the young dog left, the one who likes music, the one who, given half a chance, would already have lolloped after his comrades into the clinic building, into the theatre with its zinc-topped table where the rich, mixed smells still linger, including one he will not yet have met with in his life: the smell of expiration, the soft, short smell of the released soul.

What the dog will not be able to work out (not in a month of Sundays! he thinks), what his nose will not tell him, is how one can enter what seems to be an ordinary room and never come out again. Something happens in this room, something unmentionable: here the soul is yanked out of the body; briefly it hangs about in the air, twisting and contorting; then it is sucked away and is gone. It will be beyond him, this room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence.

It gets harder all the time, Bev Shaw once said. Harder, yet easier too. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be as hard as hard can be grows harder yet. He can save the young dog, if he wishes, for another week. But a time must come, it cannot be evaded, when he will have to bring him to Bev Shaw in her operating room (perhaps he will carry him in his arms, perhaps he will do that for him) and caress him and brush back the fur so that the needle can find the vein, and whisper to him and support him in the moment when, bewilderingly, his legs buckle; and then, when the soul is out, fold him up and pack him away in his bag, and the next day wheel the bag into the flames and see that it is burnt, burnt up. He will do all that for him when his time comes. It will be little enough, less than little: nothing.

He crosses the surgery. 'Was that the last?' asks Bev Shaw.

'One more.'

He opens the cage door. 'Come,' he says, bends, opens his arms. The dog wags its crippled rear, sniffs his face, licks his cheeks, his lips, his ears. He does nothing to stop it. 'Come.'

Bearing him in his arms like a lamb, he re-enters the surgery. 'I thought you would save him for another week,' says Bev Shaw. 'Are you giving him up?'

'Yes, I am giving him up.'

The End

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR