Disgrace

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.