Disgrace

'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's. On Petrus's side graze a pair of scrawny heifers. Petrus's 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?