He sighs again. How brief the summer, before the autumn and then the winter! He reads on past midnight, yet even so cannot get to sleep.
ELEVEN
IT IS WEDNESDAY. He gets up early, but Lucy is up before him. He finds her watching the wild geese on the dam.
'Aren't they lovely,' she says. 'They come back every year. The same three. I feel so lucky to be visited. To be the one chosen.'
Three. That would be a solution of sorts. He and Lucy and Melanie. Or he and Melanie and Soraya. They have breakfast together, then take the two Dobermanns for a walk.
'Do you think you could live here, in this part of the world?' asks Lucy out of the blue.
'Why? Do you need a new dog-man?'
'No, I wasn't thinking of that. But surely you could get a job at Rhodes University - you must have contacts there - or at Port Elizabeth.'
'I don't think so, Lucy. I'm no longer marketable. The scandal will follow me, stick to me. No, if I took a job it would have to be as something obscure, like a ledger clerk, if they still have them, or a kennel attendant.'
'But if you want to put a stop to the scandal-mongering, shouldn't you be standing up for yourself? Doesn't gossip just multiply if you run away?'
As a child Lucy had been quiet and self-effacing, observing him but never, as far as he knew, judging him. Now, in her middle twenties, she has begun to separate. The dogs, the gardening, the astrology books, the asexual clothes: in each he recognizes a statement of independence, considered, purposeful. The turn away from men too. Making her own life. Corning out of his shadow. Good! He approves!
'Is that what you think I have done?' he says. 'Run away from the scene of the crime?'
'Well, you have withdrawn. For practical purposes, what is the difference?'
'You miss the point, my dear. The case you want me to make is a case that can no longer be made, Basta. Not in our day. If I tried to make it I would not be heard.'
'That's not true. Even if you are what you say, a moral dinosaur, there is a curiosity to hear the dinosaur speak. I for one am curious. What is your case? Let us hear it.'
He hesitates. Does she really want him to trot out more of his intimacies?
'My case rests on the rights of desire,' he says. 'On the god who makes even the small birds quiver.'
He sees himself in the girl's flat, in her bedroom, with the rain pouring down outside and the heater in the corner giving off a smell of paraffin, kneeling over her, peeling off her clothes, while her arms flop like the arms of a dead person. I was a servant of Eros: that is what he wants to say, but does he have the effrontery? It was a god who acted through me. What vanity! Yet not a lie, not entirely. In the whole wretched business there was something generous that was doing its best to flower. If only he had known the time would be so short!
He tries again, more slowly. 'When you were small, when we were still living in Kenilworth, the people next door had a dog, a golden retriever. I don't know whether you remember.'
'Dimly.'
'It was a male. Whenever there was a bitch in the vicinity it would get excited and unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity the owners would beat it. This went on until the poor dog didn't know what to do. At the smell of a bitch it would chase around the garden with its ears flat and its tail between its legs, whining, trying to hide.'
He pauses. 'I don't see the point,' says Lucy. And indeed, what is the point?
'There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper. A dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts.'
'So males must be allowed to follow their instincts unchecked? Is that the moral?'
'No, that is not the moral. What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.'
'Or to have it fixed.'
'Perhaps. But at the deepest level I think it might have preferred being shot. It might have preferred that to the options it was offered: on the one hand, to deny its nature, on the other, to spend the rest of its days padding about the living-room, sighing and sniffing the cat and getting portly.'
'Have you always felt this way, David?'
'No, not always. Sometimes I have felt just the opposite. That desire is a burden we could well do without.'
'I must say,' says Lucy, 'that is a view I incline toward myself ' He waits for her to go on, but she does not.
'In any event,' she says, 'to return to the subject, you are safely expelled. Your colleagues can breathe easy again, while the scapegoat wanders in the wilderness.'
A statement? A question? Does she believe he is just a scapegoat?
'I don't think scapegoating is the best description,' he says cautiously. 'Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious power behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat's back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism. The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.'
He is getting carried away; he is lecturing. 'Anyway,' he concludes, 'having said farewell to the city, what do I find myself doing in the wilderness? Doctoring dogs. Playing right-hand man to a woman who specializes in sterilization and euthanasia.'
Lucy laughs. 'Bev? You think Bev is part of the repressive apparatus? Bev is in awe of you! You are a professor. She has never met an old-fashioned professor before. She is frightened of making grammar mistakes in front of you.'
Three men are coming toward them on the path, or two men and a boy. They are walking fast, with countrymen's long strides. The dog at Lucy's side slows down, bristles.
'Should we be nervous?' he murmurs.
'I don't know.'
She shortens the Dobermanns' leashes. The men are upon them. A nod, a greeting, and they have passed.
'Who are they?' he asks.
‘I've never laid eyes on them before.'
They reach the plantation boundary and turn back. The strangers are out of sight. As they near the house they hear the caged dogs in an uproar. Lucy quickens her pace. The three are there, waiting for them. The two men stand at a remove while the boy, beside the cages, hisses at the dogs and makes sudden, threatening gestures. The dogs, in a rage, bark and snap. The dog at Lucy's side tries to tug loose. Even the old bulldog bitch, whom he seems to have adopted as his own, is growling softly.
'Petrus!' calls Lucy. But there is no sign of Petrus. 'Get away from the dogs!' she shouts. 'Flambe The boy saunters off and rejoins his companions. He has a flat, expressionless face and piggish eyes; he wears a flowered shirt, baggy trousers, a little yellow sunhat. His companions are both in overalls. The taller of them is handsome, strikingly handsome, with a high forehead, sculpted cheekbones, wide, flaring nostrils.
At Lucy's approach the dogs calm down. She opens the third cage and releases the two Dobermanns into it. A brave gesture, he thinks to himself; but is it wise?
To the men she says: 'What do you want?'
The young one speaks. 'We must telephone.'
'Why must you telephone?'
'His sister' - he gestures vaguely behind him - 'is having an accident.'
'An accident?'
`Yes, very bad.'
'What kind of accident?'
‘A baby.'
'His sister is having a baby?'
'Yes.'
`Where are you from?'
'From Erasmuskraal.'
He and Lucy exchange glances. Erasmuskraal, inside the forestryconcession, is a hamlet with no electricity, no telephone. The story makes sense.
'Why didn't you phone from the forestry station?'
'Is no one there.'
'Stay out here,' Lucy murmurs to him; and then, to the boy: 'Who is it who wants to telephone?'
He indicates the tall, handsome man.
'Come in,' she says. She unlocks the back door and enters. The tall man follows. After a moment the second man pushes past him and enters the house too.
Something is wrong, he knows at once. 'Lucy, come out here!' he calls, unsure for the moment whether to follow or wait where he can keep an eye on the boy.
From the house there is silence. 'Lucy!' he calls again, and is about to go in when the door-latch clicks shut.
'Petrus!' he shouts as loudly as he can.
The boy 'turns and sprints, heading for the front door. He lets go the bulldog's leash. 'Get him!' he shouts. The dog trots heavily after the boy.
In front of the house he catches up with them. The boy has picked up a bean-stake and is using it to keep the dog at bay. 'Shu ... shu ... shu!' he pants, thrusting with the stick. Growling softly, the dog circles left and right.
Abandoning them, he rushes back to the kitchen door. The bottom leaf is not bolted: a few heavy kicks and it swings open. On all fours he creeps into the kitchen.
A blow catches him on the crown of the head. He has time to think, If I am still conscious then I am all right, before his limbs turn to water and he crumples.
He is aware of being dragged across the kitchen floor. Then he blacks out. He is lying face down on cold tiles. He tries to stand up but his legs are somehow blocked from moving. He closes his eyes again. He is in the lavatory, the lavatory of Lucy's house. Dizzily he gets to his feet. The door is locked, the key is gone. He sits down on the toilet seat and tries to recover. The house is still; the dogs are barking, but more in duty, it seems, than in frenzy.