Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee Page B

lot of animals in this country,' she says. 'It doesn't seem to do us much good. I'm not sure how we will justify it to them.' Then: 'Shall we start on the next one?'
              Justify it? When? At the Great Reckoning? He would be curious to hear more, but this is not the time.
              The goat, a fullgrown buck, can barely walk. One half of his scrotum, yellow and purple, is swollen like a balloon; the other half is a mass of caked blood and dirt. He has been savaged by dogs, the old woman says. But he seems bright enough, cheery, combative. While Bev Shaw is examining him, he passes a short burst of pellets on to the floor. Standing at his head, gripping his horns, the woman pretends to reprove him.
              Bev Shaw touches the scrotum with a swab. The goat kicks. 'Can you fasten his legs?' she asks, and indicates how. He straps the right hind leg to the right foreleg. The goat tries to kick again, teeters. She swabs the wound gently. The goat trembles, gives a bleat: an ugly sound, low and hoarse.
              As the dirt comes away, he sees that the wound is alive with white grubs waving their blind heads in the air. He shudders. 'Blowfly,' says Bev Shaw. 'At least a week old.' She purses her lips. 'You should have brought him in long ago,' she says to the woman.
              'Yes,' says the woman. 'Every night the dogs come. It is too, too bad. Five hundred rand you pay for a man like him.'
              Bev Shaw straightens up. 'I don't know what we can do. I don't have the experience to try a removal. She can wait for Dr Oosthuizen on Thursday, but the old fellow will come out sterile anyway, and does she want that? And then there is the question of antibiotics. Is she prepared to spend money on antibiotics?'
              She kneels down again beside the goat, nuzzles his throat, stroking the throat upward with her own hair. The goat trembles but is still. She motions to the woman to let go of the horns. The woman obeys. The goat does not stir.
              She is whispering. 'What do you say, my friend?' he hears her say. 'What do you say? Is it enough?'
              The goat stands stock still as if hypnotized. Bev Shaw continues to stroke him with her head. She seems to have lapsed into a trance of her own.
              She collects herself and gets to her feet. 'I'm afraid it's too late,' she says to the woman. 'I can't make him better. You can wait for the doctor on Thursday, or you can leave him with me. I can give him a quiet end. He will let me do that for him. Shall I? Shall I keep him here?'
              The woman wavers, then shakes her head. She begins to tug the goat toward the door.
              'You can have him back afterwards,' says Bev Shaw. 'I will help him through, that's all.' Though she tries to control her voice, he can hear the accents of defeat. The goat hears them too: he kicks against the strap, bucking and plunging, the obscene bulge quivering behind him. The woman drags the strap loose, casts it aside. Then they are gone.
              'What was that all about?' he asks.
              Bev Shaw hides her face, blows her nose. 'It's nothing. I keep enough lethal for bad cases, but we can't force the owners. It's their animal, they like to slaughter in their own way. What a pity! Such a good old fellow, so brave and straight and confident!'
              Lethal: the name of a drug? He would not put it beyond the drug companies. Sudden darkness, from the waters of Lethe. 'Perhaps he understands more than you guess,' he says. To his own surprise, he is trying to comfort her. 'Perhaps he has already been through it. Born with foreknowledge, so to speak. This is Africa, after all. There have been goats here since the beginning of time. They don't have to be told what steel is for, and fire. They know how death comes to a goat. They are born prepared.'
              'Do you think