Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

belt around its body and she buckles it. ‘So,’ says Bev Shaw. ‘Think comforting thoughts, think strong thoughts. They can smell what you are thinking.’
    He leans his full weight on the dog. Gingerly, one hand wrapped in an old rag, the child prises open the jaws again. The dog’s eyes roll in terror. They can smell what you are thinking: what nonsense! ‘There, there!’ he murmurs. Bev Shaw probes again with the lancet. The dog gags, goes rigid, then relaxes.
    â€˜So,’ she says, ‘now we must let nature take her course.’ She unbuckles the belt, speaks to the child in what sounds like very halting Xhosa. The dog, on its feet, cowers under the table. There is a spattering of blood and saliva on the surface; Bev wipes it off. The child coaxes the dog out.
    â€˜Thank you, Mr Lurie. You have a good presence. I sense that you like animals.’
    â€˜Do I like animals? I eat them, so I suppose I must like them, some parts of them.’
    Her hair is a mass of little curls. Does she make the curls herself, with tongs? Unlikely: it would take hours every day. They must grow that way. He has never seen such a tessitura from close by. The veins on her ears are visible as a filigree of red and purple. The veins of her nose too. And then a chin that comes straight out of her chest, like a pouter pigeon’s. As an ensemble, remarkably unattractive.
    She is pondering his words, whose tone she appears to have missed.
    â€˜Yes, we eat up a 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