Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee Page B

backside.’ He squats, allows the dog to smell his face, his breath. It has what he thinks of as an intelligent look, though it is probably nothing of the kind. ‘Are they all going to die?’
    â€˜Those that no one wants. We’ll put them down.’
    â€˜And you are the one who does the job.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You don’t mind?’
    â€˜I do mind. I mind deeply. I wouldn’t want someone doing it for me who didn’t mind. Would you?’
    He is silent. Then: ‘Do you know why my daughter sent me to you?’
    â€˜She told me you were in trouble.’
    â€˜Not just in trouble. In what I suppose one would call disgrace.’
    He watches her closely. She seems uncomfortable; but perhaps he is imagining it.
    â€˜Knowing that, do you still have a use for me?’ he says.
    â€˜If you are prepared . . .’ She opens her hands, presses them together, opens them again. She does not know what to say, and he does not help her.
    He has stayed with his daughter only for brief periods before. Now he is sharing her house, her life. He has to be careful not to allow old habits to creep back, the habits of a parent: putting the toilet roll on the spool, switching off lights, chasing the cat off the sofa. Practise for old age, he admonishes himself. Practise fitting in. Practise for the old folks’ home.
    He pretends he is tired and, after supper, withdraws to his room, where faintly the sounds come to him of Lucy leading her own life: drawers opening and shutting, the radio, the murmur of a telephone conversation. Is she calling Johannesburg, speaking to Helen? Is his presence here keeping the two of them apart? Would they dare to share a bed while he was in the house? If the bed creaked in the night, would they be embarrassed? Embarrassed enough to stop? But what does he know about what women do together? Maybe women do not need to make beds creak. And what does he know about these two in particular, Lucy and Helen? Perhaps they sleep together merely as children do, cuddling, touching, giggling, reliving girlhood – sisters more than lovers. Sharing a bed, sharing a bathtub, baking gingerbread cookies, trying on each other’s clothes. Sapphic love: an excuse for putting on weight.
    The truth is, he does not like to think of his daughter in the throes of passion with another woman, and a plain one at that. Yet would he be any happier if the lover were a man? What does he really want for Lucy? Not that she should be forever a child, forever innocent, forever his – certainly not that. But he is a father, that is his fate, and as a father grows older he turns more and more – it cannot be helped – toward his daughter. She becomes his second salvation, the bride of his youth reborn. No wonder, in fairy-stories, queens try to hound their daughters to their death!
    He sighs. Poor Lucy! Poor daughters! What a destiny, what a burden to bear! And sons: they too must have their tribulations, though he knows less about that.
    He wishes he could sleep. But he is cold, and not sleepy at all.
    He gets up, drapes a jacket over his shoulders, returns to bed. He is reading Byron’s letters of 1820. Fat, middle-aged at thirty-two, Byron is living with the Guicciolis in Ravenna: with Teresa, his complacent, short-legged mistress, and her suave, malevolent husband. Summer heat, late-afternoon tea, provincial gossip, yawns barely hidden. ‘The women sit in a circle and the men play dreary Faro,’ writes Byron. In adultery, all the tedium of marriage rediscovered. ‘I have always looked to thirty as the barrier to any real or fierce delight in the passions.’
    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
    I T IS W EDNESDAY . He gets up early, but Lucy is up before him. He finds her watching the wild geese on the dam.
    â€˜Aren’t they