Ah, Adelaide. Beautiful Adelaide.
It takes forty-eight hours of travel, but I get there at last. The cheapest flight went via Dubai and Singapore, with six-hour layovers in each airport. Then I had to catch a flight from Sydney to Adelaide, but the next one left only in the morning. So it is fully three days since I stood in Prof. September’s office, but already Adelaide is no longer just a concept to me.
It’s real and I’m here.
It is charming—every bit as beautiful as Cape Town, but without the shacks and litter. It is also on the sea, with a river bisecting the city like a mighty penis. Built on a grid, it shows all the fruits of careful urban planning that Cape Town lacks. There are parks and squares and boulevards, with ample parkland on all sides. Everything that makes a city comfortable to live in is right here.
And what a centre of culture it is, with arts festivals running for most of the year, and a foodie Mecca stretching all the way from the Riverbank Footbridge to North Terrace, taking in Currie and Hindley streets.
How beguiling. How white.
If indigenous Australians ever lived here, there are precious few of them left—just a few restaurant owners boasting a traditional Kaurna menu.
Is this why John Coetzee likes it so much? The well-planned order of it all? The taming of the Australian bush into parks and plazas? The corralling of the few remaining Kaurna people into a restaurant district? The mild whiteness of the faces on the streets?
He is on record as saying that there is no room for whites in Africa. Has he found room for himself here, in this place where the violent dispossession of the native population does not throb like a wound in his face every day? Has he found his lebensraum?
I have discovered where he lives. He has taken an apartment on the river on a five-year lease. He is not planning to return to his home in the Bo-Kaap, it seems. I asked at a coffee shop, where the staff confirmed that he was a regular. They were proud to have the Man Booker Prize-winning author patronising their establishment.
His apartment block is only two storeys high. Buildings aren’t very tall in Adelaide. There is no doorman, but rather an intercom system with buzzers on the street side. I wait until a resident arrives with a key. Then I catch the door before it closes behind him and let myself in. The lift belongs to another era. It has a heavy wooden door that smells strongly of furniture polish. I have to brace my feet and lean backwards with all my strength to open it. The buttons protrude from the panel like chunky throat lozenges. I press the one marked 2 and the lift jerks into life. It jerks again when it reaches the second floor. The automatic door slides away and I shove hard against the wooden door to open it.
John Coetzee lives in flat 203. His name is on the cubbyhole in the lobby. It is empty, so he must have collected his post recently. I knock on the door, and he answers almost immediately. I can tell from the flare of surprise in his eyes that he recognises me. He rallies quickly and launches into a charade of not knowing who I am.
“Can I help you, young lady?”
Deliberate provocation. A few years ago, some of the women junior lecturers and graduate students raised a special item at a staff meeting asking that male staff members refrain from addressing them as “my dear” and “young lady” and so forth. The motion was carried, but Coetzee made a point of letting everyone know how risible he found it.
I don’t rise to the bait. Instead I introduce myself, and ask if I may come in. He stands aside to allow me in. He offers me tea, and I accept.
While he is in the kitchen, I take the opportunity to look around. The furniture is new but utilitarian. There are William Kentridge prints on the wall. No plants. No scatter cushions. Pale round stains on the coffee table bear witness to the lack of coasters in his life. The room is dusty and smells faintly of ageing academic. It is a very particular smell—of shoes kicked off at night and feet left to air on the ottoman, of an infrequently washed body and sweat that has become deeply imbedded in the armpits of old shirts, of urine that has splashed onto the bathroom floor and not been wiped up, of flecks from ready meals that have sizzled and splattered in the microwave, turning diamond-hard over time.
The house in the Bo-Kaap had been lovingly tended by Maria, who also worked as an outsourced cleaner in the English Department. When students and workers protested against the outsourcing of labour at the university, John Coetzee ignored the controversy until it went away. People said he didn’t even know Maria’s surname, but that may have been a malicious rumour.
I bet he misses her quiet, efficient presence now.
I try to marshal my thoughts. This is it. This is the moment I’ve been dreaming of since I first read his book. This is my chance to state my case. I mustn’t blow it.
When we each have a mug of tea in our hands, he sits down and inclines his head politely to show he is ready to listen.
“You must see how flawed it is to liken the restoration of black power in South Africa to a group of black men gang-raping a white woman,” I begin. “At the best of times, rape analogies should be used with circumspection, if at all. If any people could justly be described as the rapists of South African history, it is the white colonists.”
“You are assuming that the net effect of colonialism was bad for Africa. I would question your premise. History is still being made. It is too early to assess the overall impact of colonialism yet.”
“I don’t believe you would find many theorists from any disciplines who would agree with you.”
“You’d be surprised. You see, we’re allowed to talk about things like that here. It is so freeing, you can’t imagine. Things that I would be lynched for saying in South Africa are calmly and openly discussed here in Australia. Like whether colonialism was good for Africa, and had the effect of drawing it into the global economy to the benefit of all its citizens.”
“I think you’ll find that the end of colonialism was good for Africa, and that the improvement in people’s lives is a function of the postcolonial era.”
“Where would Africa be if Europeans had never colonised it?”
I have to restrain myself from retorting. I have no idea whether he believes this white supremacist dogma or whether he is just spouting it to wind me up. It doesn’t matter. I have to say what I want to say while I have the opportunity.
“Do you know what is just as flawed as casting black men as rapists? It is your decision to make Lucy accept the justice of her rape. She refuses to point a finger at her rapists because she chooses to take the sins of colonialism upon her own body, to accept her punishment as just. She welcomes the baby she is carrying as a messianic figure that will overcome the darkness of South Africa’s past.”
Coetzee smirks. “I know. It’s what critics have particularly praised about my book.”
“Have you ever heard of intersectionality, Professor?”
“Another buzzword? Just what we need.”
“It’s an acknowledgement that the struggles of all oppressed people are linked and that one cannot be free without all being free. It is recognising that different people face different challenges based on their race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and so forth. The privileged white feminist who argues with her husband about whose turn it is to load the dishwasher does not face the same challenges as the black lesbian living in a rural village in the Transkei.”
“I fail to see what that has to do with my book.”
“You can’t declare the country free and ready to move on from apartheid on the back of a woman who has been raped. Your analogy itself is oppressive. Can you see that?”
He thinks about this, staring into the mug of murky rooibos he has made for himself. I wonder where he got it from. Do the delis of Adelaide boast boxes of rooibos teabags? Did he bring a supply from South Africa with him? What will he do when it runs out?
“I see what you mean,” he says. “Women have been the victims of violence long enough. It is deeply misogynistic to use the rape of a woman as an analogy for the just and necessary punishment white people have to endure to atone for their sins. I see where I went wrong.”
Is he pulling my leg? Making fun of my earnestness?
There are tears in his eyes as he contemplates the injustice he has done to all South Africans with his book. He blinks, and a tear runs down the seams of his lined face.
“I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
Now I am crying too. He lurches to his feet and I am almost blinded by tears as I stand up. I fling myself into his arms and he strokes my hair, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” For the first time since the rape, I feel at peace.
* * *
I don’t have the money for a ticket to Adelaide. I can barely afford an Uber into the City Bowl. I am now so agoraphobic, I am about as likely to fly to Australia as I am to fly to the moon.
When you have an intense and vivid interaction with someone in your head, it is hard to believe that person remains untouched by it—that they can be unaware of the ferocity with which they have occupied your thoughts. Part of me believes that Coetzee knows I have been thinking about him.
I have settled back into my home after the expedition to visit Essie September. The air has subsided around me and the walls have ceased to vibrate. My feet sink into the thin carpets and the armchair sighs as it shifts to make way for my body. I don’t want to leave it ever again. For a while I won’t have to, because I have enough to sustain life. Powdered milk. Loaves of sliced bread in the freezer. A family-sized tub of margarine—it looks a little orange but still tastes okay. Tins of tuna. Tins of peaches. Water that comes out of the taps. I won’t die.
(Sometimes I wonder if my house smells, the way I imagine John Coetzee’s apartment in Adelaide to smell. I wouldn’t notice it if it did. I sit in here day after day with the windows closed. My nose is too accustomed to this house to say whether it smells or not.)
(Sometimes I wonder if I smell. I try to shower most days, but sometimes I forget.)
I peck at my keyboard by day, whittling away at the little editing tasks that cover the bills. Just.
By night, I “listen to my stories on the wireless,” just like my grandmother used to. I have let my Netflix subscription lapse because television is too vivid and absorbing these days. If I watch it, I don’t sleep at night, consumed by anxiety for the characters and the cliff-hanger endings that beset them.
Reading is also off-limits. It stimulates my imagination. The literacy advocates are not wrong about that. And just now, my imagination needs quieting, not stimulating.
The radio is soothing. The presenters have learned to speak in soporific tones. I have found a channel that broadcasts The Archers.
I am sitting in my armchair one evening listening to the shipping forecast when there is a pounding on the front door. My heart tries to escape through my throat. Then it settles down to a pounding every bit as aggressive as the one on my door.
If I sit very quietly, the person will go away. The curtains are shut. No one can peek in and see me sitting in my chair with a crocheted blanket on my lap and the radio next to me.
“Dammit, Lucy. Open up! I know you’re in there.”
It’s Moira. I feel besieged. She knows I want to be left in peace. Why must she persecute me like this?
The pounding continues.
BANG BANG BANG
“I can keep this up all night, bitch.”
BANG BANG BANG
With a trembling sigh, I unwind the blanket from my legs and stand up.
“What do you want?” I open the door a crack and peer at her with one eye.
She shoves the door open, sending me stumbling backwards. “A drink. I want a drink.”
“I don’t have a drink. Not the kind you mean. There’s water in the tap. Help yourself.”
I got rid of all the alcohol in the house for the same reason I got rid of all the pills—even aspirin. I don’t keep sharp knives either. I worry about the thoughts that strike in the wee hours of the morning. (As a child I used to think they were called that because that was when I got up to go for a wee.) No, strike is too strong a word. They creep up like mice. Nihilistic thoughts about how nice it would be to make the pain stop for good. But I have nothing handy, and it seems like too much trouble to go out and buy something, and so I do nothing.
Moira pulls a bottle of Famous Grouse from her bag. “I came prepared.”
I sit and pull the blanket back over my knees. “I don’t want any whisky.”
“Pooh, it stinks in here. Sardines and old farts. You should crack a window once in a while.”
“It’s tuna. And it doesn’t worry me, so why should I bother?”
“Because it isn’t healthy. I swear flies are starting to settle on you. You have moss growing on your leeward side. If you fiddle with your hair any more, it will fall out.”
“What are you doing here, Moira?”
“I came to talk about sex. As in, when last did you have any?”
“Sex? Not that long ago, actually. It must be nearly two years now.”
“That recently?” She walks into the kitchen and starts opening cupboard doors. Looking for glasses, probably. I make no effort to point her in the right direction. “Who was the lucky man?”
“There were six of them actually. All men. All lucky. They broke into my father’s farmhouse. You can read all about it in the Booker Prize-winning novel by John Coetzee.”
Moira flinches. “I’m not talking about the rape, Lucy. That wasn’t sex, it was assault.”
“That’s funny, because it looked a lot like sex.”
“Rape is a violent act, not a sexual one. I’m sure your therapist has said the same thing.”
“She has. Repeatedly.”
“You used to say it yourself, remember?”
“I did. But then I got raped, and realised rape and sex are the same thing. The only difference between them turns on that tiny, subjective question of consent. The absence of consent doesn’t turn an otherwise sexual act into a non-sexual one. It’s not alchemy.”
Moira utters a crow of triumph as she finds glasses hidden behind stacked tins of peaches.Well, not glasses so much as plastic tumblers. Glasses can be smashed, and the resultant shards can be used to pierce skin. I switched to plastic crockery and glassware more than a year ago.
She pours whisky into two of the tumblers and brings one to me. “Here. This will put hair on your chest.”
“That should repel any would-be rapists.” A strange noise rumbles in my chest and breaks out of my mouth. A kind of belch. It sounds like amusement.
“There you go. Even the prospect of alcohol has cheered you up.”
“I haven’t had a drink in more than a year. It wasn’t thought to be wise.”
Moira tips a small measure of the amber fluid down her throat and smiles. “Wise shmise.”
I lift the tumbler and feel the familiar heft of having a drink in my hand. I twirl it in my fingers to watch the light strike the whisky and catch fire. I hold it to my nose and inhale. The fumes make me recoil. I try again, more carefully this time. Petrol. Iodine. Plastic. For a moment, I wish I had a proper glass to drink this out of. I could ask Moira to go and fetch one for me from her house. She would probably do it. But now that the whisky is in my hand, I want to drink it. I don’t want to wait.
I take a small sip. Too small. It evaporates on my tongue before I can swallow it. I take a bigger one that burns a fiery trail down my gullet, causing long shudders to wrack my body.
“You really are a lightweight, aren’t you?” says Moira, watching this performance. “I didn’t believe you when you said you hadn’t had a drink in a year, but now I do.”
I take another sip and my insides turn to gold. Lovely, lovely molten gold that warms my fingertips and heats my belly. Suddenly the blanket on my lap seems oppressive, so I toss it aside and pull my legs up to sit cross-legged on the chair.
“We need to get you back on the horse.”
I try to make sense of this. “What horse?”
“The sex horse.”
“There’s a sex horse? Why did no one tell me?” I laugh again, and this time it sounds more natural and less like a long-suppressed eructation.
“The sex horse says you haven’t had a ride in a very long time.”
“The sex horse is right.”
“Don’t you ever get horny, Lucy?”
I drain my glass as I ponder this conundrum. Then I hold it out to Moira and she refills it from the bottle. Do I? I wonder. Do I ever get horny?
Yes, I conclude. I do. I dream about sex sometimes, and I wake up with my vagina contracting hard in orgasm. I dream about the rape, but in my dream, there is no pain. Just the feeling of being roughly penetrated, of my breasts being handled, of a hard, male pelvis pushing and pushing against my clitoris until I come. Sometimes one of the other men nudges his cock into my mouth while I’m being fucked, and I suck on it. Sometimes I’m not asleep and dreaming, but awake and fantasising. I masturbate to my own rape.
I haven’t told anyone about this, not even L. Bascombe, my therapist. Not even when the urge to mess with her head is at its strongest.
I take another sip of whisky. Okay, a gulp. It no longer burns going down. My throat is numb, but my head is buzzing with the sound of angry insects.
“Lucy?”
“Sorry. I answered you in my mind, but not with my mouth.”
“Well, could you repeat it with your mouth, please? I didn’t quite get it the first time.”
“Yes, I get horny. I think about sex all the time. I miss it.” I think about being raped and I masturbate until I come.
“You what?”
The sharpness in her tone makes me look up. I realise I have said those words out loud.
“Dude, are you serious?”
“I’m a corrupt person. I’m evil. I deserved what happened to me.”
“Wait.” She fumbles with her phone. “I’m asking Google about this.”
There’s a solemn silence while she punches questions into Google, and I drink my whisky. The insects in my head are getting louder, and my eyelids feel heavy. I rest the back of my head against the armchair and slide into an uneasy doze. I jerk awake when the tumbler bumps against my leg.
Moira is still frowning at her phone.
“There’s nothing there, is there?” I say. “I’m a freak. I knew it.”
“You’re not a freak. And there is some stuff here. Admittedly, a lot of it is porn. Turns out that when you type, ‘I fantasise about my own rape’ into Google you mostly get porn.”
“Oh, joy.”
“But wait. There’s also a blog by a woman who was raped who says she used to fantasise about it for a couple of years afterwards. And there’s an abstract in Psychology Today about a case study of a woman who eroticised her own rape in imaginative fantasy. It’s behind a paywall. And there are quite a few articles about women who have reported experiencing orgasm during rape.”
I seize at this straw. “That’s worse, isn’t it? At least I didn’t actually come while I was being raped. I just fantasise about it after the fact.”
“That’s fallacious thinking, Lucy. There is no better or worse in this case. There are just individuals and their different responses to trauma. I don’t know why you feel such a need to position yourself in competition with other rape survivors.”
“Victims.”
“Survivors is the word I choose when I’m the one who is speaking. When you are the one speaking, you’re free to use the word ‘victims.’”
There is a distinct snap to her tone, so I pour us more whisky. This girl needs to calm down.
“Getting back to sex . . .”
“Yes, getting back to sex. The fact that you’re fantasising at all tells me you’re ready to get back in the saddle.”
“Of the sex horse.”
“Precisely. You need to sign up to Cinder.”
“How do you know I don’t already have an account?”
“Do you?”
“No. But that’s not the point. I could’ve had one. You assumed I didn’t.”
“Jesus, Lucy. Stop being fucking irritating. The first thing we’re going to put on your profile is that you’re mute. That way you won’t be tempted to talk your partners to death. You can just have sex with them. Look at me!”
I glance up to find her taking multiple pictures of my face with her phone.
“Hey, wait. Let me just . . .”
“Put your hand down.”
“But my hair! I’m not wearing makeup.”
“Doesn’t matter. These are good. Look.”
She hands me her phone, and I flip through the dozen or so images she has taken. Surprisingly, they are not bad at all. The tight bun I’ve taken to wearing every day has come loose. Strands of hair have fallen around my face, framing it in a fuzzy halo. The whisky has brightened my eyes and added a flush to my cheeks and lips. I don’t look like the pale, pinched creature I see in the mirror every morning. The shapeless sweater I’m wearing has slipped down to reveal one shoulder. The glass of whisky I’m holding appears in some of the shots, tilted at a rakish angle.
I don’t look like Lucy the Rape Victim. I look louche and fuckable.
“I look hot,” I say in wonder.
“You do. Very Cinder-y. You’re going to get a lot of swipe-rights. We could probably get someone over here this evening.”
I am just drunk enough not to be completely horrified by this thought.
“What should I put on your profile?”
I wave my tumbler in the air. “Oh, you know. The usual crap. Likes long walks on the beach. Snuggling in front of log fires. Open-minded.”
“That’s code for being into anal.”
“Really? Okay, make it broad-minded, then.”
“That means you swing both ways.”
“All right, nothing about my mind. Walks on the beach. Open fires. Sipping red wine. Theatre and opera.”
“You sound like you’re about forty-five years old.”
“Fine. You write it then.”
Moira smiles as though this is what she’s wanted all along. I tell her to let me look at it before she posts anything, and pour myself more whisky.
Has this rape made me sexually disabled? I won’t say I haven’t considered that possibility. I’ve read enough blogs to know that most victims struggle to be comfortable in sexual situations. It takes years for some to get over their fear and anxiety. Some never do. It takes a special kind of partner to have the patience to negotiate the minefield that is sex with a rape victim. One step forward. Two steps back. I know what to expect. How even if you think you’re fine, you’re over it, your body will betray you with some physical manifestation of PTSD.
It all sounds too tedious for words. I want to skip ahead to the part where I’m okay again.
“Looking for adventurous man to break dry spell with,” Moira reads. “City Bowl area. Must be single and under forty. Cultural background not important.”
“Well, that’s nothing if not frank. Woman seeks man for sex. Any man.”
“Shall I post it?”
I try to give this the consideration it deserves. My mind feels like a radio that can’t tune in to any station. It’s all just loud static and occasional flickers of coherence. I feel entirely detached from the consequences of this decision. Nothing can affect me. I’m safe in my bubble of static.
“No.”
That’s odd. I meant to say yes.
“No? Really?” Moira sags.
“Write it again. Properly this time.”
“You write it. I’m going to get us some chips.”
She shoves the phone into my hand and heads for the front door, staggering slightly. I hope she isn’t planning to drive. My mouth wants to warn her, but my brain isn’t working properly. It’ll be fine. There’s a twenty-four-hour garage shop one block away.
I stare at the phone in my hand, willing it to come into focus. How would I present myself on a dating site? What aspects of myself would I choose to highlight in order to attract a potential mate?
John Coetzee’s Lucy doesn’t have this problem. When we leave her, she is happily pregnant, expecting the Messiah child that will be unburdened by the original sin of South Africa’s grotesque past. She is farming the land with quiet, sturdy competence, working side by side with the men who raped her to create a better future for our country.
Her future as a sexual being isn’t even hinted at. All we can assume is that, like everything else in her life, sex will be wholesome. Her father looks on with uncomprehending awe, aware that he is nowhere near as evolved as she is.
Fiction-Lucy would never sign up to Cinder. If sex were to appear in her life, she would probably develop an ongoing sexual relationship with one of her rapists or their associates. The sympathetic Petrus, perhaps. Apparently, they understand each other. In the absence of any other male protection in her life, Petrus is all she has. The possibility of her moving on without a male presence is not even considered.
This book, I remind myself, won the Booker Prize. An entire panel of men and women read it and agreed that it was the best work of fiction published in English that year. The sky didn’t fall. Twitter didn’t explode in outrage. South Africa merely glowed with pride at another local-boy-makes-good story.
I wince as the front door opens and Moira comes back in. The whisky has relaxed me, but not enough to prevent me from reacting when someone walks into my house.
“Chips,” she says, dropping an armful of packets on the table. “Popcorn, peanuts, trail-mix. Let’s soak up some of that whisky.”
She opens one of the bags and waves it at me. Vinegar-scented oil rushes at me, prickling my nose and prodding my stomach into life. After weeks of tuna and tinned peaches, I suddenly feel hungry. I reach into the bag and start mashing handfuls of chips into my mouth.
I try to hand the bag back to Moira, but she waves it away. “No need. I have my own.”
The steady consumption of hydrogenated oil and carbohydrates sobers us both up. The salt makes us thirsty, so we drink water and that sobers us still more.
“So . . . Cinder.” Moira opens the app on my phone and frowns in concentration. She taps at the keyboard, pausing occasionally to think. Once, she picks up her tumbler and almost takes a sip, but then puts it down again. No further alcohol will be consumed until a suitable profile has been set up for me.
“What do you think of this?”
I look at what she has written.
Still healing and processing after a bad experience, but ready to meet new people. Looking for Mr. Cute and Sensitive.
“That’s better.”
“Right? I have a good feeling about this. Should I post it?”
“It’s too much information. I’ll get no swipe-rights with that bit about the bad experience. No one wants to deal with that kind of baggage.”
“Let’s just post it and see. If you get no interest, we can always delete it and start over.”
“Fine. Do it.”
And she does, which means we can start drinking again.
Getting drunk all over again when you are already halfway sober is a very different experience to getting drunk from scratch. I’d forgotten that. It is a slow, golden build-up, like your second orgasm of the day. The first one might have been fast and urgent—nought to a hundred in ten seconds—but the second is more intense. The first is upon you so quickly, you’re almost numb from the sensations slamming into you. The second is more satisfying.
I share this insight with Moira, and she tells me I really need to get laid.
At that exact moment, my phone starts buzzing with replies. This strikes me as so apt as to be heaven-sent. I repeat “heaven-sent” to myself and guffaw.
These are the messages I get from men in response to my Cinder profile.
You look like a bad bitch. How much cock can you take? If you can take it, I can give it to you.
Aww . . . uv had a bad experince? Stop whining or I’ll shut your rmouth with my dik
Do you like to take it in the ass? In ur profile pic you look like some1 is giving it to you in the ass. Wish it was me.
u whining cunts are all the same. Whine whine whine. Shut the fuck up bitch.
Do you know what will help you get over your bad experience? Riding my dick.
Did some man dump yo ugly ass? I don’t blame him cos u ugly as fuck.
You need to be raped bitch. But noone wud rape you becos you so ugly.
Shut up, bitch. Noone wants to listen to your whining.
You’re just a dumb bitch who deserved a bad experience.
Moira starts reading the replies out loud, but stops after a few words.
“Never mind. You don’t want to hear this. I’ll delete them.”
“No, give it here. I want to know what they say.”
“No.” She lifts the phone above her head and pulls away from me.
I watch her for a moment, measuring the distance between us. I am drunker than she is, but I have the element of surprise on my side.
Lulled by my passivity, she lowers the phone.
I pounce.
“Jesus! Get off me.”
I have the phone in my hand. I run into the bathroom and lock myself in, so I can read in peace.