There is no time for reflection. If I had the leisure, I would mull over every nuance of our date and online conversations. Not because I am a woman, but because I don’t have enough to occupy myself. My mind runs along well-worn grooves. There is nothing to tempt it to jump the tracks and try something else. I don’t have enough to think about.
Until today. Today I have plenty to think about. Too much, in fact, and none of it good. My father phoned last night while I was eating. He told me the insurance company was being difficult. This is a refrain I am accustomed to hearing, so I didn’t give it my full attention. It seemed that it was the value of the furniture that was in dispute, so I made appropriate noises.
Only when he said, “So you’ll go then? This weekend would be best,” did I drag my mind out of the quicksand of introspection and pay attention.
“This weekend?” I asked.
“Yes. That would be best. The house is by no means gutted, you know. Well, I suppose you don’t, because you’ve never shown an interest in it. The fire department got there quickly and saved a lot. The furniture came off worst. All that old wood and French polish. It must have gone up like a Roman candle. But the bones are there. The bones are definitely there.”
“You said something about an inventory?” My mind rewound our conversation and dredged up keywords.
“That’s right. I’d go myself, but the Masters golf tournament at the club is this weekend. I can’t get away, and the insurance company isn’t prepared to wait. It has to be now. They need a full inventory of the furniture that was in the house, as well as the appliances and electronics.When you see what’s there, it will jog your memory.”
Histrionics have never been encouraged in my family. You didn’t make a show of yourself. Arguments were conducted in private and in a furious undertone. Emotions were never a reason for shirking your duty.
“You want me to go to the farmhouse and draw up an inventory of the contents?”
He sighed. “Yes. Haven’t you been listening?”
“I have never gone back. Not in two years.”
“I know. That’s what I’m saying. You never ask about the house. You show no interest in its condition. It’s time you made yourself useful, and it will be good for you to start driving again. This will benefit you too in the end—a good payout from the insurance company.”
There was a pause while we listened to each other breathing. The air rushed into his lungs as he realised his mistake.
“When I’m dead, I mean. Obviously. When I’m dead and gone. It will all come to you in the end.”
Daddy don’t make me. I’m scared. Don’t make me go back there. I haven’t driven a car in weeks.
“Where are the keys? The house is locked, I assume?”
“The insurance company put up a temporary fence around the place. One of those unscalable security fences. I’ll drop the keys off in your post box. You had better take a can of Q20 with you. The lock will be stiff.”
If the English Department at the University of Constantia is a site of secondary trauma, what does that make the farmhouse where the attack occurred? Ground Zero? Omaha Beach?
L. Bascombe would want to hear about this. She would counsel caution. It is quite possible that she would urge me not to go. Or at least not to go alone. But I don’t plan to ask her advice. Some things are too big, too weighty, to discuss with one’s therapist.
I treasured up all these things and pondered them in my heart.
I am still pondering on Saturday morning as I drive out to Worcester. One hour and twenty-eight minutes of pondering time, the GPS promised me. That’s just to get into the town of Worcester. The additional eight kilometres of travelling east on a gravel road wasn’t factored in.
It dawns on me that my father had a formidable commute when he worked at the university. No wonder he chose to stay over with friends several nights of the week. I watched the distance between him and my mother grow during those years. Then there was the misunderstanding that led to his sacking. It makes more sense now from my adult perspective.
Worcester is beautiful in the way that a place once familiar and now strange can be. I never noticed its beauty before. It was just “town.”
“I’m going into town. Do you need anything?” my father would say. And my mother would hand him a list. “Town” was a source of occasional treats like ice cream, and occasional woe, like trips to the dentist. It was never a place I drove through with my head swivelling from side to side, admiring the views.
I am struck by the width of the streets and the air of prosperity. I admire the steeples of the churches. To the north are the Hex River Mountains, and to the west (hulking, purple) the Du Toitskloof mountains through which I have travelled. This is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I never realised.
I reduce my speed as I turn onto the gravel road that leads to my father’s farm. I remember feeling as though all the teeth in my head would rattle loose when he took this road too fast. Today it is eerily smooth. I pull over and open my door to look at the road. It has been resurfaced. The craterous potholes and bone-shaking runnels of my youth are gone. Everything has been smoothed over. Flaws have been erased.
Is it possible to choose not to be traumatised?
Today, it will be possible. I have a job to do and I will do it. I will not let my father down. I saw disappointment in his face once. I don’t want to see it again.
When the road rises, and I spot the farmhouse in the distance, my breath does not clog. My chest does not heave. No racing heart. No crushing weight. I have chosen zero trauma. Perhaps I am growing closer to fiction-Lucy after all.
Fiction-Lucy never leaves the farm. She takes it over and makes it her own. She forms a partnership with the men who raped her. They work the farm together. It is no longer solely hers. And this—Coetzee suggests—is how it should be. A black man and a white woman work side-by-side to farm the land together. The rape of fiction-Lucy is a metaphor for the necessary phase of violent overthrow that has to be got through before a true post-apartheid era can begin.
South Africa never had a violent revolution. It had a negotiated settlement. The old regime grudgingly handed power over only once certain guarantees were in place. Those guarantees—“sunset clauses”—were not agreed upon in anything approaching a democratic fashion.
Coetzee’s book has been praised as “unflinching,” as holding a mirror up to the post-apartheid lie. But I refuse to accept it. I refuse to accept that my rape is the best metaphor for the overthrow of the old order.
As I pull up in front of the farmhouse, I can see her—Fiction-Lucy. She is coming in from the fields, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with her rapist. Her child is strapped to her back with two blankets tied at the corners. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. It is not an option for her to hand her child to a babysitter. She and the women who work here take it in turns to watch each other’s children. She has no special status. She is not the madam. Her privilege has been stripped away, leaving behind a woman like any other—one who must work for her place in the world while raising her child.
A boy. It’s a boy. I can see that now. He is the promised child born into modest circumstances, destined to lead his people to freedom. Perhaps he will become a carpenter.
Lucy and Petrus parent the child together. It is not important whether Petrus, who was not one of the rapists, is literally the father of the boy. It is not necessary for him to share DNA with the child to be its father. The boy is the child of everyone who participated in the rape, and their associates, and as such, he belongs to all of them.
He is the embodiment of the saying that it takes a village to raise a child.
Beyond the farmhouse, the fields are thriving. Wheat and barley nod in the wind, a rippling sea of green and brown. All is well with this new-new South Africa. It is a much better place than the old-new South Africa.
I smile as the palimpsest fades and the underlay reveals itself. I lift my fingers to my mouth and pinch the smile away until it is properly gone. Then I park outside the fence because the security gate is too narrow to admit a car. The lock resists the promptings of my key. There are scabs of rust on the metal, as always in this climate. I shake the can of oil my father reminded me to bring, and spray it directly into the opening. I am rewarded with rust-stained moisture oozing back out. The hole has been adequately lubricated. It is ready to receive the shaft of my key. I snigger at the trend of my thoughts.
The smell hits me as I step into the house. Ash. Damp wood.
Mildew. Cinders. They say it took a year for the smell of burning to clear from New York City after 9/11. This has been two years, but the house has been closed up. It has turned into a tomb for odours.
If the air smells like a funeral pyre, the house looks like one too. It is unrecognisable as the site of my attack, and therefore triggers no memories. This is a Salvador Dali painting of twisted, melting images and their mirrored shadows. I have to look long and hard to recognise the coffee table I grew up with. It is a Hieronymus Bosch parody of itself. Its legs are turned in on themselves and its top is a roller coaster.
The walls are blackened, and the artwork scorched or incinerated. The ceiling sags in a manner that makes me fear for my safety. I remind myself that it has stayed up for two years, and that the slight disturbance I am causing is unlikely to bring it down.
I wander from room to room, trying to discern my childhood in the wreckage. The bed that I slept in is a stranger to me. The view of the mountains I grew up with is bubbled and smudged through the damaged glass. My parents’ bedroom is the least damaged of all. I still think of it as such although in recent years, it had become very much my father’s room. He sold the bed when my mother died. He redecorated in a more masculine style—dark wood and studded leather, hunting trophies on the wall, an antique Mauser mounted above the window. The flocked wallpaper of my mother’s day exists only in my memory.
I peer into the bathrooms, fascinated by this testimony to what severe heat can do to porcelain and plastic. I recognise the remodelled fixtures my father had installed a few years ago. In my mother’s time, the fixtures were original or retrofitted to look original. We had wall-mounted cisterns that flushed by means of a long chain. They never gave a moment’s trouble, but my father hated them. My mother was barely in the ground before he called Dream Bathrooms.
The new bathrooms disappointed him, I remember. Even after they had been refitted to his specifications, he wasn’t happy. The lock-up-and-go flat he has now is more to his liking.
I look at the clipboard my father left when he dropped off the keys. It has a spreadsheet attached to it, listing the furniture that was supposedly here before the fire. I think he would like me to believe it was drawn up by the insurance company, but I can see he compiled it himself on his computer.
1. Yellowwood tallboy, used as drinks cabinet, circa 1798, R23,000
2. Stinkwood kist, used for storing linen, circa 1801, R17,500
3. Cape oak dresser, circa 1857, R19,000
4. Stinkwood mirror frame with original bevelled mirror, circa 1870, R5,700
I am supposed to put ticks next to the items I find in this house. The total value of the contents of the house is set at a staggering figure. I know it’s not right. I know we never owned some of the items listed. I think he got the idea for them from my late grandparents’ house—my mother’s parents. Their place was a treasure trove of antiques from the Cape Colony. Some of those items came with my mother when she got married, but most remained in her parents’ house.
Other bits of furniture sound like things we owned years ago, before my mother died. My father couldn’t abide them. He traded them in for flat-pack, assemble-it-yourself items a while ago. But some—yes, some—are still here.
My father is not interested in what is still here. He wants me to pick through this twisted landscape and confirm that everything on his fake spreadsheet was once here—even the items that were never here. He wants me to help him defraud the insurance company.
How can I?
How can I not?
How can I choose to side with a faceless corporation—one that has been pocketing his premiums all these years, and which would screw him over without a moment’s hesitation—rather than my own father? It is a small thing he is asking me to do. The merest nothing. A few strokes of my pen and it is done.
Has my father not suffered enough? He lost his wife a few years ago. He watched his daughter being raped. He saw his house torched and all his possessions go up in flames. Of course he wants to make some of the awfulness go away. Money has the power to do that. The insurance company won’t even notice the difference, but it will make all the difference in the world to my father.
The clipboard shakes as I grip it.
I owe it to my father. I owe him this small favour. No father should have to see what he saw.
I grab the pen with slippery fingers and start ticking boxes. Yes, an oak dresser. Yes, a yellowwood tallboy. Yes, a stinkwood coffee table crafted by Huguenot hands in 1726. I tick and I tick and I tick. Then, when there are no boxes left to tick, I add my own items. The box used by Jan van Riebeeck to store his shaving brushes. A wooden chest with original iron clasps used to store the Governor’s smallclothes. A fragment of the True Cross.
I stop before I have furnished the entire Drommedaris. I scratch out some of my wilder fictions, but there is enough here for a hefty claim. My father will be pleased.
My phone buzzes against my hip. I take it out and see that my good deed has already been rewarded. It is a text from Eugene. Karma is delivering promptly these days.
Eugene: Hey. I have tickets for the Laugh Barrel on Saturday night. Would you like to go with me?
The Laugh Barrel is a comedy club in the City Bowl. They feature new and established stand-ups, improvs, and other comedy acts. They have open mic nights on Wednesdays. I haven’t been in years. I can’t think of a reason not to go now.
Lucy: Sure. That sounds like fun. Meet you there at 7?
I lock up when I leave the house. If I look down when I walk, I notice my duck-footed gait—the one Coetzee made so much of. So I look up and see Fiction-Lucy and her family again. Her daughter is older now. (The baby is a girl, not a boy.) She is running around the yard barefoot in a white smocked dress. Her hair is braided into two plaits tied with white ribbons. Her face glows with health and joy. There are other children running with her. They are the babies of the collective of labourers now running this farm. I saw them earlier, but they are older now.
The little girl runs up to me and lifts her shining face to mine. “I belong here,” she tells me. “This is my place.”
* * *
“You should write an op-ed for The New York Times.”
I stare at Moira. “Why would The New York Times be interested in anything I have to say?”
“Because you have a tale to tell that piggybacks on the tale of a famous man. The stories of unknown women become interesting when they are linked to the stories of well-known men. No one cares if you were sexually harassed. They only care if you were sexually harassed by a famous Hollywood producer.”
“That’s depressing.”
“But true. John Coetzee’s book is still huge.”
“Correct.”
“Everyone is talking about it. The NYT devoted two major reviews to it—one before it started winning awards, and one after.”
“Correct again.” I have copies of both reviews.
“The NYT would be interested in a piece from your perspective about how Coetzee processed your personal pain into fiction, and how that made you feel. They publish that stuff all the time. Think of the Angelina Jolie piece. And Jodie Foster. And Salma Hayek. And . . . and Bono.”
“I can think of several ways in which I am not like those people.”
“No, but listen. You’re not nobody. You are the girl who was raped. You are the real-life inspiration behind Lucy. She is one of the most important female figures in literature today, and she was based on you.”
Pride expands in my chest like a gas leak. I am somebody. I matter. Hubris yawns and stretches inside me, waking up for the first time in two years. But the doubts won’t be banished.
“Coetzee is the darling of the literary world. No one will be interested in a piece that challenges him.”
“The media built him up, and they can bring him down again. He is perfectly poised at the apex of his fame. If you brought him down, the schadenfreude would be immense. It would be delicious.”
I am dazzled by this vision of myself as the woman who brought down John Coetzee. No—The Girl Who Brought Down John Coetzee. That’s better.
“How do I do it?”
“First, write the piece. Make it punchy and heartfelt. Serious, but not too serious. Tap into the #MeToo hype. Check the submissions guidelines on their website. Clean up your piece and hit send. It will be published by the end of the month. I guarantee it.”
* * *
Lucy: I am writing an op-ed for the NYT.
Putting it in a text makes it feel real. Eugene’s reply comes back fast.
Eugene: Wow! Really? That’s amazing. You are the only person I know who has ever done that. What is it about?
“What will it be about?” would be more accurate. I can’t seem to get the words out of my mind and onto the screen.
Lucy: It’s about being the real-life inspiration behind Coetzee’s Lucy. How it affected me. What he got wrong, etc.
My text stares back at me in all its prissiness. What he got wrong, etc? When did wrongness become a measurable concept in fiction? When did the extent to which a piece of fiction is true to life become a gauge of its worth?
Eugene: I think that’s great. Good luck with the process. I’m looking forward to our date. Should be a fun night.
His use of the word “date” surprises me. Our arrangement for Saturday could easily be tidied away under the heading of two people hanging out together. Is he acknowledging it as a date because I am writing an op-ed for The New York Times? Is that the alchemy that has turned me from an acquaintance into a date?
Lucy: Me too. See you on Sat.
Disappointment flickers as he goes offline. Now I must apply my mind to my op-ed for The New York Times.
Op-ed for The New York Times. My op-ed for the NYT. I’m writing an op-ed for the NYT. Hello, have you met my girlfriend, Lucy? She’s writing an op-ed for The New York Times. Opinion-editorial.
If you are writing an op-ed for The New York Times and no one commissioned you to do so, can you be said to be writing it? An op-ed for the NYT only becomes an op-ed for the NYT when it has been submitted and accepted. Until then, it is just words on a screen.
Except it isn’t even that yet, because I am looking at the screen and there are no words on it. Now that I have to put them into sentences, my deeply held convictions are bleeding away. They are evaporating. I started off determined to consider both sides of the debate—mine and Coetzee’s. But mine has disappeared, and Coetzee’s is the only one I can see.
There is a slogan that gets printed on T-shirts and coffee mugs: “Be careful what you say to a writer. She’ll save it up and put it in a book.” Here’s another one: “Don’t annoy the writer. She’ll put you in a book and kill you.” I can barely open my Facebook feed without seeing these maxims. They frolic across the pages of my friends who consider themselves to be writers, which is all of them.
Did you notice the “she”? It is not there by accident. There’s a reason why coffee-mug slogans use the feminine pronoun.When women write things, it is cute and funny. When men write things, it is serious. For a woman to put you in her book would be flattering and amusing. For a man to do so would be life-changing. I throw words at the screen to this effect, to see if anything sticks. But Coetzee’s perspective remains uppermost in my mind. It is part of the social contract that everything is fair game when it comes to fiction. Nothing is off-limits. Nothing is beyond the pale. If real life weren’t allowed to be the inspiration for fiction, we wouldn’t have the works of Shakespeare, Austen, Adichie, Naipaul, or Didion. It is not just important for authors to be able to write without fear or favour: it is vital. Hurt feelings cannot be permitted to intrude. The only post-publication discussion that has any validity at all is a critical one. A piecemeal breaking down of a text into its real-life inspirations is an ignoble enterprise, fit only for women and children.
I throw this at the screen too, and it sticks very well. I may never be able to unstick it. What won’t stick is my counter-argument. What was that again? I can’t remember. All I can hear in my mind when I try to grasp it is the sound of my own whining.
It’s not fair
He wrote about me and I never said he could
He was watching me the whole time while pretending not to recognise me
He made me look stupid
He can’t write about me without asking
I sound like a child. My entire academic career—all my training taught me not to think about literature in these terms. It taught me to reject this mindset. I can’t bring myself to throw any of it at the screen. It is gibberish.
This has been a useful exercise. It has taught me to look more closely at this feeling of grievance I have been carrying around for nearly two years.What is at the base of it? Is it anything more than hurt feelings? John Coetzee hurt my feelings and I want him to apologise. Is that all there is to it? Yes . . . yes, it appears so.
I feel peaceful. How wrong I’ve been all this time. Writers don’t owe anyone anything. They don’t have to account for the words they put on a page or the order in which they put them. I have been trying to insert myself into the Coetzee Overnight Success narrative when the truth is, I don’t belong there. I am not part of his story, and I have allowed him to be part of mine for too long.
This is what it feels like to be free.
I go out with Eugene on Saturday night. I wear skinny jeans with ballet flats and a sparkly top with spaghetti straps. It’s the first time I’ve been out without my “I was raped” armour in two years. Men look at me and I look right back at them. It’s wonderful to have my sexual confidence back.
The comedy show is hilarious. There is one guy who makes rape jokes throughout his set. It is edgy and ironic and self-reflexive. It is meant to show that rape jokes are never funny (except his, of course). I don’t get triggered. The jokes wash over me. I laugh at some of them.
Eugene and I eat deep-fried tofu strips with sweet-and-sour sauce, and they are delicious. I look with pity at the table next to us. They are eating chicken nuggets and buffalo wings. They feast on the flesh of animals raised in misery and slain in anger. Who decides that the humble fowl is of less intrinsic worth than the human being? Or the ant, for that matter? And what about the humble protozoan? The simple eukaryote?
Is it not blatant species-ism to rank these creatures according to an arbitrary standard of complexity, thereby placing ourselves conveniently at the top? The Great Chain of Being went out with the Renaissance, except when it comes to deciding what is fit to be eaten. There is no philosophical justification for species-ism.
I decide to become a vegan, like Eugene. I whisper my decision into his ear between sets, and he smiles.
“Thank you!” He takes my hand in his. “Thank you for that. Our fellow creatures thank you. There is one less murderer in the world.”
The skin-to-skin connection between us fizzes with electricity. Or is it chemistry? Perhaps it is both—electrochemistry. The attraction is undeniable. I fantasise about what it would be like to have his hands all over me.
But first, there is an ethical dilemma I need to clear up.
During the interval, he pops round to the juice bar next door to get us freshly squeezed dairy-free smoothies.
“What’s in this?” I ask, sipping the bright orange beverage.
“Carrots, oranges, beetroot and mango.”
“I feel bad for the carrots and the beetroots.”
“Tell me more.”
“The whole plant had to die to supply us with food. It’s not right. The carrot and the beetroot are the taproots. They anchor the plant in the soil, absorb water and nutrients from the ground, and store excess starch for the plant to live off in lean times. When we uproot them to feed ourselves, we’re killing the whole parent plant. It is an act of violence.”
“But plants are not sentient in the same way animals are.” His dark eyes look up at me through sooty lashes.
“Well, actually, that’s a common misconception,” I explain. “Plants respond to stimuli and react to pain. They are capable of movement. There is evidence that they respond to music and voice. Really, the line drawn between plant life and animal life is arbitrary. It has no place in the mind of the person of conscience.”
Understanding dawns in his eyes, proving that he is just as capable of rational thought as any woman. “But if we can’t eat plants and we can’t eat animals, what can we eat? There’s nothing left.”
I smile, pleased to be able to clear up his confusion. “Don’t get hysterical. There’s an answer. Listen and I’ll explain. Have you ever heard of fruitarianism?”
“Fruitarianism?” He stammers over the unfamiliar syllables. “I don’t think I have.”
“You only eat that part of the plant that can be removed without damaging it. Fruits, legumes, nuts, and certain brassicas can be included in that category.”
“So . . . we could drink milk then . . . and eat eggs. And honey.”
“No, that’s not right. I’ll explain the horrors of the dairy and egg-farming industries to you some other time. And as for honey—absolutely not. It is brazen robbery of the life-giving food stores of bees. Not to be thought of.”
“You’re saying I can eat anything I can pick that won’t harm the parent plant?”
“Well, yes, there are those who are prepared to do violence to the plant by picking things from it. I prefer to wait for bounty to drop naturally from the plant. If you want to be an ethical eater, there’s no other option.”
“Thank you for explaining it to me, Lucy. You have opened my eyes.Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee perhaps, when you drop me home later?”
I laugh. His coquetry amuses me. “Perhaps. We’ll see.”
But I’ve already decided. I will indulge him by coming to his flat later and whiling away a few hours with passion. I won’t stay the night. They always develop expectations if you do.
“I have to be up early tomorrow,” I say, when he invites me in at the end of the evening. “I have a presentation in the morning. But I can come in for a little while.” I’m laying the groundwork for my early exit.
He apologises blushingly for the state of his flat. I don’t see much amiss. It’s the usual boyish clutter—bright scarves draped everywhere, a Pilates ball by the sofa, a low-carb salad bowl abandoned half-eaten on the table.
I accept the offer of coffee, although I’d prefer brandy. While he fusses in the kitchen, I browse through his collection of CDs and DVDs. My expectations are low, so I’m not disappointed. Pretty Woman, 10 Things I Hate About You, An Officer and a Gentleman, Sixteen Candles, Twilight. The usual boyish fantasies of happily ever after.
Don’t get me started on the music. He has every Now That’s What I Call Music CD published since the turn of the century. Who even listens to CDs any more? Has this boy never heard of the digital age?
He brings a tray to the sitting room, looking flushed and nervous. Time to make him more nervous still. As he puts the tray down, I stand and back him up against the bookshelf.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking what I want.” Then I swoop and capture his mouth in a masterful kiss. He struggles for a moment, like a bird trapped in my arms. Then suddenly all the fight goes out of him as he melts into my embrace. His capitulation comes a little more easily than I like. I prefer it when they put up more of a fight. But this will save time. I’ll be out of here in an hour.
He pulls me toward the bedroom, but there’s a perfectly good sofa right here. And no one expects you to cuddle or fall asleep on a sofa. I undo the buttons on his shirt with a practised one-handed move and back him up until his legs hit the sofa, forcing him to sit. He shudders and moans as my hard, calloused palms graze his nipples. His stomach is a little softer than I like—I prefer them tighter. Still, what he lacks in tone, he makes up for in enthusiasm.
He is panting now, practically begging for it. When we finally join, he utters a sob of gratitude. I make him come quickly and easily, and then take my time over my own pleasure. Afterwards, as he pulls a throw up to cover his chest, he casts me a look of blatant adoration.
I sigh. Why do they always insist on falling in love with me? Men don’t seem capable of separating sex from emotion. You ring that bell for them, and next thing they’re picking out china patterns. Perhaps it’s their way of convincing themselves that they’re not sluts to have slept with you. It’s fine to have sex on the first date as long as you’re in love with the woman, right?
It’s all so predictable, I’m already bored. The way he looks at me with those liquid eyes. Not to mention how he clings to my arm.
I give him a devastating smile. “Early start in the morning, remember? I have to dash now, but I’ll call you in a few days.” I pull on my jeans and boots. “Stay cool, kiddo.”
Then I’m out the door and heading for freedom, deleting his number from my phone as I go.