Disgrace Read Online Free PDF Page A

like a marionette’s. Words heavy as clubs thud into the delicate whorl of her ear. ‘No, not now!’ she says, struggling. ‘My cousin will be back!’
    But nothing will stop him. He carries her to the bedroom, brushes off the absurd slippers, kisses her feet, astonished by the feeling she evokes. Something to do with the apparition on the stage: the wig, the wiggling bottom, the crude talk. Strange love! Yet from the quiver of Aphrodite, goddess of the foaming waves, no doubt about that.
    She does not resist. All she does is avert herself: avert her lips, avert her eyes. She lets him lay her out on the bed and undress her: she even helps him, raising her arms and then her hips. Little shivers of cold run through her; as soon as she is bare, she slips under the quilted counterpane like a mole burrowing, and turns her back on him.
    Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, far away.
    â€˜Pauline will be back any minute,’ she says when it is over. ‘Please. You must go.’
    He obeys, but then, when he reaches his car, is overtaken with such dejection, such dullness, that he sits slumped at the wheel unable to move.
    A mistake, a huge mistake. At this moment, he has no doubt, she, Melanie, is trying to cleanse herself of it, of him. He sees her running a bath, stepping into the water, eyes closed like a sleepwalker’s. He would like to slide into a bath of his own.
    A woman with chunky legs and a no-nonsense business suit passes by and enters the apartment block. Is this cousin Pauline the flatmate, the one whose disapproval Melanie is so afraid of? He rouses himself, drives off.
    The next day she is not in class. An unfortunate absence, since it is the day of the mid-term test. When he fills in the register afterwards, he ticks her off as present and enters a mark of seventy. At the foot of the page he pencils a note to himself: ‘Provisional’. Seventy: a vacillator’s mark, neither good nor bad.
    She stays away the whole of the next week. Time after time he telephones, without reply. Then at midnight on Sunday the doorbell rings. It is Melanie, dressed from top to toe in black, with a little black woollen cap. Her face is strained; he steels himself for angry words, for a scene.
    The scene does not come. In fact, she is the one who is embarrassed. ‘Can I sleep here tonight?’ she whispers, avoiding his eye.
    â€˜Of course, of course.’ His heart is flooded with relief. He reaches out, embraces her, pressing her against him stiff and cold. ‘Come, I’ll make you some tea.’
    â€˜No, no tea, nothing, I’m exhausted, I just need to crash.’
    He makes up a bed for her in his daughter’s old room, kisses her good night, leaves her to herself. When he returns half an hour later she is in a dead sleep, fully clothed. He eases off her shoes, covers her.
    At seven in the morning, as the first birds are beginning to chirrup, he knocks at her door. She is awake, lying with the sheet drawn up to her chin, looking haggard.
    â€˜How are you feeling?’ he asks.
    She shrugs.
    â€˜Is something the matter? Do you want to talk?’
    She shakes her head mutely.
    He sits down on the bed, draws her to him. In his arms she begins to sob miserably. Despite all, he feels a tingling of desire. ‘There, there,’ he whispers, trying to comfort her. ‘Tell me what is wrong.’ Almost he says, ‘Tell Daddy what is wrong.’
    She gathers herself and tries to speak, but her nose is clogged. He finds her a tissue. ‘Can I stay here a while?’ she says.
    â€˜Stay here?’ he repeats carefully. She has stopped crying, but long shudders of misery still pass through her. ‘Would that be a good