Disgrace Read Online Free

Melanie Isaacs’s enrolment card and copies down her personal details: home address, Cape Town address, telephone number.
    He dials the number. A woman’s voice answers.
    â€˜Melanie?’
    â€˜I’ll call her. Who is speaking?’
    â€˜Tell her, David Lurie.’
    Melanie – melody: a meretricious rhyme. Not a good name for her. Shift the accent. Meláni: the dark one.
    â€˜Hello?’
    In the one word he hears all her uncertainty. Too young. She will not know how to deal with him; he ought to let her go. But he is in the grip of something. Beauty’s rose: the poem drives straight as an arrow. She does not own herself; perhaps he does not own himself either.
    â€˜I thought you might like to go out to lunch,’ he says. ‘I’ll pick you up at, shall we say, twelve.’
    There is still time for her to tell a lie, wriggle out. But she is too confused, and the moment passes.
    When he arrives, she is waiting on the sidewalk outside her apartment block. She is wearing black tights and a black sweater. Her hips are as slim as a twelve-year-old’s.
    He takes her to Hout Bay, to the harbourside. During the drive he tries to put her at ease. He asks about her other courses. She is acting in a play, she says. It is one of her diploma requirements. Rehearsals are taking up a lot of her time.
    At the restaurant she has no appetite, stares out glumly over the sea.
    â€˜Is something the matter? Do you want to tell me?’
    She shakes her head.
    â€˜Are you worried about the two of us?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ she says.
    â€˜No need. I’ll take care. I won’t let it go too far.’
    Too far. What is far, what is too far, in a matter like this? Is her too far the same as his too far?
    It has begun to rain: sheets of water waver across the empty bay. ‘Shall we leave?’ he says.
    He takes her back to his house. On the living-room floor, to the sound of rain pattering against the windows, he makes love to her. Her body is clear, simple, in its way perfect; though she is passive throughout, he finds the act pleasurable, so pleasurable that from its climax he tumbles into blank oblivion.
    When he comes back the rain has stopped. The girl is lying beneath him, her eyes closed, her hands slack above her head, a slight frown on her face. His own hands are under her coarse-knit sweater, on her breasts. Her tights and panties lie in a tangle on the floor; his trousers are around his ankles. After the storm , he thinks: straight out of George Grosz.
    Averting her face, she frees herself, gathers her things, leaves the room. In a few minutes she is back, dressed. ‘I must go,’ she whispers. He makes no effort to detain her.
    He wakes the next morning in a state of profound wellbeing, which does not go away. Melanie is not in class. From his office he telephones a florist. Roses? Perhaps not roses. He orders carnations. ‘Red or white?’ asks the woman. Red? White? ‘Send twelve pink,’ he says. ‘I haven’t got twelve pink. Shall I send a mix?’ ‘Send a mix,’ he says.
    Rain falls all of Tuesday, from heavy clouds blown in over the city from the west. Crossing the lobby of the Communications Building at the end of the day, he spies her at the doorway amid a knot of students waiting for a break in the downpour. He comes up behind her, puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Wait for me here,’ he says. ‘I’ll give you a ride home.’
    He returns with an umbrella. Crossing the square to the parking lot he draws her closer to shelter her. A sudden gust blows the umbrella inside out; awkwardly they run together to the car.
    She is wearing a slick yellow raincoat; in the car she lowers the hood. Her face is flushed; he is aware of the rise and fall of her chest. She licks away a drop of rain from her upper lip. A child! he thinks: No more than a child! What am I doing? Yet his heart lurches with desire.
    They drive through