Read Online Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee - Free Book Online Page A

feelings?’
    He shakes his head. ‘I have said the words for you, now you want more, you want me to demonstrate their sincerity. That is preposterous. That is beyond the scope of the law. I have had enough. Let us go back to playing it by the book. I plead guilty. That is as far as I am prepared to go.’
    â€˜Right,’ says Mathabane from the chair. ‘If there are no more questions for Professor Lurie, I will thank him for attending and excuse him.’
    At first they do not recognize him. He is halfway down the stairs before he hears the cry That’s him! followed by a scuffle of feet.
    They catch up with him at the foot of the stairs; one even grabs at his jacket to slow him down.
    â€˜Can we talk to you just for a minute, Professor Lurie?’ says a voice.
    He ignores it, pressing on into the crowded lobby, where people turn to stare at the tall man hurrying from his pursuers.
    Someone bars his way. ‘Hold it!’ she says. He averts his face, stretches out a hand. There is a flash.
    A girl circles around him. Her hair, plaited with amber beads, hangs straight down on either side of her face. She smiles, showing even white teeth. ‘Can we stop and speak?’ she says.
    â€˜What about?’
    A tape recorder is thrust toward him. He pushes it away.
    â€˜About how it was,’ says the girl.
    â€˜How what was?’
    The camera flashes again.
    â€˜You know, the hearing.’
    â€˜I can’t comment on that.’
    â€˜OK, so what can you comment on?’
    â€˜There is nothing I want to comment on.’
    The loiterers and the curious have begun to crowd around. If he wants to get away, he will have to push through them.
    â€˜Are you sorry?’ says the girl. The recorder is thrust closer. ‘Do you regret what you did?’
    â€˜No,’ he says. ‘I was enriched by the experience.’
    The smile remains on the girl’s face. ‘So would you do it again?’
    â€˜I don’t think I will have another chance.’
    â€˜But if you had a chance?’
    â€˜That isn’t a real question.’
    She wants more, more words for the belly of the little machine, but for the moment is at a loss for how to suck him into further indiscretion.
    â€˜He was what by the experience?’ he hears someone ask sotto voce .
    â€˜He was enriched.’
    There is a titter.
    â€˜Ask him if he apologized,’ someone calls to the girl.
    â€˜I already asked.’
    Confessions, apologies: why this thirst for abasement? A hush falls. They circle around him like hunters who have cornered a strange beast and do not know how to finish it off.
    The photograph appears in the next day’s student newspaper, above the caption ‘Who’s the Dunce Now?’ It shows him, eyes cast up to the heavens, reaching out a groping hand toward the camera. The pose is ridiculous enough in itself, but what makes the picture a gem is the inverted waste-paper basket that a young man, grinning broadly, holds above him. By a trick of perspective the basket appears to sit on his head like a dunce’s hat. Against such an image, what chance has he?
    â€˜Committee tight-lipped on verdict,’ reads the headline. ‘The disciplinary committee investigating charges of harassment and misconduct against Communications Professor David Lurie was tight-lipped yesterday on its verdict. Chair Manas Mathabane would say only that its findings have been forwarded to the Rector for action.
    â€˜Sparring verbally with members of WAR after the hearing, Lurie (53) said he had found his experiences with women students “enriching”.
    â€˜Trouble first erupted when complaints against Lurie, an expert on romantic poetry, were filed by students in his classes.’
    He has a call at home from Mathabane. ‘The committee has passed on its recommendation, David, and the Rector has asked me to get back to you one last time. He is prepared not to take extreme