'I'm not sure I like the way he does things - bringing the slaughter-beasts home to acquaint them with the people who are going to eat them.'
'What would you prefer? That the slaughtering be done in an abattoir, so that you needn't think about it?'
'Yes.'
'Wake up, David. This is the country. This is Africa.'
There is a snappishness to Lucy nowadays that he sees no justification for. His usual response is to withdraw into silence. There are spells when the two of them are like strangers in the same house. He tells himself that he must be patient, that Lucy is still living in the shadow of the attack, that time needs to pass before she will be herself. But what if he is wrong? What if, after an attack like that, one is never oneself again? What if an attack like that turns one into a different and darker person altogether?
There is an even more sinister explanation for Lucy's moodiness, one that he cannot put from his mind.
'Lucy,' he asks the same day, out of the blue, 'you aren't hiding something from me, are you? You didn't pick up something from those men?'
She is sitting on the sofa in pyjamas and dressing-gown, playing with the cat. It is past noon. The cat is young, alert, skittish. Lucy dangles the belt of the gown before it. The cat slaps at the belt, quick, light paw-blows, one- two-three-four.
'Men?' she says. 'Which men?' She flicks the belt to one side; the cat dives after it. Which men? His heart stops. Has she gone mad? Is she refusing to remember?
But, it would appear, she is only teasing him. 'David, I am not a child any more. I have seen a doctor, I have had tests, I have done everything one can reasonably do. Now I can only wait.'
'I see. And by wait you mean wait for what I think you mean?'
'Yes.'
'How long will that take?'
She shrugs. 'A month. Three months. Longer. Science has not yet put a limit on how long one has to wait. For ever, maybe.'
The cat makes a quick pounce at the belt, but the game is over now.
He sits down beside his daughter; the cat jumps off the sofa, stalks away. He takes her hand. Now that he is close to her, a faint smell of staleness, unwashedness, reaches him. 'At least it won't be for ever, my dearest,' he says. 'At least you will be spared that.'
The sheep spend the rest of the day near the dam where he has tethered them. The next morning they are back on the barren patch beside the stable.
Presumably they have until Saturday morning, two days. It seems a miserable way to spend the last two days of one's life. Country ways - that is what Lucy calls this kind of thing. He has other words: indifference, hardheartedness. If the country can pass judgment on the city, then the city can pass judgment on the country too.
He has thought of buying the sheep from Petrus. But what will that accomplish? Petrus will only use the money to buy new slaughter-animals, and pocket the difference. And what will he do with the sheep anyway, once he has bought them out of slavery? Set them free on the public road? Pen them up in the dog-cages and feed them hay?
A bond seems to have come into existence between himself and the two Persians, he does not know how. The bond is not one of affection. It is not even a bond with these two in particular, whom he could not pick out from a mob in a field. Nevertheless, suddenly and without reason, their lot has become important to him.
He stands before them, under the sun, waiting for the buzz in his mind to settle, waiting for a sign. There is a fly trying to creep into the ear of one of them. The ear twitches. The fly takes off; circles, returns, settles. The ear twitches again.
He takes a step forward. The sheep backs away uneasily to the limit of its chain. He remembers Bev Shaw nuzzling the old billy-goat with the ravaged testicles, stroking him, comforting him, entering into his life. How does she get it right, this communion with animals? Some trick he does not have. One has to be a certain kind of person, perhaps, with fewer complications. The sun beats on his face in all its springtime radiance. Do I have to change, he thinks? Do I have to become like Bev Shaw?
He speaks to Lucy. 'I have been thinking about this party of Petrus's. On the whole, I would prefer not to go. Is that possible without being rude?'
'Anything to do with his slaughter-sheep?'
'Yes. No. I haven't changed my ideas, if that is what you mean. I still don't believe that animals have properly individual lives.
Which among them get to live, which get to die, is not, as far as I am concerned, worth agonizing over. Nevertheless . . 'Nevertheless?'
'Nevertheless, in this case I am disturbed. I can't say why.'
'Well, Petrus and his guests are certainly not going to give up their mutton chops out of deference to you and your sensibilities.'
'I'm not asking for that. I would just prefer not to be one of the party, not this time. I'm sorry. I never imagined I would end up talking this way.'
'God moves in mysterious ways, David.'
'Don't mock me.'
Saturday is looming, market day. 'Should we run the stall?' he asks Lucy. She shrugs. 'You decide,' she says. He does not run the stall.
He does not query her decision; in fact he is relieved.
