Because you were a figure in his life. You were important to him.

How do you know that?

I am just repeating what he said. Not to me, but to lots of people.

He said that I was an important figure in his life? I am surprised.

I am gratified. Gratified not that he should have thought so I agree, I did have quite an impact on his life but that he should have said so to other people.

Let me make a confession. When you first contacted me, I nearly decided not to speak to you. I thought you were some busybody, some academic newshound who had come upon a list of John's women, his conquests, and was now going down the list, ticking off the names, hoping to get some dirt on him.

You don't have a high opinion of academic researchers.

No, I don't. Which is why I have been trying to make it clear to you that I was not one of his conquests. If anything, he was one of mine. But tell me I'm curious to whom did he say that I was important?

To various people. In letters. He doesn't name you, but you are easy enough to identify. Also, he kept a photograph of you. I came across it among his papers.

A photograph! Can I see it? Do you have it with you?

I'll make a copy and send it.

Yes, of course I was important to him. He was in love with me, in his way. But there is an important way of being important, and an unimportant way, and I have my doubts that I made it to the important important level. I mean, he never wrote about me. I never entered his books. Which to me means I never quite flowered within him, never quite came to life.

[Silence.]

No comment? You have read his books. Where in his books do you find traces of me?

I can't answer that. I don't know you well enough to say. Don't you recognize yourself in any of his characters?

No.

Perhaps you are in his books in a more diffuse way, not immediately detectable.

Perhaps. But I would have to be convinced of that. Shall we go on? Where was I?

Supper. Lasagne.

Yes. Lasagne. Conquests. I fed him lasagne and then I completed my conquest of him. How explicit do I need to be? Since he is dead, it can make no difference to him, any indiscreetness on my part. We used the marital bed. If I am going to desecrate my marriage, I thought, I may as well do so thoroughly. And a bed is more comfortable than the sofa or the floor.

As for the experience itself I mean the experience of infidelity, which is what the experience was, predominantly, for me it was stranger than I expected, and then over before I could get accustomed to the strangeness. Yet it was exciting, no doubt about that, from start to finish. My heart did not stop hammering. Not something I will forget, ever. Going back to Henry James, there are plenty of betrayals in James, but I recall nothing about the sense of excitement, of heightened self-awareness, during the act itself the act of betrayal, I mean. Which suggests to me that, though James liked to present himself as a great betrayer, he had never actually done the deed itself, bodily.

My first impressions? I found this new lover of mine bonier than my husband, and lighter. Doesn't get enough to eat Doesn't get enough to eat, I remember thinking. He and his father together in that mean little cottage on Tokai Road, a widower and his celibate son, two incompetents, two of life's failures, supping on polony sausage and biscuits and tea. Since he didn't want to bring his father to me, would I have to start dropping in on them with baskets of nourishing goodies?

The image that has stayed with me is of him leaning over me with his eyes shut, stroking my body, frowning with concentration as if trying to memorize me through touch alone. Up and down his hand roamed, back and forth. I was, at the time, quite proud of my figure. The jogging, the callisthenics, the dieting: if there is no payoff when you undress for a man, when is there ever going to be a payoff? I may not have been a beauty, but at least I must have been a pleasure to handle: nice and trim, a good piece of woman-flesh.

If you find this kind of talk embarra.s.sing, say so and I will shut up. I am in one of the intimate professions, so intimate talk doesn't trouble me as long as it doesn't trouble you. No? No problem? Shall I go on?

That was our first time together. Interesting, an interesting experience, but not earth-shaking. But then, I never expected it to be earth-shaking, not with him.

What I was determined to avoid was emotional entanglement. A pa.s.sing fling was one thing, an affair of the heart quite another.

Of myself I was fairly sure. I was not about to lose my heart to a man about whom I knew next to nothing. But what of him? Might he be the type to brood on what had pa.s.sed between us, building it up into something bigger than it really was? Be on your guard, I told myself.

Days went by, however, without any word from him. Each time I drove past the house on Tokai Road I slowed down and peered, but caught no sight of him. Nor was he at the supermarket. There was only one conclusion I could come to: he was avoiding me. In a way that was a good sign; but it annoyed me nevertheless. In fact it hurt me. I wrote him a letter, an old-fashioned letter, and put a stamp on it and dropped it in the mailbox. 'Are you avoiding me?' I wrote. 'What do I have to do to rea.s.sure you I want us to be good friends, no more?' No response.

What I did not mention in the letter, and would certainly not mention when next I saw him, was how I pa.s.sed the weekend immediately after his visit. Mark and I were at each other like rabbits, having s.e.x in the marital bed, on the floor, in the shower, everywhere, even with poor innocent Chrissie wide awake in her cot, crying, calling for me.

Mark had his own ideas about why I was in this inflamed state. Mark thought I could smell his girlfriend from Durban on him and wanted to prove to him how much better a how shall I put it? how much better a performer I was than she. On the Monday after the weekend in question he was booked to fly to Durban, but he pulled out cancelled his flight, called the office to say he was sick. Then he and I went back to bed.

He could not have enough of me. He was positively enraptured with the inst.i.tution of bourgeois marriage and the opportunities it afforded a man to rut both outside and inside the home.

As for me, I was I choose my words with deliberation I was unbearably excited to be having two men so close to each other. To myself I said, in a rather shocked way, You are behaving like a wh.o.r.e! Is that what you are, by nature? You are behaving like a wh.o.r.e! Is that what you are, by nature? But beneath it all I was quite proud of myself, of the effect I could have. That weekend I glimpsed for the first time the possibility of growth without end in the realm of the erotic. Until then I had had a rather trite picture of erotic life: you arrive at p.u.b.erty, you spend a year or two or three hesitating on the brink of the pool, then you plunge in and splash around until you find a mate who satisfies you, and that is the end of it, the end of your quest. What dawned on me that weekend was that at the age of twenty-six my erotic life had barely begun. But beneath it all I was quite proud of myself, of the effect I could have. That weekend I glimpsed for the first time the possibility of growth without end in the realm of the erotic. Until then I had had a rather trite picture of erotic life: you arrive at p.u.b.erty, you spend a year or two or three hesitating on the brink of the pool, then you plunge in and splash around until you find a mate who satisfies you, and that is the end of it, the end of your quest. What dawned on me that weekend was that at the age of twenty-six my erotic life had barely begun.

Then at last I had a response to my letter. A phone call from John. First some cautious probing:Was I alone, was my husband away? Then the invitation:Would I like to come over for supper, an early supper, and would I like to bring my child?

I arrived at the house with Chrissie in her pram. John was waiting at the door wearing one of those blue-and-white butcher's ap.r.o.ns. 'Come through to the back,' he said, 'we're having a braai.'

That was where I met his father for the first time. His father was sitting hunched over the fire as if he was cold, when in fact the evening was still quite warm. Somewhat creakily he got to his feet to greet me. He looked frail, though it turned out he was only sixty-odd. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said, and gave me a nice smile. He and I got on well from the start. 'And is this Chrissie? h.e.l.lo, my girl! Come to visit us, eh?'

Unlike his son, he spoke with a heavy Afrikaans accent. But his English was perfectly pa.s.sable. He had apparently grown up on a farm in the Karoo, with lots of siblings. They had learned their English from a tutor there was no school nearby a Miss Jones or Miss Smith, out from the Old Country.

In the walled estate where Mark and I lived each of the units came with a courtyard and a built-in barbecue. Here on Tokai Road there was no such amenity, just an open fire with a few bricks around it. It seemed stupid beyond belief to have an unguarded fire when there was going to be a child around, particularly a child like Chrissie, not yet steady on her feet. I pretended to touch the wire grid, pretended to cry out with pain, whipped my hand away, sucked it. 'Hot!' I said to Chrissie.

'Careful! Don't touch!'

Why do I remember this detail? Because of the sucking. Because I was aware of John's eyes on me, and therefore purposely prolonged the moment. I had excuse me for boasting I had a nice mouth in those days, very kissable. My family name was Kis?, which in South Africa, where no one knew about funny diacritics, was spelled K-I-S. Kiss-kiss, Kiss-kiss, the girls at school used to hiss when they wanted to provoke me. the girls at school used to hiss when they wanted to provoke me. Kiss-kiss, Kiss-kiss, and giggles, and a wet smacking of the lips. I could not have cared less. Nothing wrong with being kissable, I thought. End of digression. I am fully aware it is John you want to hear about, not me and my schooldays. and giggles, and a wet smacking of the lips. I could not have cared less. Nothing wrong with being kissable, I thought. End of digression. I am fully aware it is John you want to hear about, not me and my schooldays.

Grilled sausages and baked potatoes: that was the menu these two men had so imaginatively put together. For the sausages, tomato sauce from a bottle; for the potatoes, margarine. G.o.d knows what offal had gone into the making of the sausages. Fortunately I had brought along a couple of those little Heinz jars for the child.

I pleaded a ladylike appet.i.te and took only a single sausage on my plate. With Mark away so much of the time, I found I was eating less and less meat. My diet was mainly fruit and cereal and salads. But for these two men it was meat and potatoes. They ate in the same way, in silence, bolting down their food as if it might be whipped away at any moment. Solitary eaters.

'How is the concreting coming along?' I asked.

'Another month and it will be done, G.o.d willing,' said John.

'It's making a real difference to the house,' his father said. 'No doubt about that. Much less damp than there used to be. But it's been a big job, eh, John?'

I recognized the tone at once, the tone of a parent eager to boast about his child. My heart went out to the poor man. A son in his thirties, and nothing to be said for him but that he could lay concrete! And how hard for the son too, the pressure of that longing in the parent, the longing to be proud! If there was one reason above all why I excelled at school, it was to give my parents, who lived such lonely lives in this strange country, something to be proud of.

His English the father's was perfectly pa.s.sable, as I said, but it was clearly not his mother tongue. When he brought out an idiom, like No doubt about that No doubt about that, he did so with a little flourish, as if expecting to be applauded.

I asked him what he did. (Did: such an inane word; but he knew what I meant.) He told me he was a bookkeeper, that he worked in the city. 'It must be quite a schlep, getting from here to the city,' I said.'Wouldn't it suit you better if you lived closer in?'

He mumbled some reply that I did not catch. Silence fell. Evidently I had touched on a sore spot. I tried changing the subject, but it did not help.

I had not expected much from the evening, but the flatness of the conversation, the long silences, and something else in the air too, discord or bad temper between the two of them these were more than I was prepared to stomach. The food had been dreary, the coals were turning grey, I was feeling chilly, darkness had begun to fall, Chrissie was being attacked by mosquitoes. Nothing obliged me to go on sitting in this weed-infested back yard, nothing obliged me to partic.i.p.ate in the family tensions of people I barely knew, even if in a technical sense one of them was or had been my lover. So I picked Chrissie up and put her back in her cart.

'Don't leave yet,' said John. 'I'll make coffee.'

'I must go,' I said. 'It's well past the child's bedtime.'

At the gate he tried to kiss me, but I wasn't in the mood for it.

The story I told myself after that evening, the story I settled on, was that my husband's infidelities had provoked me to such an extent that to punish him and salvage my own amour propre amour propre I had gone out and had a brief infidelity of my own. Now that it was evident what a mistake that infidelity had been, at least in the choice of accomplice, my husband's infidelity appeared in a new light, as probably a mistake too, and thus not worth getting upset about. I had gone out and had a brief infidelity of my own. Now that it was evident what a mistake that infidelity had been, at least in the choice of accomplice, my husband's infidelity appeared in a new light, as probably a mistake too, and thus not worth getting upset about.

Over the marital weekends I think I ought at this point to draw a modest veil. I have said enough. Let me simply remind you that it was against the background of those weekends that my weekday relations with John played themselves out. If John became more than a little intrigued and even infatuated with me, it was because in me he encountered a woman at the peak of her womanly powers, living a heightened s.e.xual life a life that in fact had little to do with him.

Mr Vincent, I am perfectly aware it is John you want to hear about, not me. But the only story involving John that I can tell, or the only one I am prepared to tell, is this one, namely the story of my life and his part in it, which is quite different, quite another matter, from the story of his life and my part in it. My story, the story of me, began years before John arrived on the scene and went on for years after he made his exit. In the phase I am telling you about today, Mark and I were the protagonists, John and the woman in Durban members of the supporting cast. So you have to choose. Are you going to take what I offer or are you going to leave it? Shall I call off the recital here and now, or shall I go on?

Go on.

You are sure? Because there is a further point I wish to make. It is this. You commit a grave error if you think to yourself that the difference between the two stories, the story you wanted to hear and the story you are getting, will be nothing more than a matter of perspective that while from my point of view the story of John may have been just one episode among many in the long narrative of my marriage, nevertheless, by dint of a quick flip, a quick manipulation of perspective, followed by some clever editing, you can transform it into a story about John and one of the women who pa.s.sed through his life. Not so. Not so. I warn you most earnestly: if you go away from here and start fiddling with the text, the whole thing will turn to ash in your hands. I really really was the main character. John was the main character. John really really was a minor character. I am sorry if I seem to be lecturing you on your own subject, but you will thank me in the end. Do you understand? was a minor character. I am sorry if I seem to be lecturing you on your own subject, but you will thank me in the end. Do you understand?

I hear what you are saying. I don't necessarily agree, but I hear.

Well, let it not be said I did not warn you.

As I told you, those were great days for me, a second honeymoon, sweeter than the first and longer-lasting too. Why else do you think I remember them so well? Truly, I am coming into myself! Truly, I am coming into myself! I said to myself. I said to myself. This is what a woman can be; this is what a woman can do! This is what a woman can be; this is what a woman can do!

Do I shock you? Probably not. You belong to an unshockable generation. But it would shock my mother, what I am revealing to you, if she were alive to hear it. My mother would never have dreamed of speaking to a stranger as I am speaking now.

From one of his trips to Singapore Mark had come back with an early-model video camera. Now he set it up in the bedroom to film the two of us making love. As a record As a record, he said. And as a turn-on And as a turn-on. I didn't mind. I let him go ahead. He probably still has the film; he may even watch it when he feels nostalgic about the old days. Or perhaps it is lying forgotten in a box in the attic, and will be found only after his death. The stuff we leave behind! Just imagine his grandchildren, eyes popping as they watch their youthful granddad frolicking in bed with his foreign wife.

Your husband . . .

Mark and I were divorced in 1988. He married again, on the rebound. I never met my successor. They live in the Bahamas, I think, or maybe Bermuda.

Shall we let it rest there? You have heard a lot, and it's been a long day.

But that isn't the end of the story, surely.

On the contrary, it is is the end of the story. At least of the part that matters. the end of the story. At least of the part that matters.

But you and Coetzee continued to see each other. For years you exchanged letters. So even if that is where the story ends, from your point of view my apologies, even if that is the end of the part of the story that is of importance to you there is still a long tail to follow, a long entailment. Can't you give me some idea of the tail?

A short tail, not a long one. I will tell you about it, but not today. I have things to attend to. Come back next week. Fix a date with my receptionist.

Next week I will be gone. Can we meet again tomorrow?

Tomorrow is out of the question. Thursday. I can give you half an hour on Thursday, after my last appointment.

YES, THE TAIL. Where shall I begin? Let me start with John's father. One morning, not long after that dreary barbecue, I was driving down Tokai Road when I noticed someone waiting by himself at a bus stop. It was the elder Coetzee. I was in a hurry, but it would have been too rude to simply drive past, so I stopped and offered him a ride.

He asked how Chrissie was getting on. I said she was missing her father, who was away from home much of the time. I asked about John and the concreting. He gave some vague answer.

Neither of us was really in the mood for talk, but I forced myself. If he didn't mind my asking, I asked, how long was it since his wife pa.s.sed away? He told me. Of his life with her, whether it had been happy or not, whether he missed her, he volunteered nothing.

'And is John your only child?' I asked.

'No, no, he has a brother, a younger brother.' He seemed surprised I did not know.

'That's curious,' I said, 'because John has the air of an only child.' Which I meant critically. I meant that he was preoccupied with himself, did not seem to make allowances for people around him.

He gave no answer did not inquire, for instance, what air it was that an only child might have.

I asked about his second son, about where he lived. In England, replied Mr C. He had quit South Africa years ago and never come back. 'You must miss him,' I said. He shrugged. That was his characteristic response: the wordless shrug.

I must tell you, from the very first I found something unbearably sorrowful about this man. Sitting next to me in the car in his dark business suit, giving off a smell of cheap deodorant, he may have seemed the personification of stiff rect.i.tude, but if he had suddenly burst into tears I would not have been surprised, not in the slightest. All alone save for that cold fish his elder son, trudging off each morning to what sounded like a soul-destroying job, coming back at night to a silent house I felt more than a little pity for him.

'Well, one misses so much,' he said at last, when I thought he was not going to answer at all. He spoke in a whisper, gazing straight ahead.

I dropped him in Wynberg near the train station. 'Thanks for the lift, Julia,' he said, 'very kind of you.'

It was the first time he had actually used my name. I could have replied, See you soon See you soon. I could have replied, You and John must come over for a bite You and John must come over for a bite. But I didn't. I just gave a wave and drove off.

How mean! I berated myself. I berated myself. How hard-hearted! How hard-hearted! Why was I so hard on him, on both of them? Why was I so hard on him, on both of them?

And indeed, why was I, why am I, so critical of John? At least he was looking after his father. At least, if something went wrong, his father would have a shoulder to lean on. That was more than could be said for me. My father you are probably not interested, why should you be?, but let me tell you anyway my father was at that very moment in a private sanatorium outside Port Elizabeth. His clothes were locked away, he had nothing to wear, day or night, but pyjamas and a dressing gown and slippers. And he was dosed to the gills with tranquillizers. Why so? Simply for the convenience of the nursing staff, to keep him tractable. Because when he neglected to take his pills he became agitated and started to shout.

[Silence.]

Did John love his father, do you think?

Boys love their mothers, not their fathers. Don't you know your Freud? Boys hate their fathers and want to supplant them in their mothers' affections. No, of course John did not love his father, he did not love anybody, he was not built for love. But he did feel guilty about his father. He felt guilty and therefore behaved dutifully. With certain lapses.

I was telling you about my own father. My father was born in 1905, so at the time we are talking about he was getting on for seventy, and his mind was going. He had forgotten who he was, forgotten the rudimentary English he picked up when he came to South Africa. To the nurses he spoke sometimes German, sometimes Magyar, of which they understood not a word. He was convinced he was in Madagascar, in a prison camp. The n.a.z.is had taken over Madagascar, he thought, and turned it into a Strafkolonie Strafkolonie for Jews. Nor did he remember who I was. On one of my visits he mistook me for his sister Trudi, my aunt, whom I had never met but who looked a bit like me. He wanted me to go to the prison commandant and plead on his behalf. for Jews. Nor did he remember who I was. On one of my visits he mistook me for his sister Trudi, my aunt, whom I had never met but who looked a bit like me. He wanted me to go to the prison commandant and plead on his behalf. 'Ich bin der Erstgeborene,' 'Ich bin der Erstgeborene,' he kept saying: I am the first-born. If he kept saying: I am the first-born. If der Erstgeborene der Erstgeborene was not going to be allowed to work (my father was a jeweller and diamond-cutter by trade), how would his family survive? was not going to be allowed to work (my father was a jeweller and diamond-cutter by trade), how would his family survive?

That's why I am here. That's why I am a therapist. Because of what I saw in that sanatorium. To save people from being treated as my father was treated there.

The money that kept my father in the sanatorium was supplied by my brother, his son. My brother was the one who religiously visited every week, even though my father recognized him only intermittently. In the sole sense that matters, my brother had taken on the burden of his care. In the sole sense that matters, I had abandoned him. And I was his favourite I, his beloved Julischka, so pretty, so clever, so affectionate!

Do you know what I hope for, above all else? I hope that in the afterlife we will get a chance, each of us, to say our sorries to the people we have wronged. I will have plenty of sorries to say, believe you me.

Enough of fathers. Let me get back to the story of Julia and her adulterous dealings, the story you have travelled so far to hear.

One day my husband announced that he would be going to Hong Kong for discussions with the firm's overseas partners.

'How long will you be away?' I asked.

'A week,' he replied. 'Maybe a day or two longer if the discussions go well.'

I thought no more of it until, shortly before he was due to leave, I got a phone call from the wife of one of his colleagues: was I packing an evening dress for the Hong Kong trip? It's just Mark who is going to Hong Kong, I replied, I am not accompanying him. Oh, she said, I thought all the wives were invited.

When Mark came home I raised the subject. 'June just phoned,' I said. 'She says she is going with Alistair to Hong Kong. She says all the wives are invited.'

'Wives are invited but the firm isn't paying for them,' Mark said. 'Do you really want to come all the way to Hong Kong to sit in a hotel with a bunch of wives from the firm, b.i.t.c.hing about the weather? Hong Kong is like a steambath at this time of year. And what will you do with Chrissie? Do you want to take Chrissie along too?'

'I have no desire whatsoever to go to Hong Kong and sit in a hotel with a screaming child,' I said. 'I just want to know what's what. So that I don't have to be humiliated when your friends phone.'