Disgrace (7 page)

They are called back in. The atmosphere in the room is not good: sour, it seems to him.

‘So,' says Mathabane, ‘to resume: Professor Lurie, you say you accept the truth of the charges brought against you?'

‘I accept whatever Ms Isaacs alleges.'

‘Dr Rassool, you have something you wish to say?'

‘Yes. I want to register an objection to these responses of Professor Lurie's, which I regard as fundamentally evasive. Professor Lurie says he accepts the charges. Yet when we try to pin him down on what it is that he actually accepts, all we get is subtle mockery. To me that suggests that he accepts the charges only in name. In a case with overtones like this one, the wider community is entitled –'

He cannot let that go. ‘There are no overtones in this case,' he snaps back.

‘The wider community is entitled to know', she continues, raising her voice with practised ease, riding over him, ‘what it is specifically that Professor Lurie acknowledges and therefore what it is that he is being censured for.'

Mathabane: ‘If he is censured.'

‘If he is censured. We fail to perform our duty if we are not crystal clear in our minds, and if we do not make it crystal clear in our recommendations, what Professor Lurie is being censured for.'

‘In our own minds I believe we are crystal clear, Dr Rassool. The question is whether Professor Lurie is crystal clear in his mind.'

‘Exactly. You have expressed exactly what I wanted to say.'

It would be wiser to shut up, but he does not. ‘What goes on in my mind is my business, not yours, Farodia,' he says. ‘Frankly, what you want from me is not a response but a confession. Well, I make no confession. I put forward a plea, as is my right. Guilty as charged. That is my plea. That is as far as I am prepared to go.'

‘Mr Chair, I must protest. The issue goes beyond mere technicalities. Professor Lurie pleads guilty, but I ask myself, does he accept his guilt or is he simply going through the motions in the hope that the case will be buried under paper and forgotten? If he is simply going through the motions, I urge that we impose the severest penalty.'

‘Let me remind you again, Dr Rassool,' says Mathabane, ‘it is not up to us to impose penalties.'

‘Then we should recommend the severest penalty. That Professor Lurie be dismissed with immediate effect and forfeit all benefits and privileges.'

‘David?' The voice comes from Desmond Swarts, who has not spoken hitherto. ‘David, are you sure you are handling the situation in the best way?' Swarts turns to the chair. ‘Mr Chair, as I said while Professor Lurie was out of the room, I do believe that as members of a university community we ought not to proceed against a colleague in a coldly formalistic way. David, are you sure you don't want a postponement to give yourself time to reflect and perhaps consult?'

‘Why? What do I need to reflect on?'

‘On the gravity of your situation, which I am not sure you appreciate. To be blunt, you stand to lose your job. That's no joke in these days.'

‘Then what do you advise me to do? Remove what Dr Rassool calls the subtle mockery from my tone? Shed tears of contrition? What will be enough to save me?'

‘You may find this hard to believe, David, but we around this table are not your enemies. We have our weak moments, all of us, we are only human. Your case is not unique. We would like to find a way for you to continue with your career.'

Easily Hakim joins in. ‘We would like to help you, David, to find a way out of what must be a nightmare.'

They are his friends. They want to save him from his weakness, to wake him from his nightmare. They do not want to see him begging in the streets. They want him back in the classroom.

‘In this chorus of goodwill,' he says, ‘I hear no female voice.'

There is silence.

‘Very well,' he says, ‘let me confess. The story begins one evening, I forget the date, but not long past. I was walking through the old college gardens and so, it happened, was the young woman in question, Ms Isaacs. Our paths crossed. Words passed between us, and at that moment something happened which, not being a poet, I will not try to describe. Suffice it to say that Eros entered. After that I was not the same.'

‘You were not the same as what?' asks the businesswoman cautiously.

‘I was not myself. I was no longer a fifty-year-old divorcé at a loose end. I became a servant of Eros.'

‘Is this a defence you are offering us? Ungovernable impulse?'

‘It is not a defence. You want a confession, I give you a confession. As for the impulse, it was far from ungovernable. I have denied similar impulses many times in the past, I am ashamed to say.'

‘Don't you think', says Swarts, ‘that by its nature academic life must call for certain sacrifices? That for the good of the whole we have to deny ourselves certain gratifications?'

‘You have in mind a ban on intimacy across the generations?'

‘No, not necessarily. But as teachers we occupy positions of power. Perhaps a ban on mixing power relations with sexual relations. Which, I sense, is what was going on in this case. Or extreme caution.'

Farodia Rassool intervenes. ‘We are again going round in circles, Mr Chair. Yes, he says, he is guilty; but when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing to, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part. That is why I say it is futile to go on debating with Professor Lurie. We must take his plea at face value and recommend accordingly.'

Abuse
: he was waiting for the word. Spoken in a voice quivering with righteousness. What does she see, when she looks at him, that keeps her at such a pitch of anger? A shark among the helpless little fishies? Or does she have another vision: of a great thick-boned male bearing down on a girl-child, a huge hand stifling her cries? How absurd! Then he remembers: they were gathered here yesterday in this same room, and she was before them, Melanie, who barely comes to his shoulder. Unequal: how can he deny that?

‘I tend to agree with Dr Rassool,' says the businesswoman. ‘Unless there is something that Professor Lurie wants to add, I think we should proceed to a decision.'

‘Before we do that, Mr Chair,' says Swarts, ‘I would like to plead with Professor Lurie one last time. Is there any form of statement he would be prepared to subscribe to?'

‘Why? Why is it so important that I subscribe to a statement?'

‘Because it would help to cool down what has become a very heated situation. Ideally we would all have preferred to resolve this case out of the glare of the media. But that has not been possible. It has received a lot of attention, it has acquired overtones that are beyond our control. All eyes are on the university to see how we handle it. I get the impression, listening to you, David, that you believe you are being treated unfairly. That is quite mistaken. We on this committee see ourselves as trying to work out a compromise which will allow you to keep your job. That is why I ask whether there is not a form of public statement that you could live with and that would allow us to recommend something less than the most severe sanction, namely, dismissal with censure.'

‘You mean, will I humble myself and ask for clemency?'

Swarts sighs. ‘David, it doesn't help to sneer at our efforts. At least accept an adjournment, so that you can think your position over.'

‘What do you want the statement to contain?'

‘An admission that you were wrong.'

‘I have admitted that. Freely. I am guilty of the charges brought against me.'

‘Don't play games with us, David. There is a difference between pleading guilty to a charge and admitting you were wrong, and you know that.'

‘And that will satisfy you: an admission I was wrong?'

‘No,' says Farodia Rassool. ‘That would be back to front.
First
Professor Lurie must make his statement.
Then
we can decide whether to accept it in mitigation. We don't negotiate first on what should be in his statement. The statement should come from him, in his own words. Then we can see if it comes from his heart.'

‘And you trust yourself to divine that, from the words I use – to divine whether it comes from my heart?'

‘We will see what attitude you express. We will see whether you express contrition.'

‘Very well. I took advantage of my position vis-à-vis Ms Isaacs. It was wrong, and I regret it. Is that good enough for you?'

‘The question is not whether it is good enough for me, Professor Lurie, the question is whether it is good enough for
you.
Does it reflect your sincere 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.'

‘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.

‘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.

‘What about?'

A tape recorder is thrust toward him. He pushes it away.

‘About how it was,' says the girl.

‘How what was?'

The camera flashes again.

‘You know, the hearing.'

‘I can't comment on that.'

‘OK, so what can you comment on?'

‘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.

‘Are you sorry?' says the girl. The recorder is thrust closer. ‘Do you regret what you did?'

‘No,' he says. ‘I was enriched by the experience.'

The smile remains on the girl's face. ‘So would you do it again?'

‘I don't think I will have another chance.'

‘But if you had a chance?'

‘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.

‘He was what by the experience?' he hears someone ask
sotto voce
.

‘He was enriched.'

There is a titter.

‘Ask him if he apologized,' someone calls to the girl.

‘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?

‘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.

‘Sparring verbally with members of WAR after the hearing, Lurie (53) said he had found his experiences with women students “enriching”.

‘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 measures, he says, on condition that you issue a statement in your own person which will be satisfactory from our point of view as well as yours.'

‘Manas, we have been over that ground. I – '

‘Wait. Hear me out. I have a draft statement before me which would satisfy our requirements. It is quite short. May I read it to you?'

‘Read it.'

Mathabane reads: ‘I acknowledge without reservation serious abuses of the human rights of the complainant, as well as abuse of the authority delegated to me by the University. I sincerely apologize to both parties and accept whatever appropriate penalty may be imposed.'

‘“Whatever appropriate penalty”: what does that mean?'

‘My understanding is, you will not be dismissed. In all probability, you will be requested to take a leave of absence. Whether you eventually return to teaching duties will depend on yourself, and on the decision of your Dean and head of department.'