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By Root 588 0

from the way he walked. He was not at ease in his body. He moved as though his body were a horse that he was riding, a horse that did not like its rider and was resisting. Only in South Africa did I meet men like that, stiff, intractable, unteachable. Why did they ever come to Africa, I wondered – to Africa, the birthplace of dance? They would have been better off staying in Holland, sitting in their counting-houses behind their dykes counting money with cold fingers.

I taught my class as I was paid to do, then when the hour was over left the building at once by the back exit. I did not want to speak to Mr Coetzee. I hoped he would not return.

Yet the next evening there he was again among the students, doggedly following instructions, performing steps for which he had no feel. I could see he was not popular with the other students. They tried to avoid him as a partner. As for me, his presence in the room took away all my pleasure. I tried to ignore him, but he would not be ignored, watching me, devouring my life.

At the end of the class I called to him to stay behind. 'Please stop this,' I said to him. He stared back at me without protest, mute. I could smell the cold sweat on his body. I felt an urge to strike him, lash him across the face. 'Stop this!' I said. 'Stop following me. I do not want to see you here again. And stop looking at me like that. Stop forcing me to humiliate you.'

There was more I could have said, but I was afraid I would lose control and start shouting.

Afterwards I spoke to the man who owned the studio, his name was Mr Anderson. There is a student in my class who is spoiling it for the other students, I said – please give him his money back and tell him to leave. But Mr Anderson would not. If there is a student disrupting your class it is up to you to put a stop to it, he said. This man is not doing anything wrong, I said, he is simply a bad presence. You cannot eject a student because he has a bad presence, said Mr Anderson. Find another solution.

After the next class I called him back. There was nowhere private to go, I had to speak to him in the corridor with people passing all the time. 'This is my work, you are disrupting my work,' I said. 'Go away from here. Leave me alone.'

He did not answer, but reached out a hand and touched my cheek. That was the one and only time he ever touched me. The anger inside me boiled over. I knocked his hand aside. 'This is not a love-game!' I hissed. 'Don't you see I detest you? Leave me alone and leave my child alone too or I will report you to the school!'

It was true: if he had not been filling my daughter's head with dangerous nonsense I would never have summoned him to our flat, and his miserable pursuit of me would never have begun. What was a grown man doing in a girls' school anyway, Saint Bonaventure, that was supposed to be a nuns' school, only there were no nuns?

And it was true too that I detested him. I was not afraid to say so. He forced me to detest him.

When I pronounced that word, detest, he just stared back at me in bewilderment, as if he could not believe his ears – that the woman to whom he was offering himself could refuse him. It gave me no pleasure to see such bewilderment, such helplessness. I did not even like to see him on the dance floor. It was as if he was naked: a man dancing naked, who did not know how to dance. I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to beat him. I wanted to cry.

[Silence.]

This is not the story you wanted to hear, is it? You wanted a different kind of story for your book. You wanted to hear of the romance between your hero and the beautiful foreign ballerina. Well, I am not giving you romance, I am giving you the truth. Maybe too much truth. Maybe so much truth that there will be no place for it in your book. I don't know. I don't care.

Go on. It is not a very dignified picture of Coetzee that emerges from your story, I won't deny that, but I will change nothing, I promise.

Not dignified, you say. Well, that is what you risk when you fall in love.