Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 113the Isaacs’ household are outwardly unreserved, their excessiveness
highlight a discrepancy between the rigidly prescriptive codes that
govern the social act of apologizing and the character’s genuine feel-
ings of remorse. Intriguingly, the superlative spectacle of abasement
also appears to carry a faint tone of sexual playfulness. While deliv-
ering his apology, Lurie describes Isaacs as “fixing him with [... an]
intent look” (p. 167). He then “detects a trace of Melanie in him: a
shapeliness of the mouth and lips. On an impulse he reaches across
the desk, tries to shake the man’s hand, ends up by stroking the back
of it. Cool, hairless skin” (p. 176). These vaguely sensual descriptions
of Isaacs of course fit in with the overall pattern of lascivious impro-
priety with which we are now very familiar. Indeed, when the time
comes to apologize to Mrs Isaacs and her other daughter, Desiree,
Lurie describes feeling a “current of desire” leaping through him
(p. 173). Significantly, this impulse immediately follows another
redundant display of penitence, in which, with “careful ceremony
he gets to his knees and touches his forehead to the floor” (p. 173).
For Jane Poyner, the discrepancies we can observe between Lurie’s
thoughts and his actions illustrate “the very primitive nature of truth
and reconciliation [... ], in turn laying bare the limitations of public
notions of ‘truth’ and the compromises they produce.”^60 P o y n e r t h e n
concludes that “Coetzee is hesitant over the redemptive potential of
confession and absolution.”^61 The fact that Lurie does not permit
outward expression to all his impulses is clearly not to be regretted.
However, the contrast between what he feels and the actions he is
coerced into performing nonetheless presents a foreboding sign of
communicative failure and repression.
This feature of Lurie’s inner development therefore problematizes
a straightforward reading of the novel as a text with a didactic moral
“message.” This is because the protagonist’s transition is visibly pecu-
liar to his own temperament and circumstances and, furthermore,
cannot readily be absorbed into the prevailing sanitized frameworks
of moral redemption that are used by contemporary social bodies
such as the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. This quality of
the novel captures what Attridge has called Coetzee’s concern for
singularity in his work—an abiding demand for his readers to con-
nect with the characters in a way that encourages us to “refashion