Summary
Patricia
All night she dreamed of earthmovers at the Durban house, and all of them were in it. She is thankful the bloodwoods are still there so Rachel is still there, safe on the hill.
She has been listening to the various sounds outside her room this morning. She hears when Beauty finally entered the house, and she calls to her. She can tell Beauty is ready to check on Richard, and for a second thinks that the two of them could stop checking on him and drive away to Durban and leave him here.
Patricia asks Beauty if she could tell Bheki to take Rachel out and if Beauty could go with him and make sure everything is okay. They can put the coffin in the blue trunk. She wants Rachel buried where her parents are—St. Thomas’s Church, where she was also married and christened.
When Patricia is in the kitchen later that morning, she is struck by how poor it looks. She always accepted everything for what it was, always thinking simplicity meant honesty. The house was unashamedly itself, just like her father. She thinks of her time in the house with Richard after Rachel, failing test after test, thinking that she once had grace so she would always have grace and not knowing that was simply untrue. She wonders if her father’s love ruined her. It surprises her to think that Beauty never said anything all these years, yet takes care of Richard instead of killing him as Looksmart would have done.
Bheki
Under the bloodwoods, Bheki sees one of the dogs’ graves has been dug up. He is able to get Rachel’s coffin up, and he is pleased to see it is intact.
Beauty is with him. He knows she has always loved him, and he has enjoyed her love. He never felt the same way towards her, but he likes her in the world with him. He does not have the heart yet to tell her he is not going to stay in Durban with them. Looksmart promised him a job and he can get care for his son; plus, Looksmart said it was time black people started helping each other because the time for getting help from the whites was over. Beauty will be devastated, but over time he has come to think of her and Madam as the same, and he would like his feelings for both of them to be finished.
Bheki and Beauty place the coffin in the trunk as Madam watches from afar. It seems like the arrival of the dead child has made it clear that these people are leaving this place for good.
Patricia
Patricia receives a phone call from Mrs. Bell from the school, a woman who had been John Ford’s secretary. She says Ford has had an accident, and when Patricia asks if he was murdered, Mrs. Bell says it looks like he took his own life. She says the police would like Patricia to come over, as there was a note.
Bheki silently drives her over. She feels as if she is responsible for this event—her crime with all these men is a “lack of imagination” (221). Looksmart has given her a gaze to look at herself with, and it is one she will use now until the end of her days.
At John’s house, his familiar smell lingers. She calls out, and a pretty young officer appears. Mrs. Bell is also there. That woman knew of her affair with John, but Patricia rarely thought of her. When the officer says it appears John took his own life, Patricia is surprised at first but then chides herself that she perhaps never really knew him. She replies that he seemed well yesterday, and Mrs. Bell speaks up, asking if she knew. It turns out, an almost-giddy Mrs. Bell says, that John had terminal cancer that recently spread to his brain. Patricia is shocked and says she did not know. The officer shows her the note that asks Janet (Mrs. Bell) not to disturb Patricia with news of this event. When the officer asks about their relationship, she says they were old friends, a comment which Mrs. Bell seems to smirk at.
The officer asks if Patricia would like to see the body, and she surprises both of the other women by saying yes. She wants to know how to feel about him. She passes through the house, seeing watercolors he painted of places they went, and thinking of how maybe she will have to delay their departure to Durban and how Looksmart could keep building but she and Richard could stay there as the development rose up around them.
When she sees John, it is a horrendous scene. She wonders how he could have done this violence to himself. She is too far away from grief at the moment, feeling simply stunned. She wonders if he still believed in God and if he knew he was going to do this when he saw her yesterday.
She does know she does not want to see John’s children, who always pretended to care about their father but did not. She says goodbye to John, and then tells Mrs. Bell she will be leaving for Durban tomorrow and will not be able to return for the funeral.
John
In John’s letter to Patricia, he acknowledges how she is leaving for Durban soon, how the two of them are near the end of their days. He thanks her for loving him and says he never regretted their love and he hopes she will forgive his shortcomings and remember the happy times.
Patricia
Bheki is loading the suitcases and Richard is wandering around the roses as they prepare to depart. Patricia thinks of John’s letter being the closest to a love letter from anyone, but she experienced such conflicting emotions when she read it. He obviously knew he was dying from cancer and was going to kill himself, and that she would read the letter in Durban. But it is clear the truth eluded him—both of them. He did not say he loved her, and it all seemed more like wishful thinking than anything else.
Beauty stands behind Patricia in her wheelchair, the house at their back. It is a place that will forget them not long after they leave. Patricia looks at Beauty and comments that it has been all these years and she did not speak one word; she asks why she did not leave. Beauty explains this is where she lives; this is her job. Patricia asks if she was angry and Beauty seems confused by this, wondering why Patricia would ask. Beauty says she was young, and when they spoke of Grace it was as someone who was lost.
Patricia presses her for the truth, and Beauty asks why in a genuine tone. Finally, she says that it was not Grace’s first time with UBaas, that he paid her money. She did not love Looksmart as he loved her. This makes Patricia sad; Looksmart has this gap in him that he does not even know he has. Beauty then says Grace was pregnant with UBaas’s child, and when she told him he was angry she would not get rid of it. This was the day he let the dog loose on her.
Patricia inquires why Beauty did not say this to Looksmart yesterday. She replies that he is like a boy in his heart and cannot hear this. Patricia wonders that Looksmart has his story, so why should she believe Beauty? Beauty responds that Mesis must find the truth for herself.
They are quiet. Patricia states that Richard killed his own child. Beauty says for him, there was no child. Patricia is silent, thinking of how Richard must have felt more for the child than he could have admitted. She says aloud to Beauty that when they get to Durban she will put Richard into a home.
Bheki
He is uninterested in what the Madam and Beauty are saying; they are always talking. He agrees to put the dog down for the Madam.
Richard
He hears the shot and sees the black man carrying the dog. He is curious, but then he turns back to the roses.
Patricia
Patricia is not sure what to do with her keys, so she places them in the cubbyhole with her papers. She sees the bloodwoods, but there are no other witnesses to their departure. Bheki comments that the rain is finished, a statement that sounds like it refers to something grander, like a war or a plague.
They are driving out of the property, past the stables. The sky is a brilliant blue. Everyone in the car is quiet and pensive. As they reach the marsh they see Looksmart’s car coming toward them. He rolls his window down and seems a little embarrassed, as if he'd hoped he would arrive when they were gone. All Patricia and Looksmart can make of each other are silhouettes. She tells Bheki that he’ll want the keys, which Bheki lobs to Looksmart. Neither of them speaks, keeping their peace and raising their hands as the car drives on.
Analysis
The end of the novel is all denouement, all coming to terms with and potentially resolving some of the conflicts brought to the fore earlier. Looksmart is able to leave with a modicum of peace; after her forced revelations Beauty is hoping to sink back into inconspicuousness and dream of her own home; Bheki is tearing himself away from his position as a servant of whites to put his family first and be around other black people while working for Looksmart; Patricia is reconciled to what she has heard over the past day and is ready to leave Dwaleni behind.
One of the best ways to think about this final section is through the ubiquitous symbolic imagery of burial and disinterment. There is the burial of the dogs, yes, but primarily it is Rachel’s interment and unearthing that activates meaning. When Rachel was born dead and then buried, it closed off whatever relationship Patricia and Richard had. It traumatized Patricia, who rarely was able to let go of her pain. When Looksmart was in her life she felt a vestige of happiness, but his departure was another form of death. Now that they are leaving Dwaleni she has Rachel’s body dug up because she cannot bear to leave it in the earth—earth that is no longer hers.
Critic Mathilde Rogez explores the way Patricia and Richard use imprecise language to discuss Rachel (when they even do), noting that they use “the third-person or non-person pronoun. This omission at the start of the play [Rogez is talking about the theatrical version, Dream of the Dog, but this analysis still applies] is all the more ambiguous as the audience cannot know who they are talking about. It is only later that Patricia mentions Rachel’s name, incidentally when speaking to Beauty; by contrast, the end of her conversation with Richard points to hidden meanings and words merely hinting at their signified, a situation which repeated again towards the end of the play when Patricia has to force Richard to say Rachel’s name, and then Grace’s, instead of a shameful, vague ‘it’.”
But we are not just talking about Rachel’s literal body that it being unearthed: we are also talking about the motif of secrets, lies, forgotten or repressed memories, and half-truths, and how due to Looksmart’s arrival and subsequent revelations from both him and Beauty, there is an “unburying,” an “excavation,” of truth. This process is fitful and painful, and not everything is fully “disinterred” by everyone, but there is a sense that, by the end of the novel, what was once buried deep in the dark is now out in the open for people to see.
This claim is further supported by the weather imagery, for while the mist hangs over the house and the land for the entire novel, by the end Patricia notes that “the sun is shining through the cloud” (240), the “emerging sky is so blue that it looks almost mauve” (241), and there is an energetic little bird flitting outside of Patricia’s car window. These are images of renewal, life, and promise.
