from a prison cell, closing her body, making him impotent” (Gordimer 1998: 51). This lack of physical intimacy reflects their divergent psycho-spiritual relationship with the abject, with the ‘unspeakable’. Just as they are unable to articulate to each other their hidden fears, so they are now unable to express themselves intimately. The couple are also unable to overcome their hidden resentment of their son. As a solution, there arises the unshared thought that “[t]here is a need to re-conceive, re-gestate the son” (63). With the thought focalised through Harald’s consciousness, the reader is led to share his percep-tion: for him, to re-gestate the son means to find “a new relationship with his God, the God of the suffering he could not have had access to, before” (279). He is shocked to hear, therefore, that Claudia has harboured an apparently similar, yet utterly dissimilar, desire. Hers is a literalist understanding of re-gestation: “Perhaps we should try for a child. [. . .] I’m not menopausal yet” (279). The sexual trope of re-gestating the son is a pithy concentration of Harald’s and Clau-dia’s joint, yet separate, spiritual journeying through the liminality of extreme emotional uphea-val. While Harald is taming his pain through internal dialogue (a more recognisably ‘spiritual’ path), Claudia is trying to take hold of her pain in a different way: through moments of simple presencing, whether through touch or smell or sex, or by literally trying to conceive another child. These are her private ways of getting a grip on loss and grief. Harald interprets Claudia’s simple statement (“Perhaps we should try for a child”) as an equivalent – albeit, expressed in a different language – of his ownpainful search for solutions. “That she should allowherself to turn to this illusion, a doctor, forty-seven years old [. . .] Hewas tumescent with her pain, hemade love to her anyway, for the impossibility” (279). This moment is a turning point in the couple’s spiritual-cum-sexual journey. As Harald and Claudia open up to the other’s pain, intimacy returns: “It was the first time since the messenger entered the townhouse, and it was unlike any love-making they had experienced in their life together, a ritual neither believed in, performed in bereaved passion” (279). Spirituality is trans-lated into sexuality, and sexuality is allowed to reveal itself as another form of the spiritual: an instance of secular spirituality. Through a gradual self-emptying and self-exceeding, Harald and Claudia, in private ritual, move out of the liminal world of ‘anti-structure’. This is Turner’s stage of re-aggregation (1974: 255), the third stage of any rite of passage, when the initiands are re-integrated in society as changed people.After their son’s trial formurder is over, “[t]herewas a decompression, a collapse of the nerves, a deep breath expelled [. . .] but this coming full circle, as it were, expel-ling the breath of relief ” (274). They emerge out of regression quite suddenly and unexpectedly: “There was no conception for a forty-seven year old. But there is a child” (291). The child in question is the product of the bisexual triangle: Duncan-Natalie-Carl, a childwhose father is uncertain, but whomDuncan from his prison cell wishes to have taken up in the larger family. By juxtaposing the desire for another child – the desire to “re-conceive, re-gestate the son” (63; 279) – with the fact of a surprise ‘grandchild’, Gordimer strongly suggests that, after having gone through the purgatory of self-examination and forgiveness, sexuality can be sublimated; the need to give affection can be opened up to embrace radical difference. Harald and Claudia are now prepared to support Nata-lie’s child, whether their own son or Carl is the father, for “children belong, never mind any doubts about their origin, in the family” (290). Such sentiments are handed to them by Khulu, Duncan’s African friend. By reaching out to the child, the couple succeed in sublimating their primary sexuality, a climactic moment on their spiritual journey. At the same time, they manage to go beyond their unquestioned prejudices regarding bisexual relationships, thus healing their relationship with their own son.

DOI link for from a prison cell, closing her body, making him impotent” (Gordimer 1998: 51). This lack of physical intimacy reflects their divergent psycho-spiritual relationship with the abject, with the ‘unspeakable’. Just as they are unable to articulate to each other their hidden fears, so they are now unable to express themselves intimately. The couple are also unable to overcome their hidden resentment of their son. As a solution, there arises the unshared thought that “[t]here is a need to re-conceive, re-gestate the son” (63). With the thought focalised through Harald’s consciousness, the reader is led to share his percep-tion: for him, to re-gestate the son means to find “a new relationship with his God, the God of the suffering he could not have had access to, before” (279). He is shocked to hear, therefore, that Claudia has harboured an apparently similar, yet utterly dissimilar, desire. Hers is a literalist understanding of re-gestation: “Perhaps we should try for a child. [. . .] I’m not menopausal yet” (279). The sexual trope of re-gestating the son is a pithy concentration of Harald’s and Clau-dia’s joint, yet separate, spiritual journeying through the liminality of extreme emotional uphea-val. While Harald is taming his pain through internal dialogue (a more recognisably ‘spiritual’ path), Claudia is trying to take hold of her pain in a different way: through moments of simple presencing, whether through touch or smell or sex, or by literally trying to conceive another child. These are her private ways of getting a grip on loss and grief. Harald interprets Claudia’s simple statement (“Perhaps we should try for a child”) as an equivalent – albeit, expressed in a different language – of his ownpainful search for solutions. “That she should allowherself to turn to this illusion, a doctor, forty-seven years old [. . .] Hewas tumescent with her pain, hemade love to her anyway, for the impossibility” (279). This moment is a turning point in the couple’s spiritual-cum-sexual journey. As Harald and Claudia open up to the other’s pain, intimacy returns: “It was the first time since the messenger entered the townhouse, and it was unlike any love-making they had experienced in their life together, a ritual neither believed in, performed in bereaved passion” (279). Spirituality is trans-lated into sexuality, and sexuality is allowed to reveal itself as another form of the spiritual: an instance of secular spirituality. Through a gradual self-emptying and self-exceeding, Harald and Claudia, in private ritual, move out of the liminal world of ‘anti-structure’. This is Turner’s stage of re-aggregation (1974: 255), the third stage of any rite of passage, when the initiands are re-integrated in society as changed people.After their son’s trial formurder is over, “[t]herewas a decompression, a collapse of the nerves, a deep breath expelled [. . .] but this coming full circle, as it were, expel-ling the breath of relief ” (274). They emerge out of regression quite suddenly and unexpectedly: “There was no conception for a forty-seven year old. But there is a child” (291). The child in question is the product of the bisexual triangle: Duncan-Natalie-Carl, a childwhose father is uncertain, but whomDuncan from his prison cell wishes to have taken up in the larger family. By juxtaposing the desire for another child – the desire to “re-conceive, re-gestate the son” (63; 279) – with the fact of a surprise ‘grandchild’, Gordimer strongly suggests that, after having gone through the purgatory of self-examination and forgiveness, sexuality can be sublimated; the need to give affection can be opened up to embrace radical difference. Harald and Claudia are now prepared to support Nata-lie’s child, whether their own son or Carl is the father, for “children belong, never mind any doubts about their origin, in the family” (290). Such sentiments are handed to them by Khulu, Duncan’s African friend. By reaching out to the child, the couple succeed in sublimating their primary sexuality, a climactic moment on their spiritual journey. At the same time, they manage to go beyond their unquestioned prejudices regarding bisexual relationships, thus healing their relationship with their own son.

from a prison cell, closing her body, making him impotent” (Gordimer 1998: 51). This lack of physical intimacy reflects their divergent psycho-spiritual relationship with the abject, with the ‘unspeakable’. Just as they are unable to articulate to each other their hidden fears, so they are now unable to express themselves intimately. The couple are also unable to overcome their hidden resentment of their son. As a solution, there arises the unshared thought that “[t]here is a need to re-conceive, re-gestate the son” (63). With the thought focalised through Harald’s consciousness, the reader is led to share his percep-tion: for him, to re-gestate the son means to find “a new relationship with his God, the God of the suffering he could not have had access to, before” (279). He is shocked to hear, therefore, that Claudia has harboured an apparently similar, yet utterly dissimilar, desire. Hers is a literalist understanding of re-gestation: “Perhaps we should try for a child. [. . .] I’m not menopausal yet” (279). The sexual trope of re-gestating the son is a pithy concentration of Harald’s and Clau-dia’s joint, yet separate, spiritual journeying through the liminality of extreme emotional uphea-val. While Harald is taming his pain through internal dialogue (a more recognisably ‘spiritual’ path), Claudia is trying to take hold of her pain in a different way: through moments of simple presencing, whether through touch or smell or sex, or by literally trying to conceive another child. These are her private ways of getting a grip on loss and grief. Harald interprets Claudia’s simple statement (“Perhaps we should try for a child”) as an equivalent – albeit, expressed in a different language – of his ownpainful search for solutions. “That she should allowherself to turn to this illusion, a doctor, forty-seven years old [. . .] Hewas tumescent with her pain, hemade love to her anyway, for the impossibility” (279). This moment is a turning point in the couple’s spiritual-cum-sexual journey. As Harald and Claudia open up to the other’s pain, intimacy returns: “It was the first time since the messenger entered the townhouse, and it was unlike any love-making they had experienced in their life together, a ritual neither believed in, performed in bereaved passion” (279). Spirituality is trans-lated into sexuality, and sexuality is allowed to reveal itself as another form of the spiritual: an instance of secular spirituality. Through a gradual self-emptying and self-exceeding, Harald and Claudia, in private ritual, move out of the liminal world of ‘anti-structure’. This is Turner’s stage of re-aggregation (1974: 255), the third stage of any rite of passage, when the initiands are re-integrated in society as changed people.After their son’s trial formurder is over, “[t]herewas a decompression, a collapse of the nerves, a deep breath expelled [. . .] but this coming full circle, as it were, expel-ling the breath of relief ” (274). They emerge out of regression quite suddenly and unexpectedly: “There was no conception for a forty-seven year old. But there is a child” (291). The child in question is the product of the bisexual triangle: Duncan-Natalie-Carl, a childwhose father is uncertain, but whomDuncan from his prison cell wishes to have taken up in the larger family. By juxtaposing the desire for another child – the desire to “re-conceive, re-gestate the son” (63; 279) – with the fact of a surprise ‘grandchild’, Gordimer strongly suggests that, after having gone through the purgatory of self-examination and forgiveness, sexuality can be sublimated; the need to give affection can be opened up to embrace radical difference. Harald and Claudia are now prepared to support Nata-lie’s child, whether their own son or Carl is the father, for “children belong, never mind any doubts about their origin, in the family” (290). Such sentiments are handed to them by Khulu, Duncan’s African friend. By reaching out to the child, the couple succeed in sublimating their primary sexuality, a climactic moment on their spiritual journey. At the same time, they manage to go beyond their unquestioned prejudices regarding bisexual relationships, thus healing their relationship with their own son.