J. Coetzee - Foe

‘Having introduced you thus, I open your book and read from it to Friday. “This is the story of Mrs Veal, another humble person whom Mr Foe has made famous in the course of his writing,” I say. “Alas, we shall never meet Mrs Veal, for she has passed away; and as to her friend Mrs Barfield, she lives in Canterbury, a city some distance to the south of us on this island where we find ourselves, named Britain; I doubt we shall ever go there.”

‘Through all my chatter Friday labours away at the washing-board. I expect no sign that he has understood. It is enough to hope that if I make the air around him thick with words, memories will be reborn in him which died under Cruso’s rule, and with them the recognition that to live in silence is to live like the whales, great castles of flesh floating leagues apart one from another, or like the spiders, sitting each alone at the heart of his web, which to him is the entire world. Friday may have lost his tongue but he has not lost his ears — that is what I say to myself. Through his ears Friday may yet take in the wealth stored in stories and so learn that the world is.not, as the island seemed to teach him, a barren and a silent place (is that the secret meaning of the word story, do you think: a storing-place of memories?).

‘I watch his toes curl on the floorboards or the cobblestones and know that he craves the softness of earth under his feet. How I wish there were a garden I could take him to! Could he and I not visit your garden in Stoke Newington? We should be as quiet as ghosts. “Spade, Friday!” I should whisper, offering the spade to his hand; and then: “Dig!” — which is a word his master taught him — “Turn over the soil, pile up the weeds for burning. Feel the spade. Is it not a fine, sharp tool? It is an English spade, made in an English smithy.”

‘So, watching his hand grip the spade, watching his eyes, I seek the first sign that he comprehends what I am attempting: not to have the beds cleared (I am sure you have your own gardener), not even to save him from idleness, or for the sake of his health to bring him out of the dankness of his cellar, but to build a bridge of words over which, when one day it is grown sturdy enough, he may cross to the time before Cruso, the time before he lost his tongue, when he lived immersed in the prattle of words as unthinking as a fish in water; from where he may by steps return, as far as he is able, to the world of words in which you, Mr Foe, and I, and other people live.

‘Or I bring out your shears and show him their use. “Here in England,” I say, “it is our custom to grow hedges to mark the limits of our property. Doubtless that would not be possible in the forests of Africa. But here we grow hedges, and then cut them straight, so that our gardens shall be neatly marked out.” I lop at the hedge till it becomes clear to Friday what I am doing: not cutting a passage through your hedge, not cutting down your hedge, but cutting one side of it straight. “Now, Friday, take the shears,” I say: “Cut!”; and Friday takes the shears and cuts in a clean line, as I know he is capable of doing, for his digging is impeccable.

‘I tell myself I talk to Friday to educate him out of darkness and silence. But is that the truth? There are times when benevolence deserts me and I use words only as the shortest way to subject him to my will. At such times I understand why Cruso preferred not to disturb his muteness. I understand, that is to say, why a man will choose to be a slaveowner. Do you think less of me for this confession?’

’April 28th

‘My letter of the 25th is returned unopened. I pray there has been some simple mistake. I enclose the same herewith.’

’May 1st

‘I have visited Stoke Newington and found the bailiffs in occupation of your house. It is a cruel thing to say, but I almost laughed to learn this was the reason for your silence, you had not lost interest and turned your back on us. Yet now I must ask myself: Where shall I send my letters? Will you continue to write our story while you are in hiding? Will you still contribute to our keep? Are Friday and I the only personages you have settled in lodgings while you write their story, or are there many more of us dispersed about London — old campaigners from the wars in Italy, cast-off mistresses, penitent highwaymen, prosperous thieves? How will you live while you are in hiding? Have you a woman to cook your meals and wash your linen? Can your neighbours be trusted? Remember: the bailiffs have their spies everywhere. Be wary of public houses. If you are harried, come to Clock Lane.’

’May 8th

‘I must disclose I have twice been to your house in the past week in the hope of hearing tidings. Do not be annoyed. I have not revealed to Mrs Thrush who I am. I say only that I have messages for you, messages of the utmost importance. On my first visit Mrs Thrush plainly gave to know she did not believe me. But my earnestness has now won her over. She has accepted my letters, promising to keep them safe, which I take to be a manner of saying she will send them to you. Am I right? Do they reach you? She confides that she frets for your welfare and longs for the departure of the bailiffs.

‘The bailiffs have quartered themselves in your library. One sleeps on the couch, the other, it seems, in two armchairs drawn together. They send out to the King’s Arms for their meals. They are prepared to wait a month, two months, a year, they say, to serve their warrant. A month I can believe, but not a year they do not know how long a year can be. It was one of them, an odious fellow named Wilkes, who opened the door to me the second time. He fancies I carry messages between you and Mrs Thrush. He pinned me in the passageway before I left and told me of the Fleet, of how men have spent their lives there abandoned by their families, castaways in the very heart of the city. Who will save you, Mr Foe, if you are arrested and consigned to the Fleet? I thought you had a wife, but Mrs Thrush says you are widowed many years.

‘Your library reeks of pipesmoke. The door of the larger cabinet is broken and the glass not so much as swept up. Mrs Thrush says that Wilkes and his friend had a woman with them last night.

‘I came home to Clock Lane in low spirits. There are times when I feel my strength to be limitless, when I can bear you and your troubles on my back, and the bailiffs as well if need be, and Friday and Cruso and the island. But there are other times when a pall of weariness falls over me and I long to be borne away to a new life in a far-off city where I will never hear your name or Cruso’s again. Can you not press on with your writing, Mr Foe, so that Friday can speedily be returned to Africa and I liberated from this drab existence I lead? Hiding from the bailiffs is surely tedious, and writing a better way than most of passing the time. The memoir I wrote for you I wrote sitting on my bed with the paper on a tray on my knees, my heart fearful all the while that Friday would decamp from the cellar to which he had been consigned, or take a stroll and be lost in the mazes and warrens of Covent Garden. Yet I completed that memoir in three days. More is at stake in the history you write, I will admit, for it must not only tell the truth about us but please its readers too. Will you not bear it in mind, however, that my life is drearily suspended till your writing is done?’

‘The days pass and I have no word from you. A patch of dandelions — all we have for flowers in Clock Lane — is pushing up against the wall beneath my window. By noon the room is hot. I will stifle if summer comes and I am still confined. I long for the ease of walking abroad in my shift, as I did on the island.

‘The three guineas you sent are spent. Clothes for Friday were a heavy expense. The rent for this week is owed. I am ashamed to come downstairs and cook our poor supper of peas and salt.