J. Coetzee - Foe

‘In the darkest heart of the forest I halt. “Let us rest again,” I say. I take her cloak from her and spread it over the leaves. We sit. “Come to me,” I say, and put an arm around her. A light trembling runs through her body. It is the second time I have allowed her to touch me. “Close your eyes,” I say. It is so quiet that we can hear the brushing of our clothes, the grey stuff of hers against the black stuff of mine. Her head lies on my shoulder. In a sea of fallen leaves we sit, she and I, two substantial beings.

‘“I have brought you here to tell you of your parentage,” I commence. “I do not know who told you that your father was a brewer from Deptford who. fled to the Low Countries, but the story is false. Your father is a man named Daniel Foe. He is the man who set you to watching the house in Newington. Just as it was he who told you I am your mother, I will vouch he is the author of the story of the brewer. He maintains whole regiments in Flanders.,

‘She makes to speak, but I hush her.

‘“I know you will say it is not true,” I continue. “I know you will say you have never met this Daniel Foe. But ask yourself: by what agency did the news reach you that your true mother was one Susan Barton who lived at such and such a house in Stoke Newington?”

‘“My name is Susan Barton,” she whispers.

‘“That is small proof. You will find many Susan Bartons in this kingdom, if you are willing to hunt them down. I repeat: what you know of your parentage comes to you in the form of stories, and the stories have but a single source.,

‘“Who is my true mother then?” she says.

“‘You are father-born. You have no mother. The pain you feel is the pain of lack, not the pain of loss. What you hope to regain in my person you have in truth never had.,

‘“Father-born,” she says — “It is a word I have never heard before.” She shakes her head.

‘What do I mean by it, father-born? I wake in the grey of a London dawn with the word still faintly in my ears. The street is empty, I observe from the window. Is the girl gone forever? Have I expelled her, banished her, lost her at last in the forest? Will she sit by the oak tree till the falling leaves cover her, her and her basket, and nothing is left to meet the eye but a field of browns and golds?’

‘Dear Mr Foe,

‘Some days ago Friday discovered your robes (the robes in the wardrobe, that is) and your wigs. Are they the robes of a guild-master? I did not know there was a guild of authors.

‘The robes have set him dancing, which I had never seen him do before. In the mornings he dances in the kitchen, where the windows face east. If the sun is shining he does his dance in a patch of sunlight, holding out his arms and spinning in a circle, his eyes shut, hour after hour, never growing fatigued or dizzy. In the afternoon he removes himself to the drawingroom, where the window faces west, and does his dancing there.

‘In the grip of the dancing he is not himself. He is beyond human reach. I call his name and am ignored, I put out a hand and am brushed aside. All the while he dances he makes a humming noise in his throat, deeper than his usual voice; sometimes he seems to be singing.

‘For myself I do not care how much he sings and dances so long as he carries out his few duties. For I will not delve while he spins. Last night I decided I would take the robe away from him, to bring him to his senses. However, when I stole into his room he was awake, his hands already gripping the robe, which was spread over the bed, as though he read my thoughts. So I retreated.

‘Friday and his dancing: I may bemoan the tedium of life in your house, but there is never a lack of things to write of. It is as though animalcules of words lie dissolved in your ink-well, ready to be dipped up and flow from the pen and take form on the paper. F ram downstairs to upstairs, from house to island, from the girl to Friday: it seems necessary only to establish the poles, the here and the there, the now and the then after that the words of themselves do the journeying. I had not guessed it was so easy to be an author.

‘You will find the house very bare on your return. First the bailiffs plundered it (I cannot use a kinder term), and now I too have been taking odds and ends (I keep an inventory, you have only to ask and I will send it). Unhappily I am forced to sell in the quarters where thieves sell, and to accept the prices· thieves receive. On my excursions I wear a black dress and bonnet I found upstairs in the trunk with the initials M.J. on the lid (who is M.J.?). In this garb I become older than my years: as I picture myself, a widow of forty in straitened circumstances. Yet despite my precautions I lie awake at night picturing how I might be seized by some rapacious shopkeeper and held for the constables, till I am forced to give away your candlesticks as a bribe for my freedom.

‘Last week I sold the one mirror not taken by the bailiffs, the little mirror with the gilt frame that stood on your cabinet. Dare I confess I am happy it is gone? How I have aged! In Bahia the sallow Portuguese . women would not believe I had a grown daughter. But life with Cruso put lines on my brow, and the house of Foe has only deepened them. Is your house a eyes in one reign and wake in another with long white beards? Brazil seems as far away as the age of Arthur. Is it possible I have a daughter there, growing farther from me every day, as I from her? Do the clocks of Brazil run at the same pace as ours? While I grow old, does she remain forever young? And how has it come about that in the day of the twopenny post I share a house with a man from the darkest times of barbarism? So many questions!’

‘Dear Mr Foe,

‘I am growing to understand why you wanted Cruso to have a musket and be besieged by cannibals. I thought it was a sign you had no regard for the truth. I forgot you are a writer who knows above all how many words can be sucked from a cannibal feast, how few from a woman cowering from the wind. It is all a matter of words and the number of words, is it not?

‘Friday sits at table in his wig and robes and eats pease pudding. I ask myself: Did human flesh once pass those lips? Truly, cannibals are terrible; but most terrible of all is to think of the little cannibal children, their eyes dosing in pleasure as they chew the tasty fat of their neighbours. I shiver. For surely eating human flesh is like falling into sin: having fallen once you discover in yourself a taste for it, and fall all the more readily thereafter. I shiver as I watch Friday dancing in the kitchen, with his robes whirling about him and the wig flapping on his head, and his eyes shut and his thoughts far away, not on the island, you may be sure, not on the pleasures of digging and carrying, but on the time before, when he was a savage among savages. Is it not only a matter of time before the new Friday whom Cruso created is sloughed off and the old Friday of the cannibal forests returns? Have I misjudged Cruso all this time: was it to punish him for his sins that he cut out Friday’s tongue? Better had he drawn his teeth instead!’

‘Searching through a chest of drawers some days ago for items to take to market, I came across a case of recorders you must once have played: perhaps you played the big bass recorder while your sons and daughters played the smaller ones. (What has happened to your sons and daughters? Could they not be trusted to shelter you from the law?) I took out the smallest of these, the soprano, and set it aside where Friday would find it. The next morning I heard him toying with it; soon he had so far mastered it as to play the tune of six notes I will forever associate with the island and Cruso’s first sickness. This he played over and over all morning. When I came to remonstrate, I found him spinning slowly around with the flute to his lips and his eyes shut; he paid no heed to me, perhaps not even hearing my words. How like a savage to master a strange instrument — to the extent that he is able without a tongue — and then be content forever to play one tune upon it! It is a form of incuriosity, is it not, a form of sloth. But I digress.