J. Coetzee - Foe

‘Long ago, Mr Foe,’ I said, ‘you wrote down the story (I found it in your library and read it to Friday to pass the time) of a woman who spent an afternoon in conversation with a dear friend, and at the end of the afternoon embraced her friend and bade her farewell till they should next meet. But the friend, unknown to her, had died the day before, many miles away, and she had sat conversing with a ghost. Mrs Barfield was her name, you will remember. Thus I conclude you are aware that ghosts can converse with us, and embrace and kiss us too.’

‘My sweet Susan,’ said Foe — and I could not maintain my stern looks when he uttered these words, I had not been called sweet Susan for many years, certainly Cruso had never called me that-’My sweet Susan, as to who among us is a ghost and who not I have nothing to say: it is a question we can only stare at in silence, like a bird before a snake, hoping it will not swallow us.

‘But if you cannot rid yourself of your doubts, I have something to say that may be of comfort. Let us confront our worst fear, which is that we have all of us been called into the world from a different order (which we have now forgotten) by a conjurer unknown to us, as you say I have conjured up your daughter and her companion (I have not). Then I ask nevertheless: Have we thereby lost our freedom? Are you, for one, any less mistress of your life? Do we of necessity become puppets in a story whose end is invisible to us, and towards which we are marched like condemned felons? You and I know, in our different ways, how rambling an occupation writing is; and conjuring is surely much the same. We sit staring out of the window, and a cloud shaped like a camel passes by, and before we know it our fantasy has whisked us away to the sands of Africa and our hero (who is no one but ourselves in disguise) is clashing scimitars with a Moorish brigand. A new cloud floats past in the form of a sailing-ship, and in a trice we are cast ashore all woebegone on a desert isle. Have we cause to believe that the lives it is given us to live proceed with any more design than these whimsical adventures?

‘You will say, I know, that the heroes and heroines of adventure are simple folk incapable of such doubts as those you feel regarding your own life. But have you considered that your doubts may be part of the story you live, of no greater weight than any other adventure of yours? I put the question merely.

‘In a life of writing books, I have often, believe me, been lost in the maze of doubting. The trick I have learned is to plant a sign or marker in the ground where I stand, so that in my future wanderings I shall have something to return to, and not get worse lost than I am. Having planted it, I press on; the more often I come back to the mark (which is a sign to myself of my blindness and incapacity), the more certainly I know I am lost, yet the more I am heartened too, to have found my way back.

‘Have you considered (and I will conclude here) that in your own wanderings you may, without knowing it, have left behind some such token for yourself; or, if you choose to believe you are not mistress of your life, that a token has been left behind on your behalf, which is the sign of blindness I have spoken of; and that, for lack of a better plan,. your search for a way out of the maze — if you are indeed amazed or be-mazed — might start from that point and return to it as many times as are needed till you discover yourself to be saved?’

Here Foe turned from me to give his attention to Jack, who had for a while been tugging his sleeve. Low words passed between them; Foe gave him money; and, with a cheery Good-night, Jack took his leave. Then Mrs Amy looked at her watch and exclaimed at how late it was. ‘Do you live far?’ I asked her. She gave me a strange look. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not far, not far at all.’ The girl seemed reluctant to be off, but I embraced her again, and kissed her, which seemed to cheer her. Her appearances, or apparitions, or whatever they were, disturbed me less now that I knew her better.

‘Come, Friday,’ I said-’it is time for us to go too.’

But Foe demurred. ‘You will do me the greatest of honours if you will spend the night here,’ he said ‘Besides, where else will you find a bed?’ ‘So long as it does not rain we have a hundred beds to choose from, all of them hard,’ I replied. ‘Stay with me then,’ said Foe — ‘At the very least you shall have a soft bed.’ ‘And Friday?’ ‘Friday too,’ said he. ‘But where will Friday sleep?’ ‘Where would you have him sleep?’ ‘I will not send him away,’ said I. ‘By no means,’ said he. ‘May he sleep in your alcove then?’ said I, indicating the corner of the room that was curtained off. ‘Most certainly,’ said he-’I will lay down a mat, and a cushion too.’ ‘That will be enough,’ said I.

While Foe made the alcove ready, I roused Friday. ‘Come, we have a home for the night, Friday,’ I whispered; ‘and if fortune is with us we shall have another meal tomorrow.’

I showed him his sleeping-place and drew the curtain on him. Foe doused the light and I heard him undressing. I hesitated awhile, wondering what it augured for the writing of my story that I should grow so intimate with its author. I heard the bedsprings creak. ‘Good night, Friday,’ I whispered — ‘Pay no attention to your mistress and Mr Foe, it is all for the good.’ Then I undressed to my shift and let down my hair and crept under the bedclothes.

For a while we lay in silence, Foe on his side, I on mine. At last Foe spoke. ‘I ask myself sometimes,’ he said, ‘how it would be if God’s creatures had no need of sleep. If we spent all our lives awake, would we be better people for it or worse?’

To this strange opening I had no reply.

‘Would we be better or worse, I mean,’ he went on, and meet what we meet there?’

‘And what might that be?’ said I.

‘Our darker selves,’ said he. ‘Our darker selves, and other phantoms too.’ And then, abruptly: ‘Do you sleep, Susan?’

‘I sleep very well, despite all,’ I replied.

‘And do you meet with phantoms in your sleep?’.

‘I dream, but I do not call the figures phantoms that come to me in dreams.’ ‘What are they then?’ ‘They are memories, memories of my waking hours, broken and mingled and altered.’

‘And are they real?’

‘As real, or as little real, as the memories themselves.’

‘I read in an old Italian author of a man who visited, or dreamed he visited, Hell,’ said Foe. ‘There he met the souls of the dead. One of the souls was weeping. “Do not suppose, mortal,” said this soul, addressing him, “that because I am not substantial these tears you behold are not the tears of a true grief.”’

‘True grief, certainly, but whose?’ said I — ‘The ghost’s or the Italian’s?’ I reached out and took Foe’s hand between mine. ‘Mr Foe, do you truly know who I am? I came to you in the rain one day, when you were in a hurry to be off, and detained you with a story of an island which you could not have wished to hear.’ (’You are quite wrong, my dear,’ said Foe, embracing me.) ‘You counselled me to write it down,’ I went on, ‘hoping perhaps to read of bloody doings on the high seas or the licentiousness of the Brazilians.’ (’Not true, not true!’ said Foe, laughing and hugging me — ‘you roused my curiosity from the first, I was most eager to hear whatever you might relate!’) ‘But no, I pursue you with my own dull story, visiting it upon you now in your uttermost refuge. And I bring these women trailing after me, ghosts haunting a ghost, like fleas upon a flea. That is how it appears to you, does it not?’ ‘And why should you be, as you put it, haunting me, Susan?’ ‘For your blood. Is that not why ghosts return: to drink the blood of the living? Is that not the true reason why the shades made your Italian welcome?’