J. Coetzee: Foe

‘I was walking one day at the north end of the island, on the Bluff, when I spied Friday below me bearing on his shoulder a log or beam nearly as long as himself. While I watched, he crossed the shelf of rock that stretched out from the cliff-face, launched his log upon the water — which was deep at that place — and straddled it.

‘I had often observed Friday at his fishing, which he did standing on the rocks, waiting till a fish swam below him and then darting his spear at it with great dexterity. How he could spear fish belly-down upon his clumsy vessel was not plain to me.

‘But Friday was not fishing. After paddling out some hundred yards from the shelf into the thickest of the seaweed, he reached into a bag that hung about his neck and brought out handfuls of white flakes which he began to scatter over the water. At first I thought this was bait to lure the fish to him; but no,. when he had strewn all his flakes he turned his log boat about and steered it back to the ledge, where he landed it with great difficulty through the swell.

‘Curious to find what he had been casting on the waves, I waited that evening till he had gone to fill the water-bowls. Then I searched under his mat and discovered a little bag with a drawstring, and turning it out found some few white petals and buds from the brambles that were at the time flowering on parts of the island. So I concluded he had been making an offering to the god of the waves to cause the fish to run plentifully, or performing some other such superstitious observance.

‘The sea continuing calm the next day, I crossed the rocks below the Bluff as Friday had done till I stood at the edge of the shelf. The water was cold and dark; when I thought of committing myself to those depths and swimming out, whether on a log or not, among the circling arms of the seaweed, where no doubt cuttlefish hung in stealth waiting for prey to swim into their grasp, I shivered. Of Friday’s petals not a trace was left.

‘Hitherto I had given to Friday’s life as little thought as I would have a dog’s or any other dumb beast’s — less, indeed, for I had a horror of his mutilated state which made me shut him from my mind, and flinch away when he came near me. This casting of petals was the first sign I had that a spirit or soul call it what you will — stirred beneath that dull and unpleasing exterior.

‘“Where did the ship go down on which you and Friday sailed?” I asked Cruso.

‘He indicated a part of the coast I had never visited.

‘“If we could dive to the wreck, even now,” I said, “we might save from it tools of the greatest utility. A saw, for instance, or an axe, both of which we lack. Timbers too we might loosen and bring back. Is there no way to explore the wreck? Might Friday not swim out to it, or float out on a log, and then dive down, with a rope tied about his middle for safety?”

‘“The ship lies on the bed of the ocean, broken by the waves and covered in sand,” Cruso replied. “What has survived the salt and seaworm will not be worth the saving. We have a roof over our heads, made without saw or axe. We sleep, we eat, we live. We have no need of tools.”

‘He spoke as if tools were heathenish inventions. Yet I knew if I had swum ashore with a saw tied to my ankle he would have taken it and used it most happily. ‘Let me tell you of Cruso’s terraces. ‘The terraces covered much of the hillside at the eastern end of the island, where they were best sheltered from the wind. There were twelve levels of terracing at the time I arrived, each some twenty paces deep and banked with stone walls a yard thick and at their highest as high as a man’s head. Within each terrace the ground was levelled and cleared; the stones that made up the walls had been dug out of the earth or borne from elsewhere one by one. I asked Cruso how many stones had gone into the walls. A hundred thousand or more, he replied. A mighty labour, I remarked. But privately I thought: Is bare earth, baked by the sun and walled about, to be preferred to pebbles and bushes and swarms of birds? “Is it your plan to clear the whole island of growth, and turn it into terraces?” I asked. “It would be the work of many men and many lifetimes to clear the whole island,” he replied; by which I saw he chose to understand only the letter of my question. “And what will you be planting, when you plant?” I asked. “The planting is not for us,” said he. “We have nothing to plant-that is our misfortune.” And he looked at me with such sorry dignity, I could have bit my tongue. “The planting is reserved for those who come after us and have the foresight to bring seed. I only clear the ground for them. Clearing ground and piling stones is little enough, but it is better than sitting in idleness.” And then, with great earnestness, he went on: “I ask you to remember, not every man who bears the mark of the castaway is a castaway at heart.”

‘I reflected long on these words, but they remained dark to me. When I passed the terraces and saw this man, no longer young, labouring in the heat of the day to lift a great stone out of the earth or patiently chopping at the grass, while he waited year after year for some saviour castaway to arrive in a boat with a sack of corn at his feet, I found it a foolish kind of agriculture. It seemed to me he might occupy his time as well in digging for gold, or digging graves. first for himself and Friday and then if he wished for all the castaways of the future history of the island, and for me too.

‘Time passed with increasing tediousness. When I had exhausted my questions to Cruso about the terraces, and the boat he would not build, and the journal he would not keep, and the tools he would not save from the wreck, and Friday’s tongue, there was nothing left to talk of save the weather. Cruso had no stories to tell of the life he had lived as a trader and planter before the shipwreck. He did not care how I came to be in Bahia or what I did there. When I spoke of England and of all the things I intended to see and do when I was rescued, he seemed not to hear me. It was as though he wished his story to begin with his arrival on the island, and mine to begin with my arrival, and the story of us together to end on the island too. Let it not by any means come to pass that Cruso is saved, I reflected to myself; for the world expects stories from its adventurers, better stories than tallies of how many stones they moved in fifteen years, and from where, and to where; Cruso rescued will be a deep disappointment to the world; the idea of a Cruso on his island is a better thing than the true Cruso tight-lipped and sullen in an alien England.

‘I spent my days walking on the cliffs or along the shore, or else sleeping. I did not offer to join Cruso in his work on the terraces, for I held it a stupid labour. I made a cap with flaps to tic over my cars; I wore this, and sometimes closed my ears with plugs too, to shut out the sound of the wind. So I became deaf, as Friday was mute; what difference did it make on an island where no one spoke? The petticoat I had swum ashore in was in tatters. My skin was as brown as an Indian’s. I was in the flower of my life, and now this had befallen me. I did not weep; but sometimes I would find myself sitting on the bare earth with my hands over my eyes, rocking back and forth and moaning to myself, and would not know how I had got there. When Friday set food before me I took it with dirty fingers and bolted it like a dog. I squatted in the garden, heedless of who saw me. And I watched and watched the horizon. It mattered not who came, Spaniard or Muscovite or cannibal, so long as I escaped.

‘This was the darkest time for me, this time of despair and lethargy; I was as much a burden on Cruso now as he had been on me when he raved with fever.

‘Then step by step I recovered my spirits and began to apply myself again to little tasks. Though my heart was no warmer towards Cruso, I was grateful he had suffered my moods and not turned me out.