J. Coetzee - Foe

‘So while sail was hoisted and the head of the ship put about, I led Friday below to the cabin where Cruso lay. “Here is your master, Friday,” I said. “He is sleeping, he has taken a sleeping draught. You can see that these are good people. They will bring us back to England, which is your master’s home, and there you will be set free. You will discover that life in England is better than life ever was on the island.”

‘I knew of course that Friday did not understand the words. But it had been my belief from early on that Friday understood tones, that he could hear kindness in a human voice when kindness was sincerely meant. So I went on speaking to him, saying the same words over and over, laying my hand on his arm to soothe him; I guided him to his master’s bedside and made him kneel there till I felt calm overtake us, and the sailor who escorted us began to yawn and shuffle.

‘It was agreed that I should sleep in Cruso’s cabin. As for Friday, I pleaded that he not be quartered with the common seamen. “He would rather sleep on the floor at his master’s feet than on the softest bed in Christendom,” I said. So Friday was allowed to sleep under the transoms a few paces from the door of Cruso’s cabin; from this little den he barely stirred for the duration of the voyage, except when I brought him to visit his master. Whenever I spoke to him I was sure to smile and touch his arm, treating him as we treat a frightened horse. For I saw that the ship and the sailors must be awakening the darkest of memories in him of the time when he was torn from his homeland and transported into captivity in the New World.

‘We were used with great civility throughout the voyage. The ship’s surgeon visited Cruso twice a day, and by letting blood afforded him much relief. But to me he would privately shake his head. “Your husband is sinking,” he would say — “I fear we came too late.”

‘(I should tell you that Captain Smith had proposed that I call Cruso my husband and declare we had been shipwrecked together, to make my path easier both on board and when we should come ashore in England. If the story of Bahia and the mutineers got about, he said, it would not easily be understood what kind of woman I was. I laughed when he said this — what kind of woman was I, in truth? — but took his advice, and so was known as Mrs Cruso to all on board.

‘One night at dinner — I ate all this time at the captain’s table — he whispered in my ear that he would be honoured if I would consent to pay him a visit in his cabin afterwards, for a glass of cordial. I pretended to take his offer as mere gallantry, and did not go. He pressed me no further, but continued to behave as courteously as before. In all I found him a true gentleman, though a mere ship’s-master and the son of a pedlar, as he told me.)

‘I brought Cruso his food in bed and coaxed him to eat as if he were a child. Sometimes he seemed to know where he was, at other times not. One night, hearing him rise, I lit a candle, and saw him standing at the cabin door, pressing against it, not understanding that it opened inwards. I came over to him and touched him, and found his face wet with tears. “Come, my Cruso,” I whispered, and guided him back to his bunk, and soothed him till he slept again.

‘On the island I believe Cruso might yet have shaken off the fever, as he had done so often before. For though not a young man, he was vigorous. But now he was dying of woe, the extremest woe. With every passing day he was conveyed farther from the kingdom he pined for, to which he would never find his way again. He was a prisoner, and I, despite myself, his gaoler.

‘Sometimes in his sleep he would mutter in Portuguese, as he seemed always to do when the bygone past came back to him. Then I would take his hand, or lie beside him and talk to him. “Do you remember, my Cruso,” I would say, “how after the great storm had taken away our roof we would lie at night and watch the shooting stars, and wake in the glare of the moon, thinking it was day? In England we will have a roof over our heads that no wind can tear off. But did it not seem to you that the moon of our island was larger than the moon of England, as you remember it, and the stars more numerous? Perhaps we were nearer the moon there, as we were certainly nearer the sun.

‘“Yet,” I would pursue, “if we were nearer the heavens there, why was it that so little of the island could be called extraordinary? Why were there no strange fruits, no serpents, no lions? Why did the cannibals never come? What will we tell folk in England when they ask us to divert them?”

‘“Cruso,” I say (it is not the same night, it is a different night, we are ploughing through the waves, the rock of England looms closer and closer), ‘’is there not someone you have forgotten in Brazil? Is there not a sister awaiting your return on your Brazilian estates, and a faithful steward keeping the accounts? Can we not go back to your sister in Brazil, and sleep in hammocks side by side under the great Brazilian sky full of stars?” I lie against Cruso; with the tip of my tongue I follow the hairy whorl of his ear. I rub my cheeks against his harsh whiskers, I spread myself over him, I stroke his body with my thighs. “I am swimming in you, my Cruso,” I whisper, and swim. He is a tall man, I a tall woman. This is our coupling: this swimming, this clambering, this whispering.

‘Or I speak of the island. “We will visit a corn factor, I promise, my Cruso,” I say. “We will buy a sack of corn, the best there is. We will take ship again for the Americas, and be driven from our course by a storm, and be cast up on your island. We will plant the terraces and make them bloom. We will do all this.”

‘It is not the words, it is the fervour with which I speak them: Cruso takes my hand between his huge bony hands and brings it to his lips, and weeps.

‘We were yet three days from port when Cruso died. I was sleeping beside him in the narrow bunk, and in the night heard him give a long sigh; then afterwards I felt his legs begin to grow cold, and lit the candle and began to chafe his temples and wrists; but by then he was gone. So I went out and spoke to Friday. “Your master is dead, Friday,” I whispered.

‘Friday lay in his little recess wrapped in the old watch-coat the surgeon had found for him. His eyes glinted in the candlelight but he did not stir. Did he know the meaning of death? No man had died on his island since the beginning of time. Did he know we were subject to death, like the beasts? I held out a hand but he would not take it. So I knew he knew something; though what he knew I did not know.

‘Cruso was buried the next day. The crew stood bare-headed, the captain said a prayer, two sailors tilted the bier, and Cruso’s remains, sewn in a canvas shroud, with the last stitch through his nose (I saw this done, as did Friday), wrapped about with a great chain, slid into the waves. Throughout the ceremony I felt the curious eyes of the sailors on me (I had seldom been on deck). No doubt I made a strange sight in a dark coat, borrowed from the captain, over sailor’s pantaloons and apeskin sandals. Did they truly think of me as Cruso’s wife, or had tales already reached them — sailors’ haunts are full of gossip — of the Englishwoman from Bahia marooned in the Atlantic by Portuguese mutineers? Do you think of me, Mr Foe, as Mrs Cruso or as a bold adventuress? Think what you may, it was I who shared Cruso’s bed and closed Cruso’s eyes, as it is I who have disposal of all that Cruso leaves behind, which is the story of his island.’

‘April 15th

‘ W e are now settled in lodgings in Clock Lane off Long Acre. I go by the name Mrs Cruso, which you should bear in mind. I have a room on the second floor. Friday has a bed in the cellar, where I bring him his meals. By no means could I have abandoned him on the island. Nevertheless, a great city is no place for him. His confusion and distress when I conducted him through the streets this last Saturday wrenched my heartstrings.