Foe (11 page)

'"I
ask these questions because they are the questions any reader of our
story will ask. I had no thought, when I was washed ashore, of
becoming a castaway's wife. But the reader is bound to ask why it was
that, in all the nights I shared your master's hut, he and I did not
come together more than once as man and woman do. Is the answer that
our island was not a garden of desire, like that in which our first
parents went naked, and coupled as innocently as beasts? I believe
your master would have had it be a garden of labour; but, lacking a
worthy object for his labours, descended to carrying stones, as ants
carry grains of sand to and fro for want of better occupation.

'"And
then there is the final mystery: What were you about when you paddled
out to sea upon your log and scattered petals on the water? I will
tell you what I have concluded: that you scattered the petals over
the place where your ship went down, and scattered them in memory of
some person who perished in the wreck, perhaps a father or a mother
or a sister or a brother, or perhaps a whole family, or perhaps a
dear friend. On the sorrows of Friday, I once thought to tell Mr Foe,
but did not, a story entire of itself might be built; whereas from
the indifference of Cruso there is little to be squeezed.

"'I
must go, Friday. You thought that carrying stones was the hardest of
labours. But when you see me at Mr Foe's desk making marks with the
quill, think of each mark as a stone, and think of the paper as the
island, and imagine that I must disperse the stones over the face of
the island, and when that is done and the taskmaster is not satisfied
(was Cruso ever satisfied with your labours?) must pick them up again
(which, in the figure, is scoring out the marks) and dispose them
according to another scheme, and so forth, day after day; all of this
because Mr Foe has run away from his debts. Sometimes I believe it is
I who have become the slave. No doubt you would smile, if you could
understand."'

* *

'Days
pass. Nothing changes. We hear no word from you, and the townsfolk
pay us no more heed than if we were ghosts. I have been once to
Dalston market, taking a tablecloth and a case of spoons, which I
sold

to
buy necessaries. Otherwise we exist by the produce of your garden.
'The girl has resumed her station at the gate. I try to ignore her.

'Writing
proves a slow business. After the flurry of the mutiny and the death
of the Portuguese captain, after I have met Cruso and come to know
somewhat of the life he leads, what is there to say? There was too
little desire in Cruso and Friday: too little desire to escape, too
little desire for a new life. Without desire how is it possible to
make a story? It was an island of sloth, despite the terracing. I ask
myself what past historians of the castaway state have done -whether
in despair they have not begun to make up lies.

'Yet
I persevere. A painter engaged to paint a dull scene -let us say two
men digging in a field -has means at hand to lend allure to his
subject. He can set the golden hues of the first man's skin against
the sooty hues of the second's, creating a play of light against
dark. By artfully representing their attitudes he can indicate which
is master, which slave. And to render his composition more lively he
is at liberty to bring into it what may not be there on the day he
paints but may be there on other days, such as a pair of gulls
wheeling overhead, the beak of one parted in a cry, and in one
corner, upon a faraway crag, a band of apes.

'Thus
we see the painter selecting and composing and rendering particulars
in order to body forth a pleasing fullness in his scene. The
storyteller, by contrast (forgive me, I would not lecture you on
storytelling if you were here in the flesh!), must divine which
episodes of his history hold promise of fullness, and tease from them
their hidden meanings, braiding these together as one braids a rope.

'Teasing
and braiding can, like any craft, be learned. But as to determining
which episodes hold promise (as oysters hold pearls), it is not
without justice that this art is called divining. Here the writer can
of himself effect nothing: he must wait on the grace of illumination.
Had I known, on the island, that it would one day fall to me to be
our storyteller, I would have been more zealous to interrogate Cruso.
"Cast your thoughts back, Cruso," I would have said, as I
lay beside him in the dark -"Can you recall no moment at which
the purpose of our life here has been all at once illuminated? As you
have walked on the hillsides or clambered on the cliffs in quest of
eggs, have you never been struck of a sudden by the living, breathing
quality of this island, as if it were some great beast from before
the Flood that has slept through the centuries insensible of the
insects scurrying on its back, scratching an existence for
themselves? Are we insects, Cruso, in the greater view? Are we no
better than the ants?" Or when he lay dying on the
Hobart
I
might have said: "Cruso, you are leaving us behind, you are
going where we cannot follow you. Is there no last word you wish to
speak, from the vantage of one departing? Is there not something you
wish to confess?"'

* *

'We
trudge through the forest, the girl and I. It is autumn, we have
taken the coach to Epping, now we are making our way to Cheshunt,
though leaves lie so thick underfoot, gold and brown and red, that I
cannot be sure we have not strayed from the path.

'The
girl is behind me. "Where are you taking me?" she ask~ for
the hundredth time. "I am taking you to see your real mother,"
I reply. "I know who is my real mother," she says -"You
are my real mother." "You will know your true mother when
you see her,'' I reply -"Walk faster, we must be back before
nightfall." She trots to keep pace with me.

'Deeper
into the forest we go, miles from human habitation. "Let us
rest," I say. Side by side we seat ourselves against the trunk
of a great oak. From her basket she brings forth bread and cheese and
a flask of water. We eat and drink.

'We
plod on. Have we lost our way? She keeps falling behind. "We
will never be back before dark,'' she complains. "You must trust
me," I reply.

'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!'