Foe (8 page)

'Or
I bring out your shears and show him their use. "Here in
England," I say, "it is our custom to grow hedges to mark
the limits of our property. Doubtless that would not be possible in
the forests of Africa. But here we grow hedges, and then cut them
straight, so that our gardens shall be neatly marked out." I lop
at the hedge till it becomes clear to Friday what I am doing: not
cutting a passage through your hedge, not cutting down your hedge,
but cutting one side of it straight. "Now, Friday, take the
shears," I say: "Cut!"; and Friday takes the shears
and cuts in a clean line, as I know he is capable of doing, for his
digging is impeccable.

'I
tell myself I talk to Friday to educate him out of darkness and
silence. But is that the truth? There are times when benevolence
deserts me and I use words only as the shortest way to subject him to
my will. At such times I understand why Cruso preferred not to
disturb his muteness. I understand, that is to say, why a man will
choose to be a slaveowner. Do you think less of me for this
confession?'

'April 28th

'My
letter of the 
25th
 is
returned unopened. I pray there has been some simple mistake. I
enclose the same herewith.'

'May 1st

'I
have visited Stoke Newington and found the bailiffs in occupation of
your house. It is a cruel thing to say, but I almost laughed to learn
this was the reason for your silence, you had not lost interest and
turned your back on us. Yet now I must ask myself: Where shall I send
my letters? Will you continue to write our story while you are in
hiding? Will you still contribute to our keep? Are Friday and I the
only personages you have settled in lodgings while you write their
story, or are there many more of us dispersed about London -old
campaigners from the wars in Italy, cast-off mistresses, penitent
highwaymen, prosperous thieves? How will you live while you are in
hiding? Have you a woman to cook your meals and wash your linen? Can
your neighbours be trusted? Remember: the bailiffs have their spies
everywhere. Be wary of public houses. If you are harried, come to
Clock Lane.'

'May 8th

'I
must disclose I have twice been to your house in the past week in the
hope of hearing tidings. Do not be annoyed. I have not revealed to
Mrs Thrush who I am. I say only that I have messages for you,
messages of the utmost importance. On my first visit Mrs Thrush
plainly gave to know she did not believe me. But my earnestness has
now won her over. She has accepted my letters, promising to keep them
safe, which I take to be a manner of saying she will send them to
you. Am I right? Do they reach you? She confides that she frets for
your welfare and longs for the departure of the bailiffs.

'The
bailiffs have quartered themselves in your library. One sleeps on the
couch, the other, it seems, in two armchairs drawn together. They
send out to the King's Arms for their meals. They are prepared to
wait a month, two months, a year, they say, to serve their warrant. A
month I can believe, but not a year they do not know how long a year
can be. It was one of them, an odious fellow named Wilkes, who opened
the door to me the second time. He fancies I carry messages between
you and Mrs Thrush. He pinned me in the passageway before I left and
told me of the Fleet, of how men have spent their lives there
abandoned by their families, castaways in the very heart of the city.
Who will save you, Mr Foe, if you are arrested and consigned to the
Fleet? I thought you had a wife, but Mrs Thrush says you are widowed
many years.

'Your
library reeks of pipesmoke. The door of the larger cabinet is
broken and the glass not so much as swept up. Mrs Thrush says that
Wilkes and his friend had a woman with them last night.

'I
came home to Clock Lane in low spirits. There are times when I feel
my strength to be limitless, when I can bear you and your troubles on
my back, and the bailiffs as well if need be, and Friday and Cruso
and the island. But there are other times when a pall of weariness
falls over me and I long to be borne away to a new life in a far-off
city where I will never hear your name or Cruso's again. Can you not
press on with your writing, Mr Foe, so that Friday can speedily be
returned to Africa and I liberated from this drab existence I lead?
Hiding from the bailiffs is surely tedious, and writing a better way
than most of passing the time. The memoir I wrote for you I wrote
sitting on my bed with the paper on a tray on my knees, my heart
fearful all the while that Friday would decamp from the cellar to
which he had been consigned, or take a stroll and be lost in the
mazes and warrens of Covent Garden. Yet I completed that memoir in
three days. More is at stake in the history you write, I will admit,
for it must not only tell the truth about us but please its readers
too. Will you not bear it in mind, however, that my life is drearily
suspended till your writing is done?'

'The
days pass and I have no word from you. A patch of dandelions -all we
have for flowers in Clock Lane -is pushing up against the wall
beneath my window. By noon the room is hot. I will stifle if summer
comes and I am still confined. I long for the ease of walking abroad
in my shift, as I did on the island.

'The
three guineas you sent are spent. Clothes for Friday were a heavy
expense. The rent for this week is owed. I am ashamed to come
downstairs and cook our poor supper of peas and salt.

'To
whom am I writing? I blot the pages and toss them out of the window.
Let who will read them!'

* *

'The
house in Newington is closed up, Mrs Thrush and the servants are
departed. When I pronounce your name the neighbours grow
tight-lipped. What has happened? Have the bailiffs tracked you down?·
Will you be able to proceed with your writing in prison?'

'May 29th

'We
have taken up residence in your house, from which I now write. Are
you surprised to hear this? There were spider-webs over the windows
already, which we have swept away. We will disturb nothing. When you
return we will vanish like ghosts, without complaint.

'I
have your table to sit at, your window to gaze through. I write with
your pen on your paper, and when the sheets are completed they go
into your chest. So your life continues to be lived, though you are
gone.

'All
I lack is light. There is not a candle left in the house. But perhaps
that is a blessing. Since we must keep the curtains drawn, we will
grow used to living in gloom by day, in darkness by night.

'It
is not wholly as I imagined it would be. What I thought would be your
writing-table is not a table but a bureau. The window overlooks not
woods and pastures but your garden. There is no ripple in the glass.
The chest is not a true chest but a dispatch box. Nevertheless, it is
all close enough. Does it surprise you as much as it does me, this
correspondence between things as they are and the pictures we have of
them in our minds?'

* *

'We
have explored your garden, Friday and I. The flower-beds are sadly
overgrown, but the carrots and beans are prospering. I will set
Friday to work weeding.

'We
live here like the humblest of poor relations. Your best linen is put
away; we eat off the servants' plate. Think of me as the niece of a
second cousin come down in the world, to whom you owe but the barest
of duties.

'I
pray you have not taken the step of embarking for the colonies. My
darkest fear is that an Atlantic storm will drive your ship on to
uncharted rocks and spill you up on a barren isle.

'There
was a time in Clock Lane, I will confess, when I felt great
bitterness against you. He has turned his mind from us, I told
myself, as easily as if we were two of his grenadiers in Flanders,
forgetting that while his grenadiers fall into an enchanted sleep
whenever he absents himself, Friday and I continue to eat and drink
and fret. There seemed no course open to me but to take to the
streets and beg, or steal, or worse. But now that we are in your
house, peace has returned. Why it should be so I do not know, but
toward this house -which till last month I had never clapped eyes on
-I feel as we feel toward the home we were born in. All the nooks and
crannies, all the odd hidden corners of the garden, have an air of
familiarity, as if in a forgotten childhood I here played games of
hide and seek.'

* *

'How
much of my life consists in waiting! In Bahia I did little but wait,
though what I was waiting for I sometimes did not know. On the island
I waited all the time for rescue. Here I wait for you to appear, or
for the book to be written that will set me free of Cruso and Friday.

'I
sat at your bureau this morning (it is afternoon now, I sit at the
same bureau, I have sat here all day) and took out a clean sheet of
paper and dipped pen in ink -your pen, your ink, I know, but somehow
the pen becomes mine while I write with it, as though growing out of
my hand -and wrote at the head: "The Female Castaway. Being a
True Account of a Year Spent on a Desert Island. With Many Strange
Circumstances Never Hitherto Related." Then I made a list of all
the strange circumstances of the year I could remember: the mutiny
and murder on the Portuguese ship, Cruso's castle, Cruso himself with
his lion's mane and apeskin clothes, his voiceless slave Friday, the
vast terraces they had built, all bare of growth, the terrible storm
that tore the roof off our house and heaped the beaches with dying
fish. Dubiously I thought: Are these enough strange circumstances to
make a story of? How long before I am driven to invent new and
stranger circumstances: the salvage of tools and muskets from Cruso's
ship; the building of a boat, or at least a skiff, and a venture to
sail to the mainland; a landing by cannibals on the island, followed
by a skirmish and many bloody deaths; and, at last, the coming of a
golden-haired stranger with a sack of corn, and the planting of the
terraces? Alas, will the day ever arrive when we can make a
story without strange circumstances?

'Then
there is the matter of Friday's tongue. On the island I accepted that
I should never learn how Friday lost his tongue, as I accepted that I
should never learn how the apes crossed the sea. But what we can
accept in life we cannot accept in history. To tell my story and be
silent on Friday's tongue is no better than offering a book for sale
with pages in it quietly left empty. Yet the only tongue that can
tell Friday's secret is the tongue he has lost!

'So
this morning I made two sketches. One showed the figure of a man clad
in jerkin and drawers and a conical hat, with whiskers standing out
in all directions and great cat-eyes. Kneeling before him was the
figure of a black man, naked save for drawers, holding his hands
behind his back (the hands were tied, but that could not be seen). In
his left hand the whiskered figure gripped the living tongue of the
other; in his right hand he held up a knife.

'Of
the second sketch I will tell you in a moment.

'I
took my sketches down to Friday in the garden. "Consider these
pictures, Friday," I said, "then tell me: which is the
truth?" I held up the first. "Master Cruso," I said,
pointing to the whiskered figure. "Friday," I said,
pointing to the kneeling figure. "Knife," I said, pointing
to the knife. "Cruso cut out Friday's tongue," I said; and
I stuck out my own tongue and made motions of cutting it. "Is
that the truth, Friday?" I pressed him, looking deep into his
eyes: "Master Cruso cut out your tongue?"

'(Friday
might not know the meaning of the word
truth
,
I reasoned; nevertheless, if my picture stirred some recollection of
the truth, surely a cloud would pass over his gaze; for are the eyes
not rightly called the mirrors of the soul?)

'Yet
even as I spoke I began to doubt myself. For if Friday's gaze indeed
became troubled, might that not be because I came striding out of the
house, demanding that he look at pictures, something I had never done
before? Might the picture itself not confuse him? (For, examining it
anew, I recognized with chagrin that it might also be taken to show
Cruso as a beneficent father putting a lump of fish into the mouth of
child Friday.) And how did he understand my gesture of putting out my
tongue at him? What if, among the cannibals of Africa, putting out
the tongue has the same meaning as offering the lips has amongst us?
Might you not then flush with shame when a woman puts out her tongue
and you have no tongue with which to respond?

'I
brought out my second sketch. Again there was depicted little Friday,
his arms stretched behind him, his mouth wide open; but now the man
with the knife was a slave-trader, a tall black man clad in a
burnous, and the knife was sickle-shaped. Behind this Moor waved the
palm-trees of Africa. "Slave-trader," I said, pointing to
the man. "Man who catches boys and sells them as slaves. Did a
slave-trader cut out your tongue, Friday? Was it a slave-trader or
Master Cruso?"