Foe Read online

  ‘In the hut there was nothing but the bed, which was made of poles bound together with thongs, crude in workmanship yet sturdy, and in a corner a pile of cured apeskins, that made the hut smell like a tanner’s storehouse (in time I grew used to the smell, and missed it after I had put the island behind me; even today when I smell new leather I grow drowsy), and the stove, in which the embers of the last fire were always left banked, for making new fire was tedious work.

  ‘What I chiefly hoped to find was not there. Cruso kept no journal, perhaps because he lacked paper and ink, but more likely, I now believe, because he lacked the inclination to keep one, or, if he ever possessed the inclination, had lost it. I searched the poles that supported the roof, and the legs of the bed, but found no carvings, not even notches to indicate that he counted the years of his banishment or the cycles of the moon.

  ‘Later, when I had grown freer with him, I told him of my surprise. “Suppose,” said I, “that one day we are saved. Would you not regret it that you could not bring back with you some record of your years of shipwreck, so that what you have passed through shall not die from memory? And if we are never saved, but perish one by one, as may happen, would you not wish for a memorial to be left behind, so that the next voyagers to make landfall here, whoever they may be, may read and learn about us, and perhaps shed a tear? For surely, with every day that passes, our memories grow less certain, as even a statue in marble is worn away by rain, till at last we can no longer tell what shape the sculptor’s hand gave it. What memories do you even now preserve of the fatal storm, the prayers of your companions, your terror when the waves engulfed you, your gratitude as you were cast up on the shore, your first stumbling explorations, your fear of savage beasts, the discomforts of those first nights (did you not tell me you slept in a tree?)? Is it not possible to manufacture paper and ink and set down what traces remain of these memories, so that they will outlive you; or, failing paper and ink, to burn the story upon wood, or engrave it upon rock? We may lack many things on this island, but certainly time is not one of them.”

  ‘I spoke fervently, I believe, but Cruso was unmoved. “Nothing is forgotten,” said he; and then: “Nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering.”

  ‘ “You are mistaken!” I cried. “I do not wish to dispute, but you have forgotten much, and with every day that passes you forget more! There is no shame in forgetting: it is our nature to forget as it is our nature to grow old and pass away. But seen from too remote a vantage, life begins to lose its particularity. All shipwrecks become the same shipwreck, all castaways the same castaway, sunburnt, lonely, clad in the skins of the beasts he has slain. The truth that makes your story yours alone, that sets you apart from the old mariner by the fireside spinning yarns of sea-monsters and mermaids, resides in a thousand touches which today may seem of no importance, such as: When you made your needle (the needle you store in your belt), by what means did you pierce the eye? When you sewed your hat, what did you use for thread? Touches like these will one day persuade your countrymen that it is all true, every word, there was indeed once an island in the middle of the ocean where the wind blew and the gulls cried from the cliffs and a man named Cruso paced about in his apeskin clothes, scanning the horizon for a sail.”

  ‘Cruso’s great head of tawny hair and his beard that was never cut glowed in the dying light. He opened and closed his hands, sinewy, rough-skinned hands, toil-hardened.

  ‘ “There is the bile of seabirds,” I urged. “There are cuttlefish bones. There are gulls’ quills.”

  ‘Cruso raised his head and cast me a look full of defiance. “I will leave behind my terraces and walls,” he said. “They will be enough. They will be more than enough.” And he fell silent again. As for myself, I wondered who would cross the ocean to see terraces and walls, of which we surely had an abundance at home; but I held my peace.

  ‘We continued to sleep in the hut together, he and I, he on his bed, I on the bed of grass Friday laid for me and changed every third day, very thick and comfortable. When the nights grew cold I would draw a cover of skins over me, for all this time I had no more clothes than the petticoat I had come ashore in; but I preferred not to have the skins upon me, for to my nostrils their smell was still very strong.

  ‘Sometimes Cruso kept me awake with the sounds he made in his sleep, chiefly the grinding of his teeth. For so far had his teeth decayed that it had grown a habit with him to grind them together constantly, those that were left, to still the ache. Indeed, it was no pretty sight to see him take his food in his unwashed hands and gnaw at it on the left side, where it hurt him less. But Bahia, and the life I had lived there, had taught me not to be dainty.

  ‘I dreamed of the murdered ship’s-master. In my dream I saw him floating southward in his puny boat with the oars crossed on his breast and the ugly spike sticking out of his eye. The sea was tossed with huge waves, the wind howled, the rain beat down; yet the boat did not sink, but drifted slowly on toward the province of the iceberg, and would drift there, it seemed to me, caked in ice, till the day of our resurrection. He was a kindly man – let me say so now, lest I forget – who deserved a better end.

  ‘Cruso’s warning against the apes made me chary of leaving the encampment. Nevertheless, on the third day of my marooning, after Cruso and Friday had gone off to their labours, I ventured out and searched the descent till I found the path up which Friday had borne me, and followed it down to the shore, watching where I trod, for I still had no shoes. I roamed along the beach awhile, keeping an eye out to sea, though it seemed early yet for rescue to come. I waded in the water, amused by the gay-coloured little fish that stopped to nibble my toes and taste what kind of creature I was. Cruso’s island is no bad place to be cast away, I thought, if one must be cast away. Then about noon I climbed the slope and set about collecting firewood, as I had undertaken to do, mightily pleased with my excursion.

  ‘When Cruso returned he knew at once I had been exploring, and burst out in a passion. “While you live under my roof you will do as I instruct!” he cried, striking his spade into the earth, not even waiting till Friday was out of earshot. But if he thought by angry looks to inspire me to fear and slavish obedience, he soon found he was mistaken. “I am on your island, Mr Cruso, not by choice but by ill luck,” I replied, standing up (and I was nearly as tall as he). “I am a castaway, not a prisoner. If I had shoes, or if you would give me the means to make shoes, I would not need to steal about like a thief.”

  ‘Later in the day, when my temper had cooled, I asked Cruso’s pardon for these tart words, and he seemed to forgive me, though grudgingly. Then I asked again for a needle and gut, to make myself shoes. To which he replied that shoes were not made in a twinkle, like handkerchiefs, that he would himself make me shoes, in due time. Days passed, however, and still I was without shoes.

  ‘I asked Cruso about the apes. When he first arrived, he said, they had roamed all over the island, bold and mischievous. He had killed many, after which the remainder had retreated to the cliffs of what he called the North Bluff. On my walks I sometimes heard their cries and saw them leaping from rock to rock. In size they were between a cat and a fox, grey, with black faces and black paws. I saw no harm in them; but Cruso held them a pest, and he and Friday killed them whenever they could, with clubs, and skinned them, and cured their pelts, and sewed them together to make clothes and blankets and suchlike.

  ‘One evening, as I was preparing our supper, my hands being full, I turned to Friday and said, “Bring more wood, Friday.” Friday heard me, I could have sworn, but he did not stir. So I said the word “Wood” again, indicating the fire; upon which he stood up, but did no more. Then Cruso spoke. “Firewood, Friday,” he said; and Friday went off and fetched wood from the woodpile.

  ‘My first thought was that Friday was like a dog that heeds but one master; yet it was not so. “Firewood is the word I have taught him,” said Cruso. “ Wood he does not know.” I found it strange that Friday should not underst
and that firewood was a kind of wood, as pinewood is a kind of wood, or poplarwood; but I let it pass. Not till after we had eaten, when we were sitting watching the stars, as had grown to be our habit, did I speak again.

  ‘ “How many words of English does Friday know?” I asked.

  ‘ “As many as he needs,” replied Cruso. “This is not England, we have no need of a great stock of words.”

  ‘ “You speak as if language were one of the banes of life, like money or the pox,” said I. “Yet would it not have lightened your solitude had Friday been master of English? You and he might have experienced, all these years, the pleasures of conversation; you might have brought home to him some of the blessings of civilization and made him a better man. What benefit is there in a life of silence?”

  ‘To this Cruso gave no reply, but instead beckoned Friday nearer. “Sing, Friday,” he said. “Sing for Mistress Barton.”

  ‘Whereupon Friday raised his face to the stars, closed his eyes, and, obedient to his master, began to hum in a low voice. I listened but could make out no tune. Cruso tapped my knee. “The voice of man,” he said. I failed to understand his meaning; but he raised a finger to his lips to still me. In the dark we listened to Friday’s humming.

  ‘At last Friday paused. “Is Friday an imbecile incapable of speech?” I asked. “Is that what you mean to tell me?” (For I repeat, I found Friday in all matters a dull fellow.)

  ‘Cruso motioned Friday nearer. “Open your mouth,” he told him, and opened his own. Friday opened his mouth. “Look,” said Cruso. I looked, but saw nothing in the dark save the glint of teeth white as ivory. “La-la-la,” said Cruso, and motioned to Friday to repeat. “Ha-ha-ha,” said Friday from the back of his throat. “He has no tongue,” said Cruso. Gripping Friday by the hair, he brought his face close to mine. “Do you see?” he said. “It is too dark,” said I. “La-la-la,” said Cruso. “Ha-ha-ha,” said Friday. I drew away, and Cruso released Friday’s hair. “He has no tongue,” he said. “That is why he does not speak. They cut out his tongue.”

  I stared in amazement. “Who cut out his tongue?”

  ‘ “The slavers.”

  ‘ “The slavers cut out his tongue and sold him into slavery? The slave-hunters of Africa? But surely he was a mere child when they took him. Why would they cut out a child’s tongue?”

  ‘Cruso gazed steadily back at me. Though I cannot now swear to it, I believe he was smiling. “Perhaps the slavers, who are Moors, hold the tongue to be a delicacy,” he said. “Or perhaps they grew weary of listening to Friday’s wails of grief, that went on day and night. Perhaps they wanted to prevent him from ever telling his story: who he was, where his home lay, how it came about that he was taken. Perhaps they cut out the tongue of every cannibal they took, as a punishment. How will we ever know the truth?”

  ‘ “It is a terrible story,” I said. A silence fell. Friday took up our utensils and retired into the darkness. “Where is the justice in it? First a slave and now a castaway too. Robbed of his childhood and consigned to a life of silence. Was Providence sleeping?”

  ‘ “If Providence were to watch over all of us,” said Cruso, “who would be left to pick the cotton and cut the sugar-cane? For the business of the world to prosper, Providence must sometimes wake and sometimes sleep, as lower creatures do.” He saw I shook my head, so went on. “You think I mock Providence. But perhaps it is the doing of Providence that Friday finds himself on an island under a lenient master, rather than in Brazil, under the planter’s lash, or in Africa, where the forests teem with cannibals. Perhaps it is for the best, though we do not see it so, that he should be here, and that I should be here, and now that you should be here.”

  ‘Hitherto I had found Friday a shadowy creature and paid him little more attention than I would have given any house-slave in Brazil. But now I began to look on him – I could not help myself – with the horror we reserve for the mutilated. It was no comfort that his mutilation was secret, closed behind his lips (as some other mutilations are hidden by clothing), that outwardly he was like any Negro. Indeed, it was the very secretness of his loss that caused me to shrink from him. I could not speak, while he was about, without being aware how lively were the movements of the tongue in my own mouth. I saw pictures in my mind of pincers gripping his tongue and a knife slicing into it, as must have happened, and I shuddered. I covertly observed him as he ate, and with distaste heard the tiny coughs he gave now and then to clear his throat, saw how he did his chewing between his front teeth, like a fish. I caught myself flinching when he came near, or holding my breath so as not to have to smell him. Behind his back I wiped the utensils his hands had touched. I was ashamed to behave thus, but for a time was not mistress of my own actions. Sorely I regretted that Cruso had ever told me the story.

  ‘The next day after our conversation, when Cruso returned from his terraces, I was walking about in sandals. But if I expected thanks for the labour I had saved him, I received none. “A little patience and you would have had better shoes than that,” he said. This was very likely true, for the sandals were clumsily made. Yet I could not let his words pass. “Patience has turned me into a prisoner,” I retorted. Whereupon Cruso wheeled about angrily and picked up the skins from which I had cut my shoes and hurled them with all his might over the fence.

  ‘Seeing that he was not to be mollified, I took myself off down the path to the shore, and wandered there till I came to a place where the beach was covered in seaweed that had been washed ashore, and lay rotting, and where clouds of fleas, or sand-fleas, rose at every step. There I paused, my temper cooling. He is bitter, I told myself, and why should he not be? After years of unquestioned and solitary mastery, he sees his realm invaded and has tasks set upon him by a woman. I made a vow to keep a tighter rein on my tongue. Worse fates might have befallen me than to be abandoned on an island ruled over by a countryman with the foresight to swim ashore with a knife at his belt and a slave at his side. I might as easily have been cast away alone on an island infested with lions and snakes, or on an island where rain never fell, or else on the island home of some foreign adventurer gone mad with solitude, naked, bestial, living on raw flesh.

  ‘So I returned in a contrite spirit and went to Cruso and asked his pardon for taking the skins, and gratefully accepted the food Friday had set aside. When I lay down to sleep that night I seemed to feel the earth sway beneath me. I told myself it was a memory of the rocking of the ship coming back unbidden. But it was not so: it was the rocking of the island itself as it floated on the sea. I thought: It is a sign, a sign I am becoming an island-dweller. I am forgetting what it is to live on the mainland. I stretched out my arms and laid my palms on the earth, and, yes, the rocking persisted, the rocking of the island as it sailed through the sea and the night bearing into the future its freight of gulls and sparrows and fleas and apes and castaways, all unconscious now, save me. I fell asleep smiling. I believe it was the first time I smiled since I embarked for the New World.

  ‘They say Britain is an island too, a great island. But that is a mere geographer’s notion. The earth under our feet is firm in Britain, as it never was on Cruso’s island.

  ‘Now that I had shoes, I took to walking the shoreline every day, as far in either direction as I could. I told myself I was keeping watch for a sail. But too often my eyes would settle on the horizon in a kind of fixity till, lulled by the beating of the wind and the roar of the waves and the crunch of the sand under my feet, I would fall into a waking slumber. I found a hollow in the rocks where I could lie sheltered from the wind and gaze out to sea. In time I grew to think of this as my private retreat, the one place reserved for me on an island owned by another; though in truth the island no more belonged to Cruso than to the King of Portugal or indeed to Friday or the cannibals of Africa.

  ‘There is more, much more, I could tell you about the life we lived: how we kept the fire smouldering day and night; how we made salt; how, lacking soap, we cleaned ourselves with ash. Once I ask
ed Cruso whether he knew no way of fashioning a lamp or a candle so that we should not have to retire when darkness fell, like brutes. Cruso responded in the following words: “Which is easier: to learn to see in the dark, or to kill a whale and seethe it down for the sake of a candle?” There were many tart retorts I might have made; but, remembering my vow, I held my tongue. The simple truth was, Cruso would brook no change on his island.

  ‘I had been there about a month when one morning Cruso came home from the terraces complaining he was unwell. Seeing he was shivering, I put him to bed and covered him warmly. “It is the old fever that came with me,” he said. “There is no cure, it must run its course.”

  ‘For twelve days and nights I nursed him, sometimes holding him down when fits of raving overtook him, when he sobbed or beat with his fists and shouted in Portuguese at figures he saw in the shadows. One night, indeed, when for hours he had been moaning and shivering, his hands and feet cold as ice, I lay down beside him, holding him in my arms to warm him, fearing he would die otherwise. In my embrace he at last fell asleep, and I slept too, though uneasily.

  ‘All this time Friday made no effort to help me, but on the contrary shunned the hut as though we two had the plague. At daybreak he would set off with his fishing-spear; returning, he would put his catch down beside the stove, gutted and scaled, and then retire to a far corner of the garden, where he would sleep curled on his side like a cat, or else play over and over again on his little reed flute a tune of six notes, always the same. This tune, of which he seemed never to tire, grew so to annoy me that one day I marched over and dashed the flute from his hands and would have scolded him too, whether or not he understood, had I not feared to wake Cruso. Friday sprang to his feet, his eyes wide with surprise, for I had never lost patience with him before, or indeed paid him much heed.