Foe (16 page)

I
spoke. 'It is growing late, Friday and I will not be staying,' I
said.

'You
must not think of departing,' said Foe. 'You have nowhere to go;
besides, when were you last in such company?'

'Never,'
I replied. 'I was never before in such company in my life. I thought
this was a lodginghouse, but now I see it is a gathering-place for
actors. It would be a waste of breath, Mr Foe, for me to say that
these women are strangers to me, for you will only reply that I have
forgotten, and then you will prompt them and they will embark on long
stories of a past in which they will claim I was an actor too.

'What
can I do but protest it is not true? I am as familiar as you with the
many, many ways in which we can deceive ourselves. But how can we
live if we do not believe we know who we are, and who we have been?
If I were as obliging as you wish me to be -if I were ready to
concede that, though I believe my daughter to have been swallowed up
by the grasslands of Brazil, it is equally possible that she has
spent the past year in England, and is here in this room now, in a
form in which I fail to recognize her -for the daughter I remember is
tall and dark-haired and has a name of her own -if I were like a
bottle bobbing on the waves with a scrap of writing inside, that
could as well be a message from an idle child fishing in the canal as
from a mariner adrift on the high seas -if I were a mere receptacle
ready to accommodate whatever story is stuffed in me, surely you
would dismiss me, surely you would say to yourself, "This is no
woman but a house of words, hollow. without substance"?

'I
am not a story. Mr Foe. I may impress you as a story because I began
my account of myself without preamble, slipping overboard into the
water and striking out for the shore. But my life did not begin in
the waves. There was a life before the water which stretched back to
my desolate searchings in Brazil, thence to the years when my
daughter was still with me, and so on back to the day I was born. All
of which makes up a story I do not choose to tell. I choose not to
tell it because to no one, not even to you, do I owe proof that I am
a substantial being with a substantial history in the world. I choose
rather to tell of the island, of myself and Cruso and Friday and what
we three did there: for I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by
telling her story according to her own desire.

Here
I paused, breathless. Both a girl and the woman Amy were watching me
intently. I saw. and moreover with what seemed friendliness in their
manner. Foe nodded as if to encourage me. The boy stood motionless
with the coal-scuttle in his hand. Even Friday had his eyes on me.

I
crossed the room. At my approach the girl, I observed, did not waver.
What other test is left to me? I thought; and took her in my arms and
kissed her on the lips, and felt her yield and kiss me in return,
almost as one returns a lover's kiss. Had I expected her to dissolve
when I touched her, her flesh crumbling and floating away like
paper-ash? I gripped her tight and pressed my fingers into her
shoulders. Was this truly my daughter's flesh? Opening my eyes, I saw
Amy's face hovering only inches from mine, her lips parted too as if
for a kiss. 'She is unlike me in every way,' I murmured. Amy shook
her head. 'She is a true child of your womb,' she replied -'She is
like you in secret ways.' I drew back. 'I am not speaking of secret
ways,' I said -'I am speaking of blue eyes and brown hair'; and I
might have made mention too of the soft and helpless little mouth,
had I wished ·to be hurtful. 'She is her father's child as
well as her mother's,' said Amy. To which I was about to reply that
if the girl were her father's child then her father must be my
opposite, and we do not marry our opposites, we marry men who are
like us in subtle ways, when it struck me that I would likely be
wasting my breath, for the light in Amy's eye was not so much
friendly as foolish.

'Mr
Foe,' I said, turning to him -and now I believe there was truly
despair in my looks, and he saw it -'I no longer know into what kind
of household I have tumbled. I ·say to myself that this child,
who calls herself by my name, is a ghost, a substantial ghost, if
such beings exist, who haunts me for reasons I cannot understand, and
brings other ghosts in tow. She stands for the daughter I lost in
Bahia, I· tell myself, and is sent by you to console me; but,
lacking skill in summoning ghosts, you call up one who resembles my
daughter in no respect whatever. Or you privately think my daughter
is dead, and summon her ghost, and are allotted a ghost who by chance
bears my name, with an attendant. Those are my surmises. As for the
boy, I cannot tell whether he is a ghost or not, nor does it matter.

'But
if these women are creatures of yours, visiting me at your
instruction, speaking words you have prepared for them, then who am I
and who indeed are you? I presented myself to you in words I knew to
be my own-I slipped overboard, I began to swim, my hair floated about
me, and so forth, you will remember the words -and for a long time
afterwards, when I was writing those letters that were never read by
you, and were later not sent, and at last not even written down, I
continued to trust in my own authorship.

'Yet,
in the same room as yourself at last, where I need surely not relate
to you my every action -you have me under your eyes, you are not
blind -I continue to describe and explain. Listen! I describe the
dark staircase, the bare room, the curtained alcove, particulars a
thousand times more familiar to you than to me; I tell of your looks
and my looks, I relate your words and mine. Why do I speak, to whom
do I speak, when there is no need to speak?

'In
the beginning I thought I would tell you the story of the island and,
being done with that, return to my former life. But now all my life
grows to be story and there is nothing of my own left to me. I
thought I was myself and this girl a creature from another order
speaking words you made up for her. But now I am full of doubt.
Nothing is left to me but doubt. I am doubt itself. Who is speaking
me? Am I a phantom too? To what order do I belong? And you: who are
you?'

Through
all this talk Foe had stood stock still by the fireplace. I expected
an answer, for never before had he failed for words. But instead,
without preliminaries, he approached me and took me in his arms and
kissed me; and, as the girl had responded before, I felt my lips
answer his kiss (but to whom do I confess this?) as a woman's answer
her lover's.

Was
this his reply -that he and I were man and woman, that man and woman
are beyond words? If so it was a paltry reply, demonstration more
than reply, one that would satisfy no philosopher. Amy and the girl
and Jack were smiling even broader than before. Breathless, I tugged
myself free.

'Long
ago, Mr Foe,' I said, 'you wrote down the story (I found it in your
library and read it to Friday to pass the time) of a woman who spent
an afternoon in conversation with a dear friend, and at the end of
the afternoon embraced her friend and bade her farewell till they
should next meet. But the friend, unknown to her, had died the day
before, many miles away, and she had sat conversing with a ghost. Mrs
Barfield was her name, you will remember. Thus I conclude you are
aware that ghosts can converse with us, and embrace and kiss us too.'

'My
sweet Susan,' said Foe -and I could not maintain my stern looks when
he uttered these words, I had not been called sweet Susan for many
years, certainly Cruso had never called me that-'My sweet Susan, as
to who among us is a ghost and who not I have nothing to say: it is a
question we can only stare at in silence, like a bird before a snake,
hoping it will not swallow us.

'But
if you cannot rid yourself of your doubts, I have something to say
that may be of comfort. Let us confront our worst fear, which is that
we have all of us been called into the world from a different order
(which we have now forgotten) by a conjurer unknown to us, as you say
I have conjured up your daughter and her companion (I have not). Then
I ask nevertheless: Have we thereby lost our freedom? Are you, for
one, any less mistress of your life? Do we of necessity become
puppets in a story whose end is invisible to us, and towards which we
are marched like condemned felons? You and I know, in our different
ways, how rambling an occupation writing is; and conjuring is surely
much the same. We sit staring out of the window, and a cloud shaped
like a camel passes by, and before we know it our fantasy has whisked
us away to the sands of Africa and our hero (who is no one but
ourselves in disguise) is clashing scimitars with a Moorish brigand.
A new cloud floats past in the form of a sailing-ship, and in a trice
we are cast ashore all woebegone on a desert isle. Have we cause to
believe that the lives it is given us to live proceed with any more
design than these whimsical adventures?

'You
will say, I know, that the heroes and heroines of adventure are
simple folk incapable of such doubts as those you feel regarding your
own life. But have you considered that your doubts may be part of the
story you live, of no greater weight than any other adventure of
yours? I put the question merely.

'In
a life of writing books, I have often, believe me, been lost in the
maze of doubting. The trick I have learned is to plant a sign or
marker in the ground where I stand, so that in my future wanderings I
shall have something to return to, and not get worse lost than I am.
Having planted it, I press on; the more often I come back to the mark
(which is a sign to myself of my blindness and incapacity), the more
certainly I know I am lost, yet the more I am heartened too, to have
found my way back.

'Have
you considered (and I will conclude here) that in your own wanderings
you may, without knowing it, have left behind some such token for
yourself; or, if you choose to believe you are not mistress of your
life, that a token has been left behind on your behalf, which is the
sign of blindness I have spoken of; and that, for lack of a better
plan,. your search for a way out of the maze -if you are indeed
amazed or be-mazed -might start from that point and return to it as
many times as are needed till you discover yourself to be saved?'

Here
Foe turned from me to give his attention to Jack, who had for a while
been tugging his sleeve. Low words passed between them; Foe gave him
money; and, with a cheery Good-night, Jack took his leave. Then Mrs
Amy looked at her watch and exclaimed at how late it was. 'Do you
live far?' I asked her. She gave me a strange look. 'No,' she said,
'not far, not far at all.' The girl seemed reluctant to be off, but I
embraced her again, and kissed her, which seemed to cheer her. Her
appearances, or apparitions, or whatever they were, disturbed me less
now that I knew her better.

'Come,
Friday,' I said-'it is time for us to go too.'

But
Foe demurred. 'You will do me the greatest of honours if you will
spend the night here,' he said 'Besides, where else will you find a
bed?' 'So long as it does not rain we have a hundred beds to choose
from, all of them hard,' I replied. 'Stay with me then,' said Foe
-'At the very least you shall have a soft bed.' 'And Friday?' 'Friday
too,' said he. 'But where will Friday sleep?' 'Where would you have
him sleep?' 'I will not send him away,' said I. 'By no means,' said
he. 'May he sleep in your alcove then?' said I, indicating the corner
of the room that was curtained off. 'Most certainly,' said he-'I will
lay down a mat, and a cushion too.' 'That will be enough,' said I.

While
Foe made the alcove ready, I roused Friday. 'Come, we have a home for
the night, Friday,' I whispered; 'and if fortune is with us we shall
have another meal tomorrow.'

I
showed him his sleeping-place and drew the curtain on him. Foe doused
the light and I heard him undressing. I hesitated awhile, wondering
what it augured for the writing of my story that I should grow so
intimate with its author. I heard the bedsprings creak. 'Good night,
Friday,' I whispered -'Pay no attention to your mistress and Mr Foe,
it is all for the good.' Then I undressed to my shift and let down my
hair and crept under the bedclothes.

For
a while we lay in silence, Foe on his side, I on mine. At last Foe
spoke. 'I ask myself sometimes,' he said, 'how it would be if God's
creatures had no need of sleep. If we spent all our lives awake,
would we be better people for it or worse?'

To
this strange opening I had no reply.

'Would
we be better or worse, I mean,' he went on, and meet what we meet
there?'

'And
what might that be?' said I.

'Our
darker selves,' said he. 'Our darker selves, and other phantoms too.'
And then, abruptly: 'Do you sleep, Susan?'

'I
sleep very well, despite all,' I replied.

'And
do you meet with phantoms in your sleep?'.

'I
dream, but I do not call the figures phantoms that come to me in
dreams.' 'What are they then?' 'They are memories, memories of my
waking hours, broken and mingled and altered.'