I walked some distance, then sat down to collect myself. Around me in the bushes settled a flock of sparrows, cocking their heads curiously, quite unafraid, having known no harm from man since the beginning of time. Was I to regret what had passed between Cruso and me? Would it have been better had we continued to live as brother and sister, or host and guest, or master and servant, or whatever it was we had been? Chance had cast me on his island, chance had thrown me in his arms. In a world of chance, is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? The questions echoed in my head without answer.
- J.M. Coetzee, Foe
Showing posts with label coetzee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coetzee. Show all posts
I whisper, and swim.
"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-factory, 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 of this."
---
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, 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. 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 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 us 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.
'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 than 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 master 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, you search for a way out of the maze - if you are indeed a-mazed 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?'
- J.M. Coetzee, Foe
Or I speak of the island. "We will visit a corn-factory, 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 of this."
---
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, 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. 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 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 us 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.
'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 than 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 master 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, you search for a way out of the maze - if you are indeed a-mazed 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?'
- J.M. Coetzee, Foe
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