Foe by J.M. Coetzee

nothing, Friday," I tell him. "It is only a poor mad
girl come to join us. In Mr Foe's house there are many mansions. We
are as yet only a castaway and a dumb slave and now a madwoman. There
is place yet for lepers and acrobats and pirates and whores to join
our menagerie. But pay no heed to me. Go back to bed and sleep."
And I brush past him.
    'I
talk to Friday as old women talk to cats, out of loneliness, till at
last they are deemed to be witches, and shunned in the streets.
    'Later
I return to the drawing-room. The girl is sitting in an armchair, her
basket at her feet, knitting. "You will harm your eyesight,
knitting in this light," I say. She lays down her knitting.
"There is one circumstance you misunderstand," I continue.
"The world is full of stories of mothers searching for sons and
daughters they gave away once, long ago. But there are no stories of
daughters searching for mothers.
    There
are no stories of such quests because they do not occur. They are not
part of life."
    "'You
are mistaken," says she. "You are my mother, I have found
you, and now I will not leave you."
    '"I
will admit I have indeed lost a daughter. But I did not give her
away, she was taken from me, and you are not she. I am leaving the
door unlocked. Depart when you are ready."
    'This
morning when I come downstairs she is still there, sprawled in the
armchair, bundled in her cloak, asleep. Bending over her I see that
one eye is half open and the eyeball rolled back. I shake her. "It
is time to go," I say. "No," says she. Nevertheless,
from the kitchen I hear the door close and the latch click behind
her.
    '"Who
brought you up after I abandoned you?" I asked. "The
gipsies," she replied. "The gipsiesl" I mocked-"It
is only in books that children are stolen by gipsiesl You must think
of a better story!"
    'And
now, as if my troubles are not enough, Friday has fallen into one of
his mopes. Mopes are what Cruso called them, when without reason
Friday would lay down his tools and disappear to some sequestered
corner of the island, and then a day later come back and resume his
chores as if nothing had intervened. Now he mopes about the
passageways or stands at the door, longing to escape, afraid to
venture out; or else lies abed and pretends not to hear when I call
him. "Friday, Friday," I say, seating myself at his
bedside, shaking my head, drifting despite myself into another of the
long, issueless colloquies I conduct with him, "how could I have
foreseen, when I was carried by the waves on to your island and
beheld you with a spear in your hand and the sun shining like a halo
behind your head, that our path would take us to a gloomy house in
England and a season of empty waiting? Was I wrong to choose Mr Foe?
And who is this child he sends us, this mad child? Does he send her
as a sign? What is she a sign of?
    '"Oh,
Friday, how can I make you understand the cravings felt by those of
us who live in a world of speech to have our questions answered! It
is like our desire, when we kiss someone, to feel the lips we kiss
respond to us. Otherwise would we not be content to bestow our kisses
on statues, the cold statues of kings and queens and gods and
goddesses? Why do you think we do not kiss statues, and sleep with
statues in our beds, men with the statues of women and women with the
statues of men, statues carved in postures of desire? Do you think it
is only because marble is cold? Lie long enough with a statue in your
bed, with warm covers over the two of you, and the marble will grow
warm. No, it is not because the statue is cold but because it is
dead, or rather, because it has never lived and never will.
    "'Be
assured, Friday, by sitting at your bedside and talking of desire and
kisses I do not mean to court you. This is no game in which each word
has a second meaning,. in which the words say 'Statues are cold' and
mean 'Bodies are warm,' or say 'I crave an answer' and mean 'I crave
an embrace.' Nor is the denial l now make a false denial of the