Birds of a Feather

Aaah, okej, den var faktiskt inte så bra som jag tyckte i eftermiddags. Det var en engelskauppgift, som gick ut på att hitta på en dialog mellan Robinson Crusoe och Fredag. Det var säkert nästan tio år sedan jag läste boken, men faktafel var helt ok. 

Jag måste komma över denna rädsla för att lägga ut mina texter för folk att läsa (måste ju skicka ut romanen för betaläsning någon gång i vår), så den som vill kan läsa lite engelskt flum här nedanför.

—

The seasons had shifted again, and by the markings on Robinson’s calendar, the two men deduced it must be early summer. The day was no longer than the night, but the phase where one shifted into the other progressed slowly.

One of those nights, when the sun had gone just low enough to allow one or two stars to shyly shine their lights, Robinson and Friday sat side by side in the sand, not far from the hut. Their fire had been reduced to embers, but there was no point in trying to keep it alive. The night was warm, their eyes were since long used to periods in the dark. Friday’s probably more than his own, Robinson thought to himself. They had never been contaminated by streetlights or oil lamps. Once, the old sailor would have used it to scare away beasts from his camp, but now that there were two of them, he didn’t feel the need.

“Master.” Friday broke the silence. “May I ask you a question?”

Robinson watched him with a father’s interest. There was barely a trace of barbaric tone in his voice anymore; he had taught the man well.

“Of course you may, Friday.”

The man took a deep breath, as to give flight to whatever thoughts were trapped inside his dark head.

“What do you think would have happened to me, if you hadn’t found me?”

“You would have been killed and eaten”, Robinson gently reminded him.

“Oh yes, I know. But say that wouldn’t have happened?”

“That’s a good question.” Robinson pondered his answer for a few moments. “You would have continued your life as a wild man. You would never have learnt a word of English, and you’d never have learned about God.”

“That is true.”

A slightly more powerful wave crashed over the sand, almost reaching the toes of Friday’s long feet. He didn’t move them, as anyone raised by an English mother would have.

“Now I’ll ask you a question, boy. How would you have felt about that?”

“I wouldn’t have felt very much at all, would I? I wouldn’t have known I missed it.” The edges of Friday’s silhouette were growing blurry in the disappearing light, but his smiling teeth were as white as ever. “But now that I do know about God and England, I can say this life seems much more meaningful.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Friday.”

“Would you tell me more about your home, Master? There is so much out there of which I know nothing.”

There was an eagerness in Friday’s voice that planted a seed of wary in Robinson’s mind. He wanted nothing more than to speak of England, of the streets that had been his boyhood kingdom. His dear parents, who must have thought him dead. Who were probably dead themselves by now.

“I shall tell you”, he decided. “But only as a story, as men tell stories of what might lie beyond the stars. All those places I once travelled without map or compass, they are now as unreachable as the heavens.”

Friday was not only a fast learner and a shockingly eloquent speaker, he was also an excellent listener. While Robinson spoke, he came to think of the young men native to The Fat Cat, the pub on the corner. Any one of them would have interrupted him before he got to describe the neighbouring houses, but Friday sat quietly. He nodded along, his eyes pulling more and more detail out of the storyteller. By the command of his expression, Robinson took to describing the colours of the cobblestone after a heavy rain, the constant smell of wet wood, the fur patterns of the three dogs that his father used to feed.

“I shall stop now; there is too much to tell.” Robinson shook his head. Never would he have thought he remembered so much. His mind had been so packed with thoughts of

maintaining and improving what he had created, that he hadn’t given too much thought to the fact that he had once come from a world that other people had created for him.

“My former home is not a story”, Friday pondered. “It’s around us. Not this island, but one very much like it. There are huts and smiling people, but no God. Nevertheless, it is very much alive.”

“I wish I could show you mine, since I have gotten to experience yours in such detail. But that will never be. You will live and die where you’ve always been meant to be, as where I will forever be a wandering soul.”

“Do you think yourself to be lost, Master?”

Robinson struggled to find the answer, which was an irony in itself.

“I am lost”, he said. “But you are found. That’s in your blood, Friday. You are a child of nature, of the beaches and the palm trees. A son of the unforgiving sea. You came of that which does not change, whereas my world can be turned upside down within the course of a day. The England I speak of does not exist anymore, and if I found a way to return, I would no longer recognize what was once my home. I am a man of no country, of no creed, of no kingdom. Nothing is mine, and I am nothing’s.”

“Then you too have become a son of the sea.” When Friday spoke, he usually had a twinkling tone, as if he were always prepared to burst into melodic laughter. That was all gone now. “I own nothing, but I am owned by nothing. I live of what nature gives to me, and at the end of my life, I give everything back. We are not that different, Robinson Crusoe.”

Robinson knew fear; this was not it. Friday did not frighten him, but the massive intellect that hid behind a barbaric upbringing did. If that kind of soul had been put into a body in England or in France, given proper schooling and resources, it could have toppled regimes single-handedly.

“I think I have, for what will surely be the only time in my life, shared a thought with God.” There was no doubt in Robinson’s mind. “In his never ending wisdom and knowledge of the human race, he put the best and brightest minds as far away from what we think to be intelligent civilization as possible. He keeps in direct contact with you here, through the sweet fruits and the ground that will, someday, consume you, whereas we shield ourselves from him with church roofs and smoke. My wisdom shows itself in that I am able to survive these conditions, but you don’t even think of them as harsh. You are a creature of God, Friday, and as a humble fool, there is one thing I must ask that you answer me.”

“If I am to answer, I need a question.”

The sun had disappeared completely now, and Robinson wasn’t sure it’d ever come back. Neither was he sure that he cared. With his eyes to the stars, to the sea, to the slowly rising moon, anywhere but to the man next to him, he gathered the courage to ask what might change their way of life to the core.

“What name did I steal from you?”

/E-K