I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

  It was an enjoyable expedition. We marked the way with big arrows made of stones, so we wouldn’t get lost in that monotonous landscape. We went from hilltop to hilltop to get a good view of our surroundings. It wasn’t until we reached the ninth bunker that we found fabric, but already in the second, we’d found a packet of coffee. I’d never tasted coffee and I didn’t like it very much. I watched my companions shriek with delight and pleasure as they imagined the others’ joy when they returned with such a wonderful find, but I was unable to share their excitement. We found as much salt and soap as we needed, but not a single sandal, which upset us, until Denise said we should have thought of it years ago and taken the leather boots to cut sandals from the legs.

  ‘We’re not very resourceful, are we!’ said Greta ruefully.

  ‘We come from a world where it wasn’t necessary, everything was ready-made and we never asked how things were produced,’ replied Frances.

  They didn’t like talking about the past any more than they had done before, and would have said nothing further, but it was a long hike and this was a good opportunity. Because Anthea had taught me a lot of things, I felt bolder about asking questions.

  ‘Tell me what it was like,’ I said. ‘How did you live?’

  Initially, they were reluctant to answer, then they relented. At first, they were talking to me, but it turned out they’d never told one another their life stories, and they were enjoying this opportunity. Frances had been married with two children, Paul and Mary. When the disaster struck, she’d been planning to have a third, and, because her memories were so terribly hazy, she didn’t know whether she’d been pregnant and lost the baby or had simply intended to have another child. Her husband was called Lawrence, and she’d met him when she was twenty-three, on the rebound from a love affair which she thought she’d never get over. As she talked, she kept saying:

  ‘But it’s all so ordinary, it’s the same as everybody else!’

  As if she wasn’t aware that for me, nothing was ordinary, since nothing had ever happened to me.

  ‘The child’s right, nothing’s ordinary when it’s happening to you,’ said Denise. ‘I didn’t have any children, but I wanted them and I always envied those who did.’

  When all their lives had been shattered, she was on her second divorce, because, she said, she always chose the wrong men and was never happy with them. Greta couldn’t understand why Denise kept remarrying. She herself had never married, but had lived for years with the same lover and been very happy. That shocked Denise. And they began arguing about whether marriage was a good thing or not. In that wilderness where there were no men to marry, they debated whether it was better to be unfaithful or to leave, and then they burst out laughing. Even I recognised the absurdity of the situation and laughed with them. On reflection, I realise that I laughed a lot more often than I thought. But later, they cried, and I wasn’t able to understand them any more. Then they felt sorry for me, because I’d never experience love, and it was the same as when they talked about chocolate or the joys of a long, hot bath; I believed them without really being able to imagine what they were talking about.

  Greta had had a son by this man she’d never married, but apart from naming them, none of them would ever talk about their children. On that subject, my questions were unable to break through their defences. Later, Anthea tried to explain their reticence to me.

  ‘You can’t understand, and since I didn’t have any children myself, I probably don’t fully understand either, but just think about what might have happened to their children! Growing up alone, like you, among strangers who weren’t in a position to take proper care of them? Or killed? Or dumped in groups of forty in bunkers, living like animals, dying for want of attention? They don’t want to think about their children. They’re probably all dead, and better off that way. If Frances was pregnant, she must have had a miscarriage. You’ve never seen a child, you don’t know what it means – their vulnerability, their trust, the love you feel for them, the anxiety, being ready to lay down your life to save them, and it’s unbearable to imagine a child’s pain.’

  It’s true I know nothing of all that and have no memories of my own childhood. Perhaps that’s why I’m so different from the others. I must be lacking in certain experiences that make a person fully human.

  I don’t remember their accounts very well, probably because there were too many things that I hadn’t experienced and couldn’t picture. They’d say: ‘We went dancing.’ What was dancing? They explained, they formed couples, facing each other. Denise placed her left hand on Frances’s waist and held her right hand up in the air, then they spun around. Yes, but what about the music? The sound of an accordion or a violin? They spelled out waltzes, one, two, three, one, two, three. Having counted my own heartbeats for so long, I could understand a repetitive rhythm, but I could never imagine the sound of the band, nor the laughter of those boys who made them lovesick, nor the rustle of chiffon or silk dresses swirling around them and making them look so beautiful. They spoke of creeping home at dawn, angry parents who scolded them, kisses, jilted lovers, men they were in love with but who didn’t love them, and it was all a muddle in my head. Gradually, I stopped asking them to tell me about their world, and I gave up trying to imagine it. I knew very well that I came from it. I’d had a father and a mother who probably went dancing and got married or left each other, and were torn apart by the disaster like Frances and Lawrence. Perhaps one of the dead women I’d seen in the bunkers was my mother, and my father was lying mummified near the bars of one of the prisons; all the links between them and me have been severed. There’s no continuity and the world I have come from is utterly foreign to me. I haven’t heard its music, I haven’t seen its painting, I haven’t read its books, except for the handful I found in the refuge and of which I understood little. I know only the stony plain, wandering, and the gradual loss of hope. I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence. There is nothing we can do about it.

  Such thoughts ought to make me weep. But tears never come to my eyes except when I think about Anthea, a woman I actually knew. I cannot mourn for what I have not known.

  Every evening we’d collect a huge pile of dead wood and make a fire. We grilled sausages coated with mustard, of which we’d found a few jars, and we ate them with flour cakes baked over the embers. We were relaxed and tired, and I think that for a while, my companions’ nostalgia was allayed as they experienced the vast silence of the plain, the continual rustle of the grass. We were in no hurry to sleep, we listened to the breeze which always whistled the same soft note. Apart from Rose’s powerful soprano, it was the only music I’d ever heard.

  Sometimes, as I returned to the group around the fire, I’d feel a rush of emotion; I was moved by the flickering of the flames in the night, the silhouettes of the women resting, the interplay of words or Denise’s reedy voice carrying the laments of another era across the plain, and I understood what Anthea called beauty, which apparently had been so abundant in their world.

  After four months, we set out for home. We’d gone round in a huge circle, so it only took us a month to return to the village. We were slightly apprehensive, but there had been no deaths. The timber promised for the new buildings was ready and we set to work. I enjoyed it immensely. We’d found two excellent sites to move to if we decided to leave our present settlement, but that seemed unlikely because I could see that the women were happy in their new houses and wouldn’t agree to leave until the cold store was practically empty. All the same, when the houses were finished, I went on a quick expedition with Anthea to the nearest place: the river was nice and wide, rich in aquatic plants, with a clayey bed which she said might be useful for making bricks. There was a small wood, vital for timber. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed that there aren’t many trees left,’ sh
e said. ‘They don’t grow very fast and we may run out of wood before we run out of meat.’

  Shortly after our return, Angela announced that she was unwell. She had giddy spells, memory lapses and a feeling of exhaustion that rest could not cure. She didn’t think she was older than sixty or sixty-five, but she came from a family where people didn’t live to a very old age, she told us, and, should the situation arise, she didn’t want us to allow her to suffer or deteriorate as Margaret had done.

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ protested Anthea. ‘I understand what you’re asking and, if I had syringes and medicines, I’d promise anything you like. But here?’

  ‘There are the knives,’ replied Angela. ‘You know just where to strike to pierce the heart.’

  It proved unnecessary. She soon fell into a coma and died within three days, but the idea took root in Anthea’s mind. She thought of Mary-Jane who’d gone off to hang herself in the bunker.

  ‘You see, it keeps haunting me, gnawing at me. She fled all alone in the middle of the night, and perhaps she cried out in pain while making her rope. I feel I abandoned her. Angela was right: I know where the heart is and how to plunge in a knife to stop it. I think that if anyone else suffers the same pain as Mary-Jane, it will be my duty to do what is necessary, but I’m afraid of being too cowardly.’

  ‘You can teach me,’ I said. ‘I could do it. I’m not like the rest of you.’

  The thirteenth year after our escape, we decided to move because we’d almost run out of meat. Several more women had died and now there were only thirty-two of us left, but these deaths had always happened either quite quickly or calmly and I hadn’t yet had to carry out my promise. With the few trees still left and the trolley wheels, we built makeshift carts on which we loaded the tables and chairs. We went to a site that was a three-week trek from the first village, and we built ten houses. The first one was as big as possible, and the others were smaller, to accommodate just a few women. It was a huge task but one which, naturally, gave us enormous pleasure. We had become good carpenters and our roofs were sound structures. We even managed to make excellent bricks with mud from the riverbed, and our walls may not have been completely straight, but they held up. We tried to make gardens around the front doors by gathering a few of the rare wild flowers, but they always died, no matter how carefully we watered them.

  Greta, Anthea, Frances and I shared a house. Most of the women were living as couples, except for Denise, Annabel and Laura who set up as a threesome. But we only built one kitchen and we ate our meals together, at tables arranged in a big square. Once the village was built, which took a good year, we began to dread idleness. Some of the women had really taken to woodwork and I went on several expeditions to find other types of tree or thicker trunks. Sometimes, I found a hollow branch which I’d bring back for Rose. She wanted to carve a flute, but was never satisfied with the result. None of us had learned the simple things, such as pottery, or the art of recognising herbs, and Anthea said that even a land as arid as this ought to provide more resources for creativity than the things we’d thought of so far. For example, if properly treated, the aquatic plants we’d used for making thatched roofs could perhaps be used for knitting and weaving. Frances remembered that flax had to be retted, but what was retting? Another woman suggested letting the wood soak for a long time and then bending it. But our efforts were fruitless, and after a few disappointments we gave up.

  Gradually, the futility of all our attempts dampened our spirits. Our bed and board were guaranteed, a few metres of fabric satisfied our modesty, and a few kilos of soft soap met our hygiene requirements. We were going to die one by one without having understood anything of what had happened to us and, as the years went by, our questions petered out. The lights in the bunkers were still on, and I simply couldn’t resign myself to never understanding anything. Where did the electricity come from? There had to be a power station operating somewhere, Anthea had told me. Was it entirely automated? Were there still some people who operated it without knowing why? Would it stop one day and the meat rot in the cold stores? No one dreamed of seeing rescuers appear, and the few remaining questions were always about our failure. I didn’t dare admit that I wanted to carry on walking and exploring, because I knew they’d think I was crazy.

  Our mood was not one of despair, which Anthea explained to me was a violent feeling that led to great emotional outbursts, but rather one of equanimity. There were no longer extensive conversations on every subject, nor the nervous jollity of before. During the year when we were building the new village, the women had become animated again, but then they lapsed into the old sluggishness, never hurrying to complete any task, since there were so few that they preferred to draw them out. That made them seem like old women. They had no reason to look up, so they walked with a stoop. The last passions had fizzled out, their hair was going grey and they seemed to have lost the desire to live. We had survived the prison, the plain and the loss of all hope, but the women had discovered that survival is no more than putting off the moment of death. They continued to eat, drink and sleep, while in the shadows, surrender, silent capitulation and death lurked. They became thin, the furrows on their dejected faces grew deeper, they easily became breathless, their hips were painful and their legs swollen. Elizabeth suffered from haemorrhages, Greta stomach pains and Anna became paralysed down one side of her body.

  She could no longer speak, one eye was closed and the other begged. We all knew what she was asking, but Anthea, weeping, was unable to grant it.

  ‘You told me that you’d be able to do it,’ Anthea murmured, not daring to meet my eye.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I told her.

  I didn’t really understand. If that was what Anna wanted and we could offer her no other relief, why was it so difficult for them to act? I think I understand them now that I have cried, but I can’t be sure, because even though I’ve spent most of my life with them, I am well aware that I was always different. I’m probably missing a chunk of their past.

  She had explained everything to me in detail. You had to count the ribs down from the collarbone, then find the edge of the sternum and go back three fingers. She showed me on her own breast the exact spot where I would have to plunge the knife in hard, with a single swift stroke.

  ‘Then, when it’s my turn, you’ll know what to do.’

  They all went out of the house where Anna lay and I was left alone with her. I sat beside her. She looked at me and I saw, on what remained of her face, that she was trying to smile at me. I drew back the blanket from her emaciated chest, and had no difficulty in counting the protruding ribs, nor in locating the edge of the sternum. I placed my finger on the spot and I could feel the beating of her heart, which seemed vigorous. It was certain that if we did not intervene, she could remain the victim of this appalling condition for a long time. She raised the arm she was still able to move and stroked my cheek while I placed on her skin the point of the knife that I had spent ages sharpening. I was swift and accurate, her arm fell back and her heart was beating no more.

  I received that caress several times – the only one I was able to tolerate – the silent gratitude of a woman receiving death at my hands. None wanted to endure pain and I think they were in a hurry to die. I don’t know how many I killed – I who count everything, that was one thing I didn’t count. Each time, even when they were contorted with the most violent pain, I saw their tormented faces relax as I was about to strike, and it didn’t make me cry because I sensed their haste and their relief. It was only at the moment of death that they admitted their despair and rushed headlong towards the great, dark doors that I opened for them, leaving the sterile plain where their lives had gone awry without a backward glance, eager to embrace another world which perhaps didn’t exist, but they preferred nothingness to the futile succession of empty days. And I know that at that moment, they loved me. My hand never trembled. We became strange accomplices during their last moments, when I was the chosen companion, the
one who would unravel their incomprehensible fate, closer than their forgotten lovers, dead in the bunkers or under another sky, closer than their weeping lovers waiting at the door for me to come out, the knife wrapped in a thick rag that would conceal any drops of blood, and nod my head confirming that it was all over, that the sick woman’s suffering was at an end, and that, at least for one of us, the agony was over. Then we could hum the song of death. Afterwards, we’d gaze at one another for a moment in silence, then the women would go inside and shroud the dead woman in a blanket, the newest and best one we had. At nightfall, we’d carry her to the cemetery and lower her gently into her grave. One after the other, they were buried under that sky and neither they nor I knew if it was the one under which we’d been born.

  It wasn’t necessary for me to stop Anthea’s heart. Each death had contributed a little to killing her. There had been so much hope when we’d escaped from the prison, and then this slow dissipation, the gradual abandonment of all expectations, a defeat that had killed everything without a battle. She wondered when it had dawned on us that we were as much prisoners out in the open as we had been behind bars. Was it after finding the second bunker when we’d been terrified at the sight of the thirty-nine dead women, heaped up or collapsed on top of one another? Or the first time we’d descended a staircase with no further hope of finding the cage open? Or when Mary-Jane had hanged herself? When did we know for certain that we had no future, that we would continue to live as parasites on those who’d locked us up, stealing below ground to take our food from the departed enemy? And how was it that we hadn’t died from sheer nausea? She mulled over these questions endlessly, and I listened in silence. The impossibility of finding any answers fuelled the grief that was killing her. When there were only six of us left, and Greta died, Anthea no longer had the strength to stand and had to be carried to the cemetery. We used a litter like the one on which Dorothy had died, and Anthea lay on her back gazing up at the sky as we walked, still wondering if it was that of planet Earth. There was a moon. The women always said that it looked like the moon they’d known, but they weren’t sure they could trust their own memories. Anthea’s sight had grown poor, she screwed up her eyes with a futile persistence. When we arrived, Greta was already lying in her grave and Laura was keeping vigil. Rose had passed away, but the women had learned the song and their voices resonated for a long time over the plain, because they repeated it several times. I had never sung. We hadn’t sung in the bunker, and afterwards it was too late, I had a lump in my throat. Nor could I shout, I could only produce a raucous croak that didn’t travel far. I do not know whether I am still able to speak. Of course, all I have to do is try, but I don’t seem to want to. And what does it matter if I’ve become mute in a world where there is no one to talk to?