I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

  I decided to bury the skeletons, because I wanted to show that whatever had happened to us, we belonged to the same kind, to those who honour the dead. I dug twenty-three shallow graves and laid the skeletons in them, then I covered them with earth and made a little mound on top of each one, on which I placed the masks and the weapons. I arranged them in a circle, I don’t know why, I felt that was best, their heads in the centre and their feet pointing towards the distance. It took me three days, because the ground was dry and I found it tiring. I rested by trying to decipher my books.

  They were all carrying the same book: A Condensed Gardening Handbook. It explained how to plant, sow, thin out, hoe and weed, and what to do in which season and what to plant where. I read the entire book carefully and became an expert on grafting roses, which made me laugh. There were lots of illustrations which showed me what a hoe looked like, a tulip bulb and plenty of other things that I’d never seen and never would.

  I read and reread the book. I acquired a perfectly useless knowledge, but I enjoyed it. I felt as if I had embellished my mind and that made me think of jewels, those objects which women used to adorn their beauty, in the days when beauty had a purpose.

  By the fifth day, everything was in order. I’d chosen two pairs of trousers, two shirts, a jacket, several pairs of underpants, taken as many towels as possible and replaced the rest, neatly folded and wrapped in the blankets, on the seats of the bus. I repacked my rucksack, which was only a little heavier because I’d eaten the contents of many of the cans, when suddenly I spotted the bottles which I’d completely forgotten. Had I become so rich that I could neglect some of my possessions? I had to move on because my water supply was getting low and I needed to find a river or a bunker soon to replenish it, but I could take a little time to find out what was in the bottles. I had no implement to open them with, so I began digging out the cork with the tip of my knife, which was difficult and took a long time. At last, I was able to pour a little of the liquid into my cup. It smelled funny, very strong and not very pleasant to the nostrils. I dipped my finger in and licked it: I didn’t like it. I took a tiny sip, which I swallowed gingerly, but even so it burnt my throat and made me want to cough. So it was alcohol, as I’d been expecting. At first, I was vexed, then I remembered that alcohol has medicinal qualities. In the past it had been used especially for cleaning wounds and numbing the senses when someone was in a great deal of pain. My wounds, nothing more serious than scratches on my legs when I brushed past thorn bushes, never became infected. All the same, it seemed like a good idea to take one bottle. I put the others back inside the bus.

  Before departing, I gazed at the scene I was leaving behind: the rust-eaten bus, a shell in the middle of the plain, which, over the centuries, would slowly disintegrate where it stood, the tombs in a circle decorated with the masks and weapons, the silence barely disturbed by the constant whispering of the wind. It all seemed incredibly strange, sinister and moving. I felt the burden of the inexplicable, of my life, of that world to which I was the sole witness. I had nothing else to do in it but continue my journey. One day, I would die here. Like the guards.

  I followed the road.

  It hadn’t been used for twenty years and, in places, despite the sparse vegetation, it was so overgrown that it disappeared and I had to climb a little hill to make out the bare strip. It took me in a south-west direction. I wondered whether it would lead to something. That would be logical, if there was any logic in this world. In the bus, two seats had remained empty: was the driver on his way to pick up three more guards, one of whom would have to stand, or was he driving the others to their final destination?

  For three days, ten hours a day, I walked, once again spurred on by impatience. I’d stayed in one place for a long time and was reaching the end of my supplies when I saw a cabin. I went in, feeling no emotion, certain that I would only find, as usual, the lights on, the main doors open and the cage locked. In the cold store, I was glad to see a fairly small piece of lamb that would defrost and cook quite fast. Back at the top, I realised that I hadn’t even glanced at the cage and its occupants. That made my heart sink, and I promised to go and pay my respects the next day.

  That night, I had a dream that I remembered. In it, I was sitting inside the bus amid the guards, who were alive. I couldn’t make out their faces because of the masks, but I could hear them talking among themselves. I had never actually heard the sound of a man’s voice, but that didn’t occur to me in my dream. The bus was moving. My situation felt completely natural, I didn’t wonder where I was going, or what I was doing among the guards. This seemed to go on for ages and I was perfectly relaxed, surrounded by the men, when suddenly I rediscovered the exquisite eruption of before, when I used to make up stories that I kept to myself.

  That woke me. I was alone, under my blanket, lying in the middle of the plain, a few paces from the cabin. I felt an immense sadness on thinking that there had been men and their closeness could trigger that delicious tremor, but I was reduced, poor me! to encountering it by chance in a dream. For a few moments I wondered what gave me my determination to live. I thought of all those women who had been killed by despair well before they reached old age, of Laura who grew tired of keeping her soul tethered to her body, and I felt a sort of vague temptation, a gnawing urge to admit defeat, which terrified me. I got up and took a few steps. It was a clear night, the sky was vast, hill after hill, I had thousands of kilometres to cover. My curiosity, momentarily dampened, was reawakened.

  The next day, I went back down the stairs and sat outside the cage. It was one of the few bunkers where the occupants had maintained their dignity to the end. There were no gruesome piles of twisted bodies, they were lying down, each on his own mattress, as if asleep. Perhaps one of them had had a powerful influence over the others and had convinced them that shouting and resistance would achieve nothing, that they had to resign themselves to dying and embrace their fate without putting up a futile struggle. Everything was in order, but, apart from bodies lying everywhere, how can you create disarray when you have nothing? I felt a sort of serenity looking at those corpses: they had died calmly and would spend eternity in tranquil postures. It set me wondering how I would die, whether it would be at night, in my sleep, and I would lie on the plain for ever, exposed to the constant gentle wind, or whether I would fall ill and have to endure pain. I remembered the guns, and then I remembered the safety catch, and told myself I should have persevered, I’d have been bound to find out how to use it, because I might end up wanting to die. I could have gone back to the bus, but I was extremely reluctant to retrace my steps when there was so much new ground ahead. I was young and healthy, and I had plenty of time to worry about that kind of precaution. Besides, I expected to make new discoveries. There had to be more than just cabins on that plain!

  I filled one of the big cooking pots with water and boiled my washing for a long time on the guards’ cooker. When it looked clean, I took it up and laid it out on the grass to dry in the sun. That took me the whole day.

  I set off again. Now that I had a book and could learn to read, I was sorry not to have a pencil or anything else to write with, to make a note of my route. In the evening, before going to sleep, I practised writing letters in the dirt, copying the sentences and words from the book. I had used a lot of them in speech, so I recognised them, and I thought about how to construct those that were not in there. The first one I tried to spell was ‘cabin’: I had ‘ca’ from ‘can’ and ‘bin’ from ‘compost bin’ – I just had to put the two together to make ‘cabin’. Then I spelled ‘cage’. The magic ‘e’ made the ‘a’ say its own name, unlike the short ‘a’ in ‘cabin’. I felt very pleased with myself for working this out and it looked as though I remembered everything I’d been taught.

  Sometimes, busying myself in this way, I automatically spoke the words I was trying to write and I was astonished at the sound of my voice, which had become cracked and raucous. I was probably forgetting how to talk thro
ugh lack of practice. That worried me a little, then I shrugged: so what if I completely forgot how to speak? I would never talk to anyone again!

  All the same, I felt nostalgic for a moment. That wonderful dream never recurred, and I was sometimes acutely aware that I was alone, and always would be, and that the only pleasure within my grasp was the all-too-rare one of satisfied curiosity.

  I continued from bunker to bunker. In so far as there were seasons on this planet where things varied so little, winter returned. The temperature was slightly cooler and it often rained during the night. I slept wrapped in the waterproof sheet and I set out a little later in the morning, as I had to wait for it to dry. I wore trousers and the jacket. While waiting for better weather, when I wasn’t working on my reading, I made myself a dress from the towels. The ground became greener and the streams deeper. I lost the road.

  It had become harder and harder to follow. At first, I told myself I must have made a mistake and confused it with the natural formation of the land. Much as I disliked doing so, I retraced my steps. I thought I’d found it again at the top of a hill, and I scanned the countryside carefully. The direction I’d come from seemed to be the right one, so I went back the same way, hoping that I’d only missed it through a lapse of concentration. I waited for the low evening sunlight, which emphasised the contours of the landscape, and I saw the thin ribbon stretching up the hill opposite. At dawn the next day, I was able to make out further clues, but after an hour’s walking, I could no longer see any clear signs. I decided to cover a vast semicircular area with a radius of five thousand steps. For three days, I walked back and forth, and had to resign myself to the fact that the road ended there.

  I was bitterly disappointed. I had so hoped that it would lead me somewhere, I’d forgotten that nothing made sense in that wilderness. Do people build roads that suddenly vanish? Yes, I told myself, yes, those people did. I felt like sitting down on the ground and weeping, but, luckily, my anger was the stronger and drove me on. I had to decide on a new direction. At first I’d chosen the east, then the road had made me deviate towards the south-west, and now I resolved to go due south.

  I had less energy. The road and the bus, which had given me so much hope, had turned out to be insoluble mysteries like everything else, and from time to time I said to myself that it was a pretty meagre reward after two years’ walking. But gradually my natural resilience took over again and, as I made my way from one hilltop to another, it occurred to me to organise my route more cleverly than in a straight line. By going straight, I was only exploring a very narrow area, and perhaps I was missing things to the left or right. The fruitless semicircle gave me an idea: I would walk in huge parallel arcs, two or three hours’ apart, depending on how I felt, and on the appeal of the terrain. Of course, that was much harder to calculate than going straight ahead, when all I had to do was pick out the landmarks and walk towards them. I knew that if you followed the sun, you’d go round in a circle. I got involved in complicated reckonings and experiments on the ground: I needed to follow the sun for a while and then change direction at midday. At that time, I had no means of making a map of my journey, but in the evenings, I drew it on the ground with stones and gazed at it for a long time to ensure I had memorised it. I began to wonder whether the bunkers were dotted around at random, or whether their location was governed by a plan. On our first exploratory trip, it had been twenty-six days before we’d found one, but sometimes I walked for barely a week before being able to stock up afresh. I walked in several semicircles, then, when I was certain I could orientate myself, I made big zigzags along the arcs of the circle: after a few weeks, I realised that the bunkers were arranged in groups of five, one at each corner of a rectangle and one in the centre. By keeping to a straight line, naturally, I missed some. I soon became able, on arriving at a cabin, to work out which way to go to find the next one, and could go to them or avoid them as I chose. I never avoided them and, whether I needed food or not, I’d go down to pay my respects to the dead. I never came across an open prison door.

  The coincidence that had made the siren go off at the precise moment when the guard was putting his key in the lock had been unique. Sometimes I marvel at my fate: I had been the only child among the women, and we were the prisoners who had escaped with our lives. For a few years.

  This new control over my route dispelled my melancholy mood. After all, I had made one discovery, so why had I allowed it to make me depressed? There would be more.

  I made another discovery.

  It was at the end of the day. I was tired and was looking for a patch of ground that would be a good place to stop. It had rained for several nights, but that evening the sky was cloudless, so I could rely on dry weather, which was a relief because I hadn’t been able to light a fire and had eaten my canned food cold and congealed. In other words, I needed a thick grove where I’d find plenty of wood to cut, with as few brambles as possible. I looked carefully about me, but with a specific objective, which nearly caused me to miss the mound of stones. I’d almost gone past it when the feeling of something unusual made me stop. I turned round and saw the mound that stood out so sharply against the monotony of the plain. There were never piles! It was two metres wide and reached almost to my knees. I’d never encountered anything like it – at most, I’d seen a few large stones close to each other, but what I found here couldn’t be natural. I took off my rucksack, put it slowly down on the ground and caught my breath.

  I was almost afraid to start moving the stones. I had to rouse myself. The stones were fairly large and I could only pick up one at a time. I realised that I was likely to graze my palms, so I tore off a strip from the blanket and wrapped it around my hands, which slowed me down, but in a way, I found it a relief. I was terribly afraid of being disappointed and finding, after all that effort, nothing but a few shade-loving insects. The pile was artificial, there was absolutely no doubt about that. If it concealed nothing, I would have to ask myself why someone had made it and all I’d have gained would be a new question, that worthless treasure which was beginning to weary me. This world was like a jigsaw puzzle, I only had a few pieces which didn’t fit together. Once, Anthea had explained that game to me and it sounded as though I’d have enjoyed it.

  I concentrated on removing the stones evenly from the top of the pile to avoid a rock slide. It was slow work and it took me more than an hour to reach the last layer of stones, which were much smaller and in the shape of a circle. I took the shovel I used every evening to level the ground and began to scrape the earth carefully. I was on my knees, like the pilgrims of the past, and certainly trembling like one. The shovel soon struck a metal surface.

  My whole being leapt! An intense tremor rippled through me and I felt giddy. I stood still for a few moments, regaining my breath, stunned and almost afraid. I put down the shovel and bandaged my hands again to remove the last stones. Drops of perspiration fell from my forehead and I was quaking with impatience, but I continued to work slowly and methodically. Within three minutes, everything was clear: in front of me was a round metal cover, a metre in diameter, with a slightly rusty handle set off-centre. I picked up a screwdriver to free and raise it. Was I going to have to lift this heavy-looking plate? I was confused and almost in despair, telling myself that I probably wouldn’t have the strength, but I tugged at the handle just in case. I felt something move, I tugged again and found that the plate rotated on a horizontal axis, stiffly, and with a scraping sound, but it required no more strength than I had. It rose up, surrounded by a rim of steel, and I saw, at a depth of half a metre, a small ledge on which I could stand. I lowered myself in gingerly, my hands on the edges. As soon as I’d gained a foothold, I realised I was on the top step of a very narrow spiral staircase that was unlit. At that time, I’d never experienced the profound darkness of enclosed spaces, because the light never went out in the bunkers, but the women had spoken of switches. I felt along the wall. They hadn’t given a precise description, but I thought they mu
st be small objects positioned near doors. I began groping my way down the stairs, and when I reached the third step I felt something small and smooth with a button. I pressed: a big light came on, just at my feet. The wall was grey and rough like the walls in the bunkers, but the staircases were never spiral like this, and you couldn’t control the light. I continued my descent, hurrying at first, but I think I’d only got to about the tenth step when I started feeling dizzy. I stopped, and, despite my impatience, forced myself to wait a few minutes until the giddiness had passed. As soon as I started moving again, it returned. Later, I was able to run up and down it, but that first time, even though I was consumed with curiosity, I had to stop several times. There were eighty open-work metal steps. At last I saw the floor, made of the same rough material as the walls. One last turn and I was at the bottom, in a corridor that was six or seven paces wide and twelve paces long, lined from top to bottom with shelves laden with cans, bottles and packets of all kinds, and closed at the end by a door of a very strange material that I had never seen before. It opened easily to reveal a big square room, which wasn’t grey and gloomy like the bunkers. The walls were entirely covered in a beautiful wood with a dark sheen, and the floor was soft underfoot. I understood that, for the first time in my life, I was about to walk on carpet. Lamps at various points in the room gave off a warm glow, which fell in brighter puddles on a big table, and there were wide, low chairs which I recognised at once as the kind of object that used to be called armchairs. I was choked with admiration. I’d never seen anything so beautiful, because I’d never seen anything beautiful that was the work of a human hand. I had seen the beauty of the sky, the changing shapes of the clouds, softly falling rain; I had seen the slowly moving stars, and a few flowers, but here, I was seeing furniture, paintings hanging on the walls, vases, a small carving – but I shouldn’t be describing these things so precisely, because that first moment I saw only the interplay of lines, shapes and harmonious colours, an unfathomable configuration that completely overwhelmed me, and brought tears to my eyes because of the feeling of calm and tranquillity that reminded me of the women’s singing, in the past, when it rose up over the plain. The colours were beautifully in tune with each other, and harmonised with the volumes and dimensions of the room. I was still giddy from the descent, and I crouched down because I felt as though I might fall over. After a few minutes, I thought it would be a good idea to close my eyes, the giddiness hadn’t gone but was even getting worse. I rested my head on my folded arms. I breathed deeply and did something I hadn’t done for years, I began counting my heartbeats. This recourse to a very old habit seemed to soothe me. All the same, more than an hour went by before I could calmly begin exploring my new kingdom. I tried several times to raise my head and open my eyes, but I was immediately overcome with emotion, I had to curl up in a ball again and wait, patiently, for the storm to subside.