Les Guerilleres

by Wittig, Monique

  OEDIPA PERNETTA MERCY

  GERMAINE DAPHNE CYNTHIA

  SHIRLEY NIOBE HARRIET

  ROXANA CAROLINE HULDA

  DAISY PRAHOMIRA MANYE

  FLORENCE SHADTAR ASTA

  The women are on their cavorting continually rearing horses. They proceed without orders to meet the enemy army. They have painted their faces and legs in bright colours. The cries they utter are so terrifying that many of their adversaries drop their weapons, running straight before them stopping their ears. The women are on the ridges that command the pass. In this strategic position which is all to their advantage they draw their bows and fire thousands of arrows. Then the army breaks ranks.

  The men all begin to run in the greatest confusion, some go towards the exit from the pass, others try to retrace their steps. They jostle and collide with each other as they flee, they stumble over the bodies of the dead and wounded. Orders are no longer heard. Cries of despair panic shrieks of pain are heard. Many throw down their swords that hamper them in flight. Some climb on the hills making signs of surrender, they are soon slaughtered. When the bottom of the valley has become a charnel-house the women brandish their bows above their heads, they utter shouts of victory, they chant a song of death in which these words are heard, Vulture with the bald head/brother of the dead/vulture perform your office/with the corpses I offer you/receive also this vow/never shall my arrow be planted in your eyes.

  The Ophidian women the Odonates the Oögones the Odoacres the Olynthians the Oöliths the Omphales the women of Ormur of Orphise the Oriennes have massed and gone over to the attack. The convoys that follow them bring arms victuals clothes. They travel at night, rejoining the armies at daybreak when they withdraw after having given battle. Their most formidable weapon is the ospah. They hold it in position above their heads and rotate it at full speed by twirling the right arm as with a lasso that one spins before one or like the leather thong with bolos attached that one throws round the legs of wild horses to trip them. The ospah is invisible so long as it is not in action. When it is manipulated during battle it materializes as a green circle which crackles and emits odours. Thus the women, making it move at full speed in a given direction, create with the ospah a zone of death. No ray, no shot, no fulguration are seen to emanate from the ospah. The coalescence of the O's is produced by the desperate combatants, full of courage audacious tough and unyielding.

  The little girls have laid down their rifles. They advance into the sea and plunge into it, the sweat running down their necks, under their armpits, along their backs. Or else, stretched out in the sun, they talk very loudly. Some, unable to stay still, jump in the sand and jostle each other. One of them, quite naked, with tresses of hair over each shoulder, standing in front of a group, recites at a stretch, Is the finest thing on the dark earth really a group of horsemen whose horses go at a trot or a troop of infantry stamping the ground? Is the finest thing really a squadron of ships side by side? Anactoria Kypris Savé have a bearing a grace a radiant brightness of countenance that are pleasanter to see than all the chariots of the Lydians and their warriors charging in their armour. Then the women applaud.

  VINCENTA CLOTILDA NICOLA

  SUKAINA XU-HU ANACHORA

  OLYMPA DELPHINA LUCRETIA

  ROLANDA VIOLA BERNARDA

  PHUONG PLANCINE CLORINDA

  BAO-SI PULCHERIA AUGUSTA

  The women say that men put all their pride in their tail. They mock them, they say that the men would like a long tail but that they would run away whining as soon as they stepped on it. The women guffaw and begin to imitate some ridiculous animal that has difficulty in getting about. When they have a prisoner they strip him and make him run through the streets crying, it is your rod/cane/staff/wand/peg skewer/staff of lead. Sometimes the subject has a fine body broadened at the hips with honeyed skin and muscles not showing. Then they take him by the hand and caress him to make him forget all their bad treatment.

  The women say, you are really a slave if ever there was one. Men have made what differentiates them from you the sign of domination and possession. They say, you will never be numerous enough to spit on their phallus, you will never be sufficiently determined to stop speaking their language, to burn their currency their effigies their works of art their symbols. They say, men have foreseen everything, they have christened your revolt in advance a slave revolt, a revolt against nature, they call it revolt when you want to appropriate what is theirs, the phallus. The women say, I refuse henceforward to speak this language, I refuse to mumble after them the words lack of penis lack of money lack of insignia lack of name. I refuse to pronounce the names of possession and non-possession. They say, If I take over the world, let it be to dispossess myself of it immediately, let it be to forge new links between myself and the world.

  The women advance side by side in a geometric order of progress. The interval of a few yards that they maintain between them is invisible at a distance. The first rank that advances covers the width of the plain. The tall buildings crumble like card houses at their passage emitting a thick dust over which they march. The second rank of combatants marches some hundred yards behind the first, covering like that one the whole width of the plain. They are followed by another rank at the same distance, by yet another, until one can no longer distinguish their outlines as they blend with the horizon.

  As far as eye can see there is no house standing. The combatants carry in both hands a small sphere which has a crateriform part that is directed in front of them at the level of their belts. At every obstacle that presents itself to their progress they project a beam of convergent rays the power of whose impact is signalled by a murky flash, a brief glare, which ensures that any object that may be in the field of the rays is instantly destroyed. They wear garments all of one piece, made of a kind of metal. Their faces, intermittently lit up by the spheres and their rays, resemble great insect heads with antennae and stalked eyes.

  The women await their emissaries on their doorsteps, a smile on their lips. They have let down their hair, they have assumed the military costume that leaves the body free in its movements. Within the houses they have poured out the dishwater and scattered the dirty linen. One of them, standing in the middle of the square, rotates slowly on herself arms extended on either side of her body saying, The summer day is brilliant but more brilliant still is the fate of the young girl. Iron plunged into ice is cold but colder still is the lot of the young girl who has given herself in marriage. The young girl in the house of her mother is like seed in fertile ground. The woman under the roof of her husband is like a chained dog. The slave, rarely, tastes the delights of love, the woman never.

  RAYMONDA ATALA ENRICA

  CALAMITA AMANDA COSIMA

  GARANCE REGINA NU-TIAO

  GELSOMINA SHOGUN ALICE

  OLUMEAI GYPTIS NU-TIAO

  BENJAMINA SELENE CURACA

  They resuscitate those males who founded their celebrity on the women's downfall, exulting in their slavery whether in their writings in their laws in their actions. For these there are got ready the racks the screw-plates the machines for twisting and grinding. The women stop their ears with wax so as not to hear their discordant cries. When they have soaked them in baths of water mixed with acid, when they have drawn twisted beaten them, they treat their skins according to the usual technique of tanning or else they have them dried in the sun without especial care or else they exhibit them with labels that record the name of their former proprietors or that recall their most striking catch-phrases. It forms a subject of unending humour among them. They continually cast doubt on the attribution of a particular phrase or name to a particular skin that they judge too old for that phrase from the chronological standpoint or on the contrary too recent.

  The women say with an oath, it was by a trick that he expelled you from the earthly paradise, cringing he insinuated himself next to you, he robbed you of that passion for knowledge of which it is written that it has the wings of the eagle, the eyes
of the owl, the feet of the dragon. He has enslaved you by trickery, you who were great strong valiant. He has stolen your wisdom from you, he has closed your memory to what you were, he has made of you that which is not which does not speak which does not possess which does not write, he has made of you a vile and fallen creature, he has gagged abused betrayed you. By means of stratagems he has stultified your understanding, he has woven around you a long list of defects that he declares essential to your wellbeing, to your nature. He has invented your history. But the time approaches when you shall crush the serpent under your heel, the time approaches when you can cry, erect, filled with ardour and courage, Paradise exists in the shadow of the sword.

  From pedal canoes in ambush behind the rocks the women attack the bearded strangers when they attempt a landing. They make their machines move backwards if the men abandon their intention, and hide as best they can. Relieving each other as often as is necessary not to reduce their speed of propulsion they operate their boats by means of cranks. One of these is situated at the front of the canoe, controlling backward motion, the other at the rear controls advance. A violent eddy of disturbed water from beneath the canoe comes inboard. The splashes leave white marks of salt on the bare copper-coloured breasts. They stay hidden so long as the strangers keep away from the coasts. They advance openly if the men show signs of approaching and greet them with clouds of arrows.

  They exchange pleasantries about what is usually called the choice of husband. One of them cites Gyptis who for this procedure presented a cup to the solitary Euxène. Another mentions Draupadi who took five husbands. Of the first it is stated that Draupadi compared him to the apple of her eye, of the second it is stated that she compared him to the light of her life, of the third it is stated that she compared him to the treasures of her house, of the fourth it is stated that she compared him to a young acacia, of the fifth it is stated that she delighted to call him the rampart of her strength. Someone recalls the Sarmatians, the drawers of the bow, the horsewomen, the throwers of javelins, who did not take a husband until they had killed at least three enemies. Another names those who greeted their wedding-day on horseback, equipped with shields with javelins and swords. One of them stands in honour of the women of Lemnos who all massacred their husbands and made themselves mistresses of the island. Then someone begins to sing, Towards you, my dear ones, my feelings will never change.

  The women say, unhappy one, men have expelled you from the world of symbols and yet they have given you names, they have called you slave, you unhappy slave. Masters, they have exercised their rights as masters. They write, of their authority to accord names, that it goes back so far that the origin of language itself may be considered an act of authority emanating from those who dominate. Thus they say that they have said, this is such or such a thing, they have attached a particular word to an object or a fact and thereby consider themselves to have appropriated it. The women say, so doing the men have bawled shouted with all their might to reduce you to silence. The women say, the language you speak poisons your glottis tongue palate lips. They say, the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say, the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated. Whatever they have not laid hands on, whatever they have not pounced on like many-eyed birds of prey, does not appear in the language you speak. This is apparent precisely in the intervals that your masters have not been able to fill with their words of proprietors and possessors, this can be found in the gaps, in all that which is not a continuation of their discourse, in the zero, the O, the perfect circle that you invent to imprison them and to overthrow them.

  DEMETER CASSIA POPPAEA

  TAI-SI FATIMA OPAL

  LEONORA EMMANUELA

  BO-JI SHIRIN AGATHA

  KEM-PHET MELISANDE

  IRENE LEOKADIA LAURA

  One of them relates the story of Vlasta. She tells how under Vlasta's guidance the first female State was created. The young women of Bohemia joined Vlasta and her troops in Moldavia in their scores of thousands. The Carpathian fortresses appear on the mountain-tops with their walls of pink sandstone. In their courtyards after weapon drill the assembled women compose songs and invent games. Another of them recalls that in the female State men were tolerated only for servile tasks and that they were forbidden under pain of death to bear arms or mount on horseback. At the Bohemian ambassadors arriving in great anger to enjoin them to surrender they cock a snook and make a long nose and send them back, emasculated. Later they put many troops to flight and enter into a long war during which Vlasta's warriors teach all the peasant women who join them how to handle arms.

  The women say, whether men live or die, they no longer have power. They are seated in a circle. Some have undone their tunics because of the heat. Their breasts touch their knees. Their hair is twisted into innumerable strands. They say that they have instructed fast runners, bearers of news. Awaiting their arrival they sing, sitting in groups or squatting on their heels, anacyclic songs such as, If the slaves/unwillingly exhaust themselves, standing to insult/their hateful masters/they die but without/letting fall their weapons/too eager for the struggle/to fly and hide.

  They say, Vile, vile creature for whom possession is equated with happiness, a sacred cow on the same footing as riches, power, leisure. Has he not indeed written, power and the possession of women, leisure and the enjoyment of women? He writes that you are currency, an item of exchange. He writes, barter, barter, possession and acquisition of women and merchandise. Better for you to see your guts in the sun and utter the death-rattle than to live a life that anyone can appropriate. What belongs to you on this earth? Only death. No power on earth can take that away from you. And—consider explain tell yourself—if happiness consists in the possession of something, then hold fast to this sovereign happiness—to die.

  They say that they sing with such utter fury that the movement that carries them forward is irresistible. They say that oppression engenders hate. They are heard on all sides crying hate hate.

  The women menace they attack they hiss the men they revile them jeer at them spit in their faces scoff at them provoke them flout them apostrophize them mishandle them are abrupt with them they speak coarsely to them execrate them call down curses on them. They are possessed by such utter fury that they boil with anger tremble choke grind their teeth foam blaze rage and fume leap vomit run riot. Then they call them to account admonish them put a knife to their throats intimidate them show them their fists they thrash them do violence to them acquaint them with all their grievances in the greatest disorder they sow the seed of discord here and there provoke dissension among them divide them ferment disturbances riots civil ware they treat them as hostile. Their violence is unleashed they are in a paroxysm of rage, in their devastating enthusiasm they appear wild-eyed hair bristling clenching their fists roaring rushing shrieking slaughtering in fury one might say of them that they are females who look like women when they are dead.

  VOLUMNIA YAO SHAGHAB

  OPPIENNE LUCY AUDE

  HEDWIG LEONIE AGNES

  TAMARA FRANCE AHON

  SORANA RUZENA SALLY

  SU-YEN KIUNG TERESA

  Great blades with cutting edges like those of razors are arranged in quincunxes parallel to the ground at different levels around the camp. To anyone who arrives opposite them they appear like a series of broken lines. At night they are invisible. Sentries keep watch behind the scythes so that no attack may interfere with their arrangements. The others sleep despite the shots despite the victims' cries of pain and surprise which are heard time and again at different points. In the morning working parties relieve the sentries and collect the portions of bodies divided by the blades in large baskets. These may be heads chests legs singly or attached to the pelvis an arm, according to the level at which the attackers have run into the blades. The collected bodies are buried in a large ditch which they fill and cover with a pile of earth. Then they plant their flags the
re in great number, some sow flowers there. Standing they chant a song of mourning for the men who have died in combat.

  It is said of the army of Sporphyra that it advances like Koo, superb, ferocious, astride a tiger, beautiful in countenance. They say of the army of Wu that it is always on a war footing like Sseu-Kuan of the eleven heads, the many-armed, who bears an eye on each of her palms. The women of Perségame go in groups, sowing disorder and confusion, unleashing around them the desire for orgasm like cat-headed Obel. They say that some of the women infiltrate into the enemy troops, bodies painted blue and yellow, sowers of defeat like the cruel Seumes. From Apone the horsewomen have learned how to stay fast in the saddle and to look after their encampments. The women of Gathma declare themselves fitted to destroy the enemy like Segma the lion-headed, the well-named, the powerful, the drinker of blood.

  They say they have the strength of the lion the hate of the tiger the cunning of the fox the patience of the cat the perseverance of the horse the tenacity of the jackal. They say, I shall be the universal vengeance. They say, I shall be the Attila of these ferocious despots, cause of our tears and our sufferings. They say, and when by good fortune all women wish to rally to me, each alike shall be Nero and set fire to Rome. They say, War, rally! They say, War, forward! They say that once they have arms in their hands they will not yield them. They say that they will shake the world like thunder and lightning.