I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

My memory begins with my anger.

I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror.

This was the first time I’d listened closely, and I was surprised at how much they had to say, the passion with which they repeated the same thing in ten different ways so as to avoid accepting that they’d had absolutely nothing to say to one another for ages. But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity, as I’ve realised these past few years.

‘You have so little idea what it meant to have a destiny that you can’t understand what it means to be deprived as we are.

There was no suggestion of a rebellion. They’d had husbands, lovers and children. As a result of being too afraid to think about them because it was so painful, they’d forgotten almost everything.

Inevitably, with memory comes pain. Sitting facing one another, they found the courage to compare their scant memories. They tried to exhume the past in long conversations which groped their way around the obstacles. They fought against the amnesia which perhaps afforded relief, and against fear. They listened to one another attentively, and when one of them had an idea, she interrupted the woman who was speaking, in a rush to get it out before she forgot it. But they maintained a certain reticence as protection against the tears that would have alerted the guards. I was no longer excluded. I had earned my place among them, even though all I could do was listen.

‘Same here,’ said Greta. ‘I’ll stop breathing. It must be a matter of willpower, I’m sure you can stop your heart from beating.’

Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.

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.

I knelt beside Frances, who gripped my shoulders and pulled me towards her, to place a kiss on each of my cheeks. ‘You are kind,’ she said. That touched me. I smiled at her and she was smiling as the knife went in.

I nearly forgot! Of course, one of the most wonderful discoveries was the mirror. I had never seen myself. Anthea had told me I was pretty, but that meant nothing to me, and still didn’t. Even so, I was fascinated and spent hours gazing at myself. I didn’t know my expressions; I learned what my smile looked like, and my serious or worried look, and I stared at them thinking: ‘That’s me.’

tell myself that I am alone in this land that no longer has any jailers, or prisoners, unaware of what I came here to do, the mistress of silence, owner of bunkers and corpses. I tell myself that I have walked for thousands of hours and that soon I will take my last ten steps to go and put these sheets of paper on the table and come back to lie down on my deathbed, an emaciated old woman whose eyes, which no hand will close, will always be looking towards the door. I have spent my whole life doing I don’t know what, but it hasn’t made me happy. I have a few drops of blood left, that is the only libation I can offer destiny, which has chosen me. Then I see the pale winter dawn break and I go back down to sleep, if the pain allows me any respite, on the big bed where there is room for several people.

Sometimes the women pitied me, saying that at least they’d known real life, and I was very jealous of them, but they died, as I am about to die, and what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?

‘I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all’,