I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

And now, racked with sobs, 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.

Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?

‘Then they’d be acknowledging my existence. If you do something that is forbidden, it is the action that is the target. If you do something that isn’t forbidden, and they intervene, then it’s not the activity that’s attracting attention, it’s you yourself.’

Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey,

I felt a surge of grief, I, who had never known men, as I stood in front of this man who had wanted to overcome fear and despair to enter eternity upright and furious. I sighed and left.

the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were probably what

the women called love.

what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?

Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others,

time is a question of being human and, frankly, how could I consider myself a human being, I who have only known thirty-nine people and all of them women?

I will only be truly dead if nobody ever comes,

It is strange that I am dying from a diseased womb, I who have never had periods and who have never known men.