I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

He was a loner, like me, a proud man, and I was leaving, knowing nothing of him other than his final plan. But that at least he had achieved. He’d wanted to face his destiny to the last, and someone knew it. As long as I lived, my memory of him would live too, there would be a witness to his pride and solitude. I stopped, hesitated for a moment, then went back down to gaze at him for a long time. There was nothing new to be discovered on his parchment face. I felt a profound sadness. I told myself that that was perhaps how, in the time of the humans, people said goodbye to the body of a cherished lover, by trying to engrave them in their memory. I knew nothing about him, but I knew nothing about myself, except that, one day, I too would die and that, like him, I would prop myself up and remain upright, looking straight ahead until the last, and, when death triumphed over my gaze, I would be like a proud monument raised with hatred in the face of silence.