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.

After all, if I was a human being, my story was as important as that of King Lear or of Prince Hamlet that William Shakespeare had taken the trouble to relate in detail.

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?

By remaining silent, they were creating a girl who didn’t know and who would regard them as the custodians of a treasure.

If the only thing that differentiates us from animals is the fact that we hide to defecate, then being human rests on very little, I thought.

I sensed I was being invited to participate in the life of the past, in that world they spoke of together and which I now saw they no longer intended to exclude me from, even though I already knew that I’d never be able to enter it.

I know only the stony plain, wandering, and the gradual loss of hope. I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence. There is nothing we can do about it.

We had survived the prison, the plain and the loss of all hope, but the women had discovered that survival is no more than putting off the moment of death.

I don’t know how many I killed—I who count everything, that was one thing I didn’t count.

Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey, and I didn’t notice the change.

We were doing nothing, we were going nowhere, we were nobody.

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 was perfectly aware that I had only added another question to all the others, but it was a new one, and, in the absurd world in which I lived, and still live, that was happiness.

Whenever I think of Anthea’s death and the effort it took to hold her in my arms, tears come into my eyes. I try to imagine myself being warm: there’s always a point when the whip cracks.

But a sky does not die, it is I who am dying, who was already dying in the bunker—and I 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