I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

Our mood was not one of despair, which Anthea explained to me was a violent feeling that led to great emotional outbursts, but rather one of equanimity.

The last passions had fizzled out, their hair was going grey and they seemed to have lost the desire to live.

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.

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

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.

at least for one of us, the agony was over. Then we could hum the song of death.

One after the other, they were buried under that sky and neither they nor I knew if it was the one under which we’d been born.

the gradual abandonment of all expectations, a defeat that had killed everything without a battle.

I do not know whether I am still able to speak. Of course, all I have to do is try, but I don’t seem to want to. And what does it matter if I’ve become mute in a world where there is no one to talk to?

If it had been up to me, I’d never have stopped, but I could see that the others couldn’t go on any more.’

To me it feels as if I’ve always been alone, even among all of you, because I’m so different.

this country belongs to me. I will be its sole owner and everything here will be mine.’

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.

‘You are kind,’ she said. That touched me. I smiled at her and she was smiling as the knife went in.

She appeared to let herself be completely guided by me, and I realised that she’d lost all interest in her life.

Why should she want to live? We were doing nothing, we were going nowhere, we were nobody.

she had gone backwards, seeking a world that made sense, losing her way among the labyrinths, slowly deteriorating, dimming, noiselessly being obliterated and then fading away so gradually that it was impossible to pinpoint the transition between the flickering little flame and the shadows.

She was pale, and at peace, looking no more dead than when her heart was still beating and she had lost interest in staying alive.

I remembered the descriptions of pilgrimages I’d listened to, of those people who went around churches on their knees, begging forgiveness for their sins. I’d never really understood what that was all about, but I sensed I was participating in a very ancient ritual belonging to that planet from which I’d come but which was so foreign to me.

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.

All I had to do was decide which way to go.

I took my bearings from the landscape and began the trek which I intended to continue as long as I lived, even if I didn’t know what I expected from it.

My heartbeats had been my unit of time, my steps would be my unit of length.

I’d go down and look at everything very closely. That was the only tribute I was able to pay the victims.

I’d set out with the intention of discovering things

As the sun was already very low and soon I wouldn’t be able to see enough, I decided to save the book for later, but my excitement made me clumsy and I dropped the bottle that had been in my lap. It was sheer luck that it didn’t break, as it had landed on the jacket and I was able to catch it before it rolled onto the stones.

This is just good writing

on this planet of which I will only ever see a fraction, however long I keep walking,

I will never see all I want to see.

I decided to bury the skeletons, because I wanted to show that whatever had happened to us, we belonged to the same kind, to those who honour the dead.

I acquired a perfectly useless knowledge, but I enjoyed it. I felt as if I had embellished my mind and that made me think of jewels, those objects which women used to adorn their beauty, in the days when beauty had a purpose.

I felt a sort of vague temptation, a gnawing urge to admit defeat, which terrified me.

My curiosity, momentarily dampened, was reawakened.

was extremely reluctant to retrace my steps when there was so much new ground ahead.

I was sometimes acutely aware that I was alone, and always would be, and that the only pleasure within my grasp was the all-too-rare one of satisfied curiosity.

gradually my natural resilience took over again and, as I made my way from one hilltop to another, it occurred to me to organise my route more cleverly than in a straight line.

I see this symbolism

By going straight, I was only exploring a very narrow area, and perhaps I was missing things to the left or right.

all I’d have gained would be a new question, that worthless treasure which was beginning to weary me.

but it required no more strength than I had.

I’d never seen anything beautiful that was the work of a human hand.

there’s always a point when the whip cracks.

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.’

my determination wouldn’t make up for the information I lacked.

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.

I have long since stopped trying to imagine things I do not know.

So few things happened during all those years of walking. I found the bus, I lost the road, I arrived here. In any case, I had to die some day.

I can say that time exists, but it has passed me by without my feeling it.

If someone spoke to me, there would be time, the beginning and end of what they said to me, the moment when I answered, their response. The briefest conversation creates time.

I will only be truly dead if nobody ever comes, if the centuries, then the millennia go by for so long that this planet, which I no longer believe is Earth, no longer exists. As long as the sheets of paper covered in my handwriting lie on this table, I can become a reality in someone’s mind. Then everything will be obliterated, the suns will burn out and I will disappear like the universe.