I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

how can you feel privileged not to have something that everyone else has?

It was certain that I would die untouched, and I wanted to satisfy my curiosity at least.

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

said to myself that if it hadn’t killed the women, it was because a person can’t die of sorrow.

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

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.

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.

‘Lord, if you’re up there somewhere, and you aren’t too busy, come and say a few words to me, because I’m very lonely and it would make me so happy.’

She may not have the learned behaviours of dances and marriages, but even a person raised in captivity learns to want, yearns to see beyond their cage.

Perhaps in its own way the novel slyly demonstrates the natural peacefulness that a world without men might possess, but also suggests that this settling is the downfall of the women, that they do not go on

‘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.’