I Who Have Never Known Men Read online

  We stood at the graveside for a long time, in silence. From time to time, one of the women would repeat the terrible words: ‘From the depths, I call on you, O Lord.’ Perhaps that isn’t exactly the right translation, none of us really knew that dead language which they chanted over a land that was almost dead, but they’d told me what they understood. Their voices soared up, they gazed at the dark sky as if they somehow expected a reply, but nothing ever crossed that vault except the silent movement of the stars. Then, one after the other, they fell silent, the chorus died out like an untended fire, and silence descended, barely ruffled by the lightest of winds that permanently blows. All that was left for us to do was to throw earth over the emaciated body that was barely discernible under the blanket and then make our way slowly back to the village of empty houses.

  The women placed the litter next to the bed and left us alone. I settled Anthea in her bed – she’d grown so thin that I could lift her easily. I covered her well because she’d become very sensitive to the cold, and we bade each other goodnight. But I could hear her crying, and I was unable to sleep. I went over and sat on the edge of her bed. She asked me to hold her hand. She knew how much I hated touching anyone and I understood that if she was asking me to overcome my revulsion, it was because she desperately needed this pitiful contact.

  ‘You know that you are going to end up alone,’ she said.

  I often thought about it.

  ‘I looked after you as best I could when you were little, and later I taught you everything I knew. But soon I won’t be there for you any more. I feel as though I’m deserting you.’

  ‘You have no choice,’ I replied.

  ‘How will you survive?’

  ‘I’ll move on. I’ll carry on looking. 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.’

  ‘Will you be able to cope? Won’t you go mad?’

  ‘I have no idea what you mean by madness. You know I’m not like the rest of you. I haven’t experienced the things you miss so badly, or if I ever did, I don’t remember anything, and that hasn’t done me any harm. To me it feels as if I’ve always been alone, even among all of you, because I’m so different. I’ve never really understood you, I didn’t know what you were talking about.’

  ‘It’s true,’ she agreed. ‘You are the only one of us who belongs to this country.’

  ‘No, this country belongs to me. I will be its sole owner and everything here will be mine.’

  After that, she lay silent for a long time. I suppose she was thinking about the old days, when she’d led a life that made sense and that she had lost, because sometimes tears ran down her cheeks, and I wiped them gently away. Otherwise, we remained still and I could feel her irregular heartbeat, even in her hand. I’d learned to recognise that kind of rhythm, which gets weaker and weaker. You think it’s stopped, but it starts up again, but there’s no hope; life isn’t tenacious enough to win. I wasn’t sure that Anthea would see the dawn. At one point in the night, she asked if I could bear to cradle her in my arms.

  ‘I’m so cold.’

  I offered to go and fetch another blanket. She nodded and smiled feebly.

  ‘I need to be held.’

  That cost me an effort which I’m certain I managed to hide. I lay down beside her and she rested her head on my shoulder, and I clasped her to me.

  ‘I have loved you so much,’ she told me.

  She drifted off into a light sleep, and I think she dreamed, because she sometimes made little movements and muttered indistinctly. Day was beginning to break when she grew completely calm. She was breathing very softly. I wasn’t afraid of falling asleep, and I concentrated my attention on her ebbing life. I didn’t know exactly when she stopped breathing, we were both so tranquil and silent. 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. When I was certain it was all over, I lay there for a long time, holding her to me, as she had wanted.

  It was all I could do.

  Frances, Denise, Laura and I were the only ones left. A few months later, Frances had a fall in the house and broke her legs. Anthea had explained to me about these fractures in elderly women, and there was no chance she would recover. Frances was in such pain that she didn’t even want us to lift her or make her more comfortable. She asked me to stab her immediately, she didn’t want to suffer a moment longer than was necessary. I left her alone with Denise and Laura while I ensured that the knife was as sharp as possible. On my return, the two able-bodied women rose to leave the house, and something strange happened: they both stopped as they passed me and hugged me, as if they were thanking me for what I was about to do. I knelt beside Frances, who gripped my shoulders and pulled me towards her, to place a kiss on each of my cheeks.

  ‘You are kind,’ she said.

  That touched me. I smiled at her and she was smiling as the knife went in.

  On our return from the cemetery, Denise asked me to do the same for her, but I don’t know why it was impossible for me to do it to a woman who was still in good health, even if I knew how much grief she was suffering. She had to wait three years, when she became semi-paralysed, like Anna, except her face wasn’t affected and she was able to talk.

  ‘Now, will you?’

  ‘Now, it’s different. I must do it.’

  And so I remained alone with Laura. Apart from me, she had been the youngest of the women and her death didn’t seem imminent. Although she’d accompanied me on several expeditions, I didn’t have a spontaneous liking for her. She was rather grumpy and was constantly complaining. When we were alone, her personality changed. She never protested at my decisions and, to be honest, it would have required a lot of imagination to protest against what I exaggeratedly call decisions. If I said it was time to go and fetch some meat from the nearest bunker, wash our clothes or light a fire, it was always because we were getting low on meat and our dresses were dirty. She appeared to let herself be completely guided by me, and I realised that she’d lost all interest in her life.

  One morning, as I was returning to the village laden with cans of food, I was struck by her absent air. It was the season when it rains the least and I’d put the bench outside the door. I found her sitting there, staring into space. For years, her eyesight had been poor, and now, she was gazing into the distance without even screwing up her eyes, although she said this helped her distinguish things. Her hands were resting on her thighs, but with her palms upturned, as if she’d forgotten to turn them over, which made her look strange, neglected, a woman plonked there whom nobody had taken the trouble to tidy up, like a garment dropped in a hurry lying crumpled on the floor. Her thighs were slightly apart. Before, in the prison, Laura had been thin, like all the others, then she’d grown fat, complaining all the time that she couldn’t control her appetite. But since the death of her lover, Alice, she’d lost interest in food and had shed a lot of weight. Now she’d resumed the attitude of a corpulent woman whose knees didn’t touch when her legs were together, because of the size of her thighs, as if her body no longer recognised itself in the present. Her dress had ridden up slightly, revealing her withered, fragile flesh. I was the one who’d made that dress, meticulously assembling scraps of fabric that were still usable from the least worn tunics, and she’d watched me work, as if she couldn’t really understand why I busied myself so. Then she’d put on the dress and recovered her wits for a moment to thank me. We’d always been very particular about manners, even back in the bunker – probably to differentiate ourselves from the guards and their whips.

  I went up to her, talking so as not to give her a fright. I told her that I’d brought back some soup, that we could eat soon, and some soap because our last packet was nearly finished.

  ‘But I was right, I looked everywhere but there’s no more thread, I shan’t be able to mend your dress.’

  In the past, we’d used her hair to sew with, but now
our hair had stopped growing and was short and sparse.

  As I spoke to her, I was thinking that I’d have to go on an expedition because we were going to run out of soap too, but I held back from saying so. I was only talking for the sake of it, frightened by her expression that was so vacant, so absent, that she looked as if she was asleep with her eyes open. She started violently, turned her head towards me and, as she’d told me before, must have seen only a vague shape.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, child,’ she said as if she’d forgotten that there were only the two of us left. ‘You’re a good girl. I’m not much help to you.’

  I said a few comforting words and went inside to light the fire. She followed me slowly and stood beside me. She watched me, seemingly unable to think of a way to help.

  ‘Do you think I’ll live much longer?’ she asked.

  Her tone was calm and normal. She was asking an ordinary question and would happily listen to the answer and then think of something else. Surely such a lack of interest in her own concerns could only be a sign of impending death?

  The women had only ever called me ‘child’, and even now that I’ve been alone for such a long time, and because I have no other name, I still have a vague feeling that I am the youngest, even though there is no one left with whom to compare my age. I thought back to the days when I’d been furious and full of contempt, when I’d had the impression that they were laughing at me, that I knew nothing and they knew everything, and I found it heart-rending to see that Laura was now consulting me as if I were an oracle. She just stood there, not knowing what to do with her body.

  ‘Do you feel ill?’

  I had been so slow to reply that she must have forgotten her question. She looked taken aback, struggled to think, and nodded.

  ‘I’m tired. But everyone’s tired, aren’t they?’

  Everyone: the two of us.

  ‘Yes, everyone,’ I replied calmly.

  If she didn’t remember that everyone was dead, why remind her?

  The fire had got going. I put on the logs, covered it and picked up a saucepan. I chose two cans containing tomato soup. Anthea had taught me to read the labels and I was delighted to discover that they were the kind that contained little meatballs. Laura stood beside me, as if she couldn’t think what else to do. Her legs seemed unsteady. It wasn’t very obvious, and I wasn’t certain. I told myself at first it was her disorientated air that made me think that, but since she stopped living shortly afterwards, it’s likely that she was finding it hard to stay on her feet. I led her gently to a chair at the big table, sat her down and placed a bowl and glass in front of her.

  ‘We’ll be eating in a few minutes.’

  ‘If you like,’ she replied.

  I looked at her carefully. Her face was utterly devoid of expression and it was probably my own anxiety that made me think she looked lost. Her eyes had a glazed look and her arms dangled by her sides. I wanted to place them in her lap, but that reminded me of the gesture I’d made so often, crossing the arms of a dead woman on her chest, and then closing her eyes, so I held back. But at the same time I was certain she was dying.

  Like that, on her feet, without being ill? It wasn’t her body that was giving up, but her spirit, which had grown increasingly weary of animating those muscles, of making that heart beat, of going through all the motions of living, the spirit that nothing had nourished for such a long time, that had watched its sisters die and that had for its only companion a woman who disliked her and whom she disliked. How tragic! I said to myself. How tragic! She had, in the past, lived out twenty or twenty-five years of her legitimate destiny, and then crazy events had taken place and she’d entered a world of absurdity, surrounded by strange women who were as confused as she was. Despite all that, she had tried to love. I thought of Alice, a lively, impatient woman, who used to say to me: ‘Go away and play!’ when I disturbed her and then apologised. They’d lived together in a little house. They argued noisily and made up again with great promises: you had to do something to pass the time. I sat down in front of Laura, I sincerely wanted to say some helpful words that would sustain her, but, to be honest, in this sterile land, in the silence and the solitude, ignorant and sterile myself, what could I give her? Why should she want to live? We were doing nothing, we were going nowhere, we were nobody.

  ‘You see,’ I said to her, ‘I want to go off exploring. I don’t want to end my days here, eating canned food only for it to come out again later.’

  She looked up. You could see she was trying very hard to understand what I was talking about. Then, to help her, I said:

  ‘I’m going off exploring.’

  ‘But there’s nothing,’ she said, surprised. ‘Only the bunkers.’

  Thinking was a great effort for her.

  ‘There aren’t even any seasons.’

  ‘We don’t know. We gave up too soon. We only searched for two years, didn’t we?’

  ‘That was because of the old women. We had to keep stopping so they could die in peace. And sometimes they took such a long time. They kept feeling better and we thought they’d recover.’

  ‘I want to leave. I’m not old.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wait. I shan’t be long.’

  She understood me. We both knew that she couldn’t cope on her own, that she wouldn’t have the strength to go and get food from the bunkers or gather enough wood for her fire, and that I couldn’t abandon her.

  The soup was hot. We ate in silence, then I went to wash up in the river. When I returned, she was sitting on the bench again, waiting for me. She’d sit then until she felt sleepy and then would go and lie down on her mattress to sleep. While asleep, she’d be waiting to wake up.

  I didn’t want her to die, but how could I have wanted her to live? Several times during the afternoon, I felt a tremor of impatience. I was overjoyed at the idea that I was going to be free. To calm my excitement, I began working out what I’d need. I’d take one of the big bags and pack enough provisions for two weeks, two blankets – because I’d grown used to sleeping on a mattress and I was afraid I’d find the ground too hard. Later, when I’d adjusted, one blanket would be enough and my load would be lighter. I’d need lots of matches, a small shovel and boots. I must remember to take some soap. My dress was in complete tatters, but I’d be bound to find some fabric and thread, because I’d regularly come across bunkers with fresh supplies. I’d have to make sure I found the right size boots if I wanted to walk a long way. In the past, I’d had the unpleasant experience of blisters, and for years, I’d been living in sandals. We’d never found any socks and the skin of my feet had become soft, but I knew it would soon harden.

  I bustled about, devoting myself happily to the too few domestic tasks, and my mind busied itself planning the route. I kept going over the list of things I needed to take, enumerating, repeating, summarising, to the point where I began to feel very irritable. Soon I’d have done everything it was possible to do: the floor was swept, the mattresses turned, the blankets shaken, there was nothing left to wash or put away. I went out and sat on a chair facing Laura. She was staring at the sky, at the point where the sun would set later, and her gaze was more vacant, more absent than ever. Her breathing was even. Her hands were once again resting on her thighs palms upturned, and I could see a tiny artery pulsing on the outside of her wrist. It was regular, clear and strong. That’s why I don’t think she died of a physical illness, but that she abandoned her unflagging body which would have carried on for years, except for her eyes. She heard me coming, muttered a few words, so softly that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t feel like asking her to repeat them. What could she have to say to me? What did we have of the slightest interest to tell each other? That it was a fine day, that it was unlikely to rain that night, that the sun was going down? She was no more interested in telling me than I was in hearing it, and most likely she’d only attempted to speak to me out of politeness, to show that she was glad of my company, which was probably not entirely
true. What could I give her, other than food and drink, which would only prolong an existence she no longer desired?

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

  That satisfied her. We were in agreement, without being too sure over what. Or perhaps over the fact that we had nothing in common. And so we sat in silence.

  I didn’t watch the sky. I was fascinated by Laura. She seemed to be disappearing inside herself, withdrawing further and further. At first, there was still some expression on her face, the ghost of the smile she’d given to welcome me, a hint of weariness, a faint grimace when an insect settled on her hand. She didn’t budge, I brushed the creature away but she seemed oblivious. The setting sun illuminated her face. There was no shadow, nothing to see except for skin, taut over tissue that was still living, a live model, with peaks and troughs, different from those of a plain or a hill, that the eyes could explore but without learning anything other than their configuration. I could have touched her, for sure, run my hands over her cheeks, but would she have felt it? There was a moment when everything was as if suspended. I could see clearly that the little artery in her wrist was still beating, but I was certain that Laura was dead. Her breathing was soft and regular, with an automatic rhythm that was unable to stop, but she was no longer thinking. In the past, Anthea had explained what an electroencephalogram was: Laura’s would have been flat. Sitting on the bench, gazing towards the setting sun, she lost her mind in the cerebral convolutions, the mysterious nooks and crannies of the memory, 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. As the sun touched the horizon, her wrist stood out clearly in the evening light and I saw that there was no more movement under her white skin. I let out a deep sigh. My last tie had been cut.