I Who Have Never Known Men Read online

  So, there had been a change. Somewhere, a decision had been taken which affected us, the impact of which we could assess: one of the old men had disappeared – perhaps he’d died – and had been replaced. Had this escaped the notice of those who governed our lives, were they not concerned about giving us a piece of information, or had they relaxed their vigilance?

  I didn’t take my eyes off the guards. They always went in threes, pacing up and down the corridor. They were silent. When they passed one another, their eyes didn’t meet but I had the impression that they watched each other as closely as they watched us. The authorities must have been afraid that they’d disobey orders, or that they’d speak to us. Once again, I had a sudden insight, I understood why they had to be in threes: it prevented any complicity. They weren’t permitted to have private conversations, which might have conveyed something to us; they had to maintain the role of suspicious jailers all the time.

  The two men on duty with the young guard had been there for ages. During the early years, the women had tried to talk to the guards, to make demands or move them to pity, but nothing could break down their cruel indifference. Then, they gave up and behaved as if they couldn’t see the guards, as if they’d banished their presence from their minds – or as if they themselves were bars that the women had become so used to that they no longer bumped into them. Nobody imagined that they felt in the least humiliated, but the prisoners’ pride was preserved intact. They no longer complained to the guards or took their imperturbability as an insult. And that made the gaze of this girl, sitting absolutely still, all the more powerful.

  I’d stopped telling myself stories: watching the guard, I was creating one. I needed patience, I had nothing else to give. I don’t know how many waking periods I spent in this way. I thought a lot, and it occurred to me that we should stop speaking in terms of day and night, but of waking and sleeping periods. My certainty grew stronger: we were not living according to a twenty-four-hour cycle. When the lights were turned down, no one was tired: the women said it was because they had nothing to do. Perhaps they were right, but I didn’t know what it was like to work. My conviction came from continually watching the young guard. The relief guards didn’t come when we awoke, at mealtimes, when we went to bed or when we were moving around, but in between, at irregular intervals. The main door would open a fraction, the three men pacing up and down around the cage would converge, and sometimes they’d all leave the room as the next shift entered; at other times, only one or two were replaced. Was there any connection between their timetable and ours? How could I measure the passage of time? The only indicators I had were my body rhythms.

  Anthea taught me that the heart always beats at the same rate, between seventy and seventy-four times a minute in a healthy person.

  I began to count.

  I had learned very little. Thirty, forty, fifty, seventy, eighty, I had to sort out the tens in my mind, but then I realised I didn’t know my tables and I barely knew how to do division. If, between the time when they turned the lights full on and the time when the guards changed shift, when the young guard came on duty, my heart had beaten seven thousand, two hundred times, that would have made a hundred minutes. It was just a question of multiplying Anthea’s seventy-two by a hundred, but what I had was three thousand, two hundred and twenty, or five thousand and twelve! I was incapable of performing the necessary operations. It was all very well concentrating and counting, but I couldn’t make use of the figures I obtained.

  ‘Can you teach me to do sums?’ I asked Anthea.

  ‘Without pencil and paper?’

  She explained:

  ‘We are not as heartless as you think, and we have discussed your education a great deal. Teach you to read? With what, and to read what? Counting was possible up to a point, but only for mental calculations and we weren’t able to show you arithmetical operations. You wouldn’t know how to read a number. Helen and Isabel taught you your tables, but you must have forgotten because you never used them. Besides, when you realised that it wasn’t a game, you refused, it made you cross. We couldn’t force you and we couldn’t punish you, because of the guards. We couldn’t make you want to learn things you thought were pointless, and, in the end, we didn’t really see the need. Eight eights, and what then? What do you find sixty-four of here? Was there any point teaching you anything?’

  I knew what reading was, but I’d never seen anything written. At most, I had understood the idea of letters, of their configuration, of words. The women had spoken of books and of poets.

  ‘If ever we get out, I’ll be stupid.’

  ‘If ever …’

  She stared at me and I sensed that images were going through her mind, of which I had no idea. Of course, I must have seen the sun, the trees, days and nights, but I had no recollection whatsoever. Although I could guess what filled Anthea’s inner gaze, I couldn’t picture those things.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no chance of that, you poor child,’ she said after a while. ‘But it’s true that if that were to happen, you’d be able to criticise us for having been very poor teachers, and we’d delight in your criticism.’

  I looked at the women: they’d just been given the vegetables, and were bustling about as usual, trying to find a new way of cooking cabbage and carrots when all they had was water and salt. They didn’t seem so stupid, because I understood that, having nothing in their lives, they took the little that came and made the best use of it, exploiting the slightest event to nourish their starving spirits.

  ‘Yesterday, between the time when the lights came full on and when the young guard arrived, in other words when they changed shift, my heart produced three thousand, two hundred and twenty beats, and today, five thousand and twelve. How long is that?’

  I saw her gasp.

  ‘What? Did you count them?’

  ‘It could help measure time.’

  The young guard paced slowly up and down the length of the cage, the other two followed a few steps behind him. They never moved away from one another, they never walked side by side. While talking to Anthea, I kept my eyes on my prey: he never once looked in my direction.

  ‘If you counted, the least I can do is try and work it out,’ she said. ‘It’s such a long time since I did that! But do I know how fast your heart beats?’

  ‘You told me what a normal rate was.’

  ‘Yes, but there are variations from one person to another, and how do I know whether your heart beats at a normal rate? I can’t even take your pulse since we’re not allowed to touch.’

  ‘I can take it, I already have. I’ll say “tick-tock” at each beat. Compare that with your own heart, it’ll give us something to start from.’

  My rate was slower than hers.

  ‘You’re younger. You are probably closer to the average than I am; my heart used to beat quite fast. How can we tell?’

  ‘What does it matter if the unit isn’t precise? The main thing is to have a unit. Take seventy-two.’

  ‘No. Given that we can’t be sure anyway, I’ll divide by seventy. It’s easier, and even then, I’m not sure I won’t get in a muddle.’

  She fell silent, her eyes glazed over and she began to mumble. I listened to her without taking my eyes off the guard.

  ‘Three thousand, two hundred and twenty divided by seventy makes forty-six. At least, I think it does. I’m amazed it goes exactly. I’m going to start again.’

  One of the old guards stared at me intently for two or three seconds.

  ‘Yes, it’s definitely forty-six. I’ll try five thousand and twelve.’

  The guards had the time to complete their round before she finished.

  ‘Seventy-one or seventy-two, there are fractions.’

  ‘So that’s either forty-six minutes after we get up, or seventy-one or seventy-two?’

  ‘Forty-six minutes, or one hour and eleven or twelve minutes.’

  She was thrilled.

  ‘How odd! What connection can there be between f
orty-six minutes and one hour twelve?’

  I was lost.

  ‘We used to work seven or eight hours a day, depending on what our job was,’ she explained. ‘We’d begin at the same time every day, or people worked shifts, to ensure continuity. But we never had variations of twenty-five or twenty-six minutes from one day to the next. Does that mean something?’

  She was alluding to a way of life that I knew nothing about, and I could only listen to her.

  ‘Carry on counting. Count the times tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow? But was it tomorrow in the old sense of the word?

  This first achievement made me ambitious. I told myself that heartbeats were not the only rhythms, and I started listening to my body. I knew that menstruation occurred every twenty-eight days and I was saddened that I didn’t possess that indicator, but I observed the variations in my appetite. Sometimes, I was very hungry when I woke up, and it felt like a long time until the meal was ready. We’d got it into our heads that they gave us food at specific times, but I saw that this was mistaken. Between the two meals, sometimes three hours went by, sometimes five. When I’d counted about ten times, it seemed that the young guard arrived at different times. I won’t list the figures I obtained – although I remember them perfectly, for they are the birth dates of my thoughts. Anthea found them so odd that she wondered whether the times weren’t completely random. But the young guard almost never stayed longer than six hours, according to my heart. When he appeared, he looked fresh and rested – from watching him, I had come to know him well – but at the end of his shift, he showed little signs of fatigue. His step maintained its elasticity, he held his head high: I couldn’t say precisely what it was that suggested weariness. Was he a little paler? His gaze less penetrating? Were his movements just a fraction slower? The relief guard always came on duty at times that were separate from our meal and sleep times. I found that strange.

  ‘This gives us a clue,’ I told Anthea. ‘Their time is not the same as ours. We and the guards live together, in fact: wouldn’t it be natural for us to follow the same patterns?’

  I could see that she hadn’t grasped my reasoning.

  ‘When one of the guards doesn’t appear for seven or eight hours, presumably it’s because he’s gone off to sleep. But those periods are never the same as our sleep times. I shall have to keep watch, to make a mental note of their absences.’

  Anthea looked puzzled, then frowned and nodded.

  ‘What can two different time patterns mean?’

  ‘You’re the one who’s known the real world. I can’t make anything of it.’

  She told me that she was unable to make any sense of it either. She couldn’t connect the two things and she felt it was time to take the other women into our confidence.

  ‘I can’t think any more. It’s all too complicated, I can’t absorb all the facts. We must share what we’ve discovered, and ask the others what they think.’

  Obviously, I was none too pleased, but I realised that Anthea was out of her depth and I gave her my permission. She went about it through discreet little chats: she took one or two women to one side, warned them that she was about to tell them something astonishing, and asked them to keep their expressions blank so as not to alert the guards. The idea of being astonished by the life we led already caused a stir, and Anthea quickly became adept at calming them down. During the early years, they’d learned to control themselves, then, with the absurd monotony of the days, they’d no longer had anything to control. The announcement of something new sent them into a tizzy. At first, the novelty itself was less of a shock than the fact of its existence. They said: ‘It’s not possible!’ and then they faltered. Anthea invented techniques. She began by saying: ‘Stay calm. Carry on with what you were doing’ – peeling a vegetable, finishing off some sewing, plaiting their hair, there were so few things to do – ‘without altering your speed. To do that, you need to be aware of your speed, of your movements.’ On hearing this, the women were of course intrigued, but only moderately. Because we lived under surveillance, the idea of remaining impassive was quickly understood, and they followed Anthea’s orders without difficulty. The word got around that something extraordinary was happening and, above all, that they must not give anything away. It seemed to me that if there was a little buzz of excitement, it was discreet enough to escape the guards’ attention. The women had chattered happily about everything when there was nothing to talk about, and there didn’t appear to be any change. They took stock of what they knew about the world before, and realised that they’d forgotten a lot. Most of them were not very well educated, and had lived quietly taking care of their homes, their children, the shopping and housework. I don’t think they had much to forget. They started to cogitate; their minds were numbed and they found it hard.

  They couldn’t think of anything.

  Meanwhile, I carried on counting. Gradually, I managed to count automatically, while I was chatting or eating, and soon, in my sleep. I woke up with a number in my mind: at first, it seemed improbable. I was dubious, then convinced. Anthea told me I’d developed an aptitude which was perhaps not as extraordinary as all that; it was simply that no one had ever needed it before.

  I counted my heartbeats one by one, and I soon found myself faced with huge numbers that defied mental calculations. At seventy-two beats a minute, an hour was equal to more than four thousand, two hundred, and by the end of the day I had reached over fifty thousand. It was no longer manageable. So I found a different technique: I counted seventy-two then I mentally chalked up one. I started again and chalked up two, but I was afraid of getting confused with these two different scales. Then a woman would come along and act as an abacus: I’d say one, she’d remember it, then I’d say two. She soon became unnecessary because I didn’t make any mistakes. I saw that I was keeping track of the figures accurately. Gradually, I no longer needed to say the numbers out loud. Something fell into place inside me that alerted me automatically every seventy beats. I became a human clock.

  Our days lasted between fifteen and eighteen hours, with random variations. From the moment the lights were turned down, which we called the beginning of night, about six hours went by before we were awakened. That was how we established that we were living according to an artificial clock. We needed to understand why.

  Emma put forward the craziest theory.

  ‘We’re not on Earth. We are on a planet that rotates every sixteen and a half hours.’

  ‘How would we have got here?’

  ‘How did we get into the bunker?’ I asked.

  Nobody had the least idea, which amazed me.

  I’d put my own lack of memories down to the fact that I’d been so young and to the women’s state of shock that Anthea had described to me, but the others knew no more than I did. Apparently, life had been going on as usual, when suddenly, in the middle of a night that had begun like any other, there’d been screams, flames, a stampede, things which I, who’d always lived in the quiet of the bunker, couldn’t begin to imagine.

  ‘There were strange drugs that affected the brain and created false memories,’ said Emma.

  Anthea wasn’t convinced of this. There’d been all sorts of unconfirmed rumours, stories of brainwashing, genetic engineering or robots so sophisticated that they were mistaken for human beings.

  ‘The fact is that none of us seems to have any coherent memories that would enable us to piece together what happened. We don’t even know if there was a war,’ said Dorothy. ‘I can recall only vague images: I see flames, people running in all directions, and I think I’m tied up and frightened. It goes on for a very long time. I’m still frightened, but there aren’t even any images any more.’

  ‘Well, I can’t even tell you that much,’ said Annabel. ‘There’s my day-to-day life, and then a sort of panic which I’ve always been terrified of reliving. Then, I’m here, lying on a mattress and everything feels perfectly normal.’

  ‘Wars aren’t like that. There are
bombs and air-raid sirens.’

  ‘There wasn’t a war. Not where we were, at any rate. Of course, those were troubled times, but educated people said that we hadn’t lived in peace for a very long time.’

  ‘We were invaded by another country.’

  ‘Or Martians!’