I Who Have Never Known Men Read online

  They were as ready as ever to burst out laughing and I began to understand that it wasn’t out of stupidity or hopelessness, but as a means of survival.

  ‘So why would they have taken us to another planet? What use could we be to them?’

  ‘Clearly none at all,’ chipped in another. ‘We’re still on Earth. Fifteen or twenty years ago – no, less, you can tell from looking at the child – when we were locked up, there was a purpose, they were keeping us in reserve for something. And then a file got lost, the admin workers made sure no one found out, and they carried on guarding us and keeping us alive, but no one was responsible for us. We’re the result of an administrative blunder.’

  ‘But sixteen hours! That doesn’t explain sixteen hours!’

  ‘And it’s ridiculous that we can’t find any pattern in the guards’ routine. My memories of before are fuzzy, but I’m sure we worked regular hours. We even had to clock on.’

  ‘Once, only once since I’ve been counting, the young guard stayed nearly eleven hours at a stretch, pacing up and down around the cage. By the end, he looked drawn and pale, but he didn’t complain. I’ve never seen him looking impatient,’ I said.

  Our conversations followed these lines, going over and over the same ground. Attempts to recall the early years of imprisonment were fruitless. Apparently, the women had slowly emerged from an inner fog to find themselves accustomed to the strange life they led. There was no suggestion of a rebellion. They’d had husbands, lovers and children. As a result of being too afraid to think about them because it was so painful, they’d forgotten almost everything. But they didn’t try to shut me up, because they were horrified at having lost their own history. Anthea gradually became convinced that they’d been drugged.

  ‘Look at us, look at how we live. We have been deprived of everything that made us human, but we organised ourselves, I suppose in order to survive, or because, when you’re human, you can’t help it. We made up new rules with what we had left, we invented a code. The eldest pours the soup into the bowls, I supervise the sewing, when there is any, Annabel reconciles those who squabble, and we have no idea how all that came about. We must have been living in a dream for a long time and when we woke up, we’d adapted to the situation.’

  ‘What about when Alice wanted to kill herself and Claudia stopped her?’

  ‘That’s one memory that stands out amid all the confusion. No one knows when that was.’

  I’d been counting for four months. We’d decided no longer to worry about the anarchic routine they imposed on us – my heart would act as our clock. One evening, as the lights were being dimmed, we decided that it was eleven o’clock, and that from that moment, I would count the days as twenty-four hours, as in the past. Sometimes, when we were in the middle of lunch, joylessly eating the boiled vegetables, a woman would ask me the time and I’d reply:

  ‘Two o’clock in the morning.’

  That rekindled a spirit of rebellion in their dulled minds. We had our own time, which had nothing in common with that of those who kept us locked up; we’d rediscovered the quality of being human. We were no longer in league with the guards. Inside the bars, my strong, regular heart fuelled by youthful anger had restored to us our own territory; we’d established an area of freedom. New jokes sprang up. When the hatch opened for the second time and we were given a few kilos of pasta, if it was eight o’clock in the morning according to my heart, there was always one woman who’d say:

  ‘Ah! Here’s breakfast!’

  Or, if it was midnight:

  ‘The show’s over, let’s have dinner in town.’

  And we’d have a fit of giggles. I laughed too, I remember now, because I’d stopped seeing the women as enemies since I’d been giving them what I could: the time. I hadn’t forgotten the young guard, and when he was on duty, I continued to watch him, sitting close to the bars, hoping that one day he’d betray himself and give some sign that he’d noticed me, but that did not happen. I still wonder whether it was out of discipline, or whether he really hadn’t been struck by the fact that one of the women, always the same one, never took her eyes off him for a moment. I didn’t tell myself any more stories.

  I’d created the only new thing possible in our static lives. While my gaze was riveted on the young guard, no one disturbed me. Had they done so, it would have drawn attention to me. That left me plenty of time to think. I began to fear that, once again, we would be stultified by habit. It seemed to me that certain discussions no longer aroused much interest, and some of the women began yawning when we tried once again to fathom the rationale behind the time difference. They moaned that we were wearing ourselves out for nothing, that we wouldn’t find an explanation, that everything was arbitrary. I told myself that if their enthusiasm waned, I’d start hating them again and feeling alone, whereas I’d been enjoying myself. They’d go back to making jokes that excluded me and I’d be angry again. But Anthea thought I was wrong and that they really had woken up. ‘It’s even dangerous,’ she added. ‘I’m afraid that the guards will realise and will drug us again. We’ll sink back into apathy, we’ll be half dead and we won’t even realise it. I can’t imagine anything more humiliating.’

  Inevitably, with memory comes pain. Sitting facing one another, they found the courage to compare their scant memories. They tried to exhume the past in long conversations which groped their way around the obstacles. They fought against the amnesia which perhaps afforded relief, and against fear. They listened to one another attentively, and when one of them had an idea, she interrupted the woman who was speaking, in a rush to get it out before she forgot it. But they maintained a certain reticence as protection against the tears that would have alerted the guards. I was no longer excluded. I had earned my place among them, even though all I could do was listen.

  But this didn’t last long, because suddenly, there was a major event.

  I must describe the event in precise detail, which I find very difficult, because of the shock and amazement. It happened just as the guards were opening the hatch to give us our food. The pots and pans always stayed inside the cage, we piled them up beside the sinks, but we had to hand back the plates which we slid between the bars after each meal. The food would arrive on huge trolleys and we had to pick it up with our hands and place it in the containers, a task that was both unpleasant and difficult. At the back of the room, on the other side of the bars, a big metal door would slide open a fraction, instantly sparking our curiosity. What would they give us today? What would we be able to do with it? Two of the guards would go over to the door, pulling the trolley, while the third would continue to watch us, his whip at the ready. First of all, we had to take the soup ladle, the forty spoons and the blunt knives for peeling the vegetables. That day, there were carrots and beef cut into coarse chunks, and the women immediately began arguing over whether they would cook all the carrots or keep some to eat raw. There were also potatoes, to our delight, because they were a rare treat. The women said it was odd, because in the past world, potatoes had been very cheap and a food so rich in various things that, according to Anthea, a person could keep healthy eating nothing but potatoes. But we found the quantity of food insufficient, even for the tiny appetites of women who were inactive and had virtually nothing to do, and so the pleasure was short-lived. One of the guards slid a key into the lock of the little hatch. At that precise moment, there was a terrifyingly loud noise.

  I’d never heard anything like it, but the women froze, because they’d recognised the sirens. It was an ear-piercingly loud, continuous wail. I was dumbstruck and I think I lost track for the first time since I’d acquired the ability to count time. The women who were seated leapt up, those who were at the bars collecting the food, recoiled. The guard let go of the bunch of keys, leaving them in the lock and turned to face the others. They looked at one another briefly, and then they all rushed towards the main exit, flinging the double doors wide open – something they’d never done before – and ran out.

>   They ran out. For the first time since we women had been imprisoned, we were alone in the bunker.

  For me, the initial shock was soon over. I raced forward, slid my arm between the bars, finished turning the key and removed it together with the whole bunch. I gave the hatch a push and it opened. I stepped back, my hands clenched, because I was holding the most precious thing in the world. My internal clock had started up again and I can say that we stood there for more than a minute, staring at the open door, still unable to grasp what had happened. The shock had taken my breath away and I was panting. I got a grip on myself, grabbed the bars and jumped through the hatch to unlock the door of the cage. There were several keys on the key ring, I had to try two before finding the right one. Since I’d never used a key before, I fumbled, but I managed to open the cage door. The women watched me, rooted to the spot. They looked as though they couldn’t grasp what was happening.

  ‘Come on,’ I shouted. ‘Come on out!’

  Then I ran to the other door. I had no idea what I’d find there. It was only a few metres away, which made me wonder whether I’d run into the guards, whether I wasn’t rushing headlong into danger, but I told myself that the women would come to the rescue if necessary, and that forty angry women would be more than a match for a few guards, even if they were armed. I went through the open door, and found myself in a wide, deserted corridor. On either side were doors that opened into rooms which I knew nothing about.

  The first woman to join me was Anthea, and just behind her, Dorothy, the one who’d questioned me. They both wore the same expression of disbelief. They spoke, but their words were drowned by the continuous wail of the siren, and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I realised that I was talking too, I said that the guards weren’t there any more, that they’d left, they’d run away, and things like that. I kept saying the same thing over and over, as if stating an unbelievable truth that had to be repeated again and again to convince myself. We persevered with our futile conversation for a few seconds, then the siren suddenly stopped, as if stifled by its own noise.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ I said.

  Dorothy nodded. Anthea echoed:

  ‘They’ve gone.’

  We were so disconcerted that we just stood there, utterly at a loss. Then, one by one, the other women appeared, hesitantly at first, and then, as they reassured each other, they began pushing and shoving, thronging the corridor that was too narrow to contain us all. I withdrew, entered one of the rooms, and looked about me. I saw a big table, a few chairs and some cupboards. Of course, at that point, I didn’t know the names of all those things; I saw objects that I didn’t recognise as I threaded my way rapidly between them, because I’d glimpsed another door on the far side of the room. It too was open, and led to the staircase.

  Today I say staircase as if, at that time, I knew what it was and what I was looking for. As a matter of fact, we weren’t even certain that we were underground. The women thought so because there were no windows. I’d never found myself at the foot of a staircase, but I’d heard of them and I immediately realised what this was. I ran up a few stairs then turned round to call, unnecessarily, because Anthea and Dorothy had followed me. They were more cautious than I – later they told me they dreaded the sudden appearance of the guards, and that before following me, they’d shouted to the women that they might have to fight, and the women had replied that they were prepared to be killed if necessary, but they would never return to the cage. I was no longer thinking of them. I ran up the stairs recklessly; I ran with a sort of all-consuming elation, an intoxication akin to the feeling I’d no longer been able to induce by making up stories once I’d emerged from my isolation and begun talking to the others. I was borne by an impulse so powerful that, had a guard appeared at that moment, even if he were twice my size, I’d have knocked him over and trampled him underfoot; I was possessed by a wild joy that was heedless of all else. I climbed without becoming breathless, without getting tired, even though I had never taken more than twenty steps in a straight line. I flew up the steps as in the dreams I had later, dreams I’d heard the women describing, where you rise up and glide like the birds that I was soon to watch being carried by the airstreams, effortlessly drifting, dancing for hours in the twilight, just as I was dancing up the steps, weightless, floating, in an exhilarating ascent towards the undreamed-of unknown, the outside, the world that was not the cage; and I had no thoughts, only a visceral thrill that swept me along, and images, perhaps, that raced through my mind, or simply words that gushed up and rose to receive the imminent images – the sky, the night, the horizon, the sun, the wind, and many more, countless words that had accumulated over the years and which were in a hurry, spurring me on. Oh! That first time I went up the stairs! When I think of it, my eyes fill with tears and I feel that compulsion, that surge of triumph. I think I’d be prepared to relive twelve years of captivity to experience that miraculous ascent, the wonderful certainty that made me so light that I flew up the hundred steps in one go, without stopping for breath, and I was laughing.

  All of a sudden, I found myself at the top. I was in what we later called a cabin, three walls and a door, also open, the plain spreading out before me. I bounded forward and looked. It was the world.

  It was daylight. The sky was grey, but not the lifeless grey of the bunker walls. Huge masses of subtle hues glided gently in a light breeze. I recognised them as clouds; they were tinged with pearl, lit from behind by the sun. A strange emotion choked me, more restrained and exquisite than the exuberance that had borne me up the stairs. I wished I could linger, but there were too many other things to discover. It was drizzling. Fate would have us emerge on a rainy day. Later, we realised that rain was rare in this season. I stepped forward, raised my face and arms to this extraordinary wetness, which I’d heard about but had been unable to imagine. A few drops fell onto my hands and I licked them, enthralled. My dress was soon soaked through and the breeze, light as it was, plastered it to my thighs, and I found that wonderful.

  ‘But where are we?’ asked a voice behind me.

  It was a breathless Dorothy, supported by Anthea. They both looked around, and so did I. There was nothing but a gently undulating plain stretching as far as the eye could see, from one end of the horizon to the other.

  ‘We’re outside,’ I replied, laughing. ‘And there isn’t a single guard. They’ve all gone.’

  ‘We’re a long way from a town, there’s no sign at all of any housing. I’d always thought we must be near some big city,’ said Anthea.

  Dorothy frowned.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. This plain is vast, it’s unbroken. We are not in my country, you could always see mountains.’

  Anthea seemed so puzzled and anxious that I felt sorry for her.

  ‘What does it matter?’ I said. ‘The main thing is that we’re outside, free, and there are no guards.’

  The other women began to arrive, out of breath and stumbling, and we moved away from the cabin to make room. Soon, they were all there, looking around in amazement, trying to fathom where they were, repeating, one after the other, that they’d never seen anything like it, almost terrified at being in such a strange place. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t rejoicing wholeheartedly at the miracle of being outside, released from the cage, at seeing the sky and feeling the wind and the rain. They’d wanted something all their lives, but now they had it, they didn’t recognise it. Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness. That is something that I, who have only experienced absurdity, can only suppose.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ said Annabel.

  They huddled together, a small, terrified group in the middle of an unknown land. After the familiarity of the cage, the forty women clung to one another, disorientated by the vast stillness from which nothing emanated.

  ‘What if they come back?’

  I realised they were trying to justify their fear
. We scanned our surroundings; all we could see was the stony plain where nothing moved except the scant grass gently swaying in the breeze.

  ‘We mustn’t stay here, we must leave, hide,’ said Annabel.

  ‘Go where?’ muttered Frances. ‘There’s nothing. Not a building, not a shelter, not a road, just …’

  She looked at the small building from which we’d emerged.

  ‘Just this sort of cabin, in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘We’re lost,’ said a voice.

  There was a murmur of unfinished phrases, one picking up from where the previous speaker had trailed off, their words colliding and tumbling over one another. I suddenly lost my temper.

  ‘Then go back inside! The cage is still down there, if you’re so frightened of being outside!’

  ‘Oh, you and your …’ retorted Annabel, exasperated.

  She stopped short. I think she was going to say insolence, or rebelliousness, but she quickly realised that I was right, that this panicking would get them nowhere. I tried to control myself too, for I sensed that an argument was brewing, and that would have given them an outlet for their anxiety and set them all against me. Anthea, who’d remained calm, backed me up.

  ‘The child’s right. We must think, and organise ourselves. I don’t understand where the guards have gone, or why they’ve disappeared, and I’m frightened too. It’s not long since they left the bunker and there’s no trace of them.’

  ‘Eleven minutes,’ I added, ‘since the siren went off –perhaps a little longer, because I lost track of time for a moment. It took us eleven minutes to open the door, get out and climb up the stairs.’

  ‘Eleven minutes? With a helicopter or small aircraft, that’s plenty of time for them to vanish from sight, I suppose. But what about us? We can’t disappear like that. To get over there, to the horizon, will take us a good two or three hours on foot. If they’re planning to come back and catch us, we’ll be captured in no time.’