Death had begun its work. Who would it single out next time? A vague melancholy set in. I think they were wondering why they were wearing themselves out trying to survive from day to day in this alien land where only the grave awaited them, but they didn’t talk about it. They no longer chatted endlessly about nothing, but came and went in silence, slowly, as if weighed down by inevitability. The days went by, and then the months, and the sense of an imminent disaster was dispelled. I realised the day when Elizabeth, who was now the oldest, said to us laughingly:
‘It’ll be my turn next, and look how active I still am!’
She had just come back from the woods with an armful of heavy branches for the fire and, it was true, she wasn’t even out of breath.
Then we started planning ahead again. In the cold store, there was still a large stock of meat, but Helen and Isabel had worked out that with thirty-six of us, it wouldn’t last more than five years. I refrained, and I was probably not the only one, from saying that our numbers would decrease. There was no question of replenishing our supplies from another bunker, the nearest was a ten-day hike away and the meat would go off before we got back. The idea of emigrating was floated and I was thrilled at the thought of constructing another village. I had enjoyed building, I started thinking up new arrangements and even became quite excited, offering to add new houses to the village for those who wanted a little more privacy. I had become skilled, but apart from the occasional shelf, I rarely had the opportunity to use my talents. My suggestion was greeted with approval, several of the women who lived as couples said that actually they’d prefer to live on their own. But the most urgent problem was that of our clothing: our dresses were in tatters. We could in fact have gone naked, the climate was so mild, at least during the hottest season, but the women objected. The years of incarceration with no privacy under the watchful eye of the guards had made modesty a luxury which no one wished to forgo. Besides, we had almost run out of soap. We decided to send an expedition towards the west, a direction we hadn’t yet explored. Four of us set off, Denise, Frances, Greta and myself, since we were the youngest and strongest. Anthea was probably the same age as the three women who were accompanying me, but she was the nurse, the only one who could understand the women’s ailments and perhaps, despite the lack of medicines, find some remedy, so it seemed best for her to stay behind in the village. We were to fetch fabric, sandals, soap and salt, and identify another site in case we did decide to move. Those who stayed behind promised to cut down trees and lay them to dry so that they’d be ready on our return.
It was an enjoyable expedition. We marked the way with big arrows made of stones, so we wouldn’t get lost in that monotonous landscape. We went from hilltop to hilltop to get a good view of our surroundings. It wasn’t until we reached the ninth bunker that we found fabric, but already in the second, we’d found a packet of coffee. I’d never tasted coffee and I didn’t like it very much. I watched my companions shriek with delight and pleasure as they imagined the others’ joy when they returned with such a wonderful find, but I was unable to share their excitement. We found as much salt and soap as we needed, but not a single sandal, which upset us, until Denise said we should have thought of it years ago and taken the leather boots to cut sandals from the legs.
‘We’re not very resourceful, are we!’ said Greta ruefully.
‘We come from a world where it wasn’t necessary, everything was ready-made and we never asked how things were produced,’ replied Frances.
They didn’t like talking about the past any more than they had done before, and would have said nothing further, but it was a long hike and this was a good opportunity. Because Anthea had taught me a lot of things, I felt bolder about asking questions.
‘Tell me what it was like,’ I said. ‘How did you live?’
Initially, they were reluctant to answer, then they relented. At first, they were talking to me, but it turned out they’d never told one another their life stories, and they were enjoying this opportunity. Frances had been married with two children, Paul and Mary. When the disaster struck, she’d been planning to have a third, and, because her memories were so terribly hazy, she didn’t know whether she’d been pregnant and lost the baby or had simply intended to have another child. Her husband was called Lawrence, and she’d met him when she was twenty-three, on the rebound from a love affair which she thought she’d never get over. As she talked, she kept saying:
‘But it’s all so ordinary, it’s the same as everybody else!’
As if she wasn’t aware that for me, nothing was ordinary, since nothing had ever happened to me.
‘The child’s right, nothing’s ordinary when it’s happening to you,’ said Denise. ‘I didn’t have any children, but I wanted them and I always envied those who did.’
When all their lives had been shattered, she was on her second divorce, because, she said, she always chose the wrong men and was never happy with them. Greta couldn’t understand why Denise kept remarrying. She herself had never married, but had lived for years with the same lover and been very happy. That shocked Denise. And they began arguing about whether marriage was a good thing or not. In that wilderness where there were no men to marry, they debated whether it was better to be unfaithful or to leave, and then they burst out laughing. Even I recognised the absurdity of the situation and laughed with them. On reflection, I realise that I laughed a lot more often than I thought. But later, they cried, and I wasn’t able to understand them any more. Then they felt sorry for me, because I’d never experience love, and it was the same as when they talked about chocolate or the joys of a long, hot bath; I believed them without really being able to imagine what they were talking about.
Greta had had a son by this man she’d never married, but apart from naming them, none of them would ever talk about their children. On that subject, my questions were unable to break through their defences. Later, Anthea tried to explain their reticence to me.
‘You can’t understand, and since I didn’t have any children myself, I probably don’t fully understand either, but just think about what might have happened to their children! Growing up alone, like you, among strangers who weren’t in a position to take proper care of them? Or killed? Or dumped in groups of forty in bunkers, living like animals, dying for want of attention? They don’t want to think about their children. They’re probably all dead, and better off that way. If Frances was pregnant, she must have had a miscarriage. You’ve never seen a child, you don’t know what it means – their vulnerability, their trust, the love you feel for them, the anxiety, being ready to lay down your life to save them, and it’s unbearable to imagine a child’s pain.’
It’s true I know nothing of all that and have no memories of my own childhood. Perhaps that’s why I’m so different from the others. I must be lacking in certain experiences that make a person fully human.
I don’t remember their accounts very well, probably because there were too many things that I hadn’t experienced and couldn’t picture. They’d say: ‘We went dancing.’ What was dancing? They explained, they formed couples, facing each other. Denise placed her left hand on Frances’s waist and held her right hand up in the air, then they spun around. Yes, but what about the music? The sound of an accordion or a violin? They spelled out waltzes, one, two, three, one, two, three. Having counted my own heartbeats for so long, I could understand a repetitive rhythm, but I could never imagine the sound of the band, nor the laughter of those boys who made them lovesick, nor the rustle of chiffon or silk dresses swirling around them and making them look so beautiful. They spoke of creeping home at dawn, angry parents who scolded them, kisses, jilted lovers, men they were in love with but who didn’t love them, and it was all a muddle in my head. Gradually, I stopped asking them to tell me about their world, and I gave up trying to imagine it. I knew very well that I came from it. I’d had a father and a mother who probably went dancing and got married or left each other, and were torn apart by the disaster like Frances and Lawrence. Perhaps one of the dead women I’d seen in the bunkers was my mother, and my father was lying mummified near the bars of one of the prisons; all the links between them and me have been severed. There’s no continuity and the world I have come from is utterly foreign to me. I haven’t heard its music, I haven’t seen its painting, I haven’t read its books, except for the handful I found in the refuge and of which I understood little. I know only the stony plain, wandering, and the gradual loss of hope. I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence. There is nothing we can do about it.