‘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.