My mind worked incredibly fast: the boy was propelling me along with seeming dedication to his job, but, once we rounded the corner and were out of sight, he stopped, turned to me, smiled and said: ‘Don’t be afraid.’ And then he took me in his arms and an immense sensation surged through me, an overwhelming eruption, an extraordinary burst of light exploding inside me. I couldn’t breathe – and then I breathed again, because it was desperately brief.
After that, my mood changed. I no longer tried to persuade the women to tell me their secrets; I had my own. The eruption proved difficult to achieve. I had to tell myself stories that became increasingly long and complicated but, to my utter dismay, I never experienced that explosion twice in a row, whereas I wished it could have lasted for hours. I wanted to feel that sensation all the time, day and night, swaying deliciously, like the rare patches of grass on the plains caressed by the gentle breeze that blew for days at a time, but which I didn’t see until much later.
I now devoted all my time to the task of producing the eruption. I had to invent exceptional circumstances where we found ourselves alone, or at least isolated in the midst of the others, face-to-face, and then, after much agony, I had the exquisite surprise of finding his arms around me. My imagination developed. I had to exercise rigorous discipline, because I couldn’t dream up the same story twice: surprise was crucial, as I realised after trying several times to relive the exquisite gesture that had transported me, without feeling the slightest stirring. This was extremely difficult because I was simultaneously the inventor of the story, the narrator and the listener awaiting the shock of the unexpected. Thinking back, I’m amazed I managed to overcome so many obstacles! Imagine how fast my imagination had to work to prevent me from knowing what would happen so that I’d be caught unawares! The first time I imagined the interrogation, I’d never made up stories before, I didn’t even know it was possible. I was completely swept along by it, marvelling both at such a new activity and at the story itself. Then I soon became adept at it, like a sort of narrative engineer. I could tell if it had begun badly or if it was heading towards an impasse, and could even go back to the beginning to change the course of events. I went so far as to create characters who reappeared regularly, who changed from one story to another, and who became old friends. I was delighted with them, and it is only now that I’m able to read books that I can see they were rather limited.
I needed to invent increasingly complicated stories: I think that deep down something inside me knew what I wanted from them and objected; I had to catch myself off guard. Sometimes I had to keep it up for several hours, to lull my inner audience into a false sense of security so that she’d be entranced by the pleasure of listening, enjoy the story and lower her defences. Then came the magic moment, the boy’s gaze, his hand on my shoulder and the rapture that invaded my entire being. After that, I was able to sleep. Perhaps, in stopping the story, I was disappointing an inner listener who preferred the story to the turbulence, which is why she always spun it out and would happily have deprived me in order to prolong her own pleasure. Sometimes, halfway through, I’d try to argue with her: ‘I’m tired, I want to go to sleep, let me get to the eruption, I’ll carry on tomorrow.’ But it was no use, she wouldn’t let herself be fooled.
The women noticed that I’d changed. They observed me for a moment, saw me always sitting down, my knees tucked under, my chin resting on my folded arms, and I suppose I had a vacant stare. I was oblivious, because I wasn’t bothered about them any more, and I was surprised when Annabel came to question me.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Thinking,’ I replied.
That puzzled her. She stayed a little longer, waiting for me to say more, then went to convey my reply to the others. They argued for a while, and Annabel returned.
‘What about?’
The full force of my anger returned.
‘When I asked you what people do when they make love, you wouldn’t tell me, and now you expect me to tell you what’s going on inside my head! You keep your secrets, if it makes you happy, but don’t expect me to tell you mine!’
She frowned and went back to the others. This time, the debate went on longer. I’d never seen them talk at such length and with such seriousness – usually they’d burst out laughing after ten minutes. Apparently I’d provoked something new in their minds. Another woman then stood up and came over to me. It was Dorothy, the eldest and most respected. Even I didn’t hate her. She sat down and stared hard at me. Her presence annoyed me greatly because she was interrupting me at a crucial point in the story, which had been going on for a very long time: I was going to be locked up alone in a cell and had overheard a few words about the relief night guard who I had every reason to believe was the young man. How could I carry on in front of this old woman who was staring silently at me? At least I could try not to lose sight of the situation: I was alone, breathless and scared, and I could hear voices and the clink of weapons in the corridor. I didn’t know what was going on and was frightened by the atmosphere of urgency and turmoil. I tried to suspend the scene in my mind while studying Dorothy who was studying me. I told myself that if the eruption didn’t happen soon, I would have to make some sense out of the situation. But what on earth could I imagine that would feed back into the static world in which we lived, women locked up for so many years that they’d lost all notion of time?
‘So, you’ve got a secret,’ said Dorothy at long last.
I didn’t reply, because it wasn’t a real question. I could tell she was trying to faze me with her heavy stare and her silence. There was a time, before I’d found the inner world where I entertained myself, when I was still inquisitive and docile, when I’d have been intimidated. I’d have wondered what I’d done wrong to deserve this scrutiny, and I’d have feared the punishment. But now I knew I was beyond their reach: punishments were never more than being left out, excluded from futile, flighty conversations about nothing in particular, and that was all I wanted so that I could continue my secret pursuit in peace.
Since I didn’t react, she frowned.
‘I spoke to you. It is only polite to reply.’
‘I have nothing to say. They told you I have secrets. You tell me they told you I did. Well, so what?’
‘I want to hear them.’
I began to laugh, as much to my surprise as to anyone else’s. I’d been used to respecting the women’s wishes, especially those of the eldest who had the most authority, but everything had changed because I could no longer see any basis for that authority. I suddenly discovered that they had no power. We were all locked up in the same manner, without knowing why, watched over by jailers who, either out of contempt or because they were obeying orders, didn’t speak to any of us. They never entered the cage. They were always in threes, except when they changed shift, and then we saw six at a time, but they didn’t speak to one another. At mealtimes, one of the big double doors would open, a man would push a trolley along the gap between the cage and the wall, and another unlocked a little hatch through which he passed us the food. They wouldn’t answer our questions and we had long since stopped asking them any. The old women were as helpless as the younger ones. They had seized some imaginary power, a power over nothing, a tacit agreement that created a meaningless hierarchy, because there were no privileges that they could grant or refuse. The fact is that we were on an absolutely equal footing.