I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

Contents ( 3)

I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN

Jacqueline Harpman

Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz

With an afterword by Sophie Mackintosh

Published by Transit Books

2301 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, California 94612

www.transitbooks.org

Afterword © Sophie Mackintosh, 2019

First published in France with the title Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes by Stock, Paris in 1995

First Transit Books edition, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-945492-60-0 (PAPERBACk) | 978-1-945492-62-4 (EBOOk)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER AVAILABLE

DESIGN & TYPESETTING

Justin Carder

DISTRIBUTED BY

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution (800) 283-3572 | cbsd.com cbsd.com

Printed in the United States of America

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

I Who Have Never Known Men
Afterword

To Denise Geilfus In friendship

Since I barely venture outside these days, I spend a lot of time in one of the armchairs, rereading the books. I only recently started taking an interest in the prefaces. The authors talk readily about themselves, explaining their reasons for writing the book. This surprises me: surely it was more usual in that world than in the one in which I have lived for people to pass on the knowledge they had acquired? They often seem to feel the need to emphasise that they wrote the book not out of vanity, but because someone asked them to, and that they had thought about it long and hard before accepting. How strange! It suggests that people were not avid to learn, and that you had to apologise for wanting to convey your knowledge. Or, they explain why they felt it was appropriate to publish a new translation of Proust, because previous efforts, laudable though they may be, lacked something or other. But why translate when it must have been so easy to learn different languages and read anything you wanted directly? These things leave me utterly baffled. True, I am extremely ignorant: apparently, I know even less of these matters than I thought I did. The authors express their gratitude to those who taught them, who opened the door to this or that avenue of knowledge, and, because I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, I usually read these words with a degree of indifference. But suddenly, yesterday, my eyes filled with tears; I thought of Anthea, and was overcome by a tremendous wave of grief. I could picture her, sitting on the edge of a mattress, her knees to one side, sewing patiently with her makeshift thread of plaited hairs which kept snapping, stopping to look at me, astonished, quick to recognise my ignorance and teach me what she knew, apologising that it was so little, and I felt a huge wrench, and began to sob. I had never cried before. There was a pain in my heart as powerful as the pain of the cancer in my belly, and I who no longer speak because there is no one to hear me, began to call her. Anthea! Anthea! I shouted. I couldn’t forgive her for not being there, for having allowed death to snatch her, to tear her from my clumsy arms. I chastised myself for not having held on to her, for not having understood that she couldn’t go on any more. I told myself that I’d abandoned her because I was frigid, as I had been all my life, as I shall be when I die, and so I was unable to hug her warmly, and that my heart was frozen, unfeeling, and that I hadn’t realised that I was desperate.

I Who Have Never Known Men

I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN

CONTENTS