Mara and Dann

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Where are they?’ she whispered up at the woman, and heard the whisper, ‘They’ve all gone north.’

  Soon they stopped. High in the sky above her she saw the head of a cart bird turning and tilting to look down at them to see who they were. She was terrified of these tall birds, with their sharp beaks and great feet and claws that could rip somebody to pieces. But it was harnessed to a cart and she was expected to climb in. The cart was used on the fields, and was a flimsy thing that rattled about and only carried light loads. She could not manage it and was lifted in, and then Dann was beside her, and the whole cart creaked and seemed to want to settle to the earth as the two big people got in. The cart bird stood waiting. The slave who looked after the cart bird, who they called the cart bird man, sat just behind the bird, making it start and stop with a whistle she had often heard them make. The man and the woman wanted the cart to go forward and kept saying, ‘Go, go,’ but the bird did not move. Mara whispered, ‘It needs a whistle.’ ‘What whistle?’ ‘Like this.’ Mara had not meant her little piping whistle to make the bird go, but that is what happened. The cart was rushing forward and the great feet of the cart bird were going down hard into the dust and lifting up and scattering dust back over them all. Where were they going? Mara was afraid that these two people who were trying to help them did not know, but they were saying to each other loudly, because of all the noise, ‘There’s the big hill,’ ‘That’s the black rock they described,’ ‘I think that must be the dead tree.’ Weren’t they supposed to be keeping quiet because of enemies? Anyone near could hear the rattling of the cart, though the wheels were running quietly through the dust. The little boy was crying. She knew he felt sick, because she did. And then Mara fell off to sleep and kept waking to see the cart bird’s great head jerking along against the stars…And then, suddenly, the cart stopped. The cart bird had stopped because it was tired. It fell to its knees and its beak was open, and it tried to get up but couldn’t, and sank back into the dust.

  ‘We are there anyway,’ the man told the children; and the two big people lifted the children out of the cart, and were tugging them off away from the cart when Mara said, ‘Wait, the cart bird.’ And then, seeing these people did not know much about cart birds, she said, ‘If the bird is left tied to the cart and can’t move it will die.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said the man, and the woman said, ‘Thank you for telling us.’

  Now the two moved to where the rope from the cart was tied to the harness on the bird; but they did not know how to untie it. The man took out a knife and cut all the lines. The bird staggered up and to the side of the track, where it fell again, and sat moving its head around, and opening and shutting its beak. It was so thirsty: Mara could feel the dryness of its mouth in her own.

  Now they were walking along a path, the kind the Rock People used: not straight and wide, like the real roads, but going through the bushes and grasses anyhow it could, and looping around rocky places. It was soft underfoot, this path: it was only dust. Several times she had to stop herself tripping, because her feet dragged in the dust drifts and she was pulling her brother along. The woman said something, and the man came back and picked up the child, who let out a wail, but stopped himself in time to prevent that hand over his mouth. They were trying to talk quietly, but the little girl thought, Our breathing is so loud, anyone near could hear it, and we are all too tired to walk carefully. Once or twice she drifted off to sleep as she walked, and came to herself at the tug of the woman’s hand. Now it was light, Mara could see her face: it was a nice face, but so tired, and around her mouth was the greyish scum of being thirsty. The light was still grey, and across the great stretch of country from that reddening sky came that cold breath that says the sun will soon rise. Like the little cluster of stars, this early cold was her special friend, and she knew it well, for at home she liked to wake early before anyone else and stand by the window and wait for the sweet coolness on her face and then look out, watching how the world became light and the sky filled with sunlight.

  Dann was asleep on the shoulder of the man carrying him, who was almost staggering with the weight. Yet Dann was not heavy, she often carried him. Now it was full daylight. All around was this enormous, flat country covered with grass, a yellow, drying grass that she could easily see over. No trees. Here and there were little rocky hills, but not one tree. The child could see that the woman, whose hand she was clutching, dozed off as she walked; and when that happened the big, dry hand went limp, and the child had to grab it and hold on. She felt she would soon start crying, she had to cry, she was so miserable and frightened, but she had no tears.

  They were going down off a ridge and, look, there were trees, a line of them, and a smell Mara knew, the smell of water. She cried out, and then all four of them were running forward, towards that smell…They were on the edge of a big hole, one of a string of big holes, and at the bottom of this was some muddy water. Things flapped about down there. Fish were dying in that water, which was hardly enough to cover them, and there was a strong smell coming up, of dead things. The four jumped off the jagged edge of the hole into the dried mud around the water; but it was not water at all: it was thick mud and they could not drink it. They stood there, looking down at the dark mud where fishes and a tortoise struggled, and there was a new thing, a new sound, a roar, a rumble, a rushing, and the smell of water was strong…And then the woman snatched her up and the man picked up Dann, and the four were at the top of the edge of the big hole, and then running and stumbling as fast as they could, and Mara was saying, ‘Why, why, why?’ gasping dry breaths; and they reached one of the little hills of rocks, and climbed a short way and turned to see…What the little girl thought she saw was the earth moving along towards where the waterholes were, a brown fast moving, a brown rush, and there was a smell of water, and the woman said, ‘It’s all right, it’s a flash flood.’ And the man said, ‘There must have been a cloudburst up north.’ Mara, no longer tired, her whole being vibrating with fear because of the nearness of the flood, could see only blue sky, not a cloud anywhere, so how could a cloud have burst? The brown water had reached level with them, jumping and tumbling past, but a wash of water was spreading out and had reached the little hill. Dann began struggling and roaring in the man’s arms to get down into the water, and in a moment all four were standing in the water, splashing it all over them, drinking it, while Dann was like a dog, rolling in it, and laughing and lapping, and shouting, ‘Water, water’; and then Mara sat down in it, feeling that her whole body was drinking in the water; and she saw the two grown-up people were squatting to drink and splash themselves but the water was only part-way to their knees. It was up to her shoulders, and rising. Then the two grown-ups were standing and looking towards where the flood had come from and saying quick, frightened things to each other, using words Mara did not know. That water was short and everyone must be careful all the time, she knew, and could not remember now when things had been different. But she had not heard of floods, and dams and clouds bursting, and inundations. And then she felt herself scooped up again and saw how the man lifted Dann up out of the water; and they were halfway up the hill when there was another roar and a second brown flood came racing down. But now it was not just roaring: there were bangs and crashes and rumbles, and bellows and bleats too, for in this second flood were all kinds of animals, and some of them she had never seen before except in the pictures painted on the walls at home. Some were being tossed by the waves of the flood to one side of the main rush of water and, finding that they had ground under them, were climbing out and making for the higher ground. The big animals were doing well, but smaller ones were being swept past, calling and crying; and Mara saw one of them, like her little pet, Shera, at home, who slept in her bed and was her friend, riding past on a tree that had all sorts of little animals stuck all over the branches. Now Mara was crying because of the poor animals; but meanwhile others were running down from the higher ground towards the water, and straight into
the flood to stand in it and drink and drink and roll in it, just as the four of them had done, for they were so thirsty. Mara saw the cart bird come staggering out of the grass, its feet going down wide because it was so weak, and when it reached the edge of the water it simply sank down and drank, sitting, while the water rose so that soon its neck was poking up out of the brown flood, like a stick or a snake. The water was now rising fast around the hill they were on. Where just a moment before they had splashed and rolled, it was so deep that a big horse, like the ones her parents rode, was up to the top of its legs; and then another wave came spilling out from the main flood and the horse stepped out and began swimming. Then the cart bird stood up, and now that it was wet all over, and its puffs of white and black feathers flat and thin, you could see it was all bones. Mara knew that animals were dying everywhere because of the dryness, and when she saw the cart bird, so thin and weak, she understood. She had a big book, with pictures of animals pasted in, and some she had never seen; but here they were, all along the edge of the water, drinking. Now she was watching a big tree rolling and tossing as it swept past, with animals on it; and as she watched she saw it rear up and turn over…and when it rolled back the animals had gone. Mara was crying, feeling on her palms the soft fur of her pet, and she wondered if someone was looking after Shera. And it was the first time she had thought that they, the People, had gone fast away from the houses, run away; but what had happened to their house animals, the dog and Shera? Meanwhile above her head the man and woman were talking in low, frightened voices. They were disagreeing. The man got his way, and in a moment she and Dann were lifted up again and the two grown-ups were in the water, which was nearly up to their shoulders now, so that the children were in it to their waists, and they were wading as fast as they could to another hill, much higher, less rocky, not far away. But it seemed very far, as the water was rising around them; and the tussocks of grass they could not see tripped them up, and the man once even fell, and Dann tumbled out of his arms and disappeared into the water, while Mara cried out. But the man got up from the water, picked Dann out of it, and when a roar from behind said there was another big wave on the way, he tried to run, and did run, making great, splashing bounds, easier as the water grew shallower; and they all reached this other hill just as the new wave banged into them, and their heads went under, and then they were up on the side of the hill, together with all kinds of animals, who were dragging themselves up, streaming water, half drowned, their open mouths full of water.

  The children were carried nearly to the top of this hill, which was much higher than the one they had left. When they looked back they could see the water was already halfway up, past where they had been standing, and the animals there were so thickly clustered their horns and trunks were like the little, dead forest near home with its branches sticking up. Now the water covered everywhere: there was nothing to be seen but water, brown, tossing and flooding water, and all the hills were crowded with animals. Just near where the four people stood, the two children clutching tight to the legs of their rescuers, was a big, flat rock covered in snakes. Mara had never seen them alive, though she knew there were still some left. They were lying stretched out or coiled up, hardly moving, as if they were dead, but they were tired. And snakes were swimming towards the hill, through the waves, and when they reached the dry ground they slithered out and just lay, still.

  ‘Some cloudburst,’ said the woman, and above them was a blue sky without one cloud in it, and the sun shone down on the flood. ‘I saw a river come down once, like this, but it was thirty years ago,’ said the man. ‘I was about the age of these children. It was up north. The big dam burst in the hills – no maintenance.’ ‘This is no dam,’ said the woman. ‘No dam could hold this amount of water.’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d say the plain above the Old Gorge flooded, and the water got funnelled through the gorge down to here.’ ‘A pity we can’t stop all this water flooding to waste.’

  Meanwhile Dann had found a hollow place in a flat rock where the water was trickling in, and he was sitting in the water. But he was not alone: lizards and snakes were there with him.

  ‘Dann,’ shouted Mara. The child took no notice. He was stroking a big, fat, grey snake that lay beside him in the water, and making sounds of pleasure. ‘Stop it, that’s dangerous,’ said Mara, looking up at the woman so she could stop Dann; but she did not hear. She was staring off in the direction Mara knew was north, and yet another wall of water was coming down. It was not as high as the others, but enough to push in front of it boulders and dead animals, the big ones with trunks and big ears and tusks.

  ‘We can’t afford to lose any more animals,’ said the man. And the woman said, ‘I suppose a few more dead don’t make any difference.’

  They were speaking very loudly above the sounds of the water and the banging rocks and stones, and the cries of the animals.

  At this moment Dann got up out of his pool, unlooping a big green snake that had come to rest around his arm, and climbed up towards them, careful not to step on a snake or an animal too exhausted to move out of his way, and stood in front of the two grown-ups and said, ‘I’m hungry. I’m so hungry.’ And now Mara realised she had been hungry for a long time. How long was it since they had eaten? The bad people had not given them food. Before that…Mara’s mind was full of sharp little pictures she was trying to fit together: her parents leaning down to say, ‘Be brave, be brave and look after your brother’; the big man with his dark, angry face; before that, the quiet ordinariness of their home before all the terrible things began happening. She could not remember eating: food had been short for quite a long time, but there had been things to eat. Now she looked carefully at Dann, and she had not done that for days because she had been so thirsty and so frightened, and she saw that his face was thin and yellowish though usually he was a chubby, shiny little child. She had never seen him like this. And she saw something else: his tunic, the brown sack thing of the Rock People, was quite dry. The water had streamed off it as he had climbed out of the rock pool. And her tunic was dry. She hated the thin, dead, slippery feel of the stuff, but it did dry quickly.

  ‘We don’t have much food,’ said the man, ‘and if we eat what we have now we might not find any more.’

  ‘I’m so hungry,’ whispered Mara.

  The man and the woman looked worriedly at each other.

  ‘It isn’t far now,’ he said.

  ‘But there’s all that water.’

  ‘It’ll drain away soon.’

  ‘Far? Where?’ demanded Mara, tugging at the brown slipperiness of the woman’s tunic. ‘Home? Are we near home?’ Even as she said it her heart was sinking because she knew it was nonsense: they were not going home. The woman squatted down so that her face was on the same level as hers, and the man did the same for the boy. ‘Surely you’ve got that into your head by now?’ said the woman. Her big face, all bone and hollows, her eyes burning out between the bones, seemed desperate with sadness. The man had Dann by the arms and was saying, ‘You must stop this, you must.’ But the little boy hadn’t said anything. He was crying: tears were actually falling down his poor cheeks now that he had drunk enough to let him cry properly.

  ‘What did Lord Gorda tell you? Surely he told you?’

  Mara had to nod, miserably, tears filling her throat.

  ‘Well then,’ said the woman, straightening up. The man, too, rose, and the two stood looking at each other; and Mara could see that they didn’t know what to do or say. ‘It’s too much for them to take in,’ the woman said, and the man said, ‘Hardly surprising.’

  ‘But they have to understand.’

  ‘I do understand. I do, really,’ said Mara.

  ‘Good,’ said the woman. ‘What is the most important thing?’

  The little girl thought and said, ‘My name is Mara.’

  And then the man said to the little boy, ‘And what is your name?’

  ‘It’s Dann,’ said Mara quickly, in case he had forgotten; and he h
ad, because he said, ‘It isn’t my name. My name isn’t Dann.’

  ‘It’s a question of life and death,’ said the man. ‘You’ve got to remember that.’

  ‘Better if you could try to forget your real name,’ said the woman. And Mara thought that she easily could, for that name was in her other life, where people were friendly and kind and she wasn’t thirsty all the time.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Dann again.

  The two grown-ups looked to see that the rock behind them did not have a snake on it. There were a couple of lizards and some scorpions, who did not look as if the water had discouraged them. They must have emerged from crevices to see what the disturbance was all about. The man took up a stick and gently pushed it at the scorpions and lizards, and they disappeared into the rocks.

  The four of them sat down on the rock. The woman had a big bag tied around her waist. Water had got into it, but the food inside was so well wrapped in wads of leaves that it was almost dry, only a little wet. There were two slabs of thick white stuff, and she broke each slab into two so they each had a piece. Mara took a bite and found her mouth full of tasteless stuff.

  ‘That’s all there is,’ said the woman.