Mara and Dann

by Doris Lessing

  ‘No, I’ll stay.’

  Orphne tied Dann to the bed with cords, interposing soft pads of cloth between them and his skin, laid a single piece of cloth over him, because of the heat, and sat down next to the bed. ‘Have you ever seen someone while the poppy is leaving them? No? Well, I’m warning you.’

  Mara replaced her tunic and trousers, and sat down. She thought, It doesn’t seem as if he knows I am here, but perhaps he does.

  For some time Dann slept, or was unconscious, or both, but then he began to moan and shiver, and to fight against his bonds; great spasms shook his body, while his teeth clenched and his eyes rolled, and yet all the time he seemed insensible, so that it was like watching someone fighting in his sleep with an assailant, or a drowning person struggling just under the water. It was sickening, and Mara wanted to untie him, and hold him as she had the small child, to lift that body of his, as light as bones picked up from beside a road, and run away with him, shelter him, hide him – but she knew that this Orphne with her skills was right, was curing him, and that she must sit quiet and watch.

  Juba came, and Dromas, and then Candace and Meryx, and one after another all the Kin came and stood gazing down; and their faces were like the guards’ and the runners’, and – Mara thought – probably like hers when she looked at the dying milk beast. Which was not going to die, because a woman had given it water, and Dann was not going to die either.

  Late that night Meryx came, found Orphne alert by Dann, and Mara sitting dozing in her chair. He tried to lift Mara up, to take her to bed, but her hand tightened around Dann’s. Orphne shook her head at Meryx, who stood beside Mara for a while, stroking her hair, and Orphne watched, smiling drily. Then Meryx kissed Mara, and went off to bed; and Orphne said, meaning the way Mara envied her big body and her breasts, ‘But you have the lover, and I don’t.’

  Through that night Orphne poured her soporific drinks and potions into Dann; but as she said, what goes in must come out, and she had a shallow pan by her, which she slid under Dann, watching for the moment. Then she had to clean him, and he screamed at the first touch. Orphne pulled apart his legs. The two women bent, shocked, to see how the area around the anus was bruised black and green and blue, and the anus itself was loose and bleeding. Mara had not seen anything like this, nor even thought about it; but Orphne knew and said, ‘They enjoy it when they are young but they don’t think that when they are old they won’t be able to hold their shit.’

  ‘Old,’ said Mara, for this was one of the moments when she felt as if she lived a different life from these gentle people. ‘Which of us do you imagine will live to be old?’

  ‘I will,’ said Orphne, smearing ointment on Dann. ‘I shall be a wise old woman. I shall be a famous healer. Even the Hadrons will honour me and use my cures.’

  ‘They do now,’ said Mara.

  ‘And my little hospital will be twice as big, and I shall train people to be famous healers.’

  And Orphne sat smiling at Mara, calm, confident, and with only a hint of the pugnacity that means doubt.

  ‘You know,’ said Mara, after a long pause of not knowing what to say, ‘I have learned something important here. Do you want to know what it is?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Orphne, her smile meaning now: There she goes again.

  ‘You can tell someone something true, but if they haven’t experienced anything like it they won’t understand. Orphne, if I say to you, “You can’t buy something if you haven’t got the money,” you’ll say, “Well, of course.”’

  ‘Of course,’ said Orphne, laughing.

  ‘But you don’t understand what it means to have a cache of gold coins, each one enough to buy a house, or three hours in a sky skimmer that means saving many days of walking – but if you don’t have a little coin, you can’t buy a piece of bread or some matches.’

  ‘Then change a gold one,’ said Orphne. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ said Mara.

  All the next day Dann shook and screamed and begged for poppy, and Orphne kept him bound and cared for him; and that night he was so exhausted she gave him the same strong sleeping draught she had given Mara. It had in it ganja, and a little poppy; and when Mara said, ‘But surely that is only prolonging the agony,’ Orphne said, ‘There is only very little poppy, but it will be enough to calm him. To take someone off the stuff suddenly – you can, but it is dangerous when he is as weak as Dann.’

  And so Dann was put soundly to sleep, and Mara went to Meryx, and he held her as if he had recovered a treasure he had thought lost for ever.

  And so the days passed, Mara and Orphne fighting to bring Dann back, and slowly succeeding. At night Meryx claimed Mara.

  Then Dann was himself, though still weak, and Mara asked him what had held him so long in the Tower.

  He seemed to be speaking of events long in the past. His eyes searched the ceiling as he spoke, as if what he remembered was pictured there, and he did not look at Mara or at Orphne, who held his hands, one on each side.

  He said he had run away from the barracks for the male slaves when he heard the Towers were occupied. There he joined a gang of runaway slaves, mostly Mahondis, but there were some Hadrons and others. They were all men. There were women in the Towers but they kept to their own groups, afraid of rape. No woman by herself could survive. Dann’s gang lived by stealing food from the fields, and then poppy from the warehouses, through intermediaries. He mentioned Kulik. At first Dann had sold the stuff to get food, but then he began taking it: now his words became halting, and he said, ‘There was a bad man.’ And now this was little Dann’s voice: ‘A very bad man,’ piped little Dann. ‘He hurt Dann.’

  He had done it again: his memory had refused to accept a truth too painful to be borne. ‘Weren’t there two men?’ asked Mara.

  ‘Two? Two?’ muttered Dann, his eyes darting this way and that, frantic, evading some memory.

  Mara said steadily, taking a risk, ‘When I came into the Tower and found you, there were two men with you. One was very ill, near dead. One was dead. His throat had been cut.’

  ‘No, no,’ screamed Dann, and struggled terribly inside his bonds. Orphne shook her head at Mara, and brought another soothing drink.

  Mara sat on while Dann sank back into sleep, and she thought how he had always refused to remember that first time, when two men became one, ‘the bad one,’ and now again there’s one man. Dann killed him but he’s not going to remember.

  This, the returning of his mind to his time in the Tower, made Dann relapse. He became childish and spoke in a child’s voice; but soon that left him and he lay for hours, conscious, but sombre, apparently a long way from either woman; and when he did look at them, he was surprised by what he saw. And Mara thought, We sit here beside him, kind and smiling, in our clean, pretty dresses, and now even I have a flower in my hair. And we must seem to him like some kind of a dream.

  Soon Orphne had another patient. Ida was brought in, raving that her baby had died of drought sickness, though in fact the infant was well and had become the pet – with the other two babies – of the whole Kin, so starved were they for the pleasantness of babies and small children.

  Ida was in the room next to Dann’s, and Orphne tended her while Mara sat through long days with Dann, watching as he was returning to normal. He was nearly himself again.

  But perhaps that was painful, like swimming up out of dark dreams, for his eyes were always haunted and sad. And Mara caught him sitting up, leaning forward to look at his own backside over his balls and prick, where the bruises had faded, the flesh no longer ragged. But it was still ugly, and Dann’s face twisted up in disgust, and he lay for a long time with his arm over his face, not wanting to see Mara.

  It was soon more than a month since the four girls had gone to the young Hadrons, and three of them had conceived. Juba went to visit them and found they were well and happy. They no longer thought the Hadrons were disgusting, and two decided to stay with their lovers. Soon
another four girls went to the Hadrons, and there were six Mahondis there. The courtyard seemed sad and empty, with half the women gone, though one was pregnant. Pregnant by a Hadron, though. There were not enough hands for all the work, and Mara went to join the slaves making food, since it was dangerous for her to be out in the fields, where the Hadrons might capture her again. She had not conceived. Meryx said, dry and sad, for this was how most of what he said sounded these days, ‘And so you didn’t sleep with Juba.’ ‘But I told you I didn’t,’ said Mara.

  Dann got out of his bed and went to the courtyard where the girls were, for company; but there was something about this sad, restless-eyed, silent young man that subdued them, though they did not know the full story of his experiences. So Dann sat in the big general sitting room. Something new had happened. Candace no longer kept the curtain over the wall map. Mara had gone to her, and begged to be taught, and asked for the wall map to be exposed. She was there so much that soon the curtain was left pulled back. Dann sat there looking, thinking, sometimes for hours, and when she could Mara was with him.

  Ida got better, and was full of accusations and discontent. She hated Kira; she complained the Hadrons had not asked for her to go and be made pregnant. She said that Dann was a thief – and that was on the day he found that the gold coins he had hidden in the bottom of his sack, those that were not around his waist, were gone. He complained to Juba. Juba said he was not to worry, the coins would be returned. And meanwhile Ida sat playing with the softly shining, enticing things. Eleven of them. She let her fingers move among them, while she smiled, and seemed to feel that from them she was receiving something delightful that was feeding happiness into her.

  Mara asked Dann if those coins in the flesh around his waist were uncomfortable, and he said they were, when he thought about it.

  ‘Perhaps I should ask Orphne to do the same for me,’ said Mara.

  Orphne was present and said, ‘Then you’ll ask in vain.’

  Dann said to Mara, ‘You were quite right when you decided we should never put things up our backsides or your cunt. That’s where they always look first.’

  Orphne was upset, really distressed, and looked pleadingly at them both. ‘My dear Dann,’ she said, ‘my dear Mara!’

  When she was out of the room Mara said, ‘We have to soften things up for them. They don’t understand.’

  Orphne brought Mara a necklace of seed cases: big, brown, flat ones into which the coins would fit. But the contraption would slide heavily around Mara’s neck, making any observer curious. ‘Besides,’ said Mara, ‘when you are travelling you don’t wear necklaces.’

  ‘Are you going to keep all yours in one place?’ asked Dann, meaning Mara’s cord of coins, again in its place under her breasts.

  ‘Well, where can we put them? My hair is too short.’

  ‘How about in our shoes? These heavy Mahondi working shoes – we could slip a few into the soles?’

  ‘It is easy to lose a shoe. Or someone might steal them.’

  ‘I think the best place is with my knife, at the bottom of the knife pocket.’

  ‘Yes. Eleven coins won’t show.’

  ‘First I have to get them back from Ida.’

  ‘She’s gone crazy,’ said Orphne, ‘just a little. Humour her.’

  Dann said, ‘I’m going to get you a knife – you must have a good knife, Mara.’

  Dann wanted to leave now; Mara, Orphne backing her up, said he wasn’t strong enough yet.

  Soon they were into the second dry season since the two had come to Chelops. The milk beasts were happy to stay in their sheds and let the dust blow past outside.

  ‘There’ll be riots in the town,’ said Larissa: ‘we’ve cut the rations again.’ For although they knew that the townspeople were going, and going, and mostly gone, none of the Mahondis seemed able to take the fact in.

  Of the twelve young women who had been chosen by the Hadrons, ten had conceived, and six had chosen to stay with the men they had once thought of as enemies.

  Mara wore a robe too big for her and kept it unbelted, for she had told the Hadrons she was pregnant and that was four months ago.

  Again Dann said they should leave, before the dry season sucked all the life out of Chelops. Mara knew they should, but her heart hurt and ached at the thought of leaving Meryx. Yet she had to go. Yet she could not bear it.

  Juba was summoned to Lord Karam and asked about the health of the new Mahondi babies. And by the way, how was Mara? Was she carrying well? Was she healthy?

  ‘Very healthy,’ said Juba, putting on a look of self-congratulation.

  And now that was it: they must leave.

  On the evening before Mara and Dann left, all the Kin together with the new babies and their nurses were in the communal room. Mara and Meryx had put on the wonderful robes that Mara had carried with her at the bottom of her sack, and appeared, as the others said, as if they were going to their wedding. Again everyone exclaimed over the workmanship, the material – which no one there had ever seen, or dreamed of, and they fingered a sleeve, caressed a bit of embroidery, wondered over the dyes.

  ‘Give it to me, I want it,’ said Ida, tugging at Mara’s robe.

  ‘You can’t have it,’ said Dann. And then, ‘I want my gold coins. Give them to me.’

  Ida pouted and sighed and ogled Dann, and said, ‘Ida wants them. I want them. I won’t give them to you.’

  Dann stood over Ida and said, ‘Give them back. Now.’ Then, as Ida writhed her shoulders about and lisped, ‘No, no, no,’ Dann whipped out his knife and was holding it at her throat. ‘Give them back or I’ll…’

  She wailed, and took the little bag of gold coins from her bosom, and he snatched them from her.

  Everyone was shocked – Mara too. Angry – but Mara knew the dreadful anxiety that had been gnawing Dann. She went to stand by him.

  ‘It was only a game, Dann,’ said Dromas. ‘Ida was only playing.’

  ‘Then it’s our lives she was playing with,’ said Dann.

  The good humour, the charm, of the occasion had gone. In a moment everyone would have left. Mara said to Candace, ‘I want you to show everyone that wall of yours. I want to say something.’

  On this evening the curtain was hiding the map, and Candace was unwilling to show it. But as Mara stood confronting her, Candace at last got up, went to the wall, and pulled back the curtain. Most people had seen what was there, but had not really understood, as Mara had found out. It was just some old thing that had nothing to do with them, that old map, which for some reason Candace valued. Now all the Kin turned so they could see the wall. Candace moved lamps so that it was illuminated. Mara would remember that scene, hold it in her mind, and come back to it when she thought of Chelops. There were about twenty people in the room. The women sat in their soft tinted gowns, their black hair loose on their shoulders; the men were in their yellow house robes; and all the alert and apprehensive faces seemed to float above bubbles of soft colour, the whole scene glowing in the light from the lamps.

  At first it seemed that the picture they were looking at had been blanked out with white: the top half was white from one edge of the frame to the other. Beneath this nullity of white hung, or projected, fringes or edges of colour, on a background of blue. Blue filled the bottom half of the picture, and in it were bigger coloured shapes, and two very large shapes, one of which had scrawled across it, IFRIK. This map was no delicate creation: it did not come from the same world of accomplishments as the robes Mara and Meryx had on. It was painted crudely on white leather: the joins of the hides that had gone to make this great map had to be identified and discounted in the general picture.

  The other big shape, which resembled Ifrik, was South Imrik. Both were merely outlines on the white, crudely coloured, with dots for towns and their names, and black lines for their rivers.

  Mara, who had sat in this room with Candace and with Dann, sometimes for hours, knew that what it said could not be grasped without explanation. And
now Candace began, in a heavy, reluctant voice, and with many pauses.

  ‘This white represents ice,’ she said. ‘None of us has ever seen ice. It is what water becomes when it is very cold. Water becomes solid white, like rock. All of this…’ – she walked slowly along the wall, pointing – ‘is ice or snow.’ She pointed to the bottom half: ‘And this part of the world is free of ice. It is where we live. Ifrik.’ And she pointed to a black dot somewhere in the middle of Ifrik: ‘This is where we are. This is Chelops.’ At this there were sighs, almost groans, because of the littleness of their world. ‘When we say the world, we should not see it flat, like that map. It is round. Like this.’ And here she said, ‘Wait a minute.’ And she reached into a niche in the wall under the map and brought out a very big, round shape, and set it on a table. It was one of the gourds grown for the milk beasts to eat. The surface had been rubbed smooth and white chalk rubbed in, and the information on the wall map was done here in black for the outlines and blue dyes for background. But on this globe there was no white mass covering the top half.

  Candace pointed to the very top of the globe. ‘Look,’ she said, and they saw a small cap of white. ‘Ice,’ said Candace. ‘Just a little, at the top of the world. And at the bottom, too, this small shape of ice. That is how the world was once – they say about twenty thousand years ago, but perhaps it was more – there was no ice or snow here.’ And she swept her hand over the white expanse on the map. ‘It was warm. All of this…’ – and she walked again, from one edge of the wall map to the other, pointing at the white – ‘it was all free of ice, and there were cities and very large numbers of people. They think that for fifteen thousand years all this area was free of ice, and during that time there were civilisations. They were much more advanced than anything we know. And then the climate changed, and the ice came down and covered all this space…’ And she walked, pointing. ‘The cities and civilisations disappeared under sheets of ice. The “world” for us is this…’ And she swept her hand over the fringes and projections from the ice, and the two big shapes, Ifrik and South Imrik. ‘But once the world was this…’ And she pointed to the globe.