Mara and Dann

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Well, at least we have enough money to keep going. You, thirteen. Me, ten.’

  Mara put back the cord with its thirteen knots under her breasts, and wondered what it could be like to live inside a body you did not have to be conscious of, as a source of danger, never letting herself be seen undressed, always afraid the cloth of her robe might blow up or be lifted.

  Dann lay among the soft grasses by the stream, his eyes shut. It was quiet: only birds and the sounds of water. And she could not resist and lay down too, and slept. When they woke it was late afternoon. He said the wound at his waist was painful. Mara said she hoped the knife had been clean. He joked that that was hardly likely, living the life it did. It was his best friend, he said, that knife.

  It was time they left the forest. They walked along the paths past the shacks and huts where the very poor people lived, into the edges of the town, then nearer the centre, and found an inn, a large one, where they hoped they would not be much noticed. And it was full of every kind of person, of every colour, including some new to both of them, very pale of skin or reddish, with light eyes of blue or green. But there was such a mix of people, and most wearing the long Sahar robes, that Mara and Dann believed they were enough like them not to be noticed. They ate quickly at a general table, a vegetable stew, and some roast meat, and fruit. They asked for a room. This time the proprietor did not have the look of a spy. A lazy, indifferent man, he asked where they had come from and when they said, ‘From the south,’ he only remarked, ‘I hear things aren’t too good down there.’

  The room was on the third floor, large and comfortable, and there were two beds in it. There was a great bolt on the door. They slept, and for the first time they could remember, were happy to pull over them a thick cover.

  Mara woke in the night to hear Dann groan, and in the morning they inspected his waist and knew they must find some sort of medical help. But they didn’t want anyone to see those concealed coins. She went down to the big general room where the owner stood, as if he had not moved since she saw him last, by a table from where he surveyed his guests. So many, such a noisy lot, so animated, so confident: Mara had not seen anything like this. Over these people was no cloud of apprehension, of threat. She said she wanted the name and address of a doctor and at once saw in his eyes the alertness that had not been there till now: he was afraid of an infectious disease. So she at once said that there was a flesh wound that would not heal but was not dangerous.

  She walked, following directions, through crowded, lively streets, and heard a dozen different languages, but more than the others, Charad. Not once, Mahondi. In the doctor’s house was an old woman, bent and nearly blind, who peered at her, seemed hardly to see her; and when Mara asked for a lotion to heal infected flesh, she reached down a jar off a shelf. And now it was a question of paying. Mara had with her the bag of coins she had got off Han, and put some down on the table the old woman stood behind. And now the blind old eyes peered and blinked and the old fingers fumbled, and then, ‘What’s this? Haven’t seen this money for a while.’

  ‘It’s legal tender,’ Mara said.

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ And she shouted in Charad into a back room and out came a young man whom Mara disliked and distrusted at first sight. He was wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He had been eating. There was a smell of spicy food. Everything about him was sharp and sly, with a conceit in each movement and look.

  ‘Are you the doctor?’ asked Mara.

  He did not answer, but took up the coins and then looked at her, suspicious, curious, and said, ‘We don’t often see these.’ He took a few of them, and pushed back the others. He was doing everything slowly so that he could go on examining her. She was afraid. ‘Who is the medicine for?’ he asked, and she said, ‘My brother.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Bad enough.’

  ‘If it’s not better by tomorrow, come back.’ But he did not turn away and nor did Mara.

  ‘I want to change some money,’ she said, knowing as she spoke that she was making a mistake. It was as if the words had been pulled out of her by those cold eyes of his.

  ‘What money?’

  She had a gold coin ready in her pocket, and she laid it down, and again those clever fingers went to work, testing and assessing.

  ‘I haven’t seen one of these for a long time either. Where have you come from?’

  ‘A long way.’

  ‘I can see that.’ He pushed the coin back at her and said, ‘If you come to the Transit Eating House any night, you’ll change your money.’

  He stood watching her leave. She knew that everything that had happened with him was wrong and dangerous.

  She bathed Dann’s wound with the lotion, and then went down to negotiate about payment. At last she persuaded the innkeeper to accept the old coins, but knew that yet again she was paying twice what she should. And now she sat with Dann. He drank but would not eat, slept but kept waking. He was feverish and the wound was worse.

  Next day she went back to the doctor’s house. There the old woman at once summoned the young man, to whom she said she wanted medicine for a fever.

  ‘I’ll tell my father to come and see your brother.’

  ‘No, no, the medicine will be enough.’ And she knew her tone was wrong, and that he knew she was hiding something. She wondered why with this man she seemed unable to behave in any way but guiltily, nervously.

  ‘He’d better come and see him,’ said the young man.

  Mara walked back to the inn with an elderly man, the doctor, whom she did not much like either, but he was not as instantly unlikeable as his son. Dann was hot and the wound was nasty. The doctor did not touch it, to Mara’s relief, so he did not feel the coins that were still there; but he looked at Dann’s tongue, turned up his eyelids, listened to his chest and – this Mara found unpleasant – examined Dann’s genitals. She knew that probably this was what doctors had to do; but it was what slavers did. And besides, the sight of that hand pushing and probing there made her flustered and uneasy. She wanted to knock the hand away. Then the doctor made Dann turn over and laid his ear to Dann’s upper back, first on one side and then the other. He straightened up and said, ‘That’s an old wound. A slave chain, I suppose? Why is it open now? Was your brother trying to scrape off the roughness of the scar?’

  Mara had never heard of, or even imagined such a thing, and said so. The doctor said, ‘Well, that’s a bit of a mystery then.’ He left three kinds of medicine: one for applying to the wound, the others to drink. He accepted payment in the old coins without bargaining. He then said that when her brother was better they might find the Transit Eating House an entertaining place. Mara felt that she was in a trap, but could not see what it was; and when he said, ‘When the wound is better I’ll take a proper look at that scar. There might be an internal infection for some reason,’ she was saying to herself, Oh no you won’t, we won’t let you.

  And now for several days and nights Mara nursed Dann, who at first did not seem to get better. He was delirious and shouted threats and warnings, which Mara knew were because in his mind he was back in the Tower. And he gave orders, like an army officer, and then might try to salute, as he lay, accepting orders, muttering, ‘Yes, sir.’ In the long hours of his fever Dann seemed to be reliving several different times in his past, and Mara could recognise from what he said, or moaned, or shouted, that he went back and back again to the Tower, and his suffering at these moments was terrible. Again little Dann clung to his big sister, gripped her, cried out that she mustn’t let them take him … And then at last he slept and was better. With every dose of the medicine he improved, until about a week after arriving at the inn he seemed himself. And now she was able to start feeding him. The food here was nourishing and various; but there were tastes and spices new to them because, after all, through this town had for centuries passed traders and travellers from all over the North Lands and from the east where the Middle Lands were. But all they knew of these
was that they were very far away.

  Mara stood at the window and looked down into a quiet back street. This was a suburb. All the houses were of brick and wood and set in gardens. Over to the east rose, pale and gaunt, tall buildings, like the Towers of Chelops, clusters of them; but here they were not the haunts of criminals but were where the rich lived, the rulers of Bilma. Mara looked and wondered and wished she could go out, and felt Dann’s gaze on her back, and heard, ‘Mara, do go out. I feel all right now.’ There was a peevishness here, which she was hearing often. Too often. She turned, careful to be seen smiling. She knew her anxiety annoyed him. And indeed she was saddened and worried, and much more than he knew. This was not the bright, confident, high-spirited young soldier of such a very short time ago, but a man who was tormented. Was he remembering those terrible nightmares and how he had clung and pleaded for her protection?

  ‘Very well, I will,’ she said, and knew that as she went her steps quickened with pleasure and anticipation. She had been longing to see this city. She stopped herself saying, Be careful, Dann. Don’t do too much, too soon.

  And now she was out of the quiet suburban streets and in central Bilma, where she walked, and stopped, and looked and thought, This is the first time I’ve seen streets like this. Bilma was busy, confident, noisy, fast, full of traders and buyers and bargainers, of shops and stalls and booths, and there were several markets, where she went for the pleasure of sharing in the energetic animation. In every other town she had been in the people seemed to be listening always for news of the dryness that crept northwards; but here they talked of ‘down there,’ ‘down south,’ ‘the war in the south,’ ‘the southern drought,’ as if they were immune from all that. And probably they were, for this was a very different country, with its capacious forests and the old rivers that had not stopped running in anybody’s memory. So occupied was Mara in her enjoyment of this successful place and its polyglot people that she forgot herself and her caution until she noticed that she was getting more attention than she wanted. Then she saw that her robe, the Sahar, the long, striped garment she had bought to be like everybody else in the North Lands, was in fact worn by men. They were all in plain white, or white striped black or dark brown or blue or green, while the women were in light, clear colours, yellow and rose and blue, or patterned in ways Mara had never seen, so that she wanted to stare, and marvel over a skirt, or a sleeve, because of its wondrously subtle weave. Light, gauzy dresses. The nearest to them were the bright dresses worn by the Kin, but she knew she could not find anonymity in those, because they were full and flounced, whereas these robes were straight, so that the patterns on them could be better seen. She went to a market stall and bought a robe that was a happy miracle of delightful patternings, and she knew that in it she would be like everybody else. When she had paid for it – and she had to persuade the stallholder to accept the coins – she knew that it was essential to change a gold one, for she had so few of the others left.

  Back she went to the inn, where the proprietor stopped her and said he had to warn her: he knew that customs were probably different down south, but a woman too much on her own in the streets was asking for trouble. She thanked him, went up to the room, and there Dann sat where she had left him, listless and sombre. He turned his head to watch her slip off the striped gown and put on this new one. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, meaning her as well as the dress. ‘Beautiful Mara.’ She told him about the busy streets and the markets, and he did listen, but she knew that when he looked at her he was seeing more than her. She said, not expecting that she was going to say anything of the kind, ‘Are you missing Kira?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

  Daring a great deal, for he was always on the edge of irritability, she said, ‘And the boy?’

  He said angrily, ‘You don’t understand. He was there, that’s all.’

  She ordered food for them both, and watched him eat until he said, ‘Stop it, Mara. I’m eating all I can. I don’t have an appetite.’

  And then she was restless again, and he saw it, and he said, ‘Go out if you want. I’ll sleep.’

  She descended to where the proprietor stood, a fixture, it seemed, watching his customers, and stood before him in her new robe which made her – surely? – one of the local people. ‘Now I’m wearing this, is it all right to go out?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, but reluctantly. ‘But be careful.’ And added a warning, and a stern one: ‘You are an attractive female.’

  ‘I’ve seen attractive females in every street.’

  ‘Yes, but are they alone?’

  Mara went out, thinking how surprising it was that police, police spies, the watchful, suspicious eyes she knew so well, were not in evidence here.

  What did you see, Mara? What did you see? On this morning’s excursion she had been too dazzled by what she saw to see it well. Now that she was alert, her wary self again, she saw that while every street held as many women as men, they were in groups, or walked two or three together, and usually with children, or they were with a man or men. If you saw a woman by herself she was old, or a servant with children, taking them somewhere, or a servant going to market, with her baskets. In these streets women did not saunter or dawdle or stand staring. And now that she was noticing everything, there was no doubt the proprietor of the inn was right. When people saw her, they looked again, and their faces were fixed in the immobility of interested surprise. So what was it about her? That she was good-looking she knew, but there was not exactly a shortage of handsome women. She was a Mahondi – was that it? She had not seen any in her wanderings here in Bilma. But there was such a variety here: people as tall and slight as the Neanthes, stubby and sturdy as the Thores, and everything in between. No Hennes, not one. And no Hadrons. And certainly no Rock People. Just imagine, she could have lived her life out in that Rock Village and never known that there could be lively, clever, laughing crowds so various that she was for ever seeing a new kind of body, or hair, or skin. But her ease in exploring these streets was gone, and she felt danger everywhere. She went back to the inn, and the proprietor said, first, that she had visitors, and then that it was time he was given more payment.

  She asked if he would change a gold coin. She had seen the moneychangers in the markets, but, watching the transactions, knew she would not get a fair exchange. Those men, and women, sitting behind their little tables piled with coins, each with a guard standing beside them who was well armed with knives and cudgels, they all minutely observed every approaching trader or traveller; and Mara had taken good note of the greedy faces and looks of self-congratulation when the fleeced ones went off with less money than they should have.

  ‘You can change money in the Transit Eating House.’

  She found Dann with the doctor, and the son, the young man she disliked so much. And Dann was sitting up, animated and laughing. When Mara came in, he stopped laughing.

  ‘Your patient is doing very well,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Your medicine did very well,’ she said.

  ‘My father is a famous doctor,’ said the young man.

  The two were rising from where they had been sitting, on her bed: her coming had ended the pleasantness of the visit. Dann was obviously sorry this new friend was leaving. And now Mara looked again at the youth to see if she had been unjust in disliking him, but could see only a sharp face – she thought a cunning face – with eyes that were impudent and shameless. And, too, there was a subdued anger, and she believed she knew why, remembering the tone of ‘My father is a famous doctor.’ For if his father was famous, then he was not, and if he turned out to be famous then it would not be for the kind of wholesome knowledge that gave this doctor his self-possession and his consciousness of worth.

  But Dann liked Bergos, the son of the good doctor.

  The two men went off. Dann said he was thinking of going out that evening, and Mara knew it would be the Transit Eating House. Oh yes, she was in a trap all right, but she did not know wh
at it was, only that there was nothing she could do about it until it was sprung. Dann was not well enough to leave this town and move on. As he lay down on the bed again to rest, he said, ‘We could stay here, Mara. It’s a nice town. You seem to think so … ’

  And Mara watched him fall asleep, and thought that going North, the dangerous difficulties of always going North, could end in this town, because it was agreeable and apparently welcoming. What had going North meant if not finding something like this, which was better than anything she had imagined? Water, first of all: water that you did not have to measure by the drop or even the cup; water that stood in great barrels on street corners for people to drink out of generous wooden ladles that hung ready; water that ran in reed pipes into the houses; water splashing in the many fountains; water close by in beneficent rivers; water in the public baths that stood in every street; water that fell ungrudgingly from the skies – water that you took for granted, like air. And, because of the water, healthy people, and children everywhere, and children’s voices – she could hear them playing in a garden nearby.

  It was mid-afternoon, the rest hour just coming to an end. Here everyone lay in their rooms through the warm hours, or sat lazing in the shade of tea houses. In this darkened room, where the slats of the shutters made stripes over the floor and across the bed where Dann slept, so that she thought fearfully that it was as if he lay trapped in a cage, Mara sat and thought; she thought hard and carefully, and knew that she did not want to give up here in Bilma. This was not what she had been journeying to find. Well, what was she looking for? Not this: she knew that much.