It was agreed that the women might spend a few more days, but should remember that the weather was due to change soon. In return, there was work for them with the harvest.
Al·Ith, her son, and Dabeeb rode up into the blue pass together. Halfway up Al·Ith dismounted, to show Dabeeb white bones in the grass.
The three stood enclosed in a curdling blue mist. Dabeeb found it frightening. She was having difficulty breathing. The little boy, who was brave and strong, seemed as if he wanted to cry, but would not let himself.
‘Ben Ata says men do not cry,’ he announced to his mother and to his nurse.
Al·Ith said that they should stay and wait for her. ‘I can go up by myself. I go farther every time … I can stay longer now. But today I won’t stay … oh, Dabeeb, if you only knew how I long for there, how I hunger to be taken in …’
‘But I do know, Al·Ith!’
Dabeeb sat with Arusi near the strong white bones and told him stories about the kindest and most loving horse that had ever lived, until Al·Ith came back. It did not seem long, but Dabeeb could see from her eyes how far she had been gone from them.
Al·Ith sat and took her child in her lap and bent and gazed into his eyes and fed him with what she had brought from there.
‘Take it back,’ she was whispering. ‘Take it to your father. Give it to Zone Four — feed, strengthen, nourish, endure …’
‘What is it that you see up there?’ asked Dabeeb.
‘I am not able to see. But I do see more and more … there are beings like flames, like fire, like light … it is as if wind had become fire, or flames … the blue is only the matrix of the real light, Dabeeb, and if I shut my eyes — ’ and she shut her eyes — ‘I can see images, pictures, reflections … they are high and fine, Dabeeb, they are not like us, to them we are just … they pity us and help us, but we are just …‘
So she babbled.
And Dabeeb said, ‘Yes, to them we are just … ’
Subdued, Dabeeb was. While Al·Ith, who she felt was her heart, her self, her sister, her lady, her friend, was already slipping away from this her realm and her home, she, Dabeeb, was preparing herself to return down, down, down — and it was as if she had been sentenced.
Back in the orchard she said to the women that they must go home, and they did not disagree. She said to Al·Ith that the boy should be left with her, in the manner of one suggesting a reparation, but Al·Ith’s face reminded her how badly she had gone wrong.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mourned. ‘I don’t know how it happened that I was so sure we should all come — but I do see now … what got into me? And I have done harm, yes, we can all see that.’
The mother and child were separated, and it was dreadful. Like a grown-up person he was silent and held his grief in, and went riding away in front of Dabeeb, who held him very tight, and rained tears onto his soft head. He did not look back at his mother, who stared after him, her face dead.
The band of women who rode back home were not in any way as they had been while coming from the lowlands, but were silent, and seemed not to want to be observed.
And the looks they were getting along the roads were critical, and in the inns their reception was courteous, but in a way that chilled them.
The results of this mistake of theirs were indeed severe. In Zone Three — and we had never regarded ‘down there’ with kindliness — everyone talked of the ill-mannered and bumptious women. Their coming at all was sensed to be ill-judged. Much worse damage had been done by them than by the officious and doltish soldiers who had come to fetch Al·Ith at the beginning. And what was wrong with the place anyway, that women had to come in a company by themselves, just as soldiers, the men, had come — as if it were the most normal thing in the world — without women. Their clothes — that they had been so proud of — their hair, everything about them was condemned, and this reflected badly on Al·Ith, who in any case seemed to be in the wrong about something, or to have been affected by her marriage. All of us questioned the marriage again, and felt undermined: some were even wondering about the Providers — if they had made a mistake, or had been careless in allowing themselves to be wrongly interpreted. Such thoughts were new with us, and an uneasy troubling current was set at work throughout the Zone.
In Zone Four, the reports the women brought back were not useful to the work of slow repair and regeneration. Many people did not believe the talk about that high, fine, subtle way of living. And no one understood it. What the women said was not untrue, but there was nothing yet in Zone Four that could reflect and explain what they had seen. Rumours about the decorations and colours and patterns and cleverness of ‘up there’ resulted in Zone Four suddenly breaking out in all kinds of garish clumsiness. Ben Ata actually had to pass a law forbidding unnecessary extravagance, and there was ill-feeling on the lines of: Why should they have it when we can’t?
And the marriage itself, and the child, who was heir to both Zones — though in a way that was not yet understood — was for the first time criticized. Al·Ith was judged to be standoffish and capricious, and public feeling turned in favour of the new consort, who was paying a visit to Ben Ata in the pavilion. All over the Zone people were laughing at the gossip that the serving women brought from the pavilion. The new queen was giving Ben Ata a right old time of it! She was a real wild one, she was! And this kind of talk did them good, because they could feel superior to those sand-eaters ‘down there,’ instead of the oppressive incapacity and inadequacy that came from reports of Zone Three.
But I am anticipating …
When Dabeeb rode back up the hill to the pavilion with the little boy, who was still sorrowful and bereaved, clutched before her, she found it empty. The women who acted as nurses to the child were in their homes and Ben Ata was with her husband, Jarnti, organizing a smaller, more pliable army.
So she took Arusi down to her own home, and put him with her children. In any case she knew that the boy had been damaged by her ill-judged visit, and needed comforting and the security of someone he had always known.
Ben Ata came back, hearing the women were there, and found Dabeeb with the boy, who knew him, but seemed disposed to distrust him, as being one who was bound to come and go unpredictably.
An older child took Arusi out of the room, and the two were alone.
Dabeeb was thinner, with a solitary suffering look. Ben Ata found her beautiful, in a new way — which both held him off and reminded him of Al·Ith.
The two sat quietly in the bare little room which as yet showed nothing of the new spirit that was raising Zone Four.
Looking at it, Ben Ata resolved to do something to help this bare frugality — little knowing that she had seen wonders and beauties that would make her forever indifferent to what could be done here, for nothing would seem to her worth bothering with.
‘I have been very wrong,’ said Dabeeb, facing him with it, bravely.
‘Yes, I think you have.’
‘Ben Ata, you simply cannot imagine how wonderful …’ and she talked on, in a heavy, painful, needful way of what she had seen, which succeeded only in communicating that she had suffered some inward blow or wound.
‘Al·Ith,’ pleaded Ben Ata, ‘how is she? How does she seem?’
And now Dabeeb sighed, and shook her head.
‘I don’t "think I can explain. We can’t understand, you see … but, Ben Ata, there is something wrong, or so I feel. Not all the women agree — some believe that the way she is is right, because she was always a strange soul, wasn’t she?’
‘But, Dabeeb, what is wrong?’
‘It is as if she were being punished. That is the feeling … it is her sister. Oh, she is a hard one, Ben Ata!’
‘Murti· is hard!’ he protested, remembering what Al·Ith had told him of her sister who was ‘her other self.’
‘I’ve already said — what you learn there is that they are above us, and we don’t really understand … but I’d swear to one thing. Murti· is turned against Al·Ith
. Or, at any rate, she is pleased she isn’t there.’
‘But where is she?’
At last he got a picture of it all, and could only end by agreeing with her that they were not able to judge.
He was dismayed by Al·Ith’s strangeness. That she was changed — ‘oh, you wouldn’t know her!’ That, ‘she’s gone a long way from us, Ben Ata, and we can’t expect to know where.’
But immediately, he was worried about Dabeeb whom, after all, he loved, too.
It did not occur to him now to slap affable kisses onto her cheeks and neck, while she protested, and then tumble with her on the bed, having pulled a chest across to hold the door against the children coming in.
He brought his chair close to hers, and took her hands, and smoothed her hair, and held her while she wept, and so they stayed until it was time for her to feed the children. Including his Arusi. And it was arranged that for the time being the little boy would remain with her, so that he could be loved and feel himself part of her family.
And so Ben Ata comforted Dabeeb; and visited her often, to see his son, to hear more about Al·Ith, and to discuss what should be done next.
For if Al·Ith was not about to visit him, then he wanted to visit her.
But nothing happened. The drum was silent. No messages came from anywhere. The child, who was after all the heir to two realms, was flourishing in this common household.
When the drum did beat, it was for Vahshi. She did not want to come. He had to go and fetch her. The two returned with a double escort — troops of her wild desert horsemen, and Ben Ata’s soldiers in formation. The desert men skirmished about, communicating in wild yells and shrieks their surprise and dislike of this safe, domestic, and tame little kingdom, while the soldiers marched on stolidly, looking straight in front of them.
While Vahshi stayed with Ben Ata, the desert men rode all over the Zone, for it was not their nature to stay in one place. What they told the women they enticed, and the dazzled boys, added to the ferment and the change, and by the time Vahshi returned to her own place, a company of young men had formed itself, who had successfully petitioned Ben Ata to go with her and learn the adventurous ways of the desert.
And then — nothing happened. Al·Ith did not come. And there was no summons for Ben Ata. Dabeeb knew, and so did the king, that plans had changed because of the untoward effects of the women’s reckless excursion. The uncertainty was hard on them.
What a hard time it was for them all! — as well as its being an exciting, demanding time, everything new …
Particularly for those men, mostly the older ones, or the middle-aged, for whom the army had been life.
Jarnti, for instance.
It was not that he had nothing left to do in the now dwindled armies, but that the glory had gone out of it.
He was at home a good deal. In the little married quarters’ house with its patch of allotment it seemed that a dozen children of all ages were crammed: there was no room for him and no occupation unless he was prepared to mend doors, paint walls — that kind of thing. He did these tasks, sharing them with the older boys, but while they enjoyed this closeness with a father they had so seldom seen, he worked always with a baffled incredulous air that said he could not believe in himself in this role. And Dabeeb, watching him at it, and grateful, nevertheless shared his unease, for she knew what it cost him.
Or he would stride restlessly about the little place, making it shrink and become paltry and flimsy, that great military man who even in old uniforms long since relegated to civilian use and stripped of braid and crispness was a soldier.
A front room’s windows looked up at the rise where the pavilion rose, graceful among its gardens, and beyond that to the mountains of Zone Three. He would bring a camp stool there and sit staring ahead: for his head could not lift itself on those so long-punished and brought-down muscles.
Dabeeb might come into the room and see him striving to get his head up and back — and failing. And she would creep out again, for fear he would know she had seen his failure.
It was his pride she was nursing now, for she was so very sorry for him.
‘Dabeeb, do you understand that my whole life has gone for nothing?’
‘No, how can that be, my dear?’
‘“How can that be” … don’t use that tone of voice to me! But what have I been all my life? And what am I now?’
Dabeeb, standing behind him where he sat straddling the camp stool, staring dully and painfully ahead, made sympathetic noises.
‘Do you know what it feels like? I’ve been one thing all my life. That is what I am.’
‘Not all you are perhaps,’ soothed Dabeeb.
‘I will not have you using that tone of voice! How is it you can’t tell me apart from those spoiled brats of yours?’
‘I am sorry, but I don’t think … ’
‘It doesn’t matter what you think! My life — it’s gone, cancelled, wiped out. Once we were proud of our army. We could hold up our heads with the best … ’ But here he stopped, and the silence vibrated because of the unfortunateness of that phrase. ‘At any rate, we knew where we stood. But suddenly, from one day to the next, everything is its own opposite, black is white.’
‘I’m sorry, Jarnti.’
‘What difference does it make whether you are sorry or not! And my father? What does this make of my father’s life? He did his duty as he saw it all his life. And his father — what does this switch-about make of us all? Nothing, that’s all we are.’
‘Well, my dear … ’
‘Don’t you dare offer me a cup of hot milk now, or a nice bite to eat … I’ll beat you if you do … and that’s another thing. How is it you’ve suddenly become too delicate to touch? You’d think you would fall apart if I laid a finger on you. I’m not your child, Dabeeb, I don’t understand how it is I’ve only just seen that you treat me like a child.’
Dabeeb said nothing. She was bursting with the need to comfort, uphold, soothe, reassure. Both their occupations were gone!
Sometimes she would come quietly into the room where he sat day after day, trying to lift his head up, against the habits and training of lifetimes — his and his ancestors — so that he could gaze steadily at the once forbidden peaks. And she sat herself by him, saying nothing, hoping that he at least was comforted by having her there.
Meanwhile, she quietly taught her children that they must respect their father for what he had been, and even more for his valiant attempts now; and that for their part they must train their minds to dwell on that higher land always hanging there above them, so that when opportunities came they might partake of its influences. And she was a kind stepmother to Arusi. And all the time she thought secretly of Al·Ith, identifying with her; for while Al·Ith was being consumed away from her land, Dabeeb was inwardly taking leave of this one.
When she sat close with her old husband—for he had aged very much after that blow of seeing his great armies suddenly demeaned and demolished — she would put out her hand to him, hoping he would not see this as the sort of approach one makes a child, and sometimes he even took it, and leaned forward to stare wildly at her, as if he had not really seen her before.
‘Dabeeb!’ he might demand, broken but stubborn. ‘Dabeeb, you talk of the Providers. You talk of them … one’d think you knew them the way you talk! But they take everything away. That’s what they do … they lead you one way, or they let you go all your life one way, and you feed yourself on it and you think that it is everything and then— pouf! It’s gone! Gone … Dabeeb, what do you say to that, eh? Tell me!’
‘We have to believe they know what they are doing, my dear.’
‘We do? Do we? Well, I’m not so sure.’ And he would turn away his blunt, stubborn soldier’s face, so that she would not see his eyes had tears in them. ‘Don’t you see, Dabeeb? It’s not just that now we are told that the army is nothing, and that all our old ways we were so proud of were nothing and that the great thing is to build barns and ma
ke drains. But that makes all the past nothing, too. Don’t you see? Just puffs of air and old rubbish.’
‘I don’t see that, Jarnti.’
‘You don’t? Well, I do.’
It was not until five winters had passed since Dabeeb’s return, that Dabeeb went to the king and said that a message had come for him to go to Zone Three. He was on his horse and off almost as she spoke.
At the frontier he found his way challenged, not by his garrisons, his sentries, but by a company of young men and women from Zone Three who were armed, and who threatened him. Ben Ata was too surprised to do more than sit silent on his horse, gazing. First of all, that he could be prevented, after the Providers had given the Order. And secondly, at the arms. For he had seen nothing like this out of ancient illustrations of obsolete weapons. The young people had truncheons. They had catapults. They had sticks which had thin ropes tied to one end, with weights or stones on the ropes. They had large rocks in their hands. They wore the ordinary garb of Zone Three, and their appearance was utterly civil and civilian. It was not that the weapons were contemptible: they were enough to incite the soldiers and their king … Not so long ago Ben Ata would have laughed and his soldiers would have guffawed derisively with him. Then they would have enjoyed chasing these poor people, would have made them prisoners and tormented them as ignorant children torture animals. But now Ben Ata restrained his soldiers, and sat quietly on his horse thinking. Then he sent the soldiers off, and rode straight back to Dabeeb.
‘Was there anything else in the message that you left out?’
Dabeeb said that there was. ‘But it seemed so ridiculous, Ben Ata … ’
The message had been that he should go with his army.
Dabeeb and Ben Ata sat soberly together. They talked it over, and Ben Ata went off to talk to Jarnti. The arrangement now in Zone Four was that all young men should do two years’ military service, and should consider themselves thereafter on indefinite leave from the army: this to ensure what Ben Ata thought indispensable — that every youth should learn discipline and orderly ways. He asked Jarnti for three companies. There were a hundred men in each. They were armed with guns, and with swords and knives. But it was their appearance that Ben Ata was counting on, and to this he devoted his attention.
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five Page 28
