Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Yes, she died, and that is the trouble.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But don’t worry, he’ll get over it.’

  And why had he said that? Why should he? Dann didn’t seem to want to.

  Suppose Dann died? What then? Would Griot lie on his bed, limp as a newly dead thing? But even the thought shocked him into a kind of panic. He could not conceive of life without Dann. Dann was what he lived for—his General Dann.

  It was no good, he could not come to terms with it. Dann was ill because of his love for his sister. Because of love. Mara, yes, she was a nice enough woman, yes, she was—had been.

  Back there in my life, beyond that night of fire and killing and fighting, I had a family. I must have. In that first army where I was a boy soldier they called me an orphan. If they called me an orphan I must have had a father and a mother.

  Perhaps I had a sister, too.

  There were girls in armies.

  There were girls out there in his army. He already had a battalion of boy soldiers, and soon there would be one of girl soldiers. Girls meant babies. If that happened, this army of his would be more like a town than a camp. What was he to do? All these people to feed and clothe, and it was time they went into Tundra—but for that he needed Dann, and Dann lay on his bed and would not get up.

  ‘What am I to do?’ he whispered to himself, sitting at his table in the great hall. Ali heard and said to him, ‘Patience, sir, be patient. Grief is like a poison; it can poison.’

  So were all those people out there, each with a tragedy to tell, poisoned? Was Ali? Griot did not think so.

  The soldiers guarding Dann said that the sick man was talking about someone called Leta.

  Griot sent a message to Leta by a traveller, saying that it must be delivered only to Leta herself, or to Shabis.

  Griot and the snow dog were walking on the road that would lead to the Farm, when around a bend came running a figure Griot at once recognised because behind her streamed a flood of pale hair. She was shouting, ‘Help, help,’ and behind her ran and yelled ‘Albie, Albie’ two louts with sticks. She saw the snow dog and stopped. The two persecutors stopped. The white-skinned woman and the great white animal shone out against the dull mud of the road, the greasy-green of the marshes, the low grey sky. A struggling ray of sun found that hair, and it gleamed and glimmered. Ruff had not been taught attack and pursuit, and he had never seen Leta, but he knew what to do. Within a few bounds he had passed Leta and the two youths turned to run. The snow dog would soon catch them up and they ran off the road into the marshes. Ruff stopped on the edge and watched them go. Some of the marshes were quagmires. He turned and padded quietly back to where Leta stood watching. He sat down in front of her. The neat and intelligent head, in its white ruff, was higher than her waist. She held out a hand and Ruff sniffed it.

  Griot came up. ‘This is Ruff, from the Ice, north, beyond the Middle Sea,’ he said.

  Now Ruff was walking around Leta, sniffing at the long pale hair, and he let out a small bark, which could have been a greeting.

  Those two glimmering white things, in the scene of dark water, greyish weeds and bushes, they belonged together, a pair, a match—and Griot, who had found it hard to accept Leta’s strangeness, was now accepting her, because of the snow dog.

  Leta was carrying bundles and baskets. Griot took them and felt her trembling.

  ‘You can manage to get to the Centre?’

  She stood, brave but irresolute. Ruff went to her side and positioned himself: she saw he meant her to put her weight on him. He began slowly moving and she kept pace, leaning on him.

  ‘Dann is very ill; he is talking about you.’

  ‘And I think about him.’

  At the Centre she at once went in to Dann. Ruff waited until she had placed herself close to Dann, then he lay down, his head on Dann’s shoulder.

  The two soldiers guarding Dann could not take their eyes off Leta, and her hair. The Albs in the army were white, it could be said, compared with the many not-white skin shades of the others, but none was as white as Leta, whose skin glistened. That hair of hers, it flowed down her back—and they hadn’t seen anything like it. She pushed up her hair into a great bundle and said, ‘Dann, it’s Leta.’

  He opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Leta,’ he said, and he put out his hand to the knot of hair and stroked it. ‘It’s you.’

  But he did not get up, lay there, in a curve, and it seemed that his eyes were going to close again.

  ‘Have you eaten today, Dann?’

  Dann did not answer, but one of the soldiers said, ‘No, he refused food.’

  ‘I am going to make myself clean, Dann, and have something to eat, and I’ll come back at once and feed you.’

  Dann closed his eyes.

  Leta went with Griot to a nearby room, asked for water to wash off the mud of that long wet road, and then for something to eat—anything quick and easy.

  When Leta returned to Dann she carried a jug of medicine she had mixed from herbs, and knelt by him, holding it to his lips. He took a gulp and grimaced, and then drank, because of her determination.

  She made him take a few mouthfuls of food and began talking. She talked of the things they had done together, she, and Mara, and Daulis, and Shabis, and Dann. Amazing journeys and dangers. ‘Do you remember?’ she asked. ‘Do you remember, Dann?’ At last he seemed able to keep his eyes open and even to respond with a smile or a nod. ‘Do you remember the inn, Dann? The inn where the water came through the roof? And we were all ill, except you, and you and the river woman nursed us; we would have died without you—do you remember?’

  And then, as he showed signs of lapsing into sleep, she told some tale that did not seem wilder than what she had already told, but he opened his eyes and said, ‘No, Leta, we did not do that.’

  She went on with the true story, and as he seemed to lose grasp of it, allowed her tale to go off into improbability—at least, it was to Griot—and he smiled as he said, ‘Naughty Leta, you know we didn’t do that.’

  He was more animated.

  ‘I am going to use some of my medicines to wash you, Dann.’ As he made a movement that refused her, she said, ‘When we were sick at the river woman’s inn, you washed me—do you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I do. You told me what herbs to use.’

  ‘And I shall wash you now.’

  She ordered warm water, poured into it a strong-smelling liquid and then began taking off Dann’s singlet and trousers. He sat up and took them off himself. His body, so bony and meagre, had to shock: it hurt Griot very much. This was General Dann, the powerful General Dann who had been the handsome and strong General Dann—and he was such a thin, poor thing. Leta got Dann to sit right inside a wide flat basin, full of the strong-smelling water, and she sponged and poured and sponged and all the time she talked: ‘Do you remember how we saw that sky machine that crashed, so long ago, and there were lines of people worshipping it?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Long, long ago—and that’s what we like. Isn’t that disgusting, Leta?—the long ago?’

  Leta poured and sponged; the snow dog crept forward and lapped at the water, for curiosity, and then sneezed. She laughed and stroked him and said, ‘You have a wonderful new friend, Dann.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do have a friend.’

  Leta saw Griot react to this and turn away. Dann saw Leta’s concerned face and understood. ‘Griot, without you nothing would have happened. You have made it all happen.’ Griot heard an undertone here and smiled a little, reproachful and ironical. Would Dann have preferred nothing to have been done while he was away? Yes, probably.

  Leta said, ‘I’ve understood that sometimes it is only when a friend leaves that you know what she was. When Mara died…’ She did glance here at Dann, but went on, ‘When she died, I knew what she had been, for all of us.’

  Dann sat stiff and silent in the water, and Leta went on talking about Mara, how brave she had been, then said unexpectedly, ‘Dann
, what would Mara say if she could see you now? Have you thought of that?’

  Dann let his eyes shut, sighed, and after a good long moment said, ‘But as you see, Leta, she’s not here and she doesn’t say anything.’

  And he began to weep.

  Griot signalled to the soldiers to leave. What they had heard until now could only strengthen their idea of General Dann the wonder worker—and to that had been added Dann the healer, Dann the tender nurse—and the exploits they had heard from Leta would be told and retold in the camp.

  But weeping—no.

  The snow dog groaned in sympathy and put his muzzle to Dann’s face.

  Dann stroked the snow dog and said to Leta, ‘I don’t want to live, Leta. Why should I?’ As she hesitated, showing that it was not a thought unknown to her, ‘No, I want you to tell me: what for, Leta?’

  ‘For one thing, there’s the child.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll never be my child. Kira wouldn’t allow it.’

  ‘No, you are right, but there’s Mara’s child.’

  Dann got out of the basin, wrapped himself in a drying cloth and lay in his usual position, a curve like a bent arrow or flexed stick. ‘Tamar has a father,’ he said.

  Leta hesitated, and then said, ‘Shabis wants to return to Agre. They are waiting for him there. He can’t take Tamar with him on that journey. Do you remember the journey, Dann? How dangerous it was?’

  No movement from Dann, but his eyes were open.

  ‘And Daulis wants to travel with Shabis as far as Bilma.’ And now Leta lost her composure and broke into a wail. ‘Yes, and he will go, he’ll go, Dann.’

  She sat sobbing.

  Dann slowly sat up and pulled Leta to him past the great basin that was sending out its aromatic odours. ‘Oh, Leta, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Leta.’

  She wailed in his arms, and the snow dog whined in sympathy.

  Griot thought, A pity the soldiers have gone. It would go down well in the camps, kindly Dann, comforting the Alb.

  Then he saw the soldiers had not gone, they were spying and eavesdropping—four of them, the two ordered out and the two due to replace them. They were just outside the big doors to the drill ground. Griot pretended he hadn’t seen them.

  Dann was rocking Leta.

  ‘It’s been the only time in my life I wasn’t alone—with Daulis,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I know; poor Leta.’

  ‘But I can’t go back with him. I’d be caught and sent back to—Mother. Daulis knows that but he’s still going, Dann.’ And she wept, painfully, while Dann sat rocking her and the snow dog got as close as he could to both of them, his muzzle on Leta’s shoulder.

  ‘I want to come here, Dann. I’ll bring the little girl and she’ll be safe here. She’s never safe anywhere near Kira.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And she hates you, Dann. Kira hates you.’

  ‘What will Kira say about Shabis going off?’

  ‘You’re right. She wants him. She wants him for herself. So far she hasn’t got him and now she is beginning to hate him too. She’s starting something new. She’s collecting people—refugees—and making an army.’

  ‘What is she going to do with her army?’

  ‘She doesn’t talk to us, Dann. She hates us all.’

  ‘But what would we do with a child here—in this dead place?’

  Dann lay back again and covered himself with the damp drying cloth; Griot took that from him and replaced it with a rug.

  ‘Thank you, Griot. Don’t think I’m not grateful to you.’

  Griot thought, grateful, that’s a word that needs thinking about.

  Leta watched and smiled, and let Griot know she felt for him. She said, ‘I’m going to rest now. I’ll come back later. There’s so much I must tell you, Dann.’

  Dann had closed his eyes. He seemed to be asleep.

  Leta came back, and sat by Dann and talked. ‘Do you remember, Dann?’ and when after a long time he had not moved, she raised her voice, or lowered it sharply. What she remembered was always astonishing. The guards coming to watch Dann arrived earlier, and those due to leave stayed on. Sometimes as many as six squatted by the wall, listening.

  It seemed as if Dann did not hear, but several times, when Leta invented, to check, Dann said, ‘No, Leta, that didn’t happen.’

  Yet what had happened and what hadn’t seemed equally improbable.

  When she said, ‘That night, when you and Mara killed Kulik, on the mountain, in the fog,’ the listeners, and Griot too, expected him to say, ‘No, Leta, that isn’t true,’ but he only said, ‘Yes, but it was Mara’s poisoned snake that did for him. If it did. You didn’t know that when I was down in the Bottom Sea some men came to catch me and one had a scar.’

  ‘No. I didn’t. But I was so afraid that night. You and Mara were always so brave. But there’s no need to be afraid now of Kulik or of anyone, because there’s no price on your head now, Dann. Shabis said so.’

  ‘But if Kulik is alive, would he know that?’

  ‘How could he be alive? One little scratch from Mara’s snake would be enough. I was afraid of Mara’s snake. But I’m scared of everything. I’m afraid of Kira now. She hates me because of my white skin. That’s all it is. Isn’t that strange, Dann?’

  The listeners along the wall were uncomfortable. The soldier Albs were discussed, were argued about. Some people didn’t mind them, but they were always noticed.

  ‘And it’s my hair, too. One night I woke and Kira was standing over me with that knife of hers—she was going to cut off my hair. Then Shabis told me to carry a knife too and make sure she knew it. He gave me the knife in her presence. And he sat there telling me all kinds of tricks—how to use it. So here it is.’ She pulled out the handle of a knife from her tunic. ‘Kira just laughed: you know how she laughs.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dann. ‘I know.’

  And Leta seemed to catch her breath when he said it: it was the bitterness in it. The soldiers and Griot were hearing a new thing from Dann, and Griot was not pleased. Bitterness was a weakness and General Dann could not be weak.

  ‘But about your hair, Leta. You shouldn’t be surprised at that. In all my wanderings I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a wonder and that’s all there is to it. I sometimes think: before the Ice, did those old people up there in Yerrup all have hair like yours? Now I am doing it: why should we care about then—it’s a sickness.’ He sat up and said to her, ‘And you are a wonder, Leta, with your plants and your healing tricks. It’s not the first time I’ve been rescued by a healing woman. That was before you joined us, before Bilma. It was when I was so ill in the Towers at Chelops. No, I’ve never told you, because I hate to think about it. But I was ill with the poppy and with—a lot else, too. A plant woman called Orphne cured me. I was nearly dead.’ He lay back and yawned, and stretched. He was better.

  ‘The thing is, you see, Leta, I was too far gone to want to live then. And now I don’t want to get better—I think. You must understand, Leta. It’s such a hard grind, living. When I think of what Mara and I did together, the effort and the drudge of it, how did we do it? How do we do it, Leta, living and keeping on?’ He lifted his head and addressed the soldiers. ‘You know what I’m saying. You’ve had it so bad, you’ve lost everything, war and running, always running, and don’t you ever ask yourself, what for?’ He waited for them to answer him, but while they acknowledged what he said, with nods, or rueful grins, or their eyes told him they understood him, they did not say anything.

  He let his head fall back and he was asleep.

  Leta said, very low, ‘He’s nearly back with us, he’s nearly here again. But he could still slip the other way. He must be woken and made to sit in the bath with the herb water, and he must eat, and take the medicines I’ll leave.’

  She went out and sat with Griot in the hall and then laid her head on her arms. ‘It’s hard, bringing a person back when they want to die.’

  Griot could not imagine himself wanting
to die: in front of him stretched a life full of effort and accomplishment, fuelled by what he counted on, as he did his own breath—Dann.

  He was thinking now that he could bring himself to like Leta, despite her unnatural white skin, and that hair which close to was like a thousand spiders’ threads when the early sun is on them. He gingerly put out a finger and touched a strand of gold that had escaped from her pile of tresses and lay on the table.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ said Leta. ‘I’m used to it.’ She got up, piled the masses of gleaming hair on her head, pinned it, and said, ‘Now get together all the soldiers who know anything about medicine and bring them here.’

  Griot himself went through the camp of huts and sheds, with their reed roofs that gleamed, palely, like Leta’s hair, and explained what was needed. He saw how the soldiers were filling their idleness with a hundred games and little tasks. Griot knew how dangerous idleness could be. And as he returned to the main building a couple of Kharabs came running to say they wanted to take a unit quietly at night through the marshes to the Tundra grazing grounds and drive away some meat birds, the big ones, taller than people.

  ‘We’re hungry,’ one said.

  ‘Everyone is hungry,’ agreed Griot. He was pleased with what he was hearing. ‘You can drive them through the marshes—if you have a guide.’

  ‘We have a guide.’

  ‘And when you have the birds here there’ll be enough for one big feast for everyone, that’s all.’

  The two looked as if they could say more, and Griot said it for them: these were two capable, strong men. ‘What we need to plan are regular raids, but not always in the same place; there are different animals in different parts.’

  He saw the men’s faces strengthening in confidence and resolution. These two would do well. ‘You go away and come back with plans for regular raids. And not just of the meat birds. There are herds of goats, too. But you must have a good plan. We have spies in Tundra and they have spies here. They arrive with the refugees. So you can only trust a few people for the raids.’