Mara and Dann mad-1

by Doris Lessing Little Dorrit

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 ma-terial — 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 Chel-ops." 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.

  Mara knew, because she had gone through the process herself, that all present were wrestling in their minds with immensities. Yet, at the same time, with smallness. They looked at Ifrik, and knew with their minds that it was vast because they could see the dot called Chelops; looked at a little triangular projection beneath the white that Candace said was Ind, a large country, full of people — so it was believed, or it had been in the past — and then at Chelops again, which was their world, and the centre of Hadron, which Candace outlined with her finger: just a little shape there in the middle of that immensity, Ifrik.

  "These have never had ice," said Candace, pointing. "Ifrik has never known ice. South Imrik has never known ice. The climate has changed for us, many times, but never ice. Or so we believe. Nor Ind. Nor..." And she pointed to the east of Ind where thick fringes of colour hung below the white, and dots and splodges of colour spread out. "Islands," said Candace. "None of us has seen the sea, and probably won't ever see it. I know some of you have not heard of it. It is water. Salt water. Most of the surface of the world is water." And she turned the big gourd so that they could see how much blue there was.

  "How do you know all this?" asked one of the girls, and could not conceal her resentment. Mara knew this resentment well: it was what people feel when being asked to take in too much that threatens their idea of themselves, or their world.

  "It was all in the sand libraries," said Candace. "Our Memories knew it." And now she said to Mara, "You want to say something, I think."

  Mara went to the wall and from there looked back at the faces which, every one, showed something like anger, or reluctance. They did not want to know all this. She said, "All this happened quickly — so Candace told me. This." — and she indicated the globe, with its tiny caps of ice top and bottom — "was how things were for fifteen thousand years. And then the ice came down, quite fast, in a hundred years."

  "Fast?" jeered one of the girls. She was seventeen. To her the hundreds, and the thousands, and the tens of thousands, meant no more than the kind of talk children overhear: grown-ups conversing above their heads using words they do not know.

  "It began," said Mara, "when these lands here." — and she pointed to the north of the globe — "which had people and towns and plenty to eat, had to empty because it got so cold, and they knew the ice was coming. And that took." — she looked at the girl who had spoken — "not much more than twice seventeen years."

  The girl burst into tears.

  "These things can happen quickly," Mara pleaded, imploring them, begging them. "Just imagine: all of this, all." — and she made the globe spin slowly — "all of it here, the top half, beautiful and good to live in, and then the ice came down over it."

  The people were restless, their eyes evasive and gloomy, and they sighed, and wanted to leave.

  Juba said, "Mara is concerned for us all. She wants us to leave Chelops."

  "Where to?"."When
?"."How, move?" — came from various people.

  "North. Move North now before you have to. Up there they say there is water and plenty of food."

  But it was too much for them, even those who knew what Mara thought, and had heard her pleas before, and they were leaving the room, not looking at her, exchanging little smiles.

  Dann said to Mara, as if they were alone and all the others irrelevant, that she must be awake very early, and he would come to pack with her. He apparently did not notice that the Kin ignored him as they left. Only Orphne embraced him, told him to be careful and remember that poppy did not suit him.

  Meryx and Mara did not sleep.

  While Mara and Dann packed their sacks, Meryx watched. He was pale and seemed ill.

  Into the very bottom of Mara's sack went the ancient robes she and Meryx had worn last night: "wedding robes" — she said she would remember them like that. Then the one brown garment they had left. A green house dress and a blue one: Meryx would not let her leave them behind. Light shoes. Trousers and tunic — Meryx's — that she had been wearing outside. A clean slave's robe. Matches. Soap. A comb. Salt. Flaps of flat bread. Dried fruit. A small skin of water, in case she and Dann were separated.

  In Dann's sack was a spare slave's robe. Loin cloths. The same provisions. The top of his sack was filled with the old can, which held clean water from a good well. The robe he wore was the one he had arrived in, and he said it was a good thing it was stained and old. He had his eleven gold coins pushed well down into the bottom of his knife pocket. Mara too had on the robe she had come in. Orphne had sewn into it a new knife pocket: she had wept doing it. In that was a knife in a leather sheath. Mara had on her head a little woollen cap.

  Meryx said angrily that if he had met her like this in the fields, he would have ordered her never to wear that disgraceful old rag again. His voice was thick with tears.

  A message came from Candace that she wanted to see Mara before she left.

  Mara found her staring at the map whose upper parts were all white — the Ice.