Mara and Dann mad-1

by Doris Lessing Little Dorrit

  This had been a big town, laid out in a regular way, streets intersecting each other in squares. They had been paved with big blocks of stone, and there were grooves in the stone made by wheels. The buildings were full of birds that had their nests anywhere there was a ledge or a hole. Creepers had reached high up the walls, thin green fingers clutching the stone. When had people lived here? She asked at the inn and they said that no one knew: before the trees went, they said. Once there had been great forests here, but that was so long ago you could hardly find an old tree trunk or a bit of dry wood, not for several days' walking distance. A rain forest it had been — so it was said. Well there was not enough rain these days even to keep the palms happy. Along this river in the dry season the trees were watered by teams of townspeople who made themselves responsible for them. The trees provided all kinds of food, and fibre for weaving, and a kind of milk, which was welcome now that it was getting difficult to keep the domesticated animals alive. Mara went to see these animals. There was a small version of the milk beasts down south, no higher than Mara's waist, and she thought of Mishka and Mishkita and wondered what they would have thought of these small copies of their kind. There were animals with horns and great udders, that stood to Mara's shoulders. They were fed on palm leaves. There were very tall animals, with great feet like floats and long necks called Khamels, which had been imported from the north at a time when North had been all sand and stone, because they needed so little to live on. And when was that? Oh, hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, no one knew now. Mara asked if skimmers were known here and the reply was that there used to be plenty, at least once a week, but now hardly ever. It was the river that everyone relied on, and that was not likely to disappear. This river led into a larger one, believed to be the main one, and there had always been rivers here, though it was known they had sometimes changed course.

  Rain forest, thought Mara, going to stand in the deserted town, gazing at ancient wheelmarks in streets that had been empty for hundreds — or thousands? — of years. A rain forest... what could that mean? She shut her eyes to imagine it, and heard the sounds of water running and splashing off oars. What could it have been like, to wander in a forest that held rain in its branches, was always wet, and little streams ran everywhere?

  She went to the river, saw the rolling glitter, and felt her stomach turn over, for it remembered the movement of the boat. Soon she would have to get on a boat again and face days — how long? — of that heat, the movement, the glitter in her eyes. She heard Sasha's whisper, Don't let anyone know you are pregnant, and she closed her eyes to conquer the nausea. When she opened them in front of her stood a vision, a beautiful young woman in a pink dress, with her hair braided and shining, and she was smiling at her. It was Kira, who said, "I'm not surprised to see you: anyone sensible would leave."

  And she took Mara by the hand and led her to a mud house larger than the others, of two storeys, and into a large, cool room full of coloured things — cushions, hangings, embroideries, bright pots and jars. Mara sank into a reed chair, thankful to be able to keep still, and Kira clapped her hands and a servant came in, who was told to bring drinks. She was a black girl, and her hair was as intricately done as Kira's.

  "And now tell me everything," Kira said, fanning herself, clicking and turning and displaying the fan, of scarlet birds' feathers, just as Ida did. Her pink dress billowed about her to the floor.

  When Mara had finished her tale, she asked Kira, "If you had known what the journey was going to be like, would you have left?"

  Now, this directness was not at all Kira's style, for she evaded it, pouting, and laughing, and flirting her fan — as she had always done; but at last, faced by Mara's seriousness, she sighed and said, "No. I would not. That boat nearly killed me."

  "And are you sorry you left your baby?"

  "Ida's baby."

  "I want to know."

  Another sigh, not petulant or staged. "Mara, if I had brought that baby with me it would have died on the boat. What baby could survive that? — so hot, the insects, not enough to eat."

  Here the servant brought milk from the palm trees and fruit.

  "Is there enough food here?"

  "Plenty. And my husband is a trader."

  "Your husband! I didn't think husbands were your style."

  "They aren't. But there are different kinds of marriage here. He wants a full marriage, he thinks I am a marvel." And she laughed, all her lovely teeth on show. Then she leaned forward and whispered, "If he knew I had been a slave in Chelops. I wouldn't let him touch me until I had a legal security here." Aloud she said, "I love him and he's good to me." On this a big black man came in. He had heard what she said and was pleased. He shone with pleasure in his handsome blackness. His hair was a great black bush. He stood with his hand on Kira's shoulder and looked at Mara, and he did not think she was a marvel, as Mara could see.

  "Who's your friend?"

  "She's my cousin. From Chelops. She was married to the son of the chief man."

  This man nodded, smiled politely, squeezed Kira's shoulder and went out.

  "He's jealous," said Mara.

  "Of men and of women. But I don't get up to any of that here, he'd kill me. Of course I never went in for it much — girls. That was just to pass the time." On she chattered, and did not ask Mara another question, because she had created her vision of the life in Chelops and had no intention of letting it be challenged.

  One thing was clear. She was lonely and desperate to talk. Not to exchange talk, but to talk. Mara tried to stop the flow, several times, and then the servant came in to say that the innkeeper wanted her.

  She thought, Oh no, it's Dann, he must have said something — what has he said? — and she apologised to Kira, who said, "I'll come and visit you and Dann," and she ran through the heavy yellow sunlight to the inn where the innkeeper was waiting, with a man he introduced as Chombi. She found him frightening. He was very tall, thin and his skin was of an ugly white colour she had never seen before. His hair was like Mahondi hair, but there was this unhealthy white skin — repulsive.

  "Your brother is making a noise," he said.

  "He's my husband, not my brother," said Mara.

  The trouble was, Dann might or might not remember to lie. She ran into their room and found Dann crouched by the head of the bed, panting. He had dreamed, that was clear. She made him lie down, gave him more medicine, and said, "Dann, I've told them we're married. Will you remember that?" She repeated it until he said yes, he would, and dropped off back to sleep.

  Mara sat at the low window and watched the river glide past a hundred yards away, and saw the moon paths swaying on the water. Even that little movement made her feel sick.

  Chombi came to enquire after Dann. She said he had the river sickness, the one insects give you, but he was getting better. Chombi was full of suspicion and hostility. He enquired after her health too. He had heard she was sick, when she arrived. Mara said she had the river sickness, but not badly, and was better now.

  While Kira had talked, and talked, Mara had been able to make a picture of this place.

  The region of the River Towns was governed by the Goidel people, who had their headquarters in the next town up the river, called Goidel. Each river town had its local representative, and this town's government man — Kira called him The Spy — was the tall, white, thin man, Chombi.

  Kira had seen Mara's nausea — but only when she actually asked to be shown a place where she could be sick — and said that Mara must not be ill. If Dann was ill, and she was too, that would be seen as the possible beginnings of an epidemic and both would be taken to Goidel into an isolation hospital. More than anything, this region feared epidemics, for there had been several recently, and many had died, mostly children. Mara had been afraid to tell Kira she was pregnant, but when she had to be sick again Kira said, "And you'd better not tell them you are pregnant either, because they'll take you for breeding. But if you can make them believe that Dann is your
husband, it will be all right. They don't take women away from husbands."

  Mara, then, could be neither ill nor pregnant, and what was she to do? It seemed to her she had no choice, except to go on with the journey and hope for the best. Choice: were there people who had choices? Kira, for instance. If she stayed in Chelops, probably the Kin themselves would have been delighted to lose her to the Hadrons, because she was such a nuisance. If she had kept the baby then Ida would have made her life a misery. If she had brought the baby with her it would almost certainly have died on the river.

  Mara could decide to make the slow, difficult — and sickening — journey back to Chelops, and tell Meryx, Look, I'm pregnant, you are like your father, a maker of children. But the Hadrons would take her the moment the baby was born. And she would still be in that situation which both she and Kira knew: Chelops could not last for long.

  Why was Kira so clear-headed about this, unlike the rest of the Kin? She was an orphan, had been taken into the Kin as a child, from an inferior branch of the Mahondis. She had never felt part of the Kin, had always seen herself as an outsider; and was able to see the Kin from an outsider's view, had never been lulled into complacency.

  There was a hard end to this run of thoughts: Kira would probably survive, having run away and left her child, when the Kin, and the Had-rons — and Kira's baby — might easily not survive.

  And what was Mara to do now?

  She listened to Dann muttering or shouting in his sleep, hushed him, told him, Dann, be quiet — and he woke apparently himself, demanding to leave at once.

  "Have you remembered I am pregnant?" she whispered. "And that I am your wife?"

  "Up North it will be better," he said, and slipped back into fever, shaking and sweating again. Kira came to sit with him while Mara slept. Mara knew that Dann was good-looking, but she had not thought of him as someone immediately attractive — in spite of Felice — but it seemed Kira liked Dann very much, and she helped Mara change the slave's robe for a clean one, and she exclaimed over his scars, and the weals around his middle, and sighed and said that perhaps she would come with them when they left. This was such a boring little place. After all, this was only a minor river. It would join the main river about ten days' from here, and on that one you could travel right up to the edge of the country that the Khamels came from. But up there they spoke a different language and Kira didn't think she could be bothered with that.

  "I thought the same language was spoken everywhere," said Mara, and Kira laughed at her and said that Mara's trouble was — and it had been Kira's — that she had believed Hadron to be most of Ifrik, instead of just a little place, and that since all of southern Ifrik spoke one language, they had thought it must be the same everywhere.

  It seemed that Kira's presence was calming the suspicions of the tall, white spy, for he kept away until she left, and then said he had noticed Mara was not in health, and he had a duty to tell his superiors so. "I am perfectly well," said Mara. This man, whom she thought was like a worm or the white belly of a lizard, and who she hated touching her, then took her wrist and felt her pulse, put a thin, bony thumb on her neck pulse, bent to look into her mouth and check her teeth, and lifted an eyelid. Mara knew that he was checking on more than her present health. He would report on her physical condition to the superiors in Goidel.

  "If you are pregnant," he said, "you have nothing to fear, if that man is your husband."

  "He is."

  "You look very much alike."

  "Mahondis do look alike. We are inbred," she said, not knowing that in fact she thought this.

  "Then that is a fault easily cured," he said.

  Dann was awake and listening, and on his face was a look that told Mara he was fighting inner demons.

  "And do you claim this child?" Chombi asked him.

  "Yes, I do," said Dann, forgetting that Mara had told him not to say she was pregnant.

  Mara asked Kira how long it took to get a message to Goidel. Two days there. Then a couple of days of deliberations and a decision, and two days on the return boat. Altogether, allow a week.

  Mara told Dann that she might be taken as a concubine for the Goidels. He said, "Oh no, they won't." As always now there was a pause after her speaking, before he heard, and responded. She believed that this bout of fever had done him real harm — not physically, for he was recovering, but by bringing his nightmares nearer. She wondered if Dann was perhaps a little mad. Sometimes, yes. On certain subjects.

  That week she spent feeding Dann and herself, and making him strong by walking with him around the mud lanes, and to the old deserted city in the savannah. She knew they were being observed. They sat with Kira, and Mara watched to see if Dann was attracted to Kira, for she longed to be reassured: there was a death sentence in the River Towns for men finding men attractive. And Dann did respond to Kira, but she made such a joke of everything it was hard to say what she felt.

  At the end of ten days two uniformed men came off the river boat from Goidel to the inn and demanded to see Mara and Dann. They were in the communal room, eating. At the sight of the two men Dann gave a shout and darted out of the door and disappeared into the maze of lanes and little houses. Yes, the two men were quite alike, Mara thought. Like most people around here they were very black, well-built, with lean faces, but their hair was long and black, like the Mahondis'.

  "I see your husband has run away," said one man, genially. "Well, that makes things easier. Get your things. You are coming with us to Goidel." Mara said nothing. She knew Dann had run away because of the two similar men, who later would become, in his mind, one man. Perhaps he would ask Kira for help. And he had not committed a crime, was not sick — or pregnant.

  "Better for you that you are pregnant than ill," said the other gaoler. "It would be isolation for you and that's no joke."

  They watched her pay the bill. She had none of the small coins left after that. She watched them conferring with Chombi, while he reported the events of the little town, and was given orders.

  The upriver boat came. Mara got on with her sack, and sat where she had before, but this time she had two men behind her, watching. What did they think she might do? Jump into this big, dangerous river, full of water dragons? Swim through them to a bank that edged empty savannah and ancient, deserted towns?

  That night in the inn they made her sleep between them. The next day on the boat was the same. She did not dislike these men, who were only doing a job. They were kind, in their way, making sure she ate and drank. That evening they arrived in Goidel and she was taken to a gaol and put in the charge of two women who fed her, washed her, were jocular and tried to make her laugh.

  Next morning she went in front of an elderly magistrate who reminded her, by his manner at least, of Juba.

  "So you claim you are married?"

  "Yes."

  "What degree of marriage?"

  Kira had told her to say, second degree. That meant, here, either man or woman could have other partners, but the man must assume responsibility for any child, since there was no way of establishing paternity. This was one of the laws introduced when it was becoming clear that fertility was dropping.

  "Second degree," said Mara.

  "Whatever the degree, when the husband is not present, it is irrelev-ant — wouldn't you agree?" "Yes," said Mara.

  "Well, you must go back to prison. If your husband does not claim you within a week, then you will go to the breeding programme."

  Mara had walked between the two gaolers to the court, and now back again. Going she had been too anxious to notice much; returning, her mind easier, since she believed Dann would come, she was able to see the streets she was walking through. Goidel was very different from the little mud towns down the river, several times larger, and while the buildings were of mud or mud-brick, the facades of most were covered with the same fine plaster she had seen in the old ruined cities above the Rock Village. So, instead of looking like an extension of the river bank mud, the bu
ildings were white, or a pale earth colour, or yellow, or even pink. None of these facades was new or clean; some were chipped, or areas of plaster had fallen and not been replaced. The roofs, of reed, needed replacing. In some, birds had nested. Many buildings were empty. But there were hundreds of people in the streets and they wore garments striped with bright colours, or plain, of the same very fine material as the robes she carried rolled at the bottom of her sack. Delicate, almost transparent material, with embroidery around necks and sleeves when the garment was plain. These were well fed people. Above all, there was an air of general confidence and calm. People stood about in groups talking, and laughing. In a little garden families were sitting on the grass eating and drinking. Her gaolers were not marching like soldiers, but strolling along and stopping to explain things when she asked.

  The two women gaolers took her in, making jokes with the two soldiers. These were, Mara knew, clever, surviving women, and she wanted to trust them. She decided she would: after all, she had no alternative.

  She asked them if they knew any medicine for aborting a baby. She was whispering, so even the walls could not have heard. They were not surprised. Whispering, one said that if they were found out it would be the death sentence for both of them, and the other that they must be well paid.