Mara and Dann mad-1

by Doris Lessing Little Dorrit

  Leta laughed, angrily. "I know. I have spent years trying to think of ways to get out. I know about the laws. There isn't a man in Bilma with any kind of expertise who has been in my bed, that I haven't used. Information. I have been in this place ten years," she said. "Ten years." And Mara could hear the horror of it, in her voice, full of hate. "Take me out with you," she said. "I have saved some money. Mother Dalide lets us keep a little. I have had my price ready for two years now. I could buy myself free, here, but when I walked around Bilma I'd be looking into the faces of men I've had sex with. In Kanaz no one will know me."

  "Surely if I took anyone it should be Crethis?" said Daulis.

  Leta, Mara could see, was only just controlling impatience.

  "I know you are fond of her," she said.

  "Yes, I am," he insisted.

  "Have you thought what you'd do with her? She's not like me, she's not independent. You'd have her on your hands."

  "A pleasure," he said. But it was only to keep his end up — he was looking doubtful.

  "There are women who hate this life," said Leta. "Like me. And there are some who like it. And Crethis is one." Daulis shook his head — shaking away the thought. "Crethis can have six men in a night and she often does, she's popular. And she will enjoy every minute of it." Daulis had got up and was staring out of the window where sparks from the watchmen's fire fled up into the dark. "If you took her out of this house she'd be back. It's her home. And if you took her to Kanaz she'd be back into the brothels in no time."

  Silence from Daulis. He had his face turned well away but there were tears on his face.

  "Yes, you love her. But she's a little girl. She was six years old when she came here — and began her life as a whore. She has never spent a night alone, except when she was ill last year with the lung disease."

  "I promised her," said Daulis.

  "What did you promise? A member of the Council couldn't have promised marriage to a whore out of Mother Dalide's brothel?" "I promised her safety in my house."

  "You're not the only one. Your friend the Chief of the Council took her out to his home, and she was back here six days later. This house is her home and Mother Dalide is her mother."

  "All right, get your things," said Daulis.

  Leta ran out, and as they heard her quick, light feet on the stairs, Senghor came in.

  "Yes, I know," said Daulis. "It is not allowed; but I am Councillor Daulis of the Supreme Council and I am ordering you to stand aside." Senghor stood aside.

  Mara and Daulis went downstairs, Mara carrying her sack, while the women not at work came out into the hall to watch. A few blew kisses, whether to Daulis or Mara it was hard to say.

  Leta came with a little bag of her things in her hand, and then the three were out in the night streets of Bilma. They walked fast along side streets until they came to a big gate. The guard on it recognised Daulis and let them in. Daulis left the two women in a downstairs room while he went up to confer with his colleague and friend, the magistrate, and then they were summoned upstairs. In a few minutes Mara was married to Daulis, with Leta as the witness, by expedient law. It was a question of saying that they were both unmarried, and not promised to anybody else. Then Mara wrote her name beside Daulis's name in a great parchment book. She had not written, except for practising letters in the dust with a stick, since she was with Shabis. She was given a leather disc, on a thong, to hang around her neck, so the world would know she was married and the property of a man. And for this time she was pleased to have the protection.

  Daulis asked the magistrate to send a message to the Council saying that Mara from Dalide's house was married and legally free to leave Bilma.

  As they left, the magistrate asked Mara, "Are you the woman whose brother is wanted for treasonable desertion in Charad?"

  "My brother has gone North. He is safe."

  "With that price on his head he'd better shift himself. He's not going to be safe anywhere this side of Tundra."

  And then she and Daulis and Leta were moving fast and secretly, always through lanes and side streets, to the hill overlooking the station where she had been with Dann, but skirted it, and were near the platform where a line of coaches stood waiting for the morning. They did not dare board a coach, in case there was a search for them, but saw a small shack or shed a little way off and went there. Soon they saw, in a dim moonlight, a couple of soldiers come around the hill, and then look through the coaches. They were going back, then one of them came towards the shack, peered through a cracked window, and came in.

  Daulis stepped forward and said, "Do you know me?"

  The soldier hesitated, and said, "I was told to arrest you."

  "Where's your order?"

  "There wasn't time for an order. The Chief of the Council sent us."

  "Well I am giving you an order. I am Daulis, you know that, and I am going to Kanaz with my wife Mara. You have no legal right to stop me."

  The soldier looked around the dusty interior of this old shed and was wondering: If it is legal, why are you hiding? But he was undecided, did not dare arrest Daulis. He went out, without saluting, and they could see the two soldiers conferring, by the coaches. They went off, slowly.

  By now it was well after midnight. Leta produced some bread — she had snatched it from the kitchen as she left. They ate, hastily, wished there was water, and went out and found a fallen tree, with a lot of branches, and behind them they crouched, watching the coaches and the shack they had left, expecting a return of the soldiers. And just before dawn someone did come, but it was a tramp, and he might be more dangerous, because if he saw they were hiding, and therefore afraid of the law, he might go and report them hoping for a reward.

  The sun rose. The station platform was filling. The three ran towards it, and then Mara saw the tramp standing staring at her. She knew him, could not think who it was... went to him and with difficulty recognised Kulik, because he was so thin and in rags.

  She was about to retreat when he came forward and grasped her arm, bringing that hated, scarred face close to hers, dirty teeth bared in a threat.

  "Give me some money, Mara," he said.

  "No."

  "I'll take it."

  The last thing she wanted was a fracas, a noisy incident, even loud voices. She gave him a handful of small coins, and as she turned away saw his triumphant face, and heard his low, "Where's your brother? Are you going to hide him?"

  She joined the other two on the platform and they got on just as the coach began to move, pulled by the young men in front, pushed by the young men behind. And as the coach was already getting up speed, a couple of officers, not soldiers, came running on to the platform, looking after them.

  "When will we be safe?" asked Mara.

  "Not in Kanaz," said Leta. "But it is a big town, I hear, so we can hide."

  And the two looked at her with respect, and believed her. Leta, now she was out of that place which so demeaned her, was an impressive woman, authoritative because of her knowledge of life, and handsome too. She wore a dark green garment which made her pale skin gleam, and her green eyes shine. Her pale hair was in a big knot. And who is the princess now? thought Mara, fascinated by this strange female who was like nothing she had ever known.

  The three of them were clutching each other and clinging on where they could. This "coach" was a contraption of wood slats and lattices, like a cage, and it rattled and bounced and swayed — surely in danger of toppling? And quite soon a mess of splintered wood beside the track showed that these coaches indeed fell over, although they did not move very fast. A good runner could easily have kept up; runners were: the youths who pulled were loping along, and had plenty of breath to shout at each other as they ran. The youths who had pushed, had leaped on to the coach at the last minute and were waiting to replace the others, when they tired. But from their talk, it was apparent that there was a place ahead where the lines had fractured. That these breaks were not uncommon could be seen by the piles of rai
l sections at intervals along the tracks, pieces of the heaviest wood in the forests. Soon the coach was pulled to a halt by the ropes, and ahead workmen were replacing broken rails. The three did not have to confess their unease that they were stationary not more than a couple of hours from Bilma, and that a fast horse could easily catch up with them.

  At first they had travelled through a light forest; but here was a grassy valley, rather like the ones Mara had seen so often in her journey north, across the wide, dry savannahs; but the grasses were different, and the trees too: lower, more compact and dense, not the airy, wide-branched trees of the forest south of Bilma. Beneath them, to the depth of — it was believed — twenty feet, still lay the old sands of the desert ancient people had called the Sahara. And Mara thought that in her sack were two striped robes called Sahar. While the sands far beneath them had been flooded — so they said — and pushed up forests, been swept by fire, and again and again, by floods, had been sands again. While all this was going on, for thousands of years, one little word stubbornly kept an old sound, and people who did not know the names of their ancestors, or even that they had had them, could walk into a shop and say, "I want to see your Sahar robes."

  On a parallel track to the lines appeared a stately procession of horses, donkeys, light carts, litters carried by — but they didn't have slaves in Bilma — and men and women walking. The people in the coach watched this caravan go by for a good half hour. Mara asked, "Then why the need for coaches?"

  "A good question," said Daulis. "Some people want to end the coach service. But it takes one of those caravans a week to reach Kanaz, and it is a couple of days by coach. This is really used for urgent council work."

  "And other things," said Leta, smiling at him, and he actually blushed.

  "And other things," he agreed.

  "This is also called the Love Trail," said Leta to Mara. "There are inns all along the route used for holidays and love." The word "love" when she used it sounded like a curse.

  Daulis said to her, "Poor Leta. But soon it will all be different for you."

  Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face to look away from them. "Perhaps it will," she said at last. And then, "You are a good man, Daulis. We all of us know that." She was using the we of the brothel. "We know who are the swines." And again her voice shook.

  Mara, sitting so close to Daulis, thought that she had not yet had a close look at him, and she did now, in the bright morning light. Yes, he was a good man. His face was one to trust — well, she had trusted him. But when she compared his face with another in her mind's eye, then he had to suffer from the comparison. Shabis was finer, and both stronger and more sensitive.

  Mara asked, as the idea popped into her on some kind of prompting or instinct, "Do the Three Generals want me too, as well as Dann?" "I wasn't going to tell you yet. But yes, they do." "Are they offering money for me?"

  "Not officially; but they have been in touch with our Council. They think you have Shabis's child."

  "But that was just a bit of spite on the part of his wife."

  "They think you had his child while you were with the Hennes. They plan to get rid of Shabis, and they don't want any child of his alive."

  "There is a child of his alive."

  "There was."

  Mara thought of her life as a soldier, at the watchtowers, imagined a baby there, a child, and began to laugh. And laugh, while Leta and Daulis gravely watched her. She knew she sounded hysterical. She was tired, still frantic with anxiety because of Dann — and hysterical. "You don't know how funny it is," she said at last. "Well, the Three Generals can't know much about the Hennes. The Hennes planned to start a breeding programme, to improve their stock, using Shabis's child, if there was one, and to kidnap the Generals' children too."

  "Exactly. Using Shabis's child to establish their claim over Agre. They planned to march into Agre with the child in front of their army."

  "Then the Hennes don't know much about the Agre."

  "And the Three Generals want the child. Because Shabis is so popular, they are afraid the soldiers will rally around Shabis and his child."

  And now Mara sat silent, discouraged. She was afraid, too. Just a few spiteful words by an unhappy woman could get her, Mara, recaptured. Had caused so much fevered plotting and planning. Could have caused another war. But she was thinking too that she was to blame. How could she have been so blind and thoughtless, so blithely ignorant, living there with Shabis and not ever thinking that he had a wife who must be at the least suspicious. Though it turned out that she was poisoned by jealousy. Mara tried to imagine how she would have felt if, living with Meryx, she knew that he spent all his days with some captured woman, talking to her, teaching her, taking his midday meal with her.

  "I have been very stupid," she said aloud, and told Leta and Daulis that part of her story.

  Leta pronounced judgement. "Any of the house women could have told you what to expect."

  "Yes, I know."

  Daulis took her hand and, as she instinctively pulled away, teased her, "As my wife, Mara, you must allow me to hold your hand. If only to reassure me that you don't actually hate me."

  "You know you don't want me as your wife."

  She heard her voice, forlorn, sad, rough with tears. "Do you know what I keep thinking of? It's the baby I lost. The baby." And she began to cry.

  Leta said, "And I keep thinking of the baby I lost."

  Here Mara and Daulis looked at her, surprised, and Leta explained, "Crethis. She was my baby. I never had a baby. And I can't help thinking of her."

  "And I," confessed Daulis.

  Leta said, "I've always looked after her. And now I'm gone. She loves Daulis — as much as she can. Mother Dalide is away. She must be in a bad state today."

  "Are you feeling sad because you left? asked Daulis. "You mean, do you think I should have stayed a house woman because Crethis will miss me?"

  "No."

  "Then what do you mean? Of course I feel sad. It's not only Crethis, but she is the most of it. The girls there are all I've known, as friends. But I've been trying to get out of that house from the day I found myself in it. And so — Crethis might die."

  "Why die?" asked Daulis, quickly.

  "You are sentimental," said Leta, "I don't respect that. If you do something that has consequences then accept them. Crethis has a weak chest. She nearly died. I nursed her. I was with her all the time. She would have died without me. Well, knowing Crethis, she's probably found someone else to cling on to already. But no one is going to sit by her bed day and night for weeks." And now Leta wept too.

  The rails were mended. The young men who had jumped on to the coach went forward to pull, replacing the others who took their place in the coach.

  But they did not have to clutch and cling for long, because about an hour later they stopped where there was an inn, among the dark, sombre trees of this region. Some passengers got off, couples holding hands or with linked arms. Servants came from the inn to sell food to the passengers and they brought a jar of water.

  Everyone drank in a way Mara recognised: they were afraid it would be some time before they got water again.

  The young men who made the coach move changed again. Now they were all tired and were not shouting jokes and bits of gossip as they ran, and the ones in the coach waiting their turn to get out and push, or pull, were silent and apathetic.

  The journey went on. They were shaken, rather sick, and Leta said she had a headache. Mara was glad to accept Daulis's offer of a steadying arm, and she sat against him, her head on his shoulder, and thought that her long, fierce independence had made it hard for her to be as simply affectionate as Crethis, who hugged and caressed and stroked and kissed as naturally as she breathed. She was thinking two contradictory things at the same time: one, that she was glad to be married to Daulis, for it made her feel safe; and then that she would shortly be free and herself again and married to no one.

  When it got dark they had to sto
p because the coaches did not run at night over these fragile and so easily broken rails. There was an inn and they took a room together, the three of them, ate in the room, and locked the door from inside, and pushed a heavy table against it. Each had a bed, and they dozed and woke, and saw that the others were awake and watching and knew that this had to be one of the nights when the first light was a reprieve from enforced immobility. As soon as the square of the window showed some light they were up and dressed, and were down by the tracks waiting. It was a fresh clear morning, rather cold, and they sat on the benches provided for travellers and ate breakfast.

  Mara told them about the flying machines down south that were grounded and had to be pushed by runners, and about Felice and her flying service. Leta was amazed, for she had not heard of such machines; but Daulis said that not long ago, in his father's lifetime, there had still been these machines in Bilma, but there was a coup, and possession of the machines was what was being fought over, and at the height of the fighting the rebels had set fire to the machines, all ten of them. Their remains could be seen in a forest north of the town, what was left of them, for they had been pulled apart over the years to make shacks and huts. Mara asked, "Are you afraid of another coup?"

  Leta laughed from surprise, but Daulis said seriously, "Yes, Mara, some of us are. But if there were a coup, it would be my friends who would make it. I don't know if we are more afraid of there being a coup, or not being. But it does seem as if the life of a rule, a period of peace, is never longer than a hundred years or so. And the last coup was a hundred and fifty years ago."

  "And your Council is corrupt."

  "Yes, some of us are corrupt."

  "And there must be a lot of poor people in Bilma, otherwise you'd not have all these youths that look as if they need a square meal to push your coaches."

  "Yes, there are poor people, and it is getting worse."

  "Why worse?" asked Leta. She sounded threatened.

  "It seems fairly clear that we are having another change of climate. They are saying up North that the Ice is retreating again."