Mara and Dann

by Doris Lessing

  ‘We must keep moving, Mara. Look back.’ She screwed up her eyes to look where they had come and saw that smoke was rising from where the village was, and farther on too – the flames were racing to the watercourse, and soon would cross that, in a jump, and reach the one they were walking along. Would those piles of bones burn, putting an end to memories of so many animals? Dann saw how she held her arms across her pate, and found a bit of cloth in his sack and gave it to her to drape across her head and make a bit of shade. She saw that sweat poured off him everywhere, felt it running down her too. She was afraid that the water she felt running down her legs was wet shit. She quickly looked, but no, it was sweat. She was afraid because of losing all that water, and went to a waterhole to drink, with him. They drank and drank, both thinking that they must while it was there. Then he said, ‘Come on: if the wind changes, the fire’ll catch up with us.’

  She was so glad of her end of the pole: otherwise she would be staggering and falling. She was walking in a kind of half-sleep, or trance, and wondered that Dann could still move so lightly, that he was so alert, turning his head all the time, this way, that way, for danger. They went on, and on, their shadows at first small under them, but then black and long on the flat places between rocks, but jumping and changing when they went through rocks. She felt she must fall, but knew they had to go on. Every time she turned her head she could see how the smoke clouds were darkening and how they hung well beyond this second watercourse: the flames must be into the plain beyond the rivers. Where she had never been. Stumbling there in her half-sleep, burning up because the sweat had run itself dry, she thought, What a little life I’ve been leading. I wasn’t curious enough even to cross over the rivers to the western plain … And there it was again, a word in her mind and she had no idea where it had come from: west, western. Like north, which everyone used. What was North, where was it?

  Just when she thought she could no longer move one foot before the other, they were walking on burnt earth. The fire or another recent one had come here. The low, black grasses still kept their shape, as if they had grown out of the earth black and so fragile they crumbled into bits at a touch, and would blow away at the first strong wind. An old log burned, a red glow deep in grey ash.

  ‘We’ll be all right now,’ he said. They were still on the ridge with the watercourse down on their left, big pools from the flood. He lifted the pole off her shoulder, and went leaping down, and she followed, carefully holding herself upright. Just like farther down there were bones here, old bones and new ones, and the insects clustered and clotted on them and on the dead trees. Dann had flung off his garment and was in a pool like a big rock basin. She slowly took off her slippery skin and joined him. They drank and splashed water over their heads and shoulders and lay in the water, their heads resting on the edge. From there they stared straight up into a sky full of smoke and, turning their heads, saw columns and towers of smoke – probably the dead trees by the waterholes.

  The fire would kill the scorpions and the singing insects and the new frogs. It would make the water in the holes steam and sink quickly down into the mud, which would soon be dry and cracked. It would burn the smaller bones. And the earth insects, which had to have grass to live? When the fire had passed over the plains, burning up everything, even the earth in some places, would the grass grow again? If not, the insect cities would die, their towers would stand dead and empty, and then … there would be just dry earth everywhere, and the dust clouds would blow about and slowly the Rock Village would be filled with dust and sand.

  ‘Come on,’ Dann said, as he leaped out and pulled on his white garment. Oh no, she was thinking, I can’t go on; but he had not meant that: he was looking for a safe place for them to spend the night. She climbed out of the water, put on her tunic that was like a snakeskin, and helped him search among the rocks. He was looking for a place that was hidden, but high enough for them to look down and around from. And there it was: a flattish rock on the top of a little hill, with still unburnt bushes and grass around it. There was something that looked like a barricade or a wall of small stones: yes, this was a wall, joining bigger boulders, and it had been made for defence. People before them had thought this place a good one. When she looked she could see the little rough walls here and there, some of them tumbling down. Quite a long time ago then, not recently, this hilltop had been fought over by – well, who?

  The yellow glow in the sky that was the sun behind smoke and dust was lower now, but it was very hot, and the flat rock pumped out waves of heat. Mara took some of her white flour, mixed it with water and made cakes which she laid on the rock. Meanwhile Dann was moving away stones from where they could sit, their backs to a big boulder.

  He sat with his legs stretched out, and she by him, thinking, Now perhaps he’ll talk, he’ll tell me … And then she was asleep, and woke to see that the whole sky seemed on fire, the clouds and billows of smoke full of light, and rays shooting right up towards the sinking sun. Dann was looking at her. She thought, I’m so ugly. He must think I’m like a monkey – but he has never seen a monkey I expect. But where did I see them? Oh yes, it was home, there were monkeys in a big cage. I know what I look like, and my head … She was so hungry. The flour cakes she had put on the rock? – he had eaten some. She would have gone to get herself some but she felt she could not move. His gaze did not leave her face. He was examining her, as Daima had looked at her before she died, as if her face – Mara’s – held some truth or secret. Oh, she was so hungry. As she looked at the cakes, wanting them, Dann leaped up and fetched them, putting them carefully into her hand. And then he watched her eat them, slowly, a bit at a time, as she had learned to eat, food being so short, every crumb, every tiny bit held in the mouth to get all the goodness from it. Besides, her teeth hurt.

  She did not feel uncomfortable that he was watching her. She was happy he was there, but she did not understand him. Nothing he did was what she expected, nor much of what he said.

  She said to him, ‘If you hadn’t come then I would be dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was dying and didn’t know it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when that fire started I think I would have decided to stay with Daima and let it burn me.’

  He said nothing, only gazed at her face, and her eyes.

  ‘There would have been no reason for me to leave. Nowhere to go. And I was too weak anyway.’

  He said, carefully – and it was because he didn’t want to offend her – ‘Didn’t you ever go anywhere else? Only the Rock Village?’

  ‘Only out to find the roots – and there were seeds, too.’

  He put his knuckles to the earth and leaped up, and stood staring away down the side of the hill. She knew it was because he did not want her to see his face. He was shocked because she had not made any effort to go anywhere else. But you didn’t know how it was, how difficult, she wanted to say to him. But she was ashamed. She had lived all that time, knowing nothing – nothing. While he …

  He was taking from his sack one of the yellow roots. He cut it and gave her half, sat by her, looked over to where the sun was going down, a red, burning place among the dark clouds.

  ‘When you went off with the two men did you come this way?’

  He shook his head. A long silence now. A real silence. Long ago, at this hour, the sun going, there had been all kinds of animal noises, bird sounds, and the singing insects were so loud they split the ears. Now, nothing.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘North.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s better there.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘People say.’

  ‘Have they been there?’

  ‘The farther south, the worse. The farther north, the better. There’s water up there. It still rains there. There is a big desert, they say, and it is drying everything around its edges, but you can go around it.’

  ‘There is going to be a desert here.�
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  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We use words like south and north and east and west, but why do we? Where do they come from?’

  He said with a laughing sneer, as if he had suddenly become another person, ‘The Rock People are just stupid. Stupid rock rabbits.’

  ‘All these words come from somewhere. I think from the Mahondis.’

  He jeered again, ‘The Mahondis! You don’t understand. They aren’t anything – we aren’t. There were people once – they knew everything. They knew about the stars. They knew … they could talk to each other through the air, miles away …’ His mood was changing: he seemed to be wanting to laugh, but properly, then giggle…‘From here to the Rock Village. From here to – up north. To the end of North.’

  And now she found herself giggling too.

  ‘You’re laughing,’ he said, laughing. ‘But it’s true. And they had machines that could carry a hundred people at a time …’

  ‘But we had sky skimmers.’

  ‘But these could go on flying without coming down for days …’

  And suddenly they were laughing aloud, for the ridiculousness.

  ‘And they had machines so big that – bigger than the Rock Village.’

  ‘Who told you all this?’

  ‘People who know what’s up North. There are places there where you can find out about the old people – the ones that lived long ago. And I’ve seen pictures.’

  ‘The pictures on the old walls?’

  ‘No, in books.’

  ‘When we were little there were books.’

  ‘Not just paintings on leather and leaves. They used to have books made of … It’s a very thin, fine stuff, white, and there can be a hundred pages in a book. I saw some pages from an old book … they were crumbling …’ His mood changed again. He said furiously, ‘Mara, if you only knew … We think the Rock People are just – rabbits. But those people, the ones that lived long ago – compared to them we are beetles.’

  Now the dark was coming up through the rocks. He said, ‘I’m going to sleep. But you must stay awake. Do you know how to? When you get sleepy, then wake me. Don’t wake me suddenly or I’ll hit you. I’ll think you’re an enemy – do you see? You slept a bit earlier.’ And there and then he lay down on the rock and was asleep.

  And now it was really dark. There was no moonlight: the moon was almost full, but the sky was too full of smoke and dust to see it, or the stars. Mara sat with her back against a rock and her head whirled with everything she had been hearing. She wanted to cry, and would have cried, but stopped herself, thinking, Bad enough to lose all that water in sweat, but I can stop myself crying. She thought of her life all these years with Daima, who told her tales, full of all kinds of things the little girl had thought were made up – just stories – but now Mara was wondering if Daima’s tales were true after all. But mostly they had played What Did You See? And what had Mara seen! The inside of a neighbour’s rock house. The details of the scaly skin of a land lizard. A dead tree. ‘What did you see, Mara?’ ‘The branches stick up like old bones. The bark has gone. The wood is splitting. In every crack insects are living.’ But they aren’t now: the flames have killed them, every one. ‘The birds come and sit in the dead trees and go off, disappointed. There are birds’ skeletons in the trees. When the skeletons fall to the ground you can see they are like us. They have legs and feet and their wings are like arms.’ ‘And what else did you see, Mara?’ ‘The dead wood of the different trees is different, sometimes light and spongy and sometimes so heavy and hard I can’t push my thumbnail into it.’ ‘And what else, Mara?’ ‘There are the roots deep in the ground that I dig up.’ And that was what she had seen, all those years. The village. The Rock People. The animals, always fewer and then gone. The lizards and dragons – but they had gone too. Mishka, darling Mishka, who had licked her face clean, and then Mishkita. And the earth insects … insects, scorpions, insects, always more of them … Well, even the scorpions would have been burned up by now, probably.

  And that was all. She had not gone farther than the dead cities in the hills. ‘What did you see, Mara?’ ‘I saw pictures of people, but they were not like us, but a different brown, with differently shaped bodies, painted eyes, rings on their hands and in their ears. I saw …’ Perhaps those were the people that Dann said had been so clever that they knew everything?

  Mara was staying awake easily because of her sad and ashamed thoughts. Then she wanted to pee and was afraid to move and wake Dann. She crawled away, trying not to make a sound, and squatted paces away. There was a lot of pee now, and her pee place was no longer sore. Her body was not burning and aching and itching and crying out for water. When she crawled back she saw Dann’s eyes were open, watchful gleams in the dark.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  His eyes closed and he was instantly asleep. A little later he rolled towards Mara, and was hugging her. ‘Mara, Mara,’ he said, in a thick voice, but it was childish, a little boy’s voice. He was asleep. He snuggled up to her and she held him, her heart beating, for she was holding her little brother; but at the same time he was dangerous, and she could feel his tube thick and hot on her thigh. Then his arms fell away. He was sucking his thumb, suck, suck. Then silence. He rolled away. She could never tell him that he had sucked his thumb. He would probably kill her, she thought. Then was surprised at the thought, which had come so easily.

  Before Dann fell asleep, while he watched his sister, he had been thinking, Why am I here? Why did I come for her? She’s such a poor, sick, feeble thing. But all he knew was that ever since he had heard from travellers that there were people alive in the old village, he had had to come. He did not know why, but he was restless, he was unhappy, he could not sleep. He had to look for her. She was mistaken, thinking he had not seen monkeys. He had, in cages – and people too, in cages. He thought she looked like a little monkey, with big, sad eyes and a naked head. But she was already fattening a little. She was no longer just a skeleton with a bit of skin over the bones and enormous dry, hungry eyes. And that was in only two days. At the waterhole he had seen something he first thought was an animal, with its long claws and filthy mats of hair on its head; but now he knew her again, for certain looks of hers, and movements, and memories, were coming back. They were all of warm arms and a soft voice, of shelter and comfort and safety. He was trying to match what he saw: the little, spindly creature, all bones, with the memories his limbs and body held, of soft, big, kind arms, everything big and soft and warm.

  When the light began, Mara saw that all over her were bits of the black, greasy stuff from the fire. So the wind had shifted. She said, ‘Dann,’ and he was at once on his feet and looking at the black bits on him. The fire had burned to the edge of the older fire, and gone out. There was smoke everywhere, but it was thinner ahead, where they were going. He took up the water cans, and put the pole on his shoulder, and went bounding off down towards the nearest waterhole; and then he shouted to her and she went to the edge of the little hill, the rock already hot under her feet, and saw him point down. The black from the fires seemed to have over it greyish-yellowish streams, like liquid: earth insects, like a flood, going down to the watercourse. But that was not their destination: the streams were already on their way up the farther ridge. ‘Quick,’ he said, and bounded down, though keeping a distance between him and them; and she followed, shivering now not with weakness but with fear, and plunged after Dann into the biggest waterhole. There they washed the black smears off them, and filled the cans right up, and drank and drank, always watching the earth insects; but saw that the mass was spreading out sideways, towards their waterhole. She wanted to scramble out but he held her, and then, as the insects fell over into the water, he grabbed them with his quick fingers, pulling off their heads and cramming the still squirming bodies into his mouth. He ate several, then saw her face and stopped to think what to do. She was not far off fainting with horror. Along the edge of the water now was a
fringe of drowning insects. He stepped through the water to the bank, reached for his big sack, took from it a smaller one, filled it with drowned insects, and then nodded at her to get out of the water. She was afraid, for the insects seemed to be everywhere. But he stepped up and out, carefully, putting his feet between the trickles of insects which, if they had a mind to, could eat him and her to bones in a moment. But no, the insects were going as fast as they could through the waterholes to make new cities for themselves in a part that had not been burned. Yet there was nothing to be seen but the black of the fire, so they would have a long way to go, carrying everything they had: bits of food from their underground farms – which, Mara could see, seemed dry and shrivelled instead of plump and fresh – their babies, and their big mothers, each the size of Mara’s hand, white and fat, and who even as they were being carried along were laying eggs that fell from them like maggots and were gathered up by the insects and carried in their mouths. This was a people moving from one home to another, as the Rock People moved into an empty house if they liked it better than their own. Mara watched Dann step carefully among the insects, who were now more like a flood, a flash flood, when it seemed as if the earth itself was on the move; and she went after him afraid she would set her feet down on them because of her faintness. But soon they were through the insects and going along the ridge again, above the watercourse where the holes were already only half what they were yesterday. Looking back they could see more and more of the insects coming; soon there would be none left in the tall earth towers that were like cities. Up the two went to the place between the rocks, and Dann put the drowned insects on the hot rock, and in a few moments they had lost their juicy, glistening look and were like little sacks of skin. And now Dann gave Mara one of them, looking hard at her, and she put it in her mouth. It tasted on her tongue acid, and pulpy; she pretended it was a bit of fruit. Dann handed her another and another, and she ate them, until she was full. Then off he jumped down back to the swarm, and she saw him scooping the insects out of the rivers of them, putting them into the bag, and in a moment was back, and as he took each one out of the bag he nipped off its head. The insects were hissing and fighting inside the little bag. His hands had been bitten, they were red and swollen. But he went on, beheading them and laying them out on the rock, which was by now almost too hot to touch. He ate them as they cooked, and handed her one after another, and she knew that he was measuring that bony little body of hers with his eyes and thinking, She’s fatter, she’s better. ‘Eat, Mara. Eat, you must,’ he commanded.