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

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Oh, Mara,’ he whispered, and then shouted her name into the noisy water. It seemed to him her face was in the patterns the water made. A rainbow spanned the Rocky Gates and little rainbows were spinning off and away with the clumps of foam. The air seemed full of light, and noisy movements—and Mara.

  He was heavy with sorrow, felt he could easily roll off that rocky protuberance and let himself fall.

  He was leaving Kira too—wasn’t he? But he scarcely ever thought of her and the child she was having. His. She had not even bothered to tell him she was pregnant. ‘I don’t think I’d get much of a look in with that child, even if I were a good father, hanging about, waiting for the birth—which must be soon.’ So he excused himself. ‘And besides, I know Mara will see that my child will be looked after, and there is Shabis, and Leta and Donna and probably other people by now.’ It made him uncomfortable, saying my child, though it was. The thought of Kira was like a barrier between him and this soon to be born infant.

  He stood up at the very end of the rocky finger and dared the wind to swirl him off. His tunic filled with air, his trousers slapped against his legs: his clothes were willing him to fall, to fly, and he felt the tug and lift of the wind over his whole body. He stood there, upright, not falling, so he left the rock and went to the Centre. There he visited the old woman who screeched at him, and so did the servant: two demented old women, in a bad-smelling room, berating him.

  He chose a few things, put them in his old sack, found Griot and told him he would be away for a while.

  How those sharp green eyes did peer into his face—his thoughts.

  And how much he, Dann, was relying on Griot, and that made him feel even more caged and confined.

  ‘Would you ever return to the Farm, Griot?’

  ‘No.’

  Dann waited.

  ‘It’s Kira. She wanted me to be her servant.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dann.

  ‘I’ve had enough of that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dann, who had been a slave—and worse.

  ‘She is a cruel woman,’ said Griot, lowering his voice, as if she might overhear.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dann.

  ‘So, you’ll be off, then?’

  Dann had gone a few paces when he felt the need to turn, and he did, and saw Griot’s betrayed face. But had he made Griot any promises? He had not.

  ‘Griot, I’ll be back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Dann made himself march away from Griot’s need.

  Dann set off around the edge of the Middle Sea, going east. He had meant to walk right round the edges of the Bottom Sea, but that was before he had seen it, so rough, often piled with detritus from rockfalls. Up here on the top edge there was a road, more of a track, running between the precipitate fall to the water and the marshes. He had left the stale mouldy smell of the Centre, but the smell of the marshes was as bad: rotting vegetation and stagnant water. He walked, thinking of Mara and the past. His mind was full of Mara, and of sorrow, though he had missed the news of her death. She had died giving birth. The messenger from the Farm had come running to the Centre, but Dann had left. Griot had thought of sending the messenger after Dann, but said that Dann was away. Griot was glad he did not have to tell Dann. During his time at the Farm he had observed, had taken everything in. He knew how close Mara and Dann were: one had only to see them together. He knew the two had walked all the way up Ifrik through many dangers; his own experience had told him what a bond shared danger was. He had seen that Dann suffered, because Mara belonged not to him but to her husband Shabis. To tell Dann his sister was dead: he was in no hurry to do it.

  Dann had wanted to leave the Centre—leave the past—because of the weight of sorrow on him, which he believed he understood. It was natural. Of course he was bereft, but he would get over it. He had no intention of subsiding into unhappiness. No, when he got walking, really moving, he would be better. But he had not got into his stride, his rhythm: it was what he needed, the effortlessness of it, when legs and body were in the swing of the moment, a time different from what ruled ordinary sitting, lying, moving about—never tiring. A drug it was, he supposed, to walk like that, walking at its best, as he had done sometimes with Mara, when they were into their stride.

  But Mara was not here with him.

  He kept at it, thinking of Mara; well, when did he not? She was always there with him, the thought of her, like the reminder of a beating heart: I am here, here, here. But she wasn’t here. He let his feet stumble him to the very edge of the declivity that ended in the Bottom Sea, and imagined her voice saying, Dann, Dann, what did you see?—the old childhood game that had served them so well. What was he seeing? He was staring into streaming clouds. Water—again water. His early life had been dust and drought, and now it was water. The abrupt descent before him ended in water and a blue gleam of distant waves, and behind him the reedy swampy ground with its crying marsh birds went on for ever…but no, it did not. It ended. And on the other side of the northern cloud mass, he knew, were shores loaded with ice masses. Much more to the point surely was, Dann, Dann, what do you know? He knew that the vast emptiness of the gulf before him had been sea that came up almost to where he stood now, with boats on it, and there had been cities all around its edge. He knew that cities had been built all over the bottom of the sea, when it was dry, which were now under water, and on islands, still inhabited, but many of those had emptied, were emptying because everyone knew how fast the waters were rising, and could engulf them. Everyone knew? No, he had met people coming to the Centre who knew nothing of all this. He knew, though. He knew because of what the Mahondis knew, fragments of knowledge from distant pasts. ‘It is known,’ one would say, giving the information to another, who did not have it, because they came from a different part of Ifrik. ‘It is known that…’

  It was known that long ago when the Ice first came creeping and then piling into mountains all over Yerrup, the mass and pack of ice had pushed all those wonderful cities along the edge of that shore that stood opposite to him now, though he could not see it, over the sides and into the great gulf which was already half full of detritus and debris, before the people of that time—and who were they?—had taken up the stones and blocks of cement that had built the old cities and used them for the cities on the land which was now behind him, but then things changed, the Ice began to melt and the cities sank down. That was when the tundra turned into water. Cold, cold, a terrible cold that destroyed all Yerrup but how was it this sea, the Middle Sea, had been a sea but then was empty? ‘It was known’ that at some time a dryness, just as frightful as the all-destroying Ice, had sucked all the water out of the Middle Sea and left it a dry chasm where cities were built. But it did not fit—these bits of fact did not fit. His mind was a map of bits of knowledge that did not connect. But that was what he did know, as he looked into the moving dark clouds, and heard the seabirds calling as they dropped their way down to the lower sea. And, at his back, the marshes, and beyond them, for they had an end, scrub and sand and dust, Ifrik drying into dust. He and Mara had walked through all that, walked from deserts into marshland, and both were on their way to their opposites, through slow changes you could hardly see, you had to know.

  What do you know, Dann?—I know that what I see is not all there is to know. Isn’t that of more use than the childish What did you see?

  He returned to the track and saw stumbling towards him a man ill with exhaustion. His eyes stared, his lips cracked with his panting breath, but although he was at his limits he still moved a hand to the hilt of a knife in his belt, so that Dann could see he had a knife. Just as Dann’s instinct was; his hand was actually moving towards his knife when he let it fall. Why should he attack this man, who had nothing he needed? But the man might attack him: he was well-fed.

  ‘Food?’ grunted the stranger. ‘Food?’ He spoke in Tundra.

  ‘Walk on,’ said Dann. ‘You’ll find a place where they’ll feed
you.’

  The man went on, not in the easy stride Dann was wanting to find, but on the strength of his will. If he didn’t fall into a marsh pool, he would reach the Centre and Griot would feed him.

  What with? That was Griot’s problem.

  Dann went on, slowly, thinking that it was easier to walk fast on dust and sand than on this greasy mud that had already been trodden and squashed by a thousand feet. Plenty of people had been this way. More were coming. Dann stood at the side of this track and watched them. They had walked a long distance. Men, then some women, even a child, who had dull eyes and bad breathing. He would die, this child, before he got to the Centre. In Dann’s sack was food, which would save the child, but Dann stood there and watched. How would he ever get into his stride, his own beautiful rhythm, when these refugees came past, came past…

  He had not made much progress that day, and he was already tired. The sun was sinking over there in the west, behind him. Where was he going to sleep? There wasn’t a dry bit of earth anywhere, all was wet and mud. He peered over the edge of the chasm to see if he could find a good rock to stretch out on but they all sloped: he would roll off. Well, why not? He didn’t care if he did. He went on, looking down at steep and slippery rocks that had been smoothed by thousands of years of the rub of water—but his mind gave up: it was hurting, to think like this. At last he saw a tree growing aslant, a few paces down. He slid to it on glassy rocks and landed with his legs on either side of the trunk. This was an old tree. And it was not the first that had grown on this site. Remnants and fragments of older trees lay about. Dann pulled out some bread from his sack, hung the sack on a low branch and lay back. It was already dark. The night sounds were beginning, birds and beasts he did not know. Overhead was the moon, for the clouds had gone, and he stared at it, thinking how often its brightness had been a threat to him and Mara when they had been trying to escape notice…but he didn’t have to hide now. Dann slept and woke to see a large animal, covered with heavy shags of white hair, standing near him on its hind legs, trying to pull down his bag with the food in it. He sat up, found a stone and flung it, hitting the side of the animal who snarled and escaped, sliding and slipping on scree, before reaching some rocks.

  It was halfway through the night, and chilly, but worse than that, damp, always so damp. Dann wrapped himself well and thought that if he put the bag with the food under him, the hungry animal might attack him to get it. So he left the bag where it was on the branch and dozed and woke through the rest of the night, waiting for the animal to return. But nothing happened. The sun rose away to the east where—he knew—the shores of the Middle Sea ended, and beyond them unknown lands and peoples. For the first time a doubt appeared in his mind. He had been thinking—for such a long time now—that he would walk to the end of this sea and then…but how far was it? He had no idea. He did not know. He ate some bread, drank water from a little stream running down from the marshes and climbed back to the path. He was stiff. He must find his pace again, which could carry him all day and—if necessary—all night.

  On his right the marshes were opening into larger pools, and places where you could stand and look down through water on to the roofs of towns. And what roofs—what towns. He remembered the boatman who had brought him and Mara north: he had said he didn’t enjoy looking down to see buildings so much better than anything anyone knew how to build now. It made him miserable, he said. Yes, thought Dann, exactly, it did make one miserable. Perhaps this weight of sorrow on him was simply that: he was ashamed, surrounded always by a past so much more clever and wonderful and rich than anything they had now. Always now you came up against long ago…long, long ago…once there was…once there were, people, cities and, above all, knowledge that had gone.

  So, what did he know? When you came down to it? Over there the ice mountains were melting over Yerrup and their water poured all along those coasts he could not see, down into the Middle Sea. Water poured from the Western Sea down over the Rocky Gates into the Middle Sea. The marshes had been frozen solid as rock where cities had been built to last for ever but now they stood down there deep under water. And southwards, beyond the marshes, Ifrik and its rivers were drying into dust. Why? He did not know. He knew nothing.

  Dann’s thoughts were stumbling as wearily as his feet, he was burdened with the weight of his ignorance. And of his shame. Once, long ago, people knew, they knew it all, but now…

  A man came towards him, tired out, like them all, and Dann called out in Tundra—but saw from the face it was not understood. He tried Mahondi, he tried Agre, and then the odd phrases of the half-dozen languages he knew enough of to say, ‘Where are you from?’ At last one man did stop. The two were alone on the track. Dann pulled out some bread and watched the starving man eat. Then he said, ‘Where are you from?’

  Dann heard syllables he recognised.

  ‘Is that far?’

  ‘I have been walking forty days.’

  ‘Is your country near the end of the Middle Sea?’

  And now a blank face.

  ‘This is the Middle Sea. We are standing on the edge of it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘What do you call this, then?’—Dann indicating the great emptiness just by them.

  ‘We call it the Divide.’

  ‘Dividing what from what?’

  ‘The Lands of the Ice from the dry.’

  ‘Is your land dry?’

  ‘Not like this’—and the man looked with repulsion at the dull low gleam of the marsh near them.

  ‘How far then to the end of the Divide?’

  ‘The end?’

  ‘It must have an end.’

  The man shrugged. He wanted to be on his way. His eyes strayed to Dann’s sack. Dann pulled out the food bag and gave him another bit of bread. The man hid it in his clothes.

  ‘When I was a child I was told my grandfather had walked to see what lands there were beyond ours and found none. He walked many days.’

  And he set off towards the Centre.

  Dann stood there, full of dismay and cursing himself for arrogant stupidity. He had taken it for granted that of course he could walk to the end of this shore; why not? Had he not walked all the way up Ifrik? But how long that had taken…and between him and the end of this shore were wars; these people walking and running, some of them wounded, with bandaged arms and dried blood on them, had run from wars. Did he really want to walk into a war? Into fighting?

  What was he going to do, then? Dann went on, and on, slowly, not finding his pace, as he was continually having to stop because of the parties of refugees coming towards him, and so it was all that day and at evening it was like the last, wet everywhere, the reedy marshes and—this evening—pale mists moving over the water, and the smell even worse, because of the mists. It was getting dark. Dann looked east into the dusk and thought he would never see the end of this coast. What did he think he was doing, why was he here?

  On a patch of smooth hard mud at the edge of the road he squatted to draw with his knife’s tip a circle, then an oval, then a long thin shape, a circle stretched out—the Middle Sea. Every puddle, every pond, every lake had a shore that went round, enclosing water. Why had he wanted to walk to where the shore of the Middle Sea ended, to turn around on itself? Because he wanted to see the Ice Cliffs of Yerrup for himself, that was the reason. Well, there might be easier ways of doing that than walking for another long part of his life, and marching straight into wars and fighting.

  He slid from the edge, as he had done the night before, and landed in a patch of grass where bushes stood about, bent all in one direction, because of the wind from the Ice. He put his sack under his head, his knife ready on his chest, and was pleased with the occasionally appearing moon, which let him keep watch.

  He woke in darkness. A large vague white mass was close to him and the moon appeared, letting him see it was another of the great beasts lying there, its eyes open, looking quietly at him. Dann’s hand, on hi
s knife’s hilt, retreated. This was no enemy. The moon went in. There was a smell of wet fur. The moon came out. What was this beast? Dann had never seen anything like it. Impossible to tell under all that fur what its body was like, but the face was fine, eyes well spaced, a small face surrounded by bursts of white hair. This was a beast for cold; one did not need to be told that; it would not do well on desert sand or anywhere the sun struck down hot. Where did it come from? What was it doing, lying so close? Why was it? Down Dann’s face wet was trickling. There was no mist tonight. Tears. Dann did not cry, but he was crying now, and from loneliness, his terrible loneliness defined because of this companionable beast so close there, a friend. Dann dropped off but woke, slept and roused himself so as not to miss the sweetness of this shared trustful sleep. In the early dawn light he woke and the animal was there, its head on its vast shaggy paws, looking at him with green eyes. Like Griot’s. This was not a wild animal: it was accustomed to people. And it wasn’t hungry; showed no interest in Dann’s provisions.

  Dann slowly stretched his hand towards the animal’s paws, where its head lay. It closed its eyes, in acknowledgement of him, and then again. Dann was crying like a child, and thought, It’s all right, there’s no one to see. The two lay there as the light strengthened, and then the beast’s pointed ears stood back and it listened. There were voices up on the road. At once it got up, and slunk down the slope of scree to where a white skeleton bush stood shaking in the wind. There it hid.

  Dann watched it go, watched his friend go. Then up he leaped, to face the people up there, face what he had to—though he was not sure now what that was.

  With his head just above the edge he watched a group stumbling past, too exhausted to look up and see him. He waited. No one else seemed to be coming. He got back on the track and saw that soon the ground rose dry towards a low hill, with trees. He had to fill his water bottle, if the marshes were ending. He stepped off the track on a dryish edge between pools, and stood, his face to the sun, letting it warm him. He had been dreaming, as he lay with the beast so near, and it had been a bright dream. Mara, yes, he had been dreaming of her because of the sweetness of the beast’s companionship. How strange it was, the visit of that animal, in the night.