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

by Doris Lessing

  Dann was looking into a clear pool, with some weed drifting in it. There were three masses of—well, what? Three masses of whitish substance, just below the water. Two large masses and a smaller one…bubbles were coming from it, a muzzle, pointing up…they were animals, like his night’s companion, they were drowned, but wait—bubbles meant life; that smaller thing there, it was alive. He knelt on the very edge of the marshy pool, risking the edge giving way under him, and pulled at the beast, brought it close to his feet, and lifted up the weight of it with a jerk beside him, nearly falling in himself. Dann raised up the sodden mass by the hind legs and watched water stream from the pointed nose. Water was streaming from everywhere. Surely it must be dead? There was not a flicker of the resistance of life, of animation. And still water was pouring from the mouth, from between new little white teeth. The eyes were half open under mats of wet fur. This was a young animal, the cub of those two cloudy masses of white lying so close. Perhaps they weren’t dead either? But Dann had his hands too full, literally, with this young beast. Which suddenly sneezed, a choking spluttering sneeze. Dann put his arm round the heavy dense wetness and held it so the head was down, to let the water out. It was so cold, the air, a heavy deadly cold and the animal was a cold weight. Dann did not feel cold because he was used to exposure, but he knew this animal would die if he couldn’t warm it. He laid it on some grass tussocks, between the pools, and in his sack found the bundle of clothes he always carried. He used one to wipe the beast’s wet skin, where lumps of wet hair lay matted, and then wrapped it in layers of cloth. What was needed here was blankets, thick layers of warmth, and he had nothing. Surely it should be shivering? He could not feel breath. He opened his jacket, of layered cotton, that was warm enough for him, and buttoned the beast against him, head on his shoulder, feet nearly at his knees. The weight of sodden cold made him shudder. What was he going to do? This was a young thing, it needed milk. Dann stood, holding the beast to stop it sliding down, and looked at the two foamy submerged masses which would lie there for days in this cold water before going putrid. Unless something came to eat them?

  Marsh birds? There were plenty of small marsh animals. He couldn’t concern himself with them; he doubted if he could have saved the great beasts, even if they did have life in them. He doubted whether he could help this one. He stepped carefully between the marsh tussocks to the path, afraid of overbalancing with this dead weight, and wondered if he should return to the Centre? But that was a good two days’ fast walking to the west. What if he ran? He could not run, with that weight on him. Ahead was the track, winding along the edge of the cliff, but wait—the ground did rise there ahead and where there were trees must, surely, be people. Despite the weight Dann tried to run, but staggered to a stop, and felt against his chest a small but steady beat. At the same time it began sucking at his shoulder. It wanted to live and Dann had nothing, but nothing, to give it. He was crying again. What was wrong with him? He did not cry. This was an animal, out of luck, and he had watched so many die, with dry eyes. But he could not bear it, this young thing that wanted to live and was so helpless. Although the weight was giving him cramps in his legs, he resumed his stumbling run and then, ahead, the dark edge of the wood showed a path going up and, as he thought, people—the beast stopped sucking and whimpered. Dann ran up the path, running for a life, and when ahead he saw a house, more of a shack, with reeds for a roof and reeds for walls, he clutched the animal, because his now fast bounds and leaps were shaking it too much.

  At the doorway of the shack stood a woman, and she had a knife in her hand. ‘No, no,’ shouted Dann. ‘Help, we need help.’ He was using Mahondi, but what need to say anything? She stood her ground, as Dann arrived beside her, panting, weeping, and opened his jacket and showed her the soaking bundle. She stood aside, put the knife down on an earth ledge on an inside wall, and took the beast from him. It was heavy and she staggered to a bed or couch, covered with blankets and hides. He saw how nimbly she stripped off the soaking clothes, which she let fall to the earth floor. She wrapped the beast in dry blankets.

  Dann watched. She was frantic, like him, knowing how close the animal was to death. He was looking around the interior of the shack, a rough enough place, though Dann’s experienced eye saw it had all the basics, a jug of water, bread, a great reed candle, a reed table, reed chairs.

  Then she spoke, in Thores, ‘Stay with it. I’ll get some milk.’ She was a Thores: a short, stocky, vigorous woman, with rough black hair.

  He said in Thores, ‘It’s all right.’ Apparently not noticing he spoke her language, she went out. Dann felt the animal’s heart. It did beat, just, a faint, I want to live, I want to live. It was not so cold now.

  The woman returned with some milk in a cup and a spoon, and said, ‘Hold its head up.’ Dann did as he was told. The woman poured a few drops into the mouth between those sharp little teeth, and waited. There was no swallow. She poured a little more. It choked. But it began a desperate sucking with its wet muddy mouth. And so the two sat there, on either side of the animal, which might or might not be dying, and for a long time dripped milk into its mouth and hoped that would be enough to give it life. Surely it should shiver soon? The woman took off the blanket, now soaked, and replaced it with another. The animal was coughing and sneezing.

  As Dann had done, she lifted it by its back legs, still wrapped in the blanket, and held it to see if water would run out. A mix of water and milk came out. Quite a lot of liquid. ‘It must be full of water,’ she whispered. They were speaking in low voices, yet they were alone and there were no other huts or shacks nearby.

  Both thought the animal would die, it was so limp, so chilly, despite the blanket. Each knew the other was giving up hope, but they kept at it. And both were crying as they laboured.

  ‘Have you lost a child?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s it. I lost my child, he died of the marsh sickness.’

  He understood she had been going out of the room to express her milk to feed the beast. He wondered why she did not put the animal to her breast now, but saw the sharp teeth, and remembered how they had hurt him when the animal sucked at his shoulder.

  Such was their closeness by now that he put his hand on her strong full breast, and thought that if Mara had had her child, she too would have breasts like this. It was hard to imagine.

  He said, ‘It must hurt, having that milk.’

  ‘Yes,’ and she began to cry harder, because of his understanding.

  And so they laboured on through the day and then it was evening. During that time they saw only the beast and its struggle for life, yet they did manage to exchange information.

  Her name was Kass and she had a husband who had gone off into the towns of Tundra to look for work. He was a Tundra citizen but had made trouble for himself in a knife fight and had to look out for the police. They had been living from hand to mouth on fish from the marsh and sometimes traders came past with grains and vegetables. Dann heard from Kass a tale of the kind he knew so well. She had been in the army, a soldier, with the Thores troops, and had run away, just like him and Mara, when the Agre Southern Army had invaded Shari. The chaos was such that she imagined she had got away with it, but now the Hennes Army was short of personnel and was searching for its runaway soldiers. ‘That war,’ she said, ‘it was so dreadful.’

  ‘I know,’ said Dann, ‘I was there.’

  ‘You can’t imagine how bad it was, how bad.’

  ‘Yes, I can. I was there.’ And so he told his tale, but censored because he wasn’t going to tell her he had been General Dann, Tisitch Dann, of the Agre Army, who had invaded Shari and from whom she had run.

  ‘It was horrible. My mother was killed and my brothers. And it was all for nothing.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘And now Hennes recruiting officers are out everywhere, to enlist anyone they can talk into going back with them. And they are looking for people like me. But the marshes are a protection. Everyone is afraid of
the marshes.’

  And all that time of their talk the animal breathed in shallow gasps and did not open its eyes.

  The shack filled with dark. She lit the great reed floor candle. The light wavered over the reed ceiling, the reed walls. The chilly damp of the marshes crept into the room. She shut the door and bolted it.

  ‘Some of those poor wretches running from the wars try and break in here but I give as good as I get.’

  He could believe it: she was a strong muscled woman—and she had been a soldier.

  She lit a small fire of wood. There was nothing generous about that fire, and Dann could see why: probably this rise with its little wood was the only source of fuel for a long way walking in every direction around. She gave Dann some soup made of marsh fish. The animal was lying very still, while its sides went up and down.

  And now it began to cry. It whimpered and cried, while its muzzle searched for the absent teats of its mother, drowned in the marsh.

  ‘It wants its mother,’ said Kass, and lifted it and cradled it, though it was too big to be a baby for her. Dann watched and wondered why he could not stop crying. Kass actually handed him a cloth for his eyes and remarked, ‘And so who have you lost?’

  ‘My sister,’ he said, ‘my sister,’ but did not say she had married and that was why he had lost her: it sounded babyish and he knew it.

  He finished his soup and said, ‘Perhaps it would like some soup?’

  ‘I’ll give him some soup tomorrow.’ That meant Kass believed the creature would live.

  The cub kept dropping off to sleep, and then waking and crying.

  Kass lay on the bed holding the beast, and Dann lay down too, the animal between them. He slept and woke to see it sucking her fingers. She was dipping them in her milk. Dann shut his eyes, so as not to embarrass her. When he woke next, both woman and animal were asleep.

  In the morning she gave it more milk and it seemed better, though it was very weak and ill.

  The day was like yesterday, they were on the bed with the beast, feeding it mouthfuls of milk, then of soup.

  By now she had told him that because of the ice mountains melting over Yerrup, there was a southwards migration of all kinds of animals and that these animals, called snow dogs, were the most often seen.

  How was it possible that animals were living among all that ice?

  No one knew. ‘Some say the animals come from a long way east and they use a route through Yerrup, to avoid the wars that are always going on along this coast, east of here.’

  ‘Some say, some say,’ said Dann. ‘Why can’t we know?’

  ‘We know they are here, don’t we?’ The animals Dann had seen when sleeping out on the side of the cliff were snow dogs. This was a young snow dog, a pup. Hard to match this dirty little beast with the great beasts he had seen, and their fleecy white shags of hair. He was far from white. His hair was now a dirty mat, with bits of marsh weed and mud in it.

  Kass wrung out a cloth in warm water and tried to clean the pup, but he hated it and cried.

  The helpless crying was driving Dann wild with…well, what? Pain of some kind. He could not bear it, and sat with his head in his hands. Kass tried to shush the animal when it started off again.

  And so another day passed, and another night and at last the snow pup seemed really to open its eyes and look about. He wasn’t far off a baby, but must have been walking with his parents when they fell into the marshes.

  ‘They must have been chased into the marsh,’ said Kass. People were afraid of them. But they did not attack people, they seemed to want to be friendly. People were saying, suppose the snow dogs become a pack, instead of just ones and twos? They would be dangerous then. Yet there were people who used them as guards. They were intelligent. It was easy to tame them.

  Kass warmed water, put the pup into it and quickly swirled off the dirt. It seemed to like the warmth. After his bath he was white and fleecy, with large furry paws and a thick ruff round his neck: his intelligent little face looked out from a frame of white ruff.

  Then, one day, he actually barked, as if trying out his voice.

  ‘It sounds like Ruff, Ruff, Ruff,’ said Kass. ‘We’ll call him Ruff.’

  And now, at night, they set the pup on one side, wrapped in a blanket, instead of lying between them, and they held each other and made love. Both knew they were substitutes for absent loves—her husband, for Kass. For him, that was not easy. Kira was, had been, his lover, but it was Mara he thought of.

  Suppose Kass’s husband came back suddenly?

  She said, yes, she was thinking of that. And what did Dann propose to do next?

  Dann said he was going to walk, walk right to the end of this side of the Middle Sea.

  He was trying her out and she at once said that he was crazy, he didn’t know what he was talking about. And there were at least two wars going on not far along the track. When people came through from there, they brought news, and war was the news they brought.

  And Kass knew much more about the Bottom Sea than he did. The opposite north shore did not run in a straight line from the Rocky Gates to—whatever was the end, where it turned to become the southern shore. It was much broken with fingers and fringes of land, and down in the Bottom Sea were a lot of islands, large and small. And that was how the snow dogs came across from the north shore. They swam from island to island.

  So what did Dann want to do?

  He wanted to walk. He needed to walk. That meant leaving here.

  With every day the snow pup was stronger. He sneezed a lot: there was still water in his lungs, they thought. He was a pretty, fluffy young snow dog, who never took his green eyes off them. He loved to lie beside Kass on the bed, but liked better to be with Dann. He snuggled up to Dann and put his head on Dann’s shoulder, as he had been on that walk, or rather run, to get here.

  ‘He loves you,’ said Kass. ‘He knows you rescued him.’

  Dann did not want to leave the snow pup. He did not want to leave Kass but what was the use of that? She had a husband. He loved that animal. That angry fighting heart of Dann melted into peace and love when the snow dog lay by him and licked his face or sucked his fingers. But Dann had to move on. At first he had thought the snow pup would go with him, but that was impossible. Ruff was being fed, carefully, on thin soup and bits of fish and milk, not Kass’s now, but a goat’s, who lived in its pen and bleated because it wanted company.

  Ruff could not travel with Dann, and Dann had to move on.

  When Dann set forth, the pup wailed and toddled after him along the path. Kass had to run and try to lift him to carry him back. Kass was crying. The snow pup was crying. And Dann cried too.

  He told himself that when he was with Kass and the snow pup he had cried most of the time. But he was not someone who cried, he repeated. ‘I don’t cry,’ he said aloud, running faster to get away from the snow pup’s wailing. ‘I never have, so now I must stop.’ Then he realised he had found his pace, he was going at a good loping run along the track, and slowed to a fast walk which would sustain him without tiring. It was a wonderful release for him, and he stopped crying and went on, marshes on one side and cliffs on the other, without stopping or changing pace. No refugees came towards him now. That meant the wars had ended, did it? The fighting was over?

  Dark came and he slid over the edge to find a bush he could hide in, or a cleft in the rocks. He dreamed of Kass’s kindly bed, and of her, and of the snow pup, but woke dry-eyed, and had a mouthful or two of her provisions, and returned to the path, the sun full in his face. He saw the marshes were less. By that night on his right hand were moors, and he slept not on a sloping cliff face but on a dry rock under sweet-smelling bushes. To be rid of the dank reek of the marshes…he took in great breaths of clean healthy air and so it was all that day and the next, and he thought he must be careful, or he’d run straight into the fighting, if it still went on. And all that time no people had come towards him along the track. Then he saw them, two—well, what wer
e they? Children? When they came close, stumbling, their knees bending under them, he saw they were youngsters, all bone, with the hollow staring eyes of extreme hunger. Their skins…now, what colour was that? Grey? Were there grey people? No, their skins had gone ashy, and their lips were whitish and cracked. They did not seem to see him; they were going past.

  These two were like him and Mara, long ago, ghostlike with deprivation, but still upright. As they came level the girl—it was a girl?—yes, he thought so—nearly fell and the boy put out his hand to catch her, but in a mechanical, useless way. She fell. Dann picked her up and it was like lifting a bundle of thin sticks. He set her by the road on the side where the moors began. The boy stood vaguely, not understanding. Dann put his arm round him, led him to the grass verge, put him near the girl, who sat staring, breathing harshly. He knelt by them, opened his sack, took out some bread, poured water on it to make it easier to eat. He put a morsel in the girl’s mouth. She did not eat it: had reached that stage of starvation where the stomach no longer recognises its function. He tried with the boy—the same. They smelled horrible. Their breath was nasty. Then he tried out his languages, first the ones he knew well, then the odd phrases, and they did not respond at all, either not knowing any of them, or too ill to hear him.

  They sat exactly where he had set them, and stared, that was all. Dann thought that he and Mara had never been so far gone they could not respond to danger, had lost the will to survive. He believed these two were dying. To reach the Centre would take many days of walking. They could reach Kass, after a few days, but would be met by her broad sharp knife. Beyond them the moors stretched towards Tundra’s main towns, a long way off. And if they did manage to get themselves up and walk, and reached the marshes, they would probably fall in and drown, or tumble over the edge of the cliffs.