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

by Doris Lessing

  ‘When I was young I was captured by a gang of dealers in poppy and ganja—I was forced to take poppy and I was very ill then. I have the scars of the poppy on me—as I think you must know.’

  Silence; a deep and powerful attention.

  Dann had picked up a red fleece on his way out to the square and had held it in his hand, and now he shifted it into his arms and stood sheltering it, like a child: like something young that needed protecting. There was a breath of sympathy from the soldiers, a sigh.

  ‘So I know very well how poppy gets a grip on you.

  ‘It had a grip on me.

  ‘It still has a grip on me.

  ‘I do not believe that this will be the last time it makes me—ill.’

  Between each quiet, and almost casual, statement Dann waited, and took his time looking over the faces. Not a sound.

  ‘Griot—where are you?’

  Griot stepped out from the doorway that led to Dann’s room and came forward to stand in front of Dann, where he saluted and, at Dann’s gesture, stood beside him.

  ‘You all know Griot. This is Captain Griot. That is what you will call him. Now, I am speaking for Captain Griot and for myself, General Dann. If any one of you, any one wearing the red fleece, catches me with poppy, it will be your duty to arrest me and take me at once to Captain Griot—or anyone else who is in command. You will take no notice of anything I say or do when under the influence of poppy. This is my order. You will arrest me.’

  He paused a long time here. Ruff, standing between Griot and Dann, looked up at Griot’s face and at Dann’s, and then barked softly.

  A ripple of laughter.

  ‘Yes, and Ruff says so too. And now for you. If any one of you is found with poppy, in the camp, let alone smoking it, you will be arrested and severely punished.’

  Here a tension communicated itself from Griot to Dann, who said, ‘The degree of punishment has not yet been decided. It will be announced.’

  A movement of unease through the soldiers.

  ‘You will remember, I am sure, that you chose to come here, to the Centre. No one forced you. No one stops you from leaving. But while you are here, you will obey orders. And now, look to Captain Griot for orders and for what you need. I am not well yet and I shall rest, though I am sure I will be well soon. Captain, dismiss them.’

  Dann retired back to the great hall and Griot’s working table, where Griot joined him, with the snow dog.

  Dann sat carefully, disposing his so thinly covered bones among the folds of his Sahar robe, which had been Mara’s, though Griot did not know this.

  Griot waited and, when Dann said nothing, asked, ‘And how are you proposing to punish, sir?’

  ‘I thought we could dismiss any soldier caught with poppy.’

  ‘No, that is how I was punishing the looters from the Centre, and all that happens is that they became gangs of outlaws and thieves.’

  ‘So, what else?’

  ‘I have put offenders into a punishment hut on half-rations but, you see, some of these people have starved for weeks, and our half-rations and a warm hut are hardly a punishment.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘When I was in the army in Venn, they branded offenders with marks denoting their offence.’

  ‘No,’ said Dann at once, ‘no.’ His hand went to his waist where the scars were.

  ‘No,’ said Griot, ‘I agree. When I was in the army in Theope—that’s on the coast, and it’s a cruel place—they flogged offenders, in front of the whole army.’

  ‘No, no flogging. I’ve seen it. No.’

  ‘This is an army—General.’

  ‘Yes, it is, and congratulations. And how are you going to enforce discipline?’

  ‘Sir, in my view there is not much we can do. This is an army but it is a voluntary one. What we are depending on is…’

  ‘Well, out with it.’

  ‘It’s you—sir. No, I know you don’t like that, General, but it’s true. Everyone is waiting—for you. What we lack is space. You can see that. We are badly overcrowded now. There are parts of the Centre fit for occupation, but if we had the soldiers in it, they would be a rabble in no time.’

  ‘Yes, you are right. And then?’

  ‘And the food. You have no idea what a job it is, feeding everyone.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘We’ve got a road zigzagging down to the Bottom Sea and the fish comes up that. We have fishing villages all along the shores of the Bottom Sea now—well, for a good little distance. We have our farms on the slopes of the mountain. The animals are doing well. But there’s never enough of anything.’

  ‘So, it’s Tundra. I get your message, Griot. So what are your spies saying?’

  ‘There will be civil war. There’s already fighting in some places out on the eastern edges of Tundra.’ He saw the strain on Dann’s face. Dann was trembling. He seemed hardly able to keep his seat.

  ‘They want us to invade and keep order and—they want you, sir.’

  ‘A Mahondi general?’

  ‘I don’t think they remember that. To tell the truth it is hard to understand how they see it. You are a bit of a legend, sir.’

  ‘What a prize, Griot. What a general. What a ruler—that’s what they want, I suppose.’

  Griot’s eyes were going to overflow if he wasn’t careful. He could hardly bear to see Dann sit shaking there: he was actually putting his weight on the snow dog, for support. Griot could not stop thinking about the handsome young captain in Agre, or, for that matter, the healthy Dann who had returned from his wanderings so recently. And here was this sick unhappy man who looked as if he were seeing ghosts, or hearing them.

  ‘You’ll get better, Dann—sir.’

  ‘Will I? I suppose I will. And then…’ Here there was a good long pause and Griot had no idea what Dann might say next. ‘Griot, do you ever think of—of the cities—the cities under the marshes? Did you know they were all copies of the cities that long ago—long, long ago—were all over Yerrup? That was before the Ice. They were built here on permafrost. That is, permanent frost, that would last for ever—that is how we think, you see, Griot, that the things we have will last. But they don’t last. The cities sank down into the water. All of us, we live up here and just down there are the old dead cities.’ Now he was making himself lean forward to hold Griot’s eyes, trying to make what he was saying reach Griot who, he was sure, was not taking it in.

  ‘Dann, sir, you’ve forgotten, I’ve had bad times too. And when you’re frightened or you’re hungry you have all kinds of bad thoughts. But there’s no point in that, is there? It doesn’t get you anywhere.’

  ‘No point in starting again. Yes, Griot, exactly; no point. Over and over again, all the effort and the fighting and the hoping, but it ends in the Ice, or in the cities sinking down out of sight into the mud.’

  Now Griot leaned across the table and took Dann’s hand. It was cold and it shook. ‘It’s the poppy, sir. It’s still in you. You should go to bed, have a rest, sleep it off.’

  The snow dog did not like Griot touching Dann and he growled. Griot removed his hand.

  ‘We live in these ruins, Griot, these ruins, full of things we don’t know how to use.’

  ‘We know how to make some of them. And there is something else I discovered while you were away. I’d like to talk to you about it when you wake up.’

  ‘Rubbish, ancient rubbish, Griot. I had the right idea when I set fire to it. No, I won’t do it again, don’t worry.’

  ‘There are things here you haven’t seen.’

  ‘Mara and I explored the place.’

  ‘There’s a hidden place. The old people didn’t know about it. They didn’t care about all that. All they cared about was you and Mara—well, that’s the past.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘But the servants—the Centre had hereditary servants.’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘Yes. They knew the Centre and the hidden things. They never t
old the old people. Only the servants knew. And there are things…’

  ‘More old rubbish.’

  ‘No, wonders. You’ll see.’

  Dann got up unsteadily, his weight on the snow dog who adapted himself to him.

  ‘And you haven’t heard what is going on at the Farm.’

  ‘Do I want to hear it? Yes, of course I have to hear it.’

  He stood by the table, balancing himself there with one hand, but his weight was on Ruff’s back. He listened.

  ‘But my child isn’t in danger—Rhea, you say? Because it is Kira’s.’

  ‘It is Mara’s child who is in danger. But Leta and Donna—they never let Tamar out of their sight.’

  ‘I was going to suggest you ask Leta to come. She has all that knowledge of medicines.’

  Griot knew that there were people in the camp with this knowledge, or some, but he did not want to discourage Dann’s interest, so he said, ‘I’ll send for Leta. Donna can keep watch on Mara’s child.’

  Dann said, ‘If Shabis goes back to Agre, the child could go with him.’

  Griot repeated what Shabis had said.

  ‘Then…that’s it,’ said Dann, shaking off these problems, because they were too much for him—as Griot could see.

  Dann walked to his quarters, with that cautious steadiness people use when they are afraid of falling. The snow dog went with him.

  Griot sat on in the empty hall. The airy apertures of its upper parts showed a light snow whirling about the sky.

  Snow: and that mass of people out there he was responsible for might never have seen it. Against extreme cold all they had was fleecy red blankets. Soon they would be streaming into the hall to complain: and so it was, in they came. How were they to make fires when there was no firewood, and reeds burned so fast they were ash before they gave out warmth? Well, it made a change from the problem of too many people in too small a space.

  He was expecting Dann to rejoin him: it was his need that made him think so. So much weight on him, Griot, so many difficulties. But Dann did not emerge and when Griot went to see, he was lying as still as a stunned fish and seemed hardly to breathe. The guards were dozing, the snow dog lying stretched out asleep beside him.

  It occurred to Griot that he must postpone his expectations of Dann. Perhaps next day, or the next…Griot had plenty to think about. He was rehearsing how he would report his discoveries.

  When Dann had gone on his walk to the east, Griot had decided to explore the Centre’s resources. This plan lasted a day or two. Griot had had no idea of the vastness of the place: it would take too long. It was immediately obvious that some parts had been so thoroughly plundered there was nothing to hope for from them. Halls so long and wide you could hardly see their edges, were empty: these had held guns, weapons, of the kind to be seen in armies in every part of Ifrik. What had been left were samples of what had gone. In a space that could have housed an army would be displayed a single sword of workmanship which no one could match now: a musket; a bow made of unknown wood; guns Griot had seen in use, that fired iron balls; but of course many of these had gone too. Empty halls: and the need for space. But these vast spaces had leaking roofs and in some places puddles that were not from the roof: excuse enough not to put them into use. The sheds and huts the soldiers lived in were drier and warmer than these frigid leaking halls. Many of the fugitives and outcasts that had found hiding places in the Centre had sneaked themselves places in the soldiers’ camp and Griot pretended ignorance.

  Other halls, as vast, were full of artefacts whose use was now known, and stood in a crammed order that had not been touched for—but Griot did not enjoy talk of thousands of years.

  The places that interested him had machines that he believed might be copied and used now, for agriculture, or boats of intriguing designs. He put some soldiers on to examine all these, and found—not for the first time—what a treasure of expertise and skills were in that crowd of runaways out there, now his army.

  He left them to it, demanding that they should memorise what they had found, well enough to describe it all to Dann.

  He had become absorbed in an unexpected direction: the water that was welling up, so it seemed, from deep under the Centre.

  He asked for volunteers to dig, who had some knowledge of wells, or shafts, and within a few days they had come to say they had found layers of wood.

  They had stood all around a pit and looked down at beams laid in a cross-hatch, on which had been built foundations of stone.

  First of all, the wood. There were no big trees for many days’ walking in any direction. On the mountain were light trees, useless for building. These beams would have been heavy, even before they were soaked. Wood. Anywhere they dug, and not too deep down, were beams, and no one, none of these people from so many different countries, had seen trees that could have provided this wood. In one spot, the highest place in the Centre, Griot put the soldiers to dig further and they came on layers of wood and then more, deeper still. Once there had been forests here. Probably if you dug deeply enough into the marshes there would be trees lying pickled in that sour water. And then there was the stone. The Centre, or parts of it, was built of stone. Other parts were of bricks made of mud and reeds. Layers of time here: Griot knew that this interested Dann and so he stored up the information that was being brought to him by the soldiers. So much. All were interested, in their various ways, and some knowledgeable. Griot, who had never had a day’s schooling until he reached Agre and Shabis’s lectures for the troops, listened while his soldiers talked of things far above his head. Griot did not pretend to knowledge he did not have and was eager to listen—for Dann, who would soon return and be ready to hear all this. Griot remembered Mara, and how she talked of the Centre and of its stores of information, its lessons, and that is why he was sure about Dann. But Dann did not return.

  All the wells and pits—and this was true anywhere in the Centre—held water. The northern edges of the Centre were sinking into wet. The truth was, and there was no evading it, the whole enormous expanse of the Centre was undermined with water, and it was not far down, either.

  And then something else happened, and its importance was brought to Griot by some of his soldiers, who had been scribes and teachers in their native lands.

  There were, and there were bound to be, tales of ghosts: so many peoples had lived here, builders in wood from long, long ago, builders in stone, generations upon generations, and of course ghosts walked the Centre, and people inclined that way had seen them. And there were tales, that Griot took as little notice of as he did of the ghosts, of a secret place in the Centre so well hidden no one could find it without a guide. It was people from far away in the east who took this kind of thing seriously: they had heard it all as part of their tales of the Centre, which had been known everywhere, because of its fame and its influence. Griot listened to soldiers whom he had to respect, for their education, talking about sand libraries, and sand records. He had heard Mara use these words, not knowing what they meant. Well, then, so there was this hidden place, but it was hidden, wasn’t it? And then, one of the refugees, newly arrived, said that he had been told as part of the stories he was brought up with, that the secrets of the Centre were known by its servants.

  The old princess, Felissa, was alive, but demented, and when Griot took a Mahondi speaker to visit her she screeched at both of them, not to tell lies. If there were secrets in the Centre she would have known them.

  Two servants had looked after Felissa. One, the old man, had died, but the old woman was sharp and alert and suspicious.

  Griot and his Mahondi interpreter said that they knew there was a secret place and that she, as an hereditary servitor of the old couple, must know about it.

  She said it was all lies.

  Griot cut this by saying that Dann had instructed him to get the secret, and emphasised his command by standing over her with a long deadly knife—he had found it rusting in one of the museums and had had it sharpened.
<
br />   The old servant might have been as near death as made no difference, but she was afraid for her life, and agreed to show Griot the way. At first she wriggled and evaded and said she had forgotten, and that anyway she believed the place had fallen in, and there was a curse on anyone who told the secret, but at last the fact that she was going to tell the truth showed in her terror: she believed in this curse, and wept and whined as she led the way.

  The Centre could be viewed perhaps as a pot being shaped on a wheel, its shape changing, then changing again. Long ago—but the phrase meant a stretch of time shorter than the great age of the Centre—someone—who?—had ordered builders—who?—to make a place hard to find. Walls curved and evaded, disappeared as other walls intervened, and no wall was made of the same substance as its neighbour. Inside formidable weights of stone were long slim bricks made of clay and reed, that became stone again, and a wall had patterns on it you could memorise, but in a moment the patterns had changed, and slid into other messages, and, it seemed, other languages. The walls were like a magician’s tricks: designed to hold your attention while they did something else. No matter how carefully the invader approached a place, which he had been inveigled into thinking must be the right one, somehow he was deflected and found himself where he had started.

  Griot had taken just one soldier with him, a man from the east, and both followed the weeping and sniffling old woman, never taking their eyes off her, so easy was it to believe she shared the deceiving properties of the walls, that slid, and slipped away, and misled. That clever old builder, or school of builders, knew how to make fools of intruders. Though Griot was holding plans of where he had been in his mind, there was a moment when he knew he and his soldier were lost: if the old woman chose to leave them here, they might not be found again. They were deep under masses of stone. Griot stopped, stopped the old woman, made her retreat with him until he recognised a mark he had made on a stone, then advanced again, with her in front, the interpreter sweating and afraid. And now, this time, there was a place where walls slid past each other so cunningly you could hardly see a gap, because it was concealed by an outjut of old brick, but Griot and his companion did slide in, watching how the old woman had to bend and slide, and then at last he began to see what was hidden. But he did not understand anything.