Mara and Dann. Doris Lessing

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      She remembered the grave that held hundreds of people, near the hill of two nights ago. Hundreds, Dann had said. She began counting in her head: ten fingers. Then: ten toes. She knew that five twenties made a hundred but after that everything became difficult: only words, words that she used without understanding. It was silent now down the sides of this little hill. She was sleepy. Dann jerked up and said, ‘Sleep.’ She curled up and wished she could fall asleep the way he did, a closing of his eyes and – out. She heard sounds, knew that a wind had risen, and what she had begun to think was hunting lizards was the wind worrying and whining among rocks. She saw Dann standing over her, his knife in his hand, looking out at the dark. In the strong moonlight he seemed smaller, and easy to attack. The other man was staring at him past the fires. Was he thinking that Dann was only a boy and could easily be overthrown? Or was he Kulik and recognised Dann? But how could he? Mara had only just recognised him. And as for her, she still had breasts when he saw her last, and was a girl whom he tried to surprise behind walls and in corners. The wind was lifting the dust about and when it was blown into the low fires it burned, sending up sparks. The dust was what was left of plants, trees – or perhaps the bodies of animals. And people. Mara slept and woke with the light warm on her face. The fires were all out and the travellers on their feet, picking up their belongings. Dann put a piece of bread into her hand. She gulped a mouthful of water. Kulik – but was it he? – was watching them both. When everyone began filing down towards the track, he went first to make it clear he was the leader, and looking at Dann to challenge him; but like yesterday Mara and Dann came last. Near the track was a mat of dusty brown hair from the woman the lizard had eaten, with blood on it. The two robbed by Mara and Dann were not far from the end, walking stiffly, one foot after another, and seemed to be asleep with their eyes open. Mara thought, They had so little food left that what we took wouldn’t make all that difference, but she knew the two would not be walking like that, on their last legs, if they had eaten the food that was now making strength in Dann and her.

      They all walked on, slowly, while the sun rose up, hot. Then Mara saw beside the road the little straggle of half-dead leaves on a brown stalk that told her that under it was a clutch of yellow roots. She showed Dann; but he did not remember how they grew. If these two fell out and were alone on that track it would be dangerous, yet all around now she could see the brown stalks and leaves. She called loudly, ‘There’s food here.’ Some people turned, turned back, indifferent. Others stopped. Mara took her digging stick from her sack, and dug with it in the hard earth, while Dann stood guard, and the others were stopping and coming back. She hoped that the roots would not be deep – sometimes they were as deep in the earth as she was tall. She reached the first roots at the depth of her arm, and pulled out the dusty brown balls, used Dann’s knife to cut one, and showed how the yellow liquid dropped from it. At once all these people were scrambling around among the dead grasses, digging with anything they could find. Into Mara and Dann’s sacks went ten of the roots, five each, after they had eaten as much as they could. Mara saw the two robbed ones, who were dying, simply sitting by the road: they did not have the strength to dig. Dann knew what she wanted to do, and this time did not stop her: everyone was so preoccupied with their digging they wouldn’t notice. Mara gave the two a root each, cut open, and saw that they had hardly the strength to suck them. Although it was Mara who had seen the tell-tale vines and alerted everyone, now she was being pushed out of the way and kept at a distance from them.

      The man from last night was organising the effort, allotting the vines and the sharing out of the roots. He hardly looked at Mara and Dann standing by, watching, but when it was over, and the travellers were on the move again, he stood staring at them, glaring. He hated them. Whether he knew who they were, or didn’t; whether he was Kulik, or wasn’t…he loathed the two youngsters and intended them to know it.

      There was a coughing, grumbling roar and from behind them came a skimmer, low over the track, turning up dust and chaff, and the raw earth from the root diggings that looked as if miners had been prospecting there. Everyone scattered off the track, and there were mutterings of hate, then shouts of rage, as the machine came level. In it were five Mahondis, all looking very serious, worried – but Mara could not see if her friend was there. The machine was low: if the travellers had wanted they could have pulled it down on to the ground. She knew the skimmer should be much higher, about treetop level; she knew that inside it must be comfortable seats…How did she know these things? She only just remembered travelling in them. It took a long time for the clouds of dust to settle: on either side of the track were drifts of pale, thick dust. As a child she had looked out from the windows of the skimmers at the Rock People and never thought how they felt about the dust, or how much they must hate the skimmers and everyone that travelled in them.

      They all walked on, hardly visible to one another in the dust, and then up a rise, and saw that down the other side the skimmer was on the track, the dust already settling around it. All the crowd ran up to it: inside the Mahondis sat, frightened to death, afraid to get out and lighten the machine. If they did, they would be killed, they knew. And then the pilot struggled with his levers and gauges and got the skimmer up quite high, well above their reaching arms. It trundled on, making grinding and creaking noises, and then it fell – it crashed. At once all the travellers rushed up, peered in, reached in. Some of the Mahondis were dead, but not all; there were groans and cries and blood, but what the travellers were after were the provisions they carried. What food there was soon found itself distributed among the travellers – kept by whoever had grabbed it. Containers of water came out too, but there were only two small ones. And then the machine exploded, and the people near it were killed, together with anyone left alive inside. The skimmer lay in pieces all over the road and on either side of it, and black smoke went up. Ten of the travellers had been killed. The rest, thirty or so, stood shaking their fists and cursing the machine and the Mahondis. Mara knew she could have been among them: it might have been her head, or her arm, lying there in the dust. If she had accepted the invitation of the two men to travel with them, then she would be dead now.

      She was waiting for Dann to say, Mara aren’t you glad I ran away? Aren’t you glad I said no? – But while he stood there, as always alert on his two feet planted slightly apart, gripping the pole on his shoulder with one hand and his knife with the other, he did not seem to be thinking anything of the kind. He did not respond to things as ordinary people did. Surely he ought to be thinking now of their escape? She said to him, pleadingly, ‘Dann – Dann?’ But he turned to give her his close, acute look, and then his narrow smile – and he was already moving away from the crash. Was it that he had been near death so often that he did not care about it?

      Dann waited until all the travellers were back in their places: Kulik or, at any rate, the leader, at the head, the rest in their families behind, and then he and Mara at the very end. Behind them they could see that, across the space between here and the hill they had spent the night on, lizards and dragons were waddling. Big, fat, bulging-with-flesh beasts, the size of a big man. They had smelled the blood.

      Now they were walking through flat country and the big, green trees were few, so the underground rivers must be dry or perhaps had never run here. Everywhere stood the pale, dead trees. At sunset, the time to stop, there was no hill or high place. They would have to stay the night in the open, with miles of emptiness around them, the moon showing where they were. It was still a bright moon, though only half of what it had been.

      Kulik – but Dann said he thought it wasn’t Kulik – told everyone to get into a big circle, with their faces outwards and their sticks and weapons ready. He was taking command because he thought that last night Dann had been trying to be a leader, and he kept giving Dann hard stares that said, Don’t you try to challenge me.

      There was nothing to burn, only a little grass. They would have to forget fires for that night. They did not listen to Kulik, because they could not trust anyone, and were again in their little groups. Near Dann and Mara were the couple that had the child, who looked about four but was really ten years old. It was very still in its mother’s arms. Her face was hard and angry. She carried the dead child well away from the crowd, which was already settling to sleep, and laid it on the СКАЧАТЬ