The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. Doris Lessing

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      Griot went off and returned with a sticky black lump which he showed to Dann. ‘It’s poppy,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep.’

      At this Dann shot up, and grabbed Griot by the shoulders and shook him. With a terrible laugh he shouted, ‘So, you want to kill me.’

      Griot had seldom smoked the stuff, he did not care for it. He had no idea what Dann meant; Dann saw that anxious puzzled face and let him go.

      ‘It did nearly kill me once,’ he said and, of his own accord, lay down again.

      ‘The soldiers use it. They burn it. They like the fumes.’

      ‘Then forbid it.’

      ‘There’s not much of it in the camp.’

      ‘I said – forbid it. That’s an order, Griot.’ He sounded sane enough.

      Griot covered Dann’s legs with a blanket and said, ‘Call me, if you want me,’ and went out.

      He sat on the bed in the room next door and heard howling. Was that Ruff? No, it was Dann, and Ruff was whining in sympathy. Griot put his head in his hands and listened. At last there was silence. He crept to the door; Dann was asleep, his arms round the snow dog’s neck. Ruff was not asleep.

      Now Dann was ill, and it went on, and time went on, and Griot looked after Dann, not knowing if what he was doing was right. Yet Dann did take some responsibility for himself. First, he told Griot that if he ever asked for poppy Griot must refuse. ‘That’s an order, Griot.’ He demanded to be kept supplied with jugs of the beer the soldiers made, alcoholic if enough of it was drunk, and he stayed in his room, sometimes walking about, sometimes lying on the bed, and he talked to himself or to Mara, or to the snow dog. He kept himself drunk. When he walked about, Ruff went with him, step for step, and at night Ruff lay close, and licked his hands and face. Dann told Griot he must call Ruff to go out, have his meals and run around a little. Ruff went willingly with Griot and he made the acquaintance of the other snow dogs – a tricky thing this, because Ruff had not been with others of his kind. But they got on well enough, provided Ruff kept his distance. He never became one of their pack. He always wanted to return to Dann. Weeks passed. Griot was thinking that now was the time to invade the Tundra cities; all the news he was getting confirmed this, but he needed Dann because he was General Dann and known through all of Tundra. And, too, Griot needed Dann for his superior military knowledge.

      Though Dann was quite crazy at this time, this did not prevent him from emerging on occasion, to sit at the table with Griot, advising on this and that. The advice was sensible and Griot relied on it.

      The soldiers talked among themselves, of course, because they were on duty as guards outside Dann’s room, and sometimes inside the room, when Dann was worse than usual. Their General was mad, they all knew, but for some reason this did not seem to alarm them. They spoke of him always with respect – more, it was love, Griot thought, and this did not surprise him.

      But Dann did not seem to be getting better, so Griot decided to make the trip to the Farm, to talk to Shabis and ask help from Leta, who had so much knowledge of plants and medicines. He told Dann he was going to make a reconnaissance trip to Tundra’s cities. Dann said he wanted a soldier in Griot’s place, male, not a woman.

      Because this man organised Dann’s bathing, bringing the big basins and the hot water, and persuading Dann into the water, he saw the scars around Dann’s waist, which he could not account for, but which looked as if at some point Dann had worn a slave chain, whose barbs had torn him; and he saw, too, the scars on Dann’s buttocks radiating out from his anus. The word got around the camp about these cruel scars, and Dann’s reputation was enhanced, in the direction of awesomeness and the unknown. And their General had been a slave – that helped them to understand his present illness. Then the guard soldier let drop that Griot had gone to the Farm and, while Dann understood the deception, it hurt to think of Griot there, at that place which in his mind was like a soothing dream, with its windy Western Sea, its streams of running water and the old house … but Kira was there, and he did not want to think of his child, who was now getting on for four. And he certainly didn’t want to think of Mara’s child.

      Griot set off, four soldiers marching behind him. With Tundra collapsing the roads were even more unsafe. He could watch out for attacks from the front. The soldiers were just within hearing distance. He listened to gossip from the camp and on the whole liked what he overheard. The soldiers had all been refugees, and often did not know each other’s languages. Griot had instituted compulsory lessons in Tundra, and this is what they were talking, saying they looked forward to when they could spread themselves over the spaces of Tundra: it was so cramped in the camp.

      Griot began thinking about his own life, but from that point in it when he could match this Griot here with that Griot, who had arrived as a fugitive boy at the Agre camps in Charad and was at once put into training to become a soldier. Before that – no, he did not much enjoy thinking about it. He would make himself remember it all – later. Agre had made him: now he knew it was Shabis who had made him, who was then the big General so far above him he knew only his name and sometimes saw him: ‘There, there he is, that’s Shabis.’ He was under Dann’s immediate command, the handsome, daring young officer, whom he hero-worshipped. Griot marched to Shari behind General Dann, as he had become, and when the Hennes armies invaded Shari and he heard that Dann had run from Shari, Griot did too. He had been in that mass of refugees that flooded Karas, but then he lost Dann’s trail and could not get news. He was a runaway soldier and in danger of being recaptured and punished – perhaps executed. He had heard there was a price on Dann’s head. About Mara he did not know. He had actually heard her address the soldiers in the public square in Agre, but he had not immediately connected that lanky fishbone of a girl with the beauty he had seen at the Farm. He made his way to Tundra, always in danger, worked when he could and, when he thought of the safety of the Agre Army, wished he had not run away. Then he heard by chance that General Dann, with his sister, was in a farm away to the west, and there he went, arriving just after Dann had left.

      Griot recognised Shabis at once, but did not know Mara. He asked for work. He knew about farming, having served with the agricultural detachments in the Agre Army. They gave him a room and their trust but he knew Kira did not like that. For her, he was a menial. But Mara and Shabis, and the others, Daulis and the two Albs, treated him like one of them. He had never known a family, but suspected this must be one. And soon it would be more of one, because both Mara and Kira were pregnant. Kira complained: that was her style. Pettishly or angrily, she complained. Mara soothed her and kept her in order; that was how Griot saw it. The couple, Shabis and Mara, were at the centre of this family, and Kira was like the awkward child.

      Griot had spent his life – that is, the one before arriving in Agre – watching, always on guard, seeing everything, faces, gestures, little movements of the eyes, a hardly perceptible grimace, or smirk, or sneer, or smile; that is how he had learned about life, about people. And he knew that not everyone had his perceptiveness: he was often surprised at how little they ordinarily saw. Here, at the Farm, he was returned, as far as dangers and threats went, to his pre-Agre condition. Not because of Shabis, or Mara – it was Kira he had to watch. Now he worked hard, was careful never to presume, kept out of Kira’s way and watched them all. He knew Mara missed her brother, not because she complained, but because they talked often of Dann and she sighed, and Shabis would put his hand on hers or draw her to him in an embrace. Kira saw this satirically – unkindly. When she spoke of Dann it was as of a possession she had mislaid. As her pregnancy went on she grew very large and did really suffer. The winds were blowing dry and cold, and then dry and warm, while Kira lay around with her feet up and began ordering Griot about, until he said to her, with the others all present, that he was not her servant.

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