Mara and Dann

  She stood at the window. Down there in the big garden was the low pile of ash where last night the watchmen had crouched and gossiped – in Kharabian, which no one else understood. Except Dalide, of course. Then she looked at the tall, slim, white towers where the rich lived, and around them great mansions in their gardens. For a few moments last night Dann had the money to buy one of those houses, and to live there as a rich man.

  Dann would have gone back to the inn, where everybody already knew what had happened, and where they would shrink away from him – from the bearer of so much ill luck. The proprietor would have said that his sister had paid the bill until now, but how did Dann propose to pay the next bill? Dann would have stood there, silent, still stunned by the shock. What would he have said? Did he bluff? He might still have had a few bits of money in his pockets, but not enough for more than a night or two, and a little food.

  Food – again food, the need to eat. For the time she had been here, she had not been anxious about eating – food was arriving in front of her when she wanted it. But food would not be there for Dann, quite soon.

  She went to the tray waiting on the table. This was better than anything she had eaten: soft, light cakes, and honey, and the drink was frothy and brown and fragrant. Presumably, as long as she was in this brothel she would not be worrying about what she was going to eat next.

  Would Dann be tempted to cut out another gold coin or two? He wouldn’t dare. If it went bad he would have to call the doctor again. And how long would Dann live, if they knew of what lay hidden under that scar? It was so astonishing a thing that they would not easily believe it. And she, now, sitting over that breakfast tray, eating the delicate food, thought that what was simply good sense in one condition was lunacy in another. Dann, with the criminals in the Tower, who would have killed him for even one of those coins, hid them in his own flesh, crouching somewhere in a corner by himself, cutting, pushing in the coins, tying cloth around to stop the bleeding. And all that was the merest good sense and it had kept him alive. But now, in this pleasant town, this safe town – well, not for everybody – it was simply mad. How could she get a coin to him, unobserved? She couldn’t. She was being observed every minute.

  Oh, she was so tired, so sleepy. She lay on her bed and slept again and when she woke her midday meal was on the table untouched, and it was evening. She went to the door, which was unlocked, and saw Senghor squatting just outside, his back against the wall, and if he had been asleep he woke quickly enough to spring up and put out a hand to stop her.

  ‘Tell Dalide not to give me any more sleeping potion. It makes me ill. I’m not used to it. And tell her if I find myself drugged again I shall starve myself.’

  Senghor nodded. He motioned her back inside the room, locked it from outside so that she stood angry and trembling, just inside it, and then in a few minutes she heard it being unlocked. He said that Mother Dalide had given her the sleeping potion because she could see Mara was so tired that she probably would not sleep without it. But Mara could be sure that Dalide would give her no more potions of any kind.

  ‘When can I see Dalide?’

  ‘Mother Dalide is leaving tonight to visit her other house in Kanaz.’

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes she goes for seven days, perhaps thirty.’

  And now Mara was tempted to fall into despair. Dalide was in no hurry with her plans to sell Mara profitably. ‘Did she send me a message?’

  ‘Yes. No more medicines.’

  ‘No, about her going away?’

  He stared, and sneered. ‘Why tell you? You are only one of the house women. She feed you well because she sell you well.’

  So that comfortable room, which she already felt as a home, a refuge, often had in it a woman whom Mother Dalide would sell well.

  ‘I’m going to look at the garden.’

  ‘You will stay in the house.’

  ‘Dalide said I could go where I liked, in the house and the garden.’

  ‘She did not tell me so.’

  ‘If she has not left, go and ask her.’

  Again she was pushed into the room, and the door locked. She waited, and he came back.

  ‘You may be in the house and the garden.’

  Mara went down the stairs and through the curtain into the room the girls used. They were sitting about, in their half nakedness and their finery. As she went through, a little, fat, pretty girl caught at her hand and said, ‘Stay with us. Talk to us.’

  They were bored, so bored. She could feel their boredom in the air of that sad room. Twenty girls, waiting. Clearly this house was well patronised.

  Mara went to the front of the house, and opened the door, Senghor immediately behind her. When she reached it he sprang in front of her and held his thick arm across. Over it she saw Dalide, not in frills and flounces now, but in a brown leather costume that made her look like a stout parcel tied in the middle, sitting in a flimsy carriage. Between the shafts were two horses. She waited for the old woman to recognise her, and send a signal of some kind, but Dalide pretended not to see her. The carriage was already moving off.

  Mara looked into the rooms on either side of the hall. They were all furnished with couches and sofas as well as tables and chairs. In one a servant was moving soiled linen from a great sofa like a bed, and putting on clean.

  Mara went back through the big room, smiling all around, to show friendliness, and evading the reaching hands of the little plump girl, who was sitting in the embrace of a woman who gave Mara something of a fright. She was so pale she was almost green, with straight, pale hair and green eyes. Mara had never seen anything like her, and was repulsed. She opened a door and saw that in this room was a bed, and chairs, and on a small table were set jugs of the yellow drink, and cakes. Another room had in it only a bed, and another water-wall, like the one in her room. She did know now that these reflecting surfaces were called mirrors, but could only think, when she saw one, of clear, deep water.

  She went to the back of the house and there were rooms she supposed must be Dalide’s, solidly furnished, comfortable, with the pretty lamps standing about and sending out their soft light, which seemed to beckon you towards them. Then she stood on the back steps, looking into the garden, which was already shadowy with evening. The watchmen were making their fire. One was putting meat and vegetables into a pot. Others squatted, waiting, singing a sad, homesick song. Big yellow men, like Senghor. She took a step down into the garden, and as Senghor did the same, lost interest. His presence there, so close, that big, ugly body, the smell of him, an acrid, dry, powerful smell, made her feel encompassed, imprisoned, even without the immediate fact of her imprisonment.

  When she returned to the great room where the women waited, men had already come in, and were talking to the girls they had chosen. These girls were all flirtatious looks and pretty little laughs, and animation. The others sat watching. The men were traders, visitors to the town, and seemed elated because of the generosity of the hospitality, the drinks and the food and the willing servants. Well, Mara would have seen this room as splendid, once. One of the men saw her and pointed, but Senghor shook his head and hurried her through. But she had time to see another group come in. These she recognised as the same as the Hadrons, not physically, because they were a mix, like most of the people to be seen in the streets, but because she recognised the self-satisfied conceit of the consciousness of power: gross, indulged men, and certainly brutal. They saw her as she was going out, and let out cries like hunting cries, and were about to come after her; but Senghor put his arm across to bar them, and when they were through the curtain, and the door, locked it. Now she was glad to have him there. Those men – how well she knew them. So, Bilma’s danger was not that it was drying up, or likely to, but that it was corruptly governed. But if these were the rulers of Bilma, as Senghor’s demeanour said they were – he had shown none of the cringing humility at the sight of the traders – then was it the same here as in
Chelops, which had a layer of apparent subordinates who in fact ran the place? Those faces – Dalide had said that the man she planned to sell Mara to was one of them. She reached her room trembling with fear at her probable future.

  As Senghor was about to shut the door on her, she said, ‘I want some information.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know anything about my brother, Dann?’

  ‘Your brother? Why should I know?’

  ‘I am very unhappy about my brother. If you hear where he is then … ’

  ‘My orders are not to talk to the house women about outside.’ And then she saw in his face a genuine curiosity, which softened it. He came closer and said in a low voice, but not looking at her, ‘It is a strange thing when a brother gambles away his sister and the sister is not angry.’

  ‘I didn’t say I am not angry. But he is my brother. If you hear … ’

  Now he did look at her, and said, ‘I have been in Mother Dalide’s house for twenty years. She is good to me. I shall not go against her orders.’

  ‘Then tell me this: are there other women here who were gambled away in the Transit Eating House?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was it Bergos who brought them here?’

  But he shook his head at her and went out.

  She was alone. She stood at the window and saw that in the garden the watchmen’s fire was burning, and their shadows flickered over the earth and the shrubs as the flames danced. They were eating and the smell of food rose up to her and made her hungry. Her supper tray arrived, and she sat and ate and thought that already she took all this for granted: food, good food, better than anything she had eaten in her life. But the really strange thing was that she was not eating every mouthful with the thought, It is a miracle, a wonder, that this food should be here, and that I should be eating it, good food and clean water, as if it is a right, and I am entitled to all – I, Mara, who spent so many years watching every scrap of food and mouthful of water. And soon would she forget that Mara and see food without ever thinking about the hard work and the skills that had made it?

  Where was Dann?

  Again she stood at the window, mentally mapping out the house. A very big, square house, made of large, square bricks, not easy to dislodge or break through. The house was in two layers, rooms above rooms. In front was a street, and there was a guard there. At the back, the garden she was looking into – guarded. The rooms on the ground floor had thick wooden bars – not Dalide’s, but all the others. This window was not barred, but if she jumped down she would break a limb, and the watchmen would stop her. All the servants, judging by Senghor, were devoted to Dalide. That meant, unbribable. And she could not let it be known that she had money, because Dalide would have it off her. So all that meant that if she was going to get news it must be from the men who came to the house.

  Later that night she heard Senghor in argument with men outside her door: they were demanding to come in. The girls downstairs had talked about her to their customers.

  Next day, but not till the afternoon, she went down to the big room. The women had just got up, and were lolling about, yawning. The little plump girl was sitting inside the arms of the tall white one, with her straight, pale hair; she was stroking and playing with the hair, but when she saw Mara, she reached out, took Mara’s hands with little cries of pleasure, and pulled her down. So Mara was sitting within touching distance of this white female, who was so alien and so disturbing; and when the little girl said, ‘Talk to us, Mara, tell us something,’ she found it hard to compose herself. She told her story again, because what else could she tell them, when they were so curious about her? They took it as a tale, an invention, for what she said was so far from their experience, and this even though some were from the country regions of Bilma, sold by their parents to Dalide, because of hard times. None had known real hunger and could not conceive that there might not be water to drink. So Mara told her own tale and marvelled at it with them, particularly as she left out all references to the gold coins that had saved her and Dann. So the central thread of the story was not there and sometimes in the tale it sounded as if the brother and sister’s successful flight had been due to supernatural interventions, instead of the slog of endurance backed by the little store of gold that had spent years hidden inside a battered floor candle.

  She finished the tale as the customers were coming in, while the girls clamoured for her to come again tomorrow and tell them another tale. The girl, Crethis, who had been as close to her during the telling as she could, short of climbing inside her arms, now returned to sit on the lap of her pale friend, Leta, whom the others called the Albina. But immediately Crethis had to leave Leta, because in came a man who claimed her. He was a sensible looking, serious, pleasant man who seemed like a Mahondi – was he one? Yes, he was. He took a good, long look at Mara, nodded, smiled, but did not ask for her. He took Crethis off with him to a private room, and Mara went upstairs.

  There she found that all her dresses had been washed and hung up. Her bag of coins had been put on the table.

  She tried on the two gowns from Chelops. Well, these flounced, bright cottons had seemed fine enough, then. She put on the indestructible brown garment, and stood in front of the glass. It was short on her now, just to her knees, and seemed to float around her like a shadow. She was standing looking into the water-wall when Senghor came in with her supper tray and saw her. At once he pointed to what she wore and said, ‘What is that thing?’ For he had tried to wash it.

  ‘Once there was a civilisation that made things which were – they never wore out.’

  He shook his head: I don’t understand.

  ‘A people, long ago, hundreds of years…’ She thought he had taken in the hundreds and tried, ‘Thousands of years ago, they found the secret of how to make things – houses, garments, pots, cans, that last for ever.’

  ‘What people? Who? Where?’

  ‘Long ago. No one knows.’ He stared, his forehead puckering. ‘There were many peoples who lived and then vanished. No one knows why.’

  His face, as he stared at her, was sombre, awed, but also angry. Then he decided to laugh. ‘You must tell this story to the girls – they would like it,’ he said, and then dismissed all these difficult thoughts with an energetic shake of the head.

  Next day, after the midday meal, when all the house and everyone in it was sleepy and heavy, the girls because sleep was their refuge from their lives, Mara went down again and found Crethis in her place in Leta’s arms. This time Mara sat so close that Crethis did not have to move, but put out her hand to stroke Mara, or touch her hair, from inside Leta’s protection.

  Mara told them of the cities everywhere that had fallen into ruins, and the city she had seen that could never change or fall down; and then she began to tell them of the past of where they were now, the lands around Bilma. They listened, leaning forward, so interested they forgot their sweets and the poppy, and their yawns.

  ‘From where we are to the Middle Sea was once only sand. The Middle Sea is called that because it was once a sea, but now it is only an enormous hollow in the earth where once a moon hit – it fell out of the sky and tore the earth open. Only sand. Imagine that a white streak of sand you see on the road grows and becomes everything you see – everything is sand everywhere you look…’ Crethis’s friend had come in and was listening. He signalled to Crethis to stay where she was, and not interrupt Mara. ‘Yet under this sand were once forests and fields where people grew corn. Forests and fields that fed people, and then for some reason the sand covered it all over. And then after many, many years’ – she did not dare say hundreds, let alone thousands – ‘over the sand blew earth, and then seeds, and then again instead of sands were forests, deep forests. But people came to live in the forests, and they began to cut down the trees, and what you see now is that stage, people making towns among the forests and cutting trees and – everything always is a stage, one way of being changes into another.’

>   The young women seemed troubled, or anxious, but not all. Some understood and leaned forward to listen, and Leta in particular followed every word.

  ‘And when will the sands come back here?’ asked one.

  ‘Who knows? But perhaps it will all be sand again, where nothing can grow; but just when they think everything is dead, nothing will ever grow, the seasons will change and the rain is different and, instead of spreading, the sands go and there will be forests.’

  ‘As we have now,’ said Crethis, and she smiled over Leta’s arm at the man who was listening.

  ‘We have light forests now, and in them towns and great spaces where there are fields, and there the soil is blowing away and thinning. Deep under our feet are the sands of the time when all this was desert, sands as far as you could see.’

  Crethis’s friend nodded, approving, which silenced the little sighs and exclamations of incredulity.

  ‘Where did you learn all this?’ he asked Mara.

  ‘From Shabis in Charad. He taught me everything I know.’

  He looked hard at her, meaning her to mark it, and said, ‘I know Shabis.’

  ‘Do you know Darian?’

  ‘Yes, I do know Darian.’

  That meant, he would know about Dann…He got up, signalled to Crethis to accompany him, and said to Senghor, ‘Mara will come with us.’

  ‘It is not permitted,’ said Senghor.

  ‘I will answer for it to Mother Dalide.’

  The three went into a side room that had a table and cakes and a jug of juice, and even fruit, as well as the bed. Senghor tried to come in but had the door shut in his face.

  Mara sat in the only chair, and the other two sat on the bed, where Crethis snuggled up to her friend, who put his arm around her, with an indulgent smile.