Mara and Dann. Doris Lessing

they used for eating were on the walls.

      Mara went into the room she had slept in with Dann. She knew that room now, and about the lavatory in the little rock room, which was a deep hole going far down into the rocky soil. Near it was a box with earth and a shovel. There was a jug to pour water over yourself when you had finished, but nothing to dry with, and that was because of the slipperiness of the brown stuff that seemed to be used for everything when you wanted cloth. The air was so dry the wet between your legs dried quickly.

      Dann came rushing after her – ‘Mara, Mara’ – and grabbed her hand, and with Dann clinging to her hand, and Daima just behind, she went into the room separated from the sleeping room by a curtain. In it were only some stones in the middle of the rock floor. This was where Daima cooked. There were three stones, with ashes between them. All the stones were blackened by smoke, and so were the pots and pans that stood together along a wall. Above the cooking place was a hole in the roof, which in this room was made of flat bits of stone, and there was a rope to pull if you wanted to close the hole and make this stone go up flat against the roof if it rained. There were old insect webs on the rope, so the stone had been where it was for a long time. The rocks that made this room were rough, and put together so you could see through them in places to the outside. There were no carvings or pictures on the walls here. There was a door into another room that had a heavy wooden beam across it. The end of the beam had a chain, and Daima opened with a big key where the chain fitted together. She lifted the beam aside. They stepped into the dark. Daima struck a light on the wall and lit a big floor candle, and then another. There were no windows. This room was a big, square rock box, and in a corner was smaller rock box. Mara could not see over into it, and tried to pull herself up with her arms, letting go of Dann; and when she had got up, she sat on the edge and saw that in it was water. There was another big rock box, and a wooden chest of the kind she knew from her own home. Dann was tugging at her legs and whimpering, so she jumped down and took his hand. Daima lifted up the child, and he let her. He was getting used to her. He lay against her, and put his thumb in his mouth and sucked. Suck, suck, suck. Daima did not stop him. Mara went to the other rock box and found it full of white, floury stuff. This was what they were eating. She tasted it, but it did not taste of much.

      ‘Is this a plant?’

      ‘A root.’

      ‘Does it grow around here?’

      ‘It used to. Everyone grew it. Not now: we haven’t had enough rain.’

      ‘Then where does this come from?’

      ‘People bring it from the north and sell it to us.’

      ‘What if they don’t come?’

      ‘Then we would be very hungry,’ said Daima.

      Suck, suck, suck. The sound was driving Mara quite wild with dislike of it, an irritation that made her want to hit her little brother, and she was ashamed of herself and began to cry. She had hardly cried all this time. Crying, she went to the enormous wooden chest. She could just lift the lid. Inside were clothes of the kind they wore at home: delicate, light coloured tunics and trousers and scarves. They were made from the plants she had seen growing before everything got so dry, or of the stuff worms made. Because she was crying, and she knew her hands were dirty, she did not touch them; but she wanted to plunge her hands into the clothes, or stroke them, then throw off the nasty brown thing she was wearing and put on these. She stood by the big chest looking, and wanting, and crying, and listening to how her little brother sucked his thumb. Then Daima took the thumb out of Dann’s mouth, and he turned his face into her neck and howled.

      Mara thought, Poor Daima, with two crying children, and stopped crying.

      She wiped her hands carefully on her tunic and just gently stroked the robe that lay on top. It was a soft, glowing yellow. As she stroked, she thought that at home these clothes were in the big chests because they were precious and must be looked after. She knew now that these were carefully kept clothes from the past, and no one expected to have new ones.

      She let the lid of the chest drop on the yellow, and looked at the grey rock all around. There were no pictures on these walls.

      On a rock shelf lay bundles of the brown garments, lying anyhow. You couldn’t hurt them no matter what you did.

      She went to a door, this time a slab of rock in a groove, but it was too heavy for her, and Daima slid it aside. Dark – or almost, because light came in from the floor candles next door. This room was empty, but on the walls were the broken up pictures, like the brightly coloured ones on the hard, white stuff.

      ‘You can come in and look at the wall pictures another time,’ said Daima.

      She went through this dark room to another rock door, slid that back, lit a match, and in its flare Mara saw a rock room, empty, like this.

      ‘There are two other rooms,’ said Daima. ‘Four empty rooms in all.’

      ‘Do they have the pictures?’

      ‘Two of them do.’

      They went back the way they had come, and Daima slid the chain into place on the storeroom and locked it. In the room where the children slept she put the little boy down on the bed. He had gone to sleep. ‘It is a good thing he is sleeping. Perhaps he will sleep away the bad memories,’ she said.

      The old woman and the child went into the room where they ate. They sat at the rock table.

      ‘Do you want to start?’ asked Daima.

      Mara’s mind was full of new thoughts and she almost said, Not yet, but said, ‘Yes.’ She began, slowly, thinking as she talked. ‘You have four empty rooms. That means the other houses aren’t crowded, or the Rock People would come and live here. Have some of them gone away?’

      ‘A lot died when we had the drought disease. And some went north.’

      ‘Then it’s the same as in Rustam. It is half empty.’

      ‘Yes, I know.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘There used to be people coming through, both ways, going north, going south, and they told us what was going on. Now they hardly ever come. One was here two months ago. He said there was fighting in Rustam.’

      ‘Two months…I didn’t know there was fighting.’

      ‘I expect your parents were trying not to frighten you.’

      ‘That means they thought the fighting was going to stop.’

      ‘No, Mara, I don’t think they believed that.’

      Mara sat silent. She said, ‘I don’t want to go on with that bit, I don’t want to cry again.’ And her lips were trembling. She steadied herself and said, ‘You have your food and water in a room that has locks. That means you are afraid they will be stolen. But if all the Rock People got together they could lift the stones of the roof away and take the food and water. That means they still have food and water of their own.’

      ‘We still have enough. But only just. And if it rained properly here, we could grow a crop and fill our storerooms and our tanks.’

      ‘I could see it hasn’t rained for a long time. I could see from how the trees looked. The trees we have left look worse than your trees, but your trees are dry.’

      Mara was thirsty, talking about rain. She was used to being thirsty. But she was licking dry lips, and Daima saw, and poured her half a cup of the not very nice water.

      Mara went on, ‘This house wasn’t built all at the same time. The rooms that have the stones with pictures were built first. The stones must have come from another house where the pictures went the same way.’

      ‘Good,’ said Daima.

      ‘Some rooms were built on later. Like this room.’

      ‘Good,’ said Daima again.

      ‘So once this village must have had a lot of people and they needed more