Mara and Dann. Doris Lessing

asked Daima. ‘Stop him.’

      ‘I know what’s wrong,’ said Mara, and she did, though at first she hadn’t. The faces of the two were so alike you could hardly tell them apart: two angry faces looking down at the child, their lips thin and tight with dislike of him. Mara ran out and grabbed Dann just as one man picked up a stone to throw at him. ‘Dann,’ she said, ‘no, no, no.’ And to the man, ‘No, please, don’t.’ And still Dann stared, twitching with fear, his whole body shaking in his sister’s hands.

      ‘You keep those brats of yours to yourself,’ one man said loudly into the doorway to Daima.

      And they went off, the two men, as similar from the back as from the front: heavy and slow, both with the same way of poking their heads forward.

      Mara held the child as he sobbed, limp against her shoulder; and she said to Daima, past his head, that there had been two men with similar faces, and one had threatened to beat them and kept them without water, and the other was kind and gave them water – and now they seemed to Dann the same: the two brothers, Garth and Gorda.

      Daima said, ‘Those two out there grew up with my two. I know them. They are bullies and they are sly. Dann must keep away from them, and you too, Mara.’

      And now Mara began explaining to Dann that two people can look the same but be quite different inside, in their natures, that he was confused because of what had happened…And as she talked, she was thinking that all that had been less than a week ago.

      While Mara talked, Dann was staring out of the door, where the two men had stood. She did not know if he had heard her. She went on, though, talking and explaining, because often he surprised her, coming out later with something that showed he had understood.

      ‘Let’s play the game,’ she tried, at last. ‘What did you see? – ’ then, at home, with the bad people? ‘What did you see? – ’ later, with the man who gave us water? Slowly Dann did begin to answer, but his eyes were heavy and his voice was heavy too. Mara persisted, while Dann did reply, but he was talking only about the bad man, the bad man, with the whip. At last Mara stopped. It looked as if the child had muddled it all up: the scene that had gone on for hours, in their own home, when they had to stand hungry and thirsty, being threatened by the whip, and the other one in the rock room when Gorda came in. ‘Don’t you remember how he was kind and gave us water?’ But no, Dann did not remember, and he said, ‘Those two men out there, with the stick, why did they have the same face?’

      He stuck his thumb in his mouth and the loud sucking began, and then he slept, while Mara sat rocking him and Daima went off to the river with her containers.

      When she came back she washed them both again, while they stood in the shallow basin; and this time she washed their hair too, though it would not stay nice and shiny for long, with the dust swirling about everywhere.

      Then Daima took the children out to where she said the milk beast was waiting – she had told Rabat she would milk it. Dann was clinging tight to Mara, so she could hardly walk. And she kept close to Daima because the milk beast was so enormous, and frightened her. Its back was level with Daima’s head, and she was tall. It was a black and white beast, or would have been if the dust wasn’t thick on it. It had pointed, hard hooves. Its eyes were clever and knowing; and Mara had never seen eyes like them, for instead of a soft coloured round with white around, these eyes were a strong yellow and had a black bar down them, and long lashes. She thought the animal looked wicked, but Daima had already slipped a loop of rope over its horns, and then the rope over a post, and she was kneeling right under the beast’s belly, where there was a bag that had teats sticking out like enormous pink fingers. Daima had a basin under the milk bag and she was using both hands to make the milk come out. It shot into the basin, which rang out like a bell, and meanwhile the beast stood still, chewing with quick movements of its jaws. It turned its head and put its nose on Daima’s neck, and then into Mara’s neck, and she cried out, but Daima said, ‘Don’t mind Mishka, she won’t hurt you. Now, sit down here.’ Mara squatted by Daima, feeling Dann right behind her, because he was afraid of the beast but needed her more. ‘Use both hands on one teat,’ said Daima. The hot, slippery teat filled Mara’s hands, and she squeezed, and a little milk came out; but Daima showed her how to do it and soon the milk was spurting. ‘There, you’ve got the knack,’ said Daima. ‘And she knows you now.’ Daima finished off the milking, until the bag hung empty, and the beast bleated and went off when Daima took the rope from her horns, picking her way among the humps and mats of grass to a group of milk beasts standing together under a thorn tree. They belonged to different people but they spent all their days together, and their nights too, in a shed, because the dragons came after them.

      Daima had two cans of milk, one full and one partly full. They went to Rabat’s house and gave her the part-full can. She looked sharply into the can to see if she had her promised share, then smiled in the way Mara hated and said, ‘Thank you.’

      Now it was the hot part of the day, and they sat in the cool half dark of the big room. Dann was sitting on the floor, his thumb in his mouth, pressed against Mara’s legs.

      Mara saw that Daima’s eyes were full of tears, and then that tears were running down the creases in Daima’s cheeks. ‘It is funny,’ said Daima, speaking as if Mara were grown up, ‘the way the same things happen.’

      ‘You mean, your children, and then Dann and me?’

      ‘They wanted to play with the other children, but Kulik came and said, Keep your brats to yourself.’

      Mara left Dann, and climbed up on Daima’s lap and put her arms around her neck. This made Daima cry harder, and Mara cried, and then the little boy began tugging at Mara’s legs to be lifted up, and soon both children were on Daima’s lap and they were all crying.

      Then Mara said, ‘But your children are all right. They grew up. No one hurt them.’

      ‘Plenty tried to. And when I’d got them through it all, they went away. I know they had to. I wanted them to.’ Daima sat weeping, not trying to stop herself.

      ‘I won’t go away, I promise,’ said Mara. ‘I’ll never leave you alone with these horrible Rock People, never, never.’

      ‘I won’t go away,’ piped up Dann. ‘I won’t leave you.’

      ‘I’ll leave you first,’ said Daima.

      Dann cried out, but Mara said, ‘She didn’t mean that she would leave us. She didn’t mean that.’

      And the rest of the day was spent reassuring Dann that Daima did not mean to abandon them.

      Now Daima said it was time to show Mara how to do everything. How to look after the milk beast, Mishka. How to make milk go sour in a certain way. How to make cheese. How to look in the grasses for the tiny plants that showed where the sweet yellow roots were, deep below. Which green plants could be picked to cook as vegetables. How to make candles. And soon Daima said Mara should know where the money was hidden.

      ‘If you were going to hide money, Mara, where would you put it?’

      Mara thought. ‘Not in the room where the water tank is, or anywhere near where the food is. And not in this room, because people can come in so easily. Not in the thatch, because grass can burn. Not somewhere out of the house, because people would see when you went to look for it. And not in one of the empty rooms, because people would expect that.’

      A long pause.

      ‘Where, then?’ persisted Daima. But Mara could not guess.

      In a corner of this room stood a bundle of big floor candles. The biggest ones were as thick as Mara’s chest. One that looked just like all the others was quite smooth at the bottom; but when you scraped off a layer and pulled out a plug of candle, there was a hole, and in it a leather bag with coins in it. They were gold, quite small but heavy, and there were fifty of them. Mara remembered that at home the People wore big, heavy ornaments of this stuff, gold, and she herself had been given when she was born a bracelet made of these same coins, which she knew was very valuable. Where was it now? But her old