Mara and Dann. Doris Lessing

woman said, ‘I suppose a few more dead don’t make any difference.’

      They were speaking very loudly above the sounds of the water and the banging rocks and stones, and the cries of the animals.

      At this moment Dann got up out of his pool, unlooping a big green snake that had come to rest around his arm, and climbed up towards them, careful not to step on a snake or an animal too exhausted to move out of his way, and stood in front of the two grown-ups and said, ‘I’m hungry. I’m so hungry.’ And now Mara realised she had been hungry for a long time. How long was it since they had eaten? The bad people had not given them food. Before that…Mara’s mind was full of sharp little pictures she was trying to fit together: her parents leaning down to say, ‘Be brave, be brave and look after your brother’; the big man with his dark, angry face; before that, the quiet ordinariness of their home before all the terrible things began happening. She could not remember eating: food had been short for quite a long time, but there had been things to eat. Now she looked carefully at Dann, and she had not done that for days because she had been so thirsty and so frightened, and she saw that his face was thin and yellowish though usually he was a chubby, shiny little child. She had never seen him like this. And she saw something else: his tunic, the brown sack thing of the Rock People, was quite dry. The water had streamed off it as he had climbed out of the rock pool. And her tunic was dry. She hated the thin, dead, slippery feel of the stuff, but it did dry quickly.

      ‘We don’t have much food,’ said the man, ‘and if we eat what we have now we might not find any more.’

      ‘I’m so hungry,’ whispered Mara.

      The man and the woman looked worriedly at each other.

      ‘It isn’t far now,’ he said.

      ‘But there’s all that water.’

      ‘It’ll drain away soon.’

      ‘Far? Where?’ demanded Mara, tugging at the brown slipperiness of the woman’s tunic. ‘Home? Are we near home?’ Even as she said it her heart was sinking because she knew it was nonsense: they were not going home. The woman squatted down so that her face was on the same level as hers, and the man did the same for the boy. ‘Surely you’ve got that into your head by now?’ said the woman. Her big face, all bone and hollows, her eyes burning out between the bones, seemed desperate with sadness. The man had Dann by the arms and was saying, ‘You must stop this, you must.’ But the little boy hadn’t said anything. He was crying: tears were actually falling down his poor cheeks now that he had drunk enough to let him cry properly.

      ‘What did Lord Gorda tell you? Surely he told you?’

      Mara had to nod, miserably, tears filling her throat.

      ‘Well then,’ said the woman, straightening up. The man, too, rose, and the two stood looking at each other; and Mara could see that they didn’t know what to do or say. ‘It’s too much for them to take in,’ the woman said, and the man said, ‘Hardly surprising.’

      ‘But they have to understand.’

      ‘I do understand. I do, really,’ said Mara.

      ‘Good,’ said the woman. ‘What is the most important thing?’

      The little girl thought and said, ‘My name is Mara.’

      And then the man said to the little boy, ‘And what is your name?’

      ‘It’s Dann,’ said Mara quickly, in case he had forgotten; and he had, because he said, ‘It isn’t my name. My name isn’t Dann.’

      ‘It’s a question of life and death,’ said the man. ‘You’ve got to remember that.’

      ‘Better if you could try to forget your real name,’ said the woman. And Mara thought that she easily could, for that name was in her other life, where people were friendly and kind and she wasn’t thirsty all the time.

      ‘I’m hungry,’ said Dann again.

      The two grown-ups looked to see that the rock behind them did not have a snake on it. There were a couple of lizards and some scorpions, who did not look as if the water had discouraged them. They must have emerged from crevices to see what the disturbance was all about. The man took up a stick and gently pushed it at the scorpions and lizards, and they disappeared into the rocks.

      The four of them sat down on the rock. The woman had a big bag tied around her waist. Water had got into it, but the food inside was so well wrapped in wads of leaves that it was almost dry, only a little wet. There were two slabs of thick white stuff, and she broke each slab into two so they each had a piece. Mara took a bite and found her mouth full of tasteless stuff.

      ‘That’s all there is,’ said the woman.

      Dann was so hungry he was taking big bites and chewing and swallowing, and taking another bite. Mara copied him.

      ‘Anything you don’t finish, give back,’ said the woman. She was not eating but watching the children eat. ‘Eat,’ said the man to her. ‘You must.’ But he had only eaten a little himself.

      ‘Is it the Rock People’s food?’ asked Dann, surprising his sister, but pleasing her, for she knew that he did notice things, remembered, and came out with it later, even when you’d think he was too little to understand.

      ‘Yes, it is,’ said the man, ‘and you’d better learn to like it because I doubt whether you’ll get much else – at least, not for a while.’

      ‘Probably for a good long while,’ said the woman, ‘the way things are going.’

      The man and the woman stood up and went forward to the very edge of a rock to take a good, long look at the water. It was still at the same height. And all the hills were crowded, simply crammed, with animals waiting for the flood to go down, just as they were. Down below, the great plain of brown water hurried past, still carrying bushes where little animals clung, and trees where big animals balanced; but now it seemed that there was less fret and storm in the water.

      ‘It has reached its peak,’ said the woman.

      ‘If there isn’t more to come,’ said the man.

      The sky was still a hard, clear blue, like a lid over everything. The sun was shining hot and fierce, and there were no new big waves from the north.

      Dann had gone to sleep holding a half-eaten hunk of the white stuff. The woman took it from him and put it in her bag. She sat down and her eyes closed and her head fell forward. The man’s eyes closed and he sank down, asleep.

      ‘But we must keep awake,’ the little girl was pleading, ‘we must. Suppose the bad people come? Suppose a snake bites us?’ And then she tumbled off to sleep, but later only knew she had been asleep because she was scrambling up, thinking, Where’s my brother? Where are the others? And her head was aching because she had been lying in the sun, which had moved and was going down, sending pink reflections from the sky across the water. But the water that had covered everything had gone down and was a river racing down the middle part of the valley. Dann was awake and holding the hand of the woman, and they were standing higher up where they could see everything easily. This hill was now surrounded by brown mud, and the yellow grasses were just beginning to lift up.

      ‘Where are we going to cross over?’ asked the woman.

      ‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to,’ said the man.

      Now the rocks around them did not have animals all over them, for they were carefully making their way back towards the high ground on the ridge. Mara thought that soon they would all be thirsty again. And then: We’ll be thirsty too, and hungry. They had slept all afternoon.

      ‘I think it would be safe to have a try,’ said the man. ‘Between the waterholes there will be hard ground.’

      ‘A bit dangerous.’

      ‘Not as dangerous as staying here if they are coming after us.’

      The dark was filling the sky. The stars