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

saluted, and left.

      That salute – Dann certainly did not like it. It was establishing some kind of contract between them that Griot needed.

      The encounter between the two young men had been some weeks ago.

      Dann tried not to run into Griot or even to notice much what he was doing.

      

      On this day after he had noticed the hair of the animal stuck on the bush, he was lying stretched on his rocky spit, and thinking of the Farm and of Kira, who was pregnant with his child. It would be born soon. And Mara’s child too. Interesting that Griot had not expected him to return to the Farm, yet Griot had stayed there long enough to learn what was going on, and who belonged to whom. That was a joke; Mara belonged to Shabis. And so Dann wouldn’t go back. He thought of Kira and it was painful. How he did love her – and how he did hate her. Love? Well, he loved Mara, so he should not use that same word for Kira. He was fascinated by Kira. Her voice, her way of moving, that slow, lazy, seductive walk … but to be with her was to be humiliated. He thought of how, on the night before he left, she had stretched out her naked foot – and she was as good as naked – and said in that sweet singing voice of hers, ‘Come here, Dann.’ They had been quarrelling. They always quarrelled. He had stood there, a few paces away, and looked at her, and wanted to do what she wanted, which was to get on his hands and knees and crawl to her. She half lay, holding out her naked foot. She was pregnant, but it was too early to show. She needed him to lick her foot. And he desired to, he craved to, he longed to give himself up to her and stop fighting. But he could not do it. She smiled at him, her malicious smile that always made him feel she had cut him with a whip, she had wiggled her toes, and said, ‘Come, Dann’ – and he had turned and run out. He picked up some clothes, some essentials – and left the Farm. He did not say goodbye to Mara because he could not bear to.

      Dann lay on his shelf of unsafe rock and knew it was time he left. He was so restless. Well, hadn’t he spent nearly all his life on his feet, walking, walking, one foot after another? He had to be in motion again. But to leave here, leave the Centre, meant going even further away from Mara. She was a few days from here, on the shores of the Western Sea which he was observing for hours of every day from this perch of his, seeing it crash over the rocks down in sheets of foam to the Bottom Sea. The waves he saw break into spray were the same as licked the coast below the Farm. But he had to leave. He told himself it was because of Griot, always spying on him, and now there was this new animal down there, watching him too. He stretched and craned over the edge of his rock finger to see if somewhere was an animal, perhaps expecting more fish from him. For a few minutes he fancied he saw something big and white, but it was too far away. If it was watching Dann, it would be hiding itself. The thought made him feel prickly and caged. No, he must leave, he must go, he would leave Mara.

      ‘Oh, Mara,’ he whispered, and then shouted her name into the noisy water. It seemed to him her face was in the patterns the water made. A rainbow spanned the Rocky Gates and little rainbows were spinning off and away with the clumps of foam. The air seemed full of light, and noisy movements – and Mara.

      He was heavy with sorrow, felt he could easily roll off that rocky protuberance and let himself fall.

      He was leaving Kira too – wasn’t he? But he scarcely ever thought of her and the child she was having. His. She had not even bothered to tell him she was pregnant. ‘I don’t think I’d get much of a look in with that child, even if I were a good father, hanging about, waiting for the birth – which must be soon.’ So he excused himself. ‘And besides, I know Mara will see that my child will be looked after, and there is Shabis, and Leta and Donna and probably other people by now.’ It made him uncomfortable, saying my child, though it was. The thought of Kira was like a barrier between him and this soon to be born infant.

      He stood up at the very end of the rocky finger and dared the wind to swirl him off. His tunic filled with air, his trousers slapped against his legs: his clothes were willing him to fall, to fly, and he felt the tug and lift of the wind over his whole body. He stood there, upright, not falling, so he left the rock and went to the Centre. There he visited the old woman who screeched at him, and so did the servant: two demented old women, in a bad-smelling room, berating him.

      He chose a few things, put them in his old sack, found Griot and told him he would be away for a while.

      How those sharp green eyes did peer into his face – his thoughts.

      And how much he, Dann, was relying on Griot, and that made him feel even more caged and confined.

      ‘Would you ever return to the Farm, Griot?’

      ‘No.’

      Dann waited.

      ‘It’s Kira. She wanted me to be her servant.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Dann.

      ‘I’ve had enough of that.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Dann, who had been a slave – and worse.

      ‘She is a cruel woman,’ said Griot, lowering his voice, as if she might overhear.

      ‘Yes,’ said Dann.

      ‘So, you’ll be off, then?’

      Dann had gone a few paces when he felt the need to turn, and he did, and saw Griot’s betrayed face. But had he made Griot any promises? He had not.

      ‘Griot, I’ll be back.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      Dann made himself march away from Griot’s need.

      

      Dann set off around the edge of the Middle Sea, going east. He had meant to walk right round the edges of the Bottom Sea, but that was before he had seen it, so rough, often piled with detritus from rockfalls. Up here on the top edge there was a road, more of a track, running between the precipitate fall to the water and the marshes. He had left the stale mouldy smell of the Centre, but the smell of the marshes was as bad: rotting vegetation and stagnant water. He walked, thinking of Mara and the past. His mind was full of Mara, and of sorrow, though he had missed the news of her death. She had died giving birth. The messenger from the Farm had come running to the Centre, but Dann had left. Griot had thought of sending the messenger after Dann, but said that Dann was away. Griot was glad he did not have to tell Dann. During his time at the Farm he had observed, had taken everything in. He knew how close Mara and Dann were: one had only to see them together. He knew the two had walked all the way up Ifrik through many dangers; his own experience had told him what a bond shared danger was. He had seen that Dann suffered, because Mara belonged not to him but to her husband Shabis. To tell Dann his sister was dead: he was in no hurry to do it.

      Dann had wanted to leave the Centre – leave the past – because of the weight of sorrow on him, which he believed he understood. It was natural. Of course he was bereft, but he would get over it. He had no intention of subsiding into unhappiness. No, when he got walking, really moving, he would be better. But he had not got into his stride, his rhythm: it was what he needed, the effortlessness of it, when legs and body were in the swing of the moment, a time different from what ruled ordinary sitting, lying, moving about – never tiring. A drug it was, he supposed, to walk like that, walking at its best, as he had done sometimes with Mara, when they were into their stride.

      But Mara was not here with him.

      He kept at it, thinking of Mara; well, when did he not? She was always there with him, the thought of her, like the reminder of a beating heart: I am here, here, here. But she wasn’t here. He let his feet stumble him to the very edge of the declivity that ended in the Bottom Sea, and imagined her voice saying, Dann, Dann, what did you see? – the old childhood game that had served them so well. What was he seeing? He was staring into streaming clouds. Water – again water. His early life had been dust and drought, and now it was water. The abrupt descent before him ended in water and a blue gleam of distant waves, and behind him the reedy swampy ground with its crying marsh birds went on for ever … but no, it did not. It ended. And on the other side of the northern cloud mass, he knew,