Читать книгу Mara and Dann - Doris Lessing - Страница 6

It was almost dark in the room, because the door was shut and the window shutter left only a little slit for light. Through this slit fell dusty air. On the rock table sat a spindly creature: tall, with long, knobbly arms and legs, every bit of her skin covered with a brownish dust, and her hair hanging in long, greyish spikes. Her eyes were small and red in a little, bony face. Her brown, glistening garment seemed as fresh and new as at any time these last hundred or so years. This poor thing was Mara, and nearly five years had passed.

On the rock bed lay Daima, who was as thin and bony, but her hair was not in shags and rags because Mara combed it. Daima had by her a bag of the brown, shiny stuff, and she was lying on her side and taking out, one by one, all kinds of objects: a comb, a stone, a spoon, a dishevelled red feather, a snake’s shed skin. She looked at them amazed, incredulous. ‘Mara, but there’s nothing here, it’s so little, is this all it is?’ Mara did not answer, because Daima did this over and over again when she was awake. She was saying, Mara knew, Is this all my life has amounted to? At first, Mara had answered, ‘Everything is there. I’ve checked. Nothing is missing.’ But she could not go on saying it, she had so little energy left. Then Daima turned her old eyes on Mara with a close, intent, suspicious inspection; and it was as if she did not know who it was, though she did, for Mara understood that when Daima counted her life out in those possessions from the bag, Mara was among them, for she would touch a bit of cloth or the stone and say, ‘Mara, it is Mara.’ Mara made her face smile as she sat there, and turned her head so that Daima could see her, letting Daima look, and look, the close, deep stare, though she did not know what it was Daima searched for in her face. Perhaps she was making sure Mara was still there with her, for she was uneasy when Mara went out. While she did not know how bad things were out there, she did know it was dangerous.

It was midday. Daima was licking her lips, which were cracked and sore, and blinking her eyes to make some water, they were so dry. Mara went into the inner room where the pile of yellow roots was: only a few left now, only thirteen. She and Daima needed one a day to keep them as much alive as they were. Mara these days did not have the inclination to go out with her digging stick, or go to the waterholes, where there had not been water now for months, let alone climb up the hill to where the old cities were. Mara cut up a root into yellow slices and fed half of them to Daima, who even now when she was so feeble was trying to refuse her share so that Mara could have it.

Almost a year ago there had been another storm, not much of one, and they were just finishing the water Mara had collected then. Out on the plain around the village this rain had plumped the roots that lived many feet down in the earth. They had been shrivelling and were rather like wood: when Mara poked her digging stick into them they were not far off wood. But then the rain came and the roots were juicy again, and that meant Mara and Daima could live a little longer. The big white roots that seemed to absorb water were again like balls of hard, white pith.

Because of that rain, some people who had decided to leave stayed a little longer; but now no one was left, only the two women. Mara would have gone with the last group, even though Kulik was one of them, if it had not been for Daima, who could not walk.

When every one of the villagers had left, Mara had gone through the rock houses to see if anything had been left, and it was this that spoke most loudly and terribly of what had happened here. There was nothing in the houses. At least there had been a few utensils and some cans, and in each corner some of the yellow roots that were keeping them all alive, and a jar or so of water that they drank a sip or two at a time. But everything had been taken away.

As people died, and it was impossible to bury them in the hard earth because no one had the strength to dig graves, they were put in one of the empty houses and left, with the doors pulled tight shut. The air was so dry they shrivelled into mummies, so light you could pick them up like pieces of wood. But then the big lizards and the dragons, hunting everywhere for food, came into the village and tried to push the doors aside, or force their way through the windows, and one of them even climbed up on a roof and went down through the thatch. Once, these beasts had eaten only vegetable stuff, but they had long ago forgotten they were herbivores and ate anything they could find. They had lain in wait by the waterholes, when there was water, and fought with the water dragons for a share of any meat there was. Mara had come into the front room one morning to see the head and shoulders of a big lizard pushing through the aperture of the window, hissing, its tongue flickering. It wanted Daima, who was asleep on her shelf. Mara had hit the thing with empty water cans, and at last it went out backwards and waddled through the village looking for a way into a house.

That was why the rock doors were always shut now, though Mara believed there could be no lizards left, they must be all dead. But perhaps not. She had not been up to the hill cities for some time, because she was afraid, so she did not know if lizards and dragons were still there. Up in the oldest part of the ruins, Mara had found storerooms deep in the earth; and while there was nothing left of what they had once held – weapons? gold? ornamented dishes and basins and trays, like the ones pictured on the walls? – there had been water. It was old water that tasted bad because of what had fallen into it, but it was real water and for a while she had gone up to collect it. Twice she had scared away the big lizards drinking there, one of them actually standing in the water, so at first she had thought it was a water dragon; but it wasn’t, it was a land dragon. That water had not been replenished by the storm of a year ago, so it must have forced its way up through the rocks from deep under the hills. But the last time Mara saw it there was only a damp stain on rock with scorpions over it, perhaps hoping the water would well up again. From where? These days Mara saw what she looked at differently from how she once had. Hills did not stay the same, she knew that: she had seen the boulders come crashing down hillsides when lightning cracked them open. Waterholes sometimes were dusty pits and were sometimes rivers. Animals that had eaten plants learned to chase humans for their flesh. Once, digging for a root, she had found a small stream running through a rocky place underground; but when she looked for it later it was dry. Who knew what rivers moved under the earth, or had moved and were now dried up? Under the hills up there had been cities upon cities, and the people must have drunk water, so perhaps rivers once ran there that had gone long ago? Everything changed: rivers moved, disappeared, ran again; trees died – the hills were full of dry forests – and insects, even scorpions, changed their natures.

The scorpions were in the village. Mara had to watch every step. They had come in for the dead people. She had watched them trying to squeeze in through the cracks in houses, or down through the roof stones. And they did squeeze through. You could hear them scuttling and rattling about in the houses, eating up the corpses. Then the villagers had begun something new. Instead of finding an empty house and putting their dead into it, they fitted corpses into the cisterns that stood outside the door of every house. Sometimes the dead person had to be put in bent double. Then the heavy stones were put back on. The scorpions could not get in, because the lids always fitted perfectly to keep the dust out of the water. As you walked through the village, the scorpions clustered on the tops of the cisterns … Waiting? For what? And then they died. There were dead scorpions everywhere. But there were scorpions that had not died, that were able somehow to live – eating what? – and they were bigger than the old ones had been. It would be easy to think that there were two kinds of scorpion, big and little ones; but no, some were growing larger, and very fast. Once, Mara would have kicked a scorpion out of the way, but she would be afraid to now, for these new beasts could take a hand off, or a big piece of flesh out of a leg.

Mara sat on the rock table, with her feet pulled up, just in case there was something she had overlooked – a scorpion or a smaller, half-grown lizard that had hidden in the empty rooms – and she had long, interesting thoughts while she watched over Daima’s sleep. Perhaps one day, as far into the future as the old cities in the hills were in the past, people would find this village half buried in dust, or perhaps deep under the dust, and the bones in the cisterns, and they would say, ‘These ancient people buried their dead just outside their houses in rocky graves.’ They would find the bones of big lizards in the deep rocky pools in the hills because – who knew? – the water might start filling the pools up there again, and they would say, ‘There were two kinds of lizard, or dragon, and they both lived in water.’ They would find the pig bones scattered about over the plain and see the marks of bird claws and beaks and say, ‘These birds killed and ate pigs.’

But what was worrying Mara now was that they might also be able to say, ‘In those days there were insects, earth insects, the size of a thumb.’ When Mara looked out over the plain where she had dug for roots she could see everywhere circles showing pale on darker old grass. The under-earth insects whose tall homes dotted the plain – though they hadn’t when Mara and Dann first came: these great hard-earth heaps were new – came up from their tunnels at night to chew up the dry old grass with jaws like the pincers of stingers, though not as big yet, and the fragments of grass made these whitish circles. They must have watercourses running deep under their heaps for the earth of their galleries was wet. The villagers had even thought of how they could dig down through one of these insect cities until they reached water; but not only were they afraid of the insects that thought nothing of eating up a small animal in a few minutes, they did not have the strength left to dig, nor did they have anything better than wooden sticks to dig with.

These insects were rapidly growing larger. So far they did not seem to want to move far from their homes, but Mara had watched a column of them marching towards the hills of the old cities – so many of them you could not think of counting them: brownish, glistening, fat insects with their pincered heads – and she had simply run away. Every day she expected to see their brown columns trickling through the houses.

While the milk beasts were still alive these insects had been the villagers’ greatest worry. A guard was put on the beasts, day and night, to watch the grass tussocks for the scorpions and the lizards and then, when they noticed how the earth insects were growing large and bold, for their columns.

One night this problem was solved for them. Travellers had come through, pushed the weakened villagers aside and driven off the milk beasts. Mara cried as she had not since Dann went away. She loved Mishkita, and now there was nothing left for her except Daima, who she knew would soon die. And yet quite soon they would have had to kill the milk animals, for they gave so little milk now and there was nothing to give them to eat. Mishkita’s teats had been red and sore from being squeezed to get milk. And Mara had seen something that had made her frantic with the sadness of it. Mishkita had spread her legs and bent her head under her body, careful that her horns would not poke the flesh, and sucked at her own teats. She was so desperate, for she was given only two or three of the yellow roots every day and it was weeks since she had been given a drink of water – it was when Mara had found the old water up in the hills. Mara had found herself thinking, as she stood with her arm over the beast’s back, and Mishkita’s nuzzle in her neck, licking, licking, because of the salt, Perhaps poor Mishkita will not be sorry when her life is over. And that made her think of her own: would she, Mara, be pleased if one day she were surprised by one of the big lizards, or found the earth insects scrambling over her as she slept? She thought for a long time about this. Every day was so hard, such a struggle, and she was feeling so weak and often so dizzy – and yet she thought, No, I don’t want to die yet. When Daima dies I’ll go north by myself and then …

There had been another worry, the biggest of them all. One day, when there was still a little water left in the waterholes and she was not as thin as she was now, she saw a red thread of blood on her skin, on the inner thigh, and she thought, Something has stung me. But no, the blood was flowing from inside. She was at the waterholes when this happened. She went carefully back through the houses, holding the water cans so no one could see; but Daima had noticed and said, ‘Oh I hoped this would not happen. I thought perhaps you are too thin, there’s no flesh on you.’ She then told Mara what she needed to know. But what concerned her most was that Mara should never, ever, let a man near her, because for her to get pregnant was the worst thing that could happen. It would be the death of her – she was too undernourished, and the child would die too. Since then Mara had looked newly at every male, and at their instruments for making children, but she could not imagine not being able to defend herself. But while Mara thought about it, deciding there was nothing to be afraid of, with all the men so weak and hungry, she did keep an instinct of alarm alive for Daima’s sake. For she had been so apprehensive, so frightened for her – Mara could not remember Daima’s ever being so anxious.

Meanwhile, while the blood did flow there was a problem. The brown material did not absorb liquid. The mosses the village women used were all dust. Daima told Mara to tear up one of the beautiful old robes in the chest to use as pads, and Mara did, though it hurt to do it. She used secretly to let her mind linger over that chest of coloured garments, when the ugliness of everything around seemed to be dragging the life out of her.

The blood ran for two or three days, stopped. It came again. And Kulik, who had had too many problems of his own to notice Mara, sensed what was happening. He was thin, he was gaunt, but he was not weak, and Mara found herself looking out for him. When he saw her he came up, grabbed her by the arm, grinned right into her face and said, ‘What are you waiting for, a Mahondi husband?’

She tore herself free of him and ran, but then the blood stopped, and he seemed to know that too.

Kulik had had two sons. One was killed by a water stinger, not at the waterholes but just outside the village. The young man’s bones was all that they found. The other son went north with some travellers passing through. And then, but not long ago, Kulik went. He was the last to go from the rock houses.

Recently Mara had been thinking that if she did have a child – if the blood did come back – it would be something to love. For sometimes her arms ached to hold somebody. It was her little brother her arms remembered, she knew that, and now it was Mishkita, for she had so often gone to stand with her arms high around the beast’s neck, her head on its shoulder.

Suppose – Mara thought – that she had become too weak to leave? She had never had this thought before: it had always been, When I leave. This frightened her.

On this afternoon, as Mara sat on the rocky perch, she heard the light, rasping breaths from the dusty shelf where Daima lay and she thought, I have heard that breathing before, when someone is not far off dying.

Mara longed to be out of this dark, hot place where she and Daima were like two prisoners. She was dreaming of water on her face and on her arms, and running over her body. She took up a can, from sheer habit, from the line of cans near the wall and went out into the glare, though it was less now, being afternoon. She could hardly see the plain with its pale dryness, where some dust devils circled lazily in the haze. There was a fire somewhere. In the dust were little flecks of black from dead, burning grasses. They were bitter on her tongue. One fell on her and she rubbed and, because it was still warm, greasy marks were left on her skin. The fire smoke hung in dark clouds away beyond the hills of the old cities. If the fire reached them, that would be a real conflagration, for there had not been a fire there that Mara could remember, and there were all those dead trees and old scrub.

The spaces between the houses of the Rock Village were bare. The heaps of dust had been swept away by hot winds. Mara walked past the house where Rabat had died and where she now lay on her rocky shelf. Drying out had twisted those falsely smiling features into an angry sneer. There were scorpions on the roof but they could not get in. Mara went on slowly, listlessly, knowing she was straying about, not going directly forward. She could hardly keep her feet on the path to the ridge. No, she thought, she could not leave here; this is where she would die. It took a long time to reach the ridge from where she could see down to the lines of dead trees along the empty waterholes. She stood there resting, panting, her tongue dry between dry lips. Then she staggered down through the dead grasses. Among them were bones, but most of the bones were over the second ridge, on either side of the main watercourse. That is where the dying animals made their way, hoping there might be water left there. Every kind of bone was scattered about: big ones from the great animals that had died first because they needed so much water, to the little furry animals that had sometimes come up to the houses begging for water, before they died.

Mara did not stop at the first dry waterhole, the one where long ago Kulik had almost drowned Dann, nor the second, where lay the carapaces of two big water stingers, and the shells of turtles, and the bones of water lizards. Beyond was a stretch of clean white sand. She set down the can, which had not held water for months, and took off her tunic, and knelt on the sand. She came here, when she felt strong enough, to this bright, clean sand, to try to free herself of dust. For a long time she knelt there, running the fine white sand over her legs, then her arms, seeing how the dirty surface of her skin came away, leaving cleanness, and then she rubbed handfuls over her neck and her cheeks. The greasy lumps of her hair disgusted her, but she could not do anything to improve them, for the sand only stuck there. Pressing her eyes tight shut she rubbed sand over them and her forehead, again and again, and then lay on the sand and rolled her itching back and shoulders in it. She was rolling as she had seen animals do it, and at the thought she quickly raised her head to see if some scorpion or big bird, with its great talons and beak, or a lizard, had come for her; but no, the banks were empty. And now she knelt and looked down between her thighs to see if perhaps that trickle of red blood was back, but the lips of her slit were pulled tight and wrinkled with dryness. Where she should be peeing was a burning that she had become so used to it seemed only part of the angry, hungry, itchy desperation of her whole body for water. She peed so seldom, and when she did it was dark yellow and so strong she could not drink it, though she had tried, thinking that here was some sort of liquid going to waste. She had watched the dark drops being sucked into the dust and at once drying, leaving a few rough edges around the little pit, like an anteater’s hole.

She was kneeling there, rocking back and forth as Daima did, or had done – for pain and grief, eyes shut – when she heard thunder and opened her eyes to see clouds that were not smoke clouds. They were far ahead, on the horizon; but up there, in the north, was water, was rain: she was sure she could smell it. Slowly she climbed out of her little sandy desert and stood on the bank above the dried watercourse to look at the clouds: it was so long since she had seen lightning dance in banks of black cloud. Her skin craved and ached – soon, soon, drops of rain would fall and hiss on her parched skin … But she had done that before, stood waiting and watching rain on the horizon, but no rain had come. The clouds were growing bigger, gaining height over her. Was the thunder louder? She thought, If there are any animals left, they will be thinking as I am, and running as fast as they can to get here. But she could see no animals. Then she saw, as she had as a child, what seemed like the earth rolling down towards her, a brown avalanche; but now the flood was a low, brown creeping, and not very fast, not roaring and raging and throwing animals and trees and branches about, but it was coming, and would soon be here. At last she could drink her fill and fill the can and take it back to Daima, who had not felt water on her tongue or her lips, only the juice of the yellow roots, for days now.

The flood had reached her, and was slowly spreading out, but low down, filling the waterholes which bubbled and hissed, drinking in the wet, and billows of white foam almost reached Mara’s legs, and she stepped back. This was nothing like the floods she remembered, when it had seemed the whole world had become water; but it was a flood, this was water, and she knelt at the edge and plunged in her face and arms and then her whole body, rolling in it as she had in the sand. And then there was a great clacking and clattering and the surface of the flood was carrying a white load, which was bones, the bones of so many dead animals. She had to move quickly back, for now there were trees too: not the green, fresh trees that had tossed and bounded on the surface of other floods but the dead, white, fragmented trees of the drought. It was dangerous to be in the water or even too close. She stood back and waited for the water to carry the bones and trees past her. Then she saw, farther down, a big tree had stuck itself in a bank, and another came to rest against it; and behind this barrier were piling bones, loads of bones – a mass, a multitude – and she remembered how, long ago, she had seen the bones spilling out from under the bank on the big river she had come through with the two rescuers she had never seen again, or heard of. ‘Remember,’ the man had said to her, ‘remember where this is.’ But she had never been back to see if the bones were there or had been washed away again. Yet that place was no farther away than the short walk it had needed for the two strangers and Dann and her to get to the village. And now here was a new mountain of bones, with brown water rushing through them making them knock against each other. When the flood went down they would remain and the dust would blow over them and they would be hidden. People would think, This is just a river bank, until another flood … The clacking and clicking seemed to be less and the brown water was running more slowly. Up north the sky was blue, the hot, bright, antagonistic blue of drought, and soon the water would be gone. Desperate, she stepped into it, risking blows from the last of the bones, and splashed herself and drank and drank. It was muddy water, but she could feel her body soaking it in. Soon she was standing by water running low again and shrinking back into the waterholes; and her body was fresh and cool, and the filthy, dry paste of dirt had gone, leaving on her a film of the dust the water carried, a greyish film. She thought, I’m the same colour as the Rock People, but did not care. For she was thinking of Daima, and how she had not yet felt the water on her face and in her mouth. Mara was stronger now. With the sun setting in a blaze in the again hot, dry sky behind her she went home, walking well, looking at every step for insects or scorpions or anything at all making its way to the waterholes. And she did see some scorpions, the big ones, going in lines towards the water.

In the dark, hot room Daima moaned, and her breath was hot and heavy. Mara took down the shutter and opened the door a little, and gave Daima a drink, and said it had rained up-country and there had been a small flash flood. But Daima was too ill to care now, and Mara washed her all over, slowly, for a long time, so the water could sink into that drying, cracking skin; and she rubbed cloths over her hair. And made her drink, again and again.

When the morning came, Mara would go up to the waterholes again, and perhaps over the next ridge to the river, to fill the cans and bring them back, to get more water into the cistern that was in the house, though no longer locked up, since there was no one to steal it. She would make the journey again and again till the cistern was full – but then Mara thought, What for? Daima will soon die and there will be nothing here to keep me. Mara was awake all night, standing at the door, looking into the dark and at the sky, where all the stars were out, washed clean and glittering. The very moment the light greyed she took up cans and shut the door tight, and went on, the only moving thing in that hot landscape, up the ridge to its top, and stopped to see what she could see. The flood had gone, leaving a film over everything, greying the white bones heaped up against the dead branching trees. The waterholes were filled, and around every one were scorpions, and beetles and spiders. Where had they been hiding all this time? She had not seen anything but scorpions for a long time. The stretch of sand where she had rolled yesterday was there again, a white glisten over a dark dampness. On the dead white trees along the watercourse the branches seemed clotted with dark crusts or bumps. Insects again, all kinds of them. Had they drunk what they needed and fled up the trees to get away from the scorpions?

Mara was hungry. Now she had drunk enough so that her whole body was sated, and the many aches and sorenesses were not one pain all over her body but could be felt separately – her stomach was shouting, was screaming, at her that she must eat, she must … But what?

Mara went on up the second ridge, and when she reached the top saw more or less what she had expected. There was a running brown stream, low down under the dead white trees with their white branches, like arms: Please, please, give us water. There were bones in piles on both sides of the water, but not very far up, and on the bones sat all kinds of insects and scorpions. She went slowly, watching every step, between the bones to the water’s edge. It was a slow, sinking stream with wet, whitish clay all along it, which would soon be hard crusts and ridges – as hard as the surface of the white on the walls of the old buildings of the dead cities in the hills. Mara had not come here very often, because when the waterholes nearer the village were dry this river was too. Why had she come here so seldom? For one thing she liked better than anything going to the old cities. And then, when the villagers were still here, she kept her distance and none of them would go near the old cities: they liked the water holes. Her life had steadily narrowed, even before she had become too weak to go to the hills.

The mud the water had carried down had sunk down to the bottom of the pools. She could see clear down through the water. Her ears were ringing. The singing beetles were there on the branches. She had not heard them for … She could not remember when she had heard them last. Another sound … surely not … it was not possible … Yes, there was a croaking from the edge of a pool. Some toad or frog had lived through the dry years under the hard, dry mud, and now, the water having softened the mud, the creature had climbed up through it and there it was, sitting on a stone. There were several. When the water went down – and it was going down fast – goodbye, that would be the end of them. The end, too, of the singing beetles. There would be silence again.

Mara stripped off the brown tunic and knelt by a pool. Slowly she sank into it, and rolled in it and lay there absorbing water; and then, when that pool was muddy, went to another pool and squatted, looking in. She could see herself, so thin, only bones with skin stretched over them. Her eyes were deep in her face. It was her hair – those greasy, solid clumps – that she hated. She could hardly bear to touch them. She was staring down at herself there in the water, and saw that next to her was someone else. For a moment she thought her reflection was doubled, but she raised her head and saw on the other side of the pool a youth, who was staring at her. Deliberately, he cupped his hands, dipped them in the water, and drank, keeping his gaze on her. He was naked. She saw there between his legs what Daima had told her she must be afraid of: the two young, round balls in their little sac, and the long thick tube over them – nothing like the wrinkled old lumps Mara had seen so often when the Rock People bathed. This youth was not as thin as she was. There was flesh on him. It had been a long time since she had seen skin fit so nicely over the bones of a face, or arms and legs that had a smooth softness to them. There was a quickness and lightness about him as he squatted there, balancing on his heels and letting the water trickle through his fingers. She was thinking, I ought to be afraid of him. She was thinking, He isn’t one of the Rock People … And then she knew it was Dann and, moreover, had known from the first. She reached her arms out towards him across the water, but let them fall, and smiled, and said, ‘You’ve come back.’

He did not say anything. He was looking at her as she was at him, at every little bit, taking in, finding out … But why didn’t he say anything? He did not smile, he did not seem to have heard. He only frowned and examined her. Five years he had been gone. He had been ten years old, and now he was fifteen. He was a man. The Rock People married when they were thirteen or fourteen and could have children by Dann’s age.

‘I heard you were still here,’ he said. ‘Before that I thought you must be dead.’

‘Everyone is dead, except for me and Daima.’

He stood up. He took up from the ground a whitish rough tunic of the kind servants had worn back home. He shook the dust out of it and slid it over his head. For the first time, it occurred to her that she was naked. She put on her brown tunic, hating it, as she always did. And he was making a face as he saw it. He was remembering that – and what else?

She wanted to ask, ‘What did you see?’ – but you asked that about a place, a feather, a tree, a person, not five years.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked, and he laughed. That was because it was a stupid question. He had not laughed or even smiled till now. ‘Have you been here all this time?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Just here, nowhere else?’

‘Yes.’ And she knew that part of what she wanted to know had been answered. His smile was scornful, and she was seeing her life as he did when he smiled: she had done nothing, been nowhere, while he …

‘Who told you I was here?’

‘Travellers said.’

She thought that he was speaking Mahondi as if he had forgotten how to. She spoke it with Daima, so she had not forgotten.

‘You haven’t been meeting many Mahondis,’ she stated.

That laugh again: short, ‘That’s it, yes. Not many.’

‘I’m going back to see how Daima is. She is dying.’ She dipped her cans and began walking back. She did not know if he would come with her. She could not read his face, his movements; she did not know him. He might just walk off again – disappear.

They went carefully past the fast drying waterholes of the smaller watercourse, where the scorpions were fighting, and where from the trees insects were dropping to the earth to get to the waterholes – where scorpions tore them apart with their pincers.

‘All the insects and the scorpions are getting bigger here,’ she said.

‘And everywhere. And down South.’

The phrase down South did not go easily into her mind. She had often said, ‘up north,’ ‘down south’ – but south to her had meant their old home and her family. She was thinking that, to him, who knew so much more, south must mean much more. Nearly everything of what she said or thought was from their old home, from the What Did You See? game, from Daima’s memories. It was as if she had been living off all that ever since.

They took some time to get to the village. It was because she was slow. He kept getting ahead of her, stopping to wait for her, but then when they set off in no time he was ahead again.

In the village she told him which houses had the dead in them, which cisterns had corpses – but they must be dried up now, or skeletons.

At Rabat’s house he stopped, remembering. He slid back the door, peered in, went to the corner where Rabat lay, and stood looking down. Then he lifted the corpse by its shoulder, stared into the face, let Rabat drop, like a piece of wood. Except, thought Mara, any piece of wood we found we’d treat more carefully than how he has just handled Rabat. And she had learned another thing about him: the dead were nothing to him; he was used to death.

At their house Mara slid back the door and listened. She thought at first that Daima had died. There was no sound of breathing, but she heard a little sigh, and then a long interval, and another sigh.

‘She’s going,’ Dann said. He did not look at Daima but went into the inner rooms.

Mara lifted water to Daima’s lips but the old woman was past swallowing.

Dann came back. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘I’m not going while she is alive.’

He sat down with his arms folded at the rocky table, put his head on his arms – and was at once asleep. His breathing was steady, healthy, loud.

Mara sat by the old woman, wiping her face with a wet cloth, then her arms and her hands. She kept taking gulps of water herself, each one a delicious surprise, since it had been so long since she could simply lift a cup and take a mouthful without thinking, I must only take a few drops. Mara thought, If I don’t eat soon I will simply fall over and die myself. She left Daima and went to the storeroom. There were still some roots. She sliced one, licking the juice off her fingers. Then she reached up out of the dry cistern a can that had some of the white flour in it, which she had saved so that one day she would have the strength to leave. It had been three seasons since anyone had come with flour to barter. It smelled a bit stale, but it was still good. She mixed it with water, patted it flat, and put it out on the cistern top, where she knew it would cook in that flaming heat in a few minutes. When she went back to Daima, the old woman was dead.

Dann still slept.

Mara put her hand out towards his shoulder, but before she touched him he was on his feet, and a knife was in his hand. He saw her, took her in, nodded, sat down and at once drew towards him the plate of sliced root, and began eating. He ate it all.

‘That was for both of us.’

‘You didn’t say.’

She got another root, sliced that, and ate it while he watched. Then she brought in the flat bread from the cistern top, broke it in two and gave him half.

‘This is almost the last of the flour,’ she said.

‘I have a little with me.’

When he had finished eating he went to bend over Daima, staring. She probably hadn’t changed very much since he left, except that her long hair was white.

‘Do you remember her?’ she asked.

‘She looked after us.’

‘Do you remember our home?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember the night Gorda rescued us and arranged for us to be brought here to Daima?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember the two people who brought us?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember Mishka? And her baby, Dann? You called him Dann?’

He frowned. ‘I think I do. A little.’

‘You cried when you had to say goodbye to Mishkita.’

And now he sighed, and looked long and hard at her. He was trying to remember? He didn’t want to remember? He did not like it, her trying to make him remember?

It was painful for Mara: her body, her arms – her arms particularly – knew how they had sheltered Dann, how he had clung and hugged her, but now he seemed to remember nothing at all. Yet those memories were the strongest she had, and looking after Dann had been the first and most important thing in her life. It was as if all that early time together had become nothing.

But she thought, If I did let my arms reach out now it wouldn’t be Dann, but only this strange young man with the dangerous thing between his legs. I could not just hug him or kiss him now.

Then just as the sense of herself, Mara, was fading away, and she was feeling like a shadow or a little ghost, he said unexpectedly, ‘You sang to me. You used to sing to me when I went to sleep.’ And he smiled. It was the sweetest smile – not a jeer, or a sneer – and yet what she felt was, the smile was for the songs, and not for her, who had sung them to him.

‘I looked after you,’ she said.

He really was trying to remember, she could see. ‘We’ll tell each other things,’ he said, ‘but now we should go.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, we can’t stay here.’

She was thinking, But I’ve been here, and Daima too … She wanted to give him something good out of those long years and said, ‘Up in those hills there are the old cities. You never really saw them. I could show you, when the fire has died out.’

‘There are old ruins everywhere. You’ll see.’

Mara and Dann stood on either side of the tall stack of rocks that was a table and looked at each other as strangers do who want to please each other, but thinking, I can’t read that face … that look … those eyes. And both sighed, at the same moment.

Dann turned away from the strain of it. He began looking around the room, with sharp, clever eyes: he was planning, Mara could see. What was going into those plans she could not even guess at. For she had been here, all this time, knowing nothing but this village, while he …

‘Water, first,’ he said. He took two of the cans that had the wooden handles set across the tops, put loops of rope into the handles, tested the loops, slung the cans on a thick stick. Then he took them inside to the cistern. He did not have to tell her why: the mud in that water would have had time to settle.

He brought the cans back. ‘A pity we can’t take all the cans.’

‘Don’t they have them – where we are going?’

‘Hardly any. Not of this metal. All these would keep us fed for a year. But never mind. Now, food.’ He put on the table a leather bag and showed her the flour in it. Enough for a few pieces of bread. Mara brought ten yellow roots from next door and a bag of the white flour traders had once brought.

‘Is that all we’ve got?’

‘That’s all.’

‘Get some of these things.’ He indicated Mara’s brown garment.

She grimaced, but went into the storeroom and fetched back an armful.

‘We can get food for these,’ he said. He bundled them, three and three.

She went back in, and fetched some of the delicate old garments from the chest full of them, and spread them out. He picked up one, frowning: his hands were unused to such fragile cloth.

‘Better leave these,’ he said. ‘If people see them they’ll think we’re … we’re…’

‘What? But we are. We wore these, at home. I don’t want to leave them.’

‘You can’t take them all.’

‘I’ll take these two.’ The soft folds, pale rose, and yellow, lay glowing on the dark rock.

‘Perhaps someone’ll pay for them. Or give us something.’

Now they set two sacks side by side on the floor and began packing. First, into hers, went a roll of the torn-up material that she used for the blood flow. She was embarrassed and tried to hurry and hide what she was doing, but he saw and nodded. This comforted her, that he understood what a problem it was for her. She put in next the two delicate dresses, rolled up. Then the three brown ones. Then five yellow roots and her little bag of flour. Into his went, on top of an old cloth that had in it an axe, five roots, his bag of flour, three of the brown tunics. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘Wait.’ Mara went to Daima, stroked the old cheek, which was chilling fast, and stopped herself crying, because tears wasted water. She thought, Daima will lie here and go as dry as a stick, like Rabat, or the scorpions will push the thatch aside and come in. It doesn’t matter. But isn’t that strange? I’ve spent every minute of my time worrying about Daima – what can I give her to eat, to drink, is she ill, is she comfortable? – and now I say, Let the scorpions eat her.

‘Have we got candles?’

She indicated the big floor candles. Among them was one half-burned. Forgetting what it concealed, Daima had set it alight one evening, and it was only when an acrid smell of burning leather reminded them that they put out the flame. Now Mara took up the stump, turned it upside down, dug out the plug at the bottom and pulled out the little bag. She spilled on to the old rough rock a shower of bright, clean, softly gleaming gold coins. Dann picked one up, turned it about, bit it gently.

She could have cried, seeing those pretty, fresh, gold rounds, dropped in there from another world, like the coloured robes – nothing to do with this grim, dusty, rocky, cruel place.

‘I don’t think anyone would want these,’ said Dann. ‘I don’t think anyone uses them now.’ Then he thought and said, ‘But perhaps that’s because I’ve just been … I’ve been with the poor people, Mara. This is what I’ve been using.’

He took from the inside pocket of his slave’s garment a dirty little bag and spilled out on to the rock surface beside the scatter of gold some coins made of a light, dull greyish metal. Mara picked up a handful. They were of no weight at all, and greasy.

‘This is the same metal as the old pots and the cans.’

‘Yes. They’re old. Hundreds of years.’ He showed her a mark on one of them. ‘That means five.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘Five. Who knows what five meant then? Now they’re worth just what we say.’

‘How many of them to one of the gold pieces?’

And now he laughed, finding it really funny. ‘So much …’ He spread his arms. ‘No, enough to fill this whole room … Leave them. They’ll get us into trouble.’

‘No. Our parents … our family, the People, sent them to us. To Daima.’ She scooped them up, counting into the little bag, which was stiff with the candle wax, the pretty, bright little discs of gold, each the size of Dann’s big thumbnail, twice as thick and surprisingly heavy. Fifty of them.

‘Fifty,’ she said; and he said, ‘But keep them hidden.’

And that was how they could have left behind the coins that would save their lives over and over again.

Because of this little fluster and flurry over the gold, which really did seem to steal their minds away, they forgot important things. Matches – that was the worst. Salt. They could easily have chopped a piece off the bottom of a floor candle, but they didn’t think of that until too late. Mara did just remember to take up a digging stick, as they went out, which she had used for years and was as sharp as a big thorn.

What they were both thinking as they left, slinging the carrying pole between them: We have the most important thing, water.