Mara and Dann (59 page)

‘If you don't let go I'll use this.'

Neither of the men recognised the snake, did not know their danger, looked at her face, then down at the tiny sliver of a knife, then back at her…And Daulis was out of the line, with a knife in one hand and a dagger in the other. All this was happening so fast, the people in the lines had not yet noticed; but for Mara the pace was slow, every movement and gesture in a time of its own, so she was able to think, If I press this spring, Kulik will die, and then the soldiers will be forced to take notice, and there will be problems and … The two men had loosened their hold on Dann and his knife was out and at the throat of the other man. One moment, and both these men could be dead. And Mara was remembering how long ago Dann had sworn that he would kill Kulik.

But not now. Mara let Kulik go. Dann removed his knife. Kulik's scarred face turned in the familiar bare-teethed, hated grin, for a last look, and then he was off into the chair, with his aide, and the runner in the chair had the shafts up and was off, going back fast to the inn.

The people in the front had not noticed what had happened. The
people behind, who must have seen, were staring ahead, their faces saying, We have seen nothing.

If Dann had been hustled off to the chair, not one of these people would have intervened, or alerted the soldiers. What kind of people were these, then? Probably they would only help someone in their own immediate group. As for the soldiers, a couple were staring after the chair, but not as if they had seen anything much.

Mara saw that Dann was energised by the danger: his eyes were bright and he smiled at Mara, and put his arm around her. ‘Perhaps you should sell that pretty snake of yours, for all the good it's done us.'

‘It's good for killing,' said Mara. ‘So I'll not part with it yet.'

And there it was on her arm, the deadly sting back in its groove, and indeed it was a pretty little snake.

Soon they were at the front of the line, and were being waved on past the beam, towards the Tundra soldiers, who were watching them come forward.

Before Daulis could speak the officer in charge said, ‘We know about you. But we were expecting three, not four.'

Daulis said, ‘If the Centre had known I was bringing this woman they would have made provision for her.'

‘They told us to have three horses for you.'

‘We need four.'

‘Horses are not to be had for the whistling for them,' said the officer. ‘As you must know.'

The horses stood waiting. They were stout, stubby little beasts, and certainly not able to carry two people. Besides, Mara had never been on a horse. Nor had Leta. Dann had said he had, once, but it had been a striped horse, different from these, well trained and mild. These horses were anything but mild: they were kicking and bucking, and generally making it clear that they did not enjoy their servitude.

All kinds of conveyances stood about waiting for customers. ‘We'll find something,' said Daulis to the officer.

‘They're expecting you,' was the reply, meaning, Don't waste time.

They walked slowly along the road, having a good look: there was nothing like it in Bilma, nor in Charad – not since Chelops, where it had been a solid surface of shining black – but this road seemed to be surfaced by a grey spider-web, innumerable tiny lines, like scratches. Daulis said the road had been made long ago, certainly hundreds of years, and no one now knew the secret of this substance.

It was then mid-afternoon. Ahead was a town, and most of the travellers were making their way there. Daulis said he knew the town, a pretty and prosperous place, and well worth looking at. But they were all tired. The inn they chose was an affair of several storeys, with servants in uniforms, and the room was large, with real beds, not pallets on the floor, and fine hangings at the windows, and carpets.

They would have to pay for it. Mara changed two coins at the reception table, for their proper value. They lay down to recover. Then they went out to an eating house Daulis knew, and all of them, including Leta, ate very well. Neither Dann nor Mara had eaten this food or imagined it existed, and Dann said to her, ‘I told you it would get better all the time, didn't I?'

And Mara said, ‘I'll agree with you when I'm sure Kulik isn't following us.'

‘They wouldn't let him in,' said Daulis. ‘No one comes into Tundra except for some good reason. Like being useful to Tundra.'

‘You don't know this man,' said Mara. And she actually shuddered. She explained, ‘You see, you can't get rid of him, ever. It seems he has always been in my life – and Dann's. Why? It's as if he was born to torment us and chase after us, never letting us alone.'

In the room they had to make decisions. To where they would catch a boat going North, would be two days if they took a carriage or carrying-chairs. The coaches did not run here on their rickety rails. If they walked, that would take nearly a week. With one voice, Leta and Mara and Dann averred they would rather die than ever again use a carriage, a carrying-chair, or a coach. Daulis said drily that they were lucky not to be officials, who had no choice.

‘So we are lucky, we can walk if we choose,' said Mara gaily, for her spirits were rising, and so were the others'.

‘But we are supposed to be hurrying.'

Daulis said, ‘Well, if you knew how long they've been waiting, I wouldn't worry about a day or so. Or even a week.' And then he said to Mara, ‘Haven't we something to celebrate, you and I?'

‘What?'

Leta laughed at her. ‘You are no longer married, not in Tundra. That ended at the frontier.'

Mara had forgotten. She was surprised to feel a little sinking in her stomach, a giddiness. Regret. She was actually feeling sad, and she said to Daulis, ‘For a moment then I was really sorry. But don't be alarmed.'

‘I've enjoyed being married to you, Mara,' said Daulis. ‘Though some aspects of married love seemed to be wanting. Better be careful never to go back into Bilma, though. Not if you don't want to be married to me.'

‘Oh but I might enjoy it, for a while.'

This banter was upsetting Dann. Mara said, ‘If you are jealous about a convenience marriage, what are you going to be like when I am really married? If I ever am.'

And Dann surprised them by thinking a while and then saying seriously, ‘I don't know what I will do. I know I won't like it.'

This was an uncomfortable little moment, for Dann and Mara as well as for the others.

Next morning, when they got back on the big road, they saw a long procession winding out of town. It was a pilgrimage and it was going to visit a shrine. These new words having been explained by Daulis, they joined the end of the procession and were handed bunches of reeds that had been dyed black and dark red. The songs were doleful, and the people's garb was dark and sad, and all the faces wore looks of resigned suffering.

The shrine, Daulis said, housed a machine that was certainly many thousands of years old, of a metal now unknown, and it had survived vicissitudes, which included falling to earth like a leaf in a whirlwind, but into a swamp, which saved it. It was believed that Gods had descended to Ifrik in this machine, and the bones of two of these Gods had been sealed inside jars and set inside the machine. There were four pilgrimages every year to this ancient machine, which was guarded by priests, but of a different kind from the ones in Kanaz. The two different orders of priest despised each other, refused to let their followers have anything to do with each other, and had often fought vicious wars, in the past.

‘But,' enquired Mara, ‘why is walking to a place a sign of devotion to that place?'

‘And why,' asked Dann, ‘four times a year? Wouldn't once be enough?'

‘And what,' Leta wanted to know, ‘is the point of the bones?'

Daulis said that it would be better if questions like these were not asked aloud, because these people were of the sort that would set on critics and even kill them.

The procession went through more towns, each one prosperous, with well dressed people. What a contrast between the wild and desolate
country they had walked through and these towns, which were like dreams of order and delightfulness. Except for police in their black uniforms, like the soldiers'; and several times the police stood on either side of the column of singing pilgrims, looking keenly into every face. At night most pilgrims slept in special pilgrim inns, but the four slipped away to the comfort of good hotels. They rejoined the procession in the mornings. It was tedious. Above all, Leta was getting tired. She was not used to walking, more than move from one bed to another in Mother Dalide's. She did not say this bitterly, as they had heard her speak in the past, but actually laughed. They decided to try the carrying-chairs, as the least uncomfortable way of going faster; and so, two people to a chair, Dann and Mara in one, Leta and Daulis in another, they felt they were covering ground. But it was an interrupted progress. The chair-runners, two behind and two in front – these chairs had no wheels – stopped at certain points, set down the chairs, and fell out, others taking their place. No matter how they were appealed to, the runners shook them about; and at a place where they stopped for a meal, Mara asked about those ancient times when travelling was always comfortable, and Daulis said that more than that, everyone in the world was constantly on the move, very fast and thought nothing of it.

‘How do you know?' was the obvious question.

‘You will soon find out how I know,' said Daulis.

‘But why were they always moving?'

‘Because they could.'

‘Do you think we would if we could?'

‘I would,' said Dann.

And Mara said, ‘I would like so much – oh much more than I could tell you – to find a house, in a quiet place that had water, and live there with Dann. And my friends,' she added.

‘And your husband?' said Daulis.

‘And I'll have…' Dann stopped.

‘Dann will have Kira,' said Mara, and was about to explain Kira, and how Dann had loved her, but Daulis said, ‘I know about Kira. Shabis has told me about it.' And then seriously, to Dann, ‘I think you may find you'll catch up with her. I think I know where she might be … unless … '

‘Unless she's found some man she likes along the way. Isn't that what you were going to say?' 

On this last night before the river, Daulis said they should make the most of the comforts of the inn, because once they were on the boats, the river and lakeside inns would be a very different thing. And so they took care to wash well in the plentiful hot water, and to eat well, and to sleep soundly.

In the morning they walked along the road they had been following for days, and then they were standing on the edge of water where little waves ran up on to sandy verges and…
What did you see,
Mara
?
What did you see?
‘I saw the road I was on disappear into deep water.' They could see it down there, black, clean, no weeds, and little fishes wagging their way across it. Boats of all kinds were drawn up on the shore. But the shore of what? This was not a river, for it did not flow and you could not see the other side, and it was not a lake, but channels between sandy or weedy shoals, and water that just covered shallows.

A man appeared from a waterside house where boatmen waited, and showed them a flat, wide boat with ample room for them and their bundles. Daulis bargained with him, and Mara parted with two more coins. Eight left. They took their places on piles of cushions on a flat bottom, through which they could hear fussing and lapping, and they looked over the boat edges at water they could touch, and trail their fingers through. Mara and Dann were thinking, water dragons; but the boatman said little fish might nibble their fingers, but that would be the worst. For a while the boatman seemed to be steering by the road they could still see, but then it descended even deeper.

Water had risen up, and covered the road and the land around it. When did that happen? The boatman said, a long time ago. He was tried with hundreds of years? Thousands? – but these words meant nothing to him. He said that his grandfather had told him there was a family tradition that all this, where water was now, had been frozen down to a depth nobody had been able to measure, but then the ice became water.

This was slow going, finding their way through marsh, then deep water, then marsh again. Sometimes the bottom was so close to the surface
the boatman used a pole to push the boat along. Flowers floated on long, swaying stems. Birds ran over pads of leaves, and from a distance it looked as if they were running on the water. Big white birds sat on islands that were of massed weed, which dipped and swung with the ripples from the boat. There were no shores in sight but at evening they came to rest on a little promontory; and the boatman went off to his shelter, and they to an inn of the serviceable kind, and they ate food designed to satisfy hunger, and no more, and they sat about on their pallets talking, while the sunset died over the water. They lay down for the night covered with many blankets, and then there was another day of slow travelling. Mara felt that her thoughts had slowed, and all her life had become just this: sitting in a shallow boat just above water that smelled of weed, looking at Dann's face, at Leta's, at Daulis's, and thinking that she was so much part of them, and they of her, that she could not bear to think they could ever separate.

Days passed. It grew steadily colder and often cold mists crept about on the water and clung to their faces and hair. They sat wrapped in their grey blankets, even their heads covered. Mara sat dreaming in the water, that was what it felt like, as if she was in the water, in a shell; but what a difference from that other journey, down south, so hot, the water surfaces dazzling and flashing in her eyes, feeling sick, or not, but always the wet heat, the dangers from the water, where the dragons watched and waited and, always, the reminders along the banks of drought.