Mara and Dann

‘There would be if it rained.’

Dann was jumping up like a puppy, trying to get hold of the cistern’s edge so as to haul himself up. Daima took the cans of water into the house, rescuing Dann’s jar, which was in danger of being kicked over. She came back and lifted Dann up and sat him on the edge of the cistern.

‘There’s a scorpion,’ he said.

‘It must have fallen in, then.’

Mara was trying to pull herself up: her hands could not get a proper grip on the edge, which she could only just reach. Daima lifted her up and she sat by Dann, pulling her legs up well away from the angry scorpion, which was trying to climb up the rocky sides, but falling back.

‘Poor thing,’ said Mara.

‘It’s like the water stinger,’ said Dann, ‘only much smaller.’

Daima fetched a stick, pulled herself up, sat on the edge of the tank and said, ‘Mind,’ reaching down the stick. The scorpion gripped it with its pincers, Daima lifted – and the scorpion let go. ‘If you don’t hold on you’ll die there,’ said Daima, but this time the scorpion kept its grip on the stick, and Daima lifted it out carefully. The three watched the beast scuttle off into the mats of dead grass.

‘It’s hungry,’ said Daima, ‘just like everything else.’

It was so hot on the edge of the rocky box Mara’s thighs were burning. She jumped down. So did Daima, and lifted down Dann before he could protest.

‘How long since there was water in that?’

‘We had a big storm about a year ago. The cistern filled up. I kept carrying water through to the tank you saw inside. And I’ve made that water last.’

‘Perhaps we will have another storm,’ said Mara.

‘Sometimes I think it will never rain properly again.’

Inside the house Dann began yawning. He ate some sour milk, making faces; and then Mara took him next door, to the lavatory, and then to his bed. He was asleep at once.

Mara thought, I want Dann to sleep, so as to sleep away the bad memories, but I want to remember everything. What is the What Did You See? game if it is not trying to remember everything? The light was going outside. Daima lit the big floor candle. This room was cool because of the rock walls, in spite of the warm air coming in at the window. Tomorrow the sun would jump up like an enemy and then soon it would be too hot to go out of doors.

Mara sat at the rock table with Daima.

‘Is Rabat a spy?’ she asked. ‘Does she tell the others everything about us?’

‘She is a spy but she doesn’t tell everything.’ Daima saw from Mara’s face that she did not know what to ask. ‘Things are not simple,’ she said. ‘It’s true that I shouldn’t trust Rabat – isn’t that what you are thinking?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she did look after me when I was ill. And I looked after her when she broke her leg. And when my children were small she helped me with them.’

‘Didn’t she have any children?’

‘She did, but they died. It was when we had the little drought, and they got the drought sickness.’

‘Will she tell the others about the soldiers asking for us?’

‘She might, but I don’t think so. But it wouldn’t matter. If the soldiers offered money for us, yes. But I think they were really running away as fast as they could. Rabat counts on me. She has very little food left. When the traders came last time I bought food for her because she had nothing to exchange. They give flour in exchange for the roots, but it is difficult finding the roots. Some people here grow a little poppy, but it has been too dry. The water in her tanks is finished, and I’ve been giving her some. And she does help me with the milk beast.’

‘Why doesn’t she have one?’

‘I said things were not simple. She had four milk beasts left. She and her husband gave me one for my children. It was her husband that was so kind: he was a really good man. And he died. One night some people on the run came through here and they stole her three milk beasts. So now she shares mine. It is only fair – I suppose.’

‘Do you always fetch water from the pool where we were today?’

‘That little river has been dry for a couple of years. The big river has been nearly dry. I’ve got enough water in my tank in there to last us, if we are careful. I’m going back to the pool tomorrow when everyone goes. And I want you to keep Dann here.’

‘You think Kulik meant to drown him?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he began by a joke and then…It would be very easy to keep him under a little too long.’

‘Why did he want to kill Dann? A little boy?’

‘Little boys grow up. And so do little girls, Mara. Be careful all the time. Not that you have to keep in the house. I’m going to teach you how to milk the animal, and how to let the milk go sour and make cheese. And how to find the roots too – and that is very important. You have to be out and about and do your share. I might die, Mara. I’m an old woman. You have to know everything I know. I’ll show you where the money is. But remember: it is easy to slip a scorpion into a fold of cloth or throw a stone from behind a wall so that it looks as if it has come off a roof, or put a child in a cistern and pull the rock lid over. A child did die like that once. One of theirs, though. No one could hear it cry out because the lid was a fit.’

‘That means someone meant to kill it.’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘That means that they fight each other – the Rock People.’

‘Yes, they do. There are families who won’t speak to each other.’

Suddenly Mara giggled, and Daima seemed surprised. Mara quickly said, ‘We haven’t enough water. We only have a little food. But they quarrel.’ And looked at Daima to see if she had understood.

Daima said, very dry, but smiling, ‘I see you are growing up fast. But that is the point. The harder things are the more people fight. You’d think it was the other way about.’

Next morning Daima said to Dann that he could go out and play just outside the doorway, where they could see him. He went out and stood poking a stick at the dust. He seemed half asleep. Mara thought that if their mother could see this dirty little child with his matted hair, she would not know him. Above all she would not know this listlessness. Soon there were footsteps, and voices, and two men came, and stopped a few paces away to stare openly through the doorway, where Daima and Mara could be seen sitting at the table. Dann was staring at them, and then began moving closer to them, step by step, his eyes going from one face to the other. The two men stood looking at him, surprised, then uneasy, then angry. They spoke to each other in low, angry voices. And still Dann moved towards them, step by step, staring. ‘Shooooo,’ said one man, and the other shook a stick at him, as if Dann were an animal.

‘What’s the matter with the child?’ 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.