Doris Lessing - Mara and Dann

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.