Doris Lessing - Mara and Dann

Dann was actually in tears. "I don't want to leave Leta. How do you know she'll be happy?"

"Happy," said Daulis. "I don't think that is a word she has used often in her life. And you don't understand. If it is possible, she can come home and live with — we'll see."

"She'll think you have abandoned her," said Mara.

"What's the good of making promises you can't keep? If the place I've told you about isn't possible, I'll be going back to Bilma. I don't know what I'm going to find. The old man might have died and people simply moved in. Once, if you said 'a Mahondi place,' people left it alone. Not now. Once, if you said 'The Centre,' they fell into line. They still do, in some places. Everyone around here knows that the Centre is... you'll see."

He took them to a low rise, and pointed. Ahead was a great wall that curved away on either side, enclosing a round or oval space. The wall was of stone. There had been not a stone, scarcely a pebble, for miles.

"All that stone came from the Middle Sea," said Daulis. "They needed a hundred years, and more, to get this place built."

And now Dann, then Mara, exclaimed and pointed. High on the wall was a shining disc, a sun trap, and there were others, at intervals. "We know those things," said Dann. "They provide power from the sun."

"They used to provide power from the sun," said Daulis. "The apparatus wore out. But a lot of people don't know they are dead and think they are spy machines. And now, go around the wall to the south and you'll find a gateway. Just go in. I wouldn't have been able to say that until recently — there were guards. Go straight into the central hall. I'm going around the wall to the north. Goodbye, and I do hope so very much that we'll see each other very soon." And off he strode, turning to wave to them before he went around the curve.

"So we're alone together again," said Dann. "I like that, Mara." And he put his arm around her.

"You're the only thing in my life that has always been there — well, most of the time."

"I'm frightened, Mara."

"I am very frightened, Dann."

"Are you as frightened as when we were in that place with the spiders and scorpions?"

"Yes. And are you as frightened as." She was going to say, the Tower in Chelops, but could not say it; and he, gently, "You were going to say, that Tower where you rescued me; but no, I could never ever be as afraid as I was in that place. Never." He hugged her, so her head was on his shoulder, and added, "But I am as afraid as when we were fighting on that boat when Shabis's soldiers captured us."

"I wasn't frightened then because I was too busy stealing the old woman's money. Do you realise, if Han were still alive, she could probably make these sun traps work again?"

"Perhaps she was the last person to know the secret?"

The two stood there for quite a time, their arms around each other, talking. They could feel each other trembling.

At last Dann said, "Well, it can't possibly be as bad as all that. Let's go."

They went around the curve of the wall till they reached an enormous iron gate, designed to impress and oppress, and went in, and found the space between wall and inner wall almost as desolate as the tundra outside: it was greyish, lumpy, dried mud, with tussocks of marsh grass. Another imposing door, and they were in a high corridor that went on straight ahead, where there were big, painted doors, with faded pictures; and then they were in a very large room, circular, with pillars that supported a painted ceiling, which was cracked, and had flakes of plaster loose on it.

They waited. Mara clapped her hands. Nothing happened. Dann shouted, "Hallooo," and Mara too, "Hallooo."

They heard footsteps and on the opposite side of the round hall appeared two people. One was a woman, and she was a hurrying confusion of white and grey veils, and her face was first affronted, and then excited, while the man advanced in a calm, stately way. He wore some kind of uniform. He was serious, formal, silent, while she emitted little cries, "Oh, oh, my dears, oh how wonderful, oh at last, here you are." Then she was curtsying before Mara, "Oh Princess, we have been waiting so long for you," and before Dann, "Oh Prince, it has been so long." Meanwhile the man bowed stiffly from the waist, before Mara, and before Dann, and said, "Welcome to you both." Then the woman took a step back to look at them. She did not approve of what she saw, though her cries of pleasure and welcome broke out again, and now she embraced Mara, "Oh my dear Princess, Princess Shahana, oh, oh, oh." Mara, standing obediently inside those convulsive arms, knew she was muddy, unkempt and probably smelly. She knew too that the pressure of those arms meant, I shall take you in hand. And then the woman embraced Dann with, "Prince Shahmand." Her face wrinkled with distaste at the contact.

"I am sorry," said Mara. "I know we must disappoint you. You see, we have not been living like a prince and princess."

"Oh I know, I know," excitedly cried their hostess, who was so exquisite and clean and perfumed in her clouds of white and grey. "I know what a terrible, terrible time you have had, but now it's all over."

"Felissa," said the man at this point, "these two are clearly in need of food and some rest."

"Oh dear, oh dear, forgive me," and off she fluttered back into the depths of this Centre or Palace or whatever it was, while the man said, "I am Felix, and you must forgive my wife. She has built up such hopes on you two, and of course so have I."

He led the way after Felissa, and they were in a smaller, pleasant room that had a low table, floor cushions, and a window that looked out on a vista of roofs, like a town, all inside the enclosing wall. "Please sit." They did so. He sat, and said, "Your mother was my mother's cousin. And your father was Felissa's mother's cousin. And you are the last of that family, the Royal House. But I expect you know all that."

"We don't know any of it," said Dann. He sounded grumpy, but — Mara noted — a little flattered.

"Well Shahana, well Shahmand."

But here Mara interrupted. "I'd rather you called me Mara." And she looked at Dann, who saw her look, and said, "And I am Dann." But she thought he said it with reluctance.

"Mara and Dann? Well, for family use, if you like, but you'll have to use your real names, on formal occasions. At least, I do hope you'll agree to — well, to our plans for you."

Here Felissa came running back. "And there'll be food for you in just one moment." And now she sat opposite them and took her husband's hand and caressed it and said, "Felix, Felix, I had begun to believe this wonderful day would never happen."

"They want to be called Mara and Dann," he said to her, and Mara knew that she disliked him, from that moment, because though he smiled, it sounded like a sneer.

A hesitation, then, "We'll call them anything they like, poor dears."

And then in came an old man, with a large tray, and food. Nothing remarkable: they had eaten better at inns along the way. And Felissa said, "You must forgive our reduced style of living — but I'm sure that all that will change soon."

And she proceeded to tell them what Felix had already told, and the two marvelled that her style of fluttery, cooing, stroking — she had to keep fondling their hands or their faces — needed the whole meal to say what her husband had said in a few sentences.

Meanwhile Mara was thinking that for years she had secretly wondered about her name, her real name, the one she had been so effectively ordered to forget, and had believed, or half believed, that when she heard it a truth about herself would be revealed and she would have to cry out, Yes, that's it, at last, that's who I am. But now Shahana, and Princess, did not fit her, she could not pull the words over her, as she had dreamed she would, like a robe that had her name woven right through it. She did not want Shahana, nor Princess. They were for someone else. She was Mara. That was her name.