Doris Lessing - The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog

So what did he think now? One thought was the obvious one. He, Griot, had created the army out there, for it was that, if a small one. He, Griot, ran it, maintained it, fed it, planned for it. If Dann died, or finally went mad, or walked away again somewhere, Griot would be its ruler, and what did he think about that?

There was one central thing here, not to be encompassed in an easy fact, or statement: Dann’s fame, or whatever the emanation from him could be called, had spread everywhere through the cities of Tundra. Griot had discovered this for himself. He had gone in disguise into Tundra, taking the dangerous way through the marshes, and had sat about in eating houses and bars, drinking for long tedious evenings in inns, gossiping in market places. Everyone knew that the old Mahondis were dead, but there were new young ones, and it wasn’t just ‘the Mahondis’ but one, the young General, Dann. Some said his name was Prince Shahmand, but where had all that come from? Not Griot! It was the old woman, spinning her webs, using her network of spies – which now was Griot’s network. But the name was General Dann, and that had not been the old woman’s. It was a strange and unsettling thing, listening to that talk. Dann had not been so very long at the Centre before he had gone to the Farm, had not been long there again before going on his adventure to the Bottom Sea. Yet that had been enough to set the talk running, to fire imaginations. He had a life in the thoughts of the peoples of Tundra. They expected that he would fill the Centre with its old power and that once again it would dominate all of Tundra. Tundra power was weakening fast and so they waited for the Good General, for Dann. What name could you put to that fame of his? It was an illusion, as Shabis had said. It was a flicker of nothing, like marsh gas, or the greenish light that runs along the tops of sea waves – Griot had seen that, in his time. It had no existence. Yet it was powerful. It was nothing. Yet people waited for General Dann.

Griot had created an army, an efficient one, but Griot was nothing at all, compared with Dann, who possessed this – what ?

Griot sat pondering this, sitting quiet and long in the great hall, a small figure underneath the tall pillars and airy fluted ceilings that still held traces of long-ago colours, clear reds, blues, yellows, green like sea water. He did not much care about all that but supposed that old grandeur did connect somewhere with Dann’s glamour. Did it? But why should he care about Dann’s qualities, if he did not care now about Dann, who would have killed him? But he did. Griot’s not very long life, his hard and dangerous life, had not taught him love or tenderness, except for a sick horse he had tended in one of the places he had stopped – for a while – before having to run away again. He understood Dann’s feeling for the snow dog. But now Griot was thinking that if he had loved Dann, there was nothing left of what he had loved him for. But that word, love , it made him uncomfortable. Could the passionate admiration of a boy for an officer far above him be called love? He did not think so. Where was that handsome, kindly young officer – captain, then general? There was only the unreal thing, his ability to set fire to the expectations of people who had never even met him.

Griot thought of that terribly scarred body, which he had nursed like – well, like the wounded horse whose life he had saved.

He was really very unhappy. Where there should have been General Dann, a strong healthy man, there was a sick man who was at that moment sleeping off a bout of poppy.

Then he saw coming from Dann’s apartment Ruff, the snow dog, and behind him, Dann, white-faced, frail, cautious of movement, but himself.

Himself. Who? Well, he wasn’t the other one – whoever he was.

Why was Griot so sure? He was. He was conscious that to say it was no answer to terrible questions – which he did not feel equipped to deal with. But he was equipped to say, ‘That’s Dann, there he is.’

Dann sat down opposite Griot, yawned and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m not mad now.’ (He could have said, ‘I am not him now.’)

Then Dann said, and it wasn’t careless, or casual – no, he had been thinking he must say it, and mean it: ‘I am sorry, Griot.’ Did he remember he could have killed Griot if Ruff hadn’t stopped him?

‘First,’ he went on, in this considering way he was using, as if checking off things he had planned to say, ‘first, Griot, there is the question of your rank. I was stupid – what I said.’ (He didn’t say, ‘what he said.’) ‘You are responsible for everything. You’ve done it all. And yet the soldiers don’t know what to call you.’

Griot sat waiting, suffering because Dann was, looking at Dann who was not looking at him, and that was because his eyes were hurting, Griot could see: light from high up, where the many windows were, fell in bright rays. Dann moved his head back, out of the brilliance, and blinked at Griot.

‘If Shabis could make me a learner general – did you know that, Griot? I and others of Shabis’s – pets, we were learner generals. But they called us general.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Griot quietly, but hurt: he found it so hard to accept that he had made so small an impression on Dann at a time when Dann had been everything for him.

‘So, how about it, Griot? I suppose I am General Dann, if you say I am, but you should be a general too, General Griot.’

‘I’d like to be captain,’ said Griot, remembering the handsome young captain Dann who was in his memory still as something to aim for.

‘Then we’ll have to be careful no one gets promoted above captain,’ said Dann. ‘We are making up this army from scratch, aren’t we, Griot? So we can say what goes. General Dann and Captain Griot. Why not?’ And he laughed gently, looking through the bright light at Griot with eyes that watered; he wanted Griot to laugh with him. There was something gentle and tentative about all this, and Griot found himself wanting to walk round the table, lift Dann up and carry him back to his bed. Dann was trembling. His hand shook.

‘I am going to address the soldiers,’ he said, and Griot heard another item on Dann’s mental list ticked off.

‘Yes, I think you should,’ said Griot. ‘They are pretty disturbed.’

‘Yes. The sooner the better. And at some point we must talk about the Centre … it’s all right, I’m not going to burn it down. I’m not saying I don’t want to.’ He lifted his head and sniffed, as Ruff might have done – as Ruff did, too, because Dann did. Griot allowed the smell of the Centre, which he usually shut away from him, in his mind, to enter, and wrinkled up his nose, as Dann was doing. A dank grey smell, and now it had a hint of burning in it, too.

‘Dann, there is something I found out about the Centre and you’d be interested …’

Dann waved this away. ‘Call the soldiers,’ he said.

Griot went out, looking back to see Dann sitting blinking there in the light, which was about to slide away and leave him in shadow. The snow dog put his head on Dann’s thighs and Dann stroked it. ‘Ruff,’ he said, and he said it passionately, ‘you’re my friend, Ruff. Yes, you’re my friend.’

And I am not , Griot said to himself. I am not.

Soon a thousand soldiers stood at ease on the space called the parade ground, or the square, between the main Centre buildings and the camp of shed and huts. Too small a space, but there was nowhere for it to expand. On one side of the camp were the cliffs of the Middle Sea and on the other the marshes began. The camp could expand only one way, along the edge of the Middle Sea, and it was, and too fast. On the north side of the Centre its walls were sinking into wet. Between them and the cliffs were the roads needed to bring the crops and the animals from their pastures, and the fish catches from the sea.