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Mara was not well either, and it annoyed Griot – and, he could see, the others – that she consoled and helped Kira but got no kindness in return.
Then there was a fearful row, not long before the women were due to give birth, with Kira shrieking that if Griot wanted to stay he must do as he was told. Griot knew that his labour was needed at the Farm, and tried to stick it out but then Kira actually tried to hit him and he left, apologising to Shabis and Mara. He went to the Centre, and there was Dann. That Dann did not greet him with the inward upwelling of feeling – you could call it rapture or at least intense happiness – which Griot felt, seemed to Griot only right: he had been one of Dann’s soldiers, that was all. But to be with Dann, working for him, serving him, seemed to Griot not only a reward for his long worship of Dann, but it had a special rightness, like a gift from – Fate, or whatever you called it. Griot had not gone in for gods and deities, though he had seen many different kinds in his short life, but now he was wondering if there wasn’t one who had a specially kind eye out for him. Otherwise, how to account for his good fortune – landing in Agre, under officer Dann, hearing about Dann at the Farm, then finding him here at the Centre, which was so wonderfully equipped to accommodate Griot’s plans.
He could say – he was prepared to – that Dann’s going away for so long was hardly a kindness to Griot, but then he had made good use of the time, moulding and making his army, examining the resources of the Centre.
He could have said that Dann being so very ill was hardly a beneficent provision of Fate, or whatever little god it was – Griot was modest, he awarded himself only a minor deity – but having nursed Dann now for weeks he at least knew his hero had faults. However, those he decided to see as signs or guarantees of a future largeness of destiny.
And now he was going back to the Farm, and it was Kira he thought of, but carefully warding off misfortune with the kind of wary respect a spiteful and anarchic person does demand.
He left the soldiers at the inn, not wanting to burden the Farm with their lodging and food, always short, he knew, and said he would be back in a day or so.
As he walked up to the house, the Western Sea noisy on the right hand, two dogs came down to greet him: they knew him. On the veranda Kira stood, fatter than she had been, a large woman in a purple gown, her hair curled and oiled, a flower in it, watching his approach.
‘Good greetings to you,’ he said, getting in first, to establish the note he intended for his stay.
‘Have you come to see me?’ she demanded.
Now this was really odd of her, and it set Griot back.
‘No, Kira, I’ve come to see Shabis.’
‘Oh, no one comes to visit me,’ she complained and he noted that peevishness was still the rule.
Down the side of the house, on a level sandy place, two little girls were playing, and the two Albs were with them.
Daulis was on the veranda, and his greeting smile was genuine. Griot sat, and the two dogs lay down beside him. To see these creatures tamed in the service of people was to know Ruff’s wildness, and the large freedoms of the snow dogs, who owed only some of their allegiance to people. Griot thought for the first time how easily those great white beasts could become a pack and turn on their guardians. Could Ruff turn on Dann? Hard to think that.
Kira settled her billows of purple skirt into a chair and enquired, ‘And how is my dear Dann?’
Griot was not going to tell Kira how Dann was, knowing she would take advantage of it if she could. Yet, with people coming this way from the Centre on their way down the coast, she must have heard, or would hear.
‘Dann has been on a long visit to the Bottom Sea,’ he said and, as she pressed for more, he kept fending her off, saying, ‘He went fishing with the fishing fleet.’ ‘He saw the ice mountains from up close,’ and then Shabis came and Griot stood, waiting for his greeting, knowing from that kindly face that Shabis was pleased to see him – and that he was muting his greeting because of Kira.
Shabis nodded at Griot to sit, and sat himself. He looked older and his loss of Mara had sapped him of some vital substance, some buoyancy that had infused his whole being when Mara had been with him. He was a tall, too thin man, and greying. It had to be acknowledged that this soldier was very far from what he had been.
Griot wanted to talk to Shabis alone, and now began an unpleasant little game, where Kira prevented Dann and Shabis from going aside to talk. When at last they went into the house to evade her she went with them and all that evening during the meal she kept up a chatter designed to prevent her being forgotten, even for a moment.
And she had changed: Griot’s covert glances at that pretty face, with its many little tricks of lip and eye and look and smile, told him that whatever had been there to like, and admire, had gone: and her voice, too, had changed.
Everything had changed since Griot had left. Mara had been some sort of centre for this family, but it was not one now. She had held it together. And she had kept Kira out of its centre, where she tried to be.
The two little girls, both delightful and – well, like little girls, Griot supposed, who had had no contact with children since he had been one – were well behaved, but Griot noted that Tamar, Mara’s child, stayed close to her father, and when she looked at Kira she was apprehensive.
Kira ordered not only her own child, Rhea, to do this and that, sit up, not fidget, not eat so fast and so on, but Tamar too, though the two Albs, Leta and Donna, were in charge of them. At last Shabis said, ‘That’s enough, Kira,’ a rebuke with an authority that went far beyond the present situation. Kira pouted, and sulked.
When the time came for goodnights, Tamar was going past Kira, who said, ‘What’s this, no kiss for Kira?’
The child blew Kira a kiss, but she was not going to be allowed to get away with that. Griot saw how they all, Shabis, Leta, Daulis and Donna, watched as the child ran up to Kira and lifted her face up for a kiss – Tamar was pretending to laugh but she was frightened. And Kira made a great ugly face – a joke, of course – and when she bent to the kiss, made the face even more threatening, so that the child broke away and ran to Leta.
‘What a little cry-baby,’ said Kira.
The little girls were taken off by the two Albs – into separate rooms, as Griot saw – and Kira said, ‘Another of those long boring evenings. Do tell us something interesting, Griot.’
Griot said, ‘I’m sorry, Kira. I have to leave in the morning early and I must talk to Shabis.’
‘Then talk away.’
Griot looked for help to Shabis, who rose and said, ‘Come, we’ll go for a walk. It’s quite light still.’
‘I want to walk too,’ said Kira.
‘No,’ said Shabis. ‘Stay where you are.’
‘Oh, Shabis,’ cajoled Kira, but Shabis frowned. Griot saw that Kira had wanted to move into Mara’s place, still wanted to, but it had not happened, and that was the reason for her petulance and her complaints. The idea of Kira where Mara had been shocked Griot, and he stood looking at Kira with such dislike that she removed her attention from Shabis, gave it to Griot and said, ‘So, what’s the matter, Griot? You’ve got your way, haven’t you? It’s more than I ever do.’ And she actually seemed about to cry.
This was such a new thing in Kira, this childishness, that Griot was again set back by it, and Shabis called to him, ‘Come on, Griot.’
The two men went out into the dusk, with the dogs.
They stood well away from the house. Kira was in the doorway trying to overhear. Griot told how Dann had been ill since the news of Mara’s death; he explained why Dann had heard so late. He told as much as he had gathered of Dann’s adventures at the Bottom Sea and at last made himself say that Dann was mad, and he didn’t know what to do.
‘Let us go further,’ said Shabis, with a glance back at the looming purple shape that was Kira. They walked down a stony path while the noise of the Western Sea loudened, and stopped close together where spray came hurtling over a cliff, but the noise was not too bad.
‘He was very ill once before,’ said Shabis and told Griot of the events in the Towers at Chelops.
‘Yes, when he is rambling he talks about it.’
‘Usually he never mentions it. Mara said he was afraid of thinking about it.’
‘And now he is afraid of poppy.’ Griot told Shabis of Dann’s orders never to give him poppy.
‘Then that’s the main thing,’ said Shabis. ‘And I’ll ask Leta, she has medicines for everything. But meanwhile tell me about the Centre. What’s all this about a new army?’
Griot told Shabis his story, not boasting, but proud of what he had achieved, and he ended saying that Tundra’s cities should be invaded. Now was the right time.
‘You talk easily about invasions and killing, Griot.’
‘I think Tundra will soon start invading us. The Centre is a rich prize. And the old people are dead. They want Dann, for his reputation.’
‘Really, and what reputation is that?’ said Shabis, surprising Griot, who then saw the older man’s ironical smile. ‘But it seems to me there are two. One, General Dann – and he deserved that; when I promoted him so young I think I can say I knew what I was doing. But this other reputation, the wonder worker Prince Dann? That’s all just moonshine and talk.’
‘It’s not Prince Dann, or prince anything, people talk about. But he does seem to have some kind of – authority that it’s hard to explain. And my spies tell me that all over Tundra they are waiting for him.’
‘I see. I seem to have been here before. I spoke against the invasion of Shari. That is why I became the enemy of the other three generals. And I was right. Nothing was achieved except the usual tale of refugees and deaths. In my experience easy talk about wars and invasions means weakness, not strength.’
‘It’s a question of need. The refugees keep coming and coming – I am sure you must see them here – and they have to be fed and clothed and looked after. I remember how you used to give us lectures and lessons, and I try to do the same, Shabis. We are all so crowded, there’s no room. And Tundra is mostly empty.’
‘Everything is so unstable, can’t you see that? The wars along the road to the east – they show no signs of ending. On the contrary, new wars flare up … The great unknown quantity, Griot – it’s the masses of refugees. Are you going to control armies of displaced people with some talk about a wonder worker called General Dann? And down south, there is bad trouble in Charad, in my country. The three generals were killed in a coup and the army is wanting me back.’
Griot could see that Shabis, standing there so close, was talking to himself, though loudly, because of the sea noise; he was rehearsing thoughts that he went over when he was alone.
‘And yes, Griot, you are too polite to say it, but you’re thinking I am too old for generalling and war. Yes, I am, but I’m not too old to be a figurehead. I am General Shabis, who was against the three bad generals, and they are dead. So I am wanted back to unify Agre and protect them against the Hennes. But how can I leave, Griot? You must see …’
Griot saw. Shabis could not take the child with him on a long and dangerous journey south. And she couldn’t be left here with Kira, who wished her ill.
‘I have a wife in Agre,’ said Shabis. ‘She’s a good woman but she would not welcome Mara’s child. Why should she? She longed for her own child but – we weren’t lucky. If I arrived there with Mara’s – no, I can’t even think of it. And so – you do see, Griot?’
‘You could come to the Centre, with the child,’ said Griot.
‘I feel I have responsibilities here, apart from Tamar. Daulis, I know, would go back to Bilma if there weren’t Leta to consider. And Leta knows it. If Leta returned to Bilma she would find herself back in the … did you know Leta was in the whorehouse there?’
‘Yes. When Dann rambles he tells a good deal. But you forget, I was living here before and Leta is not exactly shy about her life as a whore.’
‘You don’t understand. She’s so ashamed of it, and that’s why she has to talk.’
‘If you came to the Centre, you and Dann together could lead us invading Tundra.’ Griot’s voice trembled, telling how this seemed to him the apotheosis of the best he could hope for – General Shabis and General Dann … ‘You and Dann,’ he said again.
‘Have you thought that Dann might not be so pleased to see me? He lost his sister to me – that’s how he sees it. Rather, how he feels it. He was always generous to me – to us – to me and Mara. But when I think of how he feels – well, I try not to, Griot.’
Griot was silent. The sea crashed and washed below them and stung them with spray.
‘So, you see, Griot, there’s a stop to any path I might want to take.’
Griot, who had been a child left to fend for himself, was thinking that the little girl, Tamar, was surely too small, too unimportant – was that it? – to stand in the way of General Shabis and his duty to heal his country.
‘Back to the house, Griot. I’m glad you came. Don’t imagine I’m not thinking about all this – it’s what I think about all the time.’
Kira met them on the veranda, and she was glittering with anger in the lamplight.
‘In a minute, Kira,’ said Shabis and the two men went past her. In the main room Leta and Daulis were playing dice. Donna was with the children.
Shabis asked Leta to go with him. They left Kira with Griot.
‘So, what’s the big secret?’ said Kira. ‘Has Dann gone completely crazy at last?’
This was most unpleasantly acute.
‘I’m sure you would be told if he were,’ said Griot.
Leta returned with packets of herbs, which she spread out and began instructing Griot.
‘These are all sedative herbs,’ said Kira.
‘We have people who are ill,’ said Griot, refusing to surrender Dann to Kira.
‘Well, tell Dann it is time he saw his child,’ said Kira. ‘Tell him to come and see me.’
‘Yes, I will. And he would want to see his sister’s child too,’ said Griot.
He was using a tone to Kira he never had when he was here before. He stood his ground while she sparked off anger, muttered something, turned and went out.
‘Never mind her,’ said Leta, her voice full of dislike.
This must be a jolly company of people, Griot thought. He was glad he was not trapped here.
He asked to sleep on the veranda, so he could slip off in the morning. He slept lightly. In the night he watched Kira come out and stand at the top of the steps, looking out. She only glanced at him, and then went out into the dark.
Very early he woke and saw her a little way down a slope to where some sheds stood, talking to some people who he knew were newly arrived refugees. They must have come by the marsh roads, not seeing the Centre. The two dogs were with her; when they saw he was awake, they left her and came to wag their tails and lick his hands, and then went a little way with him.
Before he turned a corner on to the road, he saw Leta on the veranda. Her hair glistened in the early light: it was like sunlight. Her skin was so white: he could never decide what he thought about Albs. They fascinated but they repelled him. That hair – how he wanted to touch it, to let the smooth slippery masses run through his fingers. But her skin … he thought it was like the white thick underbelly skin of a fish.
Donna’s hair wasn’t fair, like Leta’s, but dark and fine, and where it was parted, or when a breeze blew, the skin showed dead white. Once, Griot knew, all of Yerrup had been filled with these Alb people, all with white fish skins. He didn’t like thinking about it. A lot of people said Albs were witches, the men too, but Griot did not take this seriously: he knew how easily people said others were witches, or had magical powers. And why should he complain? When his soldiers said Dann had magic in him, Griot merely smiled and let them think it.
Before Griot had even reached the gates of the Centre he heard the commotion in Dann’s quarters: shouts, the snow dog’s barks, Dann’s voice. He ran, and burst into the room where Dann was standing on his bed, arms flailing, eyes and face wild. There was a sickly smell. Dann saw Griot and shouted, ‘Liar. You tricked me. You went to intrigue with Shabis against me.’ The two soldiers on guard, minding Dann, stood with their backs to a wall: they were exhausted and they were frightened. The snow dog sat near them, as if protecting them, and watched Dann, who jumped off the bed and began whirling around, so that his outflung hands just missed first one soldier’s face and then the other’s; he whirled so that his fingers flicked Griot’s cheek, then a foot went out as if to kick Ruff, but the animal sat there, unflinching. He let out a low growl of warning.
‘Sir,’ said Griot, ‘General … no, listen, Dann …’
‘Dann,’ sneered Dann, still flailing about, ‘so it’s Dann, is it? Inferior ranks address their superiors like that, is that it?’
Now Griot had had time to see that on a low table was a greasy smeared dish and on that a lump of poppy which had been burning and was still smoking.
Dann leaped back on the bed and stood, knees bent, hands on his thighs, glaring around. His dark pupils had white edges. He was shaking.
‘And there’s another thing,’ he shouted at Griot. ‘I’m going to burn down your precious Centre, full of rubbish, full of dead old rubbish, I’m going to make a fire big enough to scorch all of Tundra.’ He fell back on the bed, obviously to his own surprise, and lay staring up, breathing in fast sharp gasps.
One of the soldiers said, in a low voice, which was dulled by fear, ‘Griot, sir, the General set fire to the Centre, but we stopped him.’
‘Yes, I did,’ came the loud voice from the bed. ‘And I will again. What do we want with all this old rubbish? We should burn it and be finished.’
‘General, sir,’ said Griot, ‘may I remind you that you asked me not to let you have poppy. It was an order, sir. And now I’m going to take it away.’
At this up leaped Dann and he jumped off the bed towards the poppy, and then changed his mind, to attack Griot, who stood there as if hypnotised. And he was: he was thinking that in the fearful strength of his seizure Dann could overmaster him easily and in a moment.
The snow dog walked in a calm considered way to where the two men faced each other and took Dann’s right arm, lifted to strike, in his big jaws and held it. Dann whirled about. A knife had appeared in his other hand, but it was not clear if Dann meant it for Ruff or for Griot. The snow dog let himself move with Dann’s movement but did not let go.
Griot said, ‘Sir, you ordered me to keep the poppy from you.’
‘Yes, but that wasn’t me, it was The Other One.’
And now, hearing what he had said he stood transfixed, staring – listening? He was hearing … what?
‘The Other One,’ muttered Dann. Yes. Mara had said it, the other one, she had said it reminding him of what he was capable of, reminding him of how he had gambled her away. The Other One … and Dann. Two.
Just where he was standing now, he and Mara had stood and he had heard her tell him, because of some folly he was about to commit, ‘You wouldn’t do it but the other one would.’
The Other One. Which one was he now? The snow dog let Dann’s arm fall from those great jaws and returned to where he had stationed himself, near the two bemused soldiers.
‘The Other One,’ Dann said. He whirled about, so that they all thought he might be beginning again with his flailing and his threatening, but instead he took up the dish with the smoking poppy on it and thrust it at Griot.
