Mara and Dann (50 page)

Back she went to the inn, where the proprietor stopped her and said he had to warn her: he knew that customs were probably different down south, but a woman too much on her own in the streets was asking for trouble. She thanked him, went up to the room, and there Dann sat where she had left him, listless and sombre. He turned his head to watch her slip off the striped gown and put on this new one. ‘Beautiful,' he said, meaning her as well as the dress. ‘Beautiful Mara.' She told him about the busy streets and the markets, and he did listen, but she knew that when he looked at her he was seeing more than her. She said, not expecting that she was going to say anything of the kind, ‘Are you missing Kira?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Very much.'

Daring a great deal, for he was always on the edge of irritability, she said, ‘And the boy?'

He said angrily, ‘You don't understand. He was there, that's all.'

She ordered food for them both, and watched him eat until he said, ‘Stop it, Mara. I'm eating all I can. I don't have an appetite.'

And then she was restless again, and he saw it, and he said, ‘Go out if you want. I'll sleep.'

She descended to where the proprietor stood, a fixture, it seemed, watching his customers, and stood before him in her new robe which made her – surely? – one of the local people. ‘Now I'm wearing this, is it all right to go out?'

‘It's all right,' he said, but reluctantly. ‘But be careful.' And added a warning, and a stern one: ‘You are an attractive female.'

‘I've seen attractive females in every street.'

‘Yes, but are they alone?'

Mara went out, thinking how surprising it was that police, police spies, the watchful, suspicious eyes she knew so well, were not in evidence here.

What did you see, Mara? What did you see?
On this morning's excursion she had been too dazzled by what she saw to see it well. Now that she was alert, her wary self again, she saw that while every street held as many women as men, they were in groups, or walked two or three together, and usually with children, or they were with a man or men. If you saw a woman by herself she was old, or a servant with children, taking them somewhere, or a servant going to market, with her baskets. In these streets women did not saunter or dawdle or stand staring. And now that she was noticing everything, there was no doubt the proprietor of the inn was right. When people saw her, they looked again, and their faces were fixed in the immobility of interested surprise. So what was it about her? That she was good-looking she knew, but there was not exactly a shortage of handsome women. She was a Mahondi – was that it? She had not seen any in her wanderings here in Bilma. But there was such a variety here: people as tall and slight as the Neanthes, stubby and sturdy as the Thores, and everything in between. No Hennes, not one. And no Hadrons. And certainly no Rock People. Just imagine, she could have lived her life out in that Rock Village and never known that there could be lively, clever, laughing crowds so various that she was for ever seeing a new kind of body, or hair, or skin. But her ease in exploring these streets was gone, and she felt danger everywhere. She went back to the inn, and the proprietor said, first, that she had visitors, and then that it was time he was given more payment.

She asked if he would change a gold coin. She had seen the moneychangers in the markets, but, watching the transactions, knew she would not get a fair exchange. Those men, and women, sitting behind their little tables piled with coins, each with a guard standing beside
them who was well armed with knives and cudgels, they all minutely observed every approaching trader or traveller; and Mara had taken good note of the greedy faces and looks of self-congratulation when the fleeced ones went off with less money than they should have.

‘You can change money in the Transit Eating House.'

She found Dann with the doctor, and the son, the young man she disliked so much. And Dann was sitting up, animated and laughing. When Mara came in, he stopped laughing.

‘Your patient is doing very well,' said the doctor.

‘Your medicine did very well,' she said.

‘My father is a famous doctor,' said the young man.

The two were rising from where they had been sitting, on her bed: her coming had ended the pleasantness of the visit. Dann was obviously sorry this new friend was leaving. And now Mara looked again at the youth to see if she had been unjust in disliking him, but could see only a sharp face – she thought a cunning face – with eyes that were impudent and shameless. And, too, there was a subdued anger, and she believed she knew why, remembering the tone of ‘My father is a famous doctor.' For if his father was famous, then he was not, and if he turned out to be famous then it would not be for the kind of wholesome knowledge that gave this doctor his self-possession and his consciousness of worth.

But Dann liked Bergos, the son of the good doctor.

The two men went off. Dann said he was thinking of going out that evening, and Mara knew it would be the Transit Eating House. Oh yes, she was in a trap all right, but she did not know what it was, only that there was nothing she could do about it until it was sprung. Dann was not well enough to leave this town and move on. As he lay down on the bed again to rest, he said, ‘We could stay here, Mara. It's a nice town. You seem to think so … '

And Mara watched him fall asleep, and thought that going North, the dangerous difficulties of always going North, could end in this town, because it was agreeable and apparently welcoming. What had going North meant if not finding something like this, which was better than anything she had imagined? Water, first of all: water that you did not have to measure by the drop or even the cup; water that stood in great barrels on street corners for people to drink out of generous wooden ladles that hung ready; water that ran in reed pipes into the houses; water splashing in the many fountains; water close by in beneficent
rivers; water in the public baths that stood in every street; water that fell ungrudgingly from the skies – water that you took for granted, like air. And, because of the water, healthy people, and children everywhere, and children's voices – she could hear them playing in a garden nearby.

It was mid-afternoon, the rest hour just coming to an end. Here everyone lay in their rooms through the warm hours, or sat lazing in the shade of tea houses. In this darkened room, where the slats of the shutters made stripes over the floor and across the bed where Dann slept, so that she thought fearfully that it was as if he lay trapped in a cage, Mara sat and thought; she thought hard and carefully, and knew that she did not want to give up here in Bilma. This was not what she had been journeying to find. Well, what was she looking for? Not this: she knew that much.

That evening they went downstairs to eat, Dann for the first time, the proprietor congratulating him on his recovery; and Dann said, ‘Let's go to the Transit. I need a change.'

In the street a couple of men strode fast towards them and then turned around to look at Mara, and Dann said, ‘What a lucky fellow I am, to be with such a beautiful woman.'

His tone was affected, even coquettish, as if he were observing himself with a congratulating eye; and she thought, her heart heavy, its beat repeating
A trap, A trap,
that she would never have believed him capable of that dandyish drawl. When he had said he was not himself, that was the truth: a Dann she did not know strolled along at her side, and she could almost see in his hand a flower, holding it to his lips, teasing them with it, as some of the men – but what kind of men? – were doing as they walked, casting glances over the flowers at the women, and the men too. And in a moment Dann had reached out to a hedge and torn off a bright red flower. She was silently begging him, Don't raise it to your lips, as if his not doing it would be proof of his safety – and he did
not, only twirled it between his fingers. This was not a pleasant area, the route to the Transit Eating House. Mara, who had been so captivated by this town that she had refused to see anything unpleasant, now made herself look at the ugliness of these poor streets, at a woman with her brows drawn tight and her mouth set, a child whose flesh was tight on his bones, a man with defeat written on his face.

The Transit was a large building, spilling out lights, and its customers coming and going populated the street outside. Their faces were restless and excited – like Dann's now. The room they went into was very large, brightly lit, and crammed full. Here were mostly men, and Mara saw at once that she was the only woman there wearing an ordinary garment. All the rest were young, some not much more than children, and they wore flimsy, transparent skirts, with breasts just covered or not at all. Dann and she sat down and were at once brought beakers of strong-smelling drink. It was a grain drink, of the kind she had helped make in Chelops. The place was very noisy. No point in Dann's or her even trying to speak, unless they wanted to shout. Again this was a mix of peoples, some of kinds they had not seen before, and the languages they were overhearing were strange to them. This was a place, then, not for Bilma's inhabitants, but for the traders and travellers and visitors.

A tap on Mara's shoulder. ‘You want to change money?' she heard, and a waiter pointed across the room to a door that was shut, unlike most doors in this place. She told Dann she would not be long, and across the room she went.

It was a small room, for transactions and business, and in it was waiting for her a fat old woman who scarcely came up to her shoulder. She was very black, so she did not come from this region. She wore a handsome, scarlet, shiny dress whose skirts seemed to bounce around her as she walked back to a chair behind a plain plank table. She sat, and pointed Mara to an empty chair.

Her examination of Mara was brisk, frank and impartial: she might have been assessing a bale of new cloth.

‘How much do you want to change?'

Mara took out one gold coin from her pocket, where she had it ready, and then took out another. She was remembering the recurrent anxieties about changing money.

‘I shall give you more than the market-place value.'

Mara smiled, meaning this old woman to see that she, Mara, did not
think this was saying much. And in fact this crone – she was really old, in spite of her scarlet flounces and the glitter of earrings and necklaces – was ready to smile too, sharing Mara's criticism: it was the way of the world, her smile said.

‘My name is Dalide,' she said. ‘I have been changing money for as many years as you have lived.'

‘I am twenty-two.'

‘You are in the best of your beauty.'

Mara could have sworn that Dalide could easily have leaned forward and opened her mouth to examine her teeth, and then pinch her flesh here and there between fingers that had many times assessed the exact degree of a young woman's toothsomeness.

Mara put down the two gold coins. Dalide picked one up, while the other hand fondled the second coin. ‘I have never seen these,' Dalide said. ‘Who is this person?' – pointing at the faint outline of a face, probably male, on the coin.

‘I have no idea.'

‘Gold is gold,' said Dalide. ‘But gold as old as this is even better.' She pulled out bags of coins from a bigger bag, and began laying out in front of Mara piles of coins of differing values, meanwhile giving emphatic glances at Mara as each new pile was completed. These were not the flimsy coins she had been carrying about, making a light mass of money that you had to pay out in handfuls. Dalide was giving her coins that would be easy to handle and be changed, yet each worth a good bit. Mara counted them. She knew roughly what she should expect, and this was not far off. She swept the coins into a cloth bag she had with her, and Dalide exclaimed, ‘You aren't going to walk through the streets at night with that on you?'

‘Do I have an alternative?'

‘If you didn't have your brother I'd send my bodyguard with you.'

‘People are very well informed about us.'

‘You are an interesting couple.'

‘And why is that?'

Dalide did not answer, but said, ‘Would you like me to find you a good husband?'

And now Mara laughed, because of the incongruity.

Dalide did not laugh. ‘A good husband,' she insisted.

‘Well,' said Mara, still laughing, ‘what would it cost me? Could I buy a husband with this?' And she shook her bag of coins so they clinked.

‘Not quite,' said Dalide, and waited for Mara to say how much money she had.

Mara said, ‘I do not have enough money to buy a husband.' And added, laughing, ‘Not a good one.'

Dalide nodded, allowing herself a brief smile, as a little concession to Mara. ‘I can change money for you – as you know. And I can find you a husband for a price.'

‘I'm not flattered that you think I would have to buy myself a husband. Not so long ago I had a husband without money ever being mentioned.' And she could not prevent her eyes from filling.

Dalide nodded, seeing her tears. ‘Hard times,' she said briskly.

‘Surely not in this town. If these are hard times, then I don't know what you'd say if I told you what I've seen.'

‘What have you seen?' asked Dalide softly.

Mara saw no reason to be secretive and said, ‘I've watched Ifrik drying up since I was a tiny child. I've seen things you'd not believe.'

‘I was a child in the River Towns. In Goidel. I was playing with my sisters when a slaver snatched me – I was for some years a slave in Kharab. I escaped. I was beautiful. I used men and became independent. Now I'm a rich woman. But there isn't much you could tell me about hardship.'

Mara looked at this ugly old thing and thought that she had been beautiful. She said, ‘If I need you, I'll come back.' She got up, and so did Dalide. As Mara went to the door, Dalide came too, and they left the business room behind. ‘Are you coming with me?' asked Mara, seeing how everyone in the big room turned to look at this grotesque old woman in her scarlet and her fine jewels.