The Grandmothers (21 page)

I asked for other tales and heard more of ours, similarly transformed and debased, but recognisable. The Cruel Whip had become a magician who filled his coffers by selling magic tales, wicked tales, of power. And they certainly were wicked and cruel: she told me some.

I asked if she would like to hear some of our old tales, and she brought in her oldest child to listen. She enjoyed them, and so did he, but I thought the kinder aspects disappointed her. She liked the brutality of the magician’s stories. She had not learned to hear anything but the simple and obvious.

She asked me how I knew all these tales, and I said that they were in my mind, but a few had been written; by then I had begun to record them, afraid they would be lost when I died.

The idea of writing excited her: she had never heard that one could make letters, then words, then whole stories. She asked to be shown. And I had the pleasure of taking out the scrolls of reed with their smoothed inner skins ready to take the ink. I set out the sharpened reed, for writing, and the bowl of ink. She was awed. I have never seen such an admiring young woman. She wanted to know how I had learned. I said that in the old days a few of us had been taught to write, to keep the skill alive, but now there were only three still alive, myself and two of The Twelve who were then still living.

Would she like to learn? I asked, for not the least of my anxieties was that soon no one would be left to teach youngsters the .in. Our commercial managers used notches on sticks to measure and count.

She was tempted, I could see, but laughed, and said she was too stupid, she was just an ignorant woman, I told her that if she wanted to fit in to The Cities she would not talk about women as inferior. I saw from the look on her face that she did not understand me, or thought I was ill-informed. The women of The Cities are not as free as once they were. The change had been slow, and at first not noticed. It was the armies, you see: a military state is all hierarchies and ranks and steps of achievement, jealously guarded, and where did women fit into all this? Not only ordinary women, but the singers and the storytellers were not the independent, graceful, skilled women of the old days, under EnRod and then Destra. They do not impose or expect respect or admiration.

I asked Raned if she would like one of her children to be taught to write. ‘Or all of them.’ I said. She liked that idea, very much. She said they were too young but she would think about it, and look for signs of aptitude in that direction. That made me laugh: what would one look for in a small child to indicate an innate gift for the art of writing? She rebuked me, politely, saying that if one of her children - she already had three - seemed to be quieter and more noticing than the others, then she would bring this paragon to me. ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t expect a child who is good at running about and fighting to have the patience for this.’ And she picked up one of my pens, as if it were a snake or a lizard that could bite.

This was not so long ago. And now I am the only one left who has the skill of writing and I am more than ever anxious because soon there will be no one. After all, while we know that north there lives a people with a whole class of scribes who have their history, their transactions and their tales kept on their reed-rolls there is no reason why we should expect another wanderer from their mountains to come our way. That is - was - one of our tales, how this ragged starving man appeared and taught us the art of writing in return for protecting him. He had run away to avoid some punishment for a crime we were careful not to ask him about.

I again asked Raned to let one of her children study with me, and she said she thought two might be suitable. They will start with me soon. They had to be prepared to accept the idea of writing. When I was young, under Destra, the men and women who could write were admired. It was a great day for me when I was chosen. Some people used to say that there was no need for the new skill, writing, because we had all our knowledge, our history, our tales, in our memories, and every child knew it all. Writing was a clumsy and cumbersome thing compared to that. I am sure no one then could have believed that our heritage of songs and tales could be lost, could disappear, and in such a short time. Now only old people remember.

If I still had the power to do it I would call all The Cities together and ask the old people who did remember to come forward and tell everything to young people enough interested; surely there must be some left?

What a weight it all is, this anxiety, this sorrow. I do sometimes wonder why old people bother to keep alive, it is such an effort. Being old is a tedious business. How I love watching Raned’s young ones skip and dance about, the ease of it: above all, that is what one loses, the pleasure in simple movement.

And yet I mean to make sit down at least two of them, immobilising them long enough to learn their signs, that will open the world of The Word to them.

I sent out to find people who know the old skills of preparing reeds for writing, and a very old woman came up the hill to me, and I gave her money to teach others to do it, before she dies. She was so pleased to hear of anyone who needed her skills that she wept. She at least remembers how things once were.

‘It is so ugly now,’ she whispered, glancing about for fear of unfriendly listeners - and that, too, is a new thing. ‘Why is everything so loud and so ugly? Sometimes I sit and sing the old songs to myself, but I find a time when the youngsters are not about because they laugh at me. They say the old songs are insipid.’

‘I understand very well,’ I said, and so we went on, as the old do, remembering, until the servant came in, and we stopped talking. I know that my son asks his servants what I am doing and who I am seeing. He sends doctors to me when I am quite well. It is all meant kindly, I expect, but it makes me feel imprisoned.

And now ! have reached the present. I wrote the word ‘imprisoned’ last night.

Bora remarked yesterday that DeRod was not well: people were

speculating who would succeed. This took me aback, I know it will seem ridiculous and even impossible, but I bad not been thinking of him as an old man - my age, in fact. My mental image of him has been for a long time of something not far off The Cruel Whip, supplanting memories of a charming handsome fellow - one of those people who, when you think of them, make you smile. An old man. Well, of course he must be … I sent him a message that I would like to see him, exactly as if nothing of the sort has happened for such a long time - getting on for half a century. Is that really possible? Well, yes, it must be nearly that. No reply. Did I expect one? Yes. This is because since the death of Eleven my mind has been filled so much with memories of us all, mostly of us as young things. I was so full of affection for the past, for us all, DeRod too, as he was.

I waited. And then, today, I simply took my stick from its place where it leans in the corner, and set off. Not far. Walking distance, even for me. I have never used the new chairs that are lifted and carried by porters. Pardy because I don’t need them and partly because among the young they have become a sport: they race each other, as if the porters are animals, whipping them along. I think this shameful, but know that in this new spirit that reigns in The Cities my objections would seem merely another example of an old man’s whimsy.

It was a fine afternoon. My way went up to the top of the hill, by the Fall, and then through the public squares and places, and then through a wood, which we, The Twelve, had planned and planted. Fine trees now, and spacious shady places where in summer you can find coolness and shade.

I had been walking in my now slow careful way for as long as it took the sun to drop a level in the sky, striking direct through the trees, when I heard the loud laughter and jeering that these days means the youth are near. A gang of seven young men appeared, running up through the trees towards me; they saw me, and then with cries of excitement, as if they had glimpsed a running animal, came towards me. I stopped and faced them. They stopped, a few paces away. Each face was distorted into that sneer which is obligatory now.

‘What have we got here?’ said the leader.

I knew him, I was sure, right from that first moment.

‘Look, an old beggar,’ said another boy. Beggars, once impossible with us, are now common.

‘I like his fwock,’ said the first. This is the new fad among them: they lisp, and put on effeminate airs.

They were wearing a fashion derived from the Barbarians: leather trousers and jerkin, showing their shoulders and chests. I was wearing, as always, my old brown robe.

‘Give me your fwock,’ said the leader.

I stared. I could not help it. Those faces, they were familiar to me anyway, because they were not the now so familiar Barbarian face, which is sharper, bolder, strongly incised, often beautiful, or handsome, where our generic face is broad, frank, open, honest, the face of a perhaps not over-subtle people, but one you trusted. On this face, one so likeable, the sneers and jeers were like a mask which did not fit, and the raucous derision of their style of speaking did not suit their voices either.

Who was he? Who could he be, this boy?

He snatched my stick away, so that I stumbled and nearly fell, and then used it to lift up the bottom of my robe far enough so they could admire my ancient sex: what they were seeing, what I saw every day m the bath, was something like a lump of dried mushrooms. They pointed and sneered and sniggered.

Then I remembered: I knew that face so well. It was part of my oldest, dearest memories: I said, ‘Are you Rollard’s son … grandson … great-grandson?’ I amended.

That face, born to be pleasant and agreeable, returned to this condition for just a moment, then he went deep scarlet, and dropped the stick.

‘Green,’ he muttered. ‘Good green, he’s got the Sight,’

They clustered around me, mouths open, awed, staring.

‘I knew your great-grandfather well,’ I said, and my voice was unsteady, and my eyes wet, seeing that loved face there, before me. He, Rollard, had been one of The Twelve.

They turned and sped off, on one impulse, like birds or fishes. I stood alone in that glade in the wood, and wept, thinking of Rollard, thinking of us all. I picked up my stick, and went on, carefully, through the leaf litter, to DeRod’s gate. There two armed men stood forward, to stop me. I said to them, ‘Stand aside, this is one of The Twelve.’ My emotion had given me an impatience with them, and the unfamiliar words did seem to link up with some chord of memory. They stepped aside, and watched me toil up the path, to the house where appeared to stand watching nie a tall striking woman, obviously a Barbarian, who as I arrived in front of her said, ‘I know who you are.’

‘Tell De Rod I am here,’ I said, understanding that he had not received my message. She hesitated, then went inside. I followed her. She did turn to stop me, but there across the room, staring at me, was a very old man, who lifted his stick to point at me and said, ‘Oh, it’s you at last. Why did it take you so long?’

This knocked the stuffing out of me.

He is a jolly old thing, with puffs of white hair at his ears, a bald pate, and his eyes were full of tears, like mine.

I sat, without being asked.

‘I sent you a message,’ I said. The woman was standing close, hands folded in front of her, watching me.

‘I didn’t get it,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘They take very good care of me, you see.’

He did not seem to be particularly feeble, let alone ill.

‘What’s this about your being ill?’

‘I did have a bit of a turn.’

‘He must not get over-tired,’ she said.

I said to her, ‘I am sure he is capable of deciding when he is tired.’

I don’t think anyone had spoken to her like that for some time. She seemed to gather herself in a movement like a snake about to strike, then resumed her watchful pose.

I said, ‘I would like to talk to DeRod alone.’

Touch and go , . . Then, ‘Yes, leave us.’

I could see this was not a tone he used to her. Her look at me was pure enmity. But she turned and went.

Who was she? I knew that his wife, ‘the town girl’, had died long ago.

‘That is my new woman,’ he said. ‘She is good to me.’ And he giggled.

This was the fearsome, feared DeRod; he was a giggling old man, an old buffer, naughty, like a child.

‘I’ve come on serious business,’ I said.

‘Of course you have, dear boy. You wouldn’t come just for fun, dear old Sage.’

‘DeRod, as I walked heir I saw die Fall is running low. That means the water channels are silting up. There are big cracks in the silos and the rats are getting in. The irrigation ditches need attention. The roads are going into potholes.’

He could easily have giggled, become a child, called for that woman, but he looked harassed, even annoyed, and said, ‘You know how labour is now. They are lazy and irresponsible and incompetent.’

‘But DeRod, what do you expect? They get no training, they haven’t done for a long time.’

‘That’s why we use the Barbarians, they are used to work.’

Again it seemed as if he simply wanted me to keep quiet … go away … stop bothering him. Yes, that was it, he was like someone irritated with an importunate or pestering person.

I went on. ‘DeRod, when you put an end to the instruction, to the teaching, when you ended the storytelling and the songs - obviously this was going to happen?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When your mother died she left behind her a system of education, of training … you ended it.’

Again, he stared, and, there was no doubt of it, was surprised.

‘Don’t you remember, DeRod?’

And that was the moment I understood. Oh, all kinds of enlightenment came flooding, rather late, but there it was, right in front of me. It was not that he had forgotten. Not that he had deliberately destroyed what was good. He had never known it was good. He had never understood. He had seemed to be part of it all, but he, Destra’s son, the graceful and charming and delightful DeRod, whom we had all admired, had been a blind person among us. From some spirit of emulation he had gone along with it all, as children do, but he had understood nothing at all.