The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Make a hole

As deep will go

The long wing feather

Of an old black crow.

Water and grain

Go in together.

Cover it well.

Watch the weather.

Now make new holes,

Two feathers span

Four points around

The first, and so

The field is covered

With a net of grain.

The seeds will sprout,

Their roots in mud.

But if there’s drought,

Reluctant rain

The sprouts will die.

Begin again.

Make a hole…

All the little children used this song in their games, and then, a little older, found themselves in the fields, knowing exactly how to plant. It was wonderful to see their delight, as they realised they had so quickly and simply become part of the world of work, contributing their share. There were hundreds of such songs, some simple like this planting song, increasingly deep and more difficult, to match the growing into understanding of the child.

And always The Twelve met and asked ourselves and each other Why? Why? How many ingenious reasons we did find. We imagined far-reaching policies, sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent. We credited him with amazing powers of foresight, but this was when we were seeing him as Destra’s son. But he was also The Cruel Whip’s offspring–and perhaps he had inherited his father’s qualities? Why, why, why? What did he want to achieve? What was his aim? Surely not to dominate the whole of the peninsula, become despot over all its cities? Why destroy something as perfect, as harmonious, as The Cities? What was, what could be, the reason?

Somewhere along the dolorous road we did consider the possibility that Destra had hoped we would not choose her son. We did not like this conclusion. We had chosen the monster who was destroying everything his mother had created. It was our fault…but it was too painful to think like this. Because it was painful we refused to see the obvious.

I do not want to give the impression that from the moment DeRod became Ruler everything went wrong. On the contrary. For a while everything got better, on a momentum of success. And The Cities were so beautiful then, so prosperous. I remember walking up from the shore one evening with a flaring sunset behind me and thinking I could imagine I was approaching trees and gardens. But I was approaching the most populous part: the dark grey stone from our quarries that made our heavy and solid houses–made them strong against earth-shakes–was absorbed into the green and the colours of the flowers. You walked up thinking that a garden would open in front of you but as you turned a cunningly-placed bend in the path you saw a house or a group of houses. And all this is still true, even if the houses and gardens are not so well-maintained. Suppose–fancifully–we were able to sweep like birds low over The Cities surely what we must see would be the heavy crowns of trees, massed bushes, flowers, and then, half-concealed, our houses.

It was in that period when in fact everything was going wrong, something like fifty years ago, that we, The Twelve, made the great pool at the foot of the Fall for the small children.

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