The Cleft by Doris Lessing Page B

generations they had seen lightning strike a spark off the edge of a rock into dry leaves, or lightning had flashed into a patch of dry grass and an old log had caught fire and burned there, perhaps for days. Someone walking in the trees had stumbled into an area black on cracked earth, with the charred remains of little animals. Someone might have seen a locust cooked in flames, eaten it, thought: that’s nice. Had they tried a roasted mouse or a bird’s egg cooked in a hollow of a rock as the flames went over it? But not once had this person, or any of them, thought: I’ll take a part of that burning log to where we live and it will warm us at night, it will cook our food.
    Then, suddenly, precisely that thought entered an early mind, or all of them, took possession – and then a great fire burned in the valley bottom, and outside the cave mouths fires burned in the shelter of a great rock as the early people crouched near it. For a long time no fires, then fires, and nuts were roasted and eggs, and perhaps the birds who made the eggs.
    Not these people, not the first males – the Squirts – but that name would go, just as had the Monsters.A memory remained of how it was a doe who fed and warmed the first monstrous babes. There were people of the eagle, people of the deer, so whatever meat was charred on the early fires it was never eagle or deer.
    We may easily look back now and see those early youths around the great fire and brood about that mystery – which we do not know how to answer – which was that for ages – long ages, as long as you like – those early people saw fire frisking about in bushes, leaping in the trees, flashing down from clouds, something familiar to them, like river water, but never thought they could tame it, but then suddenly they did. Perhaps ‘suddenly’ is not right, perhaps it should be ‘slowly’. What causes these changes where something impossible then becomes not only allowed, but necessary? I tell you, to think about this phenomenon for long leads to a disquiet that drives away sleep and makes you doubt yourself. In my lifetime things that were impossible have become what everyone accepts – and why. But why ? Did these old people ever think, ‘We have known fire as part of the life of the forest, but now it does our bidding – how did that happen?’ There is no record of it.
    Meanwhile in the valley the young males are still nervous about their numbers. Fire, that great benefice, has not added to their safety. The hazards in greatforests go on: a charging boar, or an angry bear; a snake that doesn’t have time to get out of the way of those naked feet; a boulder rolls down a hillside; someone unused to fire sets a handful of burning grass in an unburned place and does not run fast enough to avoid the bounding, leaping flames; poison from plants and insect bites. And the river flowing there is deep and easily sweeps away an incautious child.
    There is a record that fire brought anger and scolding from Maire and from Astre. A toddler staggered into the flames: he was not stopped in time. Maire, arriving for her visit with them, told them they were inconsistent. They complained about how few they were, how seldom the eagles brought them babies, but they did not watch their little children.
    This was not the first time they were scolded.
    Earlier, a young doe stepped down to the river’s edge to drink, and behind her crawled one of the babes she was feeding. As the doe drank, dipping her muzzle into the water, the child, emulating her, doing as his mother was doing – she was that – leaned too far over the edge and fell in.
    â€˜Why don’t you set people to watch your infants, why don’t you keep guard?’
    The histories of the females record their incredulity: they simply could not understand the carelessness of the boys who did dangerous and foolish things.
    There are remarks in the