The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5

The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5
Doris Lessing

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the second instalment in the visionary novel cycle ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’.This is the story of the kindly Queen of Zone Three, who rules a land free of all harshness, and her forced marriage with the soldier-king of Zone Four, which is hierarchic, disciplined, inflexible, dutiful. This apparently difficult marriage, unwanted by both, requires a compromise between impulse and reason, between instinct and logic.Ben Ata learns to accept and then to love the ruler of Zone Three and her alien ways; and she learns to love and to need him. But when the Queen is commanded by the Providers to return to her own realm, she must obey, shattering though it is to leave her husband and child. Ben Ata, in turn, is ordered to marry the savage beauty who rules Zone Five, a land that both unites and reverses the other two Zones.In ‘The Marriages …’ Doris Lessing uses science-fiction brilliantly to investigate the conflict between men and women. Once again, invented planets allow her to deploy her unillusioned knowledge of the real world of the reader.

DORIS LESSING

CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES

THE MARRIAGES BETWEEN ZONES THREE, FOUR AND FIVE

(As narrated by the Chroniclers of Zone Three)

Copyright (#uadd51b90-05af-5f16-ad92-2cff0a74b60e)

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

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Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1981 Reprinted 6 times

First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1980

Copyright © Doris Lessing 1980

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006547204

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN:9780007404223

Version: 2017-04-27

The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five is the second in a series of novels with the overall title ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’; the first is Shikasta (1979); the third The Sirian Experiments (1981); the fourth The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982); and the fifth The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983).

Contents

Cover (#uda07fdd1-fa9b-513c-8a2f-043dcf02d293)

Title Page (#u6812939b-27c6-559d-90fe-db80b98d6eaa)

Copyright (#u6940cda8-a1cf-5b98-8b30-ab6c94f092cf)

THE MARRIAGES BETWEEN ZONES THREE, FOUR AND FIVE (#u02495f3b-be3b-5266-aa39-fdbf6e61c3e8)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Read On (#litres_trial_promo)

The Grass is Singing (#litres_trial_promo)

The Golden Notebook (#litres_trial_promo)

The Good Terrorist (#litres_trial_promo)

Love, Again (#litres_trial_promo)

The Fifth Child (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES THE MARRIAGES BETWEEN ZONES THREE, FOUR AND FIVE (#uadd51b90-05af-5f16-ad92-2cff0a74b60e)

Rumours are the begetters of gossip. Even more are they the begetters of song. We, the Chroniclers and song-makers of our Zone, aver that before the partners in this exemplary marriage were awake to what the new directives meant for both of them, the songs were with us, and were being amplified and developed from one end of Zone Three to the other. And of course this was so in Zone Four.

Great to Small High to Low Four into Three Cannot go.

This was a children’s counting game. I was watching them at it from my windows the day after I heard the news. And one of them rushed up to me in the street with a ‘riddle’ he had heard from his parents: If you mate a swan and a gander, who will ride?

What was being said and sung in the camps and barracks of Zone Four we do not choose to record. It is not that we are mealy-mouthed. Rather that every chronicle has its appropriate tone.

I am saying that each despised the other? No, we are not permitted actively to criticize the dispensations of the Providers, but let us say that we in Zone Three did not forget — as the doggerel chanted during those days insisted:

Three comes before Four. Our ways are peace and plenty. Their ways — war!

It was days before anything happened.

While this famous marriage was being celebrated in the imaginations of both realms, the two most concerned remained where they were. They did not know what was wanted of them.

No one had expected the marriage. It had not reached even popular speculation. Zones Three and Four were doing very well, with Al·Ith for us, Ben Ata for them. Or so we thought.

Quite apart from the marriage, there were plenty of secondary questions. What could it mean that our Al·Ith was ordered to travel to the territory of Ben Ata, so that the wedding could be accomplished on his land? This was one of the things we asked ourselves.

What, in this context, was a wedding?

What, even, a marriage?