Quarantine

by Jim Crace

  So Shim and Aphas were no contest for a man like Musa. He watched their conversation from his mat – the old man urgent, pressured, volatile; the blond one shamming his indifference to money, numbers, water, rent. If they had any sense, Musa thought, they’d recognize their trading weaknesses and not attempt to better him. How could they better him? They were townspeople, by the looks of it, and far from home. They wouldn’t know the customs of the scrub. Their reasoning would be that every stretch of land inside a town was owned by someone. All land was good for goats or corn or rent. Why not the country too? Why not the wilderness? And so they’d end up paying for the water and the caves. They’d not make any fuss, or ask for any proof, not with a hundred cousins in the hills. They might plead poverty at first, and ask that Musa earn a place in their devotions by showing them some charity. But he’d refuse. Charity and loans were the commerce of a fool. No, no, they’d either have to pay, or start their quarantine again, elsewhere, he’d say. No other choice. Perhaps they’d like to gather up their things and go? He’d tell Miri to prepare the donkey for burial in their water cistern. That’s when they’d start to empty out their purses like prodigals and wedding guests.

  Musa put his fingers in his lap and tried to calculate what his profit on the day might be. What was the going rate for muddy water and for caves? What could he charge? As much as he could get. The badu with the hennaed hair could hardly contribute, of course. He couldn’t pay in cash. That much was obvious. He couldn’t even talk. ‘He doesn’t have a tongue,’ the sickly Jew had said. But what about the sickly Jew himself? A purse-proud little working man, too dignified to beg for anything, too dull to ever shirk a debt. Such a man would never travel far from home without some silver pieces for the journey. He’d have a money-belt beneath his cloak like every artisan, containing coins and, perhaps, some salt crystals for good luck, plus a twist of sweet resin to catch his fleas. Musa even smiled to himself, though Musa’s smile was thinner than his lips. No fleas on me, he thought. They can’t afford the rent.

  This Aphas, though, according to Musa’s reasoning, would do his best to pay the rent. He looked exhausted by the journey, and withered by his sickness, too. He wouldn’t want to move elsewhere. He couldn’t move elsewhere. For this – the water and the cave, the right to rest and stay, the licence to breathe desert air – he’d pay out eight pieces, Musa judged. He’d pay out ten, if pressed. But not, perhaps, a coin more. The blond one would pay eight as well. He’d say it made no difference to him whether he was rich or poor. He would not wish to argue over rent. He’d claim he didn’t need the shelter or the water, that he would settle for the stars and dew, that a thousand cousins did not bother him. And then he’d get his money out and pay.

  The woman? Musa peered at her again, and ran his tongue along his teeth. She could afford as much, or more, as the two men. Look at her clothes. Look at her unmarked hands. But let her pay the eight as well. Musa looked up from his calculations. Three eights were twenty-four. That was enough. He’d drop to twenty if he must. He coughed, and motioned to the two men with his chins. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. He didn’t have all day.

  He let them have their say. They were intemperate. They offered twenty-five between the four of them, fifteen at once and ten in forty days. Musa was more easily persuaded by their case than they had expected. Twenty-five was not enough, he said. He was insulted by their twenty-five. But it was wrong, perhaps, to deny them water for the sake of principle. That much he would concede. There are traditions even in the wilderness. A traveller can wet his lips and face for free. So, yes, he would accept just the twenty-five pieces of silver, but they would have to pay it all at once. He could not have them in his debt. And he accepted, too, their inconvenient request to leave the donkey’s grave unfilled. And in return for his forbearance? The three men could come down to his tent and help to drag the donkey to the precipice.

  ‘Be friends with me,’ he said. ‘Stay here for forty days. Drink all the water that you want. Pray till you have a camel’s knees.’ He would be neighbourly and could supply them with their daily needs. He had some dates and olives he could sell. Fig cakes. Dried fruit. Goat’s milk. Goat’s meat, if they could match his price. And there was grain which she – his chin was lifted at his wife – will grind and bake for bread. There were rugs and rush bed-mats which they could hire. Lamps, with oil. Camel dung, for fuel. Everything to make their stay more comfortable. Best of all, they could be sure that they were well protected. With Musa as their landlord, no one would dare to come and trouble them, or take advantage of their devotions. His name was known and respected by everybody in the hills and far beyond. Everybody was his cousin, even the scorpions.

  Musa spat on to his hand and called the three male quarantiners forward to close their deal. ‘Just one more thing,’ he said, ‘and then it’s done’: when the forty days were up, then they could show their thanks by helping him to carry his possessions and the tent down to the track which led to Jericho. They could be his donkeys for a day. In return, he wouldn’t make them pay him any passage tax for travelling through his territory. That much was free.

  ‘What do you say? Is this not better than you hoped?’

  Musa felt – as ever – pleased to be himself He had found the morning unexpectedly amusing, and satisfying, too, despite the absence of the Galilean man. Already his retinue and his clientele had grown. His wealth increased. His dreams came true. The caravan and his deceitful uncles could be buried beneath the pleasures of the day. Everyone he met, it seemed, except the badu (and he would have to pay some other price) was opening a purse and inviting him to put his fingers in. And why? To pay for earth and air and water that was the property of god. If every market-place was full of fools like these three fools, he’d only have to dig a pit and watch while people threw their money in. All this – and all within a day of riding fever to the open gates of death. He was invincible.

  He made Shim lend him his staff for the walk back to the tent. It was downhill but hardly easier than coming up. His feet, unseen beyond his waist, descended into empty space. Musa had to place the staff ahead of him, feel for solid ground, and send his weight along its spiralled length, before he dared to shuffle forward. His fever had weakened him. He was immensely slow. But languor was the right of merchant kings when they were weighed down with the prizes of the market-place.

  Luckily, his five companions were in no hurry for themselves. They had forty days to fill. This interlude with Musa was, at least, less wearying than unbroken prayer. Aphas, anyway, was glad to be as slow as Musa, but his steps were weightless. He did his best to listen to Shim’s teachings and expostulations, to nod with recognition at the places that he named, but he could only concentrate on his increasing pain. His ankles felt as fragile as an unfired pot. His cankered liver nagged and lobbied without cease. The heat was punishing. He’d been a stonemason all his working life, perhaps, but none of these stones in his path offered any solace. They were only nuisances. A little distance to the side, and behind the men, Marta walked with Miri, their bodies brushing, their hems in unison. The badu ran ahead and cleared the path. He was a volunteer. He seemed to find the rocks and stones amusing, laughing at them as he turned them on their sides. The badu’s cries were strange – unformed and blustering. A vulture looking down on them and smelling death and fat and pregnancy, as they left their thousand footprints in the clay and emerged from the little valley on to the plateau of the tent, would be hard pressed to guess which one would be its carrion.

  Musa was exhausted when he reached the tent. He went inside for rest, and for some private moments with his flask of date spirit. He felt the fabrics of the bed. He ran his fingers through his wools, and thought of Marta, naked, waiting to be draped in narrow lengths of cloth. The women sat cross-legged in shade, outside. They were whispering, but Musa didn’t care what women had to say. He lay back on his cushions, looked out through the open awning and watched the three men circling the donkey’s carcass, holding their noses
, shaking their heads like undertakers. Aphas shook his head because he did not want to help with burial. He was too old and tired and ill. A Jew that touched a donkey corpse would be unclean until the night, and then would have to purify himself in water that should, at least, be cleaner than the water in the cistern.

  The other two shook their heads because they’d never seen an animal so bludgeoned. Musa smiled. So now they’d understand what kind of man he was, what sort of landlord he could be. He watched the badu and the blond man stoop to test the donkey’s weight. Miri had been right. The carcass was too heavy for a woman to move on her own, despite the loss of blood and eyes and entrails. But these two men were strong and evidently not concerned about the weight or smell. The blond one, Musa noticed, was more powerful than he appeared to be at first. The badu was not powerful at all, but sinewy. They disposed of Musa’s jenny with speed and energy. He watched them drag the donkey by her legs, leaving a trail of blood and flies across the scrub to the smooth and stoneless slope which led to the rim of the precipice. He could not see the donkey now, just the shrinking heads and shoulders of the two men.

  Musa – already resurrected by his drink – half expected that a fifth figure, the water thief, would appear out of the wilderness to lend a hand. The air was heavy with the presence of the man. Would he shake water on the donkey’s face, caress her eyelids with his thumb, and bid the donkey to ‘Be well again’? Or would he join the hennaed hair and the blond as they pulled up the back legs of the animal and tipped her body off the precipice to float for half a moment in mid-air and then to drop into the grieving shadows of the cliff? Shim shouted with excitement on the steep decline, ‘Let fly, let fly’, as if the donkey were a dove.

  10

  A lesser person, Jesus thought as he departed from the dying body in the tent on that first afternoon, would lose his nerve and head back for the way-marked caves, up in the hills. That was the easy path. He had seen the footprints of the little group of travellers who had preceded him, deviating from the camel trail. He could have followed them and passed his quarantine in company, tucked into the folds of clay, amongst the poppies, and exposed to nothing worse than forty days of boredom and discomfort. But Jesus had a harsher challenge for himself. Quite what it was he didn’t know. He only understood that he should choose a way that was more punishing. The worse it was, the better it would be. That, surely, was the purpose of the wilderness. He knew the scriptures and the stories of the prophets. Triumph over hardship was their proof of holiness.

  He had decided to climb down to the key-hole cave that he had spotted earlier that morning, when his mood was still reckless and ambitious. He was elated by the distance he had put between himself and his parents. Anything seemed possible. He had not yet begun the hard, dispiriting ascent up the landfall into the hills. Perhaps if he had been more tired when he had seen the hanging cave he would have set his heart on somewhere more attainable. But, invigorated by a shepherd’s breakfast – goat’s cheese and bread – and a good night’s sleep in sweet straw, it was not difficult for Jesus to believe that god had drawn his eyes to that cave in the precipice, and for a purpose. God was testing him. God was waiting for him at the cave. If only he could face the climb down – and Jesus, even as a boy, had never cared for clambering on cliffs, or trees, or rooftops – he could spend his quarantine with god for company. He could tuck himself into the folds of god.

  Here was a man who’d been a simple-hearted child, much loved and loving, nervous and obedient; quick to listen, happy to believe whatever he was told; observant in his prayers and rituals. Unremarkable, in fact. Except in this: by the time he was thirteen or so, he was the only one among his friends who behaved as if the customs and routines of their religion were anything more than tiresome duties. He was the only adolescent in the neighbourhood who demanded more from god than festivals and regimens and rules. He loved his prayers, like a child. They were a comfort to him. More comforting than food or sleep, it seemed. And just as well, because he didn’t sleep enough for someone of his age, his mother thought. He didn’t eat enough. He dozed and grazed on his devotions, like a priest. Except, unlike most priests, his devotions did not make him mild and fat. He was as skittish, pale and narrow-shouldered as a goose. The neighbours called him Gally, a common nickname for a Galilean boy whose accent was strong, but ideal for Jesus. He was like a gally fly. He could not rest.

  In his mid-teens, Jesus grew much taller suddenly; long and timid and even more preoccupied with prayers. ‘His head’s in heaven, with the angels and the doves,’ was the local joke. ‘Any day now, and his feet’ll leave the ground.’ It was a judgement that satisfied Jesus. He was indeed in heaven, for he had discovered ways of praying that were more than simply comforting. They were chaotic and exalting. When Jesus prayed, there came a point where the words were speaking him; and he became their object, not their source. Sometimes these prayers spoke him in Greek or Aramaic. He would listen to himself and try to memorize the wisdoms that he heard. Was this how Moses kept in touch with god? But there were occasions, more mystifying, feverish, and blissful, when the language was unknown, a tripping, spittlebasted tongue, plosive and percussive and high-pitched. Then, if he was left undisturbed for long enough with these wildrhapsodies, he might feel his spirit soften and solidify at once. He was an egg immersed in boiling water, a fusing and dividing trinity of yolk and white and shell. In that respect, he was transformed by god like other boys his age were changed by girls.

  His mother and his father would not leave him undisturbed for long enough to be transformed as often as he liked. They shook him by the shoulders when they found him sodden with his prayers, or sent one of his brothers to distract him. Devotion, yes; by all means let him be a righteous Jew, they said. They would encourage it. But unremitting piety like his was suitable for old men, not for boys. Why was he not more like their other sons, dragged unwillingly from their cots each morning by their exasperated parents? Jesus was unnatural; an adolescent dragged unwillingly from prayer. His mother feared she’d never find a wife for him, he’d never put on any flesh, not while he prayed so often and with such riotous solemnity.

  Finally, his father took advice from the priest, a subtle and subversive man, who understood the fervours and elations of the young and liked to keep the company of less pious adolescents than Jesus. He took the mumbled prayers to be, like sniggering and whistling, an irritating habit for a boy. He recommended that Jesus’s devotions should be more actively discouraged. ‘He has to learn that there are important duties other than prayer,’ he said. ‘Give him more things to do about the house. Get him to help you with the carpentry. Make him so tired he only wants to sleep. Throw water on him if he starts to pray in gibberish. Don’t be ashamed to use a stick. He’ll grow out of this the moment that he starts a beard. It’s just his age.’

  The priest was right. By the time Jesus’s chin and upper lip were wispy with hair, the prayers seemed to have abandoned him. His private languages disappeared, like adolescent boils. He resembled the neighbours’ sons at last, except he was more nervous and more serious, a touch bereft perhaps. At least he wasn’t rising off the ground and nudging angels with his head. He even ate and slept.

  Yet, despite appearances, Jesus had not lost any of his passion for god. He did not need to move his lips to pray. He’d reached the stage where every breath was prayer, where all the steps and sounds he made were verses for god, where everything was touched with holiness: a heel of bread, the soundless corners of the house when he woke up, the cobwebbed shadows on the clay-white walls, the motes of sawdust hanging in the window light, the patterns on his fingertips. God in everything and everything in god. Even with his father in the workshop, cutting wood and making frames, he found there was a rhythm to the bow-drill and the draw-knife and the plane which took the place of prayer. Every movement was a repetition; every repetition was a word. The timber and the tools took on new meanings. The knots in wood were sins. Twisted wood was devil’s work and shou
ld be thrown out or burned.

  Once or twice, immersed in reveries of light and work and wood, he had neared and glimpsed the large and inexplicable itself To be alive amongst the sawdust and the stars was beyond understanding; to be this person, in this place, and now. Even to contemplate that puzzle was to stray too far from safer paths, to sweat and shiver in that hollow room which has no doors or walls, where Never End and Never Start hold their invisible debate. There’d be no echo there to comfort him, or anyone. No dark or light. Not even any time. And only god – if only god would show himself — to make much sense of it. Faith or dismay, that was the choice. Choose Never End or Never Start. Choose god or pandemonium. When Jesus chose and put his faith in god, he blinked away the hollow room. He brought the wood, the tools, the workshop into focus once more. His spirit softened and solidified again, as it had done when he was in his teens, except more bleakly. It formed a question to be put to god. A question taken from the hollow room. A question that a child would ask. This was his question for the wilderness. The question of a simple-hearted, fragile man – guileless in his love of god, spontaneous and vulnerable in his beliefs. You see these motes, this dust, this bread, these soundless corners hung with webs, these fingertips, engraved with tiny lines? What for, and why?