Quarantine

by Jim Crace

  He’d left the woman with some bruises on her arms, it’s true, some broken skin, some little aches and pains that would not show although they might take time to mend. The inside of her lip was cut. Her anus had been torn. But he had let her keep her money-bag. He was no thief. She’d been a disappointment to him, actually. She’d screamed. She had insulted him. She’d struck his face a dozen times with her soft hands. She’d spat. She’d even tried to hit him with a stone. Her anger and her awkwardness had made it difficult for him; he’d had to concentrate on quelling her instead of satisfying himself. He’d had to be alert and always remember to keep the tightest grip on her – her hair, her ears, her arms, her throat, her drawstring – or else she would escape from him. She could jump up and run, but he could not.

  She’d only quietened when he’d stunned her with his fists. But he had not enjoyed her stunned and unresponsive. He hadn’t wanted sex alone, with no participant except himself That had never been the plan. He had ejaculated twice – the first time far too quickly within moments of his arrival in the cave, and the second time without much feeling. He would have liked more time with her to attempt a third and more considered consummation. But, try as he might, he could not ready himself for her. Unconscious women were not attractive in his view. They could not display their fear. And so he’d covered up her body with her shawl – no one could say he was entirely inconsiderate – and had stepped out into the dawn a slightly disappointed man.

  But still he could congratulate himself At least he’d made a trading profit on the night. There’d be no cost because she’d not breathe a word to anyone. If he’d had any doubt of that he would have snapped her neck at once and blamed her death on the badu, or some brigand in the hills, or on the wind. He knew the punishments for forcing Jewish women to submit to passions such as his were harsh, especially when gentiles were involved. If Marta reported Musa to the Jewish courts and was believed, they’d circulate his name to every dusty corner of the land. They’d track him down if he ever came within a dozen days of Sawiya, and then they’d carry out the letter of the law. They’d cover him in tar and burn him, waist-deep in a pile of dung. They’d thrust a lighted torch into his mouth. They’d bury him in stones. He’d taken quite a chance to sleep with her. He had been brave.

  But Marta would not take a chance. Musa knew she would be sensible, not brave. She wouldn’t want to speak his name to anyone. ‘What were you doing there in any case, alone?’ they’d say. ‘Why did you tell the man, “Come in?” ’ No, Marta would be silent. She’d want to bury the experience at once. When fear and shame are comrades, tongues lie still. Besides, he’d threatened her. One word of this outside the cave, he’d said, and I’ll call all my cousins here to visit you. They’ll do the same as me. I’ll come back to visit you myself. There’s nowhere you can hide.

  Yet Musa felt exposed somehow. He was revealed – to Marta at least – for what he was, cheap goods, bad stock. No merchant ever stays around to answer for the blemishes and flaws on the merchandise he’s sold. That is the time to pack his bags and go. So Musa could not wait until the end of quarantine, to endure her fear and sullen glances for ten more days, although that prospect was not daunting. He would not wait until the end. The scrub could not enrich him any more. Already he was making plans. He’d conquered Marta. Now he set his heart on Jericho.

  He was relieved to reach the pans of soft clay in the valley below the caves, and turn towards the tent. It was satisfying to have put a short distance between Marta and himself, and the walking on the flatter surface would be, he hoped, less cruel on his ankles. The clay had been renewed and freshened in the night by the few drops of rain. The wind had ironed it flat, then rippled it. It was a tidal estuary of mud, bubbling with pockets of trapped air, and it was cold around his toes. Already Musa was tired. He had no staff. He had no wife to take his arm and help him with his balance. His knees and hips were aching badly. The wet clay was harder on him than the slope. But he could hardly sit in it and rest. He took it slowly though.

  Musa found no pleasure in the footprints that he left, or the suckered protests that his sandals made in the mud as he buried them and lifted them. His tracks were deep and obvious. He would have preferred to have left no marks at all, no debts. Caravanners like to come and go, according to the verse, And let the dust that they have raised, Fill in the footprints they have made.

  It was not long before Musa spotted movement at the far end of the pans. The sun was in his eyes but he was sure that there was someone coming up towards him, a someone who was light enough to walk across the mud without their sandals sticking. It might be the badu, or the blond returned from his hopeless vigil on the promontory. Musa would demand some help with walking. It might even be his wife, collecting herbs or bringing up a flask and blankets to her ailing husband at first light as she’d been told. About time too. Musa stopped, rubbed his side, practised breathing awkwardly. He had been ill, he must remember that. He was recovered but still weak, he’d say. Another miracle.

  But it was Jesus walking in the mud, bare-footed, naked, thin and brittle as a thorn. So, then, Shim’s bogus, midnight mission had been fruitful after all. His vigil on the promontory at Musa’s behest – ‘Say that I’ll die unless he comes’ – had worked where all the other days of prayers and exhortations had failed. Musa chuckled to himself. He was rewarded for his tricks, no matter what he did. His little Gally had appeared at last. He’d come up from his cave to cure Musa for a second time. This second miracle would be an easy one. He’d only have to exorcize the demons from Musa’s hip and knee, and scrape away a little mud. He’d only have to wipe away a lie.

  Musa did not take another step. He waited while the man approached, as thinly as an egret, his body wasted to the bone, his too large hands and feet, his swollen joints. Only his genitals seemed unaffected by the fast. This was nothing. Musa was not shocked. He’d seen worse sights before than naked mystics. In his travels, he’d seen recluses who’d made themselves as yellow and transparent as amber by their deprivations. He’d seen the hermits of Khaloun who fed on insects, nothing else. Their skins were hard and cracked like cockroaches. He’d seen worse ulcers, looser teeth, more hollow eyes. But he had never seen a man appear so weightless and invincible as Gally seemed to be.

  Musa did not know what he should do. Salute the man when he arrived like an old friend? Fall down on his knees, or run, though both were difficult for someone of his size and in mud that deep? Pretend to be still ill and in need of healing? Could he fool Jesus with his tricks? Musa compromised. He took one step backwards, held his side and winced, and almost crouched, not quite a deferential bow, not quite a posture of defence, not quite an ambush. He was stooped too low to see the Gally now. He waited for the figure to come closer, oddly fearful of it but triumphant, too. Another victory. Here was the one who’d tipped the water on to Musa’s lips and cheeks. Here was the face that he’d last seen a whisper from his nose, inside the tent. The peasant’s and the robber’s face. The healer’s face. From that distance in the open scrub, it had not seemed so young as it had been when they first met. The hair was pale. The body was the colour of the land behind.

  What should Musa say to greet his Gally? It was embarrassing. He could hardly call out, ‘Good morning, cousin. Know my face?’ as if they were chattering acquaintances from some market-place. Or, ‘I’m the one that comes for you each day. At last we meet again …’ or, ‘Speak to me, then. We were good cousins thirty days ago. This is my land.’ Such pleasantries were not appropriate for one so holy and so thin. But Musa need not have worried what to say. His Gally would not cross the mud to stroke his eyelids with his thumb or talk to him or pass his judgement on the landlord’s weaknesses. When Musa stood and looked again, the man was at a greater distance and almost indistinguishable from the shadows and the bushes. He had taken a lower path, through a sloping basin of thorn and rock, and was walking away from Musa with the confidence of someone who was full of god at last.

 
Musa watched – relieved, rebuffed — as Jesus set off up the scarp, his body bones combining with the scrub rocks and the sunlight to make a hard-edged pattern which pulsed and slanted all at once. Musa put his hands up to his mouth. ‘What do you want?’ he called. The Gally did not seem to hear. He was too far away. He pulsed and slanted, disappeared, became a man again a few steps higher up the slope, was lost between the landscape and the sun. Who was he looking for, if not the merchant king? Had he come for the water in the cistern? Or was he heading for the woman in the cave?

  The air became much colder than it ought to have been. Musa barely dared to breathe. He could have sworn the man was glowing blue and yellow, like a coal.

  26

  It was Aphas who saw Musa first, a little after dawn, coming slowly through the rocks towards the flattened tent, wearing his boots of mud, his hair heavy with sweat. He did not seem so big somehow, as if a single night of quarantine up at the caves had been enough to shorten and to narrow him. Even the goats could tell he had improved. They did not scatter when he walked amongst them as they usually did. He did not try to kick their legs.

  ‘Your man is back,’ said Aphas, ‘Look.’ Mira looked, and so did Shim. They did not run to greet him, glad that he’d survived another illness and was well enough to walk. Their day-dreams perished at the sight of him. They stayed on the panels of the tent as if they thought the wind could strike up again at any moment, and waited for him to rage at what had happened to his home. Miri knew what he would do and say. He’d twist her wrist: ‘What use are you? Look what you’ve done in just one night.’ He would not be ashamed to slap her ears, even with Shim and Aphas looking on. He’d slap their ears as well, if he had half a chance.

  But no, he merely shook his head and rolled the broken tent poles with his foot.

  ‘You’ll have to make another one,’ he said, ‘when we get down to Jericho.’ He looked at Miri, sitting amongst the few possessions she had rescued from the wind, the finished birth-mat on her lap, untied, her broken loom in pieces at her feet, her face and hair made ashen by the dust. ‘You’ll have to get another loom.’

  ‘How is your stomach, then?’ she said, still nervous of the man. ‘We prayed for you, I promise. We sang for you all night …’

  ‘Your prayers were answered. See? I’m well. The wind has blown all the pain away. My wind in here …’ he rubbed his stomach, ’ … became the wind outside. See what it’s done.’ He shrugged again, and spread his hands above the tent, a stoic almost. ‘This is the price we pay.’

  What should they make of Musa now? To those survivors at the tent, he seemed transformed. They all had been transformed by the bombast of the winds, of course. There’s nothing more dispiriting than clinging to a flattened tent at dawn with nothing looming up to help beyond the scrub except more scrub. They had been circled seven times in the night. The wind had sounded seven fanfares on its horn. And their skin city had been levelled to the ground. There are no kinder winds than that. There isn’t one that comes along and puts up tents. But Musa, they supposed, had more reason to be dispirited than any of them, if he was human. Even though he’d missed their dramas with the tent. He had been badly ill, and must be more humbled and exhausted by his struggles. The idea that the midnight wind had originated in Musa’s stomach did not seem far-fetched, to Aphas at least. His stomach was large enough to lodge a storm. And demons could take many shapes. A demon driven out of Musa’s gut where it was warm and comfortable might want to take revenge on Musa’s tent. That much was logical. He sympathized with that. What had his landlord said, those many days ago? ‘I only have to belch for there to be a storm.’ Perhaps he’d belched so great a storm that all his rage was spent against the scrub, and he was left as harmless and as fragile as a blown egg. An empty shell. Certainly, none of them had ever known the man so quiet. They had not thought that he could be pensive or melancholy. It hardly suited him. His heavy jaw seemed heavier. He’d lost the teasing challenge in his eyes. He was distracted and reduced. Perhaps, his second meeting with mortality had made a better, lesser man of him.

  Even so, Shim and Aphas kept their distance, and even Miri – unwidowed for a second time – was slow to offer Musa her assistance, or to run around and find his food and drink amongst the scattered trappings. At last he said, ‘Bring me the flask.’ Perhaps date spirit would restore him, and give him courage. For reasons he could not understand, his passing encounter with the Gally had been frightening.

  ‘I don’t know where it’s gone,’ said Miri.

  ‘Hunt for it, then.’

  Miri had still not found the flask amongst the salvaged remains of their property when there was a warbling noise, and the badu came running up, covered in dust and scratches. He was talking for a change, but not a language anybody knew. He seemed unusually excited, his tongue too small for what he had to say. He’s seen the Gally, Musa thought. Or else he’s seen me coming out of Marta’s cave. He’s seen her bruises. It’s just as well that he can’t talk. But the badu was not pointing to the valley of the caves. He was pointing to the precipice. He caught hold of Shim’s wrist and tugged.

  ‘What is it, now? Let go.’

  He pulled Aphas to his feet, and tugged him for a few paces towards the promontory. He did the same to Shim. And when Shim shook him off, the badu got hold of the curly staff and handed it to Musa. Again he pointed to the precipice, and mimed a prayer. He waved his hand towards the precipice, walked off a dozen paces, beckoned them to follow him across the scrub.

  ‘He wants us to walk,’ suggested Shim.

  ‘What for?’ said Musa. ‘I’ll not walk another step today.’

  ‘Something to do with the Galilean boy.’

  ‘The Galilean boy has gone already. I saw him walking. This morning.’

  ‘Who did you see?’

  ‘The Gally. Walking.’

  ‘Walking where?’ asked Aphas, terrified of what he might have missed during his night-long absence from his cave. ‘Have you been healed by him? What did he say? Where is he now?’

  Musa shrugged. He shook his head. ‘Nothing …’

  ‘You saw him, though?’

  ‘I saw him, yes. He shows himself to me. He’s there, somewhere. Up at the caves. Unless he’s gone into the hills.’

  ‘We didn’t see him pass,’ said Shim. ‘We didn’t hear him walking. And we’ve been here all night.’

  Musa wouldn’t argue with Shim. He only said, ‘He’s silent when he moves …’

  The badu gave up on the men. But Miri was easier to drag along the ground, and more easily persuaded by the badu’s grimaces and cries.

  ‘Go with him, then,’ said Musa. ‘See what the noise is all about. Leave me in peace to think. Yes, go. See if my flask has blown over there.’

  It wasn’t long before she had returned from her first visit to the promontory, leaving the badu on the cliffs. ‘You’d better come and see,’ she said. ‘There’s someone dead.’ Musa’s mouth was hanging open. He looked stunned. He’s been caught out telling lies, thought Miri. She was pleased. He shows himself to me, indeed. I saw him walking, earlier this morning. How had her husband hoped to benefit from telling lies like that?

  At first they could not see the body lying on the rock outside the cave. The dust had made the landscape all the same colour; the shapes were indistinguishable. But they could see the ravens picking at some carrion, and hear the tok-tok of their beaks. The body was beneath the birds.

  ‘That’s him,’ said Musa, clasping his hands tightly to stop them trembling. He felt as if his head was full of bees.

  ‘Who was walking? You said. Up at the caves,’ asked Aphas.

  Musa stuck his chin out and shrugged. ‘That was him, too,’ he said tentatively. ‘I must have seen the ghost pass out of him. Unless I dreamed it. Might have dreamed it. You know I’ve not been well.’ He tried to recollect the figure, gliding on the mud. Had he really seen a living face? Had he seen anyone at all, or was his conscience playing tricks on him? His m
emory was far too faint and imprecise to be entirely sure. Even if he shut his eyes he could only picture Gally spread out on the rocks with ravens on his face. And if he opened them and looked across the precipice towards the cave, the picture was the same. Whatever Musa had seen that morning, one thing was certain now; the Gally was beyond help.

  They waited on the promontory and watched the badu climb down to the Gally’s cave with ropes and cloths to save the body from the birds. The badu did not seem afraid of death or ravens. They stood their ground, with bloody beaks, and stabbed at the badu’s arms. But he swept them off and picked the corpse up in his arms as if it were no heavier than a stook of reeds – indeed, it was no heavier than reeds – and wrapped it in the torn tent curtain which had once divided Miri from her husband. The Gally’s naked feet protruded from the cloth, like some small boy playing hide-and-seek behind a tapestry.

  The badu tied the wrapped body with rope, secured an extra line to it and climbed once more up to Shim at the rim of the precipice above the cave. They pulled the body up, past the overhanging rock, the canker thorn, the crumbling contours of the cliff. The ravens made their last assault on Jesus’s protruding, swinging feet, but nothing could prevent the burial of Jesus now.

  ‘No need to dig a grave,’ said Musa, coming up with Aphas, and his wife to join. the other two. ‘We have a grave. My little donkey’s grave. It must be meant for him … It was always meant for him.’

  ‘You mean we should use the cistern?’ said Shim.

  ‘It was a grave before it was a cistern.’

  ‘What will we drink?’

  Musa shrugged. He didn’t care what anybody drank. He wouldn’t stay another day and so he didn’t need to know about their thirst.