Quarantine (15 page)

footfall made its mark on earth.

The earth had quietened by the time that Jesus went outside.

There was nothing on the precipice to see, but there were voices

and movements on the rim above. He turned his back to Moab

and looked towards the sununit of the cliffs. Dust fell on his face

and hair. A pebble hit his shoulder. His company had come at

last; rus guide, his god, his friend. He would not pass his quarantine

alone. He waited for a face to show itsel£ Perhaps there was a

face already; he was not sure. He thought he saw the blond hair

of an angel and a face the colour of a honeycomb. He thought

he heard a joyful voice call out, in a mocking echo of his dream,

'Fly, fly . . . ' Were they the words? There was a further fall of

earth and then there was a vision that he could not understand.

Its meaning was obscure and dark and troubling. A donkey

seemed to come out of mid-air, falling through the sky at him.

It dropped down the precipice to the right ofhis cave. It turned.

It hit the rocks and bounced once more, high above the valley.

Then it fell towards the silver plate. A sacrifice towards the silver

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plate. Its legs were wings. It seemed to have no weight, no eyes.

Its head was loose like cloth, as if the bones along its neck were

less substantial than the air.

' '

As soon as Shim and the badu had begun to drag away the

donkey's carcass, the women - separated from the two remaining

men by the customary seven steps - set to work themselves.

They searched the camel panniers inside the tent for the rods

and beams to assemble Miri's loom. They laid the pieces out in

order of size - the largest breast beams and shed sticks at the

back, then the warp and heddle rods, and then, closest to hand,

the beating hook, the stick spools, the leashes and the pegs.

Miri was glad to be distracted by something other than Musa's

piping voice. Her husband was sitting in his blanketed emporium,

a pyramid within a tent, his flask of date spirit half consumed,

his goods displayed on the mat in front of him, his stomach

folding on his thighs like dough expanding into dough. He was

biding his time. He knew his tenants would be tempted by the

prospect - once their daytime fast had ended - of some of Miri's

fig cakes or dried fruit, some salted meat, some herby cheese.

Fasting's hungry work. He judged the old man, Aphas, would

be the first to be enticed. Old men near death have no one to

indulge, except themselves. Then, where Aphas had succumbed,

the other three - perhaps the missing fifth as well - would follow.

They'd have to understand they could not simply plunder the

free food of the scrub. This was his land, he would remind them.

The birds and roots were his. They had to buy their food from

him or go without until their forty days were up. They had to

pay his price. He owned the water and he owned the sky. A sip,

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a sip, the merest sip, could not be had for nothing. He chuckled

at his own audacity.

This was Musa's quarantine. He would not fast or pray. He'd

rest. His wife would milk and bake and cook; he would display

the goods; his tenants would walk down from their caves each

day for their supplies; and he would drink his spirits and his wine

and dream of future caravans. So this detainment in the hills was

working out unexpectedly well, he thought. Bad luck had almost

turned to good. He had his health. He had some rent. He had

some modest trade. He had some porters for the journey down

to Jericho. He'd have the woman, Marta, to enjoy, if he was

patient. In the meantime there was a skinny second-best at hand

who would require no patience. He'd take hold ofMiri's wrists

that night and press her bony little thighs into his lap. He'd close

his eyes and rub the fabric of her clothes against himself and call

her Marta underneath his breath.

Miri was as nervous as a doe. She did her best to be invisible.

She could see and smell that Musa was in a skittish mood. Date

spirit had revived him. His veins were full of blood and drink

and mischief He was playful and expansive for the moment, but

that could change. So far the spirit had only reached his heart

and mouth but it would travel to his cock and fists, and then

there would be danger. She would have to keep out ofhis reach

once the donkey had been disposed of and these four visitors

had gone back to their caves, unless she wanted to be purrunelled

by his hands and mouth or forced to masturbate him with a ball

of wool or made to kneel.

Miri hid behind the woman Marta from Sawiya, and concentrated on the loom. She kept her face as blank and still as clay.

But Marta was as open-faced and undefended as a young girl.

She did not seem afraid of Musa's eye. She touched Miri's arm

and hand and back; she was a sister for the day. She smiled to

herself - and once she even laughed out loud - at the datey

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monologue that Musa was imposing on Aphas. The old man

would have dearly loved to sleep, she saw. Instead, he had to

listen to their landlord's endless, hypnotizing tales of profits,

bargains, deals, the buy-move-sell of merchant life, the mysteries

of trade. Here was a man who knew the wider world, the land

behind the middleman where everything was cheap, the hill

behind the hills, the village that you reached when all the villages

had ended, the sky beyond the skies where blue was silver and

the air was heavier than smoke. That was where (according to

Musa's narratives that day) he'd seen deserts which made this

scrub seem like paradise, where he'd survived on nothing else

but camel leathers for his meat, the mist of mirages for drink,

and promises for merchandise.

'Nothing you have seen compares to what I've seen,' he said

to Aphas. But he was watching Marta while he spoke. He did

not want to miss her bending over with the pieces of the loom.

How would the fabric of her clothes spread on her back and

thighs? How would her buttocks spread?

If only Musa had been talk and nothing else, Miri thought,

then he might have been mistaken for a tolerable man - for

there was something admirable about him, on first encounter.

Everybody was agreed. When he was fuelled by drink, still

good-humoured and telling stories about the market-places of

the world, the gourds and henna, ivory and olive oil, the grain

and chalcedony he'd bought and sold; the carbuncles he'd traded

for ambergris, the gold for slaves, the aggry beads for ostrich

feathers; how he'd turned honey into salt and salt into silver,

then, yes, he was captivating. 'Like a snake,' in Miri's view.

She'd been captivated once herself A short and bitter memory.

She'd first encountered Musa in her father's camp less than a

year previously. He'd made her laugh. The way he looked. The

words he used. The stories that he told. His self-esteem. He'd

promised her that she would marry him and travel to the hems

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and pockets of the world. He'd show her valleys with so many

flies that all the cattle had two tails. He'd take her to a land where

all the chiefs had jewels so large that visitors could tether horses

to them. He'd find her villages where women gathered gold by

dipping pitch-smeared feathers in their lake. They spread the

gold like honey on their bread.

How gold and sweet his voice had been that night.

Now his voice was pitch for her. She'd never seen the jewels,

the lakes of gold, the cattle with two tails. She'd seen the flies.

She'd seen the wind-whipped camel tracks, the dusty camps, the

stultifying market towns. She'd felt her husband's fingers and his

fists. What was there captivating in the life she led with him,

other than his talk? How simple it would be, she thought, to

earn some instant silence and some widowhood with a single

blow from a loom rod. Musa's head was round and red and

tufted like a pomegranate. And it would split as easily. The man

was full of pips and piss. She and Marta could drag the body to

the precipice and push it off to join the little jenny on the valley

floor. Two donkeys, yes. Both lame. Both dead.

Thank heavens that there was the loom to think about instead.

Miri was the sort of woman who could be stoical only if her

hands were busy. Then she could endure the heat, her aching

thighs, the aimless gossip of the goats, her husband even. She

couldn't simply be inert like Musa, her fingers twined across her

lap, talking, drinking, dreaming wealth and luxury and lies. If

there was nothing else to do, she'd rather scratch herself or pick

her broken nails than keep her fingers still. Why should she dwell

on the misfortunes of a marriage in which even fever could not

intercede?

But, for Miri, there was never nothing else to do. Her life

was knuckles marching, fingers-on-the-move: making bread,

sieving cheese, seeing to the needs of goats and men, a thousand

tasks and still a thousand more to do . . . She had to find the

time as well to carve the wooden talismans which Musa sold for

prices beyond sense as the propitious work of holy men. Now

she would take the opportunity, while her husband was sweettempered and loquacious with his drink, while there was a break from caravans and market-places, to work for once on something

for herself which even Musa would not dare to sell. She'd peg

the loom in some cool spot. She'd beg some yam from Musa's

store of wools. She'd weave and embroider a birth-mat for her

confinement. She'd have the best part of forty days to weave a

birth-mat fit for queens.

Marta, her daytime sister, could not help to build the loom.

She'd hardly ever touched a loom before. In Sawiya the looms

were fixed, in workshops, and there were families of weavers to

provide everything from birth-mats to shrouds. But she was glad

to do what Miri asked, carrying the wood and putting down the

pieces. It was neighbourly to help a pregnant friend. She'd known

of women who had miscarried because they had bad neighbours

who hadn't helped with heavy loads. Yet though Marta was no

good with looms she could choose wools. She had an idle eye

for colour. A birth-mat should be white, of course. But white

wools do not travel very well. They pick up flies and dirt, as

Musa had discovered to his cost on one occasion. He'd bought

a length of fine-weave cotton cloth which he meant to sell for

shrouds ('Moon white,' he said. 'Spun in the sky at night') and

carried it for too long in the camel bags on a journey to the

Sea-meets-sea for the spring markets. He'd rolled the cloth out

for a Greek who was preparing for the burial of his son. The

moon was yellow streaked with fungal green. The urine in