Quarantine (33 page)

He was too old to set himself against the drumming antics of

this wind. He found some shelter amongst some rocks. He didn't

care what happened. He'd rather die than spend a night like this.

Shim had to hurry now. It didn't matter if his steps were not

reflective, or if his face betrayed how long the night had been.

He was no tranquil silhouette. He was at best a moving shape,

two bending legs, a flagging cloak, but one that ran to Miri's aid

and helped to pull the untamed tent cloth in, and tugged the

ropes and tent poles out of the flying darkness of the night. At

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last they made a pile of goat-hair cloth, the four sides of the tent,

the roof, the coloured curtain that had divided Musa from his

wife. They lay on it, spread-eagled, deafened by the flapping

edges of the cloth. What could they do? They waited for the

light to drive away the wind.

A metal pot set off across the scrub, between the maddened

goats, its flight powered by a fist of wind. It was a tuneless, leaden

bell which tolled itself and found new notes on every rock it

struck.

The Gaily knew what wind this was. This was the wind on

which to fly away. Its gusts and blusters came looking for him

in the cave, bursting in like rowdy boys to shake him from

unconsciousness. Get up, get up, it's time to go.

He had prepared for them. His fast had made him ready.

Perhaps he'd served his thirty days just to be equipped for the

wind. Quarantine had been the perfect preparation for his death.

His body was quiescent and reduced; dry, sapless, transparent

almost, ready to detach itself from life without complaint. A

wind this strong could pluck him like a leaf, and sweep him

upwards to the palaces and gardens that angels tended in the

stars. It was a wind of mercy, then, for all its bluster, sent by a

pliant god who was prepared to bend the rules. His god, praise

god, had not insisted on the forty days. He had not left Jesus in

his coma, wasting and unclean, until the final moment of his

quarantine. He'd taken pity on his Galilean son. Come now.

It seemed to Jesus, when he woke and put his hands out to

the wind, that he was already dead and living it. Those family

faces which he had summoned as his allies and his witnesses, that

woody workshop in the Galilee, the fields, the boys, the shady

comers in the temple yard, were only feeble memories. Another

person's life. A story told by someone else. Those pigeons trapped

amongst the vegetables would not be freed by Jesus any more.

There was no future there for him. No fleshy future anyway.

He had surrendered food for dreams. He'd traded in his flesh for

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everlasting holiness. What would his parents and his neighbours

say if they could see him now? They'd say he was a very stupid

boy.

But still, of course, he found the strength to drag himself- as

good as saved, as good as dead - out of the cave, on to the

entrance rock. He clung to it, his body naked to the wind.

Already bones had pierced his skin. His chest had folded in on

him. Sores on his legs and mouth no longer even tried to heal.

His teeth and gums stuck out like balconies across his face. He

could not shift the pain behind his eyes, though he was almost

blind. He did not feel the cold. In fact, he hardly registered the

wind now that he was wrapped in it. He could not separate the

wind from all the rushing in his ears. He was as numb as wood.

They could have driven nails into his feet. He'd not have felt a

thing. His heart was too weak now to send his blood as far as

that. His heart had decomposed. 'Make sacrifices to god, and

then prepare yourselffor the winds ofjudgement,' the scriptures

warned. He was prepared. He was the sacrifice.

There was a time of clarity, before his body parted from his

soul. There always is. It always comes too late. That's what makes

this moment of departure large and borderless. He summoned

up the words for his last prayers. Some Aramaic words, some

Greek, some ookuroos, some tok-tok-tok. His prayers were

answered in a way. There was a voice, borne on the wind, blown

in across the cliffs, a voice not Jewish and not Greek. Jesus's

bones were shaken by the voice. It teased him for a moment

with a little hope, even though there was no hope. It raised him

from the precipice and placed him in the scrub. If there were

any beasts around, then they grew mild. The voice took charge

of him. It walked him to the row of distant caves. It led him to

the remnants of the flattened tent. It took him to the swelling

liver and to the troubled womb. It took him to the badu's ears.

It carried out its ministries on Shim. It worked its miracles. It

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said, 'Fat Musa's dying now. You have to come and save his life.

Have pity on the man. There now. That's it. That's all there is

and ever was. Go back to sleep.'

He was asleep. He slept in the Galilee, Jerusalem, in Caesarea,

Greece and Rome. He slept in lands where orange was the orily

colour, where all the lakes were full of gold, where every donkey

had two tails, where there were lines of strangers waiting to be

saved. He placed his fingers on their heads and said, 'So, here,

be well again. ' A common greeting from the Galilee.

The wind nudged round him, searching for a hold. He lifted

slightly, felt his body parting from the rock. The earth had lost

its pull on him. He was all surface, no inside. His leaf had fallen

finally. He was a dry, discarded page of scripture now. The wind

embraced him, rubbed the words off him. It made him blank.

It made him ghostlier than air. Not yet, not me, he might have

cried, if he'd had any voice. What trick was there, that he could

use, to bring companions to his side? What lie, what cowardice,

what treachery, would put him back inside his Galilean cot?

This was his final blasphemy. He begged the devil to fly up

and save him from the wind. He'd almost welcome the devil

more than god. For the devil can be traded with, and exorcized.

But god is ruthless and unstable. No one can cast out god. It

was too late. Jesus was already standing at the threshold to the

trembling world which he had sought, where he would spend

his forty everlasting days. So this was death. So this was pain

made powerless. So this was fruit turned back into its seed.

Jesus was a voyager, at last, between the heavens and the earth.

There was a light, deep in the middle of the night. He tried to

swim to it. He tried to fly. He held his hands up to the light.

His hands were bluey-white like glass. The light passed through.

The mountain shivered from afar. He felt the cold of nothing

there. He heard the cold of no one there. No god, no gardens,

just the wind.

Musa slept like a donkey. He slept like a dead donkey. If someone

had beaten him with a stick, he wouldn't have woken up. It was

a pity no one came with sticks.

The wind disturbed him finally, though not when it blew.

Such winds could not disturb his sleep. But when the storm had

passed, there was a heavy calm which prodded him awake. His

cave had proven warm and comfortable, despite the weather,

and so he felt well rested and alert. He knew exactly where he

was and why he'd come, despite the utter darkness. There were

no moments of confusion. He'd slept with an erection, ready

for his visit to the other cave, so even before he'd opened his

eyes the pulsing in his lap reminded him of his great plan. He

rubbed his testicles. She'd not escape. She'd not run off. He'd

have her trapped inside her cave, as soon as there was any light.

Musa pressed his face into her shawl. There's still a trace of

her, he thought. A trace of spice. Enough to make him salivate.

He pulled his own clothes up and untied his undergarments so

that he might rub his genitals with her shawl. 'Give the dog a

bit of cloth to smell,' that was his policy, 'and it will sniff the

owner out.' And then? And then he'd put his body in the

entrance to her cave. She'd be just visible to him. It didn't matter

if she screamed. It mattered if she didn't scream. She'd cower in

the shadows or she'd run at him. Perhaps she'd have a stick and

try to beat him off. He'd hold her by her ankles or her wrists.

He'd press his nails into her flesh. He'd take her lip between his

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teeth. A woman would not want to tear her lips. She'd stay as

still as possible, on tiptoes, with her lip caught in his mouth, her

body arched around his stomach. Now he could put his hands

exactly where he wanted.

He'd have her naked, with just two tugs, two rips across her

back. Her clothes would hang from her, like sample cloths. He'd

tie the shawl around her waist and have her sit on him, the flesh

and fabric settling and lifting on his thighs, her mouth on his,

their ample breasts pressed flat against each other like leavened

cakes of bread. If she tried to pull away, the little bag of money