Quarantine (39 page)

Outside, there was no wailing at the funeral or any ululations to

alarm the women. The men did not tear their clothes, or chastise

themselves, although chastisement was deserved. But each of

them, including Shim, touched the Gaily's bandaged foot, which

still protruded from its curtain shroud. They prayed for further

miracles. They had to treat his death not as a setback but as an

opportunity, a chance to be restored by the blessing of his spirit

passing through them on its voyage to his god. Musa prayed the

hardest of them all. A touch, a touch, the merest touch, to save

him from the world.

The grave had been ankle-deep in water, but the badu, always

happy to amuse himself with stones, had lined the bottom so

that the bed was hard but dry. They lifted Jesus - all four men

as bearers, a limb apiece - and lowered him into the grave, face

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down. They could presume he was a bachelor, without offspring.

He seemed as weightless as a child. What married man or father

would leave his family to starve himself to death like this? They

sacrificed the wheatear with Musa's ornamented knife. Its blood

pumped on the curtain shroud. Musa dropped its body at the

healer's feet. They filled the grave with earth and stone, hardly

speaking to each other, and not looking in the grave until the

body was entirely covered. Even Musa kicked a little earth into

the grave and sighed as often as he could.

'This death is hard for me,' he said, not entirely without truth.

'I was the only one who really knew the man.'

They marked his grave with forty stones. It seemed appropriate. Their mourning ought to last for three days at the least, they knew. No one should walk or make a fire or cook. They should

not wash or shave. They should wear dirty clothes, if they were

truly dutiful. But they were not his family and need not spare

three days for mourning. His was a stranger's death despite their

vigils at the precipice and all the hopes they'd spent on him. If

they were at all despondent, it was because his death showed

how much they'd failed themselves. This was only the thirty-first

of their forty days, but it would be their last. How could they

boast of that, down in the valleys, in the towns? The healer was

a disappointment. He'd betrayed them all by dying. Their water

cistern had been sacrificed. The tent was flattened. So were they.

They'd leave at dawn and put an end to quarantine. There was

no choice. The wind had blown all the spirit out of them. The

scrub was telling these six trespassers to go.

The badu disappeared that night. So did the goats. When everybody came down from the caves at dawn to salvage what they could from the tent for their descent to the valley, the only sign

of any animals was dung. Musa checked his store of treasures

with which he planned to reassert himself in the summer markets

to the north. He opened up the saddle-pack with shaking hands.

He half expected to find the badu had replaced his treasures with

a rock, but everything was there, untouched. The twist ofBerber

cloth containingjewellery, some coins and a little gold; the seven

perfume bottles.

'Some thief!' said Musa.

But still the landlord and his tenants were surprised by the

badu. He wasn't quite as mad as they had thought. He hadn't

had to hand over his silver bracelets to Musa on the last day, as

Musa had intended. He hadn't paid a coin for his food or rent

or water. He hadn't even worked for them, by pottering his

landlord's goods down to the road for Jericho as he had promised.

And now he had six goats to milk or eat or sell. A decent profit

on his thirty days of idleness.

Musa cursed the hundred comers of the sky, and prayed that

every demon of the scrub would lie in wait for the little thief

with snares and thorns and traps, that he would fall into some

pit and starve. But no one really thought the badu would come

to any harm. They'd seen him clamber on the precipice. The

deepest pit could not imprison him. They'd seen him come back

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to the caves with deer, and wheatear, and with honeycombs.

He couldn't starve. Besides, he had six goats as his companions.

It was almost pleasing, to think of them, the hennaed badu and

the swart-haired goats, their bleating conversation and their

dainty steps, making their escape across the scrub. Aphas and

Marta, Miri even, wished the badu well. He'd bettered Musa.

They'd dreamed of doing something similar themselves.

But it was Shim who seemed most angry and betrayed. Had

he perhaps become fond of the badu, or was it simply that he

felt a little safer with him in their company? What could the old

man or the women do to intervene, if Musa caught him by his

ankle again and decided to pluck his toes offhis foot like unripe

berries? They were too weak and frightened of the man to do

anything but watch. The badu, though, had seemed disturbed

and kind enough to give some help, and now he'd disappeared.

Shim called for him, just in case, but he didn't answer or appear.

Shim even went down to the promontory to see if the badu was

sitting there, or climbing on the precipice, but there was no sign

of any living thing. Even the Gaily's cave seemed untouched. It

seemed unreachable, in fact. No one with any sense would try

to climb down to it without a ladder and some rope. 'A stupid

boy, a very stupid boy,' he thought, to soften the defeat of not

remaining on his own up at the caves until the end of quarantine.

He ought to stay behind, but the truth ofMusa's challenge from

two days before was ringing in his head: 'Take your chances like

a fox. Pray for water to appear. Let's see how you live without

a water-bag. ' The Gaily hadn't lasted very long without a

water-bag.

No, Shim would not waste another day on this mad enterprise.

He'd take no risks. He'd stay as quiet as possible. He'd do as he

was told for a change. And by the evening he would be released

from his landlord and the scrub for ever. He was not happy when

Musa asked to borrow his curling staff for the long walk across

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the plateau and the descent down to the valley road, but it was

a sacrifice that Shim would make without a protest. A man of

education and enlightenment should not attach himself too madly

to a mere possession. Tranquillity and self-respect were more

important than a length of wood. He'd not relinquish those to

Musa. But let him have the wood.

Musa sent the two men ahead. They had been given heavy

loads. Their progress would be slow. In addition to his own

possessions - his rush bed-mat, his cloak, his water-bag - Shim

had to carry two saddle-packs of Musa's goods, strapped across

his back, a rug and bedding on his shoulders and a half-full woven

sack of grain in his hands. Aphas, in deference to his age and

illness, only had two bags of utensils to transport. Bulky but not

weighty. The women would have to carry what was left. Some

clothes and wools, dried fruit and another woven bag of oddsand-ends for Marta. The heavy water-bags and two camel panniers for Miri, draped round her neck on ropes, with the

still-unknotted birth-mat between the ropes and her skin to

prevent chafing.

Musa would not carry anything himself, except the staff That

was his golden rule for travelling, to have his hands free in

readiness for trade and conversation. A merchant must not seem

to be a camel. He had to come and go without encumbrance.

He wanted, ifhe had the chance, to make his peace with Marta.

That was really why he'd sent the men ahead, to give him time

alone with her. Yesterday seemed such an age away. He'd buried

what he'd done to her along with Jesus. The wake was over.

They should begin anew. But Marta stuck closely to his wife,

like some shy girl. Ifhe came close to her, then she moved away.

She would not even look at him, he'd noticed, or answer him

with anything beyond a whisper, passed through Miri.

Musa understood her awkwardness, of course. A woman guilty

of adultery, willingly or not, would be embarrassed for herself,

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or fearful that her husband might find out and have her stoned.

But he would tell her that she had nothing to be frightened of.

What happens between people in the privacy of night is hidden

even from the scrutiny of god. For god must sleep. And men

and women ought to make the most of it. He'd give her one of

the little phials of perfume, well, half a phial, if she'd only lift

her head and look at him. That should be enough to make

amends.

What should he do about the tent? It would not satisfy him

to leave the wreckage there, as Miri suggested, and allow their

misfortunes with the wind to benefit some undeserving traveller

or provide free shelter for the badu, should he still be in the

scrub. So Musa had the women pile up the poles and walls of

the tent, and throw on anything that would �urn - the bits of

damaged cloth, tom curtains and rush beds, the pieces of the

broken loom, even uprooted bushes.

'Go on ahead,' he said to Miri. Marta turned away. 'And wait

for me when you get to the top of the scree.' He was a small,

spoilt boy who wanted to light a fire and enjoy the damage and

the flames all by himself.

Musa took his flintstones from their pouch and struck a spark

on to a little pile of kindling. There was, thankfully, no wind.

The flame seemed eager to oblige. He added twigs, and soon

had sufficient heat and flame to make himself a brand of sticks

and cloth.

The bushes were the first to flare. Blue flames, and then grey

smoke as what little sap there was inside the stems bubbled out

of the wood. The loom and tent poles soon joined in, but were

made from harder woods and burned more slowly and with

whiter smoke. Then the goat-hair tent sides gave in to the heat.

They did not bum. There were no flames from them. They

blackened, reddened, glowed and fell apart. They smelled like

sacrificial meat. Their smoke was yellower and more detennined

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than the thorns' . It hung above the ground like a sulphur mist

at first, but finally was lifted up in narrow braids into the cooler

air above.

There was no one to help Musa now. His uncles and his

cousins were as insubstantial as the smoke. His two porters were

out of sight. The women were too far away to call. The silence

in the scrub was so deeply brewed that Musa did not know if

he should cry out loud for joy or for help. He left the fire to

itself and set off, across the scrub, and through the wind-blown

remnants ofhis life. There was a copper pot he recognized. Some

cloth. A scarf He walked as quickly as he could to seek the

company of women.

And there his fever devil stayed, below the caves, its feet in

flames, its body shrouded in the yellow smoke. It curled above the

salty scrub, shivering and abandoned, insubstantial and attached to

no one, biding its time.

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Marta and Miri had not stopped to watch the smoke. They were

too busy walking. They hardly talked. The path was difficult

and narrow, and kept them apart for much of the time. Even

when they reached the wider tracks worn by the many caravans

which came across these hills to Jericho they did not walk side

by side. Marta led the way, nervously avoiding any vegetation

and rocky ground where there might be snakes or scorpions,

but she hurried nevertheless, hastened by a mixture of fear and

excitement. Ahead was better than behind.

Miri needed space around her to cope with the panniers and

water-bags which she was carrying. The birth-mat, wrapped