Quarantine (28 page)

PO

The devils on the precipice tempted Jesus three more times.

They dropped down leather bags of food and water. But he was

stubborn, and frightened enough to resist their gifts. He sent

their bags bouncing down the cliff-face, bread for the ravens,

water for the lizards, leather for the ants.

Then his tempters must have run out of temptations or of

bags, because they did not bother him to break his fast again.

They only came on to the promontory each evening, to plague

him with their vigil and their verses. He listened but he did not

recognize the words they used although his hearing had become

thunderous, and all their footfalls were distinct. He heard them

sniff; he heard them cough; he heard them draw in breath.

They still called to him, of course, not just the big man but

the others too. 'Gaily, Gaily. Gaily, Gaily,' until they tired of it.

He learned to recognize the whining miseries of old age, the

bitterness of infertility, the swagger of the Greeks. They sometimes begged Jesus to come out of the cave, to talk to them, to prove himself with miracles. But Jesus did not have the strength

to show himself, even ifhe'd wanted to. He'd used up any energy

he had dealing with their bags of food.

The little badu, though, did not call out, but in many ways

he was the noisiest of them all. He couldn't sit still for a moment.

He had to run, or climb along the ledges as madly as a goat, or

dislodge stones. He had to crumble earth and throw the pebbles

that he found against the precipice. He seemed to be at war with

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everything. A truly troubled spirit, Jesus thought, on those three

or four occasions when the badu came into view, clambering

around the tip of the promontory. Here was a demon soul in

torment, restless, tiny, dark, uncircumcized. A man entirely lost

to god. This is what Jesus would end up like himself if he

abandoned his devotions or was defeated for one single moment

in his fast. He'd have to spend eternity with stones. He'd shrink

and blacken. His foreskin would grow back. He'd have to clamber

till the end of time.

Just once his tempters almost trapped him. It was barely dawn

on the twenty-second day of quarantine, and Jesus was sleeping.

He mistook the scrambling feet which roused him from his

dreams to be his own, in headlong flight down banks of scree

and bones. 'See how our little Gaily runs!' When he woke up,

the dream persisted. There was shuffling. He thought that there

was breathing in his ear. Fright made him strong. He sat up

immediately and looked around into the shadows. He found

what he was looking for. He didn't care if there were animals.

He would have welcomed death if it was death. But it was just

the badu standing in the entrance to the cave, an outline, the

cloak of Moab purple at his shoulders, and his gifts - some locusts

he had trapped, a water-pouch - lying on his hands. His knee

was cut from where he'd fallen on the climb, and so he stood

unevenly, like a boy. He was less mad and restless than he'd

seemed at a distance, less devilish. The locusts and the waterpouch were trembling. The badu was afraid, and so was Jesus.

The shadow and the silhouette.

The badu whispered a word, not quite an ookuroo, but something soft and boneless. Not a word that Jesus understood. The badu put the locusts on the entrance rock. He touched his heart

and then his forehead, to mime that he was coming as a friend.

Again a sign that Jesus did not recognize. He held the water-pouch

out for Jesus to take, and when the offer was ignored, he tipped

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some water into his open palms, invitingJesus to see it, smell it,

put his tongue to it. Here was the odour of the Galilee, seeping

through the badu's shaking fingers and wasting on the ground.

Jesus concentrated all his power in his voice. He'd practised

this - the corning of the devil to his cave. He shouted in the

badu's face, 'Leave me in peace . . .' But, still, he took a half-step

forward as he shouted, just to be a little closer to the badu's hand,

and the smell, and the glint of moisture that was left. The badu

reached out through the dark, and put his damp fingers on Jesus's

face. He wiped the water on his cheeks. Jesus did not pull away.

This was too much for him.

'Rub just a little . . . on my lips,' he said, although the words

were weak and splintered. 'Not swallow it.' He would have

wept at his own weakness, at all the days he'd wasted on his fast,

if he had any tears. One drop of water and the devil would

rejoice. One drop of water and he'd spend eternity with thorns

and flames and rocks.

The badu smiled - invisibly in this half-light - but did not

move his hand or press his fingers on to Jesus's lips. He shook

his head. He said his word again, and took a half-step backwards

out of the cave. His outline thickened with the light, but he

seemed small and nervous. He'd not expected Jesus to be naked,

or so wild. He offered the water-pouch again, but without

looking at Jesus. He closed his eyes and waited, with one hand

held out. With the other hand, he twisted his hair as tightly as

he could into peaks and knots.

'Who sent you here? To mock me, ' Jesus said, each word a

self-inflicted wound. 'I'll not, not drink. But pour your water

on my neck and head. I wash my face and eyes in it . . . ' Again

the badu did not move. He only waited for Jesus to reach across

and take the pouch himself. But Jesus held his hands behind his

back and muttered prayers. Finally, the badu reopened his eyes,

and took another half-step back into the light.

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'You mock me, cousin,' Jesus said. 'You will not even wet

my lips.'

If the badu had done what he was asked, then Jesus's quarantine might have ended just in time. But the badu was a nervous man, for all his patience. He'd risked his life to climb so far in

the darkness. He took more backward steps into the first light

of the day and stood outside the entrance to the cave where

Jesus's Greek letters promised death to any gentile who tried to

come into the inner court. The badu held his hand up and

nodded at the remaining dampness on his palm. Again he touched

his heart and forehead. He did not speak. He did not smile

again. He picked the locusts up and offered them. He held the

water-pouch, but did not tip more water out. One leg was

flexed. Prepared to run if Jesus tried to grab his arm.

Now that Jesus saw the badu's face, his weakness was replaced

by anger, mostly with himself. This was a battle that he would

not lose just for a drop of water on his head and neck. He clapped

his hands. The bony impact echoed dryly in the cave. It hurt.

He clapped his hands again, and shook his head. His neck and

shoulders squeaked like a door. His skull had separated from the

skin. His hair was weed. He took a step or two towards the

badu. They almost touched again, before the badu backed away.

'He cannot make me drink, the man,' Jesus said. And then his

final shout, a piece of yew log cracking in the fire, 'Go out from

'

me.

The badu was expressionless, a fish displayed behind the thick

glass of a vase. He had not even blinked. His eyes and lashes had

not moved, even though he had been shouted at, straight in the

face. He simply nodded, turned away without a shrug and let

the locusts go, though they were dead. A waste. He could have

eaten them himself; a badu delicacy, the desert shrimp. Then he

fled, back to the place where he had cut his knee, back to the

summit of the precipice, back to his cave. He would not look

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at Jesus any more, though Jesus called to him while he climbed.

He shouted out in Greek and Aramaic, 'You have not tempted

me. Praise god,' and even with some words he knew in Sumar.

But no reply. 'Coward. Demon. Run to your master like a dog. '

Jesus stood outside his cave, elated, naked and transfixed. He

almost wept with happiness. So god was taking care of him after

all. God was standing guard. Jesus praised the ingenuity of god.

He knew another man who hardly blinked. The baker that lived

five houses down from their family workshop was as unresponsive

as the badu. Small boys would stand behind him at his stall and

shout their jokes into his ears. They would insult his bread. But

he would not respond.

'0 sweet, forgiving god, when I was weak,' Jesus said aloud,

with no one there to listen to his words. The devil's go-between

had come down to his cave to tempt him. But - praise the lord

- the devil's go-between was dea£ For everything that god had

made was weak and blemished and imperfect by design.

Jesus laughed. How dull and unprepared the devil was.

No one need be thirsty in the scrub, unless they choose, said

Musa. He and Miri had exhausted all the water in their bags,

and so had come up to their cistern at the caves to drink and to

refill the empty skins.

Without the open cistern to provide their drink, her husband

would have dragged Miri from her loom, just when the purpleorange birth-mat was almost complete. She only had to loosen the warp, a little at a time, and then her mat could be cut off the loom

and the four hundred ends tied. Tying these umbilicals was the

guarantee that her pregnancy would be successful. But Musa only

cared for mats that he could sell. He would not have put up with

thirst rather than separate Miri from a mat which would produce

no profit. He would have sent her out to hunt for water.

There was, she'd already noticed, little sign of any water in

the scrub, apart from the soft clay in the flood beds of the valley

below the caves. She'd not persuade her husband to drink clay.

There were no converging gazelle tracks, or stones piled up in

columns to mark where someone else had found a well or spring,

or any tell-tale, spongy pit of greenery. She would have had to

uproot salt bushes for the meagre store of water in their roots,

or dig out tamarisks which always had their little fingers planted

in a patch of damp. But, thank heavens for the cistern at the

caves. Digging into that had been a bit of luck, Miri thought,

though she would rather it were filled with Musa than with

water.

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She did not resent the brief break from the birth-mat to go

up to the caves. She'd have a chance to talk to Marta, and she might

succeed in walking the pain out ofher thighs, and exercising her

back and neck. She could not tell if it was the weaving or her

pregnancy that made her ache so badly. But she was most aware

of her growing bulk around the waist when she sat cross-legged

at the loom. The baby neady filled the space between her legs.

Her clothes were tight and she was hot, even at night. Her breasts