Quarantine (36 page)

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.

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

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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 ofMusa 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 hom. 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.

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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.

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'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

.

'

morrung.

' Who did you see?'

'The Gaily. 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

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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 memory was far

too faint and imprecise to be entirely sure. Even if he shut his

eyes he could only picture Gaily spread out on the rocks with

ravens on his face. And ifhe 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

Gaily was beyond help.

They waited on the promontory and watched the badu climb

down to the Gaily'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 tom tent

curtain which had once divided Miri from her husband. The

Gaily'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

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