Quarantine (4 page)

became percussion in the scrub, became the first trembling

resident of her husband's grave, she had convinced herself that

it was Musa who'd woken her. Who else? He had disturbed her

sleep so many times before. So it had been his stiff and bloodless

feet which sent the small stones tumbling. He'd died, alone, with

no one there to mediate. That was the fate that's worse than

death. Now he'd come to find his wife. She wasn't hard to find.

There was the recent kicked-up trail which led out from the

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tent across the flat scrub, into the valley, up to the scarp. There

was the abattoir of stones, clawed out for him. There was her

mocking headscarf, thrown off, snagged on a thorn, and left to

flag him to her. There was the grave, and Miri crouching in it,

hardly hidden, the tiny sobbing woman in the fat man's hole.

How could he miss her? And, then, how could he let her go

unpunished? Musa was no mystery to her. He'd use his fists and

feet. He'd pick up rocks and earth to finish her. The living would

be buried by the dead. That's what the prophets said. The world

would end that way.

But minutes passed. There were no rocks. She was not stifled

by his body pressing down on hers. Finally she found the courage

to crouch in the corner of the grave and peer out, a rodent

peeping from its burrow. Of course she did not recognize the

people that she saw, but neither was she frightened of them now.

They were, at least, the living. No Musa then. Not even death

and its three partisans. She was exposed to nothing worse than

strangers.

Miri felt too foolish and too shaken to emerge. Just like a

child, trapped underneath the mat when adults come. She would

simply have to wait for a natural opportunity to escape. Sunset,

perhaps. By sunset, surely, Musa would be safe and cold, and

she could slip away unseen and go back to the tent. She'd ululate

for him. That - precisely - was the least that she could do. In

the morning she would get him on the donkey's back- impossible

without some help - and bury him. Here were the stones -

where she now crouched, a hen on barren eggs - that would be

Musa's bed-mates. There wasn't one she hadn't touched while

she was digging. What other widow could make such a boast,

or know her husband's grave more intimately? How very dutiful

she'd been.

For the moment, Miri had little else to do but study stones

and, once in a while, when she grew too stiff for her interment,

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pop her head above the topsoil and watch these new arrivals

select their caves, as far from each other as was possible, though

close enough for safety in the night. They were like ravens, not

like rooks - neither sociable nor hostile with their neighbours.

She watched them set up home, one by one, throughout the

afternoon. They kicked out the detritus of animals and other

visitors, turned stones to check for snakes and scorpions, pulled

thorns across the cave entrances to blunt the wind and keep

animals out, threw bones as far away as possible. Then they sat

in front of their new habitations, looking out across the valleys

and waiting for the darkness and, at last, the arced and glinting

goblet of the moon. The start of quarantine.

Of course, for all their birdlike meditation and reserve, they

could not help but notice Miri watching them. They were so

concentrated on the land which would be their host for the next

forty days, and so fearful of it, that hardly a beede could move

without them knowing it. How then could they avoid seeing

the newly exposed grave and its occupant, both gaping? But

none of them behaved as if it were odd, or even unexpected,

that there should be a woman who, seemingly, had dug a pit for

herself and was content to squat in it all afternoon. This was the

season of the lunatics. If her presence made them fearful and

uncomfortable, then so what? That's what they'd come for, after

all, to encounter and survive anxieties like this.

Miri wished she had the nerve to stand, waist-high in stones

and soil, and call to them. She was a rook. She needed company.

She'd ask them what their purpose was, what they were seeking

in the caves. She'd ask if they might - later, soon - help to lift

her husband on the donkey's back and bring his body here for

its interment. She could not manage it alone, she'd say, and tell

them she was abandoned, widowed, pregnant, borderless . . .

and desperate to urinate. Her child was pressing on her bladder

now. Her back and thighs were tormenting her again. But Miri

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was uncertain of the visitors, their sullenness, their lack of smiles,

the absence of any conversation or greetings between them. She

was afraid that they might ask, Where is your husband now?

Then, Why aren't you sitting by the corpse? Or, Have you run

away and left the man to die? So Miri dared not leave her

hiding place. Nor dared she urinate. It would be a sacrilege, and

dangerous. To wet a husband's grave like that would bring bad

lack. So she squatted amongst the stones, her bladder nagging,

her nerve-ends trapped, her conscience throbbing like a wound,

her untied hair turned brown with dust, and waited for the sun

to drop.

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There were eleven caves above the poppy line - a decent choice

for these four visitors. Enough room even for the fifth when he

or she arrived. The caves were not hard to see. Their darkly

shadowed entrances made a constellation of black stars against

the copper of the cliff There were two easily accessible caves at

the cliff foot, partly obscured by salt bushes and fallen debris,

and then a further four above, opening on to a sloping terrace.

Higher still, and less inviting, were three more caves, set far

apart. And then, a hundred paces to the left, a further two,

halfway up a seam of darker, stony soil.

The first of the cave-dwellers to arrive and startle Miri had

been the oddest of them all. Was that the word? Not odd,

perhaps, but out of place. He was a gentile, blond-haired and

narrow-faced; quite beautiful, she thought. And a touch sinister.

A Roman or a Greek perhaps, a traveller. But there was nothing

Greek or Roman in his quality of clothes. He wore a local tunic

and a high, woven cap which made his face seem even thinner

than it was. His skin was dry from too much sun. But he seemed

strong, like leather thongs are strong. Designed to carry loads.

And he was heavily and well equipped - a large goatskin for

water, a rush bed-mat, a cloak, a walking staff made from an

elongated piece of tarbony with ram-horn curls halfway along

its length so that when he rested on its nub his weight had to

drop and spiral twice before it reached the ground. He'd taken

the smallest and the warmest of the middle rank of caves.

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The second chose the middle rank as well; his cave was twenty

paces from the Roman or the Greek, the furthest to the right,

and in a shallow declivity of the terrace which would protect

the entrance from his neighbour's gaze, and from the evening

sun. He was an elderly Jew, wearing a felt skull-cap; yellow-eyed

and yellow-skinned, frail and timid beyond his years, shortsighted, tired, lllnning short of time. He busied himself, peering nervously amongst the stones and scree, collecting thorn roots

and branches for a fire, and carrying small rocks for his hearth.

He talked out loud to no one in particular. Himself? The lizards?

Not prayers or incantations as you might expect. But remarks

on everything he saw and found. A good supply of wood and

that's a blessing . . . We'll live like kings, old friend . . .

The third was - surprisingly - a female Jew of Miri's own

age, though tall and stout and obviously not used to walking.

And obviously not used to cleaning out a cave. She could not

bear to touch the bones and carrion inside. She couldn't make

a decent broom from any of the bushes. She'd chosen her shelter

badly, too - one of the two caves on the lower level of the scarp,

the first she'd found, easy to reach, but hard to protect. The

bushes at the front would encourage flies, and worse. The

entrance was a little higher than the chamber itself. It wasn't

likely there'd be rain - but if there were she'd have to sleep

in it.

The fourth? A badu villager from the deserts in the south,

with silver bracelets and a hennaed beard and hair. He was more

familiar. The caravan had often traded with such men; some

silver for a dozen goats, some perfume for a roll of cloth, a tub

of dates for unimpeded passage through their land. They'd sell

their children too, it was said. And their wives. He stood outside

his cave, one of the two set at a distance from the others in the

darker seam of rock. He pulled and twisted his hair, so tightly

that the skin on his skull came up in peaks, and stared at Miri.

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Finally she had to reach for her discarded headscarf, cover up

her hair, and duck into her grave. Why such a man would choose

a cave and not a tent was inexplicable. The badus only went into

caves to die, and this man - small and unrelenting - seemed too

wild to die.

Miri watched the four of them until she and her bladder were

set free by darkness. She did not see the fifth.

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The fifth, a male, was far younger than he might have seemed

from a distance. Not much more than an adolescent, then. Bare

feet make old men of us all, on stony paths at least. But even

when he reached the softer and more accommodating track

above the landfall, he walked not from the shoulders like a

seasoned traveller intent on vanquishing the rocks and rises in

his path, but cat-like from the hips, his toes extended, pointing

forwards, and put down with caution before his heels were committed to the ground. He'd learnt the single lesson of the thorn.

His feet were already tom and bruised. So: long legs, long neck,

long hands, short leopard steps. And like a leopard he paused

frequently, not to rest but to sniff the air as if he could locate -

beyond the sulphur rising on the valley's thermals - that a caravan

of camels had passed, that there were gazelles feeding in the

thorns, that there was someone dying in the wilderness ahead.

He was open-mouthed. He looped his tongue from side to

side, circling his lips, tasting the atmosphere for smells. In fact

his sense of smell had been so bludgeoned by the heat and by

his thirst that he could not detect the sulphur even. He was

parched and faint. His lips were cracked. His legs and back -

unused to heat and effort such as this - were aching badly. If he

paused to sniff so frequently, that was because he could smell

nothing. It worried him. He hoped to clear the blockage in his

nose, and shift his headache too.

He was a traveller called Jesus, from the cooler, farming valleys

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in the north, a Galilean, and not one used to deprivations of this

kind. He'd spent the night in straw, a shepherd's paying guest,

and had that morning left his bag, his water-skin, his sandals and

his stick where he'd slept. His quarantine would be achieved

without the comforts and temptations of clothing, food and

water. He'd put his trust in god, as young men do. He would

encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why

he'd come. To talk directly to his god. To let his god provide

the water and the food. Or let the devil do its work. It would

be a test for all three of them.

First he had to find a place where he and god could meet in

privacy. He'd say, if asked, that god had told him where to go, the

details of this very route. He had been standing at the window of

his father's workshop and god had called his name. Every time the

mallet hit the wood, his name was called. And every time the mallet

hit the wood he took a further step along the road in his mind's

eye, down from the living sea in Galilee to the salt-dead waters in

the south, and then ascending to the desert hills and caves.

There were nine days of mallet hitting wood before he found

the courage to argue with his family, tie his bag, and leave. The

hills were beckoning, he'd said. But as he walked up into the

wilderness - his nostrils blocked, his feet raw, another mallet

striking on his skull relentlessly-he could not find much evidence