Quarantine (8 page)

The four newcomers to the valley caves did not sleep well. They

were bruised and battered. Their feet were sore. Their legs were

stiff. They had been punished by the journey and should have

dropped to sleep as readily as dogs. But the lodgings were too

cold for sleep. Their scrubland host had celebrated the new moon

and the onset of spring by calling up for them a wind which was

old and wintry and mean. At first it was too quick and muscular

to idle in the contours of the scarp or nose into the creases

and the dens. It hurried past. But later in the night - just when

they thought that they might sleep - the wind became invasive.

A watery haze, distilled from the daytime's rising valley heat

and turned gelid in the dark, had made the wind heavier and

more sinuous. It came into the caves, shouldered out the

skulking pockets of warm air, and put an end to everybody's

sleep.

So there was at least a unity of damp and sleeplessness inside

the caves, for these four travellers. What could they do, except

slap out the cold? Or hug their knees? Or stamp their feet? Or

blow into their hands, and wonder if they had the fortitude -

or foolishness - to last for thirty-nine more nights like this? A

fire would help, of course. But the old man's roots and branches

had not caught alight. He'd evidently lost his adolescent luck

with flint and kindling. His luck was creaky like his bones. So

he and his unseen companions had to spend the night as cold

and stiff and unignited as the fire.

4 I

They all knew darkness well enough. Who hasn't lain awake

at night with nothing brighter than a cloud-hung star to add its

feeble touch of light to looming shapes inside the room? Who

hasn't cried out for a lamp? But this was darkness unrelieved for starlight, no matter if it's moistened by the air, is never sinuous, unlike the wind. It will not curve and bend its way in to a cave.

There was a blinding lack oflight inside. They could not even see

a hand held up before their faces. They could not see the demons

and the serpents and the dancing bones. But they could hear them

all too well. What better way to pass the time, and put the worry

of the cold to one side, than by contemplating something worse

than cold: sounds without shapes?

If someone coughed in their damp comer, then for the other

three that was the certain presence of hyenas. If another - fearful

of hyenas - whispered to himself for comfort, then his voice for

all the rest became the soft conspiracy of thieves. A yawn became

a stifled cry for help. A sneeze, the whooping of a ghost. The

wind set bushes rattling: an owl browsed in the scrub: cave

beetles, amplified by their raised wings, rehearsed their murders

and their rapes.

The woman was not as sleepless as the other three, perhaps

because she was protected from the wind by the few bushes

outside the cave. Her name was Marta. She'd been married for

nine years to Thaniel, the landowner of Sawiya by Jerusalem.

His second wife. She was - a phrase she'd heard too often in the

song -

The Mother of a threadbare womb,

Her warp hung weftless on the loom.

Though she was over thirty years of age, she had no children

yet, despite her husband's nightly efforts, and her experiments

with all the recommended charms and herbs to aid fertility. She'd

sacrificed a dozen pigeons with the local priest. She'd rubbed

42

honey on a marrow, sent money to Jerusalem, worn copper

body charms, endured - she could not see how this would help

- her husband's semen in her mouth. She'd worn balsam leaves

underneath her clothes for weeks on end until she rustled like

parchment. She'd eaten only green fruit (and paid the price) .

She'd starved herself. She'd gorged. Now she was plump and

getting plumper, not to satisfy her husband, but because a flat

stomach was intolerable. A larger one and bigger breasts might

bring good luck, she thought. Provide the dovecote, and the

doves will come.

None ofit had worked, of course. Her warp remained without

its weft. A hundred times and more, she'd done her best to fend

off with prayers and lies the monthly rebuff of her periods. Now

she only had till harvest to conceive. Then, her husband said,

he would divorce her. The law allowed him to. The law

demanded that he should, in fact. After ten years of barrenness

a man could take another wife. 'You don't cast seed on sour

land,' he said. He had a right to heirs. It was a woman's religious

duty to provide and bring up children. He'd had to divorce his

first wife, because she'd failed to conceive. Marta had failed as

well. So Thaniel would have to turn her out and look elsewhere.

Of course it was regrettable and harsh, he said, but he could

hardly blame himself. Not twice. He'd marry 'Lisha's daughter.

She was young. Her father owned some land adjacent to his

own. The prospect was a cheerful one. And sensible.

'I'll have a son within ten months, ' he told his wife. 'And,

Marta, wipe your face and show some dignity. What use are

tears? You'd better pray for miracles . . . Come on. You will

have had ten years to prove yourself, and that is fair . . . '

'I'll pray,' she said.

'Pray all you want. '

Marta took him at his word. She would do everything she

could. So, despite the priest's objections that her plans were

43

wilful and unbecoming, she had walked into the wilderness to

fast by day and pray for miracles by night.

Now she was sitting upright inside the cave, her back pressed

against the least damp wall, and watching the entrance for dawn's

first smudge of grey. She was more tired than scared - and though

she, like her neighbours, turned the clatter of each tumbling

stone, displaced by nothing more ominous than dew, into a devil

or a snake, she could not stop her chin from dropping on her

chest from time to time. Her sleeping dreams were less alarming

than her waking ones, and so it felt to her that she did not fall

asleep but rather fell awake into the nightmare of the cave, alone.

She woke inside a womb, a grave, a catacomb. But she was calm.

These forty days could not be worse than the alternative - a life

without a child, a husband or a home.

She despised the man, of course, and had taken hardly any

pleasure in the marriage for at least eight of their nine or so years

together. In that she was the same as many of the women in

Sawiya. Marriage was a bumpy ride for them, though 'Better

ride than walk,' they said, 'even if the ride is on a donkey.'

Their husbands were an irritation, of course. But husbands were

amusing, too. At least, they were amusing when they were out

of sight. Their vanities and tempers could be joked about among

women friends at the ovens or the well. Grumbling and laughing

at their curdy husbands made the bread rise and the yoghurt set.

But Marta could not find the comedy in Thaniel. He'd made

her and his first wife barren, she was sure, with his dry heart and

sparking tongue. They were like millstones without oil. But -

Marta was an optimist - she still believed that everything would

be a joy if she could have his child. She pressed her eyes shut

with her forefinger and her thumb, her little finger resting on

the corner of her lips, and she prayed that she could leave her

infertility behind in this dark, barren place, where it belonged.

She prayed for forty days and nights of ripening, that she'd be

44

fruitful, that she'd multiply. Then she prayed that dawn would

break the habits of eternity: Let it arrive early for once, and drive

the night away.

Pray as she might, however, she could not entirely shut the

noises out. She was certain when she stopped and listened hard

that there was something, or someone, in the bushes just below

her cave. She heard the small sounds that someone makes when

he - of course, it had to be a he - is standing still and breathing

through his nose. The snuffles, rustling of clothes, the lubrications

of the tongue and mouth of someone waiting for her in the dark.

One ofher three new neighbours, perhaps? She had not thought

of them as dangerous, though no man was trustworthy when a

woman was alone, no matter who he was. She stopped her

praying, and tried to breathe as gently as she could. There was

more rustling, and then the someone seemed to shake a piece

of cloth. It sounded like her husband flapping out the dust when

he was taking off his clothes. The old man, then? The blond?

The badu with the hennaed hair? Which one was naked at her

cave?

Marta's measured breathing and her stillness made her drowsy.

She tried to stay awake by concentrating on the sounds outside

but, finally, she could not stop herself Her chin went down on

to her chest. She fell asleep.

Thank heavens for the charity of dreams. When Marta woke

and heard again the scurrying below her cave, the naked man

had been dismissed from her mind's eye. She listened to the

noises more critically. They were too light and birdlike to be

threatening. A man would make more weighty sounds. He

wouldn't have the patience to stay so quiet and still. A woman

then? A bird? Gazelles? The answer was obvious: it had to

be the little straw-boned woman with the untied hair who'd

evidently dug and taken up residence in a grave-like pit amongst

45

the poppies; the peeping, rodent face, half-buried in the ground,

and looking out across the scrub with moist and fearful eyes.

Marta could have clapped her hands with pleasure and relie£

She had forgotten that there was a fourth companion for the

night. Might she still be hiding in her grave?

Now Marta had a reason to go outside. There was a friend at

hand, a mad one possibly, but one that was too small to do her

any harm. Women should seek each other out. She made her

way towards the entrance, steadying herself with both hands

against the cave wall, and stepped into the damp earth and the

bushes at the foot of the cliff. She was surprised how sombre it

was, and how blustery the wind had become. Surprised because

she'd always thought that country skies at night would be much

brighter than the smothered skies of villages. But the night was

beautiful, nevertheless, more beautiful than any night that she had

known at Sawiya, possibly because Sawiya was in the basement of

the hills. This scrubland was the roo£ From where she stood,

the moon was level with her eyes. It was the thinnest melon

slice, hardbacked, translucent, colourless. Its rind was resting on

the black horizon, hardly bright enough to tinge the sky. But to

her left, beyond the valley and its sea, the peaks and shoulders

of Moab were boasting rosy epaulettes of light. The morning

was approaching.

Marta walked towards the grave. She could hear the new

friend scrabbling inside. There were flapping gasps of breath,

like landed fish in nets.

'It's all right,' she called, a reassurance for them both. 'It's me.

The woman yesterday.'

But of course there was no other woman in the grave. There

hadn't been since dusk. Miri was with Musa in their tent, and

reunited by the blanket on their bed, her narrow, knuckled

backbone pressed against his hip. Instead there was a shuffling

and contented darkness in the hole. Here were the small, wet

sounds that Marta had heard before. She couldn't place the

sounds - they were too moist and feathery to be a woman, no