by Jim Crace
A tethered donkey announced his arrival while he was still fifty paces away. Jesus stood, as was the custom, a little distance from the open awning of the tent and waited for the greetings from within, and the invitation to come forward. He could not pay for food and drink. What little money that he had he’d left behind that morning in the keeping of the shepherd. But there are traditions, even in the wilderness. A traveller can wet his face and lips for free.
He coughed. He clapped his hands. He called out greetings of his own. But no one came. That was strange – the tent was unattended, and yet the awnings were still raised. Jesus took a step or two towards the tent, so that he could see inside more clearly. There were the usual signs of domesticity; the rugs and mats, the pots, some bread and dates discarded from a meal and being finished off by ants, the sacks of grain, the remnants of a fire, the skins of water hanging in the shade, the bundled blankets on a bed, the row of shoes. But no one there, as far as he could tell. Jesus looked around for signs of someone approaching, but there were none. He called again, without reply. His patience was not endless. He was keen, he told himself, to reach the cave before darkness and to begin his fast. He was afraid as well. Afraid that he might lose his nerve the moment that he reached the precipice, and go back home at once.
This was not theft. He took a few more steps towards the awning and lifted the nearest and the smallest of the water-skins off its wooden peg. He stooped and picked up the wasted heels of bread, the dates. He rubbed the ants off on his arm. Not killing them. Not trying to, at least. They dropped into the dust and went about their business, unperturbed. He picked some pieces of straw and the small stones from between his toes and off his heels. He squeezed out what thorns he could find. His feet were bruised and sore. His head had not improved. His body ached. Perhaps it would not matter if he went inside, out of the sun, if he sat cross-legged within the tent, those blankets as a seat, and took his final supper in some comfort. Again – with water, bread and dates held in his hands – he took some further steps. He left the sun. His eyes were baffled by the darkness. While he waited to become accustomed to the gloom he heard a whistling throat, as if the bunched-up blankets at his ankles were calling out for drink.
‘Who’s there?’ he said.
Again a whistling throat.
‘Who’s sleeping there?’
Fevers will allow a period of short lucidity before their victims die. Musa became conscious for long enough to hear that one word sleeping, and then to register the pains throughout his body. His head was spongy like a mushroom. He could feel each vein and pipe, each gut and artery, each bone and nerve, highlighted by his agony. He was a parched and desert landscape, illuminated by lightning. And in that moment when he heard the word he saw the face as well. A Jewish face, young and long and womanly. A Galilean face. A peasant face. A robber’s face, for sure, because the man had helped himself to water and was standing with their water-skin held in his hand. Musa would have struck the man if he’d been well enough. It would have been his duty to make it clear that theft, especially of water, deserved some bruises and a bloody nose. It would have been his pleasure, too. But he couldn’t even clench his fist. He tried to call out Miri’s name. He hadn’t got the breath to make a sound.
‘Allow me water, to soak these little crusts and wet my lips,’ the Galilean said in that compromise of tongues where Aramaic flirts with Greek. He sensed the silent answer he received was No. He knelt into the darkness of the tent, located Musa from the cursing sounds he made, and sat down at his side. ‘Do not deny me water, cousin,’ he said. ‘Let me take a mouth of it, and you’ll then have forty days of peace from me. I promise it. The merest drop.’
He put his fingertips on Musa’s forehead. He stroked his eyelids with his thumb. ‘Are you unwell? I am not well myself.’ He laid his hand on Musa’s chest and pressed so that the devil’s air expressed itself and filled the tent with the odour of his fever and expelled the one word Musa had already formed, ‘Mi Ri.’ The cloth that Miri had put across his mouth to keep the fever in almost lifted with the power of her name. His tongue was black. Again the Galilean put all his weight – which wasn’t much – on Musa’s chest and pressed. The sulphur of the hills. The embers of the chesty fire. Even Jesus could smell it. No further calls for Miri, though.
‘A sip, a sip. And then I’m gone,’ Jesus said. ‘The merest drop.’ He poured a little water on his hands and smeared the dust of his journey across his face. He was immensely cold, but glad to have this respite from the sun. He wet his hair and massaged the water into his scalp so that his headache was somewhat dampened. He resurrected the softness in the bread and dates with water. He ate, hardly touching his lips with those long, craftsman’s fingers. He drank some more. Then – an afterthought – he tipped a little water on Musa’s cheeks and lips. He felt inspirited, newly released from pain, and powerful. He wet the cloth and put it back in place on Musa’s mouth. He shook the water from his hands over Musa’s face, a blessing. ‘So, here, be well again,’ he said, a common greeting for the sick.
What should he do? It didn’t matter much. There were no witnesses or anyone to reckon with. There was as yet no thin and bending moon to mark the first night of his rendezvous with god. So he was unobserved. There is no choice, he told himself. He had to leave this sick man on his own to die. Otherwise he’d never reach the cave; he’d miss the start of quarantine.
He would have run away, except his feet would not allow him to. He hobbled out, an old young man, letting go the water-skin and pulling down the open awnings as he passed. He was embarrassed by his selfishness, perhaps? But Musa did not witness it. He did not witness anything. His eyes were closed. He was asleep at last, and dreaming plumply like a child.
7
Musa woke again. The cloth, stiff and twisted like a loose root, was heavy on his mouth. He spat it off. He spread his arms to free himself of all the wrappings. He tried to sit up, never quick or easy for a man his size. First he’d have to turn his weight on to an elbow, push with the other hand, get on his knees … Camels were more gainly and less cumbersome. Musa did not like to be observed rising with so little grandeur from his bed, though normally Miri would be there to pull him by the wrists and elbows to his feet, to wipe him down, to hold his clothes. But now he could not even shift his weight. His head was loath to leave the tent mat. He couldn’t quite remember where he was. Nor could he recognize the sickly smells of herbs, honey and incense. Embalming smells. He felt cold, no doubt of that. Baffled, too. Why was he bruised and powerless? Why was he still in blankets? Why was he feeling so melodic and so calm? More to the point – he tried to lift his head and look around – where was his wife? He clapped his hands. He wanted water straight away. ‘Miri. Miri.’ No reply. ‘Miri? Are you coming now?’ The words were dry and splintery when normally his voice was reedy, adolescent almost. His saliva was caustic and his lips were cracked. His throat was wilderness.
He clapped his hands again and listened for some sign that she, or anybody else who had some water, was nearby. It didn’t matter who, so long as it was free and fast. But there wasn’t any sign. He should have heard the voices of his cousins and his uncles, and the blaring of the camels, the usual waking noises of the merchant camp. He could only hear goats, and the wheezings of the tent skins. Finally he found strength enough, though it was painful, to roll across the mat and peer out below the tent’s heavy skirts. He recognized what he saw. Some of it, at least. This was the unembracing spot where, caught out by the dusk, they’d had to pitch their tents the night before. A scrubland in the wilderness too far from Jericho. There was the broken soil where Habak’s tent had been. And Raham’s tent. And Aliel’s. Those fools. There was the blackened circle of their fire. The camel dung. The torn and broken bushes where the goats had fed.
There was – thank heavens – liquid within reach. Someone deserved a slap around the ears for carelessness. They’d dropped a water-bag by the awning of the tent. Musa dragged it across, pulled ou
t the stopper, and wastefully – he hadn’t got the strength to be more frugal – tipped water on his hair and down his face. Then he drank. He had to spit the water out at first. His mouth made it sour. But then the water went to work, reanimating him. He could almost trace the flow and billow of its irrigation; the freshet coursing through his mouth and throat into his stomach. At last the water percolated to his head. His breathing and his vision cleared. He was restored: a man of twenty-six or so, wedded to a life of bargaining, whose preferred self-image had him sitting neatly and cross-legged beside some market booth dispensing deals and judgements like a priest, implacably, too dignified to haggle with. It had him trading crackware lamps for damaskeen silver, figs for wine, wedding figurines for Roman cloth, papyrus for salt; there was no merchandise which could not be mated and transmuted in his hands. It had him envied and admired. And rich.
Indeed he was admired, but only in the market-place. He was a sorcerer with goods and prices there, the kingly middleman with his blued hair, his fringed and pampered cheeks, his crisp and spotless tunic, his swollen elegance, his cunning. But he was graceless in the daily commerce of the smile and hug. His embraces were the bruising sort. His punches and his kisses could not be told apart. It seemed that he both loved and loathed the trappings of his life; Miri his wife, the market-place, himself, his drink, the endless halt and harness of the caravan. He was their master and their slave at once. Two men in one; opposing twins, they’d said when he was a boy and couldn’t reconcile his bossy tantrums with his bouts of weeping. No wonder he was large even as a child – two hearts, two stomachs, twice the bones, twin temperaments.
Now that Musa was a merchant and an adult, fearful of derision and defeat, he had learnt to suppress the lesser, tearful twin. Life was too hard and unforgiving for such a weakling. Anyone could drive that tender sibling to an easy bargain. Anyone could trespass in his tent. Anyone could make a fool of him. So Musa kept him hidden, a lost companion of his childhood, and showed the world his tougher self, the one which beat and bargained like no other, the trading potentate, the fist, the appetite. Why was this splendid fellow feared but not much liked by his cousins in the caravan? It baffled Musa, and it made him fierce. They are simply envious, he persuaded himself. But during those late and bitter drinking vigils outside his tent, his judgement was more fiery, and much simpler; They hate you, Musa. Hate them back!
For the moment, though, the lesser twin had been briefly resurrected by the water. Musa grovelled on his stomach like a temple slave, his hair and beard still wet and mossy, and thought of Miri and his uncles, the market cries, the camel snorts, with some degree of fondness. He was aware that he had almost lost them all, that he had nearly died, and that their loss would be insufferable. He peered out of the tent again, for signs of relatives and friends, a wisp of smoke, a shout. But there were none. Perhaps he had died after all, and this was hell.
What had occurred? Musa had to concentrate. A face was haunting him. A throbbing voice. He could not recognize it, though. He could remember his last journey, how the caravan had come out of the hills, delayed by badu herdsmen to the south, who’d wanted to trade yarn for copperware. He’d used his size and his impatience to force a bargain. He could shake profits out of sand, someone had said, and Musa had been proud to hear it. He could recall setting camp, and then the meal, the fires, the chill of night. He’d felt both hot and cold when he’d gone in to sleep the night before. Was it the night before? Or ten, or twenty nights? He’d told Miri to massage his shoulders. He’d sent her off for blankets. He’d almost vomited and had had to sleep on his back because his chest was sore and shivering. He’d had diarrhoea.
So that was it! He’d caught a fever, then. That much was obvious.
What was now becoming cruelly obvious as well – there was the evidence outside – was that he’d been abandoned by his comrades and his family to battle with the fever on his own. And that was pitiless. Left in the desert with … He counted what he saw. That useless donkey with the limp. And five, six goats. Camel dung. No bolts of cloth, none of the larger bulks of wool, no decorated copperware. No Miri, even. His feelings of melodic calm did not survive his growing dismay and anger. The lesser twin took flight.
The sun by now was fairly low in the sky, sinking and red-faced from its exertions like any other traveller who had passed a day in the desert. Musa knew it was late afternoon. The caravan would be too far away to chase. How could he chase it anyway? Ride the limping donkey? Ride a goat? He couldn’t even lift his body off the ground. He lay – his shoulders in the tent, his head protruding out – and dreamed of chasing them on a relay of goats and catching them in some green valley to the north. He’d pull his merchandise from off the camels’ backs, the copperware, the cloth, his wools. (He loved the sensuality of wools, particularly the orange and the purple wools. They were the colours prostitutes would wear.) Those loving uncles and their sons would hide their faces with shame. Would he forgive them for abandoning him to snakes and leopards? Would he congratulate them on their thieving business skills? He’d sneeze at them. He’d drive them off with stones. He’d stand amongst them with a heavy stick and crack their heads. They’d know how dangerous he was. They’d seen him swing a stick before. Then he’d go to where the women were. He’d have a reason to attack his wife for once, and nobody would dare to lay a calming hand on his and say, ‘Be easy, Musa. Let her go.’ What could they say in her defence? He could disown her there and then. He had the right. Divorce her on the spot and turn her out. But he would take her to their tent instead, and everyone would hear her cries right through the night. The different cries which came when he was slapping her, the ones when he had pulled her tunic off and was laying leather straps across her back, and those when he had opened up her thighs and, with her hair held in his fists, was pushing into her until there was a trinity of pain and tears and fear. Kisses, punches? They were all the same to him. And then he would divorce her on the spot.
But Musa, if the truth was told, for all the bombast of his dreams, was feeling fearful and ill-used. He’d thrown water in his eyes, but there were tears as well. He was shivering, not only from the chill inside the tent. His prospects, frankly, were not promising. What kind of merchant was he now? A laughingstock. An ass. A dupe. He’d been discarded like the casing of a nut. His mood was murderous, but there was no one there to murder, except himself.
His anger made him stronger, though. He tried again, turned on his side, brought up his knees, and found that he could stand, unsteadily. He shuffled round the inside of the tent as best he could, a cover on his shoulders, using the tent poles for support and taking stock of what they’d left behind. The goats, but not the best. His family goods. Rugs, bedding and utensils. Two woven sacks of grain. Salted meat. Dried fruit. Fig cakes. A flask of date spirit. A remnant hank of orange wool, some purple, his sample rod of coloured yarns, his clothes, his wife’s, her loom. Some fragrant wormwood for the fire. He hurried to his saddle-pack, and was relieved to find his ornamented knife, the seven bottles of perfume that he’d traded earlier that year, and the little hoard of gold, coins and jewellery tied up in a twist ofberber cloth. Abandoned, yes, but hardly destitute. He’d resurrect himself with trade.
He took the long wooden pestle with which Miri crushed their nuts and grain and, using it to help him walk, went outside past the tethered donkey into the fading light, with the water-bag hung round his shoulders. His knuckles whitened on the pestle with his weight. He turned in a full circle. Just in case. No sign of anyone who’d stayed behind. No sign of anyone to kiss and punch.
The donkey – an ageing jenny, older anyway than Musa – had been tethered by his wife. He recognized the kindness of Miri’s knot. The creature had been lamed by her pannier harnesses which had rubbed to form a sore and then a boil at the top of her hind leg. The boil had hardened on the muscles so that the donkey limped, and was in pain. Her breath was bad. Her nostrils seemed inflamed, perhaps by the circulating poison of the boil. Musa lea
ned forward and looked more closely, not at the boil but at the donkey’s nose, for signs of pus and infected membranes. Her top lip drew back like a baboon’s and curled at the man’s smell. She wanted him to keep away. He wanted to keep his distance, too. Ulcerated nostrils were a symptom of glanders. Glanders could be caught by men, and not only by jackassing the jenny as some people claimed. He was not sure if they were ulcers that he saw, or simply mucus. If they were ulcers the donkey would soon die. Then what use would she be, this legacy of his kind cousins and his uncles? He couldn’t eat the meat; he couldn’t even skin her for shagreen, unless he wanted to risk catching donkey fever himself.
That thought made Musa step away. Perhaps that was the illness that he’d caught already. Donkeys, it was known, were full of demons keen to set up home elsewhere. He lifted up his hand to check for the tell-tale swelling of the underjaw. But Musa’s underjaw, beneath the beard, was loose and heavy anyway and it was difficult to tell if there was any swelling. He pushed his little finger into his nostrils. They were not clear, but then they were not painful either. Had he caught glanders then? Or had there been some other devil in his lungs? He was only sure of one thing, that both he and the donkey had been abandoned by his caravan companions with equal regard. They were considered worthless and infectious and as good as dead.
Musa loosened the donkey’s knot and began to lead her away from the tent and the goats. Her illness angered him. It would be better if she died where her contagion was not dangerous. If he could make her move, that is. The animal was uninspired by Musa’s prodding foot. She was reluctant to engage with him. She must have sensed his illness, too. He wasn’t any stronger than she was herself. She knew that she could pull as hard as he could tug. Besides, a donkey is quite used to being hit. It is a condition of service almost, part of its contract of labour. A slap of the driver’s switch on the donkey’s cheek is rewarded with a shuffle forward and a bray. Beating donkeys is as innocent as beating mats. A hearty slap across its back brings out the dust. But this old jenny, for all the native half-smile on her lips, was made doubly obstinate by her ill-health. When Musa kicked her on the shanks, she did not move and bray. She’d seemed to buckle like a colt. She fell on her haunches, and dropped her head on to the ground, chin down.