Quarantine

by Jim Crace

  ‘My honeycomb,’ said Musa.

  ‘It’s just a trick for getting to the nest,’ concluded Aphas. ‘He only had to make some smoke to keep the bees away and help himself. He came back with the honey. He doesn’t speak. He didn’t say whose land it was.’

  ‘My land. My bees.’

  Shim laughed. He was not dozing after all. ‘Now there’s a parable for all of us to contemplate,’ he said, encouraged by Musa’s evident good humour.

  Musa had been vexed enough by Aphas and his lengthy lecture on the badu ways of finding honey, yet had resisted the temptation to silence the man. But no intervention from the blond was tolerable.

  ‘What parable?’ he asked.

  ‘A parable of spiritual endeavour. A quest, like ours, for enlightenment …’ said Shim.

  ‘Enlightenment, enlightenment, not honey? Which would you rather have with dates?’ Musa turned his head away. Shim’s interruption should have ended there. But he was already in full flight.

  ‘The bees, let’s say, are prayers, or even days of fasting in the wilderness. You let one go, you follow it, it’s gone. But still there is no prospect of enlightenment or sign of god. You are still lost. You have to persevere. It takes you forty bees, let’s say, before …’

  ‘ … before, let’s say, your landlord’s sick and tired of listening, and bored, and turns you out into the desert without a water-bag.’

  ‘I heard a story once, about a water-seller who …’ said Aphas.

  ‘Be quiet.’ Musa lifted up a warning finger. ‘Now I will talk.’ He was the story-teller, no one else. Enough of parables and chatter. He wanted their attention back on him, and quickly. He did not want to lose control, not for a moment longer. He’d have to charm his victims first – despite his impulse to do otherwise – and then he’d put them in their places for the night. He knew exactly what to do.

  ‘Why should I want a water-bag?’ persisted Shim, as quietly as he dared. ‘There is no need for anyone to be thirsty in the scrub, unless they choose. You’ve said as much yourself. I think those were your words …’ He hadn’t been as amusing or as brave during the quarantine before. But no one laughed.

  ‘Go, then,’ said Musa, scarcely audible. ‘Leave my cistern. Walk out there and take your chances like a fox. Pray for water to appear. Rely on god. Let’s see how well you live.’ Musa made as if to rise. ‘Up, up,’ he called to Miri, and began to shift his weight into his shoulders. He gripped the curly staff. This was not charming in the least. ‘Let’s see how well you do out there, tonight,’ he said again.

  ‘I do not think, I do … not think … I know …’ Shim laughed thinly. He’d gone too far. Some deference to Musa was required. ‘I only ask. What can you tell us, then? What should a thirsty man … what should he do?’ He sat as tamely as he could, hands limply in his lap, the model pupil with his sage.

  ‘Those were my words. No need for any thirst, as I have said and I will say a hundred times again,’ Musa began, after he had called for Marta to bring water, had wet his lips and face and hair, and studied all the folds and pinches in the cloth at her waist. ‘There’s always water to be had, if you know where. Do you know where? The principle’s the same as finding honey with a stick. But not the parable. Not the parable that he has given us.’ He waved the staff at Shim. ‘My parable is this, that someone with a nose for trade like me can always sniff out what he wants. Honey, water, gold …’ He sniffed dramatically, and Marta almost thought he’d winked at her. ‘My turn to talk.’

  He told them how he’d crossed a desert once where nothing grew, a desert – ‘let’s say’ – forty days from side to side. Five camels, and four cousins, and himself. They’d taken sixty goats, salted mutton, indigo and horns to trade with black men on the river with three banks. The journey had been easy and all their goods were quickly sold. They had obtained a hundred monkeys in exchange which they could sell in Nabatee where monkey flesh was thought to be … he winked again; he did not say the word … an aphrodisiac.

  ‘Alas, we had been fools. Don’t anybody nod. We didn’t know how thirsty a hundred monkeys could be,’ he said. ‘Or how much noise they’d make. A hundred hairy Shims. Clacker-chack-chat all day.’

  At first they meant to put the monkeys on leashes and let them walk behind the camels. But the monkeys were riotous. They didn’t want to walk. They tugged on the leashes. A hundred monkeys, with their heels dug into sand, are stronger than three camels. So Musa and his cousins had to bunch the monkeys up like chickens and tie them by their legs to the leathers on the flanks of two of the camels. Musa rode the third; his cousins could walk. They were small enough, and fit enough, and more obedient than monkeys.

  They loaded the other two camels with bullock-skins filled with water, and set off through the fringes of the desert early in the morning while the air was cool. The monkeys didn’t seem uncomfortable. Hanging upside down in bunches was customary for them. They screamed and gibbered without cease. At first, it was amusing. Musa and his cousins screamed and gibbered, too. But after a few days the noise became a torture.

  They made slow progress. The desert proved itself to be as fickle as a carpet, smooth and welcoming if stroked with the pile, but tough to drag the fingers through against the lay of the wool. Their little caravan had stroked the pile on its journey out. Now it was travelling against the nap of the wools. The sun was at their backs, and baking hot. The monkeys gibbered, screamed as ceaselessly as crickets, even when the camels snapped and spat at them. They only quietened when his cousins gave them water. His cousins gave them water all the time.

  After fifteen days, said Musa, they realized that they were lost: ‘No prospect of enlightenment, no sign of any god.’ That had never happened to their caravan before, although they’d crossed a hundred deserts. One of his cousins, called Habak the Hawk because of his long nose, normally could be blindfolded and only had to sniff a palmful of soil to recognize the smell of every place they’d ever visited. He put this desert dust and powdered rock against his nose, but could not put a name to where they were or point towards their destination. They span him round to sniff the air; he couldn’t say if he was standing on his head or feet. They looked for signs of any caravans. But there had been high winds, and even the tracks that they had made themselves on the journey out had been swept away, together with the smell. They persevered, hoping to encounter other travellers, or find horizons broken up by trees, or recognize some star beyond the dust-filled night, or see a bird.

  After twenty days they found their own tracks again. But no goat tracks, just four men walking and five camels, and the channels made by monkeys trailing their long fingers in the sand. They’d travelled in a five-day circle to this place, and now their bullock-skins were running out. The monkeys, with hardly any water left to keep them quiet, coughed and cackled through the night. It didn’t bother them that their heads were full of blood.

  Musa paused to pull his own empty water-bags across, and hold them up, an illustration for his listeners. This is what a shortage of water looks like; this is thirst; this is what I had in mind for Shim. He wasn’t sure quite where his tale was leading him. He had no end for it, not yet. There was no point to it, except to charm. But Aphas and Marta didn’t seem to care. They nodded to the story-teller to urge him on. This was better than any parable. It didn’t matter that it had no point, except to make them wonder at the world. Even Shim was listening, despite his tightly fastened lips and eyes.

  ‘We had to save the monkeys and ourselves, though there was not enough water there for both of us,’ continued Musa, glad to see how loose of posture and how opened-eyed the woman had become. ‘What would you do? Don’t say. You’d throw the monkeys on the sand; you’d club them all to death, and drink the water all yourselves. Admit it now. Of course you would. But then you are not merchants. And you do not understand how trading is the truest test of man. It shows his strength, his worth, his piety. To buy and sell is just as spiritual as prayer or going without food. Will
any of you say it’s not?’ He looked at Shim. ‘A merchant’s never-ending quest is not for things that you can’t touch or buy, like Shim’s enlightenment – what use is that? – but for something …’ He had to stop to recall the exact words he’d heard his eldest uncle use a hundred times. ‘ … but for something new and real and grand. And valuable, of course. To make the world a richer place. We’re gods, we’re little gods. We’re big. And so …’ He looked at all the faces there, except Miri’s, obviously, and would not look away until he’d won a smile and nod from each of them. ‘ … we could not go back from the desert to our uncles with nothing to show for our long efforts, with nothing to sell except the bloody remnants of the monkeys. Who’ll buy those? A merchant never goes with empty panniers. That shows a loss of faith.’ He paused. He smiled, a real and joyous smile. ‘What will you have to sell when you go home? What will you show your uncles after forty days of quarantine?’ He held his hand up. They should not reply.

  Musa told how he and his cousins had persevered against the desert’s grain. They’d travelled forward, day by day, in hope of finding wells or springs or dry river-beds where they might dig for water. They blindfolded their cousin Habak, to concentrate his sense of smell. They put him on his hands and knees to sniff the sand in search of moisture, but all he smelled was barrenness and heat. They hunted without luck for any evidence of life but they found nothing apart from themselves. They dreamed of finding tamarisks with lakes of water at their roots, and honeydew along their stems, but there was nothing to be found, excepting thirst.

  ‘Still our monkeys laughed,’ said Musa. ‘They were glad to see us lost. They liked to watch us frying in the sand. It suited them. They didn’t want to go to Nabatee and end up in a pot. Who would? They’d rather starve. Never trust a monkey on a camel’s back. That’s good advice … Never trust a thirsty woman or a dog.’ He laughed, but turned the laugh into a sudden cry of pain. He held his chest, and winced. A little indigestion, possibly. ‘Perhaps, I ought to rest a while,’ he said. He touched his brow. ‘I’m hot.’ He closed his eyes.

  ‘You’re teasing us,’ said Aphas. ‘I hope you’re teasing us. What happens to the monkeys now? Of course, do rest if you’re unwell. We wouldn’t want you to be unwell …’

  ‘Ah, so our neighbour would trade the ending of the story-teller for the ending of his story,’ said Musa, breathing heavily. ‘The monkeys matter more than me … ? I would have hoped a sick man such as you would have more feeling for a fellow invalid.’

  ‘No, no, do rest …’

  ‘I will not rest. There is some respite to my pain, thank god. Bring water then. Put that good shawl the woman has around my shoulders. I will continue while I can.’ The shawl was warm and sweet, and smelled a little gingery from Marta’s balm.

  The time had come, Musa said after he had drunk the water and clutched his chest a few more times, when he and his caravan had journeyed through the desert to death’s door. Drink something, anything, or die, that was the choice. They’d have to take a knife to Musa’s camel. He’d have to walk like his cousins, ankle-deep in sand. They’d cut into the camel’s hump and stomach. They’d have to drink her waters, blood and milk, and let the monkeys find what sustenance they could by dining on her entrails and her fat. The monkeys would have to swallow camel upside down.

  ‘But no one makes me walk,’ said Musa, rubbing his side. ‘A clever merchant never walks. I closed my eyes. I put my head to work. I thought, let’s kill a couple of the monkeys. Let’s take our meat and drink from them. The meat’s already nicely hung, it should taste good. But think of it. What did I say about the monkey meat? Why do they savour it in Nabatee? It makes a man thirsty for his wife. What use would that be for the five of us, with nothing there to comfort us but sand? It is a sin for a man to waste his seed with camels. Our sons would have two toes.

  ‘And so I didn’t take a monkey by the throat and use my knife on it. I cut one monkey free. I held its tail. I whispered in its ear, I said, Find water. You’re a bee. I didn’t have to put it in a hollow stick or block its backside with an apricot. You should have seen it run. It knew its only chance of getting away, back to its river with three banks, was first to find some water and then be off. My quickest cousin, Raham, followed it into the dunes until he lost it. Monkeys move like rats. So does my cousin Raham. But the monkey soon went out of sight. It didn’t buzz. We couldn’t follow that. But we could track its little steps in the sand, its tail, its swinging hands, until we found it once again, exhausted by the running and the sun. Half dead. No water yet. We tied it up, we hung it by its ankles with its brothers and its sisters. Then we let another monkey go … I whispered in its ear, Enjoy your run, you monkey boy …’

  It took them fourteen monkeys and two days, Musa said, but finally they saw a line of rocks and thorn which led down to a dry valley bed and there they found their fourteenth monkey sitting in an open cistern underneath a slab of stone, bathing like an empress in a bowl. ‘We helped ourselves. We didn’t have to smoke out bees. We washed. We drank up to our brims. We refilled our bullock-skins. And then we let the camels in. Sweet water, with a touch of ginger to its taste.’

  Now they left the desert in the past, and followed down the valley, taking their directions from the gullies cut by the last downpour of rain a year or so before, until they came to leafy trees and habitations and to fields which had, Musa said, ‘a wispy, adolescent beard of grass’. They got to Nabatee in time to make a profit, with only twenty monkeys perished on the way, and Musa hadn’t walked a step. ‘My story ends with me a little richer than I was.’ He looked at Shim: ‘Your learned commentary, please. Don’t disappoint us now.’ He took a breath and held it in his lungs, so that his face began to redden. Now was the time to take them by surprise.

  ‘This is a story,’ Shim said, with care, ‘that might serve for us all. The first thirteen monkeys that you followed did not reach the water that you sought. It was only that you persevered until the fourteenth. It’s perseverance you are teaching us. For that my neighbours will be grateful … I am sure …’

  He would have said a little more, attempted to improve his standing, if Musa had not cried out suddenly, and slapped his hands across his stomach. ‘This pain … is more than I can tolerate,’ he said. He closed his eyes and blew out air. He put his hand into his hair. ‘I’m burning hot. My head.’

  ‘Shall I bring more water?’ Aphas said.

  ‘No, no. Just let me rest.’

  Musa opened half an eye, and looked around. Shim, he noticed, was almost smiling. Marta had stood up and looked alarmed. His wife had put her hand up to her face. He could not see her mouth. She’d be concerned, he thought, that the devil had come back to him and that she’d soon be widowed by a second onslaught of the fever. On a rock, beyond the furthest of the caves, he saw the badu balancing on one leg like an egret, one foot resting on his other knee.

  ‘No, no,’ Musa said again. ‘I must lie down. It’s here.’ He pointed to his side – a sharp pain in his liver – and ran his hands across his abdomen – an area of general suffering.

  ‘Something you’ve eaten,’ said Aphas helpfully, although he could not imagine that anybody’s liver pains were worse than his. He’d defer to Shim for cleverness and to Musa for a blinding tongue, but he’d counted general suffering to be his own reserve.

  ‘That meat,’ said Musa, in his most boyish voice, ‘it was bad. Your honey hid the taste.’ He’d let his tenants think they’d poisoned him. ‘I’m hot.’ And then, once Miri had come up to fan him with her scarf, ‘I’m cold. This is bad … They steal my meat, and now they poison me.’ Musa would have doubled up with pain if he could. He was too big to bend. Instead he rolled over on his side, and spread out in the dust, a wounded animal, its great head cushioned only by some stones. He’d seen Aphas acting out his cancer in the last thirty days, and had not been impressed. Musa could do better. Winces and deep breathing weren’t enough. He experimented with some uncontrolled spasms in his le
g. He clutched his ear. He looked as frightened and as baffled as he could. This was not low cunning. Musa did not like to be accused of that. His cunning was the highest kind; it was his version of a miracle.

  The wind had lifted. The afternoon was cold and coming to an end. The clouds had brought the darkness early. He had no time to waste. ‘I need to sleep,’ he said.

  The women lifted up a leg apiece, while Aphas, Shim and the badu dragged their landlord by his shoulders to the nearest empty cave – the one a few steps along from Marta’s which opened on to the sloping terrace, screened only by a few salt bushes and the coppery debris of the cliff. They laid him on the soil with only Marta’s shawl as his cot-clothes. They put his head on it. He put his nose in it. He liked the warmth of Marta and her smell.

  His wife and his tenants stood in the entrance of the cave, blocking out the light, whispering. What should they do with him? Not one of them had said, ‘Be well again,’ or stroked his brow. Everybody knew of people who had died as suddenly as this – the same unheralded pain, the cry, the fingers stretched across the chest, the grey-red face, the final, chortling breath. The world might lose some stories if Musa died, but not much else worth keeping. The prospect of his death was tolerable. His death was overdue. Miri did not even dare to pray. Her prayers had let her down before. Would there be a second chance of rolling Musa down the slope into the cistern she had dug for him? Why waste good water on the man? They’d only have to block his cave with stones to make a sepulchre and mark the stones with chalk to warn future quarantiners and any passing Jews that there was a corrupting body inside.

  ‘Miri, Miri, come to me,’ he said at last, his voice more vulnerable than she had ever heard it before, his face invisible. He made her kneel and put her ear against his lips. His breath was warm and dry. No eggy smells, this time. ‘Go to the tent for me, take care of everything,’ he said. ‘I cannot walk. I must sleep here. Bring back a flask of date spirit in the morning as soon as it’s light. Bring rugs and blankets, some pillows for my head. Collect some herbs. Bake something sweet for me tonight. The honey’s there. And don’t forget to fill the water-bags. Tell him to come.’ He pointed at Aphas.