Quarantine

by Jim Crace

  But still, of course, he found the strength to drag himself — as good as saved, as good as dead – out of the cave, on to the entrance rock. He clung to it, his body naked to the wind. Already bones had pierced his skin. His chest had folded in on him. Sores on his legs and mouth no longer even tried to heal. His teeth and gums stuck out like balconies across his face. He could not shift the pain behind his eyes, though he was almost blind. He did not feel the cold. In fact, he hardly registered the wind now that he was wrapped in it. He could not separate the wind from all the rushing in his ears. He was as numb as wood. They could have driven nails into his feet. He’d not have felt a thing. His heart was too weak now to send his blood as far as that. His heart had decomposed. ‘Make sacrifices to god, and then prepare yourself for the winds of judgement,’ the scriptures warned. He was prepared. He was the sacrifice.

  There was a time of clarity, before his body parted from his soul. There always is. It always comes too late. That’s what makes this moment of departure large and borderless. He summoned up the words for his last prayers. Some Aramaic words, some Greek, some ookuroos, some tok-tok-tok. His prayers were answered in a way. There was a voice, borne on the wind, blown in across the cliffs, a voice not Jewish and not Greek. Jesus’s bones were shaken by the voice. It teased him for a moment with a little hope, even though there was no hope. It raised him from the precipice and placed him in the scrub. If there were any beasts around, then they grew mild. The voice took charge of him. It walked him to the row of distant caves. It led him to the remnants of the flattened tent. It took him to the swelling liver and to the troubled womb. It took him to the badu’s ears. It carried out its ministries on Shim. It worked its miracles. It said, ‘Fat Musa’s dying now. You have to come and save his life. Have pity on the man. There now. That’s it. That’s all there is and ever was. Go back to sleep.’

  He was asleep. He slept in the Galilee, Jerusalem, in Caesarea, Greece and Rome. He slept in lands where orange was the only colour, where all the lakes were full of gold, where every donkey had two tails, where there were lines of strangers waiting to be saved. He placed his fingers on their heads and said, ‘So, here, be well again.’ A common greeting from the Galilee.

  The wind nudged round him, searching for a hold. He lifted slightly, felt his body parting from the rock. The earth had lost its pull on him. He was all surface, no inside. His leaf had fallen finally. He was a dry, discarded page of scripture now. The wind embraced him, rubbed the words off him. It made him blank. It made him ghostlier than air. Not yet, not me, he might have cried, if he’d had any voice. What trick was there, that he could use, to bring companions to his side? What lie, what cowardice, what treachery, would put him back inside his Galilean cot?

  This was his final blasphemy. He begged the devil to fly up and save him from the wind. He’d almost welcome the devil more than god. For the devil can be traded with, and exorcized. But god is ruthless and unstable. No one can cast out god. It was too late. Jesus was already standing at the threshold to the trembling world which he had sought, where he would spend his forty everlasting days. So this was death. So this was pain made powerless. So this was fruit turned back into its seed.

  Jesus was a voyager, at last, between the heavens and the earth. There was a light, deep in the middle of the night. He tried to swim to it. He tried to fly. He held his hands up to the light. His hands were bluey-white like glass. The light passed through. The mountain shivered from afar. He felt the cold of nothing there. He heard the cold of no one there. No god, no gardens, just the wind.

  24

  Musa slept like a donkey. He slept like a dead donkey. If someone had beaten him with a stick, he wouldn’t have woken up. It was a pity no one came with sticks.

  The wind disturbed him finally, though not when it blew. Such winds could not disturb his sleep. But when the storm had passed, there was a heavy calm which prodded him awake. His cave had proven warm and comfortable, despite the weather, and so he felt well rested and alert. He knew exactly where he was and why he’d come, despite the utter darkness. There were no moments of confusion. He’d slept with an erection, ready for his visit to the other cave, so even before he’d opened his eyes the pulsing in his lap reminded him of his great plan. He rubbed his testicles. She’d not escape. She’d not run off. He’d have her trapped inside her cave, as soon as there was any light.

  Musa pressed his face into her shawl. There’s still a trace of her, he thought. A trace of spice. Enough to make him salivate. He pulled his own clothes up and untied his undergarments so that he might rub his genitals with her shawl. ‘Give the dog a bit of cloth to smell,’ that was his policy, ‘and it will sniff the owner out.’ And then? And then he’d put his body in the entrance to her cave. She’d be just visible to him. It didn’t matter if she screamed. It mattered if she didn’t scream. She’d cower in the shadows or she’d run at him. Perhaps she’d have a stick and try to beat him off. He’d hold her by her ankles or her wrists. He’d press his nails into her flesh. He’d take her lip between his teeth. A woman would not want to tear her lips. She’d stay as still as possible, on tiptoes, with her lip caught in his mouth, her body arched around his stomach. Now he could put his hands exactly where he wanted.

  He’d have her naked, with just two tugs, two rips across her back. Her clothes would hang from her, like sample cloths. He’d tie the shawl around her waist and have her sit on him, the flesh and fabric settling and lifting on his thighs, her mouth on his, their ample breasts pressed flat against each other like leavened cakes of bread. If she tried to pull away, the little bag of money on its drawstring round her neck would swing between them like an incense pot. Now Musa had a happy image of himself. He’d seize her by her drawstring and pull her breasts and lips back on to his. That’s what he’d do, one of the many things he’d do, when he had trapped her in the cave.

  Musa pushed the shawl away from his genitals and let the cold air calm him down. He dared not touch himself again, not yet. He had already come too close to ejaculating. That would be expenditure without returns. How many times he had had sex with women just like this, alone, his penis in his hand, recalling some short encounter from that day. If only he could possess these half-glimpsed women in the flesh, every one of them. If only he could rope them up in bunches and hang them by their ankles from his camel sides, like monkeys. He’d go each night to pick a plump one from the bunch. He was deserving of them all. If they aroused him, then they should satisfy him too. Women that he’d only glimpsed for moments in a market crowd. Women married to his cousins, caught out half dressed at their ablutions. Older women, careless with their clothes. Girls too young to wear a shawl, too young to care if Musa saw their legs. Women who had argued with him at his stall, their faces fiery and their shoulders square. Women seen with sickles in their fields as Musa and his camels journeyed by; he’d call to them, and they would stand up, perhaps, arch and stretch their aching backs, and wave at him, shake all the chaff and dust from off their clothes.

  How easy it had been to dip his hands into their remembered lives at night. To rove about them with his fingertips. To have these strangers do exactly as he said in his imaginings. There’d been no bruises and no screams from them, except, of course, on those occasions when he summoned little Miri to his bed to stand in for the woman that he’d picked that day. ‘Wave at me, Miri. Do it, do it. Stand there. Arch your back. That’s right. Be quiet! Pull up your tunic. Stretch.’ Be someone else, besides my wife. Be anybody else. Be everyone.

  Now Musa’s heart was beating far too fast for comfort. His breath was laboured, but, at least, he would not have to waste himself into his hands or on his wife that night. There was a chance – a certainty – that all these beating, breathless moments in his past could, by some miracle, be brought to life. He’d help himself, through Marta, to all the women he had ever seen, to all the chances he had ever missed. He would express himself on her, like he’d expressed his anger on the little jenny he had killed. He�
��d put his pestle to good use again. He’d kick the woman’s shanks. She’d go down on her knees. He’d like to see the stubborn creature’s head fall loose. He’d like to see her tumble to the ground. She’d close her eyes when he pushed into her. He saw her face, he planned how it would be, and it was plump and beautiful and bruised. Her fabrics were all silks, and all her silks were torn. Do what you want to me, he’d make her say. You are the landlord. This is rent.

  Musa lifted his head up off the ground, rolled on to his side, and shifted his weight on to his knees. There was no one to pull him to his feet. But he was nimble for a change. He felt so young and well, and aided by strong demons who helped him stand. He had waited thirty days for this, and he would take his time.

  It was still too dark outside the cave for him to see the damage of the night, how the wind had ripped the branches from the trees, exposed the roots of plants and left a unifying cloak of dust across the scrub. But there was light enough for him to make his way, her shawl around his shoulders, between his own cave and his neighbour’s. He looked around, and listened carefully. No sound, except for his own panting. No sign of anyone about. The badu always made a noise if he was moving. He must be sleeping, then. Musa edged along the sloping ground. No poppies had survived the night. He watched his step. He did not want to send a stone rattling down the hillside, and wake her up and rouse the badu. He had to be as sudden as he could. He had to take her by surprise. His clothes were loosened, and his testicles furrowed and retracted in the cold, like shrinking slugs with salt put on their backs.

  This was not wickedness, he told himself This was his duty and his right. Marta wanted him. Why else would someone such as her, sophisticated, wealthy, well-born, well-built, waste so many days with Miri, except to use his wife as an excuse to spend a little time with him, the story-teller and the merchant king? Why else had she such tempting breasts, such thighs, if not to have them touched? Why else had she come to the caves at all except to go back to her husband pregnant? He’d overheard her say as much herself. That’s what she’d prayed for on the promontory. She wanted to return to Sawiya, transformed by miracles, made fertile by her quarantine. He would oblige. He’d do what the little Gally had refused to do. He’d throw his seed on to her fallow ground.

  Musa had an image of her from the day before, sitting on the rocks while he invented and recounted his adventures without water in the desert. She had not stared at Miri but at him. Her lips had parted when he spoke. One leg had fallen loosely to the side, beneath her clothes. She was loose-limbed for him. Her eyes were wide and fixed on his mouth. Her face and skin were full and clear. She’d smiled at him. She’d given him her shawl as a favour and a sign. This was an invitation to her cave. This was her fault.

  She’d thank him, afterwards. He’d see to that. He’d not be satisfied until she’d said how glad she was he’d come. ‘A miracle. You are not barren now,’ he’d say when he had finished with her. ‘That husband of yours is the only one to blame. He’s not a man. He isn’t any use. But see how big my Miri is becoming. See how big the barren women are whenever I come to their market-places. I send them home with something in their bags, and they’ve not parted with a single coin. They’ve made a profit out of me. Their trees are heavy with my fruit. You’ve never seen such vines as theirs. That is the magic of my trade. My caravans supply fertility. What good is fasting, then? What good are prayers? What good’s obedience to all the laws, when Musa takes you as his bride?’

  ‘Up, up!’ he’d say. He’d make her pull him to his feet.

  Marta had not slept much during the wind, of course. She was less self-possessed than Musa. Storms never brought good luck or gentle dreams to her. And even after the storm she was too uneasy and uncomfortable to sleep. She was still awake when Musa crept up outside and stood waiting for some better light to act as his accomplice. Now that the wind had gone, each tiny sound he made was amplified inside her cave. She heard her landlord’s breathing, and she heard the scuffle of his feet. But Marta was not frightened by the sounds at first. She did not imagine for a moment that Musa was outside. She’d seen how ill he was the evening before. How hot and heavy he had been, how weak his speech. She’d have to go when it was light to take him water, to check if he were dead, but she was in no hurry for the dawn to come. She entertained herself by thinking what the sounds might mean.

  At worst the scufflings in the scrub, she thought, would be the badu, tugging at his hair and turning over rocks with his toes. He never seemed to sleep. He often prowled around at night and made strange, liquid noises, like a hyena with its snout inside a deer. The more she listened, though, the more she wondered if these sounds were human at all. A man’s disturbances would be more weighty. These were too light and birdlike to be threatening. An owl. Gazelles, perhaps? It was – at best, the very best – that little, straw-boned sister from the tent, with untied hair, and a peeping, rodent face. Her Miri, then – come up to the scarp with rugs and pillows and ‘something sweet’ as she’d been instructed by her husband, only to find him dead inside his cave? She was ashamed, but Marta wished it could be so. Then she and Miri could be sisters till the end of time. She could be an aunt to Miri’s child. They’d go back to Sawiya, arm in arm, the widow and the barren wife. That would be worth a thousand days of quarantine.

  Marta listened carefully, but she could not really fool herself that this was Miri waiting in the dark. She’d not make that mistake again. Yes, surely these were the same sounds that had frightened her before, on her first day. The raucous snails, the lizards and the flies, the worms, the millipedes, the whip bugs and the slugs had gone into the cistern for their drink. It was the fourth day of creation yet again, and the water teemed with life. Once more, she listened, held her breath. But, no, she hadn’t got the answer yet. The sounds were too dry and close to be the cistern. The sounds were unfamiliar as well, except for one which finally she recognized, the flux and reflux of a breath too regular to be an animal’s. It was the sound of someone inhaling and exhaling through his nose.

  It was not long before what little light there’d been outside had disappeared. The someone who’d been breathing blocked the entrance to her cave and was standing there, as dark and still as some large stone. Marta prayed. She had to be an optimist. She had to think it was the healer. She’d half-expected he would come. Their meeting was ordained. Perhaps there’d be a miracle. That’s what she’d prayed for, after all. That is what she’d dreamed. That was why she’d spent so many evenings, when it would have been much easier to stay with Miri at the loom, waiting on the promontory and watching for a sign of life outside his cave. It had to be the Gally, then, who blocked her light. Who else? There wasn’t anybody else. Please god there wasn’t anybody else.

  She heard his tongue. She heard his lips. She heard the salt-bush rustling and then her own name, whispered by a man. She even welcomed it. ‘Marta, I have come for you.’ She did not want to recognize the voice at first. It was so soft, and too distorted by the echo in the cave. It still might be the Galilean voice. How could she be certain anyway? She’d never heard him speak. She’d never even seen his face. She’d only caught the almost-sight of him, the shy and nearly shadow on the precipice. She’d only ever seen his humming rocks. She held her breath. She waited for the shadow to approach. There was still room for hope.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, and prayed, All thanks to god, and let it be the Gally. Let him have climbed the precipice to minister to me. ‘Marta, I’ve come for you,’ he’d said. He knew her name. The first of many miracles. He’d swell into the holy king and reach into her cave. He’d cup her face inside his giant palm, ‘Be well …’, and he would build his kingdom in her empty spaces.

  Again he said her name. And now she knew his voice was far too high and comical for one so pitying and strong. She watched the shadow, and, yes, it swelled and reached into her cave as she had dreamed. It came into her empty spaces. This was no boyish skin and bones. This man was large, and getting larger too. H
e held her wrists. He cupped her head inside his giant palms.

  What was her latest article of faith? If anything could happen, then it would.

  25

  Musa picked his way through the debris of the night, below the caves. The storm had lifted stones to show their hidden faces. It had made firewood from bushes, and pulled up roots and soil. Lice and termites tumbled in the daylight where the earth was scarred, busy with repairs. The birds were feeding everywhere. Their nests and eggs had been destroyed, but they could fret on insects until their stomachs burst. What footmarks there had been on the scrubby slope, to show the comings and the goings of the quarantiners, had been removed by the wind. A layer of dust and grit was spread across the ground, like seeds and flour sprinkled on a loaf. This was the way the world had been before mankind, the childhood of the earth when it was innocent and undisturbed. This was the way the world would be when all mankind had gone, when the cleansing wind of prophecy had swept all sins and virtues from the earth and the wilderness was strewn with fallen and abandoned faiths.

  Musa’s footprints were the morning’s first. Those were the ones that normally belonged to the burglar, the adulterer, the son who’d run away at night, the village sneak, the chicken thief. But Musa did not feel ashamed. He felt about as guilty as a boy with flour on his hands as the only proof that he had stolen bread. That is to say, he knew he had done wrong but he was glad of it. The bread had tasted good. His shame was thin and white. He’d blow it from his fingers with a single puff.