by Jim Crace
‘I need more help than you,’ he’d say to Miri. He’d lift his chins at Marta. ‘She has to help as well. Come here.’
‘I won’t.’
He pictured ways of making her.
But when he was just a few hundred paces from the women, so close that he could see the colours of the mat, Marta suddenly stood up, wrapped her fingers round Miri’s wrist and pulled her to her feet.
‘We have to go,’ she said. ‘Don’t look at him. Bring that.’ She pushed the mat into Miri’s hands. ‘We’ll finish it another day. Get water.’
Miri grabbed one of the water-bags – not a moment of bewilderment or hesitation – and began to gather the other panniers and her own belongings.
‘Leave those.’ Marta pushed the panniers away, and added Musa’s clothes and wools, the sack of dried fruit and the woven bag of odds-and-ends to the pile. They’d have to leave it all behind. She pulled the other water-bag to the edge of the descent and threw it down as far as she could on to the rocks. ‘Let’s see how he manages,’ she said.
With only the smaller water-bag and the birth-mat to carry, the women were able to move quickly. They did not have the time to laugh or cry, or answer any of Musa’s threats and promises. He was too close and dangerous. He was throwing stones at them. They would not stop their hurtling descent until their landlord and their husband and the father of their child was out of hearing and out of sight. They were light-limbed like adolescent girls. They had no need of anybody now. They had no need of miracles.
Marta and Miri hurried on in silence down the landfall, concentrating on the loose rock and the uncertain footing. The scree grew softer as the temperatures increased, closer to the valley floor. The earth was gypsum, spiced with salt. It smelt of eggs. But by the middle of the afternoon – already covered in a yellow film of salt – they’d reached more gently sloping and more sweetly smelling ground, a landscape of soft chalk which a child could pull apart in its hands as easily as breaking bread. The land was more reliable, at last, and they could walk side by side down towards the trading road, where travellers and caravans and soldiers were going to and coming from the gated cities of Judea. They walked amongst the donkeys and the men, and only then could exchange their tears and smiles.
‘Where can we go?’ said Miri.
‘To Sawiya.’
‘What will you say to them?’
‘I’ll say you are a widow, abandoned in the wilderness. I’ll say your husband was a merchant who died of fever. I’ll say the wind took all your things away and that it was my duty to offer help to you, because you’re pregnant and you have no one.
‘It’s almost true.’
‘It’s true.’
‘How will I live?’
‘You’ll weave. I’ll be the baby’s aunt.’
Marta’s lip was still a little sore, her body ached, but she felt untroubled for the first time in ten years. All the bad things in her life had been abandoned at the top of the landfall. The vultures picked them clean. Was she a foolish optimist, made rash and heady by their escape from Musa? Most probably. But, for the moment, she was sure her fortunes had reversed. She’d started running down the scree and everything had changed. Everything outside of her. Everything within. She felt she was not barren any more. She’d heard it said that women knew instinctively when they were pregnant, almost from the moment of conception. They didn’t have to wait for periods or pains. Their faces tingled, as if their cheeks had been touched by angels.
With Miri at her side, Marta felt as if she’d already plucked a star out of the sky. One more would not be difficult. Perhaps another star was already brightening inside of her. It didn’t matter whose it was, if it was Musa’s or the scrub’s or even granted to her in a dream, by the Gally with his single touch. Her husband, Thaniel, wouldn’t know or care so long as she grew fat. He’d said that she should go away and pray for miracles. She’d been obedient. He had commanded that she should give birth. And now he could rejoice with her.
It was bad luck to look behind. They concentrated only on the way ahead. Even when they saw the thin, blond head of Shim in front of them, and spotted Aphas walking with a new authority beside him, seeming younger than he had and vigorous, they did not call out a greeting. They kept themselves entirely to themselves, as they had planned to do. Two women with the fleshly scriptures of at least one pregnancy imprinted on to them. Two women blessed with god and child. They walked until the evening closed in. It did not matter where they spent the night. They were back in the world of the sane and would be safe. Only their faces ached, from smiling.
In the morning, they would carry on along the valley towards Jericho and then take the hilly route through Almog. Green hills. In two days they would reach the approaches to Jerusalem and skirt around the city, through the mud-faced houses on the mud-faced hills, towards Sawiya. They’d join Marta’s neighbours, raising voices, raising sheep, competing for the shade beneath the fig trees in their yards, fighting for their places by the fire. The uneventful world of villages.
They’d be in Sawiya before the end of quarantine. Quite soon, they’d share a table in a room, colourless except for candle flame and the orange and the purple of their mat. They would be dining well on fish. It would be still, the stillness of the small and tired. If there was something in the world that was bigger, stronger than their table-top, they would not care. It had not spoken to them yet. They were not listening. They were contented with their grainy universe of candlelight and wood and wool.
31
Musa did not waste his energy. He could not vent his anger on the scree. He rested for a while to catch his breath, then gathered his possessions in a pile, the goods abandoned by the men, the goods abandoned by the woman and his wife, the wools, the bedding, all the fabrics of their life. He could not leave them on display for anyone to help themselves. He’d rather have another fire. But there were huge rocks a little lower down the landfall where he could hide his merchandise. He didn’t have to carry anything. He only had to let it slip and roll, and then push the goods into a crevice. When he left, he’d block it off with stones. He could come back, or send someone, to claim his property at any time, so long as the scree did not give way and claim his treasures for itself.
The water-bag which Marta had thrown down the scree was too far out to reach, beyond his climbing skills. He had no water, then. He’d be a fool to try to carry on in the heat of the afternoon. The sun would finish him. Certainly he could not attempt to give chase to the women. Instead, he sat beneath the crevice of the rock with his possessions at his back, hiding in the shade. When the sun went down, he wrapped himself in bedding clothes and sat, cursing his misfortune, not getting any sleep. He’d never known a longer night.
In the morning, as soon as there was any light, but before the sun had any strength to it, Musa forced himself to stand and resume his descent to the valley. He only carried the blond man’s staff. He hid the perfume bottles, the gold, the coins and the jewellery in his underclothes. He pushed the ornamented knife into his sash. He was surprised how even-tempered he was feeling. He’d been restored by a night of cursing. Now he only saw one challenge in his life. If he could safely get down to the bottom of the landfall, then what could stop him getting into Jericho, and who could stop him there from trading up his bad luck into good? Who’d dare?
His wife and child were far ahead. He couldn’t catch them now. He wouldn’t try. He was divorced from her. He’d look for someone else to pull him to his feet and wash his back in Jericho. Some woman with a little flesh. The very thought of it relieved him of his anger. He made slow progress down the scree, leaning on his staff for ten steps at a time, and then resting until he grew too stiff to rest. He stopped before midday and once again took refuge in the shade. This time he slept, his head on shale. It left its imprint on his face. There were a few thin clouds that day to screen the sun, so Musa could continue his descent in the afternoon without the opposition of the heat. He finally reached the tradin
g route late in the day, and took his place amongst the stragglers who would have to fight for places at the single inn on the approaches to the town.
Musa was alarmingly tired, and even a little lame. He walked more slowly than the other travellers, all younger, smaller men, loaded down with bags or dragging their possessions on wooden sleds. But one or two dropped back to talk to him. One offered him some water from his bag. Who could he be, this grand, impressive man, with his covering of dust and scratches, his wondrous curling staff, his ornamented knife, and nothing on his back to mark him out as a trader or a proper traveller? He looked like some king-prophet come down from the hills, like Moses, with his prescriptions for the world.
They were amazed at all the stories he could tell. He’d come from forty days of quarantine up in the wilderness. He hadn’t drunk or eaten anything. He’d gone up thin and come back fat, thanks to god’s good offices. He’d shared his cave with angels and messiahs; he’d met a healer and a man who could make bread from stones. His staff had come to him one night, a dangerous snake which wrapped itself around his arm and turned to wood. They could hold it, for a coin. One touch of his staff would protect them against all snakes. He had, he said, some phials of holy medicine. A sniff of each, and all their illnesses would be cured and all their troubles would be halved. He would not charge them very much, as they were friends and comrades on the road. ‘Come to me at the inn tonight,’ he said. ‘And you will see.’
One of the travellers gave Musa food to eat. Another let him ride inside his donkey cart. He sat on bales of scrub hay, his fat legs hanging off the back. What little sun there was came from the summit of the precipice. Musa looked up to the scree, shading his eyes against the light, and checked the spot where he had left his worldly goods. He was alarmed for an instant. There was somebody climbing down towards his hiding place, half hidden in the shade. A man or woman? Musa was not sure. Whoever it was did not stop to search amongst the rocks, but hurried down across a patch of silvery shale. Now Musa had a clearer view; a thin and halting figure tacking the scree, almost a mirage – ankleless, no arms – in the lifting light.
Musa shouted to his new companions. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘That’s one I mentioned to you. The healer. Risen from the grave.’ But they were not sure that they could make out anyone. The shapes they saw could be mistaken for disturbances of wind, and shadows shaking in the breeze. But Musa was now almost certain what he was looking at. It was his little Gally, coming down from death and god to start his ministry. He recognized the weight and step of him.
Musa wondered if he ought to ask the cart-owner to leave him at the roadside to wait for Gally. But Musa was afraid of being wrong. What if he waited and the man did not appear? What if he waited and the man was some thin figure with another face? What if the man were what they said, a shadow shaking in the breeze? Musa pushed the very thought away. He would not wait, he persuaded himself, because it was not sensible to wait. There were practicalities to bear in mind. The cart was not the choice of emperors but it was comfortable enough, and preferable to walking. The Galilean might be a healer and the lord of miracles, but he was not a cart. No, Musa had to persevere. He’d go ahead until he reached the inn, and then he could pay for two places for the night, if there were any places left. One for himself and one for Gally. ‘Show me how to turn stones into bread,’ he’d say, ‘and we’ll go into business. I’ll make you richer than Tiberius.’ They’d make a deal, and shake some empty cups on it.
And if he did not come into the inn? Then Musa would not be disappointed. Life was long. He could expect to meet the man in Jericho, among the palms, beneath the henna blossoms. Or in Jerusalem. Or Rome. Or in the land behind the middleman, the hill behind the hills, the village that you reached when all the villages had ended, where blue was silver and the air was heavier than smoke.
In the meantime, this would be his merchandise, something finer and less burdensome than even colour, sound or smell. No need for camel panniers or porters or cousins. He’d trade the word. There was a man who had defeated death with just his fingertips. ‘I am the living proof.’ He’d travel to the markets of the world. He’d preach the good news. That would be easy. Musa had the skills. He had been blessed with this one gift. He could tell tales. ‘He came into my tent,’ he’d say. ‘He touched me here, and here. “Be well,” he told me. And I am well. And I have never been so well. Step forward. Touch me. Feel how well I am.’
Musa looked towards the distant scree again. He told himself this was no merchant fantasy. His Gally was no longer thin and watery, diluted by the mirage heat, distorted by the ripples in the air. He made his slow, painstaking way, naked and barefooted, down the scree, his feet blood-red from wounds, and as he came closer to the valley floor his outline hardened and his body put on flesh.
Musa raised an arm in greeting, but there was no response. The Gally’s eyesight was still weak, he’d say. The man would have seen the rocks at his feet, perhaps. But not the distant valley or the hills. And so he could not spot his landlord riding there. Nor could he contemplate the endless movements on the trading road, the floods, the rifts, the troops, the ever-caravans, the evening peace that’s brokered not by a god but by the rocks and clays themselves, shalom, salaam, the one-time, all-time truces of the land.
ALSO BY JIM GRACE
Continent
The Gift of Stones
Arcadia
Signals of Distress
Being Dead
The Devil’s Larder
Praise for Quarantine
“Remarkable … The effect is almost hallucinatory.”
—Frank Kermode, The New York Times Book Review
“Immensely enjoyable …Mr. Crace’s vivid writing brings
his clever take on the Bible to life.”
—Elizabeth Bukowski, The Wall Street Journal
“A serious and skillfully crafted novel about folly, faith, and a radically new relationship between a people and its god.”
—R. Z. Sheppard, Time
“Stunning …extraordinary …One of the freshest and most inventive novelistic uses of biblical material I have read.”
—Roger K. Miller, Chicago Sun Times
“Unforgettable …Crace has created an incantatory, compelling novel that stands beside Camus’ The Stranger in its visceral sense of location and its resolute refusal of moral abstractions.”
—Greg Burkman, The Seattle Times
“Quarantine is a brilliantly imagined work … .Jim Crace is
a landscape artist in prose.”
—Boston Book Review
“Troubling …profound …impressive.”
—Peter Landry, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Daring …compelling …original …[Quarantine]
has moments of pure beauty.”
—Commonweal
QUARANTINE. Copyright © 1998 by Jim Crace. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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eISBN 9780374706210
First eBook Edition : April 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crace, Jim.
Quarantine / Jim Crace.
p. cm.
1. Jesus Christ—Temptation—Fiction. 2. Bible. N.T.—History of Biblical events—Fiction. I. Title.
[PR6053.R228Q37 1997]
823.914—dc21
98-51205
CIP
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First published in United Kingdom by Viking Penguin