The Leper's Companions

by Julia Blackburn

  Just then a woman screamed and fell to the ground, her limbs convulsing and froth on her lips and this was the signal that released them all. A ripple of noise like a sudden exhalation of breath went through the crowd. Many collapsed in a heap as if they had been cut down like grass. One man stood with his arms stretched out in the shape of the cross and his whole body racked and trembling. Another began to dribble and drool like an idiot. Some were rooted in a trance, others thrashed in a wild agony. The sun moved through the sky, the day became unbearably hot and the guards watched the pilgrims with a sleepy disinterested gaze.

  Finally, when the evening was drawing in and bats were squeaking and swooping through the air, one of the Saracens took a key from a chain around his waist and went to unlock the door. The crowd surged forward, but the other guards were quick to block the entrance, their hands on the hilts of their swords. The pilgrims had to form a queue, to show their certificate of identity and to pay a fee. Only then were they permitted to step over the threshold.

  As soon as they were inside they scattered in all directions like chickens, stumbling on the uneven floor and shouting to each other across the echoing spaces.

  A few of the merchants and food sellers followed and settled themselves comfortably close to the entrance. Then, with a crash that shook the entire building, the door was slammed shut and locked and bolted, closing the church in upon itself and holding the occupants as prisoners.

  How the leper longed for quiet. As well as the urgent babble of human sounds he was now surrounded by the whirring of rattles, the ringing of handbells, the shaking of tambourines, something screeching and something else hammering with metal on stone.

  He was given a lighted candle to hold and then he was swept along shoulder to shoulder with all the others, moving in a daze from one sacred site to the next. He saw where Christ’s naked foot had stepped on a slab of marble, leaving a print that was streaked with blood. Here a dead man had been brought to life, and here the crown of thorns had been put on. And here, and here; every bit of space thick with the knowledge of the things it had witnessed long ago.

  He walked up the eighteen steps to the summit of Mount Calvary, pausing to look at Adam’s skull trapped within a narrow crack of the rock. He put his hand into the socket inlaid with lead that had held the wood of the cross. The coldness and slipperiness of it shocked him; it was like touching an open wound.

  A man was kneeling on the floor with the heavy wings of his cloak spread out around him. He was murmuring a prayer, but at the same time the leper could hear a gentle tapping and chiseling noise emanating from the secrecy of the cloak, as he carved his initials, or perhaps even the intricacy of a family crest, into the white side of the rock. It was such an odd thought to want to leave a memory behind rather than take it with you, to presume that this place which had seen so much would now never forget a man with a hammer and a chisel.

  The leper was suddenly tired of people and the isolation of their closeness. He wandered off on his own and went down some steps which led into a vault under the body of the church. The light from a single lantern showed him pillars dripping with moisture, pools of water on the floor and a big conch shell that was fixed into one of the walls, its curling pink mouth inviting strangers to listen to what it had to say.

  He put his ear to the shell. At first all he could hear was the suck and hiss of waves beating against the shore, but this changed and became the crackling of the flames of Hell and the voices of the damned crying and begging for mercy. And changed again so that he could hear laughter as well as terror, joy as well as despair. It was as if he was listening to the story of life, his own or someone else’s. The shell even whispered patches of silence to him that carried him drifting through layers of wordless images.

  He turned and went back up the steps. He searched for the priest and found him camped in a corner, busy eating hard-boiled eggs and bread by the light of a candle. “I was thinking of the meal we had on the day we left the village,” the priest said, and with that they both shared the same recollection of cold rain, the cry of marsh birds and a long journey only just begun.

  When the priest had finished eating, he rummaged in his sack and took out the book of travels, a sheet of vellum, a horn of ink and a quill pen. He leant the vellum against the book and he began to write. He wrote down the names of Catherine the Dead Woman, the red-haired girl, the woman who saw devils, the old fisherman, the man who remembered the Great Pestilence and the many others whose lives he had known and shared. And since Sally and the shoemaker’s wife had now gone, he wrote down their names as well.

  As soon as the list was completed, he took it to the Holy Sepulchre which stood like a marble tent at the center of the church. The entrance was so low he had to crouch down to avoid hitting his head. A row of lamps illuminated the enclosed space and made the walls tremble as if they were alive. The stone on which the body of Christ had once lain was covered by another slab of stone which had three holes cut into it, each big enough to insert the flat of a hand. The priest pushed the sheet of vellum through one of the holes and held it there. As he did so all the people from the village whose names he had written down stirred themselves and swam before his eyes like a vision of the dead on Judgment Day.

  He returned to the leper and without saying anything lay down on the floor and fell into a deep sleep. The leper sat beside him for the remainder of the night. He watched as the dawn came falling down through the hole in the dome of the ceiling.

  Soon afterwards the door of the church was thrown open with a crash of wood reverberating on stone. The four Saracen guards rushed in and with shouts and threats they herded the pilgrims from every corner of the building and back into the courtyard outside.

  31

  The ship was due to return to Venice very soon. Some of the pilgrims had begun to make their way to the Bay of Jaffa and the rest knew they must hurry or they would be left behind.

  The priest was eager to go at once. He longed to be home with such an intensity that he sometimes found himself remembering this journey as if it had already become a thing of the past. And then he would be shocked with the realization that he was still in a distant city among strangers with a huge expanse of land and sea separating him from the world he was accustomed to.

  At every place they visited he made a point of finding a pebble and putting it in his pocket until he had accumulated a rattling handful of little stones. He could imagine spreading out his stones on the table in his room close to the churchyard, each one encapsulating a particular memory just as an acorn can encapsulate an oak tree.

  He had bought a number of mementos as well and with the thought of leaving he began to wrap them up and place them carefully in his sack. Two pieces of blue silk thread, measured to the exact length and breadth of the Holy Sepulchre; a square of white linen soaked in the Virgin’s tears; three leather bags filled with the red dust from which Adam was made; dried roses from Jericho that opened miraculously when you dropped them in a bowl of water and a bunch of thin finger bones with a signed paper to prove they had belonged to one of the children massacred by King Herod. He had considered buying the complete body of a Holy Innocent, curled up like a sleeping cat, with the skin hard and dry, but he decided against it.

  It was only when he was packing his possessions that he realized he still had not been to the river Jordan. This was the main thing that had been asked of him, the reason why he had come here. He had forgotten until now and now it was perhaps too late. He told the leper that they must go at once to the river, but the leper explained there was no time for such an expedition. He said he had seen bottles of Jordan water on sale in the market and the priest could get one there. But the priest shook his head sadly because this would not be the same.

  He was standing outside the Hospice of Saint John wondering what to do next when a young Saracen approached him. He was riding on a donkey and leading another by its bridle. A basket of oranges was slung over the saddle. He had a crooked back t
hat hunched him forward and made him appear prematurely old and long tendril arms that seemed to have no strength in them, but swung loosely at his sides. His face was narrow and solemn but when he spoke a huge smile broke across it, splitting it in half and making you forget everything else about him.

  “I am Aziz and I am guiding you,” he said with a simple finality, each word carefully enunciated, as if he had just learned to recite them from a book.

  “Where are you guiding me to?” the priest asked him.

  “I am guiding you to the river Jordan and there you wash your soul clean,” said Aziz and he raised a single finger with great authority, pausing to look at it as if he had never seen such an odd thing before.

  “I must find my friend,” said the priest. “He will come with us.”

  But Aziz was not prepared to wait. He said he had only the two donkeys and they must go immediately. He said they were late already.

  The priest felt he had no choice in the matter and so he mounted the second donkey and followed Aziz.

  They went through the intricate streets of the city until they emerged abruptly into a barren landscape. The track began to sink down and down among the empty hills of the Judean desert, while the air grew so hot and heavy it was difficult to draw it into the lungs.

  They entered a wide river valley where the high reeds closed in around them, their flower tips glinting like polished spearheads. The priest could almost believe that he was back in the marshes near his village with the booming of the bitterns and the catlike mewing of the harriers, but then Aziz was offering him an orange, holding it close to his face and laughing because he didn’t see it even though his eyes were wide open. The donkeys’ hooves released a metallic smell from the mud that made him sneeze.

  Suddenly the curtain of reeds drew back to reveal the river Jordan, a sluggish, dirty-brown sweep of water that hardly seemed to be flowing at all.

  “Here you wash your soul clean!” said Aziz confidently. “I come for you later. You are careful you do not die!” And without waiting for a reply he turned his donkey around and the reeds quickly swallowed them both from sight.

  The priest was on his own within the silence which settled over him. He wondered where Sally was and whether she was safe, and the shoemaker’s wife. He hoped the leper would not leave without him. He wanted to call for them all by name, but he was afraid of hearing his own unanswered voice. He peeled the orange Aziz had given him and ate it very slowly, segment by segment. Then he took off all his clothes.

  I can see him standing there by the water’s edge, as vivid as a painting on glass, the sunlight from outside the window passing through the colors and making them dance like flames. The luminosity of his skin. The tight-feathered curls of hair growing across his chest and belly and down his thighs. The nakedness of his long feet. The look of compassion and sadness on his face as our eyes meet across the infinite space that divides us.

  He enters the river. The sticky mud slides between his toes and sucks at his feet and ankles. Dark bubbles rise to the surface and break around him. The water is as warm as his own blood.

  He swims out from the bank with lazy strokes. He means to swim to the other side but he is only halfway across when he reaches the fast current which runs through the center of the river. It grabs at him with strong hands. It spins him around and tries to roll him over onto his back. He fights with it as if he is fighting the coils of a snake, the embrace of a demon.

  He feels his energy slipping away and the strange lassitude which enters his body is a pleasure more intense than he has ever experienced before. “I am dying,” he thinks, and he lets go and drifts on the surface of the water like a leaf.

  But the river has lost interest in him now that he is no longer prepared to resist it. The same current that tried to pull him down, carries him to the bank and deposits him among the reeds. There is a bitter taste in his mouth. The sun dries the mud on his skin into scaly patterns.

  When his breathing has quietened and his strength has returned he gets up and finds his clothes. He takes the empty bottle he has brought with him and dips it into the river until it is filled with the murky liquid that almost took his life.

  He searches the dark silted earth for a pebble and finds one that is perfectly round. He moves its roundness in the palm of his hand so that it feels like a living thing and then he drops it into his pocket to join the others. Since there is no sign of Aziz he mounts the donkey that has been waiting patiently for him and trusts it to find the way back to the city.

  The dusk thickens as he travels. When he reaches the hospice the leper is no longer there, nor has he left a message to say where he has gone. The priest and a few remaining pilgrims set off for the Bay of Jaffa on the following morning.

  32

  The leper had waited for the priest, but then when there was no sign of him he presumed he must have gone, in the same way that Sally and the shoemaker’s wife had gone. All of them gone now, leaving him on his own.

  He had no wish to return to Venice. That journey had been made and would not be repeated. Instead he planned to set out towards the Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai Desert. He had once glimpsed something of the immensity of that landscape and the possibility of stillness it offered. The image had always remained with him, clear and undiluted by time.

  So he packed his few possessions and set off on a donkey, with a camel to carry his provisions of food and water. I caught sight of him just as he was going through the city gate, its twin towers like the pieces in a chess set. I decided to accompany him. I wanted to see what he saw, to taste what he tasted and to follow him in whatever direction he chose. And that was how we came to be traveling together, the leper and I.

  When I look back I can see the two of us on a road which stretches for mile after mile. Sometimes this road is clearly defined, but often it is obscured or obliterated by windblown hills of sand, by falls of rock, or by simple neglect because so few people pass this way.

  I see us side by side within the changing landscape. Here we stop to rest by a well and under the shade of a solitary tree; here we meet with naked strangers; here we sleep in a cave; here we are watched by a creature that has the body of a lion but the face of a man. Even when we have traveled for several weeks and are far from the city we have left behind, there is no perspective of distance to diminish us, we appear as close as we ever were.

  For the first three days we rode over a barren plain scattered with flat stones. It reminded me of the land that the shoemaker had to cross after he died: everything stripped away and no houses or people, no trees or birds or shade, just the plodding eternity of tiny figures, their shadows growing longer as the sun moved through the sky.

  Nothing lived on the plain except the snakes which lay tangled together on the hard ground, a writhing knot of them pulling apart with the sound of our approach and slip-sliding into their burrows as if they had never existed.

  One evening the leper caught a snake with a forked stick. He cut its body in half, the head still fierce and the tail flickering with anger. He placed the two pieces on either side of the road and we walked between them because he said this was an old custom which would bring us luck.

  We entered the land which was known as the Great Desert. Gusts of sand were drawn up in thin plumes like the smoke from a hundred campfires. Hills of sand were swelling around us as if there was yeast fermenting in their soft hot bellies. Sand moving and shifting and flowing like water. Our donkeys struggled to wade through it, although for the camel it was easy.

  We reached a Bedouin encampment. At first I could not understand why these people had set up their leather tents here, with no shelter and no sign of food for their animals. But the leper said there were deep cracks in the rock where you could be sure of obtaining rainwater throughout the year.

  Naked children were squatting in the dust. As we drew closer they crowded around us in a noisy circle. “Pan,” they chanted, “pan, pan, pan,” holding out their empty hands
with this simple request. Swarms of flies were feeding on the cuts in their skin. We gave them dried biscuits which they swallowed whole.

  The men showed no sign of aggression towards us. They were also naked apart from a scrap of cloth tied around their hips and indigo blue turbans on their heads. They had no fire but were cooking slices of meat and flat cakes on polished stones, which they placed under the fierce glare of the sun. They offered us some of their food with an easy generosity and watched while we ate. The cakes were unsweetened and the meat was leathery; nevertheless, it was better than what we had. They gave us water too, which they filtered through a cloth bag. It was thick and white and slightly salty, but not unpleasant to drink.

  The women were the last to approach, appearing suddenly out of the dizzy mirage of the land. They wore girdles made of palm leaves with a flap of piebald goatskin to cover their sex. Their long hair was braided and bound on top of their heads and decorated with ornaments of silver and gold, making it appear like shining fruit in the branches of a tree. They were less friendly than the men and the children, stopping before they were close and throwing stones at us while crying out in high ululations that filled me with a strange cold fear.

  But now the days and nights of my memory begin to roll into each other as the image of the desert tightens its grip. I see myself riding beside the leper and sometimes he appears to be nothing more than my own shadow. I see myself moving through a blur of shifting colors: blue and green, lilac and purple. The pebbles of a dried riverbed are white under my feet, while the cliffs on either side of me are as red as blood.

  Here is a place where the rock is threaded with a network of gold and here a swirling hollow in the rock which is filled with a dragon’s hoard of bright jewels. Here is a boulder that has taken on the appearance of a magnificent palace and next to it is one carved into the form of a human skull, the eyes staring but sightless.