Quarantine Read online

  There is something ill-conceived and comic about a standing donkey; the narrow hooves too dainty for the bony head, the long black dorsal cross that makes her coat appear as roughly stitched as patchwork, the fraying fly-swat tail, the pitcher ears. But lying down, her head between her forelegs like a dog, this donkey seemed neater and more dignified, and even with the pinkish overtones of her grey sides exaggerated by what was left of the sunlight – more beautiful.

  Musa lifted up the pestle in both hands. It seemed as if his body was the only thing that moved in that shy universe of thorn and stone. It was too late and dusky for the high and beating flocks on their migrations. Yet he was not entirely without witnesses. Three hawks were arcing high above the scrub. Birds which could spot a vacillating beetle from such a distance could hardly miss a donkey sinking on to its chin, not in a landscape such as this where life was slow. There would be carrion, and there would be a fight. Three hawks to share two donkey eyes. They circled calmly, with rationed wing beats, above the narrow strip, then out over the tumbling precipice, across the side-lit hills, and never took their eyes off the scrub and its small drama – smaller and paler even than its shadows. Here – viewed from the dying thermals of the day – malice was at work, irresistible and rarefied: the man, a donkey, the two raised arms; the goats that couldn’t give a damn; the stretched and brutal angles of the tent; and no one there to lay a hand on Musa’s arm or press his chest so that the devil’s air could be expressed before the pestle fell again.

  Musa gave the donkey one more chance. ‘Get up,’ he said. The throat had cleared. His voice was reedy once again. He kicked her side. He jabbed his heel against her inflamed boil. No luck. He brought the pestle down on to her lower back, experimentally. ‘Get up,’ again. But here Musa had met his match. Her sickness was greater than his, and was defeating him. She could endure his bullying, but did not have the will or strength to stand. She closed her eyes and even dropped her ears. Do what you will to me. You are invisible.

  Musa could not stop himself, of course. A merchant always sees his business through. He had to bargain with the currency at hand. He knew that donkeys were like customers. They had long memories. Camels had none. A donkey that had got its own way once would expect it every time. It would resist the tether and the switch. It would shake its panniers off and bray for better food. He told himself he had no choice but to force the donkey to her feet, to make her move a safe distance away from the tent. For what purpose? Simply so that she could tumble on to her chin again and die where Musa had commanded. This, then, would be the final lesson of her life. There is a price to pay for disobedience, he thought. There is always a reckoning. He’d make her pay for his infection, too. For his abandonment.

  Musa lifted up the pestle for a second time, but less experimentally. Now there were three good reasons why the donkey should be hit, and little to mitigate her punishment. He had to satisfy his anger. Anger was like phlegm and urine – best expressed at once. It was a shame there were no witnesses, he thought, warming to his task. He would have liked to have had an audience – Miri and his uncles. See what happens when Musa is upset, he’d say. Here’s how to put a pestle to good use. He would divorce this donkey on the spot.

  It was just as well there were no witnesses. When Musa swung the pestle he lost his footing. Its weight circled too widely behind his shoulder. His own weight was uncentred. He almost fell on to the donkey. His temper took a shaking, too. He had to start again, and use the pestle like an axe, chopping at the mortar of her head. Big men are often clumsy when they are violent. Their venom can seem comical and soft. They are too breathless and they have too many chins. Thin men, with bloodless lips and hollow waists, appear more dangerous. But Musa’s frenzy was not comical. There was nothing jocular or soft about the way he used the pestle. Indeed, his clumsiness had made him angry with himself and that provided extra power. Killing did not bother him. It was natural. He’d slaughtered goats a dozen times. He’d wrung the necks of birds. He’d dealt with snakes. But this was more than slaughtering. This was a settling of scores.

  It took two blows to put the donkey out. Her skull was thin, and she was old. She had sufficient spirit to bare her teeth at Musa’s leg, but not enough to roll over on her side and kick at him. She only rolled when she was unconscious and had no choice. Musa did not stop when she was on her side. He wanted now to see some product for his efforts, some broken skin, some rips, some blood. He wanted to make the stubborn creature’s head fall loose. It took him ten more blows to break the ridge of bones high on her neck, the vertebrae between her ears. They were protected by her short and springy mane. Musa had to twist the pestle as it fell so that he could strike the donkey on its uncushioned side, along the line of sinew between the cheekbone and the shoulder. Gradually her coat was rid of dust. The skin began to soften like so much grain had softened and split under the same pestle in Miri’s hands. But the blood was slow to rise. When it did it surfaced on the donkey’s skin like wine through bread, not running free but welling, blushing through the hair, thickening and darkening in curtains at her throat, as if the blood itself was so drained of energy it could not even fall.

  Then Musa rested, watching while the blood-flow to the donkey’s brain was blocked by the breakages and swellings. The nerves, first in her ears and throat, then in her flank, and finally in her damaged leg and at the end-tuft of her tail, shook and trembled as if the donkey felt nothing more than unexpected cold. Musa hit her once again. Her face was fruit. It bruised and split and wept. Her neck had broken at the shoulder-blade. Musa had succeeded in his task: at last the donkey’s head was loose. He could not resist a final swing, although his shoulders ached and his heart was hammering. Was this exuberance or brutishness? He knocked her top front teeth into her mouth. They cracked out of her gums like stones from apricots.

  Musa’s exertions were exhausting for a man already weakened by the fever. He had to rest again. He put his hand on the donkey’s rump, and lowered himself on to the earth. His hands and knees were splashed with blood, and they were shaking. He poured some water and washed himself He knew he should take more care in case the blood was still contagious, but Musa held the simple view that the glanders would have died as well beneath the pestle blows, that death can vanquish all disease. Death can heal. He dried his hands in donkey hair and shook the water off on to the animal. He flicked the waste from his hands over the donkey’s head, a blessing of a sort. Musa was feeling calmer, playful even, but he was never one for flippancy. So someone else was speaking through his lips. He was surprised to hear himself offer to the donkey the common greeting for the sick and dying. ‘So, here, be well again,’ he said. Fat chance of that!

  ‘So, here, be well again’? The recurrence of that phrase made Musa shiver. There was a meaning to such repetitions. There always was. Everything that’s stored will be restored, that is the chiming pattern of the world. Whose words were those, Be well again? Who haunted him? Whose throbbing voice was that? He concentrated hard. And, yes, there was a half-remembered figure now. A face within his fever. A peasant face. A robber’s face. He could recall his eyelids being thumbed and stroked: ‘A sip, 37 a sip. And then I’m gone.’ Not Miri’s voice, but someone soft and male; his lesser twin but with an accent from the farming north. A Galilean voice, with open lazy vowels, and consonants which shot out like seeds from a drying pod, which shed their stones like apricots, which snapped out of the gums like donkey’s teeth. ‘A sip, a sip, a sip.’ A healer’s voice, belonging in the tent.

  Musa looked into the tent. No unexpected shadows there. He searched for someone moving in the scrub. He hoped and feared to see the man again. He’d settle any debts. He’d pay the reckoning, if it was reasonable. Together they had travelled to the long black ridge and looked beyond into the ochre plains of death. Be well again. Be well.

  So that’s how Miri found him when she came. She had to stumble in the darkness for a lamp to see exactly what misfortunes had occurred. There was no body
in the tent, and that was frightening. It didn’t take her long to find the donkey and her husband. The corpse’s smell was bad, and there were scrub dogs already gathered near the tent, hungry for the meat. Her husband’s head was resting on the donkey’s leg, and they were black with drying blood. At first she thought they both were dead. But no such luck. His chest was rising. He snored. His tongue was pink and healthy on his lips, not black from fever any more. It was a curse; it was a miracle. So much for death’s discrimination. It had claimed the donkey, not the man.

  Musa was woken by the lamplight. He wasn’t feverish. He looked at Miri, her dirty hands, her bloody knees, her tearful eyes. ‘Hah, so you returned,’ he said. And just as well. He pointed at his bloody handiwork. But Musa’s anger had been squandered on the donkey. He was relieved to see his wife. It showed. How could he manage on his own? It had been the oddest day, and he was tired. He did not know if he should celebrate or grieve. He pulled her fiercely by her arms, a tender, punishing embrace, 38 and made her tell him everything that had happened, what his uncles had prescribed, what their plans for him had been.

  ‘Where were you, then?’ he asked finally. ‘Look at your hair.’

  What could she say? That she had run away from him? That she had dug his grave, and passed the afternoon quite comfortably inside? She couldn’t speak. She was in shock, and trembling. Her liberation had been too short. At last she said, with what he might have taken to be tears of worry and concern, that she had thought that he was going to die.

  ‘Well, you were wrong. A spirit came and brought me back. But not with any help from you,’ he said accusingly, though he released the hard grip on her arm and dropped his hand into her lap. ‘I saw his face.’

  ‘What face?’

  ‘Somebody’s face. The fever’s face? I don’t remember seeing yours.’

  ‘I couldn’t lure the fever out,’ she said. ‘I sang for you. All night. It’s true. I did ’ Musa tilted his heavy chin at her, to let her know he hadn’t heard her sing. ’ … I climbed the scarp to look for roots. To make a poultice. But …’ (she opened up her hands to show her broken nails) ‘ … I dug for nothing. The earth was hard. It’s stones …’

  She gabbled on, but did not listen to herself. God damn the spirit that has brought you back, she thought. Her wrist was still smarting from the fierceness of his grip. His hand was pressing into her and she was shrinking and retreating from his fingers. He was unsteady still. And ungainly as ever. He could not quite succeed – not yet, at least – in turning Miri on her back. But he was lucky with his lips, no longer dry and caustic. He pressed his kisses on her face. That was the trading profit of her day.

  It had been an afternoon of hope, at least. She’d raised her hands into the unresisting air. The sky was soft for her. But now the sky became a hard and bruising dish again. Miri was reduced 39 to one of scrubland’s night-time residents, its seven people and its goats, its caves, its tent, its partial hospitality beneath the thinnest moon of spring. She was unwidowed and unfreed, the mistress of unwelcome lips, the keeper of a wasted grave.

  8

  The four newcomers to the valley caves did not sleep well. They were bruised and battered. Their feet were sore. Their legs were stiff. They had been punished by the journey and should have dropped to sleep as readily as dogs. But the lodgings were too cold for sleep. Their scrubland host had celebrated the new moon and the onset of spring by calling up for them a wind which was old and wintry and mean. At first it was too quick and muscular to idle in the contours of the scarp or nose into the creases and the dens. It hurried past. But later in the night — just when they thought that they might sleep — the wind became invasive. A watery haze, distilled from the daytime’s rising valley heat and turned gelid in the dark, had made the wind heavier and more sinuous. It came into the caves, shouldered out the skulking pockets of warm air, and put an end to everybody’s sleep.

  So there was at least a unity of damp and sleeplessness inside the caves, for these four travellers. What could they do, except slap out the cold? Or hug their knees? Or stamp their feet? Or blow into their hands, and wonder if they had the fortitude – or foolishness – to last for thirty-nine more nights like this? A fire would help, of course. But the old man’s roots and branches had not caught alight. He’d evidently lost his adolescent luck with flint and kindling. His luck was creaky like his bones. So he and his unseen companions had to spend the night as cold and stiff and unignited as the fire.

  They all knew darkness well enough. Who hasn’t lain awake at night with nothing brighter than a cloud-hung star to add its feeble touch of light to looming shapes inside the room? Who hasn’t cried out for a lamp? But this was darkness unrelieved — for starlight, no matter if it’s moistened by the air, is never sinuous, unlike the wind. It will not curve and bend its way in to a cave. There was a blinding lack of light inside. They could not even see a hand held up before their faces. They could not see the demons and the serpents and the dancing bones. But they could hear them all too well. What better way to pass the time, and put the worry of the cold to one side, than by contemplating something worse than cold: sounds without shapes?

  If someone coughed in their damp corner, then for the other three that was the certain presence of hyenas. If another – fearful of hyenas – whispered to himself for comfort, then his voice for all the rest became the soft conspiracy of thieves. A yawn became a stifled cry for help. A sneeze, the whooping of a ghost. The wind set bushes rattling: an owl browsed in the scrub: cave beetles, amplified by their raised wings, rehearsed their murders and their rapes.

  The woman was not as sleepless as the other three, perhaps because she was protected from the wind by the few bushes outside the cave. Her name was Marta. She’d been married for nine years to Thaniel, the landowner of Sawiya by Jerusalem. His second wife. She was — a phrase she’d heard too often in the song –

  The Mother of a threadbare womb,

  Her warp hung weftless on the loom.

  Though she was over thirty years of age, she had no children yet, despite her husband’s nightly efforts, and her experiments with all the recommended charms and herbs to aid fertility. She’d sacrificed a dozen pigeons with the local priest. She’d rubbed honey on a marrow, sent money to Jerusalem, worn copper body charms, endured – she could not see how this would help – her husband’s semen in her mouth. She’d worn balsam leaves underneath her clothes for weeks on end until she rustled like parchment. She’d eaten only green fruit (and paid the price). She’d starved herself She’d gorged. Now she was plump and getting plumper, not to satisfy her husband, but because a flat stomach was intolerable. A larger one and bigger breasts might bring good luck, she thought. Provide the dovecote, and the doves will come.

  None of it had worked, of course. Her warp remained without its weft. A hundred times and more, she’d done her best to fend off with prayers and lies the monthly rebuff of her periods. Now she only had till harvest to conceive. Then, her husband said, he would divorce her. The law allowed him to. The law demanded that he should, in fact. After ten years of barrenness a man could take another wife. ‘You don’t cast seed on sour land,’ he said. He had a right to heirs. It was a woman’s religious duty to provide and bring up children. He’d had to divorce his first wife, because she’d failed to conceive. Marta had failed as well. So Thaniel would have to turn her out and look elsewhere. Of course it was regrettable and harsh, he said, but he could hardly blame himself Not twice. He’d marry ‘Lisha’s daughter. She was young. Her father owned some land adjacent to his own. The prospect was a cheerful one. And sensible.

  ‘I’ll have a son within ten months,’ he told his wife. ‘And, Marta, wipe your face and show some dignity. What use are tears? You’d better pray for miracles … Come on. You will have had ten years to prove yourself, and that is fair …’

  ‘I’ll pray,’ she said.

  ‘Pray all you want.’

  Marta took him at his word. She would do everything she cou
ld. So, despite the priest’s objections that her plans were wilful and unbecoming, she had walked into the wilderness to fast by day and pray for miracles by night.

  Now she was sitting upright inside the cave, her back pressed against the least damp wall, and watching the entrance for dawn’s first smudge of grey. She was more tired than scared – and though she, like her neighbours, turned the clatter of each tumbling stone, displaced by nothing more ominous than dew, into a devil or a snake, she could not stop her chin from dropping on her chest from time to time. Her sleeping dreams were less alarming than her waking ones, and so it felt to her that she did not fall asleep but rather fell awake into the nightmare of the cave, alone. She woke inside a womb, a grave, a catacomb. But she was calm. These forty days could not be worse than the alternative – a life without a child, a husband or a home.

  She despised the man, of course, and had taken hardly any pleasure in the marriage for at least eight of their nine or so years together. In that she was the same as many of the women in Sawiya. Marriage was a bumpy ride for them, though ‘Better ride than walk,’ they said, ‘even if the ride is on a donkey.’ Their husbands were an irritation, of course. But husbands were amusing, too. At least, they were amusing when they were out of sight. Their vanities and tempers could be joked about among women friends at the ovens or the well. Grumbling and laughing at their curdy husbands made the bread rise and the yoghurt set. But Marta could not find the comedy in Thaniel. He’d made her and his first wife barren, she was sure, with his dry heart and sparking tongue. They were like millstones without oil. But – Marta was an optimist – she still believed that everything would be a joy if she could have his child. She pressed her eyes shut with her forefinger and her thumb, her little finger resting on the corner of her lips, and she prayed that she could leave her infertility behind in this dark, barren place, where it belonged. She prayed for forty days and nights of ripening, that she’d be fruitful, that she’d multiply. Then she prayed that dawn would break the habits of eternity: Let it arrive early for once, and drive the night away.