Quarantine (32 page)

about her husband's fate, except in dreams.

Only Shim, far out on the promontory, cross-legged, transcended by the darkness and his own alarm, was sifting every sound he heard. A tumbling stone. The dry bronchitis of a stirring

wind. A roosting bird. He was the only one of them to hear the

nudging and the cussing of the clouds as death and its grey

carriage went voyaging across the night. If he prayed at all at

hearing it, he only prayed that death would stop at Musa's cave

and not descend on Shim. Let Musa die, he thought. His time

is overdue. The world will be a better place ifMusa's life is short.

But I have value in the world, and work to do, and there are

still ten days of quarantine to serve. My time's not come.

Yet Shim would not deceive himself for long. His view was

Greek, of course. Death wouldn't intervene to make the world

a better place. He'd be a fool to think it would. Death is a servant

sent to the market with a list, and far too dull to have discretions

of its own. And death is economical, as well. It only barters for

the unprotected and the weak, because they're cheap and easy

to obtain. Death wouldn't tire itself with Musa, not yet. He was

too young and strong and irredeemable for death. He was too

large. He would refuse to die, however ill he'd seemed, however

tightly he had held his sides and writhed in pain. There was not

much chance that Musa would be dead by the morning. He'd

be alive. Shim knew it in his bones, though he hoped otherwise.

What if that illness was a sham, a trick, to carry out some deathly,

stem work of his own?

No, death would not grapple with Musa when there were

easy pickings such as Aphas, old and cancerous, to choose instead.

Or Miri, even, weakened by her child. So many pregnant women

died before their time. Death liked the price of them. They were

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a bargain, at two lives in one. Or Shim himself. He was not well

prepared to struggle for his soul. He felt so weak and undefended

in the night; no roof, no courage for protection. Death could

easily help itself to him, drop its talons on his shoulders like an

owl and lift him from the rocks. Or else, more likely, death

would come out to the promontory not as an owl but in Musa's

shape to seize him by his ankles and bring its fifty fists down on

his head. Why else had Musa sent him there to pass the night

alone, so cleverly, except to separate him from the rest and

murder him? No one would know ifhe were dead. Musa would

only have to roll the body off the precipice - no need for

volunteers to drag it to the edge - and go back to the cave to

resume his illness. He could tell his neighbours that Shim had

had enough of fasting and had fled. Or Shim had tumbled in the

dark. Or Shim had achieved such deep tranquillity that he'd

transformed himself into a stone.

So, for the first part of the night, Shim cowered on the

promontory, expecting Musa to arrive and making shapes of

Musa from the darkness. Musa, silent. Musa, huge. Musa, running

on his toes, with flames and serpents at his fingertips. Death with

Musa riding on its back. Musa, black and swift, invisible. Shim

had never known a night so dark and still and full of possibilities.

But he was not terrified for long. He heard the cussing and the

nudging of the clouds diminish. His fear diminished, too. The

sky grew quieter for a while. Resting, and digesting. If death

had come, Shim thought, then it had passed him by. But he was

sure that someone else had died, close by. He smelt it in the air.

What would he find when he went back to join his neighbours

in the morning? Was Musa safe? Were Marta and the badu

spared? Had death sniffed round the tent where Aphas and Miri

were sleeping, and taken both their lives or one?

It was almost midnight when the lightning came to pierce the

clouds and let the avalanche of thunder-claps come tumbling to

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the earth. The sky was only threatening. A mummer's show of

strength. It meant no harm. The rain and the scrub had reached

an understanding when the world was made to let each other

live their lives as much as possible in peace. The clouds came

down to sniff the hills, to scratch their bellies on the thorns and

rest their weight on this warm land before the weary battles of

the night. They could not help spillingjust a drop or two, enough

to make the tent reverberate and Shim to wonder whether he

should flee back to his cave at once or - better -join the others

in the tent, if any of them had survived.

But these clouds were only passing through. They would

mostly take their waters north across Sawiya and Jerusalem into

Samaria, and to the Galilee. They'd rather wet the leaves of oaks

and terebinths than waste themselves on thorns; they'd rather

wash the dust off myrtles, brooms and asphodels. Before dawn

the first raindrops would kick up Galilean soil on to beans and

onion sets in deep-ploughed fields, and splash the red-black earth

from summer barley roots. Jesus's brothers would bring the

chickens in and lie awake while the rain beat down on their flat

roofs and broke up the lime marl which they had laid across

the planks and joists and reeds, to keep their rooms rainproof

Someone would have to use the cylinder of stone when it was

light to roll the marl back into place. Not me, they thought. It's

not my tum. Not me.

But in the scrub, the native marl stayed almost dry. The clouds

and lightning moved away, banging on their shields. The sky

grew soft with moonlight once again, and then sharp with stars.

And with the stars, the wind came in, glad to range around the

empty forum of the sky; a gladiator, looking for a fight. It was

an angry wind. See me, it cried. I've chased the clouds away.

The thunder and the lightning have run off. I've stripped the

night of any warmth it had. There's nothing I can't do to you.

This wind had no agreement with the scrub. They were old

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enemies. The scrub exposed its rocks and ridges to blunt and

bruise the wind. And in return, the wind picked up the dust and

thorns and threw the loose stuff of the scrub about, and tore the

dead wood from the trees like some mad boy. But on this night

the wind was not prepared to settle for dead wood. It pitched

itself against the scrub. The brittle trees could not withstand the

wind at all. A tree can only bend so much, and then it snaps or

comes up with its roots.

Shim would have stayed much longer on the promontory had

it not been for the wind. There was enough moonlight now to

give him the courage to remain outside all night. He'd like to

prove himself against the darkness. He'd like to be a colleague

of the stars. And then - if anybody looked across at dawn -

they'd see him as a tranquil silhouette, sat on his rock against the

rising purples of the day, half flesh, half stone. A noble sight more noble, surely, than the Gaily, hiding in his cave. Then Shim would walk up to the tent, the low sun at his back, the

shadows of his body and his staff cast out in front of him like

cloaks thrown down by worshippers to make a path. He would

take his time. His steps would be reflective. His face would not

betray how long the night had been, how close he'd come to

death. My husband's dead, the wife would say, with any luck.

Or, Aphas passed away. Or, there's been an accident; the badu

fell and killed himself. A lion came. There'd be a funeral, and

Shim would be the one - who else? - to lead the rituals and then

to recommit his neighbours to their last ten days of quarantine.

They'd all defer to Shim until the end.

Except there was a cruel, defiant wind, and it was cold. Shim

could not stay a moment more. It was not safe or sensible. He

had not come on to the promontory because he'd wanted to,

he reminded himself. He had been sent. He had been tricked.

' Call out until your voice has gone,' Musa had said. 'Stay through

the night and pray to the Gaily. He saved my life before. Say

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that I'll die unless he comes. This is my final wish.' Then die,

thought Shim. That is my final wish. He would not pray as he'd

been asked. Who'd know? Instead, he only whispered at the

wind, as it attacked the precipice, 'Gally. Fat Musa says he's

dying. Says you've got to come and save his life, up at the caves.

Have pity on the man, he says. There now. That's it. I've done.

Go back to sleep.'

Shim wrapped his cloak around himself and left a little after

midnight, when the wind began to loosen stones and earth

around the promontory, and sent them sliding down the slope

into the silence of a fall. He was surprised how hard it was to

walk. The wind picked on his knees, and lifted up the cloak

around his head. It bruised his cheeks and ears.

It was not easy climbing in the dark, but at least it was obvious

at first what route he had to take. Each of his steps should go a

little higher than the last. He fell forward and felt his way with

his hands. But once he'd reached the flat top of the precipice,

he lost all sense of where he was. The air was even more blustery

than on the cliff, and even though the night had sharpened he

could not see the outline of the hills. His eyes were watery and

almost closed against the wind. He squatted on the ground, and

felt about him with his staff. The storm was strong enough to

blow him down to Jericho. He tried to remember which direction

it had been coming from while he was sitting on his rock. It

was, he thought, blowing roughly in line with the precipice,

hugging the cracks and rifts and stretch-marks of the valley sides,

as if the valley had been shaped itself by wind. So, if he kept the

gusts blowing on his left cheek, then he was bound to walk

inland, away from the cliff edge. He felt his way like some blind

beggar with his feet and staff. His hair was tugging at his head.

His face was struck by bits of leaf and thorn, and stung by dust.

His clothes and straps reached out towards the waters of the

north.

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He might not have found the tent at all, if he hadn't stopped

to shelter, curled up in his cloak, behind a rock. He'd spend the

rest of the night right there, he thought. It was not cold enough

to freeze. There was no rain. The rock provided some protection.

He ran his staff along its base and into any crevices he found.

He might not be the only creature which had taken refuge from

the wind. He hugged himsel( He was surprised how much he

missed his cave; his neighbours even.

It was not long before he heard the cries beyond the wind, a

woman's voice, a man's, six goats' , the buffeting of cloth. He

gladly left his rock and battled with the wind towards the sounds

that could be mistaken for the vast percussion of the stormpressed, canvas billows of a ship. He could almost taste the salt, and hear the panic of the conscripts on the oars. And there, at

last, was Miri clinging to her flattened tent, a little fisherwoman

hanging on to sails with broken rigging, amongst the snapped

and wayward masts and poles. Her house of hair, so flexible of

build and lifestyle, had bent before the wind too much.

Aphas, a shadow, darker than the night, was too slow and

weak to grip the tent cloth firmly enough. He ran around at

first, grabbing everything that moved, a length of rope, a tumbling

loom, a bolt of cloth, some clothes, a round ofbread. But when

he made a pile of them, they only rolled away before he had a

chance to find a rock to weigh them down. He did not try again.