Jim Crace - Quarantine

Certainly, none of them had ever known the man so quiet. They had not thought that he could be pensive or melancholy. It hardly suited him. His heavy jaw seemed heavier. He’d lost the teasing chalenge in his eyes. He was distracted and reduced. Perhaps, his second meeting with mortality had made a better, lesser man of him.

Even so, Shim and Aphas kept their distance, and even Miri

— unwidowed for a second time — was slow to offer Musa her assistance, or to run around and find his food and drink amongst the scattered trappings. At last he said, ‘Bring me the flask.’ Perhaps date spirit would restore him, and give him courage. For reasons he could not understand, his passing encounter with the Gally had been frightening.

‘I don’t know where it’s gone,’ said Miri.

‘Hunt for it, then.’

Miri had still not found the flask amongst the salvaged remains of their property when there was a warbling noise, and the badu came running up, covered in dust and scratches. He was talking for a change, but not a language anybody knew. He seemed unusualiy excited, his tongue too small for what he had to say. He’s seen the Gally, Musa thought. Or else he’s seen me coming out of Marta’s cave. He’s seen her bruises. It’s just as well that he can’t talk. But the badu was not pointing to the valley of the caves. He was pointing to the precipice. He caught hold of Shim’s wrist and tugged.

‘What is it, now? Let go.’

He pulled Aphas to his feet, and tugged him for a few paces towards the promontory. He did the same to Shim. And when Shim shook him off, the badu got hold of the curly staff and handed it to Musa. Again he pointed to the precipice, and mimed a prayer. He waved his hand towards the precipice, walked off a dozen paces, beckoned them to follow him across the scrub.

‘He wants us to walk,’ suggested Shim.

‘What for?’ said Musa. ТП not walk another step today.’ ‘Something to do with the Galilean boy.’

‘The Galilean boy has gone already. I saw him walking. This monung. ’

‘ Who did you see?’

‘The Gaily. Walking.’

‘Walking where?’ asked Aphas, terrified of what he might have missed during his night-long absence from his cave. ‘Have you been healed by him? What did he say? Where is he now?’

Musa shrugged. He shook his head. ‘Nothing. .’

‘You saw him, though?’

‘I saw him, yes. He shows himself to me. He’s there, somewhere. Up at the caves. Unless he’s gone into the hiils.’

‘We didn’t see him pass,’ said Shim. ‘We didn’t hear him walking. And we’ve been here al night.’

Musa wouldn’t argue with Shim. He only said, ‘He’s silent when he moves. .’

The badu gave up on the men. But Miri was easier to drag along the ground, and more easily persuaded by the badu’s grimaces and cries.

‘Go with him, then,’ said Musa. ‘See what the noise is al about. Leave me in peace to think. Yes, go. See if my flask has blown over there.’

It wasn’t long before she had returned from her first visit to the promontory, leaving the badu on the cliffs. ‘You’d better come and see,’ she said. ‘There’s someone dead.’ Musa’s mouth was hanging open. He looked stunned. He’s been caught out telling lies, thought Miri. She was pleased. He shows himsefto me, indeed. I saw him walking, earlier this morning. How had her husband hoped to benefit from teiling lies like that?

At first they could not see the body lying on the rock outside the cave. The dust had made the landscape ail the same colour; the shapes were indistinguishable. But they could see the ravens picking at some carrion, and hear the tok-tok of their beaks. The body was beneath the birds.

‘That’s him,’ said Musa, clasping his hands tightly to stop them trembling. He felt as if his head was full of bees.

‘Who was walking? You said. Up at the caves,’ asked Aphas.

Musa stuck his chin out and shrugged. ‘That was him, too,’ he said tentatively. ‘I must have seen the ghost pass out ofhim. Unless I dreamed it. Might have dreamed it. You know I’ve not been well.’ He tried to recoilect the figure, gliding on the mud. Had he really seen a living face? Had he seen anyone at all, or was his conscience playing tricks on him? His memory was far too faint and imprecise to be entirely sure. Even if he shut his eyes he could only picture Gaily spread out on the rocks with ravens on his face. And ifhe opened them and looked across the precipice towards the cave, the picture was the same. Whatever Musa had seen that morning, one thing was certain now; the Gaily was beyond help.

They waited on the promontory and watched the badu climb down to the Gaily’s cave with ropes and cloths to save the body from the birds. The badu did not seem afraid of death or ravens. They stood their ground, with bloody beaks, and stabbed at the badu’s arms. But he swept them off and picked the corpse up in his a^s as if it were no heavier than a stook of reeds — indeed, it was no heavier than reeds — and wrapped it in the tom tent curtain which had once divided Miri from her husband. The Gaily’s naked feet protruded from the cloth, like some small boy playing hide-and-seek behind a tapestry.

The badu tied the wrapped body with rope, secured an extra line to it and climbed once more up to Shim at the rim of the precipice above the cave. They pulled the body up, past the overhanging rock, the canker thorn, the crumbling contours of the cliff. The ravens made their last assault onJesus’s protruding, swinging feet, but nothing could prevent the burial of Jesus now.

‘No need to dig a grave,’ said Musa, coming up with Aphas and his wife to join the other two. ‘We have a grave. My little donkey’s grave. It must be meant for him … It was always meant for him.’

‘You mean we should use the cistern?’ said Shim.

‘It was a grave before it was a cistern.’

‘What will we drink?’

Musa shrugged. He didn’t care what anybody drank. He wouldn’t stay another day and so he didn’t need to know about their thirst.

‘You can’t bury him in the water that we drink,’ persisted Shim.

‘Whose land is this? Go somewhere else for water. Go down to Jericho and drink your fill. There’s an empty cave below that you can have for free, if you’re not frightened of those birds. Climb down. Do what you want. But this man has a grave already dug for him.’

Shim and the badu carried Jesus to the tent and rested there while Miri gathered extra water-skins to fill before they used the cistern. She found some food for them to eat as weU, and some blanket cloths. Everyone would have to spend the night in caves. The tent was useless now.

They took the body through the pans of mud and up the scarp, with Musa, Miri and Aphas following as mourners. They should have put a flower on the Gaily’s lips, but there were none left standing. They had to make do with some blackened poppy petals. And then they put the body in the same cave that Musa had used the night before, for safe keeping, until everything was ready for his burial. They blocked off the entrance with uprooted thorns, and lit a fire close by to keep the flies away. The wood was damp; its smoke was black, then purple-grey, the proper colour for a funeral.

‘Where’s Marta?’ Miri asked.

‘You’d better make a sacrifice to speed the Gaily on his way,’ said Musa.

Shim and Aphas nodded warily. Their landlord was being uncharacteristically comradely with them; anything to hold their attention and keep their minds off his wife. They could hear Miri searching in the rock falls beyond the caves, caUing ‘Marta, Marta,’ with rising desperation in her cries. But Musa raised his own voice to drown hers out. He did not want the men to help Miri. If one of them found Marta alive, sobbing and bruised, what might he ask her? What might she reply?