Jim Crace - Quarantine

‘If that’s the best that this mean land will offer us, then damn it and so be it,’ Musa said. ‘We’ll make do.’

‘This is, undoubtedly, the meanest place I’ve ever seen,’ said Shim, with feeling, kicking at the stones and waving his hands around at all the unrewarding wilderness, the unremitting sun, the unrelenting landlord. He was already persuading himselfthat it was time to leave.

It was not fair of them to blame the scrub for being stingy with everything except for space and light and stone. Even if it had not displayed much magnanimity towards the men, it had, at least, been generous to Miri. It had not maddened her or lamed her, yet. It had not made her il or thin. In fact, she was the only one of them to put on any weight during the thirty days. It had allowed her to complete her birth-mat; there’d been delights in that, despite the wools. And, in the night, it had even conspired with the wind to free her from the family tent. An act of charity.

But Miri was exceptional. She had bewitched the scrub on her first day. They were equals in their plainness and their endurance. Usually it was a less forgiving, more dogmatic host, despising doubt and mocking faith at once, and favouring the predatory, whatever their beliefs. It was even-handed in its cruelties. It did not no^ally discriminate between the donkey and the mule. It did not prefer the vulture to the crow. It did not favour hennaed hair over blond. It did not hang its trees with food or fil its hoHows up with drink to make life easy for its guests. The scrub required its passengers to take care of themselves or go without. The scrub was economical, as well, like some old man, and boundless in its barrenness and poverty. Its air was thin; its earth was pale; its weeds were frayed; its moods were fractious and despairing.

But there was also something rich, at times, about the scrub, despite itself. Something sustaining, unselfish, fertile even. Perhaps this was because it made no claims. It did not promise anything, except, maybe, to replicate through its array ofabsences the body’s inner solitude and to free its tenants and its guests from their addictions and their vanities. The empty lands — these very caves, these paths, these desert pavements made of rock, these pebbled flats, these badlands, and these unwatered river beds — were siblings to the empty spaces in the heart. Why else would scrubs have any holy visitors at all? Ten thousand quarantiners had come to these parched hills and passed their days, some delirious with iHness; others feverish with god, and guilt and lunacy, unraveHed from themselves by visions of a better and eternal world; the rest made mad by fasting. Yet, at the end of their forty days, the scrub sent al of them away enriched and dryly irrigated. Even Aphas. Even Shim.

But the chosen one or two, the very few, were rewarded for their quarantines with sacred revelations. The scrub allowed them up its steep and narrow tracks, and through the softened silhouettes ofhills, to their attending gods. And there it stretched its grey horizons to reveal what far-off armies were approaching with their spangling phalanxes of spears, what distant kings and preachers came with gifts and prophecies, how slow and never-ceasing was the world. And there it gave its voyagers their glimpse of paradise.

Jesus had achieved these sacred fields and seen horizons on horizons without end. He was still there.

And Musa, too. Yes, even Musa — especially, Musa — had had his glimpse of paradise and felt the fingers of his preacher king. He would not go back with nothing to declare. The scrub would not return him empty-handed to his market-places. What greater generosity than that?

Miri was not interested in visions or prophecies, or in a god. She’d never called on him for help, not even in the fist of the storm when her mother’s loom was breaking into pieces. But she was praying now for Marta. She ran from cave to cave, and then from bush to bush, in a panic, yelling for the woman, anticipating all the joys of finding her, yet fearful that Marta was already dead. She’d seen the death or something just as bad in Musa’s eyes.

It was a barking fox that finaily led her to Marta’s hiding place. Something tasty must have tempted it to show itselfin daylight. Some easy carrion. Miri feared the worst. But it was only following the spots of watery blood which Marta had spat out as she ran for safety in the rocks when she’d seen Musa and the line of mourners climbing to the caves.

Miri pulled her, trembling and limping, into the sunlight. Her clothes were torn. Her wrists were bruised. Her lower lip was split and swollen on one side, still bleeding. She had to brush away the flies. That was an injury that Miri recognized. She’d had a mouth like that herself. She still had the scar. Musa liked to grip her lips between his teeth.

‘What happened to you?’

Marta hadn’t got the courage to speak.

‘It’s Musa, isn’t it?’

She shook her head.

‘Who then? There’s no one else … I know it’s him. It’s him!’

Miri punched her hands together. ‘That man’s made fools of everyone. Again! He wasn’t even ill. All lies. He’ll bring the heavens down on all of us. .’

‘No … I feU.’

‘Musa must have pushed you then. Look what he’s done.’

‘It was the wind. .’

‘The wind? How could the wind do that to you?’

‘Threw stones and bits of stick at me. I fell. .’

‘It’s him.’

‘No. Don’t make me say.’

‘Listen, Marta. Give me your hand. Just say you didn’t fall. Be brave. TeH me. I know my husband, what he can do. He leaves his thumbprint everywhere.’

‘He doesn’t know I’m here? Don’t let him come.’

‘It’s over now. He’s finished with you now. Just tell me what the demon’s done.’

‘Can’t teH. There’s nothing left to tell. .’ She was sobbing, pushing Miri away yet still holding tightly to her wrists. Her face was dry. No tears. ‘Don’t make me say.’

Miri put a finger on the uninjured side of Marta’s mouth. Miri’s cheeks were wet with tears. ‘Don’t say. I know what he can do. You haven’t got to say. Don’t say.’

‘What can I do?’

‘You can’t stay here. You have to come back to the caves. .’

CT».>

I can t.

‘You must. You’re safer there. There’s five of us, and only him. I’ll take good care of you. He’ll stay away, I know. What can he do to you with us around? He’s frightened of you now. ’

‘I’m scared … to go.’

‘Come on. I need your help. The Gaily’s dead. You saw the body they were carrying?’

Now Marta could not stop the tears. ‘The Gaily’s dead?’

‘We’ve got to bury him. Come on. Be brave.’

Marta did as she was told. She followed Miri. Held on to her arm. Entwined her fingers into hers until they reached the caves. She’d find an opportunity to teH her sister what the wind had reaily done.

Musa did not even look at them. He sat in conversation with the men, facing across the valley, with no expression on his face, his fat neck creased, a stack of twenty grimaces. He called to Miri only once, without turning to face her. ‘We’re waiting.’ ‘What for?’

‘For you to get the Gaily. ready for the burial.’

Preparing bodies was women’s work, in his opinion. The men could sit and pray, while Miri and Marta — glad to be busy and out of sight — gathered the leaves and bark of trees to make their shrouding ointments. They picked morning star and hyssop, dill pods, and the yeilow spices from solanum stems to perfume the body. Then they pulled back the smouldering fire and thorns, lit cups of candle-fat, and took refuge inside the smoky cave with Jesus.