Jim Crace - Quarantine

And if he did not come into the inn? Then Musa would not be disappointed. Life was long. He could expect to meet the man inJericho, among the palms, beneath the henna blossoms. Or inJerusalem. Or Rome. Or in the land behind the middleman, the hill behind the hills, the village that you reached when ail the villages had ended, where blue was silver and the air was heavier than smoke.

In the meantime, this would be his merchandise, something finer and less burdensome than even colour, sound or smell. No need for camel panniers or porters or cousins. He’d trade the word. There was a man who had defeated death with just his fingertips. ‘I am the living proof’ He’d travel to the markets of the world. He’d preach the good news. That would be easy. Musa had the skills. He had been blessed with this one gift. He could tell tales. ‘He came into my tent,’ he’d say. ‘He touched me here, and here. “Be well,” he told me. And I am well. And

I have never been so weil Step forward. Touch me. Feel how well I am.’

Musa looked towards the distant scree again. He told himself this was no merchant fantasy. His Gaily was no longer thin and watery, diluted by the mirage heat, distorted by the ripples in the air. He made his slow, painstaking way, naked and barefooted, down the scree, his feet blood-red from wounds, and as he came closer to the vailey floor his outline hardened and his body put on flesh.

Musa raised an arm in greeting, but there was no response. The Gaily’s eyesight was stiU weak, he’d say. The man would have seen the rocks at his feet, perhaps. But not the distant valley or the hils. And so he could not spot his landlord riding there. Nor could he contemplate the endless movements on the trading road, the floods, the rifts, the troops, the ever-caravans, the evening peace that’s brokered not by a god but by the rocks and clays themselves, shalom, salaam, the one-time, all-time truces of the land.