Jim Crace: Quarantine

What had occurred? Musa had to concentrate. A face was haunting him. A throbbing voice. He could not recognize it, though. He could remember his last journey, how the caravan had come out of the hiUs, delayed by badu herdsmen to the south, who’d wanted to trade yarn for copperware. He’d used his size and his impatience to force a bargain. He could shake profits out of sand, someone had said, and Musa had been proud to hear it. He could recall setting camp, and then the meal, the fires, the chill of night. He’d felt both hot and cold when he’d gone in to sleep the night before. Was it the night before? Or ten, or twenty nights? He’d told Miri to massage his shoulders. He’d sent her off for blankets. He’d almost vomited and had had to sleep on his back because his chest was sore and shivering. He’d had diarrhoea.

So that was it! He’d caught a fever, then. That much was obvious.

What was now becoming cruelly obvious as well — there was the evidence outside — was that he’d been abandoned by his comrades and his family to battle with the fever on his own. And that was pitiless. Left in the desert with. . He counted what he saw. That useless donkey with the limp. And five, six goats. Camel dung. No bolts of cloth, none of the larger bulks of wool, no decorated copperware. No Miri, even. His feelings of melodic calm did not survive his growing dismay and anger. The lesser twin took flight.

The sun by now was fairly low in the sky, sinking and red-faced from its exertions like any other traveller who had passed a day in the desert. Musa knew it was late afternoon. The caravan would be too far away to chase. How could he chase it anyway? Ride the limping donkey? Ride a goat? He couldn’t even lift his body off the ground. He lay — his shoulders in the tent, his head protruding out — and dreamed of chasing them on a relay of goats and catching them in some green valley to the north. He’d pull his merchandise from off the camels’ backs, the copper- ware, the cloth, his wools. (He loved the sensuality of wools, particularly the orange and the purple wools. They were the colours prostitutes would wear.) Those loving uncles and their sons would hide their faces with shame. Would he forgive them for abandoning him to snakes and leopards? Would he congratulate them on their thieving business skills? He’d sneeze at them. He’d drive them off with stones. He’d stand amongst them with a heavy stick and crack their heads. They’d know how dangerous he was. They’d seen him swing a stick before. Then he’d go to where the women were. He’d have a reason to attack his wife for once, and nobody would dare to lay a calming hand on his and say, ‘Be easy, Musa. Let her go.’ What could they say in her defence? He could disown her there and then. He had the right. Divorce her on the spot and tum her out. But he would take her to their tent instead, and everyone would hear her cries right through the night. The different cries which came when he was slapping her, the ones when he had pulled her tunic offand was laying leather straps across her back, and those when he had opened up her thighs and, with her hair held in his fists, was pushing into her until there was a trinity of pain and tears and fear. Kisses, punches? They were al the same to him. And then he would divorce her on the spot.

But Musa, if the truth was told, for al the bombast of his dreams, was feeling fearful and ill-used. He’d thrown water in his eyes, but there were tears as weH. He was shivering, not only from the chill inside the tent. His prospects, frankly, were not promising. What kind of merchant was he now? A laughingstock. An ass. A dupe. He’d been discarded like the casing of a nut. His mood was murderous, but there was no one there to murder, except himself

His anger made him stronger, though. He tried again, turned on his side, brought up his knees, and found that he could stand, unsteadily. He shuffled round the inside of the tent as best he could, a cover on his shoulders, using the tent poles for support and taking stock of what they’d left behind. The goats, but not the best. His family goods. Rugs, bedding and utensils. Two woven sacks of grain. Salted meat. Dried fruit. Fig cakes. A flask of date spirit. A remnant hank of orange wool, some purple, his sample rod of coloured yams, his clothes, his wife’s, her loom. Some fragrant wormwood for the fire. He hurried to his saddle- pack, and was relieved to find his ornamented knife, the seven bottles of perfume that he’d traded earlier that year, and the little hoard ofgold, coins andjewellery tied up in a twist ofberber cloth. Abandoned, yes, but hardly destitute. He’d resurrecthimselfwith trade.

He took the long wooden pestle with which Miri crushed their nuts and grain and, using it to help him walk, went outside past the tethered donkey into the fading light, with the water-bag hung round his shoulders. His knuckles whitened on the pestle with his weight. He turned in a full circle. Just in case. No sign of anyone who’d stayed behind. No sign of anyone to kiss and punch.

The donkey — an ageing jenny, older anyway than Musa — had been tethered by his wife. He recognized the kindness of Miri’s knot. The creature had been lamed by her pannier harnesses which had rubbed to form a sore and then a boil at the top of her hind leg. The boil had hardened on the muscles so that the donkey limped, and was in pain. Her breath was bad. Her nostrils seemed inflamed, perhaps by the circulating poison of the boil. Musa leaned forward and looked more closely, not at the boil but at the donkey’s nose, for signs ofpus and infected membranes. Her top lip drew back like a baboon’s and curled at the man’s smell. She wanted him to keep away. He wanted to keep his distance, too. Ulcerated nostrils were a symptom of glanders. Glanders could be caught by men, and not only by jackassing the jenny as some people claimed. He was not sure if they were ulcers that he saw, or simply mucus. If they were ulcers the donkey would soon die. Then what use would she be, this legacy ofhis kind cousins and his uncles? He couldn’t eat the meat; he couldn’t even skin her for shagreen, unless he wanted to risk catching donkey fever himself

That thought made Musa step away. Perhaps that was the illness that he’d caught already. Donkeys, it was known, were full of demons keen to set up home elsewhere. He lifted up his hand to check for the tell-tale sweiling of the underjaw. But Musa’s underjaw, beneath the beard, wasloose and heavy anyway and it was difficult to tell if there was any swelling. He pushed his little finger into his nostrils. They were not clear, but then they were not painful either. Had he caught glanders then? Or had there been some other devil in his lungs? He was only sure of one thing, that both he and the donkey had been abandoned by his caravan companions with equal regard. They were considered worthless and infectious and as good as dead.

Musa loosened the donkey’s knot and began to lead her away from the tent and the goats. Her illness angered him. It would be better if she died where her contagion was not dangerous. If he could make her move, that is. The animal was uninspired by Musa’s prodding foot. She was reluctant to engage with him. She must have sensed his illness, too. He wasn’t any stronger than she was herself She knew that she could pull as hard as he could tug. Besides, a donkey is quite used to being hit. It is a condition of service almost, part of its contract oflabour. A slap of the driver’s switch on the donkey’s cheek is rewarded with a shuffle forward and a bray. Beating donkeys is as innocent as beating mats. A hearty slap across its back brings out the dust. But this old jenny, for al the native half-smile on her lips, was made doubly obstinate by her ill-health. When Musa kicked her on the shanks, she did not move and bray. She’d seemed to buckle like a colt. She fell on her haunches, and dropped her head on to the ground, chin down.