Текст книги "Quarantine"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

Соавторы: Jim Crace
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

24

Musa slept like a donkey. He slept like a dead donkey. Ifsomeone had beaten him with a stick, he wouldn’t have woken up. It was a pity no one came with sticks.

The wind disturbed him finally, though not when it blew. Such winds could not disturb his sleep. But when the sto^ had passed, there was a heavy calm which prodded him awake. His cave had proven warm and comfortable, despite the weather, and so he felt weH rested and alert. He knew exactly where he was and why he’d come, despite the utter darkness. There were no moments of confusion. He’d slept with an erection, ready for his visit to the other cave, so even before he’d opened his eyes the pulsing in his lap reminded him of his great plan. He rubbed his testicles. She’d not escape. She’d not run off. He’d have her trapped inside her cave, as soon as there was any light.

Musa pressed his face into her shawl. There’s still a trace of her, he thought. A trace of spice. Enough to make him salivate. He pulled his own clothes up and untied his undergarments so that he might rub his genitals with her shawl. ‘Give the dog a bit of cloth to smeH,’ that was his policy, ‘and it will sniff the owner out.’ And then? And then he’d put his body in the entrance to her cave. She’d bejust visible to him. It didn’t matter if she screamed. It mattered if she didn’t scream. She’d cower in the shadows or she’d run at him. Perhaps she’d have a stick and try to beat him off. He’d hold her by her ankles or her wrists. He’d press his nails into her flesh. He’d take her lip between his teeth. A woman would not want to tear her lips. She’d stay as still as possible, on tiptoes, with her lip caught in his mouth, her body arched around his stomach. Now he could put his hands exactly where he wanted.

He’d have her naked, with just two tugs, two rips across her back. Her clothes would hang from her, like sample cloths. He’d tie the shawl around her waist and have her sit on him, the flesh and fabric settling and lifting on his thighs, her mouth on his, their ample breasts pressed flat against each other like leavened cakes of bread. If she tried to pull away, the little bag of money on its drawstring round her neck would swing between them like an incense pot. Now Musa had a happy image of himself He’d seize her by her drawstring and pull her breasts and lips back on to his. That’s what he’d do, one of the many things he’d do, when he had trapped her in the cave.

Musa pushed the shawl away from his genitals and let the cold air calm him down. He dared not touch himself again, not yet. He had already come too close to ejaculating. That would be expenditure without returns. How many times he had had sex with women just like this, alone, his penis in his hand, recalling some short encounter from that day. If only he could possess these half-glimpsed women in the flesh, every one of them. If only he could rope them up in bunches and hang them by their ankles from his camel sides, like monkeys. He’d go each night to pick a plump one from the bunch. He was deserving of them ali. If they aroused him, then they should satisfy him too. Women that he’d only glimpsed for moments in a market crowd. Women married to his cousins, caught out half dressed at their ablutions. Older women, careless with their clothes. Girls too young to wear a shawl, too young to care ifMusa saw their legs. Women who had argued with him at his stall, their faces fiery and their shoulders square. Women seen with sickles in their fields as Musa and his camels journeyed by; he’d call to them, and they would stand up, perhaps, arch and stretch their aching backs, and wave at him, shake aU the chaff and dust from off their clothes.

How easy it had been to dip his hands into their remembered lives at night. To rove about them with his fingertips. To have these strangers do exactly as he said in his imaginings. There’d been no bruises and no screams from them, except, of course, on those occasions when he summoned little Miri to his bed to stand in for the woman that he’d picked that day. ‘Wave at me, Miri. Do it, do it. Stand there. Arch your back. That’s right. Be quiet! Pull up your tunic. Stretch.’ Be someone else, besides my wife. Be anybody else. Be everyone.

Now Musa’s heart was beating far too fast for comfort. His breath was laboured, but, at least, he would not have to waste himself into his hands or on his wife that night. There was a chance – a certainty – that all these beating, breathless moments in his past could, by some miracle, be brought to life. He’d help himself, through Marta, to all the women he had ever seen, to all the chances he had ever missed. He would express himself on her, like he’d expressed his anger on the little jenny he had killed. He’d put his pestle to good use again. He’d kick the woman’s shanks. She’d go down on her knees. He’d like to see the stubborn creature’s head faU loose. He’d like to see her tumble to the ground. She’d close her eyes when he pushed into her. He saw her face, he planned how it would be, and it was plump and beautiful and bruised. Her fabrics were all silks, and aU her silks were tom. Do what you want to me, he’d make her say. You are the landlord. This is rent.

Musa lifted his head up off the ground, rolled on to his side, and shifted his weight on to his knees. There was no one to pull him to his feet. But he was nimble for a change. He felt so young and weU, and aided by strong demons who helped him stand. He had waited thirty days for this, and he would take his time.

It was still too dark outside the cave for him to see the damage of the night, how the wind had ripped the branches from the trees, exposed the roots ofplants and left a unifying cloak ofdust across the scrub. But there was light enough for him to make his way, her shawl around his shoulders, between his own cave and his neighbour’s. He looked around, and listened carefully. No sound, except for his own panting. No sign of anyone about. The badu always made a noise if he was moving. He must be sleeping, then. Musa edged along the sloping ground. No poppies had survived the night. He watched his step. He did not want to send a stone rattling down the hillside, and wake her up and rouse the badu. He had to be as sudden as he could. He had to take her by surprise. His clothes were loosened, and his testicles furrowed and retracted in the cold, like shrinking slugs with salt put on their backs.

This was not wickedness, he told himself This was his duty and his right. Marta wanted him. Why else would someone such as her, sophisticated, wealthy, well-born, well-built, waste so many days with Miri, except to use his wife as an excuse to spend a little time with him, the story-teller and the merchant king? Why else had she such tempting breasts, such thighs, if not to have them touched? Why else had she come to the caves at al except to go back to her husband pregnant? He’d overheard her say as much herself That’s what she’d prayed for on the promontory. She wanted to return to Sawiya, transformed by miracles, made fertile by her quarantine. He would oblige. He’d do what the little Gaily had refused to do. He’d throw his seed on to her fallow ground.

Musa had an image of her from the day before, sitting on the rocks while he invented and recounted his adventures without water in the desert. She had not stared at Miri but at him. Her lips had parted when he spoke. One leg had failen loosely to the side, beneath her clothes. She was loose-limbed for him. Her eyes were wide and fixed on his mouth. Her face and skin were full and clear. She’d smiled at him. She’d given him her shawl as a favour and a sign. This was an invitation to her cave. This was her fault.

She’d thank him, afterwards. He’d see to that. He’d not be satisfied until she’d said how glad she was he’d come. ‘A miracle. You are not barren now,’ he’d say when he had finished with her. ‘That husband of yours is the only one to blame. He’s not a man. He isn’t any use. But see how big my Miri is becoming. See how big the barren women are whenever I come to their market-places. I send them home with something in their bags, and they’ve not parted with a single coin. They’ve made a profit out of me. Their trees are heavy with my fruit. You’ve never seen such vines as theirs. That is the magic of my trade. My caravans supply fertility. What good is fasting, then? What good are prayers? What good’s obedience to al the laws, when Musa takes you as his bride?’

‘Up, up!’ he’d say. He’d make her puli him to his feet.

Marta had not slept much during the wind, of course. She was less self-possessed than Musa. Sto^s never brought good luck or gentle dreams to her. And even after the sto^ she was too uneasy and uncomfortable to sleep. She was still awake when Musa crept up outside and stood waiting for some better light to act as his accomplice. Now that the wind had gone, each tiny sound he made was amplified inside her cave. She heard her landlord’s breathing, and she heard the scuffle of his feet. But Marta was not frightened by the sounds at first. She did not imagine for a moment that Musa was outside. She’d seen how ili he was the evening before. How hot and heavy he had been, how weak his speech. She’d have to go when it was light to take him water, to check if he were dead, but she was in no hurry for the dawn to come. She entertained herselfby thinking what the sounds might mean.

At worst the scuffiings in the scrub, she thought, would be the badu, tugging at his hair and turning over rocks with his toes. He never seemed to sleep. He often prowled around at night and made strange, liquid noises, like a hyena with its snout inside a deer. The more she listened, though, the more she wondered ifthesesounds were human at all. A man’s disturbances would be more weighty. These were too light and birdlike to be threatening. An owl. Gazelles, perhaps? It was – at best, the very best – that little, straw-boned sister from the tent, with untied hair, and a peeping, rodent face. Her Miri, then – come up to the scarp with rugs and pillows and ‘something sweet’ as she’d been instructed by her husband, only to find him dead inside his cave? She was ashamed, but Marta wished it could be so. Then she and Miri could be sisters tili the end of time. She could be an aunt to Miri’s child. They’d go back to Sawiya, a^ in arm, the widow and the barren wife. That would be worth a thousand days of quarantine.

Marta listened carefuliy, but she could not realiy fool herself that this was Miri waiting in the dark. She’d not make that mistake again. Yes, surely these were the same sounds that had frightened her before, on her first day. The raucous snails, the lizards and the flies, the worms, the ^milipedes, the whip bugs and the slugs had gone into the cistern for their drink. It was the fourth day of creation yet again, and the water teemed with life. Once more, she listened, held her breath. But, no, she hadn’t got the answer yet. The sounds were too dry and close to be the cistern. The sounds were unfamiliar as weli, except for one which fi nally she recognized, the flux and refl ux of a breath too regular to be an animal’s. It was the sound of someone inhaling and exhaling through his nose.

It was not long before what little light there’d been outside had disappeared. The someone who’d been breathing blocked the entrance to her cave and was standing there, as dark and stili as some large stone. Marta prayed. She had to be an optimist.

She had to think it was the healer. She’d half-expected he would come. Their meeting was ordained. Perhaps there’dbe a miracle. That’s what she’d prayed for, after al. That is what she’d dreamed. That was why she’d spent so many evenings, when it would have been much easier to stay with Miri at the loom, waiting on the promontory and watching for a sign of life outside his cave. It had to be the Gaily, then, who blocked her light. Who else? There wasn’t anybody else. Please god there wasn’t anybody else.

She heard his tongue. She heard his lips. She heard the salt-bush rustling and then her own name, whispered by a man. She even welcomed it. ‘Marta, I have come for you.’ She did not want to^ recognize the voice at first. It was so soft, and too distorted by the echo in the cave. It still might be the Galilean voice. How could she be certain anyway? She’d never heard him speak. She’d never even seen his face. She’d only caught the almost-sight of him, the shy and nearly shadow on the precipice. She’d only ever seen his humming rocks. She held her breath. She waited for the shadow to approach. There was stiU. room for hope.

‘Come in,’ she said, and prayed, Al thanks to god, and let it be the Gaily. Let him have climbed the precipice to minister to me. ‘Marta, I’ve come for you,’ he’d said. He knew her name. The first of many miracles. He’d swell into the holy king and reach into her cave. He’d cup her face inside his giant palm, ‘Be well. . ’, and he would build his kingdom in her empty spaces.

Again he said her name. And now she knew his voice was far too high and comical for one so pitying and strong. She watched the shadow, and, yes, it swelled and reached into her cave as she had dreamed. It came into her empty spaces. This was no boyish skin and bones. This man was large, and getting larger too. He held her wrists. He cupped her head inside his giant palms.

25

What was her latest article of faith? If anything could happen, then it would.

Musa picked his way through the debris of the night, below the caves. The sto^ had lifted stones to show their hidden faces. It had made firewood from bushes, and pulled up roots and soil. Lice and te^ites tumbled in the daylight where the earth was scarred, busy with repairs. The birds were feeding everywhere. Their nests and eggs had been destroyed, but they could fret on insects until their stomachs burst. What footmarks there had been on the scrubby slope, to show the comings and the goings of the quarantiners, had been removed by the wind. A layer of dust and grit was spread across the ground, like seeds and flour sprinkled on a loaf This was the way the world had been before mankind, the childhood of the earth when it was innocent and undisturbed. This was the way the world would be when all mankind had gone, when the cleansing wind of prophecy had swept all sins and virtues from the earth and the wilderness was strewn with faUen and abandoned faiths.

Musa’s footprints were the morning’s first. Those were the ones that no^ally belonged to the burglar, the adulterer, the son who’d run away at night, the village sneak, the chicken thief But Musa did not feel ashamed. He felt about as guilty as a boy with flour on his hands as the only proof that he had stolen bread. That is to say, he knew he had done wrong but he was glad of it. The bread had tasted good. His shame was thin and white. He’d blow it from his fingers with a single puff.

He’d left the woman with some bruises on her arms, it’s true, some broken skin, some little aches and pains that would not show although they might take time to mend. The inside ofher lip was cut. Her anus had been tom. But he had let her keep her money-bag. He was no thief. She’d been a disappointment to him, actually. She’d screamed. She had insulted him. She’d struck his face a dozen times with her soft hands. She’d spat. She’d even tried to hit him with a stone. Her anger and her awkwardness had made it difficult for him; he’d had to concentrate on quelling her instead of satisfying himself. He’d had to be alert and always remember to keep the tightest grip on her – her hair, her ears, her arms, her throat, her drawstring – or else she would escape from him. She could jump up and run, but he could not.

She’d only quietened when he’d stunned her with his fists. But he had not enjoyed her stunned and unresponsive. He hadn’t wanted sex alone, with no participant except himself That had never been the plan. He had ejaculated twice – the first time far too quickly within moments of his arrival in the cave, and the second time without much feeling. He would have liked more time with her to attempt a third and more considered consummation. But, try as he might, he could not ready himselffor her. Unconscious women were not attractive in his view. They could not display their fear. And so he’d covered up her body with her shawl – no one could say he was entirely inconsiderate – and had stepped out into the dawn a slightly disappointed man.

But still he could congratulate himself At least he’d made a trading profit on the night. There’d be no cost because she’d not breathe a word to anyone. If he’d had any doubt ofthat he would have snapped her neck at once and blamed her death on the badu, or some brigand in the hills, or on the wind. He knew the punishments for forcingJewish women to submit to passions such as his were harsh, especially when gentiles were involved. If Marta reported Musa to the Jewish courts and was believed, they’d circulate his name to every dusty comer of the land. They’d track him down if he ever came within a dozen days of Sawiya, and then they’d carry out the letter of the law. They’d cover him in tar and bum him, waist-deep in a pile of dung. They’d thrust a lighted torch into his mouth. They’d bury him in stones. He’d taken quite a chance to sleep with her. He had been brave.

But Marta would not take a chance. Musa knew she would be sensible, not brave. She wouldn’t want to speak his name to anyone. ‘What were you doing there in any case, alone?’ they’d say. ‘Why did you tell the man, “Come in?” ’ No, Marta would be silent. She’d want to bury the experience at once. When fear and shame are comrades, tongues lie still. Besides, he’d threatened her. One word of this outside the cave, he’d said, and I’ll call all my cousins here to visit you. They’ll do the same as me. I’ll come back to visit you myself. There’s nowhere you can hide.

Yet Musa felt exposed somehow. He was revealed – to Marta at least – for what he was, cheap goods, bad stock. No merchant ever stays around to answer for the blemishes and flaws on the merchandise he’s sold. That is the time to pack his bags and go. So Musa could not wait until the end of quarantine, to endure her fear and sullen glances for ten more days, although that prospect was not daunting. He would not wait until the end. The scrub could not enrich him any more. Already he was making plans. He’d conquered Marta. Now he set his heart on Jericho.

He was relieved to reach the pans of soft clay in the valley below the caves, and tum towards the tent. It was satisfying to have put a short distance between Marta and himself, and the walking on the flatter surface would be, he hoped, less cruel on his ankles. The clay had been renewed and freshened in the night – by the few drops ofrain. The wind had ironed it flat, then rippled it. It was a tidal estuary ofmud, bubbling with pockets oftrapped air, and it was cold around his toes. Already Musa was tired. He had no staff. He had no wife to take his arm and help him with his balance. His knees and hips were aching badly. The wet clay was harder on him than the slope. But he could hardly sit in it and rest. He took it slowly though.

Musa found no pleasure in the footprints that he left, or the suckered protests that his sandals made in the mud as he buried them and lifted them. His tracks were deep and obvious. He would have preferred to have left no marks at al, no debts. Caravanners like to come and go, according to the verse, And let the dust that they have raised, Fill in the footprints they have made.

It was not long before Musa spotted movement at the far end of the pans. The sun was in his eyes but he was sure that there was someone coming up towards him, a someone who was light enough to walk across the mud without their sandals sticking. It might be the badu, or the blond returned from his hopeless vigil on the promontory. Musa would demand some help with walking. It might even be his wife, collecting herbs or bringing up a flask and blankets to her ailing husband at first light as she’d been told. About time too. Musa stopped, rubbed his side, practised breathing awkwardly. He had been il, he must remember that. He was recovered but still weak, he’d say. Another miracle.

But it was Jesus walking in the mud, bare-footed, naked, thin and brittle as a thorn. So, then, Shim’s bogus, midnight mission had been fruitful after all. His vigil on the promontory at Musa’s behest – ‘Say that I’ll die unless he comes’ – had worked where al the other days of prayers and exhortations had failed. Musa chuckled to himself. He was rewarded for his tricks, no matter what he did. His little Gaily had appeared at last. He’d come up from his cave to cure Musa for a second time. This second miracle would be an easy one. He’d only have to exorcize the demons from Musa’s hip and knee, and scrape away a little mud. He’d only have to wipe away a lie.

Musa did not take another step. He waited while the man approached, as thinly as an egret, his body wasted to the bone, his too large hands and feet, his swollen joints. Only his genitals seemed unaffected by the fast. This was nothing. Musa was not shocked. He’d seen worse sights before than naked mystics. In his travels, he’d seen recluses who’d made themselves as yellow and transparent as amber by their deprivations. He’d seen the hennits ofKhaloun who fed on insects, nothing else. Their skins were hard and cracked like cockroaches. He’d seen worse ulcers, looser teeth, more hollow eyes. But he had never seen a man appear so weightless and invincible as Gaily seemed to be.

Musa did not know what he should do. Salute the man when he arrived like an old friend? Fall down on his knees, or run, though both were difficult for someone of his size and in mud that deep? Pretend to be still ill and in need of healing? Could he fool Jesus with his tricks? Musa compromised. He took one step backwards, held his side and winced, and almost crouched, not quite a deferential bow, not quite a posture of defence, not quite an ambush. He was stooped too low to see the Gally now. He waited for the figure to come closer, oddly fearful of it but triumphant, too. Another victory. Here was the one who’d tipped the water on to Musa’s lips and cheeks. Here was the face that he’d last seen a whisper from his nose, inside the tent. The peasant’s and the robber’s face. The healer’s face. From that distance in the open scrub, it had not seemed so young as it had been when they first met. The hair was pale. The body was the colour of the land behind.

What should Musa say to greet his Gaily? It was embarrassing. He could hardlycall out, ‘Good morning, cousin. Know my face?’ as ifthey were chattering acquaintances from some market-place. Or, ‘I’m the one that comes for you each day. At last we meet again. .’ or, ‘Speak to me, then. We were good cousins thirty days ago. This ismy land.’ Such pleasantries were not appropriate for one so holy and so thin. But Musa need not have worried what to say. His Gally would not cross the mud to stroke his eyelids with his thumb or talk to him or pass his judgement on the landlord’s weaknesses. When Musa stood and looked again, the man was at a greater distance and almost indistinguishable from the shadows and the bushes. He had taken a lower path, through a sloping basin of thorn and rock, and was walking away from Musa with the confidence of someone who was full of god at last.

Musa watched – relieved, rebuffed – as Jesus set off up the scarp, his body bones combining with the scrub rocks and the sunlight to make a hard-edged pattern which pulsed and slanted all at once. Musa put his hands up to his mouth. ‘What do you want?’ he called. The Galy did not seem to hear. He was too far away. He pulsed and slanted, disappeared, became a man again a few steps higher up the slope, was lost between the landscape and the sun. Who was he looking for, if not the merchant king? Had he come for the water in the cistern? Or was he heading for the woman in the cave?

The air became much colder than it ought to have been. Musa barely dared to breathe. He could have sworn the man was glowing blue and yellow, like a coal.