Текст книги "Quarantine"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

Соавторы: Jim Crace
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The old man did not worry her or even interest her, despite his frailty. He was a Jew. She’d met his type a hundred times before. Her uncles and her older neighbours were like him, meek and pompous al at once, slow to walk, quick to talk, and made babyish by any pain. This was her husband in old age. The blond one, though, was odd and beautiful. A foreigner, she thought. A disconcerting foreigner to dream about. She’d seen that colour hair before, amongst the legionnaires and sometimes on the merchants coming from the north. A perfume-seller’s hair. It was the colour of honey. His neck and cheeks were as brown as beeswax. She watched him from the comer ofher eye, not wanting to be seen, but not finding any reason to look elsewhere. He sat cross-legged, self-consciously, his legs entwined, almost in a braid. He had a staff, made out of twisted wood, with perfect curls along its stem, which he held across his lap. He ran his fingers round the curls. He was a handsome man, she thought. More than handsome. Statuesque. She wondered if his body hair was blond. .

Marta did not like the badu much. He’djumped in the cistern with no regard for anybody’s cleanliness. She did not trust the way he squatted on his heels, rocking like a crib, twisting his hennaed hair between his fingers, and ready to spring up. He was too smal and catlike, with far too many bracelets on his arm, she thought, to be much of a threat to her. But there was something devilish and immature about his face. If he had any body hair, it would not match his hennaed head.

Marta had her numbers and her seeds for company. She watched the men, and waited for the sun to warm her up. The badu did not speak at all. He dropped pebbles in his mouth. But the old man was glad to talk, and the blond, though he hardly turned his head, seemed resigned to listen. The old man did not whisper, but spoke up loudly – in self-conscious Greek – so that everyone could hear, perhaps. He gave his name, his place of birth, his trade. He was Aphas the mason, from Jerusalem. He reported on the complications of his journey to the caves, his attempts to light a fire, the discomforts of the night. Al unimportant, unrevealing, reassuring facts. What other intimacies than these should be exchanged by strangers in the wilderness? Finally, when no one offered to reply, he turned towards the badu and asked for his name and his place of birth. But the badu only smiled – bad teeth, wet pebbles – and shook his head. He didn’t want to give his family name, perhaps. He did not know his family name. What badu did? Or else he had no Greek. Aphas turned to Marta now and, with a chuckle at the badu’s silence, tried to implicate her in his amusement. ‘Some chatterbox,’ he said. He almost asked her name, but then had second thoughts. Was it polite? One could not simply ask a woman’s name, or say, ‘Who are your husband’s family?’ or ‘Why have you come here alone? What do you want?’ Instead, he tapped the blond man on the knee – an old man can assume such intimacies – and said, ‘Yes, yes? Let’s hear.’

The honey-head, as Marta had thought, was from the north. He knew some Aramaic and some Greek, though many of the words he used were unfamiliar. Unlike the gabbling stonemason, he spoke as ifhe had eternity. She didn’t recognize the name he gave for his home town, but she knew his own name well enough. It was Shim. An almost Jewish name. Though he was noJew, he said. His grandfather had been aJew, however, who’d left the valley ofJezreel in one of the dispersals, sixty years ago. Now he’d come back to the land ofhis forebears, Shim said, to seek something that he could not name. ‘Perhaps there is no word for it. As yet.’

‘To meet with god,’ suggested Aphas, keen to show he was a man of culture.

‘No, no, the word “god” is hardly strong enough for what I seek.’ He would not look at the old man, but only concentrated on his staff and his own voice. ‘My god is not a holy king, an emperor in heaven. He’s immanent in everything. In things like this. .’ he shook his staff, ‘. . and in the human spirit. He will absorb us when we die. If we are ready. But first we have to find that something for which I have no word. .’ ‘Enlightenment’s a word. .’ ventured Aphas. ‘Enlightenment comes to the ignorant. That is their candle in the dark and their salvation from the sensualimpulses and appetites ofpublic life. But for myself, I am looking more for. .Tranquillity, perhaps. That’s not so easy to acquire.’ He rubbed his fingers on his thumbs, as if his words were cloth. ‘I can encounter god at home. I can find enlightenment in tiny things. I do not have to leave the house. But here. .’ again he felt the cloth ofwords, ‘what better place to look beyond enlightenment and god for nameless things than here, in caves, far from the comforts and distractions of the world?’ Aphas nodded all the while, though men like Shim – scholars, mystics, sages, ascetes, stoics, epicureans, that holy regiment – were a mystery to him. Why punish your body voluntarily when the world and god would punish it in their good time? It would not do to argue, though, with someone of Shim’s undoubted class and dignity. ‘I’ve understood,’ he said, although to Marta’s eyes, he looked ala^ed. ‘I know it, though there is no word for it. .’

‘As yet.’

He had not turned his back on god, the emperor of heaven, Shim continued. Not on one god. Not on any of the gods. But he was Greek in his beliefs. He worshipped every living thing. ‘I worship this,’ he said, picking up a stone. ‘I worship those.’ He pointed at the birds. ‘I worship this.’ Again he turned the spirals of his staff.

‘That’s good. That’s very Greek,’ said Aphas.

‘I worship everybody here,’ Shim continued. His voice was slow, and hardly audible. ‘Excepting one of course.’ He lifted a hand from his staff and pointed at himself.

Aphas could not claim to have such selfless motives as Shim, he said. He could not claim to be so Greek. He’d come for quarantine because (‘No need to wrap it up in complicated words’) he was dying. These forty days were his last chance, his priest had said. He hoped to make his peace with god and with himself, of course. But most of al he hoped for miracles, that all the fastingandthe prayers wouldmake himwell again. Tranquillity was easy to acquire, compared to that. He had a growth, he said. ‘A living thing, inside ofme. No one could worship that. Bigger than my fist.’ He showed his fist, and pointed at his side. ‘You can feel how hard it is.’ He waited for a volunteer to press a finger into his side. Shim leaned forward on to his braided legs, put his finger on the growth, and nodded: ‘Like you say,’ he said.

‘Come on.’ Aphas waved the badu over, and caHed to him in both Greek andAramaic, and thentranslated it into finger-mime. ‘Feel this.’

The badu sprang on to his feet and padded over as nimbly and as silently as a cat, grinning aH the time. He lifted up the mason’s shirt. Marta could see the stomach was distended. The skin was stretched. It looked as if the old man had an extra knee-cap placed between his thigh bone and his ribs. The badu spat out pebbles, laughed, and cupped the growth in the flat of his hand. He shook his head from side to side. He tapped the cancer with his fingertips and put his ear to Aphas’s chest and grabbed hold of his hand. Nothing that he did made any sense. Aphas had to tug quite hard before the badu would let go. He wanted sympathy, or miracles, not this.

‘He doesn’t understand a word of it,’ Aphas said, retreating into chatter as he’d done for all his life. His nose was running and his eyes were wet. ‘Here, Master Shim, this fellow’s yours. You love all living things, you said. Love him.’ He forced a laugh and wiped his eyes. He then repeated what he’d said, almost word for word. . ‘ Love him, I said. ’ He turned to Marta, only looking for a nod or smile from her to rescue him from his embarrassment. She laughed for reasons of her own. Her three companions were absurd. Even the honey-head. Perhaps he was the maddest of them all.

They had hardly noticed that the sun was up and their forty days were underway. But soon – once Shim and Aphas had agreed that everyone would gather at dusk when they would light a communal fire and break their fast with Marta’s scrub fowl and the free food of the wilderness if any could be caught or found – they fell silent, even Aphas. They concentrated on themselves. FinaHy, they sought the shade and privacy of their caves. The badu wandered along the scarp, crying out and kneeling down once in a while to pick up stones. Marta was relieved to stay alone, sitting in the sun, counting seeds. The birds that had been waiting in the thorns flocked back into the water, dipping beaks and wings. But very soon they were outnumbered. The water in the cistern smeHed so mossy and the birds, excited by the unexpected boon of water, sang so unremittingly, that every living creature in the hills could smell and hear the summons to drink.

Swag flies, mud wasps and fleas blistered the surface of the water, dipping their bodies at both ends; one dip to drink and one to drop a line of eggs. Centipedes and millipedes, lonely lovers of the damp, gathered at the edges of the cistern in rare communion. Whip bugs and round worms celebrated in the mud. And slugs and snails, descending to the water and the bobbing body of a roach, signed the stones and rubble of the gravesides with their mucous threads. Star lizards blinked and turned their flattened heads in search of easy food. Overhead and in the thorns, more birds were gathering to breakfast on the throng.

Marta was still reluctant to go back to the cave. She hoped the little woman would return: ‘Hello, it’s me. The woman yesterday.’ But al she saw were birds and insects, drawn to the water in the cistern. She was drawn as well. She went to watch them drinking and, perhaps, to catch a second bird. Her shadow fell across the grave. Again the birds shook out their wings and fled. She ducked and dodged. She did not scream. The lizards scuttled behind stones, and shut their eyes at her. The insects exercised their wings. Snails shrank into their shells, and mimed the secret life of stones. It seemed to Marta that she’d dipped her fingers into and drunk some holy essence. It was the fourth day of creation when god directed that the waters teem with countless living creatures and that the birds fly high above the earth, across the vault ofheaven. She did not feel elated by god’s work, but – like any other lukewa^ Jew – she was repulsed.

She’d have to overcome her fear ofinsects and suppress the edicts ofLeviticus (‘These creatures shall be vermin unto you, and you will make yourself unclean with them’) before she’d find the heart to drink again.

9

Musa was tired and disappointed. When Miri had told him about the four cave-dwellers, he had presumed that one of them would be the Galilean man. Why else would he have followed Miri away from the comforts of the tent to walk uphill into the heat and scrub? There were better things to do. He could be resting, eating, taking stock? He had the bruises ofhis fever to shake off. And he had plans to make. How to turn his bad luck into coins. How to catch up with the caravan with only one pack-animal

– and that one pregnant-to carry the tent and al their possessions. How to get to Jericho where he could buy a camel, trade some of his goods, and lay claim once more to the title of merchant. But first there was unfinished business with the water thief. He wanted to see the man again. What for? He couldn’t say. But, if Miri’s querulous reports could be trusted, the Galilean had passed the night in caves. She’d pointed to the coppery, pockmarked cliffs. ‘Not far,’ she’d said. Not far, perhaps, for someone built like her. A chicken, al skin and bone and beak. No meat on her, except for the slight, high swelling of her stomach. But for Musa, this outing was hard work. He was a duck to Miri’s chicken, flat-footed and ungainly. His thighs were so thick that they required him to walk in opposing quarters: his right foot took him to Jerusalem, his left foot set off for Negev. He tacked his way across the scrub, with tiny steps.

At first Miri was required to walk behind with the water-bag and a mat, throwing her narrow shade across his back. Musa was

not pleased with her. Everything had been her fault; the fever, his abandonment, his immobility, his loss ofgoods. He’d ordered her to pull the donkey carcass out ofsight. It smelled. It bothered him. Even the vultures had only circled it, and gone away without tasting its disease. Something, though, less discriminating than a vulture had chewed its stomach out during the night. The scrub dogs, probably. Its eyes had gone. And there were flies. But Miri claimed the body was too heavy for her to move alone. She had refused to even try – and that was something she had never done before. For fear of a clout. What was happening to his wife? He’d caught her weeping in the night. Crying for the donkey? Surely not. Now she was sulking like a disappointed child, throwing things about the tent, making too much noise, complaining that her buttocks ached. Not that she had buttocks worthy of the name. Perhaps that was the price of pregnancy – disobedience, bad temper, aches. Did she expect that he would tolerate such disrespect for four more months?

‘Keep out of sight,’ he’d said to her when they began their walk. But the ground was stony and uncomfortable. He did not see why he should suffer first, and so he sent his wife ahead to simplify a path for him. She had to clap her hands to scare off any snakes. She had to kick away scrub balls and snap off any thorny branches in his way. She had to find the softest ground, and pull aside the loose rocks which might block his path. She hardly made a difference. It would have taken twenty men to clear a path. For Musa, though, his little chicken wife, clapping as she led the way for him, would have to do. He had his dreams. There would be twenty men at his command when he was rich. He’d be preceded everywhere he went by twenty men. They’d clear the path ofstones. They’d throw down rushes. There’d be twenty girls as weH – and none of them would look like chickens.

At last they reached the valley bed with its soft clay. Musa didn’t have to stamp to make his mark. His feet sank in. His ankles twisted when he walked. He summoned his wife to his side, and leaned on her. His buttocks and calves were aching now. Compared to Miri’s, his were buttocks ten times worthy of the name. So his pains were ten times worse than hers. His lungs were bursting. He wasn’t built for hiking. He was built for litters, or for camels. Perhaps he had been hasty when he killed the donkey. He could, perhaps, have ridden on her back to meet the Galilean or got Miri to assemble a donkey cart. That would have been more dignified.

Except there was no Galilean there, as far as he could teH. When Miri had finally pushed him up the last few steps of the scarp, through the rash ofpoppies, to the shaded foot ofthe cliffs, and he had settled down with his exhaustion on the mat, there wasn’t any sign oflife at all, except the congregation ofbirds.

‘Call out,’ he ordered Miri. ‘Unless, of course, a call’s too heavy for you.’

She obeyed, and caHed ‘Gather, gather!’, her husband’s market cry; and soon the quarantiners came down from their caves, one by one, and stood a little nervously in line in front ofMusa while he looked each of them in the face as if they were for sale. He could tell at once what they were worth. Not much, the badu. Musa could trade two badus for one goat. Except this one had silver bracelets. The old Jew was an artisan and dying, by the looks of him. A man like him would be too proud to travel without money. The blond was carrying a walking staff, made out of spiralled tarbony. Quite valuable. Musa knew his type, a seasoned traveller and, probably, prepared for thieves. He’d have some hidden coins sewn in his cloak. The woman? Good clothes

– a woven hair veil in fine material, a long sleeveless tunic, girdled twice as was the fashion, once beneath her bosom, once around her waist. Good cloth. Good skin. Good teeth. Good heavy purse, as weH, he thought. And easy pickings.

The four cave-dwellers seemed to know they should not speak. The badu tugged and twisted his hair in high strands. The other three stood patiently, glad – so far, at least – ofthis diversion in their day. What was it about her husband, Miri wondered, that made strangers treat him regaUy, defer to him? His size? Were they afraid ofsize? Or was their meekness more deliberate, not signifying their respect for Musa, but a token of their own tranquillity?

‘Just four of you,’ he said at last. The old one nodded in agreement. ‘And where’s the other one?’ The woman shook her head, and for an instant caught Miri’s eye. Just half a smile. Miri had seen similes like that before – from people who were surprised by Musa’s adolescent, reedy voice.

The old Jew spoke for all of them. He thought, perhaps, there’d been a fifth when they were walking to the hills the day before. It might have been a boy, a woman or a man. He could not tell. His eyesight was not good. The figure was too far away. Quite tall. It might have been a shepherd even. But there were only four of them who’d come to carry out devotions in these caves. ‘My name is Aphas. From Jerusalem. .’ he began.

‘And you?’ Musa said, ignoring Aphas from Jerusalem. He pointed with his chin at Marta. ‘Why are you here?’

‘To pray and fast. Like them,’ she said. ‘For quarantine. .’ ‘Why fast? What will you gain from it?’

She shook her head. She didn’t want to say. She smiled and shrugged and blushed. Musa watched her breasts and shoulders lift. She might be Miri’s age, perhaps, but she was tall and generous, he thought. She was the kind ofwoman Musa would have twenty ofwhen he was rich. She’d move a donkey without arguing. She wouldn’t make a bother of her pregnancy. He wet his lips and smiled at her. ‘Where is the other one?’ he asked. ‘The water thief?’

‘Not us,’ the old man interrupted. ‘We have our own.’ He pointed to the pit in the ground behind his back.

‘What’s there?’ asked Musa, indicating his own grave with, again, the slightest movement of his chin. Miri stepped back, out ofMusa’s sight. She put her hand up to her mouth. Would anybody say, ‘That’s where your wife spent yesterday. She dug that grave for you’? Miri pinched her lips between her fingers.

‘Our water cistern,’ Aphas said. ‘It was already here. . For god provides.’

Already there? Musa was inspired. His mind was as quick and direct as his body was clumsy. He could see a trading opportunity at once, and a fast solution to the problems ofhis unsought delay in the wilderness. Here was an opening for him. God provides, indeed. He looked from face to face to satisfy himself that none of them could be the Galilean and that none of them were worldly or local enough to spot his lie. And then: ‘It’s there because I put it there,’ he said. ‘My land. My water.’ He pointed to the rows ofcaves up in the cliff. ‘My caves.’

Miri took her hand away from her mouth. She had to smile. Her husband was the demon of the mat. She listened with her mouth open while he recounted how he had dug that hole himself, with some help from his wife. He turned his head as best he could and closed an eye at her. She should keep quiet.

It was hard work, he said. The ground was full of stones: ‘My wife is pregnant. Look at her. She’s not as young as me. She isn’t fit to dig a hole in mud let alone in stones. She isn’t big enough to even lift a stone. She broke her fingernails. Show them your hands.’ Miri did as she was told. ‘Hard work,’ he said again. He wasn’t at this point quite sure why he and Miri had dug the hole. He needed time to think, and this he gained by making Miri show her damaged fingernails to each of them. By the time she’d come back to his shoulder he had found the next verse to his song. ‘My little donkey died,’ he said. She was diseased. It was a cruel kindness to end her misery. She was an animal he’d owned since he was a boy. She was his sister. ‘That pit. .’ (the slightest movement of the chin again) ‘. . was to be her grave.’ He couldn’t let a donkey rot, out in the open, not a donkey so much loved, he said. She would attract wolves, or leopards. He didn’t have to tell them how dangerous that was. For everyone. What, then, should he do now? Put the donkey in the grave and bury her under stones, as he had planned? Or let his hard work come to nothing for the sake of a drop of water, and some strangers? He closed his eyes and hummed to himself as if even Solomon would be taxed by such a choice. Here was a further opportunity to think of ways of turning these four into profit.

‘.And then, of course, there is the other matter, too,’ he said at last. The matter of the caves. Accommodation is not free, he explained. They wouldn’t caH in at an inn and expect to eat and sleep for nothing. That was not di^tified or rational. This was not common land, and traveHers would have to pay a tribute of some kind. A token tribute. Nothing large. A gesture only. ‘A sip, a sip, the merest sip,’ he said, and liked the sound of it. They did not have to pay, of course. They could choose to move elsewhere. Aid that was free. They might imagine they could stay and not pay rent. ‘You can imagine, too, how sad I’d be if you decided that,’ he said. ‘And how my hundred burly cousins in these hills might feel justified to come with sticks and tum you out. I only have to belch round here for there to be a storm. Your choice.’ He’d give them till midday to make up their minds.

While the badu concentrated on his hair, the other two men debated what they could do about the water and the caves and Musa’s uncouth cousins. It looked as if their quarantine was doomed. Musa entwined his fingers in his lap and closed his eyes. He made himself too large and placid to defy. His world was such a shapely place. He had the sweetest, simplest plan. He’d stick around until he’d shaken all their pockets out. It wouldn’t take him forty days. He’d have his fingers on the spiralled staff, the silver bracelets, the old man’s purse, the hidden coins in the cloak, in less than ten. He’d have his fingers on the woman’s breasts, as well, if only he could bide his time. She was worth the forty days, and more. He liked her fabrics and her cloths. Her textiles made his penis twitch. His eyes were not entirely shut. He looked at Marta through his lashes. He liked the way she lifted up her tunic hem, and ran the fabric through her fingers like a set of beads.

Marta knew that Musa was watching her. He was as subtle as a hungry dog. Her husband, Thaniel, was a jewel compared to him. She would not want to be married to a man like that; his little wife was hardly better than a slave. But Marta was jealous of Miri, nevertheless. The woman was enslaved perhaps, but sinewy and spirited. . and pregnant. Here was the person that Marta would like to be herself, the one that took her place in dreams, whose warp hung heavy on the weft. Marta had held Miri briefly by the hand when she had come to show her broken fingernails. Their touching skins could not have been more different, the one as full and oily as an olive, the other parchmenty. Marta longed to put her hand on Miri’s stomach and feel the wing-beats of her child. Would that be parchmenty as well? If only babies were contagious, like a fever … If only she could pass her hands through flesh and cup the child inside her palms … If only Miri would agree to seU. .

Marta pulled up the little bag tied into the material of her tunic top, and felt its weight of coins. She could pay. She could pay for Miri’s baby, if only four months could be compressed into the forty days and there was a child for sale. She was prepared to pay for water and for rent, as well, so long as Miri was around. In fact, it was a comfort in someways to pay, because it guaranteed she would not starve or freeze to death, and it would buy her access to Musa’s little slave. She let the bag drop down again on its drawstring, into the warmth and darkness of her clothes. It made the slightest bulge, and made her blush, because she knew that Musa watched the dropping bag and that his eyes had traveUed with it underneath the folds of cloth. She pulled her hair veil down across her face and waited for the old man and Shim, the honey-top, to finish their negotiations and make their bid to Musa.

Musa often claimed that seeing inside the heads ofhis adversaries was, for him, as easy as judging melons by their skins. He knew when they were sweet and ripe. He knew if they held any juice, and where and when to squeeze. He knew when they were cavernous and dry. It was an easy game to play. He was the champion. Hejudged and squeezed his clients in the marketplace, and knew, before they even knew themselves, how much they’d offer as their initial bid as well as what they’d end up paying as the final price. They nearly always gave the game away. Their fingers moved, and speHed out twos and threes and fours. They smiled too much or met his eyes too levelly if they were cheating him. Their breathing changed if they were feeling pressurized. There was a whole vocabulary of casual coughs, finger-tapping, tongues on teeth, false frowns, which told the emperor of trade ifhis suppliers or his buyers were underbidding, backing off, or ready for the deal.

So Shim and Aphas were no contest for a man like Musa. He watched their conversation from his mat – the old man urgent, pressured, volatile; the blond one shamming his indifference to money, numbers, water, rent. If they had any sense, Musa thought, they’d recognize their trading weaknesses and not attempt to better him. How could they better him? They were townspeople, by the looks of it, and far from home. They wouldn’t know the customs of the scrub. Their reasoning would be that every stretch ofland inside a town was owned by someone. Al land was good for goats or corn or rent. Why not the country too? Why not the wilderness? And so they’d end up paying for the water and the caves. They’d not make any fuss, or ask for any proof, not with a hundred cousins in the hills. They might plead poverty at first, and ask that Musa earn a place in their devotions by showing them some charity. But he’d refuse. Charity and loans were the commerce of a fool. No, no, they’d either have to pay, or start their quarantine again, elsewhere, he’d say. No other choice. Perhaps they’d like to gather up their things and go? He’d teH Miri to prepare the donkey for burial in their water cistern. That’s when they’d start to empty out their purses like prodigals and wedding guests.

Musa put his fingers in his lap and tried to calculate what his profit on the day might be. What was the going rate for muddy water and for caves? What could he charge? As much as he could get. The badu with the hennaed hair could hardly contribute, of course. He couldn’t pay in cash. That much was obvious. He couldn’t even talk. ‘He doesn’t have a tongue,’ the sickly Jew had said. But what about the sickly Jew himself? A purse-proud little working man, too dignified to beg for anything, too dull to ever shirk a debt. Such a man would never travel far from home without some silver pieces for the journey. He’d have a money-belt beneath his cloak like every artisan, containing coins and, perhaps, some salt crystals for good luck, plus a twist of sweet resin to catch his fleas. Musa even smiled to himself, though Musa’s smile was thinner than his lips. No fleas on me, he thought. They can’t afford the rent.

This Aphas, though, according to Musa’s reasoning, would do his best to pay the rent. He looked exhausted by the journey, and withered by his sickness, too. He wouldn’t want to move elsewhere. He couldn’t move elsewhere. For this – the water and the cave, the right to rest and stay, the licence to breathe desert air – he’d pay out eight pieces, Musa judged. He’d pay out ten, if pressed. But not, perhaps, a coin more. The blond one would pay eight as well. He’d say it made no difference to him whether he was rich or poor. He would not wish to argue over rent. He’d claim he didn’t need the shelter or the water, that he would settle for the stars and dew, that a thousand cousins did not bother him. And then he’d get his money out and pay.

The woman? Musa peered at her again, and ran his tongue along his teeth. She could afford as much, or more, as the two men. Look at her clothes. Look at her unmarked hands. But let her pay the eight as well. Musa looked up from his calculations. Three eights were twenty-four. That was enough. He’d drop to twenty if he must. He coughed, and motioned to the two men with his chins. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. He didn’t have al day.

He let them have their say. They were intemperate. They offered twenty-five between the four of them, fifteen at once and ten in forty days. Musa was more easily persuaded by their case than they had expected. Twenty-five was not enough, he said. He was insulted by their twenty-five. But it was wrong, perhaps, to deny them water for the sake ofprinciple. That much he would concede. There are traditions even in the wilderness. A traveller can wet his lips and face for free. So, yes, he would accept just the twenty-five pieces ofsilver, but they would have to pay it all at once. He could not have them in his debt. And he accepted, too, their inconvenient request to leave the donkey’s grave unfilled. And in return for his forbearance? The three men could come down to his tent and help to drag the donkey to the precipice.

‘Be friends with me,’ he said. ‘Stay here for forty days. Drink all the water that you want. Pray till you have a camel’s knees.’ He would be neighbourly and could supply them with their daily needs. He had some dates and olives he could seil. Fig cakes. Dried fruit. Goat’s milk. Goat’s meat, if they could match his price. And there was grain which she – his chin was lifted at his wife – will grind and bake for bread. There were rugs and rush bed-mats which they could hire. Lamps, with oil. Camel dung, for fuel. Everything to make their stay more comfortable. Best of all, they could be sure that they were well protected. With Musa as their landlord, no one would dare to come and trouble them, or take advantage of their devotions. His name was known and respected by everybody in the hills and far beyond. Everybody was his cousin, even the scorpions.