Текст книги "Quarantine"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

Соавторы: Jim Crace
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Musa spat on to his hand and called the three male quarantiners forward to close their deal. ‘Just one more thing,’ he said, ‘and then it’s done’: when the forty days were up, then they could show their thanks by helping him to carry his possessions and the tent down to the track which led to Jericho. They could be his donkeys for a day. In return, he wouldn’t make them pay him any passage tax for travelling through his territory. That much was free.

‘What do you say? Is this not better than you hoped?’

Musa felt – as ever – pleased to be himself. He had found the morning unexpectedly amusing, and satisfying, too, despite the absence of the Galilean man. Already his retinue and his clientele had grown. His wealth increased. His dreams came true. The caravan and his deceitful uncles could be buried beneath the pleasures of the day. Everyone he met, it seemed, except the badu (and he would have to pay some other price) was opening a purse and inviting him to put his fingers in. And why? To pay for earth and air and water that was the property of god. If every market-place was full of fools like these three fools, he’d only have to dig a pit and watch while people threw their money in. Al this – and all within a day of riding fever to the open gates of death. He was invincible.

He made Shim lend him his staff for the walk back to the tent. It was downhill but hardly easier than coming up. His feet, unseen beyond his waist, descended into empty space. Musa had to place the staff ahead of him, feel for solid ground, and send his weight along its spiralled length, before he dared to shuffle forward. His fever had weakened him. He was immensely slow. But languor was the right of merchant kings when they were weighed down with the prizes of the market-place.

Luckily, his five companions were in no hurry for themselves. They had forty days to fill. This interlude with Musa was, at least, less wearying than unbroken prayer. Aphas, anyway, was glad to be as slow as Musa, but his steps were weightless. He did his best to listen to Shim’s teachings and expostulations, to nod with recognition at the places that he named, but he could only concentrate on his increasing pain. His ankles felt as fragile as an unfired pot. His cankered liver nagged and lobbied without cease. The heat was punishing. He’d been a stonemason aH his working life, perhaps, but none ofthese stones in his path offered any solace. They were only nuisances. A little distance to the side, and behind the men, Marta walked with Miri, their bodies brushing, their hems in unison. The badu ran ahead and cleared the path. He was a volunteer. He seemed to find the rocks and stones amusing, laughing at them as he turned them on their sides. The badu’s cries were strange – unformed and blustering. A vulture looking down on them and smelling death and fat and pregnancy, as they left their thousand footprints in the clay and emerged from the little valley on to the plateau of the tent, would be hard pressed to guess which one would be its carrion.

Musa was exhausted when he reached the tent. He went inside for rest, and for some private moments with his flask of date spirit. He felt the fabrics of the bed. He ran his fingers through his wools, and thought of Marta, naked, waiting to be draped in narrow lengths of cloth. The women sat cross-legged in shade, outside. They were whispering, but Musa didn’t care what women had to say. He lay back on his cushions, looked out through the open awning and watched the three men circling the donkey’s carcass, holding their noses, shaking their heads like undertakers. Aphas shook his head because he did not want to help with burial. He was too old and tired and il. A Jew that touched a donkey corpse would be unclean until the night, and then would have to purify himself in water that should, at least, be cleaner than the water in the cistern.

The other two shook their heads because they’d never seen an animal so bludgeoned. Musa smiled. So now they’d understand what kind of man he was, what sort oflandlord he could be. He watched the badu and the blond man stoop to test the donkey’s weight. Miri had been right. The carcass was too heavy for a woman to move on her own, despite the loss ofblood and eyes and entrails. But these two men were strong and evidently not concerned about the weight or smell. The blond one, Musa noticed, was more powerful than he appeared to be at first. The badu was not powerful at al, but sinewy. They disposed of Musa’sjenny with speed and energy. He watched them drag the donkey by her legs, leaving a trail of blood and flies across the scrub to the smooth and stoneless slope which led to the rim of the precipice. He could not see the donkey now,just the shrinking heads and shoulders of the two men.

Musa – already resurrected by his drink – half expected that a f ifth figure, the water thief, would appear out of the wilderness to lend a hand. The air was heavy with the presence of the man. Would he shake water on the donkey’s face, caress her eyelids with his thumb, and bid the donkey to ‘Be well again’? Or would he join the hennaed hair and the blond as they pulled up the back legs of the animal and tipped her body off the precipice to float for half a moment in mid-air and then to drop into the grieving shadows of the cliff? Shim shouted with excitement on the steep decline, ‘Let fly, let fly’, as if the donkey were a dove.

10

A lesser person, Jesus thought as he departed from the dying body in the tent on that first afternoon, would lose his nerve and head back for the way-marked caves, up in the hills. That was the easy path. He had seen the footprints of the little group of travellers who had preceded him, deviating from the camel trail. He could have followed them and passed his quarantine in company, tucked into the folds of clay, amongst the poppies, and exposed to nothing worse than forty days of boredom and discomfort. But Jesus had a harsher challenge for himself. Quite what it was he didn’t know. He only understood that he should choose a way that was more punishing. The worse it was, the better it would be. That, surely, was the purpose ofthe wilderness. He knew the scriptures and the stories ofthe prophets. Triumph over hardship was their proof of holiness.

He had decided to climb down to the key-hole cave that he had spotted earlier that morning, when his mood was stil reckless and ambitious. He was elated by the distance he had put between himself and his parents. Anything seemed possible. He had not yet begun the hard, dispiriting ascent up the landfall into the hiEs. Perhaps if he had been more tired when he had seen the hanging cave he would have set his heart on somewhere more attainable. But, invigorated by a shepherd’s breakfast – goat’s cheese and bread – and a good night’s sleep in sweet straw, it was not difficult for Jesus to believe that god had drawn his eyes to that cave in the precipice, and for a purpose. God was testing him. God was waiting for him at the cave. If only he could face the climb down – and Jesus, even as a boy, had never cared for clambering on cliffs, or trees, or rooftops – he could spend his quarantine with god for company. He could tuck himself into the folds of god.

Here was a man who’d been a simple-hearted child, much loved and loving, nervous and obedient; quick to listen, happy to believe whatever he was told; observant in his prayers and rituals. Unremarkable, in fact. Except in this: by the time he was thirteen or so, he was the only one among his friends who behaved as if the customs and routines of their religion were anything more than tiresome duties. He was the only adolescent in the neighbourhood who demanded more from god than festivals and regimens and rules. He loved his prayers, like a child. They were a comfort to him. More comforting than food or sleep, it seemed. And just as well, because he didn’t sleep enough for someone of his age, his mother thought. He didn’t eat enough. He dozed and grazed on his devotions, like a priest. Except, unlike most priests, his devotions did not make him ^mild and fat. He was as skittish, pale and narrow-shouldered as a goose. The neighbours called him Gaily, a common nickname for a Galilean boy whose accent was strong, but ideal for Jesus. He was like a gaily fly. He could not rest.

In his mid-teens, Jesus grew much taller suddenly; long and timid and even more preoccupied with prayers. ‘His head’s in heaven, with the angels and the doves,’ was the local joke. ‘.Any day now, and his feet’ll leave the ground.’ It was a judgement that satisfiedJesus. He was indeed in heaven, for he had discovered ways of praying that were more than simply comforting. They were chaotic and exalting. When Jesus prayed, there came a point where the words were speaking him; and he became their object, not their source. Sometimes these prayers spoke him in Greek or Aramaic. He would listen to himselfand tryto memorize the wisdoms that he heard. Was this how Moses kept in touch with god? But there were occasions, more mystifying, feverish, and blissful, when the language was unknown, a tripping, spittle– basted tongue, plosive and percussive and high-pitched. Then, if he was left undisturbed for long enough with these wildrhapsodies, he might feel his spirit soften and solidify at once. He was an egg immersed in boiling water, a fusing and dividing trinity of yolk and white and shell. In that respect, he was transformed by god like other boys his age were changed by girls.

His mother and his father would not leave him undisturbed for long enough to be transformed as often as he liked. They shook him by the shoulders when they found him sodden with his prayers, or sent one ofhis brothers to distract him. Devotion, yes; by al means let him be a righteous Jew, they said. They would encourage it. But unremitting piety like his was suitable for old men, not for boys. Why was he not more like their other sons, dragged unwillingly from their cots each morning by their exasperated parents? Jesus was unnatural; an adolescent dragged unwillingly from prayer. His mother feared she’d never find a wife for him, he’d never put on any flesh, not while he prayed so often and with such riotous solenmity.

Finally, his father took advice from the priest, a subtle and subversive man, who understood the fervours and elations of the young and liked to keep the company ofless pious adolescents than Jesus. He took the mumbled prayers to be, like sniggering and whistling, an irritating habit for a boy. He recommended thatJesus’s devotions should be more actively discouraged. ‘He has to learn that there are important duties other than prayer,’ he said. ‘Give him more things to do about the house. Get him to help you with the carpentry. Make him so tired he only wants to sleep. Throw water on him if he starts to pray in gibberish. Don’t be ashamed to use a stick. He’ll grow out of this the moment that he starts a beard. It’s just his age.’

The priest was right. By the time Jesus’s chin and upper lip were wispy with hair, the prayers seemed to have abandoned him. His private languages disappeared, like adolescent boils. He resembled the neighbours’ sons at last, except he was more nervous and more serious, a touch bereft perhaps. At least he wasn’t rising off the ground and nudging angels with his head. He even ate and slept.

Yet, despite appearances, Jesus had not lost any ofhis passion for god. He did not need to move his lips to pray. He’d reached the stage where every breath was prayer, where all the steps and sounds he made were verses for god, where everything was touched with holiness: a heel ofbread, the soundless comers of the house when he woke up, the cobwebbed shadows on the day-white waHs, the motes of sawdust hanging in the window light, the patterns on his fingertips. God in everything and everything in god. Even with his father in the workshop, cutting wood and making frames, he found there was a rhythm to the bow-drill and the draw-knife and the plane which took the place of prayer. Every movement was a repetition; every repetition was a word. The timber and the tools took on new meanings. The knots in wood were sins. Twisted wood was devil’s work and should be thrown out or burned.

Once or twice, immersed in reveries of light and work and wood, he had neared and glimpsed the large and inexplicable itself. To be alive amongst the sawdust and the stars was beyond understanding; to be this person, in this place, and now. Even to contemplate that puzzle was to stray too far from safer paths, to sweat and shiver in that hollow room which has no doors or waHs, where Never End and Never Start hold their invisible debate. There’d be no echo there to comfort him, or anyone. No dark or light. Not even any time. And only god – if only god would show himself – to make much sense of it. Faith or dismay, that was the choice. Choose Never End or Never Start.

Choose god or pandemonium. When Jesus chose and put his faith in god, he blinked away the hollow room. He brought the wood, the tools, the workshop into focus once more. His spirit softened and solidified again, as it had done when he was in his teens, except more bleakly. It formed a question to be put to god. A question taken from the hollow room. A question that a child would ask. This was his question for the wilderness. The question of a simple-hearted, fragile man – guileless in his love ofgod, spontaneous and vulnerable in his beliefs. You see these motes, this dust, this bread, these soundless comers hung with webs, these fingertips, engraved with tiny lines? What for, and why?

No wonder Jesus was a clumsy carpenter. He would have built a leaking ark. He concentrated on the large and inexplicable, and neglected what was on his bench. He cut or hit his f ngers far too many times. God’s patterns on his fingertips were scarred. But he was happy to have wounds. The wounds were prayers, and answers to his prayers. His prayers drew blood.

The wilderness was large and inexplicable as well. Only an innocent would try to tackle it with nothing on his feet, and leave his water-skin and overcloak behind. But Jesus had to put his trust in god’s provision for the forty days, and could hardly pack a bag with clothes and food as a reserve against shortfalls. He did his best to persuade himself that god was at his shoulder at that very moment, supplying al the courage that it took to get up from the woven comforts of the dying merchant’s tent and set off in the falling light towards the cliff-top. But he had found it difficult to pray, away from home. It was hard to concentrate on god when his feet were so sore. He found it easier to summon up his parents and his brothers, and his Galilean neighbours, and their priest. They were transported to the scrub to witness him. At first, they would be laughing at his foolishness.

Their god-struck, visionary boy, too shy to look them in the eye, who’d hid himself in gabbling scriptures, had gone off in a temper to the hills. Their Gaily was absurd. Look at his bleeding feet. Look at his flaking lips. Observe that holy, love-lorn look across his face. See how he hardly manages that little climb up to the ridge. They would expect him to be weak, to tum back at the challenge of the landfall, to take the easy path up to the poppy caves, to fall asleep inside the merchant’s tent. But when they saw him persevere they would wonder at his fortitude and say, ‘We never knew him after all.’ He could not quite admit it to himself but Jesus took more courage from the thought of surprising his parents than he took from satisfying god.

But, in these final moments of his journey, between the tent and cave, Jesus was a tired and disappointed man. He did not feel much welcomed by the scrub. Its textures were harsh and colourless. Its skies were far too large and low. He’d been naive. He’d hoped for greater hospitality, that the path would rid itself of stones and sweep away its thorns for him. God’s unfinished landscape would provide a way, he thought. The scrubland would recognize his simple dress, his solemn purposes, his modesty. Its hils would flatten. Its rocks would soften. It would protect his naked feet. This, after ail, was the path that led to god, still at work on his creation. So the path should become more heavenly, more freshly formed, safer at every step. It should become an infant Galilee. The winds should be more musical. The light should shiver and the air should smell of offerings. But god had left the thorns and stones in place across the scrub.

At last, in the approaches to the cliff-top where Jesus had to find the way down to his lodgings for the night, the scrub began to slope, eroded by flash floods and centuries of wind. There were no plants. Here, the soil was smooth and crumbling and dangerous. Al the loosened stones of any size had rolled away and fallen to the scree pans on the valley floor. Somewhere along the precipice, the latest rock fell free. It made its noisy, tumbling farewell to the slope, and bounced into the weightless silence of its fall. Any nervous man like Jesus, only used to Galilean heights and daunted by the receding ground, would feel afraid of being like that stone. He should not, therefore, have felt ashamed of getting down on his hands and knees and edging forwards on all-fours, like a sheep, towards the fragile brink of the cliff. But Jesus was ashamed, and frightened, too. Frightened that he would end up amongst the scree. Frightened of the night ahead. Frightened of his quarantine.

This was the final opportunity for Jesus to turn around and go back to the tent. It would not be hard to justify such a short retreat – his religious duty was to help a dying man. Perhaps he ought to settle for the easy caves up in the hills. That might have been god’s intention all along. ButJesus was too nervous to stand up and flee. He felt like Yehoch, perching on the temple roof, caHing out for angels and for ropes, because he could not tell if he should put his trust in god or men. The optimist and innocent who had set off that morning from the shepherd’s hut had now become a pessimist. Jesus had persuaded himself earlier that day that creation was continuing in these hills. Look at the lack of trees, he’d told himself, the thinness ofplants and grasses. God would be at work stiH. This was the edge of god’s unfinished universe. But what on earth could god complete on this despairing precipice? Where were his fingerprints? What work was there to do? Every Galilean knew that vegetation was the fruit of god’s union with the earth. There was no vegetation on these slopes. Perhaps there was no god either. Perhaps this was the devil’s realm. The stones were sinners. And the scree was heH.

Jesus hung on with his naked hands and feet. He was ashamed. His neighbours and his family were watching him. They were his witnesses. ‘Ah, yes,’ they’d say. ‘He’s fallen now, down on his knees. Look at him crawl.’

He had no choice. He hung his head over the precipice, and looked from left to right, for a descending path, and any evidence of caves. The light was poor, but he was lucky. He could not see his cave, or any cave, but he could see a sloping rock similar to the one which fo^ed the front deck to his chosen sanctuary. The perfect perch for eagles, and for angels, he had said. Except there were no eagles nor any angels, just ravens and the falling debris of the cliff.

One ofthe ravens landed close toJesus, turned its head a dozen times, inspecting him for food, and then flew off, calling out its disappointment – tok-tok, tok-tok, tok-tok. Its voice was unmistakable, more like a carpenter’s than a bird’ s. He’d made the noise himself a thousand times – the impact of a tool on wood. But, although he tried his best, Jesus could not take it as a sign that god was calling him. He had expected signs all day, it’s true. Some shaft of sunshine, picking out a rock. Some burning bush. A distant voice, perhaps, to tell him how he ought to reach his cave. A white dove, yes; or the elated song of a warbler might carry messages from god. But tok-tok-tok? God would be more eloquent than that. Jesus had to wait for quite a while, clinging like an insect to his slope, before a better sign was offered him. A steady flight of storks, corning up from Egypt to the north – the Sea of Galilee, perhaps – were passing overhead. A sign ofspring. One dropped below its companions and flew along the massive, sheer cliffs of the valley. Its white shoulders and body were briefly highlighted by the sun against the greys and browns. Then it shrank away so far that it became a duck, a dove, a fading speck of white, a mote ofsawdust in the window light. The moment that it disappeared, Jesus told himself, would be the moment that he moved.

So Jesus took his courage from the stork to edge along the cliff on hands and knees, looking for a way down to his cave. It was not difficult. It was not long before the ground grew rougher underfoot and underhand. There was a rockfail, where the land had split and slipped, like a broken crust of bread. Jesus started to climb down. The marl was soft enough to crumble between his fingers. There were struggling signs ofgod’s creation, at last. A few opportunist plants – morning star, hyssop, saltwood – had taken root in the crevices and on the leeward side ofrocks. They lent their odour to the climb and left their muffled blessings on his palms whenever he took hold of them. Hyssop was familiar, a herb for eggs and f ish, but now it was the smeil of vertigo and fear. When the rockfall steepened, Jesus descended on his thighs, facing outwards. The ground was loose but firm enough to take his weight. He did not trust his feet. They were already tom and bleeding from the walk and now were further scratched and battered by the earth. He tried to put as much weight as he could on to his hands and thighs as he went down below the level of the slope on to the precipice. He had to hurry. It was almost dusk. The cliffs were facing east. The sunlight ended sharply. He was climbing on the dark side of the world, his back pressed hard against the earth.

He reached his lodgings for the night more easily than he had expected. The route was steep but well provided with handholds and platforms for his feet. His fear of heights and falling rocks made him quick and nimble for a change. He was propelled. He almost found the climbing pleasurable. He was the boy he’d never been.

The entrance was much larger than he’d thought. The cave was deep. There was no sign of life, not even any bird lime on the rocks, or sand-fish burrows. No screaming bats. No perching angels. He called out from the rocky platform at the cave’s mouth. The echo of his nervous greeting came back twice. ‘Is anybody there ody there ody there?’ He wept, of course. What young man, alone in such a wilderness, wouldn’t weep to hear his own voice mocking him and reassuring him? No echo would be worse. He couldn’t light a fire or lamp. There wasn’t any food or drink to comfort him, but he had eaten anyway, in the merchant’s tent and in the shepherd’s hut. Two meals that day. He couldn’t think what he should do. Give thanks? Protect the entrance of the cave with stones? It was too cold to sit outside and watch the stars come out. He hadn’t brought a cloak to wrap around himself So he found a pocket of warm air, out of the draughts, and curled up on the dry clay in the cave, in his thin clothes. He made a pillow of his open palm, still smelling of the hyssop, and protected his body with his elbows and his knees as if he thought he might be kicked by demons. Would there be scorpions or snakes? Would there be nightmares? He closed his eyes. He brought his lids down on his fear. He put his trust in god; an optimist again. He could rest. He could rely on god’s provision, yes. The travelling was over. He fell asleep, almost at once.

Sleep is a medicine. When he woke up on his first day of quarantine, his spirit was repaired, as was his confidence. There was no walking to be done that day. He did not have to climb. He only had to shake the stiffness from his limbs and go outside to meet the day. The rosy epaulettes of light on the peaks of Moab which Marta was admiring at that same moment from her own cave entrance, seemed heavenly to Jesus. He sat crosslegged on his angel perch. He could hear the bluster of a wind, blowing on the cliff-tops and the hills, but not descending to his cave. God was taking care of him. Jesus would explore the cave when it was fully light outside, but for the moment he simply waited for the epaulettes to spread into a cloak, and for the cloak to throw its wa^th across his shoulders. Time was slow, of course. He filled it with prayer, and thinking of his parents

watching him pray. They couldn’t come and shake him now.

There was nothing else for Jesus to do, except to simplify his life. Repentance, meditation, prayer. Those were the joys of solitude. They had sustained the prophets for a thousand years. And they would be his daily companions. He started rocking with each word of prayer, putting all his body into it, speaking it out loud, concentrating on the sound, so that no part of him could be concerned with lesser matters or be reminded of the fear, the hunger and the chill. He seemed to find his adolescent rhapsodies. The prayers were in command of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise he made. The common words lost hold of sound. The consonants coUapsed. He called on god to join him in the cave with all the noises that his lips could make. He called with all the voices in his throat. He clacked his tongue against his mouth, Tok-tok tok-tok tok-tok.

He must have recited a hundred prayers that morning, before the sun obliged and wa^ed him through. His prayers brought up the sun. His prayers suppressed his appetite. His prayers picked out the sunlight on the dead and silver sea and hardened it. It turned it into jeweUery. The water was as solid as a silver plate. It rose from the distant valley into the mid-air haze. Jesus had to look at it through half-closed eyes, it was so bright. The more he looked, the more transformed he felt. He could have taken this to be the natural way of water and light. But Jesus had not come this far to witness only godless routines of the sun and sky and sea. He had to take each shift of light, each colouring, each shadow of a bird to be the evidence of god. He had to persuade himself, before the forty days were up, that he’d been awarded a brief view of god’s kingdom. Let the silver plate be paradise. Let god be calling out to give to him his new commandments, as he had given al his laws to Jews in this same wilderness. What would his parents and his neighbours say when he went back to

preach the word of god? They would not shake his shoulders, send his brothers to distract him, use the stick. They would rejoice in him. He could congratulate himself, and did. He was shoeless, homeless, without food. He’d slept on naked ground. But he was at last without fear or sorrow. ‘^m I not free?’ he asked himself, ‘Am I not blessed?’

Finally it was too warm to sit out in the sun, and he was trursty. He put a pebble in his mouth. He went back to the cave and slept again, just inside the entrance. He dreamed he was a. common fly and climbing down a crust ofbread. It broke away. He fell with crumbs ofbread between his legs. His wings weren’t any use. He fell awake. Flies on his face were feeding on the mucus of his nose and eyes and lips. There was indeed a noise of falling without wings. A few stones dropped outside his cave. A little further along the cliff a new landslip was underway. God’s footfall made its mark on earth.

The earth had quietened by the time that Jesus went outside. There was nothing on the precipice to see, but there were voices and movements on the rim above. He turned his back to Moab and looked towards the sununit of the cliffs. Dust fell on his face and hair. A pebble hit his shoulder. His company had come at last; rus guide, his god, his friend. He would not pass his quarantine alone. He waited for a face to show itself. Perhaps there was a face already; he was not sure. He thought he saw the blond hair of an angel and a face the colour of a honeycomb. He thought he heard a joyful voice call out, in a mocking echo ofhis dream, ‘Fly, fly. .’ Were they the words? There was a further fall of earth and then there was a vision that he could not understand. Its meaning was obscure and dark and troubling. A donkey seemed to come out of mid-air, falling through the sky at him. It dropped down the precipice to the right ofhis cave. It turned. It hit the rocks and bounced once more, high above the valley. Then it fell towards the silver plate. A sacrifice towards the silver plate. Its legs were wings. It seemed to have no weight, no eyes. Its head was loose like cloth, as if the bones along its neck were less substantial than the air.