‘What was the matter, when you saw his body?’ Miri asked. ‘You gasped. You seemed surprised by him.’
‘I knew his face,’ Marta said. ‘Dear lord, how well I knew his face. That’s how I always knew his face would be.’
‘How could you know his face? You never saw him. You always said he wouldn’t come out of his cave.’
‘I know his face from dreams. If it was dreaming.’
‘You dreamed his face?’
‘A hundred times. Even this morning. Outside the cave …’
‘He was dead this morning! You’ve seen yourself how dead he was.’
‘I watched somebody walking up. I hid. I thought it was your … Don’t make me even say his name. You know. Then I saw him. I knew it had to be the Gally. The same dead face. Just skin and bones. He was as near to me as you are now. I could have touched him. But he touched me. He touched my cuts and bruises. And then he kissed my feet.’
Miri laughed. ‘That only happens in a woman’s dreams.’ ‘He touched my stomach afterwards, like a priest. He said, This is a son for Thaniel. How could he know my husband’s name? He said he’d given me a child, with just his fingertips.’
‘That’s something else that only happens in a woman’s dreams.’
Outside, there was no wailing at the funeral or any ululations to alarm the women. The men did not tear their clothes, or chastise themselves, although chastisement was deserved. But each of them, including Shim, touched the Gally’s bandaged foot, which still protruded from its curtain shroud. They prayed for further miracles. They had to treat his death not as a setback but as an opportunity, a chance to be restored by the blessing of his spirit passing through them on its voyage to his god. Musa prayed the hardest of them all. A touch, a touch, the merest touch, to save him from the world.
The grave had been ankle-deep in water, but the badu, always happy to amuse himself with stones, had lined the bottom so that the bed was hard but dry. They lifted Jesus – all four men as bearers, a limb apiece – and lowered him into the grave, face down. They could presume he was a bachelor, without offspring. He seemed as weightless as a child. What married man or father would leave his family to starve himself to death like this? They sacrificed the wheatear with Musa’s ornamented knife. Its blood pumped on the curtain shroud. Musa dropped its body at the healer’s feet. They filled the grave with earth and stone, hardly speaking to each other, and not looking in the grave until the body was entirely covered. Even Musa kicked a little earth into the grave and sighed as often as he could.
‘This death is hard for me,’ he said, not entirely without truth. ‘I was the only one who really knew the man.’
They marked his grave with forty stones. It seemed appropriate. Their mourning ought to last for three days at the least, they knew. No one should walk or make a fire or cook. They should not wash or shave. They should wear dirty clothes, if they were truly dutiful. But they were not his family and need not spare three days for mourning. His was a stranger’s death despite their vigils at the precipice and all the hopes they’d spent on him. If they were at all despondent, it was because his death showed how much they’d failed themselves. This was only the thirty-first of their forty days, but it would be their last. How could they boast of that, down in the valleys, in the towns? The healer was a disappointment. He’d betrayed them all by dying. Their water cistern had been sacrificed. The tent was flattened. So were they. They’d leave at dawn and put an end to quarantine. There was no choice. The wind had blown all the spirit out of them. The scrub was telling these six trespassers to go.
29
The badu disappeared that night. So did the goats. When everybody came down from the caves at dawn to salvage what they could from the tent for their descent to the valley, the only sign of any animals was dung. Musa checked his store of treasures with which he planned to reassert himself in the summer markets to the north. He opened up the saddle-pack with shaking hands. He half expected to find the badu had replaced his treasures with a rock, but everything was there, untouched. The twist of Berber cloth containing jewellery, some coins and a little gold; the seven perfume bottles.
‘Some thief!’ said Musa.
But still the landlord and his tenants were surprised by the badu. He wasn’t quite as mad as they had thought. He hadn’t had to hand over his silver bracelets to Musa on the last day, as Musa had intended. He hadn’t paid a coin for his food or rent or water. He hadn’t even worked for them, by portering his landlord’s goods down to the road for Jericho as he had promised. And now he had six goats to milk or eat or sell. A decent profit on his thirty days of idleness.
Musa cursed the hundred corners of the sky, and prayed that every demon of the scrub would lie in wait for the little thief with snares and thorns and traps, that he would fall into some pit and starve. But no one really thought the badu would come to any harm. They’d seen him clamber on the precipice. The deepest pit could not imprison him. They’d seen him come back to the caves with deer, and wheatear, and with honeycombs. He couldn’t starve. Besides, he had six goats as his companions. It was almost pleasing, to think of them, the hennaed badu and the swart-haired goats, their bleating conversation and their dainty steps, making their escape across the scrub. Aphas and Marta, Miri even, wished the badu well. He’d bettered Musa. They’d dreamed of doing something similar themselves.
But it was Shim who seemed most angry and betrayed. Had he perhaps become fond of the badu, or was it simply that he felt a little safer with him in their company? What could the old man or the women do to intervene, if Musa caught him by his ankle again and decided to pluck his toes off his foot like unripe berries? They were too weak and frightened of the man to do anything but watch. The badu, though, had seemed disturbed and kind enough to give some help, and now he’d disappeared. Shim called for him, just in case, but he didn’t answer or appear. Shim even went down to the promontory to see if the badu was sitting there, or climbing on the precipice, but there was no sign of any living thing. Even the Gally’s cave seemed untouched. It seemed unreachable, in fact. No one with any sense would try to climb down to it without a ladder and some rope. ‘A stupid boy, a very stupid boy,’ he thought, to soften the defeat of not remaining on his own up at the caves until the end of quarantine. He ought to stay behind, but the truth of Musa’s challenge from two days before was ringing in his head: ‘Take your chances like a fox. Pray for water to appear. Let’s see how you live without a water-bag.’ The Gally hadn’t lasted very long without a water-bag.
No, Shim would not waste another day on this mad enterprise. He’d take no risks. He’d stay as quiet as possible. He’d do as he was told for a change. And by the evening he would be released from his landlord and the scrub for ever. He was not happy when Musa asked to borrow his curling staff for the long walk across the plateau and the descent down to the valley road, but it was a sacrifice that Shim would make without a protest. A man of education and enlightenment should not attach himself too madly to a mere possession. Tranquillity and self-respect were more important than a length of wood. He’d not relinquish those to Musa. But let him have the wood.
Musa sent the two men ahead. They had been given heavy loads. Their progress would be slow. In addition to his own possessions – his rush bed-mat, his cloak, his water-bag – Shim had to carry two saddle-packs of Musa’s goods, strapped across his back, a rug and bedding on his shoulders and a half-full woven sack of grain in his hands. Aphas, in deference to his age and illness, only had two bags of utensils to transport. Bulky but not weighty. The women would have to carry what was left. Some clothes and wools, dried fruit and another woven bag of odds-and-ends for Marta. The heavy water-bags and two camel panniers for Miri, draped round her neck on ropes, with the still-unknotted birth-mat between the ropes and her skin to prevent chafing.
Musa would not carry anything himself, except the staff. That was his golden rule for travelling, to have his hands free in readiness for trade and conversation. A merchant
must not seem to be a camel. He had to come and go without encumbrance. He wanted, if he had the chance, to make his peace with Marta. That was really why he’d sent the men ahead, to give him time alone with her. Yesterday seemed such an age away. He’d buried what he’d done to her along with Jesus. The wake was over. They should begin anew. But Marta stuck closely to his wife, like some shy girl. If he came close to her, then she moved away. She would not even look at him, he’d noticed, or answer him with anything beyond a whisper, passed through Miri.
Musa understood her awkwardness, of course. A woman guilty of adultery, willingly or not, would be embarrassed for herself, or fearful that her husband might find out and have her stoned. But he would tell her that she had nothing to be frightened of. What happens between people in the privacy of night is hidden even from the scrutiny of god. For god must sleep. And men and women ought to make the most of it. He’d give her one of the little phials of perfume, well, half a phial, if she’d only lift her head and look at him. That should be enough to make amends.
What should he do about the tent? It would not satisfy him to leave the wreckage there, as Miri suggested, and allow their misfortunes with the wind to benefit some undeserving traveller or provide free shelter for the badu, should he still be in the scrub. So Musa had the women pile up the poles and walls of the tent, and throw on anything that would burn – the bits of damaged cloth, torn curtains and rush beds, the pieces of the broken loom, even uprooted bushes.
‘Go on ahead,’ he said to Miri. Marta turned away. ‘And wait for me when you get to the top of the scree.’ He was a small, spoilt boy who wanted to light a fire and enjoy the damage and the flames all by himself.
Musa took his flintstones from their pouch and struck a spark on to a little pile of kindling. There was, thankfully, no wind. The flame seemed eager to oblige. He added twigs, and soon had sufficient heat and flame to make himself a brand of sticks and cloth.
The bushes were the first to flare. Blue flames, and then grey smoke as what little sap there was inside the stems bubbled out of the wood. The loom and tent poles soon joined in, but were made from harder woods and burned more slowly and with whiter smoke. Then the goat-hair tent sides gave in to the heat. They did not burn. There were no flames from them. They blackened, reddened, glowed and fell apart. They smelled like sacrificial meat. Their smoke was yellower and more determined than the thorns’. It hung above the ground like a sulphur mist at first, but finally was lifted up in narrow braids into the cooler air above.
There was no one to help Musa now. His uncles and his cousins were as insubstantial as the smoke. His two porters were out of sight. The women were too far away to call. The silence in the scrub was so deeply brewed that Musa did not know if he should cry out loud for joy or for help. He left the fire to itself and set off, across the scrub, and through the wind-blown remnants of his life. There was a copper pot he recognized. Some cloth. A scarf. He walked as quickly as he could to seek the company of women.
And there his fever devil stayed, below the caves, its feet in flames, its body shrouded in the yellow smoke. It curled above the salty scrub, shivering and abandoned, insubstantial and attached to no one, biding its time.
30
Marta and Miri had not stopped to watch the smoke. They were too busy walking. They hardly talked. The path was difficult and narrow, and kept them apart for much of the time. Even when they reached the wider tracks worn by the many caravans which came across these hills to Jericho they did not walk side by side. Marta led the way, nervously avoiding any vegetation and rocky ground where there might be snakes or scorpions, but she hurried nevertheless, hastened by a mixture of fear and excitement. Ahead was better than behind.
Miri needed space around her to cope with the panniers and water-bags which she was carrying. The birth-mat, wrapped round her shoulders to stop the ropes from cutting into her, soaked up the sun and soon was wet and heavy with her sweat. She was a bit annoyed with Marta. She had expected her to take her time, to stay as close as possible, so that they could at least stretch out to touch each other once in a while or exchange a word or two on their last day together. Miri knew that she and Marta would have to go their separate ways as soon as they had reached the trading road. Sawiya was a village near Jerusalem, towards the west. The summer markets where her husband would want to go were beyond Jericho, far to the north. But Miri’s friend was rushing ahead far too quickly and was impatient if Miri walked too slowly or started to chatter.
It was easy for Marta to hurry, thought Miri. She only had one bag to carry and some clothes. Her load was relatively light for such a tall and wide-boned woman. And she was not six months pregnant with a child. Her hips and back were not oppressing her. ‘Slow down, slow down,’ she said a few times to herself. But not too loudly. She was increasingly annoyed and tired, but beyond all that she understood why Marta seemed so selfish and distracted. She had been raped. She was weighed down with twenty panniers of fear. The fattest man in Judea was sitting on her back. Of course she’d want to break away from him.
Miri could have stopped and rested had she wanted to. She could have found some block of shade and waited for her husband. Then she could have walked at his slow pace and made Marta wait alone for them at the summit of the landfall where the scrub collapsed into a steep ravine of scree. But Miri wanted time alone with Marta. She wanted to recapture, if it were possible, the cheerful times when they had worked together on the loom. The landfall was the final opportunity for them to finish what they’d started. While her slow husband laboured like a swaying cart across the scrub, she and Marta could sit cross-legged, facing each other, with the purple and orange birth-mat stretched between them. They’d spread the still untied ends across their laps. They’d bunch the warps in fours and each complete the birth-mat with a hundred knots. They’d finalize their bold, unlikely friendship by tying it into the bold, unlikely wools.
So Miri did her best to keep her friend within sight. It didn’t matter that her arms felt stretched and that her shoulders ached almost beyond endurance so long as she could still see Marta walking ahead of her. By early afternoon they had crossed the plateau and were waiting side by side, at last, at the summit of the landfall as Musa had instructed. Below them, Shim and Aphas had already begun the descent. They could see Shim’s blond head and hear the tumbling scree as he slid through the stones. Aphas was a little way behind, using all the larger rocks to steady himself but moving quickly for a man who’d been so faltering and ill. They were not carrying their loads.
‘Look there,’ said Marta, pointing to a ledge of rocks a few steps from the summit of the scree. There were Musa’s saddle-packs, the rugs and bedding, the sack of grain, the two bags of utensils. The men had simply dumped them there and fled.
Miri dropped her bags and panniers where she stood and stretched her arms and shoulders to relieve the pain, and drank a little water from the bag. It was too warm to be refreshing. Now she had an extra worry. Her husband would be furious when he discovered how his porters had betrayed him. Who’d pay for that? Who’d have to add the saddle-packs, the rugs and bedding, the sack of grain, the two bags of utensils to her load? His wife, of course. But she kept her worries hidden. She couldn’t bring herself to speak to Marta yet. She did roll out the birth-mat, though. She sat with one end on her lap, as she had planned, and began to bunch and tie the threads. She’d see if Marta volunteered to help without asking. She’d not forgive her otherwise. But Marta did not volunteer to help. She stood and looked out across the valley to the peaks of Moab. Her lip, in profile, was still fat and misshapen. Her hands were trembling.
‘Come on,’ said Miri. ‘Sit down with me. Let’s finish this. Before he comes.’
They had not finished it when Musa finally came into view. He waved Shim’s staff at them from the sloping plateau which led down to the landfall, and called, ‘Wait there.’ He was tired of his own company. He hadn’t spent so much time alone and without assistance for years. The journey so
far had been unnerving and exhausting. His ankles ached. His chest was tight. He had to pause after every few steps to catch his breath. He’d not been born for walking. Just one more day, and he’d be back with camels where he belonged. Only the landfall stood between him and the markets of Jericho.
It would be difficult to go down the landfall. He knew how treacherous the scree could be for anyone as large as him. He had already pictured how stones would fall out beneath his feet and slide away, how larger rocks would tumble at him from above. He’d need the women to take him by the elbows and help him down. Marta would refuse, of course. She would not want to touch him.