Quarantine (2 page)

the end, and bury Musa on her own.

She'd have to put up stones to mark her husband's passing

and tend his grave until the caravan returned for her. She would

be safe and comfortable if she took care. There was sufficient

water in skins for a week or so, and then she could locate a

cistern of some kind; there were also figs and olives and some

grain, some salted meat and other food, plus the tent, the family

possessiOns, small amounts of different wools, a knife, some

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perfume and a little gold. She'd have company as well. They'd

leave six goats for her, plus a halting donkey which was too slow

and useless for the caravan. Two donkeys then. Both lame, she

said, nodding at her husband.

Nobody laughed at Miri's indiscretions. It did not seem appropriate to laugh when there was fever in the tent, though leaving Musa behind, half dead, was a satisfying prospect for everyone.

With luck, they said, Musa would only have to endure his

suffering for a day or two more. And then? And then, when

Miri had done her duty to her husband, they suggested, there

would be habitations in the valley where she could, perhaps,

seek refuge. She might find a buyer for the gold; take care, they

warned, for gold can bring bad luck as well. Or she might employ

the goats to buy herself a place to stay for her confinement -

until the caravan had a chance to come for her and any child, if

it survived. Eventually, she'd have the profits from her husband's

merchandise which they would trade on her behalf, the sacks of

decorated copperware from Edom, his beloved bolts of woven

cloth, his coloured wools. She smiled at that and shook her head

and asked if they imagined that she was a halting donkey too.

No, no, they said; why couldn't she have more faith in their

honesty? Of course there would be profits from the sale. They

would not want to say how much. But she might be rich enough

to get another husband. A better one than Musa anyhow, they

thought. A smaller one. An older one. One that didn't lie or use

his fists so frequently, or shout and weep and laugh so much.

One who didn't get so drunk, perhaps, then sit up half the night

throwing pebbles at the camels and his neighbours' tents, pelting

goats' dung at the moon. One that didn't stink so badly as he

died.

They promised they would return by the following spring,

one year at the latest. But Miri understood there'd be no spring

to bring them back, no matter where they went. They'd make

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certain that their winters didn't end. Why would they come so

far to reclaim the widow and the orphan of a man who'd been

so troublesome and unpredictable? Besides, they wouldn't want

to lose the profits they had made. Not after they had held them

for a year. No, Miri was not worth the trip. That was the plain,

commercial truth.

So Miri let them go. She spat into the dust as they set off

along the crumbling cliff-tops to the landslip where they could

begin their descent. Spitting brought good luck for traders. Deals

were struck with a drop of spit on a coin or in the palm of the

hand or sometimes even on the goods to be exchanged. Spit

does better business than a sneeze, they said. So, if anyone had

dared to look at Miri, they could have taken her spitting to be

a blessing for their journey. But no one dared. They must have

known that she did not wish them well. They'd given her the

chance to change her life, perhaps. But inadvertently. No, Miri

despised them for their haste and cowardice. Her spitting was a

prayer that they would lame themselves, or lose their cargoes in

the Jordan, or have their throats sliced open by thieves, their

eyes pecked out by birds. She felt elated, once the uncles and

their animals had gone. Then she was depressed and terrified.

And then entirely calm, despite the isolation of their tent and

the nearness of her husband's death. She would not concern

herself with the practicalities oflife. Not yet. Women managed

with much less. For the moment she could only concentrate on

all the liberties of widowhood - and motherhood - which would

be hers as soon as he was dead.

It was midday, and Miri opened up the outer awnings of the

tent so that she could both clear the air of death's bad breath and

inspect the landscape for signs oflife. Did she expect the caravan,

already troubled by its conscience, to tum around for her? Or

was she simply fearful of the leopards, wolves and snakes which

were at home amongst these hills? She sat cross-legged in bands

of sunlight, next to her husband's wrapped body, her hand resting

almost tenderly on his ankles. He had a fading pulse. And he

was all but silent now. A whistling throat, that's all. He'd lost

the strength to shout. And he was cold. So was the inside of the

tent.

Miri stared into the distant tans and greys ofJudea, trying to

remember what she was required to do for him, what prayers,

what body herbs, what disposition of the limbs. She'd done her

duty in the night and tried to lure the devil out. But that had

failed. Her husband's body was a labyrinthine hiding place, so

full of caves and chambers that many devils could make homes

inside. What was her duty to him now? To call on all the gods

by name and ask for mercy for this man? To combat his illness,

like the perfect, patient wife, with oils and salves and kisses? To

find a stone and drop it on his skull? No, nothing that she

did would make a difference. That was the truth, bleak and

comforting. Her husband was unconscious and about to die, and

she should leave him to it. Let the devil do its work behind her

back.

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Anyway, this vigil was exhausting her. She could not sit a

single moment more. Her child was strong and vigorous; it had

pressed its arms and legs against her hips so unremittingly that

within the past few months her pelvic bones had widened and

the nerves were trapped. Her buttocks and her thighs were

torments. She felt she had to move out of the tent or tum to

stone. This was the remedy. She would simply walk away - if,

first, she could defy the pain and stand up - and return that

afternoon to a corpse. It might be cowardly to leave a man to

die alone, but there was no one there to block her path. No one

conscious anyway. Musa couldn't use his knuckles or his fingers

or his heels against her now. He couldn't pull her hair to make

her stay. She laid the dampened cloth across his mouth - to keep

the devils in, perhaps? - loosely tethered the ailing donkey, and

staked the one billy amongst the female goats. Then, turning her

back against the flaking crown of the cliffs, she went off across

the level scrub towards the valleys and low hills in search of

well-drained ground and her husband's undug grave.

It would be hard, she knew, to bury Musa. Hard on the heart,

but harder on the fingers. For he was large. She would have to

take great care when lifting heavy rocks or tearing at the ground.

There were pans of soft clay along the valley beds where anyone

- a child even; a child would not resist the opportunity to make

its mark in clay - could crack a hole in the earth simply by

stamping. But the higher ground where Musa's body would be

safe from floods was biscuity like ash-fired pot. Underneath the

biscuit there were stones.

Miri hunted for a burial place with views across the salty

valley. It was not long before she'd found the perfect spot, an

open scarp, backed by low, coppery cliffs, pock-marked by many

caves and - it was spring - discoloured by the opposing red of

scrub poppies. The world from there would seem large and

borderless, she thought, and that would be appropriate for a

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traveller like Musa whose excursions had been ceaseless while

he lived and who would soon find that death was large and

borderless as well.

It was a tender day for widowhood, warm and clear and

breathless. There in the sinking distance, two days' walk away

at most, was the heavy sea below Jericho, and then the cliffs of

sodium and brine, the careworn hills, the bluing heights of Moab,

and finally (because she could not think that there was any heaven

in this place) the rifting, hard-faced sky. It was clouded only by

the arrowed streamers of the spring birds, heading for the Danube

from the Nile.

What better place to pass eternity?

But for the living Miri it was hard. She felt large and borderless

herself So far her marriage - a few months old, and to a younger,

tougher man - was inflexible and empty, a fired pot, a biscuit

underlain with stones. At least, she thought, she could be more

eager and more dutiful with her husband's dead body than she

had been with his living one. She'd bury him with care, as deep

as possible. She wouldn't let him face into the view, throughout

eternity, across to Moab and beyond. She'd bury him face down,

as was the custom for a man who had no heirs (not yet; at least) ,

so that he'd copulate for ever with the earth and all his sons and

daughters would be soil.

She put her fingers on the ground, pulled loose the first of

many hundred stones, and tried to open up a grave.

The salty scrubland was a lazy and malicious host. Even lizards

lifted their legs for fear of touching it too firmly. Why should

it, then, disturb itself for human travellers - a pregnant woman

and the almost lifeless body of a man - no matter if they were

abandoned in the furthest of the hills beyond Jerusalem and with

none to tum to for some help and salutation except the land

itself? It would not, normally at least, have expended its hospitality

on them. It was undiscriminating in its cruelties. The scrub, at

best, allowed its brief and passing guests to stub their toes on

stones or snag their arms and legs on thorns. It sent these travellers

to Jericho in rags. Or it lamed their animals. Or, should they

spend the night with this hard scrubland as their inn, it let its

snakes and scorpions take refuge underneath the covers of their

beds.

Yet the scrubland welcomed Miri there, to its dead hills. It

gave its hospitality to her. And should she end up on her own,

she need not have much cause to fear the night, or hunger, or

the animals. It would use what little skills it had to make her life

more comfortable, to keep her bedding free from scorpions, her

skin unsnagged by thorns, her sleep unbroken. And if it could,

it would direct some rainfall to her tent or save her billy from a

fall or drive gazelles towards her traps. It would be the one -

hooded in a brown mantle - whose breathing twinned with