Quarantine (30 page)

called for Marta to bring water, had wet his lips and face and

hair, and studied all the folds and pinches in the cloth at her

waist. 'There's always water to be had, if you know where. Do

you know where? The principle's the same as finding honey

with a stick. But not the parable. Not the parable that he has

given us. ' He waved the staff at Shim. 'My parable is this, that

someone with a nose for trade like me can always sniff out what

he wants. Honey, water, gold . . .' He sniffed dramatically, and

Marta almost thought he'd winked at her. 'My tum to talk.'

He told them how he'd crossed a desert once where nothing

grew, a desert - 'let's say' - forty days from side to side. Five

camels, and four cousins, and himself They'd taken sixty goats,

salted mutton, indigo and horns to trade with black men on the

river with three banks. The journey had been easy and all their

goods were quickly sold. They had obtained a hundred monkeys

in exchange which they could sell in Nabatee where monkey

flesh was thought to be . . . he winked again; he did not say the

word . . . an aphrodisiac.

'Alas, we had been fools. Don't anybody nod. We didn't

know how thirsty a hundred monkeys could be,' he said. 'Or

how much noise they'd make. A hundred hairy Shims. Clackerchack-chat all day.'

At first they meant to put the monkeys on leashes and let

them walk behind the camels. But the monkeys were riotous.

They didn't want to walk. They tugged on the leashes. A hundred

monkeys, with their heels dug into sand, are stronger than three

camels. So Musa and his cousins had to bunch the monkeys up

like chickens and tie them by their legs to the leathers on the

flanks of two of the camels. Musa rode the third; his cousins

could walk. They were small enough, and fit enough, and more

obedient than monkeys.

They loaded the other two camels with bullock-skins filled

with water, and set off through the fringes of the desert early in

the morning while the air was cool. The monkeys didn't seem

uncomfortable. Hanging upside down in bunches was customary

for them. They screamed and gibbered without cease. At first,

it was amusing. Musa and his cousins screamed and gibbered,

too. But after a few days the noise became a torture.

They made slow progress. The desert proved itself to be as

fickle as a carpet, smooth and welcoming if stroked with the

pile, but tough to drag the fingers through against the lay of the

wool. Their little caravan had stroked the pile on its journey

out. Now it was travelling against the nap of the wools. The sun

was at their backs, and baking hot. The monkeys gibbered,

screamed as ceaselessly as crickets, even when the camels snapped

and spat at them. They only quietened when his cousins gave

them water. His cousins gave them water all the time.

After fifteen days, said Musa, they realized that they were lost:

'No prospect of enlightenment, no sign of any god.' That had

never happened to their caravan before, although they'd crossed

a hundred deserts. One of his cousins, called Habak the Hawk

because ofhis long nose, normally could be blindfolded and only

had to sniff a palmful of soil to recognize the smell of every place

they'd ever visited. He put this desert dust and powdered rock

against his nose, but could not put a name to where they were

or point towards their destination. They span him round to sniff

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the air; he couldn't say if he was standing on his head or feet.

They looked for signs of any caravans. But there had been high

winds, and even the tracks that they had made themselves on

the journey out had been swept away, together with the smell.

They persevered, hoping to encounter other travellers, or find

horizons broken up by trees, or recognize some star beyond the

dust-filled night, or see a bird.

After twenty days they found their own tracks again. But no

goat tracks, just four men walking and five camels, and the

channels made by monkeys trailing their long fingers in the sand.

They'd travelled in a five-day circle to this place, and now their

bullock-skins were running out. The monkeys, with hardly any

water left to keep them quiet, coughed and cackled through the

night. It didn't bother them that their heads were full ofblood.

Musa paused to pull his own empty water-bags across, and

hold them up, an illustration for his listeners. This is what a

shortage of water looks like; this is thirst; this is what I had in

mind for Shim. He wasn't sure quite where his tale was leading

him. He had no end for it, not yet. There was no point to it,

except to charm. But Aphas and Marta didn't seem to care. They

nodded to the story-teller to urge him on. This was better than

any parable. It didn't matter that it had no point, except to make

them wonder at the world. Even Shim was listening, despite his

tightly fastened lips and eyes.

'We had to save the monkeys and ourselves, though there was

not enough water there for both of us,' continued Musa, glad

to see how loose of posture and how opened-eyed the woman

had become. 'What would you do? Don't say. You'd throw the

monkeys on the sand; you'd club them all to death, and drink

the water all yourselves. Admit it now. Of course you would.

But then you are not merchants. And you do not understand

how trading is the truest test of man. It shows his strength, his

worth, his piety. To buy and sell is just as spiritual as prayer or

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going without food. Will any of you say it's not?' He looked at

Shim. 'A merchant's never-ending quest is not for things that

you can't touch or buy, like Shim's enlightenment - what use

is that? - but for something . . . ' He had to stop to recall the

exact words he'd heard his eldest uncle use a hundred times.

' . . . but for something new and real and grand. And valuable,

of course. To make the world a richer place. We're gods, we're

little gods. We're big. And so . . .' He looked at all the faces

there, except Miri's, obviously, and would not look away until

he'd won a smile and nod from each of them. ' . . . we could not

go back from the desert to our uncles with nothing to show for

our long efforts, with nothing to sell except the bloody remnants

of the monkeys. Who'll buy those? A merchant never goes with

empty panniers. That shows a loss of faith.' He paused. He

smiled, a real and joyous smile. 'What will you have to sell when

you go home? What will you show your uncles after forty days

of quarantine?' He held his hand up. They should not reply.

Musa told how he and his cousins had persevered against the

desert's grain. They'd travelled forward, day by day, in hope of

finding wells or springs or dry river-beds where they might dig

for water. They blindfolded their cousin Habak, to concentrate

his sense of smell. They put him on his hands and knees to sniff

the sand in search of moisture, but all he smelled was barrenness

and heat. They hunted without luck for any evidence oflife but

they found nothing apart from themselves. They dreamed of

finding tamarisks with lakes of water at their roots, and honeydew along their stems, but there was nothing to be found, excepting thirst.

'Still our monkeys laughed,' said Musa. 'They were glad to

see us lost. They liked to watch us frying in the sand. It suited

them. They didn't want to go to Nabatee and end up in a pot.

Who would? They'd rather starve. Never trust a monkey on a

camel's back. That's good advice . . . Never trust a thirsty woman

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or a dog.' He laughed, but turned the laugh into a sudden cry

of pain. He held his chest, and winced. A little indigestion,

possibly. 'Perhaps, I ought to rest a while,' he said. He touched

his brow. 'I'm hot.' He closed his eyes.

'You're teasing us,' said Aphas. 'I hope you're teasing us.

What happens to the monkeys now? Of course, do rest if you're

unwell. We wouldn't want you to be unwell . . .'

'Ah, so our neighbour would trade the ending of the storyteller for the ending of his story,' said Musa, breathing heavily.

'The monkeys matter more than me . . . ? I would have hoped

a sick man such as you would have more feeling for a fellow

invalid.'

'No, no, do rest . . .'

'I will not rest. There is some respite to my pain, thank god.

Bring water then. Put that good shawl the woman has around

my shoulders. I will continue while I can.' The shawl was warm

and sweet, and smelled a little gingery from Marta's balm.

The time had come, Musa said after he had drunk the water

and clutched his chest a few more times, when he and his

caravan had journeyed through the desert to death's door. Drink

something, anything, or die, that was the choice. They'd have

to take a knife to Musa's camel. He'd have to walk like his

cousins, ankle-deep in sand. They'd cut into the camel's hump

and stomach. They'd have to drink her waters, blood and milk,

and let the monkeys find what sustenance they could by dining

on her entrails and her fat. The monkeys would have to swallow

camel upside down.

'But no one makes me walk,' said Musa, rubbing his side. 'A

clever merchant never walks. I closed my eyes. I put my head

to work. I thought, let's kill a couple of the monkeys. Let's take

our meat and drink from them. The meat's already nicely hung,

it should taste good. But think of it. What did I say about the

monkey meat? Why do they savour it in Nabatee? It makes a

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man thirsty for his wife. What use would that be for the five of

us, with nothing there to comfort us but sand? It is a sin for a

man to waste his seed with camels. Our sons would have two

toes.

'And so I didn't take a monkey by the throat and use my knife

on it. I cut one monkey free. I held its tail. I whispered in its

ear, I said, Find water. You're a bee. I didn't have to put it in a

hollow stick or block its backside with an apricot. You should

have seen it run. It knew its only chance of getting away, back

to its river with three banks, was first to find some water and

then be off My quickest cousin, Raham, followed it into the

dunes until he lost it. Monkeys move like rats. So does my cousin

Raham. But the monkey soon went out of sight. It didn't buzz.

We couldn't follow that. But we could track its little steps in the

sand, its tail, its swinging hands, until we found it once again,

exhausted by the running and the sun. Half dead. No water yet.

We tied it up, we hung it by its ankles with its brothers and its

sisters. Then we let another monkey go . . . I whispered in its

ear, Enjoy your run, you monkey boy . . . '

It took them fourteen monkeys and two days, Musa said, but

finally they saw a line of rocks and thorn which led down to a

dry valley bed and there they found their fourteenth monkey

sitting in an open cistern underneath a slab of stone, bathing like

an empress in a bowl. 'We helped ourselves. We didn't have to

smoke out bees. We washed. We drank up to our brims. We

refilled our bullock-skins. And then we let the camels in. Sweet

water, with a touch of ginger to its taste.'

Now they left the desert in the past, and followed down the

valley, taking their directions from the gullies cut by the last

downpour of rain a year or so before, until they came to leafy

trees and habitations and to fields which had, Musa said, 'a wispy,

adolescent beard of grass'. They got to Nabatee in time to make

a profit, with only twenty monkeys perished on the way, and

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