Quarantine (37 page)

overhanging rock, the canker thorn, the crumbling contours of

the cliff. The ravens made their last assault onJesus's protruding,

swinging feet, but nothing could prevent the burial of Jesus

now.

'No need to dig a grave,' said Musa, coming up with Aphas

and his wife to join the other two. 'We have a grave. My little

donkey's grave. It must be meant for him . . . It was always

meant for him.'

'You mean we should use the cistern?' said Shim.

'It was a grave before it was a cistern.'

'What will we drink?'

Musa shrugged. He didn't care what anybody drank. He

wouldn't stay another day and so he didn't need to know about

their thirst.

'You can't bury him in the water that we drink,' persisted

Shim.

'Whose land is this? Go somewhere else for water. Go down

to Jericho and drink your fill. There's an empty cave below that

you can have for free, if you're not frightened of those birds.

Climb down. Do what you want. But this man has a grave

already dug for him.'

Shim and the badu carried Jesus to the tent and rested there

while Miri gathered extra water-skins to fill before they used

the cistern. She found some food for them to eat as well, and

some blanket cloths. Everyone would have to spend the night

in caves. The tent was useless now.

They took the body through the pans of mud and up the

scarp, with Musa, Miri and Aphas following as mourners. They

should have put a flower on the Gaily's lips, but there were none

left standing. They had to make do with some blackened poppy

petals. And then they put the body in the same cave that Musa

had used the night before, for safe keeping, until everything was

ready for his burial. They blocked off the entrance with uprooted

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thorns, and lit a fire close by to keep the flies away. The wood

was damp; its smoke was black, then purple-grey, the proper

colour for a funeral.

'Where's Marta?' Miri asked.

'You'd better make a sacrifice to speed the Gaily on his way,'

said Musa.

Shim and Aphas nodded warily. Their landlord was being

uncharacteristically comradely with them; anything to hold their

attention and keep their minds off his wife. They could hear

Miri searching in the rock falls beyond the caves, calling 'Marta,

Marta,' with rising desperation in her cries. But Musa raised his

own voice to drown hers out. He did not want the men to help

Miri. If one of them found Marta alive, sobbing and bruised,

what might he ask her? What might she reply?

It would suit Musa if he never saw the woman again. He was

angry with her. She had not been sensible. If she'd had any brains

she would have packed her few belongings and set off home

already, saving trouble and embarrassment for everyone. But

Miri had searched inside the cave and Marta's clothes were still

there. A woman would not leave without her spare clothes. So

she was either hiding in the scrub, or something bad had happened

to her. Something fatal, Musa hoped. She brought these problems

on herself If she were dead, they'd have to hold a double burial,

the Gaily and the woman in one grave. She could be a handmaiden

for Jesus for eternity. An honour, actually. Too good for her.

But if she were still alive, then the very sight of her would spoil

the Gaily's funeral. Musa wanted to despatch the healer with

proper, blameless piety. He did not want his little sins to stand

as mourners at his side.

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'You cannot send him to his maker without a sacrifice,' said

Musa, breaking his own silence. 'Come on, come on. What will

you do for him?'

'What kind of sacrifice?' asked Shim. Was this to be a sacrifice

of principle or dignity or money? He was running short, although

he still had some coins hidden in his cloak, and didn't want to

part with any.

'What do these people sacrifice? Their daughters, probably.

Some animal, then. We have to spill a little blood for the man,

to wet our funeral prayers. That's how it's done in the Galilee.

They take an ox and slit its throat. '

'Regrettably, I cannot lead you to an ox,' said Shim, much

relieved. 'I haven't noticed any oxen hereabouts . . .'

'There are your goats,' said Aphas helpfully. 'Kill one. It would

be generous. '

'Wasteful, too,' said Musa. 'And only generous for me. What

would be your part in it?' He would not agree to sacrificing

merchandise, not even for the Gaily. Goats provided milk and

meat and fuel and skin. Killing one without a proper purpose

would be a four-fold waste. 'Send him,' he lifted his chin towards

the badu. 'He's the hunter, isn't he? He's already poached enough

birds and deer from off my land. Send him to catch something

for us. I think I can afford him that.'

Musa threw a stone at the badu to draw his attention. 'Explain

what we want,' he said to Aphas. 'He's used to you.' He watched

the old man mime the catching and the slaughter of an animal.

The badu did not seem to understand. He grinned and shook

his head, until Musa took his ornamental knife out of its cloth

and made a motion with its blade across his throat, followed by

the hand-sign for a prayer. Then the badu nodded. 'See, he's

not as stupid as he looks,' said Musa. 'How could he be?'

The badu hurried off towards the valley. He'd almost understood. He was to catch a bird for Jesus. The smallest funeral 2 1 5

offering. He had mistaken Musa's praying hand-sign to be a

bird, the fingers pressed together like closed wings, the thumbs

protruding like a little head. The badu knew exactly what to do.

Catching birds was easy. He'd been doing it for years.

He ran down to the tent and hunted through the goatskins

until he found Miri's cooking chest. He popped a little cube of

hard salt between his lips, and unravelled a fraying length of

green cotton thread from one of Musa's ruined samples. He

wrapped the thread around his finger and tiptoed amongst the

goats, which had been let loose to graze on the tattered fabrics

and any food that they could find. To anyone that watched it

would seem that he was whispering in their ears, more evidence

of lunacy. A madman speaking to the goats. What did he want

with them? To tether them with his thin thread? To strangle

one of the goats for Jesus, perhaps?

The badu searched the goats until he found one with a bloodfilled tick in the skin folds of an ear. Easy to see, but not so easy to get out. Some smoke, blown from a burning stick, would

usually make a tick detach itself But the badu hadn't any smoke.

Instead he took the now softened cube of salt out of his mouth.

He crumbled it into the goat's ear and rubbed it into the skin.

Salt was better than smoke for catching ticks. A goat with a

burning ear would not stay still. The tick, however, hated salt.

It contracted, darkened, and fell into the badu's palm. That was

the easy part.

The hard part was to tie the thread around the tick's abdomen

without popping its blood sac, and without the tick attaching

itself to the badu's finger. But he was practised. He had harnessed

hundreds of ticks since he was small. He could have pulled a

chariot with them.

The badu took the fastened tick into the nearest stand of

thorns. What little rain there'd been in the night had tempted

last year's seeds to hazard their first green shoots. Insects, tempted

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by the moisture and the exposed sap of wind-snapped branches,

competed for a meal. So did the birds. Finches, wheatears,

warblers had come from nowhere to gorge themselves. And

there were circling hawks, of course, waiting for the plumpest

opportunity.

The badu put his tick on an exposed flat rock amongst the

bushes, a little grape of blood, and weighed the thread down

with a stone, a finger-length from the tick. It could not wiggle

away, out of the unforgiving light. It couldn't even fall very far,

but it had just freedom enough to advertise itself with its struggles.

It didn't like the thread around its abdomen; it didn't like the

sun. The badu backed away, downwind, running the remainder

of the thread through his fingers, until he found a hiding place

behind a bush where he could not be seen but from where the

twisting tick was visible. Now he would fish himself a bird.

He was an expert at keeping still, though anyone who'd seen

him in the past thirty days, running in the rocks, tugging his hair

and hands unceasingly, would have been amazed that one so

plagued by movement and loose limbs could be so quiet and

patient when it suited him. Perhaps the truth was this: he was a

madman only when observed, the cussed opposite of those who

conspired to be rational in company and cultivate their manias

alone. The badu, without any witnesses to click their tongues at

him and shake their heads, appeared entirely sane. He crouched

beneath a thorn bush in the scrub, a blood tick offered on a

thread to passing birds. And he was happy, too. He had his plans.

He'd do his duty to the Gaily who had died, and then he'd make

a rich man of himself

It wasn't long before a banded wheatear came, a male, on its

way north to breed. For all its mating splendour, its damask eye

plumes and its black flights, it was tired from its long journey,

and glad to have such easy and nourishing prey. The trick, it

knew, was not to peck the tick. The bulb ofblood would burst.

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Instead, the wheatear turned its head and took the tick whole.

It lifted up its head to let the feast fall into its crop.

The trick for the badu was to wait. Ifhe pulled on the thread

too soon, before the wheatear's throat had ended its spasm of

swallowing, the tick would pop out of its mouth again, without

the blood. If he pulled on the thread too late, the wheatear's

flight might be strong enough to snap the cotton. The badu

waited until the wheatear spread its wings, two beats, and then

he jerked the thread. The wheatear tumbled in the air, and fell

on to its back. The badu was already there. The bird was his.

Not quite the perfect sacrifice, of course. Not quite as generous

as a goat, not quite as heavy as an ox. But better than no sacrifice

at all.

The badu only broke one wing so that the wheatear could

not fly away. He held it, quivering, in both hands. It didn't peck

at him for long. Only its trembling chest showed that it was still

alive. He snapped the thread off at its beak and carried the bird

to the men, waiting at the grave. They were disappointed. They

had hoped that he would catch a little deer at least.

'If that's the best that this mean land will offer us, then damn

it and so be it,' Musa said. 'We'll make do.'

'This is, undoubtedly, the meanest place I've ever seen,' said

Shim, with feeling, kicking at the stones and waving his hands

around at all the unrewarding wilderness, the unremitting sun,

the unrelenting landlord. He was already persuading himself that

it was time to leave.

It was not fair of them to blame the scrub for being stingy

with everything except for space and light and stone. Even if it

had not displayed much magnanimity towards the men, it had,

at least, been generous to Miri. It had not maddened her or

lamed her, yet. It had not made her ill or thin. In fact, she was

the only one of them to put on any weight during the thirty

days. It had allowed her to complete her birth-mat; there'd been

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delights in that, despite the wools. And, in the night, it had even

conspired with the wind to free her from the family tent. An act