Quarantine

11

As soon as Shim and the badu had begun to drag away the donkey’s carcass, the women — separated from the two remaining men by the customary seven steps — set to work themselves. They searched the camel panniers inside the tent for the rods and beams to assemble Miri’s loom. They laid the pieces out in order of size — the largest breast beams and shed sticks at the back, then the warp and heddle rods, and then, closest to hand, the beating hook, the stick spools, the leashes and the pegs.

Miri was glad to be distracted by something other than Musa’s pipingvoice. Her husband was sitting in his blanketed emporium, a pyramid within a tent, his flask of date spirit half consumed, his goods displayed on the mat in front of him, his stomach folding on his thighs like dough expanding into dough. He was biding his time. He knew his tenants would be tempted by the prospect — once their daytime fast had ended — of some of Miri’s fig cakes or dried fruit, some salted meat, some herby cheese. Fasting’s hungry work. He judged the old man, Aphas, would be the first to be enticed. Old men near death have no one to indulge, except themselves. Then, where Aphas had succumbed, the other three — perhaps the missing fifth as weH — would follow. They’d have to understand they could not simply plunder the free food of the scrub. This was his land, he would remind them. The birds and roots were his. They had to buy their food from him or go without until their forty days were up. They had to pay his price. He owned the water and he owned the sky. A sip, a sip, the merest sip, could not be had for nothing. He chuckled at his own audacity.

This was Musa’s quarantine. He would not fast or pray. He’d rest. His wife would milk and bake and cook; he would display the goods; his tenants would walk down from their caves each day for their supplies; and he would drink his spirits and his wine and dream of future caravans. So this detainment in the hills was working out unexpectedly well, he thought. Bad luck had almost turned to good. He had his health. He had some rent. He had some modest trade. He had some porters for the journey down to Jericho. He’d have the woman, Marta, to enjoy, if he was patient. In the meantime there was a skinny second-best at hand who would require no patience. He’d take hold of Miri’s wrists that night and press her bony little thighs into his lap. He’d close his eyes and rub the fabric ofher clothes against himself and cail her Marta underneath his breath.

Miri was as nervous as a doe. She did her best to be invisible. She could see and smell that Musa was in a skittish mood. Date spirit had revived him. His veins were full of blood and drink and mischief He was playful and expansive for the moment, but that could change. So far the spirit had only reached his heart and mouth but it would travel to his cock and fists, and then there would be danger. She would have to keep out ofhis reach once the donkey had been disposed of and these four visitors had gone back to their caves, unless she wanted to be pu^rruneUed by his hands and mouth or forced to masturbate him with a ball of wool or made to kneel.

Miri hid behind the woman Marta from Sawiya, and concentrated on the loom. She kept her face as blank and still as clay. But Marta was as open-faced and undefended as a young girl. She did not seem afraid of Musa’s eye. She touched Miri’s arm and hand and back; she was a sister for the day. She smiled to herself — and once she even laughed out loud — at the datey monologue that Musa was imposing on Aphas. The old man would have dearly loved to sleep, she saw. Instead, he had to listen to their landlord’s endless, hypnotizing tales of profits, bargains, deals, the buy-move-sell ofmerchant life, the mysteries of trade. Here was a man who knew the wider world, the land behind the middleman where everything was cheap, the hill behind the hills, the village that you reached when al the villages had ended, the sky beyond the skies where blue was silver and the air was heavier than smoke. That was where (according to Musa’s narratives that day) he’d seen deserts which made this scrub seem like paradise, where he’d survived on nothing else but camel leathers for his meat, the mist of mirages for drink, and promises for merchandise.

‘Nothing you have seen compares to what I’ve seen,’ he said to Aphas. But he was watching Marta while he spoke. He did not want to miss her bending over with the pieces of the loom. How would the fabric of her clothes spread on her back and thighs? How would her buttocks spread?

If only Musa had been talk and nothing else, Miri thought, then he might have been mistaken for a tolerable man — for there was something admirable about him, on first encounter. Everybody was agreed. When he was fuelled by drink, still good-humoured and teHing stories about the market-places of the world, the gourds and henna, ivory and olive oil, the grain and chalcedony he’d bought and sold; the carbuncles he’d traded for ambergris, the gold for slaves, the aggry beads for ostrich feathers; how he’d turned honey into salt and salt into silver, then, yes, he was captivating. ‘Like a snake,’ in Miri’s view.

She’d been captivated once herself. A short and bitter memory. She’d first encountered Musa in her father’s camp less than a year previously. He’d made her laugh. The way he looked. The words he used. The stories that he told. His self-esteem. He’d promised her that she would marry him and travel to the hems and pockets of the world. He’d show her valleys with so many flies that all the cattle had two tails. He’d take her to a land where al the chiefs had jewels so large that visitors could tether horses to them. He’d find her viHages where women gathered gold by dipping pitch-smeared feathers in their lake. They spread the gold like honey on their bread.

How gold and sweet his voice had been that night.

Now his voice was pitch for her. She’d never seen the jewels, the lakes of gold, the cattle with two tails. She’d seen the flies. She’d seen the wind-whipped camel tracks, the dusty camps, the stultifying market towns. She’d felt her husband’s fingers and his fists. What was there captivating in the life she led with him, other than his talk? How simple it would be, she thought, to earn some instant silence and some widowhood with a single blow from a loom rod. Musa’s head was round and red and tufted like a pomegranate. And it would split as easily. The man was full of pips and piss. She and Marta could drag the body to the precipice and push it off to join the little jenny on the valley floor. Two donkeys, yes. Both lame. Both dead.

Thank heavens that there was the loom to think about instead. Miri was the sort of woman who could be stoical only if her hands were busy. Then she could endure the heat, her aching thighs, the aimless gossip of the goats, her husband even. She couldn’t simply be inert like Musa, her fingers twined across her lap, talking, drinking, dreaming wealth and luxury and lies. If there was nothing else to do, she’d rather scratch herself or pick her broken nails than keep her fingers still. Why should she dweH on the misfortunes of a marriage in which even fever could not intercede?

But, for Miri, there was never nothing else to do. Her life was knuckles marching, fingers-on-the-move: making bread, sieving cheese, seeing to the needs ofgoats and men, a thousand tasks and still a thousand more to do. . She had to find the time as weH to carve the wooden talismans which Musa sold for prices beyond sense as the propitious work of holy men. Now she would take the opportunity, while her husband was sweet- tempered and loquacious with his drink, while there was a break from caravans and market-places, to work for once on something for herself which even Musa would not dare to sell. She’d peg the loom in some cool spot. She’d beg some yam from Musa’s store of wools. She’d weave and embroider a birth-mat for her confinement. She’d have the best part of forty days to weave a birth-mat fit for queens.

Marta, her daytime sister, could not help to build the loom. She’d hardly ever touched a loom before. In Sawiya the looms were fixed, in workshops, and there were fa^milies of weavers to provide everything from birth-mats to shrouds. But she was glad to do what Miri asked, carrying the wood and putting down the pieces. It was neighbourly to help a pregnant friend. She’d known of women who had miscarried because they had bad neighbours who hadn’t helped with heavy loads. Yet though Marta was no good with looms she could choose wools. She had an idle eye for colour. A birth-mat should be white, of course. But white wools do not travel very well. They pick up flies and dirt, as Musa had discovered to his cost on one occasion. He’d bought a length of fine-weave cotton cloth which he meant to sell for shrouds (‘Moon white,’ he said. ‘Spun in the sky at night’) and carried it for too long in the camel bags on a journey to the Sea-meets-sea for the spring markets. He’d roHed the cloth out for a Greek who was preparing for the burial of his son. The moon was yellow streaked with fungal green. The urine in the bleaching lye had activated on the camel’s back. ‘First came the stench, and then the cloud ofthread-flies,’ Musa said. ‘Then fled the Greek.’ So from then on Musa only bought and sold the darker-coloured wools with well-fixed dyes, and cloths which could stand a little dust and were not bleached.

Musa was indulging his two women. He let them pull out his stock of wools from the dark recesses of the tent and smiled as sweetly as he could while they sorted through the yams. This was a combination that Musa enjoyed — the fabrics and the flesh. He liked his wife to lift her clothes and straddle him, sometimes facing his huge chest, sometimes looking at his toes. He liked her clothes to fall on to his naked thighs and chest. Fabrics were more sensual than skin, he thought. He was a merchant, after al.

Marta shook her head and pushed aside al the rusts and browns, the wools which Miri seemed to prefer. A birth-mat which could not be white should try at least to be distinctive. She took Musa’s sample rod and let the coloured yams drop loose. She showed them to the sun, but they were not transfo^ed by light. These were the colours of a Roman’s robe. There was nothing worthy of a birth.

‘Take these,’ said Musa who, now that Aphas was asleep, had been commenting, with unusual animation for a man, on every sample that the women fingered and rejected. But he did not want them wasting decent wools on Miri’s mat. He reached across and pulled two half-hidden, remnant hanks of wool on to his knees — the vibrant, eggy orange, and the purple that he’d considered prostitutes might wear. He freed the yams a little and spread the strands across his hands, so that the women could inspect them. They were his customers.

‘Good wools,’ he said. ‘The brightest in the market-place. Find a brighter wool. Or one more flattering.’ He could imagine Marta, reclining like an empress on a purple-orange mat, and he the emperor. Too late he saw the wool was badly spun. He tried to hide the broken strands, but too many pieces fell loose, like unpinned hair. ‘Good wool,’ he said again. ‘Some threads have snapped. You see? But you can knot the ends and weave them in. It’s free. No need to haggle for a sweeter price. Be quick.’

He flicked the purple wool at Aphas’s sleeping head. ‘This fellow here might want to show his purse and take a bargain home.’

The women laughed at first. Musa had surprised them. Was he teasing? They recognized poor wool. Besides, his colours were comically ill-judged. The orange and the purple were bickering on sight, a florid uncle and his gaudy niece. The women frowned and rubbed their chins, and tried to visualize the finished mat. This wouldn’t do. They shook their heads.

‘What do you want for nothing then? Gold thread?’ asked Musa, raising his voice and narrowing his eyes at Miri. ‘Don’t shake your head again. A wife should never shake her head.’ He shook the wools. ‘It’s these or nothing. Go without a mat.’ He closed his eyes, and wiped his face dry with the wools. His wife had slighted him. In front of Marta. There was a price to pay. The wine was draining from his heart. He’d beat his wife for this.

‘Give birth on straw,’ he said. He half-opened one eye, like a lizard, to see what effect his firmness had. His wife, of course, had no expression on her face. But Marta seemed embarrassed. Perhaps, for Marta’s sake, it would be wise to seem more generous. ‘Miri does not want to bear her child on straw,’ he said to Marta. ‘Speak to her. She’s stubborn when she wants.’ He held the remnants up, the merchant and the liar once again. He’d have their custom yet.

‘Take, take,’ Musa said, feigning impatience. He threw the wools down at Marta’s feet, so that she had to bend to pick them up. At last, the lizard opened up its second eye. He ran his tongue across his lips. IfMiri was a skinny goat, he thought, then Marta was a horse. ‘Those colours bring good luck,’ he said, back in the market-place. ‘You’ll have a boy. You’il have two boys, Miri. As strong as bulls. Two little gods. An orange god, a purple god.’

A good luck mat that promised sons? Marta pushed the wools together. She bunched the yams. Perhaps the orange and the purple were not incompatible, after all. These were the fertile colours of the darkness and the day, the harvest sky at night, the ready, outer leaves of maize. She smiled at Miri. Helping Miri with the weaving might bring good luck to both of them. Miri shrugged and took the wools. Her husband had decided on the purple and the orange. That was that, and not another word to say. There wasn’t any point in bargaining for better wool, or any of the yams in the earthy colours that she preferred. She’d have to bear her child on the sort of mat that a perfume-seller would use to lay out his wares.

‘The orange one. You see? Your choice is good,’ Musa said, congratulating the women and himselfon their good taste. ‘This is the very best. It’s from the swamps. Beyond the swamps. A hundred days by camels, then a hundred days by boat. And then you have to walk, up to your knees in weed. They take the colour from the plants. Everything is orange there. The sky. The leaves. The people’s eyes. . They ail wear cloaks of orange wool and disappear against the land. They are invisible. The purple one? It’s Tyrean. The weavers there take dyes from fish. It’s fish or snails. They never say.’

He told them how each year he went to Tyre to buy and seil. ‘They only have the purple wools,’ he said. ‘The women can’t stand the constant smell of fish or snails. But when they see my orange wools, and put them to their noses, they run to fetch their husbands or their fathers. It doesn’t matter, Miri, that the yams are thin. Who cares about a broken thread when the colour is so strong and sweet?’ The women didn’t disappear when they wore orange cloaks in Tyre, Musa explained. They were as madly visible as butterflies. As were the women in the south when, on his return from Tyre, they bought his stock ofpurple wools and could be seen at last against the orange leaves and sky.

‘Sometimes it seems to me that I am trading only in colours, not in wools,’ he said, keen to end the transaction on a magic and unworldly note. ‘I am like someone who sells sounds instead of drums and pipes. I deal in smells instead of food. Old man, wake up. Here’s something wonderful.’ He tossed his empty flask into Aphas’s lap. ‘Imagine it, old man. A caravan of colours, music, smells. So Jight a cargo. Watch how the camels run. A man could make a fortune out of that. Ask her. She’ll see.’ He pointed at Miri. What did he mean, ‘She’ll see’? Would Miri see her husband make a fortune? Or would she travel to the south with him, a hundred days, a hundred days, and then a walk, her baby strapped across her chest, his camel panniers leaking sounds and colours on the path, shedding smells into the knee-deep waters of the swamp?