became percussion in the scrub, became the first trembling
resident of her husband's grave, she had convinced herself that
it was Musa who'd woken her. Who else? He had disturbed her
sleep so many times before. So it had been his stiff and bloodless
feet which sent the small stones tumbling. He'd died, alone, with
no one there to mediate. That was the fate that's worse than
death. Now he'd come to find his wife. She wasn't hard to find.
There was the recent kicked-up trail which led out from the
14
tent across the flat scrub, into the valley, up to the scarp. There
was the abattoir of stones, clawed out for him. There was her
mocking headscarf, thrown off, snagged on a thorn, and left to
flag him to her. There was the grave, and Miri crouching in it,
hardly hidden, the tiny sobbing woman in the fat man's hole.
How could he miss her? And, then, how could he let her go
unpunished? Musa was no mystery to her. He'd use his fists and
feet. He'd pick up rocks and earth to finish her. The living would
be buried by the dead. That's what the prophets said. The world
would end that way.
But minutes passed. There were no rocks. She was not stifled
by his body pressing down on hers. Finally she found the courage
to crouch in the corner of the grave and peer out, a rodent
peeping from its burrow. Of course she did not recognize the
people that she saw, but neither was she frightened of them now.
They were, at least, the living. No Musa then. Not even death
and its three partisans. She was exposed to nothing worse than
strangers.
Miri felt too foolish and too shaken to emerge. Just like a
child, trapped underneath the mat when adults come. She would
simply have to wait for a natural opportunity to escape. Sunset,
perhaps. By sunset, surely, Musa would be safe and cold, and
she could slip away unseen and go back to the tent. She'd ululate
for him. That - precisely - was the least that she could do. In
the morning she would get him on the donkey's back- impossible
without some help - and bury him. Here were the stones -
where she now crouched, a hen on barren eggs - that would be
Musa's bed-mates. There wasn't one she hadn't touched while
she was digging. What other widow could make such a boast,
or know her husband's grave more intimately? How very dutiful
she'd been.
For the moment, Miri had little else to do but study stones
and, once in a while, when she grew too stiff for her interment,
1 5
pop her head above the topsoil and watch these new arrivals
select their caves, as far from each other as was possible, though
close enough for safety in the night. They were like ravens, not
like rooks - neither sociable nor hostile with their neighbours.
She watched them set up home, one by one, throughout the
afternoon. They kicked out the detritus of animals and other
visitors, turned stones to check for snakes and scorpions, pulled
thorns across the cave entrances to blunt the wind and keep
animals out, threw bones as far away as possible. Then they sat
in front of their new habitations, looking out across the valleys
and waiting for the darkness and, at last, the arced and glinting
goblet of the moon. The start of quarantine.
Of course, for all their birdlike meditation and reserve, they
could not help but notice Miri watching them. They were so
concentrated on the land which would be their host for the next
forty days, and so fearful of it, that hardly a beede could move
without them knowing it. How then could they avoid seeing
the newly exposed grave and its occupant, both gaping? But
none of them behaved as if it were odd, or even unexpected,
that there should be a woman who, seemingly, had dug a pit for
herself and was content to squat in it all afternoon. This was the
season of the lunatics. If her presence made them fearful and
uncomfortable, then so what? That's what they'd come for, after
all, to encounter and survive anxieties like this.
Miri wished she had the nerve to stand, waist-high in stones
and soil, and call to them. She was a rook. She needed company.
She'd ask them what their purpose was, what they were seeking
in the caves. She'd ask if they might - later, soon - help to lift
her husband on the donkey's back and bring his body here for
its interment. She could not manage it alone, she'd say, and tell
them she was abandoned, widowed, pregnant, borderless . . .
and desperate to urinate. Her child was pressing on her bladder
now. Her back and thighs were tormenting her again. But Miri
1 6
was uncertain of the visitors, their sullenness, their lack of smiles,
the absence of any conversation or greetings between them. She
was afraid that they might ask, Where is your husband now?
Then, Why aren't you sitting by the corpse? Or, Have you run
away and left the man to die? So Miri dared not leave her
hiding place. Nor dared she urinate. It would be a sacrilege, and
dangerous. To wet a husband's grave like that would bring bad
lack. So she squatted amongst the stones, her bladder nagging,
her nerve-ends trapped, her conscience throbbing like a wound,
her untied hair turned brown with dust, and waited for the sun
to drop.
5
There were eleven caves above the poppy line - a decent choice
for these four visitors. Enough room even for the fifth when he
or she arrived. The caves were not hard to see. Their darkly
shadowed entrances made a constellation of black stars against
the copper of the cliff There were two easily accessible caves at
the cliff foot, partly obscured by salt bushes and fallen debris,
and then a further four above, opening on to a sloping terrace.
Higher still, and less inviting, were three more caves, set far
apart. And then, a hundred paces to the left, a further two,
halfway up a seam of darker, stony soil.
The first of the cave-dwellers to arrive and startle Miri had
been the oddest of them all. Was that the word? Not odd,
perhaps, but out of place. He was a gentile, blond-haired and
narrow-faced; quite beautiful, she thought. And a touch sinister.
A Roman or a Greek perhaps, a traveller. But there was nothing
Greek or Roman in his quality of clothes. He wore a local tunic
and a high, woven cap which made his face seem even thinner
than it was. His skin was dry from too much sun. But he seemed
strong, like leather thongs are strong. Designed to carry loads.
And he was heavily and well equipped - a large goatskin for
water, a rush bed-mat, a cloak, a walking staff made from an
elongated piece of tarbony with ram-horn curls halfway along
its length so that when he rested on its nub his weight had to
drop and spiral twice before it reached the ground. He'd taken
the smallest and the warmest of the middle rank of caves.
1 8
The second chose the middle rank as well; his cave was twenty
paces from the Roman or the Greek, the furthest to the right,
and in a shallow declivity of the terrace which would protect
the entrance from his neighbour's gaze, and from the evening
sun. He was an elderly Jew, wearing a felt skull-cap; yellow-eyed
and yellow-skinned, frail and timid beyond his years, shortsighted, tired, lllnning short of time. He busied himself, peering nervously amongst the stones and scree, collecting thorn roots
and branches for a fire, and carrying small rocks for his hearth.
He talked out loud to no one in particular. Himself? The lizards?
Not prayers or incantations as you might expect. But remarks
on everything he saw and found. A good supply of wood and
that's a blessing . . . We'll live like kings, old friend . . .
The third was - surprisingly - a female Jew of Miri's own
age, though tall and stout and obviously not used to walking.
And obviously not used to cleaning out a cave. She could not
bear to touch the bones and carrion inside. She couldn't make
a decent broom from any of the bushes. She'd chosen her shelter
badly, too - one of the two caves on the lower level of the scarp,
the first she'd found, easy to reach, but hard to protect. The
bushes at the front would encourage flies, and worse. The
entrance was a little higher than the chamber itself. It wasn't
likely there'd be rain - but if there were she'd have to sleep
in it.
The fourth? A badu villager from the deserts in the south,
with silver bracelets and a hennaed beard and hair. He was more
familiar. The caravan had often traded with such men; some
silver for a dozen goats, some perfume for a roll of cloth, a tub
of dates for unimpeded passage through their land. They'd sell
their children too, it was said. And their wives. He stood outside
his cave, one of the two set at a distance from the others in the
darker seam of rock. He pulled and twisted his hair, so tightly
that the skin on his skull came up in peaks, and stared at Miri.
I9
Finally she had to reach for her discarded headscarf, cover up
her hair, and duck into her grave. Why such a man would choose
a cave and not a tent was inexplicable. The badus only went into
caves to die, and this man - small and unrelenting - seemed too
wild to die.
Miri watched the four of them until she and her bladder were
set free by darkness. She did not see the fifth.
6
The fifth, a male, was far younger than he might have seemed
from a distance. Not much more than an adolescent, then. Bare
feet make old men of us all, on stony paths at least. But even
when he reached the softer and more accommodating track
above the landfall, he walked not from the shoulders like a
seasoned traveller intent on vanquishing the rocks and rises in
his path, but cat-like from the hips, his toes extended, pointing
forwards, and put down with caution before his heels were committed to the ground. He'd learnt the single lesson of the thorn.
His feet were already tom and bruised. So: long legs, long neck,
long hands, short leopard steps. And like a leopard he paused
frequently, not to rest but to sniff the air as if he could locate -
beyond the sulphur rising on the valley's thermals - that a caravan
of camels had passed, that there were gazelles feeding in the
thorns, that there was someone dying in the wilderness ahead.
He was open-mouthed. He looped his tongue from side to
side, circling his lips, tasting the atmosphere for smells. In fact
his sense of smell had been so bludgeoned by the heat and by
his thirst that he could not detect the sulphur even. He was
parched and faint. His lips were cracked. His legs and back -
unused to heat and effort such as this - were aching badly. If he
paused to sniff so frequently, that was because he could smell
nothing. It worried him. He hoped to clear the blockage in his
nose, and shift his headache too.
He was a traveller called Jesus, from the cooler, farming valleys
2 1
in the north, a Galilean, and not one used to deprivations of this
kind. He'd spent the night in straw, a shepherd's paying guest,
and had that morning left his bag, his water-skin, his sandals and
his stick where he'd slept. His quarantine would be achieved
without the comforts and temptations of clothing, food and
water. He'd put his trust in god, as young men do. He would
encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why
he'd come. To talk directly to his god. To let his god provide
the water and the food. Or let the devil do its work. It would
be a test for all three of them.
First he had to find a place where he and god could meet in
privacy. He'd say, if asked, that god had told him where to go, the
details of this very route. He had been standing at the window of
his father's workshop and god had called his name. Every time the
mallet hit the wood, his name was called. And every time the mallet
hit the wood he took a further step along the road in his mind's
eye, down from the living sea in Galilee to the salt-dead waters in
the south, and then ascending to the desert hills and caves.
There were nine days of mallet hitting wood before he found
the courage to argue with his family, tie his bag, and leave. The
hills were beckoning, he'd said. But as he walked up into the
wilderness - his nostrils blocked, his feet raw, another mallet
striking on his skull relentlessly-he could not find much evidence