Quarantine (14 page)

god.

But, in these final moments of his journey, between the tent

and cave, Jesus was a tired and disappointed man. He did not

feel much welcomed by the scrub. Its textures were harsh

and colourless. Its skies were far too large and low. He'd been

naive. He'd hoped for greater hospitality, that the path would

rid itself of stones and sweep away its thorns for him. God's

unfinished landscape would provide a way, he thought. The

scrubland would recognize his simple dress, his solemn purposes,

his modesty. Its hills would flatten. Its rocks would soften. It

would protect his naked feet. This, after all, was the path that

led to god, still at work on his creation. So the path should

become more heavenly, more freshly formed, safer at every

step. It should become an infant Galilee. The winds should

be more musical. The light should shiver and the air should

smell of offerings. But god had left the thorns and stones in

place across the scrub.

At last, in the approaches to the cliff-top where Jesus had

to find the way down to his lodgings for the night, the scrub

began to slope, eroded by flash floods and centuries of wind.

There were no plants. Here, the soil was smooth and crumbling

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and dangerous. All the loosened stones of any size had rolled

away and fallen to the scree pans on the valley floor. Somewhere

along the precipice, the latest rock fell free. It made its

noisy, tumbling farewell to the slope, and bounced into the

weightless silence of its fall. Any nervous man like Jesus,

only used to Galilean heights and daunted by the receding

ground, would feel afraid of being like that stone. He should

not, therefore, have felt ashamed of getting down on his hands

and knees and edging forwards on all-fours, like a sheep, towards

the fragile brink of the cliff. But Jesus was ashamed, and

frightened, too. Frightened that he would end up amongst

the scree. Frightened of the night ahead. Frightened of his

quarantine.

This was the final opportunity for Jesus to turn around and

go back to the tent. It would not be hard to justify such a short

retreat - his religious duty was to help a dying man. Perhaps he

ought to settle for the easy caves up in the hills. That might have

been god's intention all along. But Jesus was too nervous to stand

up and flee. He felt like Y ehoch, perching on the temple roof,

calling out for angels and for ropes, because he could not tell if

he should put his trust in god or men. The optimist and innocent

who had set off that morning from the shepherd's hut had

now become a pessimist. Jesus had persuaded himself earlier that

day that creation was continuing in these hills. Look at the

lack of trees, he'd told himself, the thinness of plants and grasses.

God would be at work still. This was the edge of god's

unfinished universe. But what on earth could god complete on

this despairing precipice? Where were his fingerprints? What

work was there to do? Every Galilean knew that vegetation was

the fruit of god's union with the earth. There was no vegetation

on these slopes. Perhaps there was no god either. Perhaps this

was the devil's realm. The stones were sinners. And the scree

was hell.

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Jesus hung on with his naked hands and feet. He was ashamed.

His neighbours and his family were watching him. They were

his witnesses. 'Ah, yes,' they'd say. 'He's fallen now, down on

his knees. Look at him crawl.'

He had no choice. He hung his head over the precipice, and

looked from left to right, for a descending path, and any evidence

of caves. The light was poor, but he was lucky. He could not

see his cave, or any cave, but he could see a sloping rock similar

to the one which formed the front deck to his chosen sanctuary.

The perfect perch for eagles, and for angels, he had said. Except

there were no eagles nor any angels, just ravens and the falling

debris of the cliff.

One of the ravens landed close to Jesus, turned its head a dozen

times, inspecting him for food, and then flew off, calling out its

disappointment - tok-tok, tok-tok, tok-tok. Its voice was unmistakable, more like a carpenter's than a bird' s. He'd made the noise himself a thousand times - the impact of a tool on wood. But,

although he tried his best, Jesus could not take it as a sign that god

was calling him. He had expected signs all day, it's true. Some shaft

of sunshine, picking out a rock. Some burning bush. A distant

voice, perhaps, to tell him how he ought to reach his cave. A white

dove, yes; or the elated song of a warbler might carry messages

from god. But tok-tok-tok? God would be more eloquent than

that. Jesus had to wait for quite a while, clinging like an insect to

his slope, before a better sign was offered him. A steady flight of

storks, corning up from Egypt to the north - the Sea of Galilee,

perhaps - were passing overhead. A sign of spring. One dropped

below its companions and flew along the massive, sheer cliffs of

the valley. Its white shoulders and body were briefly highlighted

by the sun against the greys and browns. Then it shrank away so

far that it became a duck, a dove, a fading speck of white, a mote

of sawdust in the window light. The moment that it disappeared,

Jesus told himself, would be the moment that he moved.

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So Jesus took his courage from the stork to edge along the

cliff on hands and knees, looking for a way down to his cave. It

was not difficult. It was not long before the ground grew rougher

underfoot and underhand. There was a rockfall, where the land

had split and slipped, like a broken crust of bread. Jesus started

to climb down. The marl was soft enough to crumble between

his fingers. There were struggling signs of god's creation, at last.

A few opportunist plants - morning star, hyssop, saltwood - had

taken root in the crevices and on the leeward side of rocks. They

lent their odour to the climb and left their muffled blessings on

his palms whenever he took hold of them. Hyssop was familiar,

a herb for eggs and fish, but now it was the smell of vertigo and

fear. When the rockfall steepened, Jesus descended on his thighs,

facing outwards. The ground was loose but firm enough to take

his weight. He did not trust his feet. They were already tom and

bleeding from the walk and now were further scratched and

battered by the earth. He tried to put as much weight as he could

on to his hands and thighs as he went down below the level of

the slope on to the precipice. He had to hurry. It was almost

dusk. The cliffs were facing east. The sunlight ended sharply.

He was climbing on the dark side of the world, his back pressed

hard against the earth.

He reached his lodgings for the night more easily than he had

expected. The route was steep but well provided with handholds

and platforms for his feet. His fear of heights and falling rocks

made him quick and nimble for a change. He was propelled. He

almost found the climbing pleasurable. He was the boy he'd

never been.

The entrance was much larger than he'd thought. The cave

was deep. There was no sign of life, not even any bird lime on

the rocks, or sand-fish burrows. No screaming bats. No perching

angels. He called out from the rocky platform at the cave's

mouth. The echo of his nervous greeting came back twice. 'Is

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anybody there ody there ody there?' He wept, of course. What

young man, alone in such a wilderness, wouldn't weep to hear

his own voice mocking him and reassuring him? No echo would

be worse. He couldn't light a fire or lamp. There wasn't any

food or drink to comfort him, but he had eaten anyway, in the

merchant's tent and in the shepherd's hut. Two meals that day.

He couldn't think what he should do. Give thanks? Protect the

entrance of the cave with stones? It was too cold to sit outside

and watch the stars come out. He hadn't brought a cloak to wrap

around himself So he found a pocket of warm air, out of the

draughts, and curled up on the dry clay in the cave, in his thin

clothes. He made a pillow of his open palm, still smelling of the

hyssop, and protected his body with his elbows and his knees as

if he thought he might be kicked by demons. Would there be

scorpions or snakes? Would there be nightmares? He closed his

eyes. He brought his lids down on his fear. He put his trust in

god; an optimist again. He could rest. He could rely on god's

provision, yes. The travelling was over. He fell asleep, almost at

once.

Sleep is a medicine. When he woke up on his first day of

quarantine, his spirit was repaired, as was his confidence. There

was no walking to be done that day. He did not have to climb.

He only had to shake the stiffness from his limbs and go outside

to meet the day. The rosy epaulettes of light on the peaks of

Moab which Marta was admiring at that same moment from

her own cave entrance, seemed heavenly to Jesus. He sat crosslegged on his angel perch. He could hear the bluster of a wind, blowing on the cliff-tops and the hills, but not descending to his

cave. God was taking care of him. Jesus would explore the cave

when it was fully light outside, but for the moment he simply

waited for the epaulettes to spread into a cloak, and for the cloak

to throw its warmth across his shoulders. Time was slow, of

course. He filled it with prayer, and thinking of his parents

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watching him pray. They couldn't come and shake him now.

There was nothing else for Jesus to do, except to simplify

his life. Repentance, meditation, prayer. Those were the joys

of solitude. They had sustained the prophets for a thousand

years. And they would be his daily companions. He started

rocking with each word of prayer, putting all his body into

it, speaking it out loud, concentrating on the sound, so that

no part of him could be concerned with lesser matters or be

reminded of the fear, the hunger and the chill. He seemed to

find his adolescent rhapsodies. The prayers were in command

of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise

he made. The common words lost hold of sound. The consonants

collapsed. He called on god to join him in the cave with all the

noises that his lips could make. He called with all the voices in

his throat. He clacked his tongue against his mouth, Tok-tok

tok-tok tok-tok.

He must have recited a hundred prayers that morning, before

the sun obliged and warmed him through. His prayers brought

up the sun. His prayers suppressed his appetite. His prayers picked

out the sunlight on the dead and silver sea and hardened it. It

turned it into jewellery. The water was as solid as a silver plate.

It rose from the distant valley into the mid-air haze. Jesus had

to look at it through half-closed eyes, it was so bright. The more

he looked, the more transformed he felt. He could have taken

this to be the natural way of water and light. But Jesus had not

come this far to witness only godless routines of the sun and sky

and sea. He had to take each shift of light, each colouring, each

shadow of a bird to be the evidence of god. He had to persuade

himself, before the forty days were up, that he'd been awarded

a brief view of god's kingdom. Let the silver plate be paradise.

Let god be calling out to give to him his new commandments,

as he had given all his laws to Jews in this same wilderness. What

would his parents and his neighbours say when he went back to

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preach the word of god? They would not shake his shoulders,

send his brothers to distract him, use the stick. They would

rejoice in him. He could congratulate himself, and did. He was

shoeless, homeless, without food. He'd slept on naked ground.

But he was at last without fear or sorrow. 'Am I not free?' he

asked himself. 'Am I not blessed?'

Finally it was too warm to sit out in the sun, and he was

trursty. He put a pebble in his mouth. He went back to the cave

and slept again, just inside the entrance. He dreamed he was a .

common fly and climbing down a crust ofbread. It broke away.

He fell with crumbs ofbread between his legs. His wings weren't

any use. He fell awake. Flies on his face were feeding on the

mucus of his nose and eyes and lips. There was indeed a noise

of falling without wings. A few stones dropped outside his cave.

A little further along the cliff a new landslip was underway. God's