Quarantine (18 page)

Except pray? Already she was grieving for her husband. There

wouldn't be a man to take good care of her. I was a piece of

meat, and soon to be as numb and silent as a stone. I don't

remember anything, except death's door.'

Where there were market-places, there were preachers. So

Musa knew the words and mannerisms he should use to lend a

touch of holiness to what he said: 'She went to look for herbs

to make a poultice for my head. And when she went a stranger

came into my tent. He was my light and my salvation. He came

from nowhere. And he was here, right by my bed, then not

quite here, then gone, then come again. The air was flesh. But

still I saw his face. I heard his voice. From the Galilee. He said

his name. I can't remember it. He put his holy water on my

head. He pressed his holy fingers on my face. He held a conversation with the fever in my chest. He said, This man is loved by god. This man is loved by everybody's god. This man is

merchandise that can't be touched. I will not let you take this

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man from us. He put his fingers on my chest. The hot and cold

went out of me. He plucked the devil out as easily as you or I

might take the stone out of an olive. He pinched death between

his fingertips. He flicked it on to the ground, like that . . . as if

it were an olive stone . . . '

Musa coughed to gain a little time. He could not think how

olive stones and death were quite the same. He tried again, ' . . . I

knew that I would live to be white-haired because . . . You must

not take my word for this. Ask her. Come back in twenty years.

This very place. And you will see me with white hairs. So now

you understand?' He looked at Shim finally. 'That man you saw,

that boy, he made me live again . . . The little Gaily drove death

away.' Again he pointed at his wife. 'Ask her. She left a dying

man and then she came back to a miracle . . . You see?' He

slapped his chest. He pulled the flesh out on his cheek to show

how soft and large he was. 'I am restored.'

It was exactly as Musa wished. He had his way; he had his

company; he had the blond man's staff

'Let's see this holy man of yours,' Shim said, glad for once

that he was no longer the centre of attention. 'Come, come.'

He called his fellow quarantiners to his side. The more they

were, the safer he would be. They did not need persuading.

Marta could not miss the possibility of further miracles. Aphas

found the energy to stand and join the pilgrim group. A healer

was his only hope. The badu followed them like a dog, always

glad of expeditions. Would someone draw the demons out of

him? They set off for the precipice in the middle of the day,

when only mad men left their tents, to find the Galilean man,

if it was him. He was the purpose of their quarantine, perhaps.

He was the answer to their prayers. Like Musa, they would be

restored.

Miri and the goats were left behind. They had no need for

miracles. Miri was unwidowed by a miracle already. She had no

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wish to meet the healer face to face. She'd want to slap his cheek.

She'd want, at least, to have the devil's eggy breath returned to

her husband's mouth. She'd want to have the days rolled back

like parchment on a scroll to times when Musa lay across his bed

with a blackened tongue, blurting fanfares of distress. But Miri

did not believe in Musa's healer, anyway. He was as real to her

as cattle with two tails.

She watched the five pilgrims disappear towards the crumbling

decline of the scrub, their pace set by her husband's flat, unsteady

step. She could have wept. She could have taken Musa's knife

and scarred herself, as widows do. Instead she turned again

towards the warring hanks of wool and the small world of her

loom.

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Miri normally preferred to weave in daylight outside the tent.

The masters working in the towns would say that weavers who

set their looms in open ground have first to find the landscape's

warp and weft, the shadow lines, the tracks, the spirit paths. The

weaving and the landscape should concur or else the cloth would

lose its shape. The wind, the water and the threads, the lines of

scree, the strata of rock, the patterned strips of wool should run

in unison and then the fabric would be true. The weaver and

the ploughman should align. It's not enough to know your yam.

You have to know the land as well, they'd say.

But Miri simply liked the light of open ground. She liked the

privacy. Most of all, she liked the moment, early in the morning

with the sky still pale and unprepared, and no one else awake,

when a piece of cloth was underway and she could step out,

bare-footed, to inspect the new weave on the loom, its warp

threads tightened by the cold and damp. She'd pick off any tiny

snails that had climbed to feed on lardings in the wool. She'd

twang the freshly wefted cloth to shed the dust or dew. If the

weave was square and true and tense, the loom became a harp.

The cloth would hum a single note to her. She could not wait

to see what note the birth-mat would provide. First she had to

find a place to peg the loom.

Miri would have liked somewhere a little distance from the

tent where she would be left in peace, out of Musa's reach, and

out ofhearing. She'd already seen a flat place without too many

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rocks, on the leeward side of the tent. It would be safe and

comfortable, once she had kicked away the stones and cleared

the scrub weed. She would not bother with the landscape's warp

and weft. She'd travelled enough to know she'd find no patterned

unison in this tumultuous scrub. No weave could match such

stringy wind or cluttered light or rock, and only someone from

a town would think it could. She would concern herself with

duller matters and set the loom where the soil was firm enough

to hold the pegs, and where the sunlight came in from the left,

so that her working arm did not cast shadows on the cloth. The

yam, for her, was more important than the land. Yet, yes, she

would allow the masters this - a weaving done in open air,

informed by sunlight and then allowed to stretch and dampen

overnight beneath the stars, was best. It would outlast a workshop

weave which had not been toughened by the sun or tested by

the wind and dew. A workshop weave was like a coddled child,

pent up indoors all day. As soon as it encountered rain or heat

or cold, it sagged and frayed.

As Miri walked towards her chosen patch of ground, carrying

the base beams of the loom, she realized she could not peg them

out away from the tent as she had wished. The site she'd chosen

was the perfect place, except in one respect. There were six

goats. The five females were untethered. There was no goatherd

to prevent them wandering. There were no dogs. Or other

wives. Miri could not leave her birth-mat unattended. In the

night the nannies would join the snails in feeding on the weave.

Goats thrive on cloth. They love the taste of it, the colours too.

They love to dine on cloaks and blankets. They'd strip a sleeping

goatherd naked if they could. They'd eat the devil's hat.

At first she thought she'd try to stake the female goats alongside

the billy. But she was pregnant. It was hot. The goats were spread

out widely over the scrub, foraging for food. Chasing goats was

work for boys. Besides, goats staked in dusty scrubland such as

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this would not feed well, and hungry goats did not produce good

milk. She had no choice. She'd have to peg out her loom inside

the tent and suffer Musa's company.

She was not used to constPicting her loom inside. She did

not know the rituals or the rules. A loom, assembled in a tent,

should always face the entrance squarely, she'd heard it said; the

awnings should never be allowed to fall closed while the weavers

were at work. You might as well throw out the cloth, half done,

if the awnings were closed by mistake. There were prayers to

recite before the loom was warped, and other prayers for when

the finished cloth was cut. Unfortunately Musa's bed already

faced the entrance to the tent. She would not want to weave

within his reach.

So Miri loosened the pinning on the side wall of the tent

between the hand pole and the leg pole. She rolled the goatweave

back or. to the roof and fastened it with leather ties and stones.

She'd opened up a gap three paces wide which she could close

against the wind and goats at night quite easily. It gave her access

to the dark part of the tent, beyond the woven curtain which

she'd made herself some months before. This was where she

slept when Musa did not want her, and where the stores were

kept. It smelt of mildew, from the flour and the skins. She cleared

a space, two paces wide, four paces long. A large birth-mat. She

fetched the pieces of the loom which she and Marta had already

stacked - too hopefully - at the entrance to the tent.

Miri had her mother's loom. She'd set it up so many times

before, outside, and made so many lengths of cloth and in so

many different camps - tent panels from goats' hair, shrouds and

cloaks, hair cloths and veils, mats and carpets, woollen camel

bands, dividing curtains, travel bags - that weaving was her kith

and kin. There, in the tent, was the little rug she'd made in grey

and red, in carefree days before her mother died and she'd

become her father's burden. There were the goat-hair panniers,

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the cotton flour bags she'd made in undyed yams. There was

the blue-green curtain, in twined weft weave, that she had started

when they'd camped in hills above the sea and her father had

sent out word that she would go to any man that asked. Musa's

caravan had stopped and she'd been bartered for a decorated

sword and a fleece-lined winter coat. 'And you can take the

loom,' her father said. There was the black cotton dress she'd

woven for the wedding day, with its cross-stitch embroidery in

red and blue and its plaited woollen girdle and its cowrie shells.

She'd spun the cotton and the wool herself All her history was

made of cloth. Now there would be a birthing-mat in purple

and orange.

She set to work. She tied the broken orange threads of wool

into one long piece and wound and stretched it round the two

warping rods. She lashed the rods, pregnant with their orange

thread, to the breast and warp beams. She pegged one beam into

the ground, using a stone as a hammer. She pulled the other

beam as far away as it would go, so that the tension on the wool

was uniform, and pegged it to the ground. She carried stones

into the tent and packed them round the pegs to stop them

slipping. She put the leashes, the heddle rod and shed stick in

place, opened up the warp threads, and checked the tightness of

the wool. She tugged each thread, looking for the loosest ones

which would meander through the weave if not fully stretched

before the weft was started. The orange wool, unbunched,

looked less garish than it had in sunlight. Perhaps her husband

had been right to choose such cheerful wools.

The gap she'd opened up in the side wall of the tent gave

open views across the falling scrub, towards the precipice and

the distant purple hills, a lesser purple than the wool. Somewhere

below and out of sight, Musa and his tenants were hunting for

their miracles. What kind of self-deception were they guilty of?

Would the Galilean man or boy, this godly creature who'd crept

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so memorably into their tent, expel the old man's cancer, fertilize

the woman's crabby womb, make Shim's heart as handsome as

his face, expel whatever madcap spirits had taken residence inside

the badu's head, bring god down to the precipice to transform

Musa, shrink him to a proper size?

Miri cupped her stomach in her hands. She knew that life did

not improve through prayer or miracles. The opposite, in fact.

So let them go and waste their time. She didn't care. She only

hoped their quest would take them far away and leave her there

in peace all day, all year, to lose herself in woollen threads. She

sat cross-legged before the loom. She rubbed the beams with

her fingertips, exactly as her mother had, exactly as her daughter

would. She plucked the warp. She played it like a harp. There

were no orange notes as yet. It was too soon for her new mat