Quarantine

A branch snapped loose and fell on to the sloping rock in front of the cave. Then a small leather bag, much reddened by the marl and snagged by the canker thorn in which it had become entangled, dropped into view. It hung on a plaited wool rope in front of the key-hole opening at knee-height from the ground, and swung from side to side, its weathered leather chirping sharply — a cowering pigeon, indeed — until it lost momentum and only swayed when it was tugged from above.

Jesus did not even sway. He put a finger in each ear and pressed his palms into his eyes. He would be deaf and blind. But he could not shut out the world for long. He had no doubt what sound would be the next, a voice too high and reedy to be a no^al man’s. No soothing ookuroos. He’d heard and feared that voice a dozen times before, because each evening of the fast the fever-giant he’d left for dead in his black tent with its bat wings had come on to the rocky promontory a little to his right to tempt him from his quarantine. He shouted out his messages in short and breathless bursts, like some trinket salesman, as if long phrases would not have the wings to fly between the promontory and Jesus’s cave. ‘Come out, Gally. Let’s see your face. . My name is Musa. I’m your cousin. And your friend.’ No answer? Then, ‘I’ll make you rich. .’ At other times, ‘At least put up. Your hands. To pray for us. You can’t refuse. This woman’s barren, see? This uncle’s dying. From a canker. A canker in his ribs. These other two. Have been possessed. The one. Won’t speak. The other one. Can’t shut up. Come. Up to the tent. You are. You are the healer. Come up. And heal.’

Jesus concentrated on the leather bag, and waited for the voice to start again. He could imagine Musa and his retinue — the blond, the tail woman and the limping man, the cat-like madcap with the he

It might have been wise, ifJesus wanted any peace of mind, to impose upon himself the cheerful, undemanding view of radicals and city Greeks, that the devil was simply an excuse; someone to justify a person’s own shortcomings, someone to take the blame. It was their creed that devils had no place on earth, that evil was not a living creature in the world. There was no one to blame other than oneself There was just good luck and bad, god’s rules observed and broken, the clumsy juggling of happiness and guilt. And death of course, but death without a reckoning, and death without eternity. IfJesus could persuade himselfofthat, then how much more comfortable his quarantine would be. The leather bag would be nothing more than an irritation, and the big man on the precipice would be no angel out of hell. His shouted words would only be another earthly test ofJesus’s patience, simple to combat, safe to ignore.

Jesus, though, was young and inexperienced. His life so far had been unGreek. It was cheerless and demanding. Death was still far enough away — and too improbable — for him to want to believe that there might be no reckoning. He was, besides, a villager, too direct and untutored to take much comfort from abstract notions that life was finite or that the devil was not flesh and blood. For him — although he could not put the words to it — the living devil was just as real as god. Indeed, the devil was the living proof of god, for everything that god had made was weak and blemished and imperfect by design. God’s pot had cracked inside the kiln, so that his sons and daughters could by their labours and their prayers restore perfection to the pot. The devil occupied the crack, and lay in wait like a thief God put him there. To deny the presence of the devil was to turn against the perfect blemishes of god.

So Jesus was in little doubt that, should the devil choose, he could easily appear as Musa on the precipice. He could produce a thousand leather bags. He could invade his soul and jostle for a perch inside his heart as truly and as tangibly as a raidingjackdaw could invade an open nest and jostle out its chirping i

Jesus, then, could not be calmly Greek and radical in this demonic scrub. How could he be when the devil called him from the precipice, when the jackdaw’s matted wing was hard against his face? He was alone, exposed, a chirping i

So even though Jesus was distressed by Musa’s daily visitations, he understood that god was watching him at last. That gave him strength, and helped him to withstand the chilling offers from the promontory and to see the devil’s plan more clearly. Musa’s offers were too crudely tempting; his summonses for Jesus to vacate the precipice and heal the sick were too bespoke to be remotely i

He wanted most to serve his god in simpler ways which did not require either confidence or reading, ways which could be witnessed by his family and his neighbours. More cowardly ways, perhaps? At best, he’d preach to villagers and children, anyone who would not challenge him and not call out, ‘Your head’s in heaven, Gally. Fuli of clouds.’ He’d even be prepared — and glad — to defile himself on those kept out of temples — lepers, menstruating women, prostitutes, the blind, even the uncircum- cized — if they would listen to him, if it would cause discomfort to the priest. These were the ones, he thought, that god had created weak and blemished and imperfect by design. These were the chirping i

Jesus had always been ashamed of his ambition, but this is what he’d dreamed since he was young. There was a congregation on a hill slope in the Galilee. He was the tallest, and he looked down on their heads. He recognized his brothers’ hair, his neighbours’ hair, the baker’s and the priest’s, the leper’s, and the prostitute’s uncovered hair. But they were tired of listening to se^ons. ‘Come up to me, the sick, the troubled and the blind,’ he’d say. He’d put his hands on eyes and foreheads, rub out pains, press his fingers into hardened flesh, remove their swellings with a touch, kiss sores. Erase their sins. He’d cure them. They’d be restored, through him, by god. And, yes, he’d find a boat for fishermen, and horses for the men too weak to walk. They’d say