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.