There was one prophecy, of course, which Marta had heard at least twice a day in Sawiya, whenever she’d recited the introit to prayers. She’d always spoken it as if the words referred to worlds ten thousand days away. But here, so close to heaven in the hills, so close to no-such-thing, the more she ran the verses through her mind, the more it seemed the prophecy was meant for her alone. Its garments fitted her. Those were her tears described, her barrenness, her quarantine, her desert places. The scrubby hills beyond Jerusalem, the scriptures said, would send down to the world through David’s seed a holy king. He’d heal the sick. He’d bring comfort to the broken-hearted. He’d build up the empty spaces. He’d spread fertility on earth.
Once Marta had decided that there was a holy pattern to her quarantine, she was softened to the possibility that what was prophesied through god’s own word would come true. If anything could happen, then it would. That was her latest article of faith. What was destined for ten thousand days would come about at once. So she had listened to Musa’s tale — how he was healed by the man that he called Gaily — and she had recognized immediately what it must mean. That fifth figure, dogging them from Jericho, that shadow on the precipice, that man who, if Musa spoke a quarter of the truth, could drive out fevers, devils, death, was sent by god to put the world to rights. He would not have travelled to the scrub and clambered to his cave only to minister to rocks and ants. He would have come, her daydream promised, to minister to her. Their meeting was ordained. There’d come a time, during the forty days, when he would swell into the holy king. He’d reach out from his cave into hers and hold her, cupped inside his giant palm: ‘Be well. .’ He would build his kingdom in her empty spaces.
These were her waking dreams. But there were others, more troubling, in which less godly prophecies came true. Her neighbours worried her. Notjust the leaping badu or the dying Aphas.
They were beyond her help and understanding. She was glad of that. But Shim too. She dreamed about him almost every night, perhaps because she was uncomfortable and cold, and hardly ever slept deeply. Sometimes she dreamed he was amongst the men who watched her in Sawiya when she went down to the well, the only handsome one. Sometimes he was confused with Musa and the Galilean man; the tent was caves, the fat was thin, their quarantine became a feast of uncooked meats, and all three men leaped over her while she was squatting in the rocks. They were a trinity as silent and as elegant as deer.
But on the second night oftheir quarantine, after they’d gone down to meet the healer and then had come back to their perching valley in the dark to break and celebrate their fast on Marta’s strangled fowl, she’d had a dream of Shim that would not fade when she woke up. He came into her cave on draughts of air. His body was as hard as wood. His arms were snakes. It was he who sweiled and cupped her in his p^ms and said, Be well. His seeds were insects running up her leg. Even in her sleep she knew they were as mad a match as the orange and the purple wools on Miri’s mat. But Marta did not shake herself awake or let him go. She let her hair and his, the black and blond, entwine and spin a yam across the cave’s damp floor — one-ply, two-ply, a braid, a knot that no one could undo or cut. She’d have to go back to Sawiya with Shim tied into her hair as evidence of what she’d dreamed.
Marta knew that dreams like this were little more than moths. They flew by night. They showed their colours in the dark, and then, once there was any light, they shut their wings and disappeared. But she was waiting to be blessed by god and fearful that her sins would show. She wondered ifsuch shaming dreams as hers might still be visible by day. See how she walks, see how her face is flushed, see how her nipples have grown broad, they’d say. Was there a blond hair clinging to her clothes? Could anybody tell by looking in her eyes that she had spent her dreams with Shim; how silent and how beautiful he’d been for her, how fertile she had been for him? On other nights she dreamed that Gaily came to work his miracle, but he found Shim inside her cave and went away.
So it was hard for Marta to face the men. She knew it would be wise and less embarrassing to spend her days at rest inside the cave, protected from the sun and wind and from the piercing judgement ofher neighbours. A woman should be out ofhearing, out of sight, when she was sick and volatile. But Marta was too restless to sit still, and too excited by the sober freedoms of the scrub to stay in darkness. Besides, there was no way of avoiding her neighbours entirely. They all woke up before break oflight to meet at the water cistern, and to pray — although, of course, a woman could not stand amongst the men in prayers, even if she were not sick and volatile, or tainted by her dreams. Marta had to stand a little distance off, behind their backs, and she was content to do so. If she did not arrive in time for their dawn hosannas in praise of the water and the light, Shim or Aphas shouted her name or let the badu throw stones at the bushes by her cave. They were being neighbourly. ‘Come out and drink,’ they said. ‘It’s almost dawn.’ So she would tie her hair veil tightly round her head to make herself invisible and join them at the grave. Even when Aphas begged her to reach down into the water to fill his cap, she did not speak to him beyond the common courtesies, or show her face. She did her best to close her wings against them al, to hide away the mothy colours of the night, to keep her ardours to herself.
No one there gave Marta much thought, to tell the truth. The men thought only of themselves. The badu grinned at her with an expression which seemed both childish and lascivious — but then he grinned at rocks as well, and rocks could have no reason to be nervous ofa grin. The old man wheezed and limped as if his illness was only real if acted out. And Shim had greater matters on his mind than floating into Marta’s cave by night on draughts of air. It was his habit, as soon as there was any light, to impose himself upon the largest rock on the sloping ground below the caves and meditate, his chin too high, his back too straight, his eyes and tongue just visible. He would not speak if spoken to. He let the flies stay on his eyes and lips. He let the lizards run across his hand. He set himself the task ofstaying stil. Marta hardly recognized the man by day. The light was cruel to him. How unexciting he’d become. She would not want his hair in hers. He was a better man in dreams.
She understood, of course, that Shim had reasons to be proud and petulant. Their landlord had humiliated him on that first day. Shim had nearly had his little toe pulled off. She’d seen him shaking with defeat as he hobbled back towards the tent. Musa had the curling staff behind his back. It looked as if he meant to strike Shim down, and when he did not strike him down but chose instead to win with words, then Shim’s abasement seemed complete. Even anger had looked comical and weak on him.
Shim should despise their landlord, then. That made sense. What Marta did not understand, and what neither she nor Aphas could bear to listen to, was Shim’s dismissal of the healer. He hadn’t even spoken to the man, the boy, as far as she could tell. He’donly seen him for a moment, from the brink ofthe precipice. Yet Shim took every opportunity to ridicule Gaily (that had become the name that everybody used) and anyone who took his side.
‘What saintly person would squander a miracle on such a man as Musa?’ he asked Aphas one morning at the cistern when the old man had caUed a verse for Gaily in his prayers. Aphas merely shook his head and shrugged. It was too early in the day and he ached too much from sleep to grapple with the wisdom of the