Greeks. Even shrugging made him wince; the pain ran up his veins like fire up oil-soaked thread.

‘Come, come,’ persisted Shim. ‘Won’t you agree with me?’ Their landlord’s story of his rescue from the fever was not believable, he insisted. Musa was a man who would not tell the truth unless there was a price on it. The donkey they had dragged away and dropped was more honest than Musa, and more saintly than Gaily. Perhaps it was the donkey, according to Shim’s mischief-making, that had come to Musa in his tent and passed some of its holy water on his head, and pressed its holy hooves on to his face, and plucked the devil out between its teeth. ‘What can you say to that?’

Another shrug from Aphas. And then, ‘There is, at least, a mystery. .’

‘Where is the mystery?’ asked Shim, unused to anyjudgement but his own. ‘It was an animal, perhaps. Or one of our landlord’s cousins put in the cave to make fools ofyou all.’

No, Aphas would not be shaken from his latest faith. He was sure he’d seen a shape, quite tall, and hardly making any sound as if it floated on the ground. It must have floated down the precipice to reach the cave because, so far as he could see, the entry was beyond the reach of no^al men. It was beyond the reach of goats.

‘I felt. .’ he said, but did not finish. He dared not use the word enlightenment again. He’d used it once before, only to hear it mocked by Shim: Enlightenment comes to the ignorant. ‘I felt uncertain. .’

‘You felt uncertain ifyou saw a man at all,’ said Shim, beginning to enjoy himself Aphas was not a scholar and the only other audience was a blushing woman and the madcap badu, who betrayed no sign oflistening, but at least here was an opportunity for greater wisdom to prevail: ‘A floating shape is not a man. If it were, then — look around — this little valley would seem as populated as a market-place. It’s only the sun and wind that make the rocks and bushes seem to float and tremble. No mystery.’

‘She saw it, too,’ protested Aphas.

‘Our neighbour, yes. The nearly-shadows and the humming rocks that she claims as her experience are not evidence of anything beyond the natural.’ He didn’t point at Marta or even say her name. ‘Who else then? Our fine landlord? You cannot cite his narrative, even if he really thinks he tells the truth. At best, his were the visions ofa fever. Hot dreams and make-believe. Who hasn’t had a fever, and then seen shapes? But why blame fever when he’s so obviously a drunk? So what is left? The badu’s word? We’ll take his word for it.’ Shim laughed. The badu couldn’t speak a single word. ‘Whose testimony should we trust that there is anybody there at all?’

‘Your own testimony,’ Aphas almost shouted. Had Shim forgotten what he’d said to Musa? ‘You saw him from the top. There’s someone there, you said. You almost dropped the donkey. . didn’t. .?’

‘It was the truth. The donkey hardly missed his head,’ said Shim. ‘He looked at me. I looked at him. You see, I have the final word. My logic has you trapped. I’m the only one whose testimony is more substantial than a shape or a shadow or a dream. And this is strange. What should one make of this? Those three ofyou who did not see him quite, convince yourselves that he’s a healer and a holy man. While I, who stared him in the face, who can describe his nose and chin and ears, can tell you he is not. It seems I have to persevere with what I said. The man’s a boy, at best, collecting eggs or chasing sheep. . What’s holy there? And where’s the mystery?’

‘No normal boy could climb down a clifflike that. It’s dangerous. It’s almost sheer,’ insisted Aphas, defeated by Shim’s reasoning but irritated too, and close to tears. At home, he had three sons of Shim’s age, and older. They had been taught to listen to their elders, and to be respectful of every priest and holy man. Certainly they knew it was not right to argue with a dying man, a man in pain. He turned his head away from Shim. He did not want to hear another word. He’d dreamed, like Marta, that the healer’s hand had come into his cave. What else would save his life? He spread his fingers on his side, despairing at the unforgiving ache. He should have put his fingers in his ears.

‘A normal boy will take a chance to snatch some eggs,’ said Shim. ‘Al normal boys can climb. The stupid ones take bigger risks. We’re talking of a very stupid boy.’

Marta coughed. She sniffed. She made impatient movements with her legs. The bees inside her melon head rose up in fury. She was surprised that Shim could strike such a cruel note, as if it mattered to him that she — and evidently Aphas, too — needed to believe in healers and in miracles. What otherwise was the point of prayer and fasting, far from home, unless the grating noises of the world could be turned tuneful by the charms and cantrips of some holy conjuror? Shim’s god might be a god whose greatest trick was curdling milk or taking mould to bread. But Aphas and Marta’s was a god who parted seas to take his people out of slavery, who punished wickedness with floods, who summoned water out of rocks, who only had to whistle for the towers and the bastions to fali. Theirs was a god who showed his hand through miracles.

She’d like to do what the widows of the slaughtered men in Maccabee had done to their false prophets and stuffShim’s mouth with clay. He’d have to listen then. For once she could be angry in ways which were not approved, a woman shouting at a man. She would be happy for the chance to scream again. This was the scrub. No one would come to help. She’d tell him that she knew his mind. He was clear water. She could see the bottom of his pot. His scoffing at Gaily was nothing more than his cowardly revenge on Musa. But Marta was not fooled, she’d say. She had not travelled much, she could not read, but Marta was not mystified by him. She even saw what hid beneath the bottom ofhis pot. She saw the deeper level to his mockery, and she understood that Shim was simply jealous of the Galilean man.

Shim was a practised traveller to holy places, as he’d told them many times. He boasted that he could read Greek letters, converse in Aramaic, Siddilic and Latin, tell fortunes, compose and sing his own prayers in a voice of mesmerizing evenness, and sit as sinless and as motionless as a pyramid, possessed by half-a-dozen gods, competing with the rocks for soberness. He said that he was used to deference, that he was used to supplicants seeking his advice and wisdom. At religious gatherings throughout the provinces more simple pilgrims than himself- and that included the likes of Marta, Musa and Aphas — would treat him as the pious and the holy one. They’d seek him out. They’d kneel to touch his gown. They’d give him alms and shelter for the night. Why should he not expect the same to happen in the scrub? His landlord and the quarantiners ought to come and stand a little distance from his cave. They ought to pray for him to drive their spirits and their fevers out. They ought to sit in hopes each day that his portentous shadow would fal on theirs. Instead, he was ignored at best, or made to look a fool, or argued with by one

— Aphas-whose character was not enhanced by travel, or another

— Musa — whose mind was not refined by study. Instead of deference and alms, he had a dislocated toe. And al these simple pilgrims in the scrub were seeking help and wisdom from some meekling youth whose only credo seemed to be that it was wise to turn his cheek against the light and cower in his cave.

‘Or else we frightened him,’ he said, to end his conversation with Aphas. ‘That is the measure of his holiness. He scrambled down. He hid inside the cave and now he’s stuck. He can’t climb up. He’s too ashamed to show his face. He’s sucking wild birds’ eggs for food, and praying for rain. Perhaps we ought to go with rope and rescue him.’ With that, he shut his eyes and settled down to meditate, his fingers spread out on the rock, with just an eyelid flickering to show he was alive, like a lizard boasting in the sun.