— a phrase he loved — ‘We never knew our Gaily after all. He is the bread of our short lives. He is the good shepherd who will lead us out of suffering.’

He’d never boasted such a dream to anyone — not to his parents or the priest, not even to his god in prayer, and hardly to himself This was his smothered heart’s desire, unspoken and invisible. Yet here was someone — this resurrected fat man, dangling provisions from the su^nunit of the precipice — who called him by his other name and seemed to see inside his heart. Someone who heard what was not said. Someone who saw what was not on display. No one had ever offered Jesus such perfect blandishments before, or such flattery. Yes, he was tempted to go up and test his healing prayers at the tent, to sacrifice his fast for them. He felt he had the cure in his fingertips. They only had to touch. They trembled at the thought of it. The hands that could remove the knots from wood, release the pigeons pinioned by the twigs, could drive out fevers and disease. He’d be the carpenter of damaged souls. But god was watching him, beyond the devil and the bees, and saying nothing. He gave no sign to Jesus. And no sign was the sign that these appeals to vanity could only be the devil’s work. He’d have to learn to block his ears and eyes for fear ofjoining them, the demons on the rock.

So Jesus closed himself against his tempters. He would not be seduced or fooled by the contents ofa leather bag. He half-heard, through his fingertips, Musa calling from the rim, his voice unnatural: ‘Gaily. Gaily. Look outside. There’s water. And some food. Dates. Some bread. My wife. Has baked for you. . Gaily, Gaily. Speak to us.’ He did not move. He hardly breathed. He was beyond temptation now. His appetites were dead.

It was hard to concentrate, but he managed to expel Musa from his thoughts and shut their voices out. He set his mind on future, better times: his quarantine had ended; he had proved his worthiness. He saw himself walking through Jerusalem towards the temple, through the trading tables and the booths which fi.Hed the outer courts. The merchants and the dealers and the money-changers, the people who wore soft clothes and ate wheat bread and reclined on couches like the Greeks, would all call out to him in their high voices, ‘Gaily, Gaily, eat our cakes and drink our wine. Buy pigeons and dates from us.’ Musa would be there, with leather bags for sale. But Jesus could not be seduced, not by the devil in the scrub, not by the devils crowding at the temple walls. He’d turn their tables over, empty out their bags, drive off their animals. He’d put his foot in Musa’s flesh and kick him through the gates.

But first he had the opportunity to kick a bag. It held the devil’s water and the devil’s bread, the devil’s finest dates. How much he’d love to open up the bag and sup on it. How much he’d be relieved to break his fast, and flood the valley of his throat.

He managed to get up on to his feet, although his ankles ached ala^rmingly and all his bones protested at the effort. He could not swing his foot to kick the bag. He reached his a^ out into the early evening light. There was no sun to warm him; how foolish and how strong he’d been to jettison his clothes. He wrapped his fingers round the plaited rope. He pulled the bag towards the cave, and caught it in both hands. He smelled the bread — the water too — in those few moments that he held the bag. He smelied the blood, the mildew and the carrion that lingered on the leather. He tugged on it. The rope tightened for an instant and came free as Musa or one of his accomplices let go of the far end. He sensed their triumph. He would make it brief Before the rope could slither from the rim and fall at the entrance to the cave, Jesus had tossed the bag away as if it had claws and teeth, a rabid bat. He hadn’t got much strength. He was surprised how heavy it had seemed, but stili it cleared the platfo^ of the cave and fell towards the valley, bouncing on the precipice until the water-pouch inside, unseen, split open from the impact of the rocks. The leather bag became too empty and too light to fall much more. It lay — forever; kippered by the sun — between two rocks, too high and too far from the top for any climber to retrieve.

Jesus pressed his fingers tighter in his ears. He was petulant with triumph and alarm, like a boy who’d smashed an egg, frightened of his mother, not the hen. He would not listen to his tempters’ shouted words. He hummed to himself so that no more sound or any of the beaten voices from above could penetrate his armour.

19

Night arrived with its sullen wing to double-shade their tents and caves. Jesus slept; he was unconscious for a while, but when he dreamed he dreamed of Musa, no one else. Stroking Musa’s eyelids with his thumb. Musa’s face marked on the surface of the moon. Musa sitting in the kingdom of the lord, naked and uncircumcized, his great lap open to the angels’ gaze. Musa in a market-place, but selling fasts instead ofleather bags, withJesus his first customer.

Musa’s salesmanship was irresistible. Of course it was. Jesus could not make the man seem dull, even in his dreams. This devil was not ignorant, a huckster with no subtlety. He was a craftsman worthy of his task. He was a trader and a salesman, after all, and practised in making virtues out of sins. He could sell the mildew and the bruises on his blemished fruit. Their blackened peels are honey-sweet, he’d say. Taste them — pay first — and you will see.

No, forJesus, the merchant Musa andthe devil were the same, in dreams and out. Close cousins anyway, far-travelled, patient, shrewd, unshockable, refined. For every camel-load ofmerchan- dise that Musa had exchanged for goods abroad he would have packed a little knowledge in his panniers as well; the whereabouts of some blue, distant town, the predilections of some king, a new philosophy, a freshly coined word, telepathy, the aHocation of the stars. He’d have the trick of holding conversations with his customers on subjects as various as that year’s lemon crop, the uses of bern and balsam oils, and whether it was proper for a sadducee to eat an egg that had been laid on the sabbath. (‘Proper to eat it, wrong to cook it, I would say. Raw eggs are good enough for sadducees. ’) Al his conversations would be sharp. His knowledge was a gleaming weapon, a spear with wings, with which to prick and wound his quarry. Musa would not flee from arguments, or duck his head at words he could not understand. What he didn’t know he would invent, and his inventions would be more quenching than the truth. He was a strong adversary for god.

So here in dreams was Musa at his stall, seUing fasts to pious Jews, always intending that they should be trapped by their own vanity in some damp cave, on some sheer precipice, with not an ant to keep them company, and only devils’ water there to wet their eyes and tongues. Here was Musa calling on the holy wisdoms of Moses, Ezra and Mordecai whose fasts had been sustained divinely. Here was Musa with his hand onJesus’s, the merchant’s mouth a short breath from the client’s ear, his forked tongue hidden by his swollen cheeks, and whispering, ‘I challenge you. To battle me. For forty days.’

Again, more dreams. He came, this time toJesus in his cave. He held a carpet viper in one hand, and a desert mouse in the other. ‘These creatures are your cousins, Gaily. They’re like you. They go without their food and drink for forty days or more in this same scrub, three months, four months,’ he said. ‘If there’s no food or drink, they simply switch their bodies off and wait until the rains. That’s what you have to do. It’s easy. Of course, the pity is that one of them can always break its fast, to eat the other one. . Guess which. Let’s see.’ He put the viper with the mouse.

Another time the merchant was a priest, his great round head topped off with a linen hat. Bells and pomegranates hung from his blue robe. There were brooches made ofsardonyx, a golden purse, a purple cape. His se^on was that fasters who had earned his blessing could expect the greatest of rewards. He could not promise paradise to mice or snakes. But pious Jews? Their prizes were unlimited. With Musa at their side, they would be calm throughout their quarantine and comfortable, he promised them, leaning his weight against the temple door. They would have peace of mind. Al the distractions and appetites of public life would be driven off like scrub dogs, and clarity of spirit would come sniffing at their ankles, begging to be lifted up and stroked.