The little badu, though, did not call out, but in many ways he was the noisiest of them al. He couldn’t sit still for a moment. He had to run, or climb along the ledges as madly as a goat, or dislodge stones. He had to crumble earth and throw the pebbles that he found against the precipice. He seemed to be at war with everything. A truly troubled spirit, Jesus thought, on those three or four occasions when the badu came into view, clambering around the tip of the promontory. Here was a demon soul in torment, restless, tiny, dark, uncircumcized. A man entirely lost to god. This is what Jesus would end up like himself if he abandoned his devotions or was defeated for one single moment in his fast. He’d have to spend eternity with stones. He’d shrink and blacken. His foreskin wouldgrow back. He’d have to clamber till the end of time.

Just once his tempters almost trapped him. It was barely dawn on the twenty-second day of quarantine, and Jesus was sleeping. He mistook the scrambling feet which roused him from his dreams to be his own, in headlong flight down banks of scree and bones. ‘See how our little Gaily runs!’ When he woke up, the dream persisted. There was shuffling. He thought that there was breathing in his ear. Fright made him strong. He sat up immediately and looked around into the shadows. He found what he was looking for. He didn’t care if there were animals. He would have welcomed death if it was death. But it was just the badu standing in the entrance to the cave, an outline, the cloak ofMoab purple at his shoulders, and his gifts — some locusts he had trapped, a water-pouch — lying on his hands. His knee was cut from where he’d fallen on the climb, and so he stood unevenly, like a boy. He was less mad and restless than he’d seemed at a distance, less devilish. The locusts and the water- pouch were trembling. The badu was afraid, and so was Jesus. The shadow and the silhouette.

The badu whispered a word, not quite an ookuroo, but something soft and boneless. Not a word that Jesus understood. The badu put the locusts on the entrance rock. He touched his heart and then his forehead, to mime that he was coming as a friend. Again a sign thatJesus did notrecognize. He held the water-pouch out for Jesus to take, and when the offer was ignored, he tipped some water into his open palms, invitingJesus to see it, smell it, put his tongue to it. Here was the odour of the Galilee, seeping through the badu’s shaking fingers and wasting on the ground.

Jesus concentrated ali his power in his voice. He’d practised this — the corning of the devil to his cave. He shouted in the badu’s face, ‘Leave me in peace. .’ But, still, he took a half-step forward as he shouted, just to be a little closer to the badu’s hand, and the smell, and the glint of moisture that was left. The badu reached out through the dark, and put his damp fingers onJesus’s face. He wiped the water on his cheeks. Jesus did not pull away. This was too much for him.

‘Rub just a little … on my lips,’ he said, although the words were weak and splintered. ‘Not swaliow it.’ He would have wept at his own weakness, at all the days he’d wasted on his fast, if he had any tears. One drop of water and the devil would rejoice. One drop of water and he’d spend eternity with thorns and flames and rocks.

The badu smiled — invisibly in this half-light — but did not move his hand or press his fingers on to Jesus’s lips. He shook his head. He said his word again, and took a half-step backwards out of the cave. His outline thickened with the light, but he seemed small and nervous. He’d not expectedJesus to be naked, or so wild. He offered the water-pouch again, but without looking at Jesus. He closed his eyes and waited, with one hand held out. With the other hand, he twisted his hair as tightly as he could into peaks and knots.

‘Who sent you here? To mock me,’ Jesus said, each word a self-inflicted wound. ‘I’ll not, not drink. But pour your water on my neck and head. I wash my face and eyes in it. .’ Again the badu did not move. He only waited forJesus to reach across and take the pouch himself. But Jesus held his hands behind his back and muttered prayers. Finally, the badu reopened his eyes, and took another half-step back into the light.

‘You mock me, cousin,’ Jesus said. ‘You will not even wet my lips.’

Ifthe badu had done what he was asked, then Jesus’s quarantine might have ended just in time. But the badu was a nervous man, for al his patience. He’d risked his life to climb so far in the darkness. He took more backward steps into the first light of the day and stood outside the entrance to the cave where Jesus’s Greek letters promised death to any gentile who tried to come into the inner court. The badu held his hand up and nodded at the remaining dampness on his palm. Again he touched his heart and forehead. He did not speak. He did not smile again. He picked the locusts up and offered them. He held the water-pouch, but did not tip more water out. One leg was flexed. Prepared to run ifJesus tried to grab his arm.

Now thatJesus saw the badu’s face, his weakness was replaced by anger, mostly with himself. This was a battle that he would not lose just for a drop ofwater on his head and neck. He clapped his hands. The bony impact echoed dryly in the cave. It hurt. He clapped his hands again, and shook his head. His neck and shoulders squeaked like a door. His skull had separated from the skin. His hair was weed. He took a step or two towards the badu. They almost touched again, before the badu backed away. ‘He cannot make me drink, the man,’ Jesus said. And then his final shout, a piece of yew log cracking in the fire, ‘Go out from me. ’

The badu was expressionless, a fish displayed behind the thick glass of a vase. He had not even blinked. His eyes and lashes had not moved, even though he had been shouted at, straight in the face. He simply nodded, turned away without a shrug and let the locusts go, though they were dead. A waste. He could have eaten them himself; a badu delicacy, the desert shrimp. Then he fled, back to the place where he had cut his knee, back to the summit of the precipice, back to his cave. He would not look at Jesus any more, though Jesus cailed to him while he climbed. He shouted out in Greek and Aramaic, ‘You have not tempted me. Praise god,’ and even with some words he knew in Sumar. But no reply. ‘Coward. Demon. Run to your master like a dog.’

Jesus stood outside his cave, elated, naked and transfixed. He almost wept with happiness. So god was taking care of him after all. God was standing guard. Jesus praised the ingenuity of god. He knew another man who hardly blinked. The baker that lived five houses down from theirfamily workshop was as unresponsive as the badu. Small boys would stand behind him at his stall and shout their jokes into his ears. They would insult his bread. But he would not respond.

‘O sweet, forgiving god, when I was weak,’ Jesus said aloud, with no one there to listen to his words. The devil’s go-between had come down to his cave to tempt him. But — praise the lord

— the devil’s go-between was deaf. For everything that god had made was weak and blemished and imperfect by design.

Jesus laughed. How dull and unprepared the devil was.

21

No one need be thirsty in the scrub, unless they choose, said Musa. He and Miri had exhausted all the water in their bags, and so had come up to their cistern at the caves to drink and to refill the empty skins.

Without the open cistern to provide their drink, her husband would have dragged Miri from her loom, just when the purple- orange birth-mat was almost complete. She only had to loosen the warp, a little at a time, and then her mat could be cut offthe loom and the four hundred ends tied. Tying these umbilicals was the guarantee that her pregnancy would be successful. But Musa only cared for mats that he could sell. He would not have put up with thirst rather than separate Miri from a mat which would produce no profit. He would have sent her out to hunt for water.