Jim Crace - Quarantine

Praise for Quarantine "Remarkable ... T he effect is almost hallucinatory." -Frank Kermode, The New York Times Book Review "Immensely enjoyable ... Mr. Crace's vivid writing brings his clever take on the Bible to life." -Elizabeth Bukowski, The Wall Street Journal "A serious and skillfully crafted novel about folly, faith, and a radically new relationship between a people and its god." -R. Z. extraordinary ... extraordinary ...

One of the freshest and most inventive novelistic uses of biblical material I have read." -Roger K. Miller, Chicago Sun Times "Unforgettable ... Crace has created an incantatory, compelling novel that stands beside Camus' The Stranger in its visceral sense of location and its resolute refusal of moral abstractions." -Greg Burkman, The Seattle Times "Quarantine is a brilliantly imagined work ....Jim Crace is a landscape artist in prose." -Boston Book Review "Troubling ... profound ... impressive." -Peter Landry, Philadelphia Inquirer "Daring ... original ... [Quarantine] has moments of pure beauty." -Commonweal ALSO UY jiM CRACE Signals of Distress Arcadia The Gift of Stones Continent JIM CRACE PICADOR USA FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX NEW YORK QUARANTINE. [Quarantine] has moments of pure beauty." -Commonweal ALSO UY jiM CRACE Signals of Distress Arcadia The Gift of Stones Continent JIM CRACE PICADOR USA FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX NEW YORK QUARANTINE.

Copyright 1998 by Jim Crace. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Picador is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Pan Books Limited. For information on Picador USA Reading Group Guides, as well as ordering, please contact the Trade Marketing department at St. Martin's Press. Phone: 1-800-221-7945 extension 488 Fax:212-677-7456 E-mail: trademarketing@stmartins.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crace, Jim. p. em. em.

ISBN 0-312-19951-1 l.Jesus Christ-Temptation-Fiction. 2. Bible. N.T.-History of Biblical events-Fiction. !.Title [PR6053.R228Q37 1999] 823' .914-dc21 98-51205 CIP First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux First published in the United Kingdom by Viking Penguin First Picador USA Paperback Edition: April 1999 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 An ordinary man of average weight and fitness embarking on a total fast- that is, a fast during which he refuses both his food and drink- could not expect to live for more than thirty days, nor to be conscious for more than twenty-five. For him, the forty days of fasting described in religious texts would not be achievable- except with divine help, of course.

History, however, does not record an intervention of that kind, and medicine opposes it. Ellis Winward and Professor Michael Soule, The Limits of Mortality, Ecco Press, New Jersey (1993) J Miri's husband was shouting in his sleep, not words that she could recognize but simple, blurting fanfares of distress. When, at last, she lit a lamp to discover what was tonnenting him, she saw his tongue was black- scorched and sooty. Miri smelled the devil's eggy dinner roasting on his breath; she heard the snapping of the devil's kindling in his cough. She put her hand on to his chest; it was soft, damp and hot, like fresh bread. Good news. Good news.

Miri was as dutiful as she could be. She sat cross-legged inside their tent with Musa's neck resting on the pillow of her swollen ankles, his head pushed up against the new distension of her stomach, and tried to lure the fever out with incense and songs. He received the treatment that she - five months pregnant, and in some discomfort - deserved for herself. She wiped her husband's forehead with a dampened cloth. She rubbed his eyelids and his lips with honey water. She kept the flies away.

She sang her litanies all night. But the fever was deaf. Or, perhaps, its hearing was so sharp that it had eavesdropped on Miri's deepest prayers and knew that Musa's death would not be unbearable. His death would rescue her. In the morning Musa was as numb and dry as leather, but cussed to the last- was gripping thinly on to life. His family and the other, older men from the caravan came in to kiss his forehead and mumble their regrets that they had not treated him with greater patience while he was healthy.

When they had smelled I and tasted the sourness ofhis skin and seen the ashy blackness of his mouth, they shook their heads and dabbed their eyes and calculated the extra profits they would make from selling Musa's merchandise on the sly. Musa was paying a heavy price, his uncles said, for sleeping on his back without a cloth across his face. An idiotic way to die. A devil had slipped into his open mouth at night and built a fire beneath the rafters of his ribs. Devils were like anybody else; they had to find what warmth they could or perish in the desert cold. Now Musa had provided lodging for the devil's fever.

He wouldn't last more than a day or two - ifhe did, then it would be a miracle. And not a welcome one. It was Miri's duty to Musa, everybody said, to let the caravan go on throughJericho towards the markets of the north without her. It couldn't travel with fever in its cargo. It couldn't wait while Musa died. Nor could it spare the forty days of mourning which would follow.

That would be madness. Musa himself wouldn't expect such waste. He had been a merchant too, and would agree, if only he were conscious, God forbid, that business should not wait for funerals. Or pregnancies. Fortunes would be lost if merchants could not hurry on. Besides, the camels wouldn't last.

They needed grazing and watering, and there was no standing water in this wilderness and hardly any hope of rain. No, it was a crippling sadness for them too, make no mistake, the uncles said, but Miri had to stay behind, continue with her singing till the end, and bury Musa on her own. She'd have to put up stones to mark her husband's passing and tend his grave until the caravan returned for her. She would be safe and comfortable if she took care. There was sufficient water in skins for a week or so, and then she could locate a cistern of some kind; there were also figs and olives and some grain, some salted meat and other food, plus the tent, the family possessiOns, small amounts of different wools, a knife, some perfume and a little gold. She'd have company as well.