Quarantine by Jim Crace

bushes
    outside the cave. Her name was Marta. She'd been married for
    nine years to Thaniel, the landowner of Sawiya by Jerusalem.
    His second wife. She was - a phrase she'd heard too often in the
    song -
    The Mother of a threadbare womb,
    Her warp hung weftless on the loom.
    Though she was over thirty years of age, she had no children
    yet, despite her husband's nightly efforts, and her experiments
    with all the recommended charms and herbs to aid fertility. She'd
    sacrificed a dozen pigeons with the local priest. She'd rubbed
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    honey on a marrow, sent money to Jerusalem, worn copper
    body charms, endured - she could not see how this would help
    - her husband's semen in her mouth. She'd worn balsam leaves
    underneath her clothes for weeks on end until she rustled like
    parchment. She'd eaten only green fruit (and paid the price) .
    She'd starved herself. She'd gorged. Now she was plump and
    getting plumper, not to satisfy her husband, but because a flat
    stomach was intolerable. A larger one and bigger breasts might
    bring good luck, she thought. Provide the dovecote, and the
    doves will come.
    None ofit had worked, of course. Her warp remained without
    its weft. A hundred times and more, she'd done her best to fend
    off with prayers and lies the monthly rebuff of her periods. Now
    she only had till harvest to conceive. Then, her husband said,
    he would divorce her. The law allowed him to. The law
    demanded that he should, in fact. After ten years of barrenness
    a man could take another wife. 'You don't cast seed on sour
    land,' he said. He had a right to heirs. It was a woman's religious
    duty to provide and bring up children. He'd had to divorce his
    first wife, because she'd failed to conceive. Marta had failed as
    well. So Thaniel would have to turn her out and look elsewhere.
    Of course it was regrettable and harsh, he said, but he could
    hardly blame himself. Not twice. He'd marry 'Lisha's daughter.
    She was young. Her father owned some land adjacent to his
    own. The prospect was a cheerful one. And sensible.
    'I'll have a son within ten months, ' he told his wife. 'And,
    Marta, wipe your face and show some dignity. What use are
    tears? You'd better pray for miracles . . . Come on. You will
    have had ten years to prove yourself, and that is fair . . . '
    'I'll pray,' she said.
    'Pray all you want. '
    Marta took him at his word. She would do everything she
    could. So, despite the priest's objections that her plans were
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    wilful and unbecoming, she had walked into the wilderness to
    fast by day and pray for miracles by night.
    Now she was sitting upright inside the cave, her back pressed
    against the least damp wall, and watching the entrance for dawn's
    first smudge of grey. She was more tired than scared - and though
    she, like her neighbours, turned the clatter of each tumbling
    stone, displaced by nothing more ominous than dew, into a devil
    or a snake, she could not stop her chin from dropping on her
    chest from time to time. Her sleeping dreams were less alarming
    than her waking ones, and so it felt to her that she did not fall
    asleep but rather fell awake into the nightmare of the cave, alone.
    She woke inside a womb, a grave, a catacomb. But she was calm.
    These forty days could not be worse than the alternative - a life
    without a child, a husband or a home.
    She despised the man, of course, and had taken hardly any
    pleasure in the marriage for at least eight of their nine or so years
    together. In that she was the same as many of the women in
    Sawiya. Marriage was a bumpy ride for them, though 'Better
    ride than walk,' they said, 'even if the ride is on a donkey.'
    Their husbands were an irritation, of course. But husbands were
    amusing, too. At least, they were amusing when they were out
    of sight. Their vanities and tempers could be joked about among
    women friends at the ovens or the well. Grumbling and laughing
    at their curdy husbands made the bread rise and the yoghurt set.
    But Marta could not