György Spiró - Captivity

The priest was dozing, and no one took any notice. Uri was perplexed both at why he was not livelier and why people were not bothered. The priest had an intermediary function between the Lord and His people, but he seemed not to serve it. A prayer-spouting puppet.

The Levite, on the other hand, was an important person. He was not satisfied with one of the bowls, which in shame, without a word of protest, was then immediately thrown to the side so hard that it broke. He also found fault with the quality of one sack’s contents; it was set aside and the opening tied again. Perhaps a fly had gotten into it, or else the deputy receiver had deemed it damp, but whatever the case it would be left behind, to be eaten by the local peasants.

The katholikos beckoned, and Master Jehuda leapt over. A young lad held a bowl in front of the katholikos’s nose. He fished out something from a barrel of oil with a stick and gave it a long, hard look. He dug around in the bowl of lentils with the other hand, took out a single lentil, and measured it against whatever the something was. He weighed it over for a long time, then nodded; the barrel could be put on the cart.

The people around Uri breathed a sigh of happiness and redoubled their singing. It had been a long time since any oil they pressed had been considered impure. Uri regretted that hitherto he had not participated in pressing olives.

When the sacks were done with, it was the turn of the fruits. These were carried on plates and placed before the Levite, who examined every single specimen. The feebler ones were set aside. They would be for us to eat, Uri surmised. Yet they had all been cut down with a flint knife, because that was never unclean. However, it was a case not of the flint knife being unclean but rather of the fruit being unclean.

On a sign given by Master Jehuda, the line broke and the singing stopped. The sudden stillness woke the priest, who stepped into a basin of water, dabbled his feet, bent down and splashed water on himself, stepped out of the bowl, and wobbled over to a table with wine and water. He chanted a prayer, and the Levite mixed wine into a glass of water, which the priest drank. This was the signal for the armed men to start drinking and eating, and now those who up until then had just passed the harvest down the chain started eating. The chain had been formed not to make the work easier (after all, one man could have carried the sacks) but so that everybody would have a part to play.

Once lunch was over, it was time for the calves and lambs, which were lying on straw at the foot of the trees. They were sprinkled with water before being led in front of the katholikos, who closely examined each one from its teeth to its hooves, he alone being qualified to do this because he counted as an expert. There were not so many firstborn animals in the village, Beth Zechariah being small. Uri thought there were too many, but then he was reminded that they were also gathering the best animals, not just the firstborn. The examination proceeded slowly, and more than one of the animals was judged faulty. Those animals would be reared and eventually slaughtered; they were good enough for the second tithe, the provender set aside for the villagers themselves to eat during the pilgrimage. The second tithe could be substandard; only the first tithe, which went to the priests and the Levites, had to be perfect.

The katholikos used a paintbrush dipped in red dye to mark the brow or wings of the selected animals and gestured that the owners should take them back into the shade. It was high time too, with the animals panting and near fainting from thirst. From that moment on, the owners were former owners and merely shepherds for the animals, because the priests — which is to say the Eternal One — now owned them.

The civilian in black now got down from the last cart, looking like someone in mourning, and made his way to the table. The soldiers lined up facing the inhabitants. The man in black halted. Silence fell.

“Who’s that?” Uri whispered.

“The tax collector.”

Animals, sacks of grain, and fruit were set before him, but no one checked their quality. This would go to the Romans in taxes, so it did not matter if it was impure. The tax collector stood there and counted. The sacks were loaded onto the cart, the livestock tethered to the back of the cart. The priest was sleeping or pretending to sleep. The Levite moved into the shade. The rows of people broke up as they gossiped, their backs turned to the tax collector.

“How much is the Edomite tax?” Uri inquired.

One percent of everything was the per capita tax, and one and a half percent the tax on produce. The tax collector was Jewish, and he paid an annual fixed sum to secure the right to collect taxes for Edom. If he happened to pull in more, the margin was his; if it was under, he bore the loss. He was evil, the tax collector, and he standing with the population was of a person in mourning: his testimony would not be accepted, it was forbidden to accept any present from him, and if he gave money to a person, it was forbidden to exchange it. Tax collectors went around the countryside with priests, Levites, and soldiers because they feared popular anger. It was a miracle that people were willing to act as tax collectors at all.

“They ruin the feast for us,” people said tartly.

Against sober voices counseling that one ought to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, people complained bitterly about being ruined by Edom’s shameless tax collectors.

“How does he know how much needs to be taken in?” Uri asked.

“He just does.”

Once a year the heads of households had to go to the tax collector in the nearest town and declare how much of what produce had been cultivated and how many souls there were in their families. That declaration was only checked in very rare instances; there just were not enough tax collectors. In that particular village there had never yet been a check on the Roman tax; no tax inspector would make it out alive if there were, that was for sure. All the same, they paid their taxes honestly to Edom because that was what their leaders demanded, and it was also what was demanded, for instance, by Master Jehuda, and if Master Jehuda said that they had to pay taxes to Edom, then they paid the tax, because Jehuda was the master.

Children did not have to be declared at birth but only once they reached seven years of age. That had been the case since Edom ruled them, maybe because so many died early in childhood. They did declare them to the priests, though, and if the firstborn was a son, they would immediately pay five sela’im to redeem him, because that son belonged to the Lord (or, in other words, to the priests), and he would have to be purchased back from them. Boys born subsequently would also have to be declared or they would not be circumcised, and girls were also declared. After each and every childbirth, even for a girl, the mother would sacrifice a lamb and a dove, or, if she was very poor, just two doves. Anyone who had no money — five silver sela’im was a huge sum, the equivalent of twenty drachmas! — would have to sign a promissory note that it would be paid as soon as they were able.

“And can a priest relieve a man of that debt?” Uri queried.

“No, that belongs to the Lord. It can never be paid off in crops, only in Tyrian silver.”

“The priest can give the money as a present to a poor family if he sees fit,” someone commented.

But they were in no mood for explanations; they wanted to grumble. So they carried on grumbling — in hushed tones so that the tax collector could hear, but not the Levite resting in the shade two paces farther away.

As if it were not enough that they had to pay a water fee, even though there was no aqueduct coming their way, all they had were their own cisterns and wells; as if it was not enough that they had to pay a road levy every time they went on a highway, festival periods aside, and there were times when they might have to go to Jerusalem in connection with a lawsuit; as if it was not enough that they had to pay a house tax even though they had put up their shacks with their own bare hands; as if it was not enough that they had to pay a frontier-crossing toll every time they needed to enter a town surrounded by a wall. Some three to four percent of their crop was taken away because the amount paid to the tax collector was more than two and a half percent, and if he was not happy he wouldn’t have his say here but would report them straight to Jerusalem, which meant that the high priests would bring some unfavorable decision with regard to the village, such as not allowing them to enter the City on feast days, or pushing them farther back in the hierarchy of the twenty-four tribes so that they would never get to stand next to the altar. So whatever they thought to themselves, they would fill separate wineskins for the tax collector, which would not go toward enhancing the emperor’s wealth but his own.