György Spiró - Captivity

Uri considered the proposal.

“Don’t the Jews from Alexandria have a guesthouse?” he asked.

“They do,” said Joseph, “but we would still suggest the Babylonians.”

“I’d be seen as a spy and ostracized!” Uri exclaimed. “I don’t want to live in any community! I don’t want to know anything about anybody!”

Silence reigned.

Joseph looked straight at Uri, who pursed his lips.

“If you’re not going to live in a community, where you get free food and board,” said Joseph cordially, “then you’ll have to earn your keep.”

“Fine,” said Uri.

“What skills do you have?”

Uri pondered before giving his answer.

“I learned to be quite a good cabinetmaker with Master Jehuda,” he said. “But I don’t know if people here are looking for furniture-makers. I don’t want to be a roofer, that’s for sure, because I get dizzy.”

Joseph ruminated on that.

“I know about just one builder who might be looking for a cabinetmaker,” he said, “but before I send you over there, I’ll have to ask if I’m allowed to do that.”

“Where do they make those decisions?” Uri inquired in all innocence.

“At higher levels,” Joseph replied, not without a touch of malice.

So the lunacy carries on, Uri thought to himself. They still believe I’m somebody important.

“All right, then,” said Joseph. “Until a decision is made you’ll stay at my place as a guest.”

“I’m grateful, master.”

Joseph froze. Uri fell silent; he was convinced that he was sitting opposite a Pharisee master: there was something both of Simon the Magus and Jehuda about Joseph ben Nahum. Joseph returned a rueful gaze before nodding.

The boys from the village were given a stamped acknowledgment of receipt and, in accordance with Master Jehuda’s instruction, immediately set off back to Beth Zechariah. Uri found himself thinking that he would be quite glad to be going along with them. He gazed after them before going back through the gates of the high priest’s palace.

He waited in a room on the ground floor until Joseph, worthy member of the Sanhedrin that he was, had finished his work. His accent was Galilean, Uri concluded in thinking back, and that surprised him somewhat. He was given water and fruit. The door was shut; Uri opened it once while he was waiting and looked out into the corridor, but no one was on guard. Joseph ben Nahum trusted him.

With a torch-carrying guard to accompany them, they walked down into Acra, the Lower City.

In the evening light they went along alleyways crammed with people, Master Joseph sunk in thought, Uri looking around him.

The bereft slept out on the streets, curled up in little piles like garbage set outside the houses. They had no belongings apart from the clothes they wore, and their stomachs rumbled even in their sleep, while up above, on both sides of the alley, the rich, oblivious to them, took the air and drank, shouting merrily across to one another from roof terraces ornamented with tubs of plants. Also sipping wine were their small children, who had been granted the unparalleled Jewish luck to have been born in the City; they too yelled and screeched merrily, the rich of the future, who did not have the stomach to look down onto the alleyway. The two shores of Sodom and Gomorrah, Uri reflected, and between them Sheol.

The homeless held their hands out lazily, without conviction, and did not look up at them. Perhaps they had done all the begging they could get out of themselves for that day, or else they could see it was rather unlikely that anyone escorted by a guard with a torch would be of a generous disposition.

Joseph took care not to step on them.

They passed through a gate under the Romanesque aqueduct that ran southward beside the inner city wall, then they turned north along the far side of the wall before descending a set of steps into the valley and climbing up the opposite hill. Uri asked what the valley was called.

“It’s the Tyropoeon, the Valley of the Cheesemakers,” Joseph said.

“And that is what the aqueduct bridges over?”

“Yes, only more to the north.”

They proceeded among small, old, rickety houses, through alleyways that could barely be called roads. It was a district much to Uri’s liking.

“It reminds me of Far Side,” he said, “only that’s flat.”

“I’ve never been to Rome,” said Joseph.

“It’s interesting, though.”

They ambled on. Joseph displayed to Uri no further interest in the empire’s capital city.

“I live on my own in the house,” he said. “My family does not live with me.”

The torchbearer halted outside one of the houses, and they entered, whereupon the torchbearer bowed, wished them a good evening, and set off back to the Upper City.

They were greeted by an elderly servant, and Joseph asked for the supper.
A back room led off from the front one, and behind the back room was a small garden with a foot-deep basin and a table surrounded by benches. The servant set on the table a terracotta oil lamp of precisely the kind that was in use in Rome. On the roofs of the small white houses that encircled the garden like a wall, neighbors, whole families with children, were perched, drinking and calling across to one another. As soon as the lamp was lit on the table, they greeted Joseph, and he in turn wished them a good evening. The roof of Joseph’s house was also flat, but there was no ladder propped up against the wall.

“Is this the City of David?” Uri asked.

“It only borders it,” said Joseph. “This is the lower part of Acra; we’re not far from the Essene Gate and the Pool of Siloam. It’s only possible to reach the City of David in a circle, because the old wall is still standing. There is a fine basin of water next to the Siloam. At times like now, when no festival is on, one can immerse in it.”

Uri suspected that Joseph did not wish to share the garden basin with him, but no matter.

“Can I go to Temple Square?” he asked all of a sudden.

“What, now?”

“Not now, but by day.”

“You can go now, as it’s open until midnight, but you won’t see very much of it.”

“I saw it once, but I’d like another look. Do I need to be cleansed for a week beforehand?”

“You don’t have to,” Joseph said. “You’ve been cleansed by being in Judaea.”

The servant brought two plates, one with bread, the other with greens. He also fetched a pitcher of wine and two earthenware cups.

“Thank you,” said Joseph.

“Thank you,” said Uri.

The servant went back into the house. Joseph got up and sprinkled some water from the basin on himself, then turned north and waited. Uri likewise sprinkled water from the basin on himself and turned north. Joseph had the shorter prayer because Uri spoke the prayer as he had learned in Beth Zechariah. Joseph stood quietly until Uri had finished, then resumed his seat on the bench. Uri sat beside him.

“Did you also say the part about ‘Give us this day our daily bread’?” Joseph inquired.

“That’s how I learned it in the village,” said Uri. “I thought that was the way everyone in Judaea said the Sh’ma.”

“Not everybody,” said Joseph. “Only people who believe the end is nigh.”

“And you don’t?”

“The end is equally nigh at all times. I am one with those who believe the end may come at any time.”

Joseph picked from the plates.

The food was good to eat, the wine good to drink — a light, slightly acidic wine to which they added no water — and it was good to hear the voices of the chattering neighbors.

“What was your trade in Galilee?” Uri inquired.

“I was a glassblower,” answered Joseph.

“That’s a good trade.”