György Spiró - Captivity

Uri did not know, and neither did the residents of Far Side, how many members made up a delegation of this sort. The Elders also gave out no information when a delegation would be setting off, or from where. Of course anyone who badly wished to could find out, because there were unmistakable early warning signs, but keeping secrets has its own magic and even busybodies did not pry needlessly; it was a sacred matter, best no one knew about it in advance. Better, in any case, because there was no way of knowing what sort of evildoers might crop up: Satan was never idle, so there was no need to tip off malefactors who might report to our enemies.

Those who had returned from a trip to Jerusalem could tell their tales.

People would congregate in the yard, in some open part of the baffling labyrinth and listen with pride to how exquisite the Temple in Jerusalem was, construction of which had been started by Herod the Great and was still going on, with twenty-five thousand laborers continually at work on it.

Amazing adventures; narrow escapes from mortal danger, vicious pirate attacks, robberies, and miraculous releases — these would be recounted by the returnees, who could now spin stories as they had, after all, admirably delivered the money and would not have to do it again for at least another twenty-three years. They would tell of Judaea’s miraculous climate, the incomparable flavors of the foods, the amazing moral character and courage of the Jews over there, the wondrous beauty of the women over there, the matchless treasures of the Homeland, but also the alarming, barbaric, superstitious, and incurable mental disorders that one encountered among the Jews of Palestine that the Jewish enclave in Rome, thank the Lord, been spared to the present day and thus, it was to be hoped, to the end of time.

Uri too had listened, mouth agape, to such accounts, and although it did cross his mind from time to time to wonder why, if that distant land was so miraculous, not a single member of the delegation ever stayed behind in Judaea but had always scurried back, helter-skelter, to despised, heathen, unclean Rome and eat the sour bread of the exile, but he always reproached himself for his bad faith and would add another Sh’ma or two to his evening prayers, and might sometimes even add a Torah verse.

I’m going to be a delegate, an astounded Uri murmured to himself happily.

He remembered then that someone from his family had already been a member of a delegation, just five years before. He would not be the first, after all, to return home. Odd that he had forgotten. He must not ascribe any particular importance to the mission if he had forgotten that.

It was a third cousin by the name of Siculus Sabinus, a blacksmith, whom Uri knew only distantly and whose house he had never visited. He was a strapping oaf of a guy who was asked in vain to describe what he had seen. All he could report was that there had been enough to eat, but even so, ever since, he got more orders than before due to his celebrity. The pilgrimage had been worth it from a business angle. It was a good profession anyway; he could bank it just making shackles, getting plenty of orders from the true Rome because there was a shortage of slaves, what with the dearth of wars, and as a result the masters were even less pleased if one did escape, so they fettered them with ever more ingenious shackles.

Siculus belonged to his extended family, and because he had been to Jerusalem five years before, if the rotation rule was applied strictly, no one else from the family could go for Passover for another nineteen years. Yet someone was going anyway: him.

Something did not add up here.

Joseph had to make a huge sacrifice to get his son squeezed into a delegation of this kind. Life would toss out any rulebook, however strict, if the Creator so willed, but then why would the Creator have so badly wanted his father to finagle this trip, not so long after Siculus Sabinus’s mission, the family connection ignored?

Uri was not on cordial terms with the Elders. They were very well aware that Uri was lettered and erudite, and that if he so wished, he could put anyone in the synagogue to shame; he never did, but he could have, and for that alone they detested him. They never exchanged courtesies with him in the way they did with others. Others with poor eyesight — he was far from the only one, of course — were coddled and spoiled, but not him. Maybe they were waiting for him to turn to them, to seek their support as the weak will do, but he did not do that. Maybe they were waiting for him to transfer to one of their congregations; in theory, the heads of congregations did not poach believers from one another, but they would be delighted if something like that were to transpire. There is at least a drop of vanity in everyone, archisynagogoses more than most; they could outdo even actors. Uri was familiar with a few actors by sight, even though he never went to the theater over there, because they still lived in the Jewish quarter, and he knew that they were actors at all times and incapable of speaking in a natural voice, they never stopped orating in orotund tones. But the moment the leaders of a house of prayer put on their festive fineries, the way they strutted around, the way they held their limbs during prayers, the way they flaunted and carried themselves… It was as if they were the sole repositories of the faith, yet they were not even priests.

Clans were extended enough that someone else could be selected to go in his place, if the time had come, and Uri had no doubt that none in the leading circles of Rome’s Jews would hold him in high regard.

Why is my father sending me to Jerusalem? How did he manage that?

He had to get up early the next day, he and his father being expected at their patron’s place; they had to put in an appearance every other morning. As one of the equestrian order, Gaius Lucius kept track of the presence of each of his past slaves and their offspring, keeping a list of those who were missing, and if there were no pressing reason for the absence, he would withdraw his patronage. It was not a good thing for a client to be given the boot by his patron, because that meant being passed over for a great many critically important favors.

Like all wealthy Romans, Gaius Lucius held an official morning reception, a salutation, every day, but he had so many personal dependents — clients, that is — he was obliged to split them into two groups, otherwise they would not all have fit in the house.

Uri was unable to sleep all night. His tunic was soaked through with sweat; a cold wind had been blowing in through the window, but he hopelessly wrapped himself in his rags as he shivered.

He had no desire to see the world, no desire to accomplish a glorious mission, no desire to reach Jerusalem; he would have preferred to stay in his alcove forever.

He would be unable to stand the footslog. If his companions got way ahead of him, he would never see them again, what with his bad eyes; he would go the wrong way, fall victim to robbers and murderers.

He would not withstand the starvation; would not be able to stand the foreign food, would develop deadly runs, be carried off by the plague, catch leprosy, perish in a malarial fever; he could not hold his ground if they came under attack; he would be at the mercy of foreign hordes; he would be captured and sold into slavery.

He was going to have to declare himself unfit for the journey.

He tried to imagine standing before his father and saying this.

He could see his father flying into an uncontrollable rage and disinheriting him. That disinheritance would be made public, the community would withdraw their support from him, he would be officially cast out, which would be announced in the temple, and he would waste away from hunger and thirst and perish in a garbage dump.