György Spiró - Captivity

The stargazers’ house stood at the western tip of the island. A temporary, timber lighthouse tower was situated nearby; the captain had told him that morning that a new Pharos, much bigger than the old, was to be built but that the city did not yet have the financing for it. How was it possible, Uri had wondered, that a city like this did not have sufficient money? The captain had just laughed: Every third person in a city might well be rolling in it, and every second person able to buy up the whole lot, all the same a city might still be poverty-stricken.

The fires were not yet burning in the interim Pharos; it was still early evening. Uri could not understand why the house of the Jewish astronomers had been constructed next to the Pharos, of all structures, as the fires surely interfered with their examinations of the firmament. On the ship even the few small torches that lit the deck at night interfered with the examinations of the heavens by the captain, who was well versed in the mysteries of the cult of Mithras. Uri came to realize, however, that the of the Jewish astronomers had settled in first, and it was only afterward that the timber lighthouse had gone up.

Uri had his fill of astronomers.

When he had returned from Samaria and drawn his reward of 120 zuz — the tidy sum they had each received for the lie that Pilate’s soldiers had been responsible for the massacre — it happened to be a half-holiday after Rosh Hashanah and before the Day of Atonement. He had tried to arrange his departure along with the Alexandrian delegation immediately after Sukkot, but he wasn’t allowed anywhere near them; the Alexandrian delegates went around under strong-armed protection and cut themselves off from beggars and petitioners. Offices resumed work only after Sukkot, but so slowly that he needed something to do until they go around to him, so he asked where he might find a library, but they couldn’t grasp what he was after: there were no public libraries in Jerusalem, and the office did not have any private libraries at its disposal. They suggested that he move in with the stargazers in the tower of Phasael, as they buried themselves in books for sure.

That is how Uri found himself where the stargazers lived, at the top of the tower of Phasael, at ninety cubits high the tallest structure in Jerusalem and built as a copy of the Pharos in Alexandria.

The astronomers did not concern themselves with him, beyond simply taking note that he was present. In any case they did little or nothing, spending the whole day eating, drinking, basking in the sun, and spinning yarns. On top of the tallest tower in the city they were invisible from below due to the projecting balcony that ran all around its lip. Uri found a few interesting books and became immersed in a volume of Eratosthenes. He delved for months on end into the secrets of trigonometry as his quarters were free, even his board, and he spent hardly anything of the 120 zuz. He rarely went down into the city, living in the tower of Phasael much as he had done in his cubbyhole in Rome.

When he got tired of reading, he went up to the balcony at the top of the tower, and there he would always find people just looking around. He slowly worked out that these stargazers were not astronomers as such — they were more interested in what was going on down below than up above. From the top of the tower of Phasael even Uri, squinting, could see the square by the Temple and the squares of the Upper City — everything. It was only gradually that the realization dawned: these stargazers were lookouts.

He could see from up above that people were also walking atop the Temple. Also lookouts.

Those other lookouts were under observation from the tower of Phasael, who made sure that they were alert in keeping a lookout.

The Lord must have a lot to see when, from time to time, he looks down as Supreme Guard on his holy city. But there is no one keeping a check on Him.

Uri was eventually dispatched to Alexandria as carrier of the calculations of the New Year, but the arrangements were so slapdash that he was only able set off a good few days later than were strictly needed to make the voyage from Jerusalem to Alexandria. If he had not chanced to find a boat in Gaza, crewed by the remaining Phoenicians, and if they had not been granted favorable winds, with the prevailing north-westerlies getting up a bit earlier than usual that spring — he would certainly have been late. It did occur to him en route to wonder whether the stargazers in Jerusalem had caused the delay not just through simple negligence but because they explicitly wanted him to be late.

I’ve grown up, Uri reflected for the umpteenth time on his journey: I no longer necessarily ascribe good intentions to people.

There were a dozen or so astronomers sitting around at ground level, beside the timber Pharos, that slim, flat-topped, five-story building. They were eating and drinking, gossiping, and drawing leisurely lines on rolls of papyrus.

The Heraclitos in question was not the great Greek philosopher but a Jewish astronomer, elderly, graying, and in Hellenic style wearing no beard and garbed in a white tunic.

Uri hauled out from under his own tunic the leather cylinder in which the New Year calculations of the astronomers in Jerusalem were rolled up.

“About time!” said Heraclitos. “Here at last.”

Uri protested that they had been late in dispatching him, that wasn’t his fault, and he had gotten here a day early nonetheless.

“That’s them all over, the dolts,” said Heraclitos without any animosity. “Couriers are deliberately sent off late just to play us for suckers.”

“So what happens if a moon courier is late?” Uri asked.

“Nothing,” replied Heraclitos, taking the papyrus out of the case, unrolling it, glancing at it, nodding and pushing it back into the leather box. “They’re not the only ones who can do calculations. There’s not a new moon anywhere in the world that was missed on account of those dolts in Jerusalem. There were new moons long before there any Jews, even before the Egyptians learned to compute.”

“Then what’s the point of sending couriers?”

“Tradition, and we bow to that. It’s one of the ways we have of expressing our loyal devotion to the Temple, which is ninety percent sustained by the dues we pay.”

Uri was crestfallen; his heroic efforts to get there in time had been pointless. He wasn’t so important a person that they had been seeking to put him personally in an awkward situation by the crafty dodge of deliberately delaying his departure. They were continually seeking ways of humiliating Alexandria, which merely laughed off the infantile trick.

Heraclitos made a sign, a young man stood up, took the leather case and vanished with it through a door.

“We’ll file it,” said Heraclitos. “Deep underneath us is a cellar where we keep all the calculations, going back three hundred years, but there are also earlier ones, the oldest of them nine hundred years old and more. In a couple of hundred years or so someone will have to think about expanding it a bit.”

Heraclitos’s dry, self-assured humor appealed to Uri, but it was not an appropriate time to laugh.

Heraclitos sat back on a bench where others were in the process of measuring something on a papyrus.

Uri remained standing.

What next?

Heraclitos looked up.

“Do you need us to sign an acknowledgment of receipt?” he queried.

“I’m not going back to Jerusalem,” Uri said. “I was allowed to leave on the understanding that I was not expected to return. I want to stay here.”

Heraclitos made a disdainful, commiserative grimace and turned away.

There was silence; Uri was still standing until one of the younger men took pity on him.