György Spiró - Captivity

In the depths of his soul, Uri almost yearned to be disinherited. It occurred to him that he would at last be free to live in the true Rome. He would enter service as a scribe for some rich man and scrape out a lonely existence like that until the end of his days. There was no need to die of starvation in Rome; that was unusual even among the destitute. He could take the tessera with him — a rotten trick maybe, but it was possible. He would never go back to the Jewish quarter, not even to pray. A Jew could pray on his own and still remain a Jew, though he would have to find nine others who were similarly disinherited to share the prayers on the Sabbath and feast days. He would send the customary tithe regularly to Transtiberim, and the Lord would have nothing to reproach him for. This was his chance to free himself from the whole kit and caboodle, his mother and his sisters; get free of his father, who did not love him anyway. All he had to do was stand in front of his father and say: I’m not going.

He cowered on his bed, his stomach ached. He pulled up his legs, linked his arms around his knees, and rocked back and forth, wordlessly, softly humming a sort of prayer; he was scared of traveling and, most of all, of what suddenly came to mind.

His heart was pounding from the terrible darkness of the freedom that seemed to be in the offing, and as his belly cramped he retched a sour vomit. As he mopped up the ejecta, easing his mental torment by occupying himself physically, he came to the decision, knowing that there was in fact no need for him to decide. He rubbed down his sweating body with the bedding and fled back into the customary logic.

No, it was not possible to reject the delegacy once the Elders conferred it, and it must have been conferred on him if his father had announced that decision. Why would they have said it directly to him anyway? He was only nineteen and had not yet paid half a shekel in dues; there was still a year to go before he reached full maturity. If he reached it, if he managed somehow to struggle back to Rome, next year would be the first time he paid the half-shekel tax. Until then he would not have the full status of an adult, though he had been initiated into manhood at his bar mitzvah. A few days ago his father had paid the half-shekel tax they had been collecting since the fifteenth of Adar, as synagogues were doing throughout the Diaspora; then the treasurer would count up the money, as in other congregations. The obligatory dues paid by all adult Roman Jewish males between twenty and fifty years of age was collected, coins were changed. They would pay back, too, the money crammed into big sacks by servants and carried off somewhere where the chief treasurer would re-count it and have the small change swapped for coins of greater value. Uri had accompanied his father to the house of prayer and seen the treasurer. He did not imagine that this year he personally would be carrying that money, and the monetary equivalent of ample other produce, to Jerusalem.

To reject this honor would be the grossest form of desecration of the faith, and Uri had no desire to desecrate the faith; he merely did not want to be a delegate. For all that, he could still remain a good Jew and wash his feet, say his prayers, and respect the laws.

To try explaining that, however, would be fruitless.

A commission like this was the greatest possible honor; it raised the prestige of the commissioned, a major injection of moral capital, which might even be exchanged for small coins. People would hustle and bustle, scramble, and even pay for an honor like this, albeit mostly to no avail, because it was necessary to comply with the rotation principle.

That principle might not have been laid out in the books of Moses, an oral tradition, like much else which had become customary since then. But it was strong all the same and it had to be admitted that rotation was now a highly venerable practice, with people living by it even in Jerusalem, so the Roman Jewish community also had to respect it. The Elders of Rome did not much care for Jerusalem’s families of high priests, because Herod the Great had brought them in from Babylon, having exterminated every last one of the old families. By then there was already a Jewish Diaspora in Rome, and the leadership of the time decided that they would not accept the new rulings of half-Jewish Herod the Great’s damned high priests. They had done so since then, of course, but the rotation principle had been decided on some time before Herod the Great’s massacres, and that principle was alive in Rome as well.

Refuse a favor from the Elders, when they had flouted the rotation principle on his behalf? Inconceivable.

He sank into a feverish light sleep.

He was in bad shape when his father stepped into the alcove.

Uri hurriedly put a toga-like sheet over his sweat-stained tunic and pulled sandals on his feet. He must have cut an even more pitiful figure than usual, because a look of disgust appeared on his father’s face.

Why is he sending me to Jerusalem, agonized Uri, and followed his father out of the cubbyhole. His stomach rumbled miserably after the sleepless night. “The whole thing feels wrong for me,” he wanted to shout and wake up the still-slumbering Jewish quarter.

In front of the house, they dangled their feet in a brass pot of stagnant rainwater before sitting down on a small bench to towel off with a damp cloth and quickly recite the Sh’ma. A parchment with biblical texts was always on hand when Jews set off on longer journeys, as they would bind a pair of small black leather boxes containing the scrolls with leather thongs to the forehead or left arm. Of course, if they were expecting to be back by the evening, they would usually not bother; only those who ostentatiously sought to draw attention to their Jewishness wore it everywhere and at all times, in which case it would be on the forehead, but many only wore it under their cloak, on the arm, if they were traveling. Uri was not in the habit of wearing a phylactery, though admittedly he had never left Rome before. The Ten Commandments were also hanging from a door post, in a mezuzah, at the entrance to the house. In Rome it did not matter if a Jew did or did not wear a sign of his faith demonstratively on his forehead, as there were so many odd sights in Rome — so many kinds of dress, cults, skin pigments, hair colors, and madness — that non-Jews paid no mind.

His father pressed a small basket into his hand.

He too was carrying one.

The sportula was for carrying the goods the clients could pick up free of charge during breakfast at their patron’s home. In Rome every plebeian, Jews included, would go around the whole day long with one of these; Jews frequently carried one woven from wicker and lined with straw to hold anything they purchased or found on the way, or they used it to take anything they wished to sell to market. No one knew the origins of the custom, perhaps from the old country, although those who returned declared that the people back home did not go around with baskets on their arms. The straw-lined basket originally served to keep food warm on a Sabbath, only that made no sense in Rome during winter and people forgot its purpose; if a custom is not recorded in a must-read matter, it loses its sense, and yet this still lingered.

Gaius Lucius personally saw to it that the sportulas of his clients were duly crammed to bursting when they departed, and if he thought one was not, he would have his servants fill them with more food and more drink while he chuckled benevolently. He wanted to be agreeable, whatever the cost. He must have something weighing on his soul, Uri surmised when he was around ten, but then he forgot ever thinking such a thing about his kindly patron.

Uri had first visited his patron fourteen years earlier, at the age of five. Gaius Lucius, the equestrian, had received him pleasantly, pinching his cheek and patting Joseph on the back — a custom he had stuck with ever since. Uri would brace himself with a respectful grin any time the great man reached toward his face. The knight had put on twice the weight in the meantime, developing a huge, flabby, oily body with vast jowls, which, together with the swollen rolls of his neck, set his ruddy features in a rotund frame like a scarf of fat, yet he wore togas made from the costliest silks and muslins, like a rich woman, having a wardrobe of several hundred of these, changing them at least five or six times a day, putting a fresh one on after every bath. It so happened that in the year Uri was born, the emperor Tiberius had banned the wearing of muslin or silk by men, but they had gone on doing so. A huge edifice with four large basins for bathing belonged to Gaius Lucius’s house, staffed with highly qualified slaves to massage and oil him and his guests. Before he acquired his taste for silk, his togas were of wool and canvas, never being willing to don cloths that had been laundered by fullers; he had a man whose exclusive job it was to procure for him three or four new togas every day. Used, furled togas would be given to clients and servants or else sold off by his stewards.