György Spiró - Captivity

“According to the Scriptures, He may come any time,” Marcus suggested, “only the chances are slight…”

“There’s no chance at all,” said Tija. “History teaches us that people have always been waiting, and He has never come. It is still going on the same today as it has up till now. The coming of the Messiah has been put off, very wisely, to the End of Time. This is not the End of Time — I don’t see what would make it that.”

Uri nodded.

“Indeed it’s not,” he said. “There’s no sign of it being that. There have to be believers for it to happen. Is there a need for religion in Alexandria?”

Tija laughed out loud, then, after some reflection, said:

“I don’t live in Alexandria, only in this house and at the Gymnasium: I haven’t the faintest idea what happens in Alexandria because I’m shut off from it. You move around in the city, you ought to know, and in addition you’re a newcomer, so you can spot things more clearly than a native.”

Uri suddenly had an uncomfortable sense of emptiness in his guts.

I don’t make good use of my time: here is this marvelous city, I really ought to concern myself more with it.

Tija had hit on what he was thinking; he broke into a smile.

“If you get into the Gymnasium,” he said, “then you won’t experience even the little of Alexandria that you have experienced so far. If you want to see anything at all of Alexandria, the Gymnasium will, frankly, be detrimental to you.”

Uri laughed.

“I’m onto you!” he said. “You’ll do anything to make sure I don’t get in, including putting my mind off it.”

“I told you before,” riposted Tija blithely.

Marcus pushed off the wall to fill himself a cup of wine.

“Politics is all there is,” he said. “Jostling for position, hatred, envy — that’s all. Only madmen rave nowadays, and they will never lay their hands on power.”

Uri was so panic-stricken at the thought that he was living in Alexandria yet missing out on it that he started to live it up.

He saved enough of his pocket money to be able to go to the better restaurants, and although he was allowed to — and did — make free use of the alabarch’s fabulous bathing facilities, with a tepidarium and a caldarium attached to each suite of rooms, he decided that he would also visit the public baths.

In Rome the baths were free of charge, with the emperors donating to their upkeep to curry favor with the population, but in Alexandria one had to pay. In Rome Uri had never been to the baths, but in Alexandria he had time to try them out. It seemed as if the city’s entire population swarmed within, hanging around or taking a dip; having themselves massaged with oil; having their nails, hair, or beards clipped; or eating and drinking delicacies. Who, if anyone at all, was doing the work in Alexandria?

Uri was given exactly the same meticulous provision as the rest, among them Hellenes and Hebrews alike, winding their linen towels the same way about their backs, with no detectable segregation between them. Which is not how it was in Rome. A wondrous city, Alexandria, yes indeed. This city was an example of how peoples of disparate religions could peacefully co-exist — a great example, an admirable example, and one day this Alexandrian spirit would spread through the world. Maybe that would be the End of Time.

Uri had already passed through the cold bath, the warm bath, the hot bath, and a renewed cold bath, the oiling, the trimming of his hair, and the snacking, and he was prostrate on a bed on the shady side of the inner garden of the enormous building when one of the bath attendants came up and informed him that one of the rooms had been vacated. Feeling adventurous, Uri readily went after him. A massage was still left, perhaps that was what went on in these many small cubicles tacked next to one another in a back courtyard of the baths complex. On all the doors except one was a sign: OCCUPIED. There was a signboard, but there was no inscription on it, or maybe it was on the reverse side. The baths attendant opened the door, and Uri stepped in; the baths attendant closed the door, and Uri could hear the sign knocking against the door, which suggested that he had indeed reversed the sign and now it too read: OCCUPIED. Jugs full of water, a table laden with wine and fruit, and a conspicuously wide divan, soft blankets on its chalky-white sheet. Order and cleanliness. Uri drank a sip of the wine then clambered onto the high bed and stretched out, loosening his towel at the waist. He lay down, and fell asleep while waiting for the massage.

He awoke to an extremely pleasant sensation. Opening his eyes, he shouted out in alarm: his male member was in one woman’s mouth while another woman was stroking his testicles.

“Shush!” said the woman who was stroking, “you’ll scare the neighbors!”

The other woman took Uri’s penis from her mouth.

“Don’t tug, I implore you,” she said. “I may bite it off.”

“Don’t do that,” Uri said faintly, without much conviction.

“Still a virgin, are you?” the stroker asked in surprise.

Uri groaned that he was, and please don’t stop now, he prayed silently to himself.

“A tool this big, and still a virgin?” the stroker exclaimed indignantly. “What can you be thinking? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

The caressing woman climbed onto the bed, knelt over Uri and slipped his member into her. Uri watched what she was doing in terror, then closed his eyes. It felt as if the sucking were continuing.

That day Uri lost his virginity six times over, one after another, and after the sixth time even the women were satisfied with him.

“Will you be here tomorrow?” Uri asked.

“We usually are,” they replied.

“I don’t think I’ve lost enough of my virginity,” was Uri’s assessment, “so I’ll definitely be back tomorrow.”

He felt that he would have been capable of a seventh time, but there was a knock on the door, so Uri got down and gave the charming women a kiss on the brow, whereupon one of them tickled his testicles and the other pushed an index finger into his anus, at which Uri was surprised, finding it a singular striking way to say farewell.

He ambled proudly along the streets of Alexandria in the afternoon heat, his back drawn up and on slightly shaking legs, feeling a true hero: a man. Naturally, he turned it over in his mind, it must be harder if a man has to sleep with a woman who is not so proficient in the art of love. He resolved that he was going to try out every single woman in the baths, and then he would pay visits to other baths to gain the necessary technical skill before immersing himself in the Gymnasium.

Sitting on the shore at the Great Harbor, Uri watched the Sun setting and the bustling, and marveled. So that was what women knew about. A signal attainment, major, an experience incomparable with that of discharging semen while asleep. Why didn’t poets and philosophers write about it? Of course they did write about it, indirectly, and there were wars that had broken out over a woman’s behind, but all that was nothing compared with what a human being’s body was able to feel.

He recalled what he had felt on stepping ashore several weeks ago, not far from the place where he happened to be seated. That he would lose his virginity here. He was pleased with himself: he had been right in his presentiment.

Those poor seamen, it came to mind. He snorted with laughter: he could see before his own eyes the way they had raced to that Jewish bordello in Syracusa to get there before the Sun went down. How right they had been.

Alexandria has been a splendid place up till then, but now it was even more splendid. Truly nobody, not even the greatest authors, had a style suited to record this marvel.