György Spiró - Captivity

On the Thursday he asked one of the gymnastics teachers if one could practice alone, and learned that it was permitted. From then on, every evening between supper and the solitary prayer time, he would return to the Gymnasium’s stadium and, in the gathering darkness, as the rest spent their free time chatting or lounging about he would run, jump, and throw the discus and javelin.

In the first week he had his sandals stolen, but he did not make the rounds looking for them, nor did he ask who was the culprit, nor did he ask for a new pair. He simply went barefoot.

He could also have obtained a pass at the end of the first week but he decided that he would rather stay back, reading and training: he was well aware by then that his body would be in good shape by the end of the second week, or at most the beginning of the third. That was indeed the case, and the others were amazed. Even the gymnastics instructors noticed that he was hurling the discus and javelin farther and more accurately, and was able to endure longer distances than he had at the start. The other students had not walked as much he had and had less knowledge of what their bodies were capable of when pushed, yet even Uri was pleasantly surprised how well the standing long jump went — so well, in fact, that by the beginning of the third week the gymnasiarch himself, of whom hitherto there had been no trace, took a look. One of the gym masters must have had a word with him, and the rest were astonished too, as the head was not in the habit of dropping in on their physical training lessons; the great scholar, they said to one another, without saying a word to Uri, who did not initiate any conversation with them but could hear what they were saying among themselves, now heard: what on Earth can that exceptional philologist, who hates physical training of any sort, be poking around here for?

But Uri knew: it was him he wanted to take a look at.

They lined up to take their jumps before him. Uri breathed deeply, knowing by now how to regulate his mind to ensure that his body would function at its best.

His turn eventually came, he grasped the weights and stepped up to the line, took one last deep breath, and started to swing them to and fro before giving them a powerful swing forward and jumping with legs flexed.

He had never jumped that far before.

It was measured with a tape. He had leapt over sixteen feet.

A buzz went up when the instructor announced it: pupils did not usually jump that far. Uri stood up straight then put the weights down.

“Once more!” came Isidoros’s voice.

Uri picked up the weights, swung them again, and leapt again. He sensed it had not been as good; he was angry with himself: how could he mess up a second jump so badly?

That too was measured, and even so was over fifteen feet.

Isidoros nodded before setting off for the main building.

“I wouldn’t mind giving it another go,” said Uri.

The head halted and turned around:

“Right, then!”

Uri picked up the weight, concentrated for a long time before swinging the weights then jumping. He sensed immediately that this would be the worst of all his jumps that day.

It was measured, and came to fourteen feet and a bit.

That was not bad either, of course, and the others would have been very happy with it, but Uri was furious.

“That’s exactly why I don’t like Jews,” said Isidoros, and left.

There was a still as people gloated.

“I am a fool!” said Uri to himself. “Why bother jumping around so much?”

A few laughed out loud; the instructor patted him on the shoulder and also snorted a laugh.

That evening at last he was spoken to in the dormitory. He was now accepted because he had not done so well on the second and third attempts: he too was a frail mortal, and the head was no more in favor of him than anyone else, so he was fit to engage in conversation.

I would have been in big trouble, Uri came to realize, if I had jumped even farther on he second attempt, though he knew full well that he had made bigger jumps in the course of his solitary training sessions.

What came to mind was his father’s warning not to disclose to others what he knew.

My father could have jumped really far, good Lord, only he realized that it was better not jump at all.

I’ll tell him about this; at last he’ll be pleased with me.

Uri was counting on being praised by the tutor for physical training, but instead of that he made a total fool of him when he asked the class to list the Olympic victors. Uri had in fact genuinely memorized the huge body of data of who had won what event, going back centuries: a horrendous mass of data of thousands of disciplines, names, and results, and Uri did not get one wrong, yet he failed all the same. He did not get it; the tutor left smugly satisfied. The classmates tittered: Uri had not memorized the corrected register given by Aristotle, but the very first list, which was by the sophist Hippias of Elis.

Uri bit his lip: the classmates had handed him Hippias’s list. They had deliberately not let him in on the secret that he ought to have been learning Aristotle’s register.

They had gotten their revenge after all.

He did not tell tales on them, just memorized Aristotle’s list.

Who would have guessed that Aristotle concerned himself with that sort of thing in his spare time! Mind-boggling! On top of which he had included in his chronology data for the Spartan Games, Olympic Games, even Romulus’s genealogy. A big ass, Aristotle too, when it came right down to it.

Uri soon made friends with the Jewish Apollonos, who was here known as Apollonos Gamma, being the third of the Apollonoses. They were brought together by oratory, as in this subject Apollonos proved truly unbeatable, his incredible dodging and weaving, his viewpoint bringing together extremes that were unimaginable to any normal mind, so that Uri listened entranced each and every time he managed to close the arch of his coruscating wittinesses nicely on time. The others had already become used to it and would roar with laughter, applaud and whistle their approval, while Uri had to recognize that he was not going to be able to compete, his brain not being as speedy and imaginative.

Not that his own orations were uninteresting, just more earthbound and objective than Apollonos’s. Uri made no use of unusual epithets or memorable similes, but he knew how to project an image of what he was saying, because as his sentences followed one another, he himself could see what he was talking about.

Apollonos set great store on that.

“Your brain is rich, fertile ground,” he said to Uri. “You can produce anything on it, whatever it is seeded with. And you have a great eye.”

Uri had to laugh: him, a great eye!

“Right you have!” Apollonos avowed. “You can see spatially: depth, distance, proximity, colors, shades, contexts. You may be short-sighted now but you must have seen perfectly at some stage, and you still recall that. It’s not your eyes that you see with but something else. You will still see well if you become blinded.”

Uri shuddered.

His relationship with Tija took a strange twist.

At the Gymnasium they did not speak much, even avoided each other, as if by agreement. From the fourth weekend, when Uri took advantage of the possibility of a pass, they spent the Sabbath and Sunday, which counted as a free day for the Greeks, together in the alabarch’s palace — a full two and a quarter days from sundown on Friday evening, as if to annul the other days of the week, as if they were not students at one and the same Gymnasium. Tija was pleasant, communicative, gossipy, telling witty and cynical tales about the gymnasiarch, the teachers and fellow students, bringing Uri to the realization that Tija was telling the truth. He sensed that Tija was not envious of any of the Greeks, only of Apollonos Gamma — but of him, profoundly. Uri could also sense that because during the week he acted as if he never saw him, Tija was not jealous of him. Uri shrugged his shoulders: that was just the way he was, what could one do? Uri was glad he had the chance to learn much from him.