György Spiró - Captivity

The knight was satisfied with the quality of the silk and muslin delivered by Joseph, and he even had his slave girls dress in these lavish materials, putting on short muslin robes to whip up his desires and those of honored guests. There was also a rise in the number of progeny among the slaves. It struck Uri that his grandfather was not necessarily descended from a Jewish father; Tadeus, the grandpa who had emancipated himself from slavery, might have been a bastard child, a mamzer, illegitimate. It could even be, Uri shuddered, that I am a third cousin to Gaius Lucius; maybe that is why he is so pleasant to all his former slaves and their offspring, because he suspects they might be his own blood relatives. When he tried to raise the topic with his father, all Joseph said was merely, “Slave folk are well advised not to speculate too much.” I’m half-Latin, half-Persian, and that’s how I came to be Jewish, Uri thought when he was around ten; there’s even a bit of me that is Etruscan, because Gaius Lucius figured on having some Etruscan ancestry.

Wise are the peoples that, in slavery, trace descent through the female line, concluded Uri when he was a child. There were such peoples in Rome, but the Jews were not among them. Uri was still glad that patriarchy was in force: he was horrified by his ugly and grumpy mother, much as his father was, and he did not love her, even though she was occasionally overcome by fits of affection and would slobber hysterically all over him with kisses, even when he was a teenager. He loved only his father, who gave up on him because his eyesight went bad.

So, early in the morning Joseph and Uri set off from home for the patron’s place, in their right hands an empty sportula to be crammed full, and they held their peace. The daily ration in a sportula could be exchanged for money, with a basketful being worth twenty-five asses, but the clients of Gaius Lucius waived that opportunity because they were able to stuff a basket with food that was worth a good deal more. The knight’s clients were in fact the objects of general envy, with many applying to be taken on as protégés, since a client was free to have more than one patron, and they would hold out promises of all sorts of return services, but the eques would turn all offers away, saying that he had no wish for any other clients other than the progeny of slaves who had served his ancestors. Mostly people did not know quite what lay behind this, but Joseph did, and he told Uri once: Gaius Lucius was not born to his father’s wife, because she was barren, but to a German slave girl. It was a big secret that Gaius Lucius learned from the lips of his dying father, Lucius. It would have been possible for Lucius to adopt the child born to the slave girl, and the child could still have inherited everything, but he felt there was more security in keeping it a secret. Gaius Lucius, of course, could have reacted by hating the offspring of slaves, said Joseph; indeed that would have been the natural thing, but as it happened he did not respond that way. Uri was perplexed by what his father said, but even more by the way he said it; he must know something about souls. So there is still Germanic blood in me, Uri supposed; perhaps that is why I have a shock of sandy hair.

His father trudged somberly, grave thoughts clouding his brow. Judging from his red-ringed, gummy eyes, he also had gotten no sleep the previous night. Uri would have liked to express his gratitude; some tasteful words of thanks to his father would have been for arranging his journey to Jerusalem, but the words escaped him. He was afraid of traveling.

They passed wordlessly over the bridge. The island was basically uninhabited, because floods frequently inundated it, so it provided optimal conditions for trees, shrubs, and, above all, mosquitoes to proliferate luxuriantly. A few centuries before, a temple to Aesculapius had been built to the south and its ruins still existed, but one would hardly say any healing power radiated from them. Uri had often felt an urge to climb down the gig stone flags of the old steps in the middle of the bridge and pitch a small tent to live quietly within the dense screen of vegetation. He even imagined catching fish in the river and eating them, but he was forced to recognize that even there he would not be on his own: vagabonds would install themselves on the island whenever it was not flooded, and they were in the habit of greeting intruders with a sharp blade.

They walked wordlessly next to each other, northeastward, toward the murkily dawning, mysterious, true Rome, among the huge blocks of its theaters, baths, and palaces looming darkly among the palm trees on the other side.

There were still many who slept on the banks of the river, even in winter. Some were wrapped in blankets, some not. Compared to these indigent beggars, they, the inhabitants of the wretched Jewish world of Transtiberim, counted as well-to-do; at least they had roofs over their heads.

Uri would have shared that reflection as well with his father, but they were not in that sort of mood.

His father was morose as he walked, never looking at his son, beset by onerous worries. Uri suspected that it was on his account, but he found it incomprehensible: almost as if his father did not know intuitively that he was unsuitable for such a trip. Why would he want it, all the same? To do him a favor, the biggest he could do? Or was it his way of getting rid of him?

That was how they walked in the true, sleeping, auroral Rome, the two of them, father and son, making their way to their rich patron, the fat Gaius Lucius, who lived at the foot of Capitoline Hill. There was almost no one among the Jews of the world, except the lucky and rich Alexandrian Jews, who would not have envied them on their patron’s account.

By the time they reached Gaius Lucius’s house, all Rome was on its feet, with everybody dashing to greet whatever patron outranked them: equites hurrying to senators, even the senators themselves hurrying to reach the consul at his breakfast, and there were even panting clients who had followed their patrons to the Forum, to some court case or other hearing. The city woke from one minute to the next; it became noisy and dusty, even though the sun had barely risen above the horizon.

There were already a dozen or so clients hanging around the knight at the court. Joseph came to a stop at the entrance, with Uri halting beside him.

The tables in the new atrium, built not long ago, were laden with food, and there were twenty-two of them, all told, in the enormous space. Delicacies of every imaginable kind graced the tables. It was possible to eat standing up, or one could recline on carpets and eat that way; everyone was free to race around, push, and scramble to fill his sportula with food and drink. Musicians had already struck up at one end of the atrium.

Jews were forbidden from partaking of some of this bounty: they were not supposed to consume meat or wine in such a place, but they were able to stuff their baskets with fruits, berries, and smoked or raw fish. Joseph had taught Uri not to participate in the scrum; he might pick and choose from what was left, it did not matter if the sportula was not entirely filled.

Every other day, Joseph and Uri placed sufficient victuals in their baskets to supply the family with food for two days. This included the twenty-five asses’ worth of free food in each sportula, on top of which there was the sustenance received for the past five years from Uri’s tessera.

Then again, they had substantial expenses. The rent they paid for their house to the Jewish community was high, even though Uri’s grandfather had built it with his own bare hands, and had even paid off the plot of land where it stood, while Joseph had rebuilt it with his own bare hands after they returned from the expulsion. That tax was all the more curious since the ground on which Far Side was built never passed into Jewish hands; Rome’s administrators set greater value than any sky-high rent that could be raked in by word of command on being able to expel the newcomers any time they wished without having to worry about lawsuits. The real money was made by the Levite butchers who charged brazenly extortionate prices for supplying and preparing kosher meat, and by merchants who dealt in pure olive oil and wine.