György Spiró - Captivity

Flaccus was nowhere to be seen. Uri had gotten through his exams, but had yet to learn the results. The Gymnasium was deserted. The summer holiday started without the academic year coming to a formal close, though it was usually marked with a big ceremony.

Couriers came and went at the alabarch’s palace; Uri knew many of them by sight, but now he noticed some new ones among them. Philo thought it best to retire to his place in the country, with Tija in tow, neither of them offering a date for their return. Uri was not invited. Marcus took part in the discussions held by his father, while Uri was left to his rooms in the alabarch’s palace, suddenly all alone.

He should go to Memphis.

He was not on terms with the alabarch to ask directly for permission: that was the sort of thing he could have brought up with Philo — he could even have asked him for the money — but Philo was not there to be asked.

What is the point of staying in Alexandria?

Uri roamed the city, where life went on at the lower ebb of funereal anxiety: the baths were closed, so the girls were unable to pursue their craft at the customary places (though they were said to be hanging around outside the city instead). Taverns were also closed, though the markets were functioning, patrolled by soldiers, on the lookout for any crowd that might gather so they could stroll over and disperse it. No one defied them, but the hatred was plain to see on all sides. At this time of semi-mourning for the ailing emperor, Uri preferred simply to sit around the harbor, his feet dangling above the water; as the lading onto and off of passing ships went on, albeit half-heartedly, because there was no pleasure to be had going ashore in Alexandria.

On Friday evening Uri went to the Basilica, where Sabbath services went ahead as normal; he was allowed to sit next to Alexander and Marcus as before, and said “Amen” along with the congregation at the bidding of the pale red kerchief, but he felt no sense of fellowship. The stargazers no longer thronged around him, though they too were seated as usual on the bench allocated to their profession.

Have I suddenly become a loser — and why?

It dawned on him that in the year and change since his arrival he had not made a single Jewish friend, not even a potential business contact.

Had he just frittered his time away? What would his father say?

He ought to go back home to Rome.

Back, after more than two years’ wandering, to his wretched cubbyhole, that dank and dark lair?

There was no way he could go back home.

But all the same, there was no way he could stay.

It would be nice to go to a tavern with Sotades, Hedylos, and the rest to fool around and crack jokes, quote the ancient poets, and improvise parodies, but for some reason that no longer seemed possible. Sotades was happy when the exams were over; he had embraced Uri, and then his Greek admirers, who had likewise sat through all his appearances, after which they had gone down to the harbor to get stinking drunk. That, of course, was when the taverns had still been open, but the moment they closed Sotades had disappeared, gone back home to the country. The Greek students who were resident in Alexandria obviously still looked one another up, but no one came looking for him. But then what business would they have going to the palace of a Jewish chief excise man? It was a pity that the Gymnasium’s dormitories were closed over the summer.

During that somber season, every now and again, Uri would climb to the top of the Paneion, the hill with corkscrew paths that stood in the middle of the Gymnasium’s grounds, where he had been so fond of reading. Now that he had no scroll or book with him he just stared, seeing very little with his bad eyes. He methodically went around all the parts of the city that he had not yet visited, feeling the walls of the buildings, sniffing around: who could say when he would have to leave, or whether he would ever return. He thought of himself as a traveler without any assigned duties. He mused about that. It occurred to him how free he was. Everyone he knew was proceeding from A to B with some particular goal in mind, all the Greek students, the Jewish ones too, Apollos and Tija. Apollos wanted rights of citizenship as an Alexandrian Greek because his parents were just Jews in Memphis, whereas Tija, who was already a Greek citizen, wanted to set up a business that made military catapults to become even richer than Marcus, who stood to inherit two-thirds of their father’s wealth. Everybody had a goal, was pushed or driven by something.

What on Earth is driving me? What is this unholy freedom?

He was gripped by an odd sensation: it was as if this miraculous Alexandria, this prodigious, phenomenal city were somehow unreal, as if the worms of evanescence were diligently at work destroying its imperishable buildings, made as they were of granite and marble, as if the parasites of Time, those invisible deathwatch beetles which feed on stone, had already done their damage, all that was needed was a moderately stiff northerly breeze from the harbor and the whole lot would come crashing down. What would be left, he wondered? Perhaps one or two slim books and pallid scrolls, not in the Serapeion — that sturdy, solid fortress would be blown away with the rest — but in a few private collections about which he had no knowledge.

It was about time he started to think about his own life.

What should he turn his hand to? What should he do to earn a crust of bread, and where?

That mood did not pass after a day or so: his low spirits proved long lasting. He thought of Flaccus, the prefect; he must be feeling something like this nowadays too.

Come to think of it, I might just as well be a prefect somewhere. A strategos in Jerusalem with Tija, serving as his chief of staff in the Roman prefecture. He roared with laughter. He was seated on the top of the Paneion, Greeks light-heartedly chatting all around and among them travelers from distant lands, who were overjoyed to be here and in their delight laughed back at him.

No human occupation held any attraction for him now. How clear he had been when he arrived in Alexandria that he wanted to train as a goldsmith or diamond cutter.

Had he been wasting his time? He had read so many scrolls. Historical works, literature, commentaries on Homer, the poetic theories of amateurish bunglers, dead science. He had done brilliantly on his exams. If his knowledge of geometry had been better, if he had a better grasp of the conical segments, he could find employment as a land surveyor. That was good job, at least in Egypt it was. But then again, in Rome as a Jew?

You’ll find no bigger impostor than me in the land of the living! Such a nonsensical gaffe! I was almost executed in Jerusalem as a supposed spy of Agrippa’s, whereas here I was pampered and sucked up to as long as that tool, that despicable Agrippa, that quarter-Jewish political vermin whom I never saw in my life, remained alive and heir presumptive of the Great Jewish Kingdom.

The emperor was restored to health, thanks be to the Eternal One, to Jupiter, to Zeus, to Serapis, or whoever. The baths reopened, taverns swung their entrances wide open as speedily as the tarts did their legs. Life came roaring back explosively, as after an overlong winter, and rowdy gangs of troopers, among them soldiers of the two legions stationed in Egypt, terrorized the whole city; Flaccus finally dragged himself out of his palace; he was seen carousing here, getting plastered there. No one who braved the streets was safe.

The Greeks mumbled their prayers of thanks in their shrines and the Jews in their synagogues, and there was nothing left of Alexandria. Antonia’s death did not just mark the end of an era, but also the end of the most wonderful city that was ever built. Uri could see this, but he kept it to himself. Not that anyone was curious, but even if asked for his opinion, he would not have let on.