György Spiró - Captivity

The teaching staff stood somberly behind the gymnasiarch; they must have already gotten it in the neck. The teaching staff had in all likelihood been instructed — maybe even specifically assigned — by Abdaraxus to search through belongings and follow students as they made their way through the city, so it was no surprise that they looked none too happy.

Not that Abdaraxus made any specific threats; he was just doing whatever was necessary to protect the independence and impartiality of his institution. Uri nevertheless felt uncomfortable.

He noticed that nobody was disposed to be his wrestling partner, and nobody wished to stand as an advocate against him in mock court dialogues. It was not that anyone made any objection to him personally, just that nobody put themselves forward. The more decent-minded teachers changed the procedure: Uri, Tija, and Apollos were no longer placed first, but they were supposed to name a Greek student as their partner, though even they did not bother. None of the instructors bade them do it.

“Your Greek pals don’t like us,” Tija commented at the palace one Sabbath evening when the meal had come to an end.

Uri bridled:

“Who’s the Greek citizen, then?” he retorted. “They’re your Greek pals!”

“Yours, you mean, you Roman!” hissed Tija. “Your emperor is Caligula, they’re his Greeks!”

Uri was astonished.

“What do you mean: Caligula is my emperor?”

“You’ve even got the same name: Gaius!”

Marcus, who was studying some documents, laughed and looked up:

“Quit that!” he said. “Caligula is the emperor of the Jews of Alexandria, not the Greeks.”

Uri was now even more astonished.

Marcus nodded his head as if to say ‘Let’s get that clear!”

“The emperor in Rome is always the emperor for the Jews here,” he declared. “You can be sure of that. That’s why the Greeks are nursing such a grudge against us: they are scared, not without good reason, that the Jews will be given more concessions. That’s their beef with us. Cleopatra herself loathed us Jews, yet she did nothing to the very end but seek to serve Roman interests. Local minorities always tend to take sides with whoever is the central authority. It’s no doubt the same in Judaea in cities where the Greeks are in the minority: there it is they who side more strongly with the emperor in opposition to the Jews.”

Uri slowly nodded. That was plain talk if anything was: Marcus must have political talent after all.

Tija was even more infuriated:

“I despise them!” he yelled. “All of them! Sneaky, shifty, foul, furtive brutes! Is that what we’re supposed to stuff our money into? Their gymnasium? Let them all choke and be carried away by the plague!”

Uri had not seen Tija in a temper before: there was something truly human in his roar. He was not raging on account of the Greeks, Uri realized; it was his elder brother he hated, being the second in line.

That night, by the light of a luminous full moon, a thought crossed his mind: surely Flaccus, the deposed prefect, couldn’t possibly be placing his trust in a plan to stir up the Greeks into fighting a war against Rome? It did at least offer a decidedly greater chance of staying alive than the suggested course of suicide.

War… It had been a long time since Alexandrians had lived through a war, and Uri, never. Even his father and grandfather had lived in times of peace… It would be bizarre if he, Roman citizen that he was, were to take part in a war against Rome.

He resolved that tomorrow he would go to a Jewish restaurant in Delta and put out some feelers to gauge what ordinary Jews were thinking.

He was unable to go the next day, however, because Philo engaged him in a philological discourse, and he only made the trip a week later. The place that came to mind was the very first restaurant he’d visited when he arrived, the one over toward the Basilica, where he had eaten that inexpensive barbel — he had not been back that way since. He looked around but did not find it; he wandered a couple of blocks this way and that, came back and restlessly paced around, but there could be no doubt about it: a fancy leatherware shop was operating where the restaurant used to be.

The Greeks had moved out of the Jewish quarter.

It might have been pure coincidence, but nevertheless they had moved out.

He shivered.

There was going to be war.

Around the Basilica there were a lot of bistros still open, with Jews lazing idly on the sidewalk with their extensive families, their children playing around them; a balmy autumn breeze was blowing in from the sea, the edge taken off it by the chain of hills. Tranquility and peace ruled everywhere. Uri sat down on a long bench in front of an equally long table around which a lot of people were chattering away. He dipped a chunk of bread in the salt and chewed on it, gazing about. The conversation next to him was about business and family matters; his tablemates must have been members of two or three different families. And they paid not the slightest bit of notice to him. The choice of dishes was rather limited, and Uri decided to take the flatfish. He found it a bit odd that it was boneless, as in kosher Jewish restaurants they normally only cooked fish with bones, but this was obviously considered kosher. He was also brought wine and water but there was no mixing bowl so he drank down some of the water and poured in some wine.

The flatfish was good, but it was noticeably flavored with honey, so Uri sprinkled on some salt and ate it like that. He had no idea with whom he should speak, or about what. Those around him were all strangers, as he did not recall ever seeing any of them at the Basilica. Perhaps they did not attend that and instead went to their own synagogues; but then again it was perfectly possible that they did go to the Basilica but were normally seated some distance from him.

“They’ll put elephants onto us”—that phrase struck his ear.

Two men were sitting at the end of the table; the words had come from one of them, cutting through the surrounding din.

“They’re expensive,” said the other.

“They’ve already gone to Ethiopia to fetch them,” the shorter figure insisted.

“Are you kidding? No way!”

“They’re trained to pick up human scent trails, human blood,” the short one claimed. “When they’ve done that they trample us down. The next thing is they’ll habituate them to Jewish blood…”

A child’s cries drowned out the voices, with the infant screaming as if it were being skinned alive. The mother tried to soothe it, but the infant was in the midst a temper tantrum, and eventually the father irately lost his temper too:

“What do you think this Greek gentleman is going to say if you bawl like this?”

The child swiftly fell silent; Uri could only gape in amazement.

He smiled at the infant, but that only set off a fresh wave of panic-stricken howling, prompting the mother to thrust its head into her lap while the father looked apologetically across at Uri.

“Only a tiny tot as yet,” he said. “Not used to going out…”

Uri smiled.

They take me for a Greek.

He then realized that the proprietor of the bistro had also assumed he was Greek; they would not have served him boneless fish.

He left half of the fish and almost the entire jug of wine, paid and hurried off. He checked whether his stomach was going to be upset or whether he was going to vomit up the unclean food, but no: he wasn’t. He then asked himself whether he wanted to be ill, or rather, was he happy that he could now eat even unclean food? Back at home his mother had frightened her children with the idea that a Jew who ate unclean food would become gravely ill, possibly even die.