György Spiró - Captivity

“I’ve heard tell that Agrippa will have need of you in his kingdom,” announced Tija one evening as he entered Uri’s room.

Uri was agog. It was exactly what he had been wanting to ask but he had never found the right moment.

“But Agrippa’s in Rome,” Uri noted.

“He’s going to have to accede to his throne sooner or later,” said Tija. “Let’s just hope that you won’t forget the two years you spent in Alexandria with us.”

Uri nodded. They had come to their decision: he was going to be the alabarch’s family spy by Agrippa’s side.

He no longer felt any fear with regard to Agrippa. He would simply explain the misunderstanding that had existed from the very beginning and Agrippa would forgive him. Maybe he would not even have to tell him that much: enough people had reported on his actions already.

“When am I to set off?” he queried.

“Not long now, we hope,” replied Tija.

It crossed Uri’s mind whether or not he ought to take offense at that, but this time Tija was not being sarcastic: he wouldn’t be with a matter concerning Agrippa.

Tija was on his way out of the room when he turned back to face him.

“For a long time I really did think that you would be my strategos when I became prefect, but then I came to see that you wouldn’t be the right man for that job. I’d lay a claim to you for just about any other position: chief collector, chief archivist, anything.”

A devil took hold of Uri.

“And Marcus will be a prefect as well?” he asked sweetly.

Tija’s eyes widened only a little in hatred.

“Marcus will be king,” he declared with poise and with that was gone.

On August 1, the anniversary of Egypt’s conquest by Rome, defamatory graffiti appeared on the walls of houses: “Pig Jews,” “Filthy Jews,” “Go back to Jerusalem, homeless Jews,” “Jewish cat killers,” and the like. Big noses and even bigger circumcised sexual organs, meant to signify that the growth of the Jewish population was considered excessive by comparison with the more judicious proliferation of the Greeks. Jews were cursed by drunks in the harbor. Greeks were delighted.

“They’ll desist,” said Philo nervously. “It’s just a fad, it’ll blow over.”

A few days later the graffiti was washed away; very few new slogans were daubed on the walls thereafter.

In mid-August Uri was wakened at daybreak by a commotion.

In the darkness he reached for a bedside oil lamp; he had been reading by its light late into the night. There was swearing outside. He heard the alabarch’s voice as he called out in exasperation: “Failed!”

Philo hushed him.

“It doesn’t matter!” he exclaimed, though he was not in the habit of shouting. “That’s how it worked out. Never mind! Get a grip on yourself! The Almighty willed that it be so — without blood! He knows best why!”

“Failed!” raged the alabarch.

Marcus was also shouting, calling for the guards.

Uri hazarded a look outside. Armed guards were scrambling toward the gate. An uproar could be heard from the street. Uri listened attentively. A crowd was cheering Agrippa, king of the Jews.

Unfamiliar armed men hurried past him.

A burly, balding, double-chinned, middle-aged man on a palanquin was brought out of one of the rooms. His features were crimson, his head was nodding, he was half asleep.

“No don’t! Don’t,” he shouted. “Put me down!”

The servants put the litter down, and the burly man staggered off the chair and looked around. His eyes caught sight of Uri.

“I’m thirsty,” he stated.

Uri hurried to the counter where food and drink was prepared. He filled a beaker with pressed orange juice and took it over to the man, who downed it in one gulp.

“This dry land, even that pitches under my legs,” he declared indignantly. “In Egypt even the land is quaking like the sea?”

Uri did not know how to answer. There was shouting from outside.

“Send the riff-raff away!” the man wailed.

“That’s not possible now,” said Tija, who had appeared from somewhere. “It’s too late now.”

The man goggled at him.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Tiberius Julius Alexander, Alabarch Alexander’s second son.”

“Why’s it not possible now?”

“Because it’s too late!”

He signaled to the bearers who stepped back toward the litter.

“Be so good, Your Majesty, as to be seated in the chair,” Tija said in a peremptory tone.

The man sighed and sat in the litter; the servants lifted it up.

“I’m sleepy! I’m tired! I’m hungry! Where are you taking me?” the man asked forlornly.

“To Pharos island!”

The servants set off with him toward the gate.

Tija looked at him as he disappeared.

“What a creep!” he burst out. “The world has never before seen the likes of that pain in the ass!”

Uri looked aghast after the litter. They were carrying Agrippa, king of the Jews, and he was a courier for him. He hadn’t even given him a proper look.

“What happened?”

“What happened? He only went and spoiled it, the idiot! Let him die of constipation!”

More armed men trudged by them.

Tija stood there crestfallen.

“Let’s go, then,” he said. “It behooves us to join the crowd in its happy howling.”

Uri slipped on his sandals and caught up to Tija at the gate.

Outside, hordes of people were marching in procession, running, jostling. Word had spread in the Jewish district of Alexandria that the king had arrived.

Tija halted, with Uri beside him.

“His boat got here this afternoon,” Tija jeered with repugnance. “He had them anchor a fair distance off shore and waited till evening, as he should have, even got to the shore without being spotted… But then he lost his senses… He’d been told what he should do, but that wasn’t good enough for him! He’s a king! He knows best! Dickhead! He began screaming at the first Greek squad to arrive to alert the other squads and to seize Flaccus… The emperor had sent him on a special mission, he yelled, and they must seize Flaccus for him immediately! Can you believe the tosspot! King of the Jews! His own bodyguard had trouble protecting him. Even after that he couldn’t hold his peace. No wonder the Jews spotted him coming!”

Tija threw himself into the crowd. Uri just stood.

It looked as if they really had messed it up. God Almighty, and how!

Uri stepped out onto the street and was carried off by the crowd. He was being carried in the right direction, toward the Heptastadion. Delirious men, women, old folks, children — all pushed, jostled, joy on faces still puffy from sleep, the king, the king, the king is here!

The next day, Agrippa sailed on in a great hurry with his escort, headed toward his kingdom with the intention of spending Rosh Hashanah there. The Greeks, putting no obstacles in his way, breathed a sigh of relief. Flaccus did not receive Agrippa, but then Agrippa had no wish to pay him the honor: he had been sent by the emperor to seize the failed prefect and haul him off to Rome.

Agrippa had with him the Jews’ congratulatory letter to the emperor, the dispatch of which Flaccus had kept pending for a year. The non-arrival of those congratulations had thrown the emperor into a temper and ever since then he had been disparaging Jews for being so extraordinary arrogant; he is more imperial, if that is possible, than his predecessors. So it was said in Agrippa’s own words. He would later on send the congratulatory letter by courier, with the necessary apologies, when he called in at a safe haven on his way to his kingdom. The emperor would surely excuse them; he could not maintain a permanent grudge against the most populous nation in his kingdom.