György Spiró - Captivity

For seven years I have been aware of the terrible deeds of which man is capable.

The only difference is that now I’m being hunted too — an important difference, but not one of essence.

He was amazed to consider just how many people had turned out to be scoundrels who he had naïvely thought to be decent and honest. How is it possible for someone who had known the essence of man in general for so long, since he was fifteen, since the Eternal One had blessed or cursed him with the knowledge, had chosen him — how could he still be so mixed up when it came to the details? What was this invincible desire in him, to see created man as better than he was?

Where did this instinct to decency, in him even now, come from? Why had it not entered his head, basking in the light thrown by alabarch’s huge presence, to demand that he be given privileges?

He saw before his eyes the figure of his father: he had toiled his whole life long but had never once given up his honesty. Maybe that was how he had been created by the Lord. Still, Uri had not been created from the same mold as his father; he’d had bestowed on him a voluptuous nature, he was indolent and selfish, a hedonist in every way, but even so he had inherited his father’s self-tormenting honesty. Tears came to Uri’s eyes at the thought of his father having left him to his own devices when his eyesight had deteriorated, yet he had only wanted what was best for his son when he had him squeezed into the delegation.

There was much lamenting in the Sector at this time, and every reason for it, but tears did not come to Uri’s eyes on that account. All that was happening in the Sector was what man commits against man. But there was one thing — the fact that his father’s honesty had permeated him, through his very flesh and bones, and he could not rid himself of it even when Jew bared fangs against Jew in the Sector, Jew cheated Jew, stealing from and falsely accusing him, even when all Jews were being held in captivity by wretched Greek scum who had been reduced to evil — that did not come simply from what mankind was capable of.

The joy he felt was at past human actions.

Perhaps the Eternal One had not willed it to be so, He who lets let every evil deed be committed in the pursuit of some unknowable higher goal. But there could be no doubt that if He happened to be glancing this way right now, He too was taking delight in this miraculous bond between father and son. He would tell his father as much, find words of some sort for this indescribable miracle, modest and undemonstrative words, and yet his father would understand all the same. Then they would both weep, embracing one another, Father and Son.

For that to happen, of course, he had to live through the Bane, as it was called in the Sector on the model of Onslaught, Attack, Calamity, Sacrifice, Holocaust, Havoc and other similarly inaccurate and idiotic names. He had to live through the Bane, and to get back home to Rome.

Negotiations with the Greeks slipped out of the hands of the council members: rebels — a group of young strongmen — drove those who were bargaining for the elders away from the northern gate with cudgels, fists, and knives; they paid the Greeks for two days worth of supplies directly, received the food, and distributed it among their own kith and kin. That shift in power did not last long, however, because the Greek rabble were replaced by legionnaires, and there was no making deals with them.

Jews were still arriving in the Sector from the outside, only now the legionnaires brought them.

The new arrivals related that thirty-eight members of the council of elders had been seized outside Delta and in north Delta, and they had been imprisoned by Flaccus in the Akra. If there were ten councilors in south Delta, then there must still be another twenty-two lying low somewhere. Maybe they were doing something on the outside; maybe they were getting organized, stealing weapons, maybe traipsing around with the alabarch’s army somewhere. Wherever they were, council members were nonetheless important people, with authority like mini-pharaohs over the clans and the Kahals, and only they were in a position to protect the Sector against the rebels.

The new arrivals also told them that the Greeks had placed statues or portraits of the emperor in every synagogue that had not been completely trashed. They had desecrated all of the Jewish houses of prayer! There was no longer any place to pray! The largest of the statues had been installed in the Basilica — it was bigger than the statue of Augustus in the Sebasteion. Even there! Yes, even there.

Uri laughed out loud.

“They’re dumping their surplus statues on us!”

He would have done better keeping this to himself, because he was almost beaten up for saying so.

In the Basilica Greeks were selling off cheaply the things they had plundered, wailed the new arrivals. One of them had seen his own menorah, a real curiosity, a huge silver piece weighing eight and a half pounds with a lion at its base! The seventy golden chairs no longer had their gilding: that had been prized off and filched by the Greeks!

The members of the council conferred with their confidants; by now there were twelve of them, Tryphon and Andron had by now also turned up. Tryphon had been lying ill in a relative’s house; Andron had been picked up by soldiers who had no idea who they were dealing with. Uri was glad that there were now two more councilors, besides Euodus, who had seen him at dinners at the alabarch’s palace: they eyed him suspiciously, it is true, but their recognition enhanced his prestige. His relationship with the alabarch was not enough in itself: Uri needed to sing something for his supper.

But then it couldn’t be any more difficult to stand his own ground among the Jews here than it had been in the Gymnasium.

He could read Greek authors, the Jews couldn’t. In a town under siege autocracy is advisable, and sooner or later that is what will come into being.

Uri proposed that all kitchen knives be rounded up and then used to equip the forces of law and order before the rebels collected them. This was debated by the members of council and accepted. Uri pointed out that under no circumstances should an attack be made on the soldiers guarding them; that may well be precisely what they are waiting for — a genuine casus belli .

Andron was astonished.

“I’d never have expected that a myopic bookworm had such a practical head on his shoulders,” he said.

“I’m a strategos gone wrong,” Uri chuckled.

Families were loathe to hand over their knives, and the bulk of them were hidden away, but they ended up with enough to arm the Gerusia’s policemen.

The men applying to be policemen were young and fit; Uri specifically requested that not all of them be taken on, as there were almost certainly some rebels among them. So long as they were in the minority, they would accommodate the will of the majority, unlike their companions who were left out. This too was debated, and not all of them were taken.

Stocks gradually ran down; the local inhabitants still had some flour, salt, and oil on hand, but they only let relatives have any and they tried to conceal their stores, so the council of elders passed a strict decree against hoarding of food. This was displayed, but could not be implemented. Uri proposed that the council ought to requisition all stocks and dole them out in equal rations, but the elders, after prolonged discussion, were unwilling to agree, perhaps because they would do better with things left the way they were, perhaps because they did not feel that their motley forces were strong enough to enforce such a rule.

Uri went with a pair of the new recruits to the southern wall. They found that the soldiers, not considering construction to be their job, had broken off reinforcement work. Uri found several points in the makeshift structure where one could break through. He reported it, proposing that anyone who was very hungry be allowed to make a break for it, on the chance that they might find food somewhere; there was plenty of money within the Sector, but hardly any food. The elders discussed and rejected the proposal. Uri looked around: confidential advisers and young men armed with knives were thronging the room. The idea was going to spread soon enough.