György Spiró - Captivity

Flaccus had banqueted together with them in the alabarch’s palace more than a few times.

That evening a few of the women and girls were allowed to return home.

They were allowed back because that afternoon, in the amphitheater, they had been shepherded onto the stage, where they ate pork in front of a packed auditorium. The pork was roasted in front of them, the half pigs skewered on a big iron rod and diligently rotated over the fire. Some of them retched, because they had been born Jewish, but they ate it anyway; some of them were able to eat it without retching because they had been born pagans and had converted to Judaism for their husbands’ sake.

Those who refused to eat were simply torn apart by brute force, also on the stage.

Following this, dancers danced, musicians made music, and mimics mimed in their customary fashion.

Four husbands immediately declared that they would be serving bills of divorce.

On hearing that, one of the wives tore open the vein at her right wrist and bled to death on the street. No one tried to stem the flow of blood.

It is amazing what will be eaten when there is nothing to eat — weeds, cats, rats, mice, hay, refuse. God looks aside, just as he had been looking aside powerlessly for weeks lest he see the enormities wrought on his people.

They were now in the month of Germanicus, time to get out of the Sector: an epidemic had broken out, with debilitated people dying by the dozens in the streets. It was impossible to bury them all promptly in the plot by the canal bank that had been assigned as a temporary cemetery.

There was no longer any point in drumming one’s fingers among the elders, so Uri hung around near the south walls, reclining all day long in the shade and weighing up how and where he could make a break for it. He spent the nights out on the streets; the dead bodies in the houses now stank. But he spent most of his time lying down to conserve energy. He was racked by thirst, above all, so he would periodically drag himself off to the canal bank and strain some of the filthy water through his fingers for a drink.

It was strange that his travels should end in this manner, with him dying young.

Joseph would be very sad, but perhaps he would never find out and would live in hope until his last breath that his son was alive somewhere.

Uri was tormented by hallucinations, but all the same it was good to dream, because at least a sort of life awaited him in his dreams.

One night, at the foot of the wall, he dreamed that he was being spoken to.

“I’m Theocritus,” the voice said, “From the XXIInds…”

Uri was incapable of making out any faces: he was stretched out among strange animals in a big cave, and they did not speak.

“Theocritus from the XXIInds…”

The cave vanished, the animals vanished, it was dark and a voice was coming from the far side of the wall:

“I’m Theocritus from the XXIInds…”

The voice could be heard coming softly from the outside and directed inward.

“What do you want?” Uri asked.

“I’m going to throw some food over! Watch your head! Don’t eat it all in one go…”

Uri sat up. A parcel plopped down on the ground.

“Have you got it?”

“Yes, I have,” Uri replied.

He slithered over and undid it. There was a flatbread, honey, and a flask of water inside. Uri ate slowly and not too much; he drank all the water. He pricked up his ears.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Theocritus from the XXIInds… Don’t forget it!”

He heard steps on the other side of the wall, then silence.

Uri tucked what was left under his tunic and slept a sleep without dreams.

The flatbread and honey kept him going for two days. He continued to recline near the south wall, and on one occasion a group of people were preparing to bury him before he growled “Not yet,” at which they took fright and slouched off.

Three evenings later another voice called through the wall. This time it was a man who gave his name as Democritus, also from the XXIInds. He threw over a flatbread, water, and some smoked fish. He asked what Uri’s name was, and Uri had to think very hard before it came to mind that he was Gaius Theodorus. He was more pleased by the name than was the mercenary.

“Got that… And don’t forget: Democritus from the XXIInds.”

“I won’t… And now I won’t forget my own name either.”

This can’t go on much longer, Uri reflected, as he again tucked the remainder under his tunic. The legionnaires are beginning to fear reprisals. Theocritus and Democritus, Theocritus and Democritus from the XXIInds… I’ll have to bear witness for them when this is all over.

He received food the same way twice more; he divided it up, sat, pondered, and all of a sudden he saw before him the saltcellar — the salinon —the geometrical figure consisting of four semicircles. He was able to follow Archimedes’s demonstration as never before, as though it were written on a tablet, showing that the area covered by the four quadrants of a circle was pi times the square of the radius.

He even managed to work out how Posidonius of Alexandria, who later settled down on the island of Rhodes, had been able to construct a spherical triangle and suspected, though he was not able to prove conclusively, Archimedes’s demonstration that the sum of the angles of a tripleuron , a spherical triangle, was greater than two right angles. Demetrius, his mad mathematics master in the Gymnasium, had endeavored in vain to find the proof, had even given it to the students as an assignment, but nobody had been able to crack it. Uri now felt that he could demonstrate it: he saw the signs on his imaginary tablet, deduced it right to the end, and when he succeeded he whooped in delight. Starvation had only diminished his body; none of his brains had gone missing!

The vision soon subsided, but the long demonstration was now lodged somewhere deep in his brain and would remain retrievable, or so he hoped as he lay there without papyrus and ink. Perhaps he would need to eat smoked fish and the memory would be evoked. There was still a bit left of the smoked fish that had been thrown over the wall. It was ritually clean — the pagans were aware of what the Jews were allowed to eat.

It will be Rosh Hashanah tomorrow, someone near him was saying, Tishri 1.

Uri slowly trudged his way northward. He would see how Rosh Hashanah’s celebrated so that he could regale his father when he got back home.

Rosh Hashanah was not celebrated in the Sector, however — that was the decision of the remaining elders, and maybe rightly so. They also decided, and posted notices making the decision public, that celebrations of the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles would also be canceled: there was nowhere for them to pray in, no house of prayer left for the Jews of Alexandria, and there was no use in pretending. There would also be no fasting, and this too had a certain logic.

So there was no celebration of Rosh Hashanah, no one read out from the Septuagint, no one made any speeches; those who were still alive just sat and stretched out on the road the whole day long, praying to themselves. Uri prayed among them, squatting on his heels and bowing to the east. The quiet, even, constant murmur which emanated from them and enveloped the entire day was soothing and hypnotic. Whenever they noticed that someone had died, they dragged the body to one side so that they might inter it after the holiday, and then they went back to their praying.

Perfect democracy in action, Uri reflected, silently laughing to himself.

On the day after Rosh Hashanah he trudged back to the south wall, his feeding trough, and he waited for his manna from Heaven. It came, moreover, this time it was again faceless Democritus who hurled it over. It never even entered Uri’s head to share it with someone else. While he was eating two of his teeth dropped out: two fine, healthy incisors from the lower jaw, bloodied by the gums.