György Spiró - Captivity

“I’ve written a lot since then,” Philo confided. “I’m curious as to what you will say… You’ll live with us, like in the old days! We shall have time again.”

Uri remarked timidly that these days he was a married man; his son had been born not long ago, and he was obliged to work as a merchant to sustain his mother, younger sister, wife and son, not to mention pay off a substantial debt that his father had left.

Philo dismissed all that — they would fix everything.

Some prominent Roman Jews introduced themselves to Uri; he did not know them. Hilarus boasted of having been with Uri in the delegation carrying the ritual tax to Jerusalem five years before. Iustus, the other former delegate who was present, again introduced Uri to Honoratus, who greeted him with exceptional cordiality as if he had never seen him before. In truth he may well not have remembered that he had embraced him just shortly beforehand.

What was going through Uri’s mind was that the alabarch, along with his whole clan, had long sunk to the floor of the sea, with a thick layer of sand covering them where they lay, under the ruins of Alexandria. Agrippa was also only acting like a king somewhere in the long-distant past, above him a thick layer of silt, from which was growing stunted weeds. It was strange that all these figures had made their way to Rome, but they were no longer what they had once been; indeed, even the Jewish elders of Rome were only Platonic, secondary shadows of their former selves, which were likewise merely shadows of fate. Man is a dream of shadows, Pindar wrote.

Never mind. Why should he not live with the alabarch’s family in Rome as well? At least he would not have to live with his own family during that time. He would drop by to see his son later on, cuddle him, play with him, and then rush away from all that physical and mental mess.

If only this equally messy shadow existence would last as long as possible.

It was no easy matter finding suitable accommodations for the illustrious delegation from Alexandria: the alabarch wanted to live in Rome proper at all costs, whereas Philo wanted to live in Far Side. At first there was a debate on the matter in Honoratus’s house, with Marcus and Tija listening begrudgingly and Uri saying nothing either. Alabarch Alexander said that up on Palatine Hill, next to Agrippa’s house, was Antonia’s, and they could move in there. It was a splendid, imposing house, which he knew well; it was now inhabited by morose Claudius with his wife and their slaves, and he would no doubt be delighted to have some life brought to it. Philo’s argument was that they were, after all, a Jewish delegation, and it would be improper for them to ignore the locals by living elsewhere; they would be insulted, and with good reason. The alabarch — who, it had become clear, was no longer the alabarch, having been replaced with a Greek by the new prefect — contended that he could not receive senators in the poverty-stricken Jewish quarter of the city.

“Let them receive you,” said Philo. “That’s cheaper for us.”

“That’s not an option!” the alabarch snapped.

Uri was astonished. Before now matters of finance had never been discussed in the alabarch’s family, but it was understandable since the alabarch had lost his entire income. Uri tried to reassure himself: they must have a bit of money tucked away to pay off at least part of his debt.

Indeed they did. Philo and Honoratus came to an agreement that, while Uri was working for the delegation, the installments due in the coming months would be considered paid. Uri thought it wise to ask for a written receipt, and what’s more — wonders never cease! — was given one. He hoped that in his free time he would be able to do some business on the side, and this gave him an extra reason to pray that Philo’s delegation would stay in Rome as long as possible.

There seemed to be every prospect of that happening: the emperor had departed for Gaul, thence to hop over into Germania and relive his father’s former victories — or, as malicious political analysts uncharitably suggested, to cross in triumph with a hundred thousand men on a granite-clad, timber bridge over a shallow creek. The alabarch’s group was disheartened to hear that: when they had set off from Alexandria the emperor had still been in Rome, and nobody suspected that he was planning a military expedition, but it now looked unlikely that the emperor would be back in the city before spring. Uri was fearful that Philo’s party would return to Alexandria for those few months, but that was not how things worked out. Since it was winter, they decided to stay in Rome while they awaited the emperor. They might have other matters to attend to besides cooling their heels as they hung around for Caligula.

By the time the alabarch finally decided to as Claudius for a place to stay at his house, it emerged that he, too, had gone off to Germania, which caused the alabarch no end of amazement. A man that sickly, gone off to war? The word was that the Senate had sent him to congratulate the emperor for crossing the Rhine and trouncing a twenty-strong advance guard. There was more than a touch of mockery in the fact that they chose lame, crackpot Claudius; everyone smirked at that. Claudius’s wife, Messalina, received them graciously but did not offer them the house, so the alabarch did not feel he could ask her.

Instead, a tenement under construction in the middle of Far Side was quickly made ready for them — temporarily finished at the fourth story, topped with a roof, and equipped with the most costly furniture and fittings to be had in Rome. The neighborhood was even paved with marble for two thousand cubits in every direction. Over the course of three weeks, six hundred men threw themselves with great fervor into the work, for a day’s wage of fifteen asses, with the foremen on two sesterces a day, and even the hod-carrying urchins getting five asses a day — twice as much as the Egyptian Copt children who worked in the harbors and markets of Alexandria.

The ground floor was fashioned into a single enormous atrium. The outer walls’ considerable height contrasted with the many shacks that surrounded the house, and Philo had them painted by eight notable (and expensive) painters with murals bearing images from Nature and sights from Egypt. Making their way onto the walls were richly colored papyrus plants, still lifes of the harbor, marvelous make-believe heptaremes, dromedaries, sphinxes, and pyramids — even a phoenix. While it was true that rumors were rife about sightings of that mysterious bird in Lower Egypt at the beginning of that fateful year, Philo had waved them aside, saying it was only a legend. In any case, this harbinger of doom lurked like a winged crocodile on the wall.

The alabarch was given a suite of rooms on the first floor, Philo one on the second, and the two young men separate apartments on the third floor. Even sewerage and under-floor heating were supplied, with several flushable marble water closets installed on the first three floors along with one each for the young men. A host of servants and cooks were hired, and a kitchen installed in a nearby building, which also provided heating for the main house. The plumbing was installed underground, with one pipe carrying hot water upward, another returning the cold water back down. This was an ingenious engineering solution, which did not require a return cistern, as the hot water was sufficient to drive the cold out. Not much warm water reached Marcus and Tija’s apartments on the third floor, unfortunately, as it had cooled down by the time it got there, which may explain why they were so dejected upon moving in.

The house had no yard of its own, so a nearby shanty was demolished and the family occupying it rehoused in the worst of the apartments on the fifth floor — the very top — of a nearby tenement building of fairly meager ground plan. The alabarch did ease matters even further with a substantial sum of money, enough to keep a family of sixteen for half a year. They’ll somehow manage half a year jostling cheek by jowl with one another, Uri figured, and if they are clever enough to scrimp and save for six months, they might even be in position to buy a nice house in the end. In place of the shanty a Roman bathhouse was built for the alabarch’s family, with hot and cold pools, a massage room, and a shallow paddling pool in which ritual ablutions could be taken. Water was supplied by a cistern that was pronounced ritually clean by a group of shochets; it ran through a thin, gently downward sloping lead pipe, supported on sixteen newly erected stone columns, and kept under watch by specially hired guards posted every five hundred yards for a wage of ten asses per day. The moment they noticed that water was being consumed — steaming or burbling sounds — they would sprint uphill with a tubful of fresh water, climb a ladder, and replenish the cistern.