György Spiró - Captivity

But then if I have ended up in this group, transporting money to Jerusalem, let me see that famous altar and the wondrous Temple from close to, he thought with an effort, because he did not suppose that the prospect of being able to see the Temple and the altar would fill him with any joy. However little he wanted to see, it crossed his mind that it was still possible to turn back.

Just get off the wagon and start off northward, toward Rome. It was not far. Or else he could wait for the night and take off when the others were asleep, not returning to Rome but seeking out a town and selling himself into slavery (that sort of thing was not uncommon), and, if he was in luck, even denying being a Jew. After all, they did not necessarily check if slaves had circumcised penises.

He shuddered at such thoughts, and it occurred to him that similar thoughts had already crossed his mind. He prayed silently that something utterly different should come to mind.

What came to mind was that he held Rome dearer than he would ever have thought. He was assailed by homesickness even though they were not yet far away. The future horrified him; with every hour, every day, he would be more distant from his home.

Over there, in the true Rome, exteriors were the most important; the fools attached everything to appearances, not to the vital. That would be what would bring them down; the Creator was not going to tolerate the intolerable to the end of time. But at least Uri felt that over there, in the true Rome, he was treated as an adult.

He could gaze at all the peoples that flocked to Rome from all parts of the world, slink right up close to give them a thorough lookover, and get close enough to know how their breath smells. There was every kind of man from ebony black through deep and light yellow to milk-white, costume of every kind; in certain squares and alleys there was a massive throng, an incredible bustle, and there were buildings and statues on the grand scale. Uri looked everything over from very close up to see it well, he even sniffed at the stonework and felt all over the walls, strolling around evenly and methodically, until he had registered in his head all of Rome, that enormous, magical city of one million people, along with all its smells and every tiny, barely palpable protrusion.

He knew the alleys where it was worth looking up every second or third step because it was likely that scraps or other filth would be tossed out onto the heads of those below; he knew which alleys cart drivers liked to careen, flattening passersby; he knew where brothels flourished and passersby might be knifed for no particular reason. There was one street in the Saepta, near where Roman citizens voted in the Campus Martius, that he never got to visit in the course of his rambles, because once upon a time an Illyrian giant, strong as an ox and in a quarrelsome mood, had unexpectedly attacked and almost strangled him. Uri was lucky that a military tribune happened to be going that way with his escort, and they had rescued him.

In the real Rome, his mongrel character faded into insignificance among the many hundreds of thousands of freakish people. At first sight he did not even look to be a mongrel; there were large numbers of people who were even more of a mess — sick, maimed, ulcerated, wounded, veteran legionnaires, and useless, cast-off slaves with missing limbs, wailing and begging for alms at every turn. He became acquainted with that bank of the Tiber and was witness to many things that his Jewish contemporaries were denied because, being intact, they were preoccupied with life on Far Side and did not have time to wander around in the true Rome. He, however, could wander; his father never asked what he was doing with his time, nor did anyone else.

Being a Roman citizen with full rights, he was entitled to enter into conversation with all sorts of people in the true Rome, and he tried to speak with everybody in their own mother tongue. These were wonderful language lessons, and one did not even have to pay for them. Over there, he thrived, shone, played roles, bluffed; he was just one of Rome’s malingering plebeians. Back home, withdrawn in his shack, he was a pariah among the Jews because of his poor eyesight, his bad legs and back, not fit for physical labor. Among Jews he was nobody, yet in the true Rome he was a man of equal rank to whom, should he speak, people would listen just like anyone else, and they would pay as little notice to his opinion as they did anyone else’s. At home, he did not dare offer an opinion about anything; over there, however, he chattered, passed judgments, held forth and butted in on any conversation. He had a Jewish self, and he acquired a Roman self; both sides would have been amazed to see him in the other milieu. But that they did not see.

He never denied, if asked, that he was Jewish, but nothing was made of it. “A Jew’s just like everybody else, only crazier” was the general, patronizing view of atheistic Jews and their unfounded arrogance that placed their one god above all the other gods. There was nothing hostile in that view; it was more disdainful indulgence, something that amused others. In this enormous city, citizens had gotten used to a great variety of peoples who found ways to get by in the world, and every one of them, without exception, was in Rome, with its comic superstitions and ludicrous customs. Where lanky Germanic people who barely spoke broken Latin were the emperor’s best Praetorian Guards; where philosophers descending from everywhere discoursed only in Greek, not Latin; where splendid delegations arrived from all parts of the world; where countless deposed kings were preparing to claim their throne and loafed around with their populous families; where a statue of the gods of every conquered people stood in the Forum — all except the Jewish God, the Unrepresentable One. A single Roman Jew with full civil rights counted little and raised no passions.

The only thing Uri was ashamed about was the begging of the grubby, bare-footed Jewish children running around the true Rome in gangs of four and five. The children were coached by adults — former beggar children themselves, well schooled in the psychology of prospective donors — in what they should say in Latin and Greek, how to surround a wealthy gentleman or lady and plead aggressively, and how to look even more destitute than they were. These adults would then collect the day’s take from the children. Any upstanding Jew was appalled by the practice, but the Elders did not forbid it, with some no doubt raking off a share of the income; names were flung around, often baselessly, of those who supposedly profited from the children.

When it became clear that Uri had bad eyesight, Joseph had also been approached to have his son tail after the indigent children as an overseer, so that they would not hide away the money that they had begged, but his father had chased them out of the house with cries of outrage. Uri knew precisely which of the idle Jews over there were keeping an eye on the gangs of beggar children. That was the one time he gave thanks for his bad eyesight, because when the Elders called his father in on account of his scandalous behavior, he could invoke his son’s shortsightedness and say that he had been so enraged by the suggestion because he thought they were poking fun of a well-known defect. On that occasion, no punishment had been inflicted on Joseph.

Maybe being a boss to children back home in Rome was better than being jolted along toward the unknown, he thought to himself now.

He watched Matthew’s back at length as he sat beside the wagoner. He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered man of middle age with sharp, sunburned features, thick, light-brown hair, and blue eyes, as Uri had already noticed at daybreak. It must be good to be strong like him, accustomed to traveling.