György Spiró - Captivity

At the head of a staircase, Fortunatus suddenly switched to saying something else: “One more,” and there that watchword got them through.

They reached an exit; here Fortunatus stopped and looked down.

Uri squinted.

It was growing light. They were standing on the roof of a temporary timber theater on the eastern flank of the hill, with rows of seats set out in semicircles below. It was the Palatine theater, which was constructed every year in mid-January in Augustus’s honor and then pulled down again when the games were over. The building of the temporary theater was a well-paying job, with entrepreneurs ready to kill to get the business. Between the theater stage and the audience stood a square block whose function Uri was unable to divine.

“We’ll wait here,” said Fortunatus.

Uri’s stomach rumbled.

“Quiet!” enjoined Fortunatus.

A few sentries were loafing in the theater; Uri felt weak in his legs from hunger but he did not dare squat down on his heels.

After a while some servants materialized with fresh cushions, gave them a thorough patting, and placed a tray laden with with wine and water, fruit and cold meat beside each cushion. Uri’s stomach and throat were gnawing with hunger. Dancers who were not yet wearing costumes now sauntered out onto the far side of the stage; musicians were loafing about, grabbing a bite to eat, plucking strings, yawning. Uri snuck back to the wall by the entrance, leaned back, and slept with his eyes open; Fortunatus said nothing.

It was well into the morning by the time the theater filled with notables, who, accompanied by bodyguards and wives and children, searched for their places, chatted, and set about eating. Screw his eyes up as he might, instead of faces Uri could only discern lighter and darker blotches as he glanced to either side. Fortunatus’s face was nearby and showed tense attention. Perhaps Agrippa would come by here, and he was after something, Uri pondered, but Agrippa did not come.

Caligula, his wife and, in her arms, his daughter took to the stage as if they were actors. The senators rose to their feet to applaud and cheer, and it was at this that Uri realized it was the emperor. Caligula, the figure dressed in the purple-edged toga, even took a bow before bounding into the imperial box over which a canvas canopy had been stretched. Grandees jumped onto the stage and assisted Caesonia down, the sleeping infant in her arms. The number of bodyguards at the entrances grew, with two now placed at the one where Uri was standing, one of them fairly normal in appearance, though grim in features, the other, however, was distinctly odd, wearing a long cloak and having what seemed to be a very short torso. He was rocking on his legs, and Uri noticed that he was wearing footwear with elevated soles, that was what made his figure look so peculiar, as if he were going about in buskins. He said something to the other officer in a surprisingly high-pitched voice; the other responded with a gruff grunt. Fortunatus looked at them, and they at him, and although they exchanged no words, Uri had the feeling that Fortunatus knew who they were.

All the spectators again rose to their feet, and Uri could see nothing so he stood on tiptoe. Some priestly figure was fiddling around at the stone block. Uri peered and could make out on the forehead a band of the ribbon that gave priests immunity from taxes and legal obligations. A four-legged animal was brought and laid on the block of stone. Uri now grasped that he was watching some sort of ceremony: at the start of every day of the Games a sacrifice was offered to Divus Augustus. It was a spectacle which was strictly forbidden to him, as a Jew, but then again Fortunatus was also present and he too was Jewish. I saw much the same in Jerusalem and now I am seeing it in Rome, it ran through his mind, and he smiled. A chanting was heard from a chorus. Uri could not see how the priest dispatched the animal. Now the public chanted something — Uri could not make out the words — before contentedly taking their seats.

Then servants emerged in the upper tiers and tossed killed birds into the crowd. People jumped up, senators and knights in just the same fashion as the plebs, snatching for and squabbling over the rare birds, each carcass probably worth a small fortune, feathers flying and floating around, children and women screaming. As Uri saw it, Caligula popped his head out from under the canopy and gazed up delightedly at the wrangling. Gradually the spectators calmed down, musicians and dancers came on, and the day’s games commenced.

Someone among the spectators sitting in the upper tiers said:

“The emperor has added a few days!”

In other words (or so Uri took it), that day would normally have been the last day of the games but Caligula had prolonged the feast.

He saw only the multiple, blurred outlines of the dancers, but the music was not unpleasant.

After them a man came out leading two immense white beasts. The public whooped and hollered, and Uri screwed his eyes: they were white bears of an immense size and were led in free, without any restraints, and then reared up on their hind legs and danced around in time with the music. The public applauded. The sound of an infant crying was heard somewhere down below — possibly the emperor’s baby daughter, Drusilla. A golden potty was brought, and the empress got her daughter to pee into it, which was of greater interest to the crowd than the bears as they leapt to their feet once more. Uri took a few paces forward in order to peek between shoulders and heads, but was only able to get a glimpse of the canvas canopy. He stepped back and looked at Fortunatus, who seemed to be angry, bit his lips, and said nothing.

Uri leaned against the wall again, allowing himself to be lulled by the music, and in fact he did drop off to sleep with the thought that it was better to nap when one was hungry than to stay awake.

He awoke to someone shaking him by the shoulder.

The dancers were still twirling down below. It must have been past noon. He looked around: Fortunatus was still standing, paying attention to the stage, but the two officers were no longer there. Uri’s stomach was rumbling loudly, Fortunatus snarled at him.

“Sorry!” Uri muttered.

In the upper tiers and down below, to the extent that Uri was able to see with any tolerable clarity, the spectators were stretched out, eating, drinking, chatting. Large trays lay on the benches, half-full or still full of all kinds of delectables. The nearest big brass tray was lying just five paces away on the floor of the semicircle of the upper aisle; all he needed to do was step over, snatch up something in the blink of an eye, and step back. No one would notice.

Uri marveled at how he could feel so famished: he had gone hungry for days, even weeks on end not so long ago, two and a half years earlier to be exact, and he had eaten a normal supper the previous evening. He must be getting soft, he thought, but all the same his hunger was suspicious. Maybe his nerves were getting to him.

Today the emperor would be assassinated.

He was staggered that such a thought should come to mind. He looked around. Spectators were unconcernedly chortling and nibbling, some even snoring at full stretch; children were plucking out feathers from the carcasses of birds, throwing them up in the air and squealing as they floated down.

He wondered if among the spectators could be found Apollonius, the Egyptian soothsayer to whom Isidoros had referred.

It was now that he became fully awake. He took another glance at Fortunatus, who was leaning resolutely against the wall, his lips clenched tightly.

It must have been past the sixth hour of the day once the musicians suddenly stopped. A pantomime in Greek was then performed, with the leader of a troupe of thieves being crucified for some reason, dripping lavish quantities of artificial blood as the soldiers prodded his hanging body. Floods of artificial blood had likewise flowed in Alexandria when the murderers in Jewish masks had hacked Dionysus to bits in the theater, and Uri was curious as to whether the bandit chief would be resurrected in the same way as Dionysus had recovered, and stuck together the various severed limbs, but at this point the performance was interrupted. The spectators also went quiet. A figure was springing upward, from row to row, like a lurching gazelle. The emperor. The spectators swiveled to look. The emperor was striving to reach the exit by which Uri and the others were leaning on the wall, and he raced past them.