György Spiró - Captivity

Uri did not understand.

“Don’t tell us you never heard of them,” said Julius.

Uri shook his head as if he were trying to free his ears from being plugged; he did not even understand the word itself.

“There is a sect from Nazareth,” Iustus said. “Surely you know where that is located.”

Uri tried to recollect it from Strabo’s maps.

“Did you not pass by that way?” Fortunatus asked.

“No.”

“But you did spend time in Judaea?”

“You know very well that I did! But I never went to Nazareth! I believe it’s in Galilee anyway, and I never went to Galilee!”

“Nazareth is in Judaea,” Iustus corrected.

Uri swallowed hard. He was now quite certain that Nazareth was situated in Galilee — he could see the map in his mind’s eye, but he couldn’t prove it, most especially if they knew exactly where it was.

“Anyway, I have no idea who the Nazarenes are!”

There was a silence.

“Why did you not go to Judaea when the prefect invited you to do so?”

The tone of Julius’s voice was serious.

“Because I was unable to persuade the women in my family,” Uri sighed. “They’re the ones who didn’t want to go. I personally would have gone with great pleasure! My wife… my wife is not too bright… My mother is old and tired, afraid to go out on her own even to the market…”

There was silence.

“It must have been a rather serious reason,” Fortunatus remarked, “to turn down a request like that.”

“That was the reason. What possible purpose could I have for lying to you?”

It crossed Uri’s mind that perhaps Fortunatus was jealous; maybe he had heard some unfounded rumor about him, Uri, being Agrippa’s courier, and now, even though Agrippa was no longer alive, the jealousy lived on. He might also be jealous that Uri had been present when Caligula was slain; Fortunatus had been present too, but so was Uri. That was enough reason to hate him. How could he placate him?

“A real man doesn’t hide behind a hysterical woman,” Iustus asserted. “What is the true reason for your staying in Rome? It wasn’t the Nazarenes who instructed you by any chance? After all, you might have gotten to know them during the time you were staying in Judaea, after we came back. Two years you spent in Judaea, and that was when they were getting organized! You then spent a whole year in Jerusalem, and they were there by then!”

Uri almost broke out laughing. First I was a spy for Agrippa, then for the alabarch. Who am I spying for now? Maybe I ought to at least know who they’re talking about!

“Tell us what you know about the Nazarenes,” Julius repeated the request.

“You tell me what you know about them,” Uri asked respectfully.

Iustus and Julius exchanged glances — this was one hell of a stubborn man.

Uri woke up to the fact that he had again blundered badly. He had neglected the Jews of Rome, had not built up friendships or mutually binding business contacts among them, did not even have a person whom he could ask what he was suspected of.

He had thought that he, being a person with full rights of Roman citizenship, could pursue his business and quietly subsist, spending his days in the Forum and his nights in Far Side freely and with impunity.

He asked his wife and mother if they had heard anything about any Nazarenes, but they declared that they hadn’t, they had not heard anything. Perhaps that was so, but perhaps they were not telling him what they knew. Uri had been increasingly prone to venting his anger when they nagged him with their nonsense, so even he had recognized that maybe they were afraid to say anything.

That left the Forum, where a few other Jews apart from himself moved about, but he did not make inquiries with them but rather among the Syrians and Greeks.

Yes, they had picked up on something.

Jews with fierce eyes had made an appearance there claiming that someone had been killed somewhere and had risen again.

Risen again? What did they mean?

Much the same as Dionysus. At some point he gathered the limbs that had been ripped off him and put himself together again.

Others had heard that the person the Jews had always been awaiting made an appearance.

Who was that? The Anointed?

Someone the Jews have always been waiting for. So say the bringers of glad tidings, which is the name used by the people themselves, who, before they came to Rome, had been spreading the word in some of the Greek cities in Syria. Now they were here in Rome.

Who appeared? The Messiah?

The Greeks were unfamiliar with the word, deriving from the Aramaic for “Anointed,” but the Syrians nodded.

Yes, the Messiah.

So, when did this resurrection occur?

Some ten or twelve years ago, toward the end of Tiberius’s rule.

But if the Anointed had arrived then the world ought to have changed radically! Had they seen any change in the world?

The world had not changed — on that the gossipers in the Forum could agree.

It was from Theo that Uri learned the most.

The boy was eight years old, and old man, Eusebius, who had once been Uri’s teacher, was unwilling to instruct him.

“The boy knows more than I do,” said Eusebius, moved when Uri took Theo to him and he recommended instead that he be allowed to frequent libraries. Uri thought that was sound advice and introduced Theo to two librarians. They found it odd that a boy so young would be seeking their services, but they had no objection provided he did not chew or tear the scrolls or scrawl anything in them. Theo almost burst into tears: what did they think he was? So he did regularly go the libraries to read. Uri did not have time to interrogate him about what he happened to be reading; Theo just told him that he read all sorts of things.

Theo had heard Uri interrogating his grandmother and mother, and a few days later he came out with what he had picked up about the Nazarenes from other youngsters in Far Side.

They would come from Greek-inhabited towns in Syria either alone or in small groups and attach themselves to families who had relatives or acquaintances in the East, after which they would go back, only for new people to show up in their places a few months later. Most of them were men. But there were a few women as well; they had permanent smiles on their faces, would constantly stroke children, and they had prodigious appetites. The smiling women would say that the Anointed had been born by the grace of the Eternal One, and he had lived for a long time in obscurity, but on the orders of the Creator he had revealed himself and had kept on curing people until it became manifest that he was the one for whom they had been waiting, but the evil people had crucified him, yet on the third day he had risen, his disciples had seen him and spoken with him, they had been able to touch his bleeding wounds and he had not even felt it, just laughed, then he ascended into Heaven, promising to come back. The women also said that with him they too had died and risen again, and all those who believed in the resurrection of the Anointed would live forever, and anyone who did not believe in him would come off badly. Children were scared of them because that meant they were not living people but spirits who had assumed bodily form, but they didn’t understand why, in that case, they ate so much.

Theo also mentioned that the way the other children told it, the first thing the smiling women spoke of in any sentence they uttered was the Anointed. If they were asked “Was the food to your taste?” they would answer: “The Anointed would say at times like these that it was to his taste,” or if asked “Will the weather tomorrow be good?” would answer: “The Anointed would say ‘Yes.’” And their prayers were not for the Lord to give them that day their daily bread, but to give them tomorrow’s bread already today, and they would add: again.