György Spiró - Captivity

With much effort, they reached Ostia in four days. There was a look of obtuse idiocy in Sarah’s eyes; Hagar resigned herself to her fate; Hermia whimpered but said nothing. The children worked their way into tramping along, with Uri tapping the girls’ backs to straighten up: being round-shouldered did not look nice, he didn’t want them to be so slack in their deportment that no one would marry them.

He spoke about the sea to Marcellus, and as the boy wanted to hear about monsters, he invented a string of marine creatures: some on whose backs one could ride; others who, when there was a storm, would gobble a man up so he would live in their belly while the tempest raged and afterward would then spit him out intact, like the whale did with Jonah. He promised Marcellus to seat him on the back of a charming monster like that as soon as they reached the sea, though in all truth they seldom showed up.

They got into Ostia without any trouble, with no guards anywhere to be seen. Uri’s recollection was that Matthew had once told him that he planned to build the synagogue by the seashore, to the south of the city wall, next to shrines of some kind, so he struck off southward as if he knew where he was going.

Theo looked at the nice big tidy houses and pledged to his sisters: “We’re also going to have a multistory house with a roof garden!”

Marcellus stopped in front of one such house, fringed with cypresses, and wanted to go in.

“We don’t live here,” said Theo.

“But this is where I want to live!” Marcellus howled.

They dragged him onward.

Uri found the city wall and also the gate leading to the sea.

They spotted a big shrine to the right, intersecting colonnaded roads, an orderly line of trees, and farther away, directly by the seashore, a very tall, strange L-shaped building. Evening was drawing in, and the building threw a shadow northwestward onto a long two-story house.

Uri hurried ahead. He went around the building and looked back on it from the sea.

The entrance, set to look southeast, had been installed between two tall columns. On the left ran a long wall, where a line of tiny windows ran above the height of a man, and there was a roof over the columns much higher than that of the building. Off to the right, set at right angles and running in a northeasterly direction, ran another long wall topped with tiny windows placed at a similar height. Above that northeasterly wall could be seen two more columns.

So there were four columns supporting an exceptionally high, gabled roof.

This had to be it.

Uri was astounded. He had not seen a Jewish house of prayer this big except for the Basilica at Alexandria, and that had been constructed as a market hall. There was something ungainly and exaggerated about the building; it was like no other. Perhaps that was because the columns had existed first and they had to be incorporated at all costs.

The entrance was locked. By now his family had caught up.

“Wait here!” said Uri and then walked along by the northeastern wall toward the terraced housing.

The two walls of the synagogue and the line of the terrace formed what was in effect a regular square, lacking only a wall to the southwest, and in that direction a line of palm trees had been planted by way of a fencing. There was no fence or plants between the northeasterly wall of the synagogue and the terrace.

This had to be the house which Matthew lived in.

As he got nearer, Uri saw that the two-story terrace was not a single building but three houses attached to one another, which must mean that two of them were servants’ quarters or let out to guests.

On a terrace in front of the upstairs windows, which was presumably shared between the three houses, a line of washing was hanging.

Uri knocked on the door on the left, the one which did not have the shadow of the synagogue falling in it. He knocked again.

A burly, completely grizzled man stepped out of the door, blinking as the setting sun hit him straight in the yes.

“We’re full up,” he said by way of a greeting.

“Plotius!” Uri exclaimed.

Plotius narrowed his eyes and stepped closer.

“Don’t you recognize me?” Uri asked.

“The voice is familiar… Hang on a moment! Don’t tell me! Your voice… You always had a cold… Gaius? Surely not!”

Plotius embraced him.

“Come in,” he said. “We’ll have something to eat and drink and you can tell me all about yourself.”

“I’m here with my family; they’re waiting on the beach…”

“Let them wait! Come in!”

Uri found himself entering a spacious room with furnishings that pointed to an affluent lifestyle. They took seats on stools.

“How many years has it been?” Plotius asked.

“Fourteen.”

“Well, I never!”

Plotius brought out some wine and a mixing dish.

“Matthew?” Uri asked.

Plotius poured carefully.

“He got a hankering to be at sea,” he said, “so he went back to sailing.”

Uri nodded.

Plotius had built the synagogue with Matthew’s money then driven Matthew out, together with his family, and gone on to steal his house.

They quaffed the wine.

“We are having golden days in Ostia,” Plotius whooped. He had become corpulent, his face flabbily filled-out. “This is the biggest synagogue in the Diaspora — a span’s width taller than the one at Delos, a bigger mikveh as well, that’s inside, under the columns… It will take fifty people at one go! And the harbor too — Portus — is a marvel! Some of that construction work is mine! In large part, one could say. Yes, mine!”

He poured some more and took a drink.

“Just imagine,” he leaned forward as he said this, “it was me who worked out what to do with that immense boat used to bring the obelisk from Heliopolis, because they had no idea what to do with it next: pile it full of fist-sized pieces of rock and sink it opposite the harbor entrance, then build up on that an artificial western bank to give protection against the winds… Next to it piles need to be driven into the water with baskets of puteolanum sling between them, and on that build up deep-water moles… Puteolanum — that’s the concrete which hardens in water that I was doing research on in Caesarea… Remember? Anyway, it was accepted,” Plotius bellowed. “It was completed in just eighteen months! Claudius congratulated me personally! It’ll last several centuries! Several centuries!”

A tall, slender, bearded young man came into the room and stared disapprovingly at them.

“My son,” said Plotius hoarsely. “He’ll be the archisynagogos after me.”

“Hold on a minute!” said Uri. “I remember what he’s called… Fortunatus, isn’t it?”

Plotius stiffened.

“Yes, Plotius Fortunatus… Do you remember everything?”

“Pretty much.”

Plotius Fortunatus picked up the mixing bowl and went out with it.

Plotius chortled.

“He doesn’t like it when I drink. That kind of son… He’s married now… I’ve got three grandsons… They live here, next door… The terrace is shared.”

Uri drank a sip of water before asking:

“We need somewhere to stay.”

Plotius shut his trap.

“There are eight of us,” Uri went on. “Four adults and four children. The synagogue is a guesthouse also, isn’t it?”

“It happens to be full up right now.”

“There’s nobody there,” said Uri. “The front door is closed.”

“There are a bunch of people coming first thing tomorrow.”

“We’ve been four days on the road from Rome,” said Uri. “Except for me they’re women and children.”

Plotius stood up, stretched his back, and looked away over Uri’s head.

“We are not allowed to give lodgings to Nazarenes,” he blurted out.