György Spiró - Captivity

“No.”

There was not enough money to get them to Alexandria or Judaea.

There were Jewish merchants in town, but they would not open their doors.

On the first Sabbath the newcomers had been received with great joy at the synagogue. It was a dilapidated little building with a crumbling roof, and food on offer was skimpy. Uri took his whole family, resplendent in freshly laundered clothes. Uri spoke pleasantly to the unknown congregation, but they only had eyes for Theo, because he was a good-looking, slender boy of a type they themselves did not produce. I ought to have kept him hidden, thought Uri; already they are jealous of me here as well. Total strangers patted Uri and Theo on the back and hastened to load up plates for them at the table that had been laid in front of the house of prayer, but it was impossible to strike up any conversation because they spent all their time talking with each other.

There was wine to be had, and Uri permitted the girls to drink a little.

“It’s good here,” said Eulogia confidentially to her father. “We’re staying, aren’t we?”

“We’re staying,” Uri said.

He mended the broken dolls’ legs then went off to putter on his own around the harbor, gazing at one of the stones there.

Not long ago he had been a well-off Roman merchant with a dozen superb, reliable contacts and a comfortable existence. He had been improvident: instead of investing his money in gold he had put it into new ventures, which were gone with the wind. He had put blind faith in the future. If it were just him alone, the admonition from the Lord would stand him in good stead. He had been too cocksure: he was not where he should have been, he had been affluent. The time had come for him to be poor.

The thing is, God help me! I have a family. How is it that you don’t see us? Why do you afflict others because of my conceitedness?

He was reminded of “Sisyphus,” a comedy by Critias and Cinesias of Athens and Diagoras of Melos, who were known as atheists even though they were not Jews. As Prodicus of Ceos was supposed to have said, “Man makes precisely the god he needs.” Those things had come to mind after the Bane in Alexandria.

Alexandria would not pass; it was coming.

Theo wanted to ramble with Uri, concerned about his father’s growing increasingly despondent; the womenfolk could keep their eyes on the young ones.

“I can do many things,” Uri told him as he mooched around the harbor. “The trouble is that these people have no need for the things I can do.”

“But there was a need for them in Rome!”

“Not very much even there, and not at all in Puteoli. This city is dead.”

“So let’s move on!”

“Where to?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll stick it out! We’ve learned how to roam around. It was not all that long ago that all Jews wandered. In the Scriptures everyone is constantly fleeing. Let’s just move on. I genuinely enjoy it.”

One evening Uri raised with Hagar and Sarah the suggestion that they should go farther south. Syracusa wasn’t too bad a city; even now it no doubt bubbled with life, and, what’s more, it had become safer since Caligula had ordered that its walls be repaired.

Maybe he had wanted to stop there on the way to Alexandria, it occurred to Uri. Caligula had been so cunning in forestalling everything except his own assassination.

Sarah remained quiet: she did not grasp it at all, just peacefully went on darning one of the children’s tunics by the light of a lamp. It was not the Jews who provided the lamp; Uri had bought one.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Hagar stated scathingly. “You’re going to have to dig into the remaining money.”

“But there is no money left!”

“Sure there is, you lying dog!”

There really was no more than five sesterces left, but it was useless for Uri to say so.

He got up at dawn and tiptoed out of the house in which, besides themselves, lived three families of Latini, two on the upper floor.

He set off for the harbor. Theo caught up.

“I’m going with you,” he said.

“Go home!”

“I’m not leaving you alone!”

Uri stopped at the edge of still sleeping, auroral Puteoli.

“How did we end up here, Theo?” he asked.

“The Eternal One guided us here,” said his son.

“For what purpose?”

“So that we may fulfill his will.”

Uri could have countered that but instead chose to remain silent.

When they reached the harbor area, Uri turned toward the slave market.

They arrived too early; day had hardly broken, so they sat down and waited.

The vendors stole out of the alleyways to open their stalls. Uri bought a flatbread and some wine for eight asses, which they both ate and drank.

“What do you intend to do, father?” Theo asked.

Uri said nothing before pressing the remaining four sesterces and four asses into Theo’s hand.

“It’s better you have it,” he said.

“But that’s a lot of money!”

“Better it’s with you.”

By the time the sun was up, several slave-traders and a few black slaves had arrived. An awn was stretched over the timber scaffold, on which the people who were for sale would be stood. The traders then set about their breakfast, eating with a will.

Alongside the platform, a small booth was opened, in which sat a man from the local authority, a pint-sized pipsqueak who was supposed to collect the tax due on each slave who was sold. Tiberius had decreed that a two percent tax was payable to the treasury on the sale of any slave, and that had remained in force ever since. A vendor would always do his best to offset the burden of the tax on the purchaser, and the purchaser in his turn would protest against that but in the end, of course, would always pay up.

The fifth of the black slaves had just clambered down from the platform when Uri, youthful and fresh jumped up. Theo was thunderstruck.

“Hey there, people!” Uri called out merrily. “I’m selling myself!”

Six people in succession peered into his mouth and clambered down from the scaffold without a word. Uri took off his tunic, standing in just a loincloth and flexing his arms and legs as he stiffened in the pose of the statue of a discus thrower, then in the pose of a javelin thrower statue, and then in the pose of Phidias’s statue of Athene, taking a few long standing-jumps and scanning some lines of Virgil in Latin, before being pushed off by surly-faced vendors.

“Father, that was silly,” said a shamefaced Theo.

Uri panted.

“That’s all I could come up with,” he remonstrated, pulling his tunic back over his head.

“Let’s go,” Theo said.

They had set off when a tall, brawny chap clapped a hand on Uri’s shoulder.

“I’m interested,” he said.

Uri came to a stop and stuttered:

“I’m fluent in three languages, have a passing familiarity with another four, I can take shorthand, wrestle, shoot a bow and arrow, use a sling, smooth wood with a plane, reap with a sickle…”

“It’s your son I’m interested in.”

Uri fell silent before giving a laugh:

“Only I am for sale,” he said.

“Two thousand sesterces for your son,” said the buyer.

“Get lost!”

“Ten thousand,” Theo spoke.

Uri goggled at him.

“Don’t be stupid!” he exclaimed. “Are you mad?”

“Deal,” said the buyer. “I’ll give that.”

Uri laughed.

“He’s not for sale,” he said blithely. “He’s a Roman citizen, just like me.”

By then there were six bruisers standing in a circle around them.

“Ten thousand,” the buyer repeated. “And I’ll pay the tax.”

“He’s not for sale,” Uri repeated.

“I’ve agreed to the terms. He’ll have a fine time with me.”