György Spiró - Captivity

Uri stuck with the fulling work until spring and then quit. He had collected enough money to be able to spend another few months looking for work. He bet on the tourists, hoping someone would have need for a scrivener, or something of the kind.

He ought to have taken on the job as a fuller earlier, not out of penance, but because then Theo would still be free and with them. How could he have been so insane? How could he have so completely taken leave of his senses?

He spent the entire day, day after day, on his own at the pier conversing with his father or with Theo.

He would ask Joseph why he had to stick it out with his so-called family, and Joseph would answer mournfully that he had to because he, Uri’s father, had set the miserable example.

You’re different in character from me, the father would say to the daydreaming Uri. You were a born a hedonist; it’s my fault that you are forced to be an ascetic.

But who was there to set an example for you, seeing as your father, Taddeus, died young and you never even knew him?

The Eternal One, Joseph mournfully declared, who hates His chosen people but has never abandoned them, no matter how unfaithful, wretched, selfish, extortionist, profiteering, narrow-minded, stupid, cowardly, swaggering, and blind, or how many times He might be gravely disappointed.

“Would the Lord have done better to abandon us?” Uri would ask his father.

Joseph pondered but gave no answer.

It would have been better, Uri concluded. Then the Jewish community, the Kahal, would not have banished me; I could have been a free Greek or Roman.

Joseph looked on him: My dear boy, the Greek polis operates in exactly the same way; all societies work that way. Do you think that’s why I let you stuff so many letters into that mind of yours?

There at the water’s edge Uri was overcome with shame. Even with my eyesight being so poor my father could have set me to work and yet he did not. He allowed me to read so that I might gain knowledge, may his name be blessed!

Uri asked of Theo what he was to do with his younger brother, sisters, and mother. Theo eagerly explained that no person was hopeless; a lot could be achieved with education.

So what should I turn my hand to, dear son.

Theo, the easy-going, handsome boy that he was, puckered his brow and thought very hard before saying: You know what, Father, not everyone in Dikaiarchia is literate. Sell them what you know best and you yourself enjoy doing. It was stupid that in penance for me you sold the one thing that you haven’t got: your health.

Theo also said that insanity was not a punishment; the punishment was meted out by the Almighty on a person for driving himself mad out of cowardice.
Uri begged his son’s pardon because he had even gotten his penance wrong.

Theo chuckled in his usual way; he was always forgiving of everything.

Passover Sabbath was celebrated at the synagogue. The local Jews arrived in high spirits; Uri and his family skulked about aimlessly in the garden.

Uri took particular notice of an ancient woman with her back bent at a right angle, who was talking aloud to herself as she gnawed with her toothless gums at chunks of bread she had dunked in her wine. Uri edged closer: the crone was cursing in Aramaic as she rocked her head left and right, not being able to look up as her rigid spine did not allow that.

“What’s the matter?” Uri asked her in Aramaic.

“That I’m still alive,” wheezed the crone, unable to look at him.

“It won’t last much longer, never fear,” Uri assured her.

“The hell it won’t, God damn it to Hell and back,” she shrilled. “My only problem is my back! Why could I never manage to get leprosy or the plague!”

Uri laughed.

“How old are you, granny?”

“What the hell do I know!” the old woman spluttered. “My grandsons are already starting to die out on me, but I’m still here without any teeth!”

“Your gums must be good and hard by now,” Uri ventured.

“The Lord punishes me by still making it possible for me to guzzle and shit. And I still pee so tidily that I could write my name with it.”

Uri guffawed.

A plump man came over, amazed.

“You’re able to talk to her?” he asked in Greek.

“Yes, I can.”

“She’s my great-grandma. She’s been dumped on me from over there, but no one can make a word out of what she burbles on about.”

“She’s a very nice old lady,” Uri reassured him.

“She’s a nice old lady who’s been dumped on me from over-there; she wheezes on all day to the point we can stand it no longer.”

“This overfed donkey is one of my great-grandsons,” the crone said in Aramaic. “He doesn’t understand a word of what I say, just spouts like all the other idiots here, things like ‘Hey!’ and ‘Whoa!’ that even the dimmest ordinary beast understands — he can’t even latch on to things like that. I gave birth to a whole pack of them, may the Eternal One damn them all!”

“What’s that she’s saying?” the tubby man asked.

Uri interpreted her as saying:

“She regrets that she can’t speak Greek and so is unable to discourse with you about exalted matters.”

The flabby fellow looked askance at Uri.

“She said that?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Just among her grandsons — she has around twenty, and who knows how many great-grandsons — they chose me of all people to pass her on to!”

Jason, the flabby fellow, asked Uri how much he would ask for per week to take over looking after the old woman.

Uri specified a huge sum.

“Done!” Jason breathed a sigh of relief. “Blessed be Passover! I feel right now as if I had just escaped from Egypt.”

Auntie Milka was not easy to get along with. Uri was greatly entertained for a few weeks, but then less and less, only to pack it in two months later, just after Shavuot, which was only observed nominally in Puteoli since it had no agricultural connotations.

“I can’t take any more,” he admitted shamefacedly. “The money’s very necessary, but I’m being driven mad by how she endlessly repeats herself. She’s a sweet old thing, but I’m afraid that I’ll throttle her one day!”

Milka was not present when this came under discussion.

“I’m amazed you stuck at it as long as you did,” Jason said. “I secretly rather hoped you would do away with her!”

“That wasn’t part of the agreement,” Uri riposted. “I’m open to offers though.”

Jason could not decide whether Uri was joking or meant that seriously, so he chose to respond with a laugh or two. Uri was counting on his savings from the money he had received being enough to last until early winter.

At this point Jason offered him quite another deal. He had a horrible wife, compared with whom Auntie Milka was an angel, and she had gotten it into her head to follow up her family tree.

“She’s hoping that some of her forebears were priests,” said Jason. “I told her that it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference now she’s married to me, seeing that I’m not a Kohen or from the tribe of Levi, but she’s gotten it into her head and she’s neglecting the kids, neglecting me, not prepared to do any cooking, and now she’s not willing to nurse the seventh child, who was born only four months ago! If the baby’s not a Kohen, she won’t nurse him! And if he were a Levite, would she suckle him from one tit?”

The proposition was that Uri should track down the ancestors of Jason’s wife and draw up a family tree, which would then be sent to Jerusalem to be verified.

“You want me to unearth a Kohen ancestor?” Uri asked.

“Yes, dig one up.”

Jason had money, so Uri again accepted the deal.