György Spiró - Captivity

Marcellus turned thirteen. He crammed all he needed, and went for his bar mitzvah at the synagogue; Hagar wept and the girls stood there inanely, then they went back home.

Uri carried on with the painting; it was fairly well paid but the peasant raised the rent, and Hagar had no wish to move. They had to think twice what to spend the money on.

A heavy, leaden-gray year ensued, the only point of light in which was Flora. Uri spent little time at home. Marcellus hung around town, sometimes only getting back the next day; the girls did nothing and Uri was occasionally provoked into bawling that they ought to read something, but they never did.

Marcellus turned fourteen, the age at which he could assume the garb of manhood, when was entered into the register of full Roman citizens, and also when he was granted his own tessera.

Uri was touched to examine the lead token on its leather thong when he slipped this over Marcellus’s neck in front of the municipal authority’s building.

“You’ve become a breadwinner, an equal member of the family,” he told him, raising his right hand over his head in benediction. “Lord Almighty! To have lived to see this at last!”

Hagar wept, the girls blubbered and recited a thanksgiving prayer to the Eternal One that they would no longer go hungry.

Marcellus said his prayers with them, then vanished. Uri raged with anger.

Marcellus strolled into the peasant dwelling only two weeks later in the evening and asked for his supper. Hagar clung to him and kept on endlessly asking:

“Did you come to any harm? Did anything bad happen to you?”

Uri could see that there was nothing wrong with the boy and bottled up his indignation.

“Where were you, then, young man?” he asked cordially.

“In Far Side,” said Marcellus, squatting back on his heels as he got to work on a meat dumpling.

Uri digested the information.

“So, what goes on in Far Side these days?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular.”

Marcellus smugly tucked in with Uri looking on. Hagar wept in happiness and the girls withdrew to one of the corners, knowing a storm was brewing.

There was no tessera around Marcus’s neck.

“So what did you do with your tessera?” Uri asked, also squatting, eye-to-eye with Marcellus.

“I handed it over to them,” Marcellus answered calmly.

A big stillness fell. Even Hagar stopped her weeping.

“And to just who did you hand it over, young man?” Uri asked.

“To my real family,” announced Marcellus, looking stubbornly at his father.

“So, who makes up your real family?” he asked in a hushed tone.

“There are many,” said Marcellus, “and there will be ever greater numbers!”

Uri was now certain, and he suppressed his temptation to swear.

“That wouldn’t by any chance be the Nazarenes, would it, young man?”

“I’m also one,” Marcellus declared proudly.

Hagar began to shriek but then thought it best to keep her mouth shut. The girls cowered.

“So you’ve become a Nazarene, my darling boy?”

Marcellus nodded, and a self-confident grin appeared on his lips.

Hagar hurried outside with the girls to leave the two of them together.

“How come? How did it happen?”

“I was inspired by the Holy Ghost,” declared Marcellus, looking his father steadily in the eye.

“And what’s that?”

“The Lord’s Breath, which permeates all things.”

“Do you perchance mean the Shekinah?”

Marcellus shook his head and resolutely reiterated:

“I was inspired by the Holy Ghost, which he breathed into the disciples at Shavuot.”

“Who? The Eternal One? And what’s Shavuot?”

“Not the Eternal One but the Lord! That’s when He ascended into Heaven.”

For them the Lord was not the Creator but the Anointed.

Uri looked at his son. His features were at once prematurely aged and puerile; one could make out the moronic features of Sarah and also Hagar along with everything else. The blood of a lot of my loopy ancestors runs together in that boy, Uri reflected; Plato would be glad to see it: there in front of his eyes a clear example of the idea of a pan-human imbecility.

“So, what did you have to do to be inspired by the Holy Ghost?” Uri politely asked. “Is that why you handed over your tessera?”

Marcellus shook his head, and said as though he were reciting a lesson:

“The Holy Ghost is blowing in all places and can confer its grace on anyone it wishes, the good and the evil alike, and it purifies their soul.”

Uri nodded.

“Can the Holy Ghost enter me?” he asked.

Marcellus became flustered; the sound of interconnected pulleys creaking in his brain was almost audible.

“Anyone,” he finally stammered out, flushing with irritation at having to show mercy to his father in the spirit of the Teaching.

“Eat it up nicely,” Uri urged. “Your mother cooks tasty dumplings.”

Unable to eat, Marcellus was silent.

Uri tried to recall the wording on the sheet that Theo had acquired from the Nazarenes more than five years ago, just before their expulsion.

“There is no family any more, only fellowship,” he muttered.

Marcellus gave a start.

“This Messiah of yours preaches fine ideals,” said Uri, “and I have no doubt he was a good healer.”

“A fisher of souls,” Marcellus proclaimed.

Uri was startled by this combination of words, so he asked his son to explain. Marcellus gathered his wits and related that the Jesus of Nazareth in question had converted fishermen as his first disciples, and they had then been sent out to heal the souls of others.

The Nazarene evangelists fish for suitable souls, Uri supposed, and Marcellus was one such. Quite probably any second-born son had a soul that was suitable; it would be interesting to know if there happened to be any firstborn sons among them.

Uri tried not to think of Theo, and he regarded as a success any day at the end of which, before falling asleep, he could tell himself that he had not thought once about him the whole day, as he was thinking of him now. He thought it unlikely Theo would join a sect to be loved; Marcellus had joined one. It’s because I have shown him no love, Uri reflected, and however nit-witted he may be, he has sensed that.

He felt a strange prickling on the nape of his neck: relief. Let Marcellus’s new family take him away, along with his tessera; his half-baked, hangdog features would not be missed. What would the loss of him be compared with the loss of Theo? He would somehow scrape along with just Hagar and their unsightly daughters.

No one could have been more amazed at himself than Uri when he heard his voice sounding sympathetic, almost affectionate:

“Well, now! And is property communal with your people?”

There was a sincere expression of interest in his tone; Marcellus could sense that his father’s exasperation had melted away, and he was taken aback because he could not fathom what had happened in a few brief moments.

“Communal property?” Uri repeated, smiling at his son.

It was a dispassionate, distant smile.

Marcellus snorted and shook his head:

“No, not that.”

“So, they didn’t actually ask you for your tessera?”

“No, they didn’t, I offered it myself. But they loved me before I did that!”

Uri was moved to genuine pity for his son.

“A vow of poverty?”

Marcellus shook his head.

“A vow of silence?”

Marcellus did not understand what he was driving at.

“Where is it that you gather?” Uri asked, tacking on after that to reassure him: “I don’t want to know the address or the names of any individuals. I’ve got no desire to inform on them, but do they live in Rome?”