György Spiró - Captivity

“How did that resurrection occur?”

Marcellus was relieved, because that he knew.

“Well, the way it happened was that the Messiah was accused of proclaiming that he was the Anointed, the king of Israel, so he was taken before the prefect, who interrogated him, then he was scourged and crucified.”

“And who was the prefect?”

“Pontius Pilate.”

Uri shuddered.

“A Roman prefect has no authority in religious affairs,” he said. “The Jewish court has jurisdiction! It should have been dealt with by the Sanhedrin.”

Marcellus knew nothing of the legal niceties, but he did say that as he was dying the Anointed had managed to convert one of the malefactors.

“Who was that?”

“Two malefactors, two thieves, were crucified together with him, so one of them.”

Uri broke out in a sweat and felt faint.

“What sort of thieves?”

Marcellus did not know: just some malefactors.

“Did Pilate sentence them too?”

“Yes.”

“They too were Jews?”

“Yes.”

“But the Roman prefect does not pass sentence on Jewish miscreants; no way does he waste his time with piddling matters like that! They are dealt with by the local Jewish courts, but then again the Jews don’t use crucifixion! Nor do they hand common criminals over to the Romans!”

Feeling very awkward, Marcellus kept quiet.

“When did it happen?” Uri asked.

Marcellus knew that.

“He was crucified just before Passover, on Friday afternoon, at the third hour, and the Messiah yielded up the ghost to the Creator in the sixth hour.”

Uri wiped off the sweat, which despite a cold breeze blowing from the west was trickling from his neck and the crown of his head.

He could picture his cell in Jerusalem. There were four of them: himself and three others.

“Dear son,” said Uri, “in the end, what is it that your people preach about the Anointed: is He a man or is He God?”

Marcellus closed his eyes and concentrated.

“He existed before the Creation,” he stuttered, “but that became manifest after His resurrection… Everything that the Lord has hidden from view becomes manifest sooner or later…”

“If the Anointed was there even before the Creator created the world,” Uri noted sharply, “then He could hardly have hidden Him from view.”

Marcellus yelled out:

“He has existed from the beginning of time, but only now has He manifested Himself!”

“Does He have an existence over and above the Creation?”

“Yes!”

“The Anointed is the Creator’s emissary, isn’t He?”

“He is!”

“Don’t you see a contradiction here? If the Anointed is subject to the Creator, then He couldn’t have existed before the Creation!”

His lips pressed tightly together, Marcellus obstinately said nothing.

Uri groaned:

“What is it that your people claim?” he asked. “Was the Messiah born a man? Did He have a mother and father?”

“He did!”

“Joseph and Mariamne, you said.”

“Joseph and Mariamne!”

“How is it possible then, that He was born to them when He existed before the Creation?”

“He’s the Messiah; for Him anything is possible! He’s the one for whom we have been waiting! And He came among us!”

Uri studied the face of his second-born son in the moonlight. Was it right to open his eyes?

“My dear son,” he said. “Are you aware of any other cases when Pilate had other Jews executed in the same way?”

“No, we aren’t,” Marcellus stated firmly. “The Eternal One marked Him out for this one and only offense.”

“Let me tell you something,” said Uri. “There was a time once when I was held in a prison cell in Jerusalem. Two rogues were locked up with me; they had not been sentenced… That Thursday night, late in the night, a new prisoner was brought in… He had overthrown the tables of the moneychangers, those who bought and sold in Temple square…”

Marcellus was horrified, shuddering, Uri could see.

“Did this Messiah of yours do anything of the kind?”

Marcellus groaned:

“Yes.”

“Did He kick up a fuss?”

“Yes, He did, but that’s not why He was crucified!”

“Did He get into a brawl in Temple square?”

“He drove them out with a whip, but that was not why He was executed.”

“Of course it was! I saw Him, I spoke with Him! He was human just like you or me! But He did not say He was the Messiah because He wasn’t! He was a man, a wretched, decent, and honest man like you or me! He was getting on, His beard turning gray, His face a bit puffy; He prayed and then they came for Him on the Friday at daybreak, took Him off and later on the two rogues as well, who had also not been sentenced!”

Marcellus listened aghast.

“The only reason I wasn’t executed was because I’m a Roman citizen! And after that I had dinner at Pilate’s place!” Uri declared. “He executed Jewish prisoners as a deterrent, and specifically at Passover, so it would be witnessed by the multitudes and they wouldn’t get any ideas about rising in rebellion. Because they had done so not long before! He had no idea who exactly he was putting to death! He wasn’t interested either! Pilate was afraid of provocation back then and also of Vitellius, with good reason, too, because it was Vitellius who got rid of him in the end!”

Marcellus held his peace.

“Herod Antipas was also there!” Uri affirmed. “He just happened to be there… He wasn’t in the habit of making pilgrimages to Jerusalem; Galilee falls outside the area where making the pilgrimage is compulsory, but he happened to be there because Vitellius had been threatening him, too, and he wanted to ally with Pilate! What do your people have to say about that? What were you told?”

Marcellus kept a strained silence before finally speaking:

“Antipas also interrogated the Messiah and referred Him back to Pilate…”

Uri groaned out loud.

“Your Anointed hero was a man! A man! I was jailed with Him, saw Him from an arm’s length away!”

Overcome with hatred, Marcellus hissed:

“You never did time in prison! You never even traveled to Jerusalem! You never dined with Pilate!”

One of Sophocles’s dictums is that there is nothing worse than man.

Carneades, on the other hand, wrote that notions about nonexistent objects come into being in the same way as those regarding existing ones, and they are just as effective as the latter, the proof being that they result in real acts. Men therefore act according to what they believe in; whether those beliefs are true or not makes no difference.

Flora did not turn up for a few days. That happened every now and again; she took water to other places and obviously made love to other men, but Uri asked no questions about what had happened, setting high store on the fact that she never asked for money in return. When she next brought water Uri was not as chipper as usual, and indeed she asked him what the matter was.

“I had a meeting with my son,” Uri muttered. “It was rather depressing.”

Flora still did not understand, but she did not ask for further details, preferring to pump him about whether or not he would prefer her hair long and straight, because there was an ointment available which straightens curly hair. Uri did his best to talk her out of the nostrum. The lovemaking ensued eventually but was not as sweet as it had been previously, and Uri had a feeling that this had also reached its end.

Marcellus lounged about at home, eating the whole day long, doing what he had done as a boy in Puteoli, only now he had an ideology to wheel out in its defense. Uri would politely inquire whether he might wish, by any chance, to earn a bit toward covering the cost of his upkeep, to which Marcellus would respond with deep conviction that he was now a holy man, the Holy Ghost was laboring inside him and a New World was here, it would spread, gradually perhaps, to take in the entire world, and then everything would change: everything that had been on high would be set down low, and everything that had been lower down would be set on high, and there would no longer be any need to labor.