György Spiró - Captivity

The citizens catcalled and whistled, cursing the Jews, and they rushed to take revenge.

The Nazarenes, and anyone who was alleged to be such, were seized and tortured, and they readily admitted to being incendiary and named their accomplices. Many Jews were denounced, by way of preemptive exculpation, by other Jews who thus avoided torture, this being a simple way to rid oneself of rivals and enemies. The Augustans even detained and stripped guiltless passersby, and anyone found lacking a foreskin was hacked to pieces, though anyone who did possess one was beaten to death in fury anyway. It was not advisable to be out on Rome’s remaining streets during those days.

It was not just Jews who had fled from Alexandria to Italia but also a fair number of Greeks, and they brought with them their own tales of horror. Superstitions which had grown up in Alexandria during the Bane were also propagated in Rome: on the Sabbath Jews drank the blood of non-Jews; they slaughtered Greek children and roasted them, which is why they did not eat pork. The most watertight accusation against Jews was one of black magic: the Jews were able by muttering their curses anywhere to set anything ablaze, they had no need for a spark or tinder. Most of those who were tortured confessed that this charge was well-founded before their skulls were cracked by the wheel. It was a highly credible charge too, the political commentators recalled: at the time of Germanicus’s death Piso had been accused first and foremost of black magic, and he had admitted as much by the fact that he had gone on to commit suicide even while the trial was still in progress. He, too, had been perverted by the Jews.

Seeing that they had betrayed mother Rome, so read the charge, those who were to be executed were first sewed into the hides of wild animals together with monkeys, rats and dogs like matricides, and they were then cast into the Tiber. But then they ran out of monkeys, so then those sewed into the skins were cast to packs of dogs. But then there was a shortage of skins and the dog-owners began to object because they had trained their animals to run, but once they had eaten human flesh they would never again be obedient, as a result of which Nero had the Nazarenes thrown to wild beasts in the wooden amphitheater on the Field of Mars, dressing up himself as a charioteer and watching the proceedings from close at hand in the arena, but those animals eventually had their fill and there were not enough of them anyway, so Nero had the remainder crucified in his gardens which had been consumed by the fire, giving free entrance.

When Uri heard what was happening, he hurried over to the gardens. He had engendered Marcellus; let him at least witness his death, assuming the dogs or tigers had not already devoured him. He was not worried about being recognized or being crucified because, so he felt, he had already seen enough of life.

Many hundreds of people were hanging on crosses, some head downward: some were still living, others were already dead. Horsemen kept order, relatives, water jugs in hand or on their head, searched forlornly and were not molested; a multitude of gawkers enjoyed the spectacle, which beat any entertainment put on at the Circus. Not since the Spartacus revolt had been suppressed had so many people been crucified, and that had been a long time ago.

Uri trod methodically; he had to walk up close to every single cross to see the face of the crucified person. It was a tiring procedure as he was constantly being jostled and shoved. The living moaned, pleading for water, writhing, choking, the shit trickling down their legs, blood dribbling from the mouths and ears of those who had been crucified upside down; the stronger ones, young men with their heads dangling down, could still flex their muscles and even as they hung there could bring their upper bodies into a horizontal position before dropping back down again.

Uri recognized many acquaintances from Far Side, but he would never have believed that they too would have joined this mad, fanatical sect. Either they had not joined, or the persons denouncing them were eager to lay their hands on their wealth. He was astounded when he discovered the dead body of aging Honoratus, as his left leg was missing; that must have been chopped off earlier. He quite certainly had not been a Nazarene, but a revolution was taking place in Far Side, with new people stepping into the places of the old elders, who were not equipped to do away with the Nazarenes. Many of the faces he considered to be Judaean; they had presumably come over as missionaries. He stood for a long time by one of the aged men who had been hanged head down: no longer alive, his long, silvery beard was fluttering in the breeze and as far as it was possible to make out from the inverted head, he had a smile on his face. He must have cheerfully gotten some big sins off his chest as he had been dying.

Uri spent the whole day walking around in the garden because new individuals were constantly being brought for crucifixion, but Marcellus was not among them. Had he escaped? Had he come to his senses in time? Had he been killed earlier?

At twilight Nero had the crucified set aflame so that they should provide light and the crowds would be able to see them: straw was heaped at the foot of the crosses and sprinkled with oil that it would burn with a lot of smoke. The dead sizzled mutely, the living screamed as they burned.

Alexandria had come to Rome. Until then, in Rome Jews had merely been scorned or laughed at; the Nazarene zealots had at last made them hated.

Marcellus clambered out from among the goats when Uri returned late that night.

“I didn’t see you crucified, dear son,” Uri greeted him unemotionally.

Marcellus was mopping goat droppings from his legs.

“Did you betray them, dear son?” Uri asked genially. “Did you race to inform against them? Was that how you saved your skin?”

Marcellus kept quiet; Hagar, as prescribed, wrung her hands.

“I don’t think I would have betrayed them,” Uri contemplated. “They were your family, your brothers and sisters…”

“They lied,” Marcellus hissed viciously.

“It took this long for you to realize? When they are being murdered? What kind of faith is that?”

“He will come,” Marcellus muttered, “only He will come by night, stealthily, like a thief… By the morning the world will be different… And wrongdoers will be the first to be pardoned!”

Uri fell silent.

There are still things I need to learn, he thought as he laughed. He howled with laughter for a long time, unable to help it.

Hagar looked at him in horror, Marcellus with hatred. Hagar then plucked a chicken, cooked; they said prayers for the dead and ate heartily without a word.

A construction fever like never before broke out in Rome. Nero announced that he was having a statue built, bigger than the Colossus of Rhodes had been, to be made of gold, raised in front of his palace, and he was applauded.

A lot of new housing on the Alta Semita and Vicus Longus, north of the Viminal, had burned down, and Uri’s murals were destroyed with them. This was a stroke of luck because the owners set to rebuilding their houses; their money had not been reduced to ashes. Uri had more work than ever before, so he was able to repay his debts.

He stayed outside of the hunt after Nazarenes; he was not counted as being a Jew — he was not a factor in people’s eyes and no one envied him his ramshackle mud-brick cottage, indeed, people were unaware of where he resided.

He brooded over the fact that people nowadays were no longer modest and humble enough.

They thought that no one before them had suffered, and nobody had thought about anything. People thought that they alone, like no one before, had an entitlement to survive death. They sneered at the tens and hundreds of millions who had lived before them — they had been imbeciles, they imagined, just for allowing themselves to die. They imagined that the Lord was singling them out, of all people, with His infinite grace, that they would be the first generation which was going to escape death, and that today’s world was the most dreadful of worlds in which to live and for that reason ripe for change.