György Spiró - Captivity

These people had not read any historical works, or if they had, they grasped nothing from them.

Nor had they read the Holy Writ, as they should.

Uri ran through his own life in his mind and found that there had been innumerable occasions when he might easily have thought that no one had experienced worse things than he had — yet all the same he never thought that.

What made me so forbearing? What made me so meek? Did I imagine, perhaps, that I would be granted a second life? That if I endured this one, then I would get another one as a reward?

Maybe because I indulged in dreaming, I did acquire a second life? I daydreamed while I was reading, and I daydreamed while I was walking. I have had more than just one life.

The time had come to muse about that sort of thing because he had married off his daughters, his first grandson had been born, his sons had grown up and were not starving to death — what had become of them was quite another matter — and the Lord could not expect him to work on the survival of the species. Let his children look after themselves as best they could.

As he grew older, Uri felt a sweeping dismissive wave of the hand taking hold in his mind. Perhaps the Eternal One was exercising mercy to facilitate the departure of a believer from this world by bestowing on him, in due time, a mighty distaste for life. He was losing his teeth, his joints were losing their resilience, his back was losing its straightness, food and drink were losing their flavor, he was losing his virility, all so that there would be nothing for him to regret.

He did still want to read. Which reminded him that there had once been a time when he had wanted to build up a library for himself. Why not?

One Sunday he sauntered over into Far Side, where he had not been for a long time. Nothing had changed except that a few ugly tenement buildings had been thrown up. He turned into the house where Theo, before he had been castrated, had placed his scrolls on deposit. Over the intervening years the sympathetic young man’s back had grown crooked and gray hairs now flecked his hair; he expressed his willingness to return the scrolls that had been entrusted to him.

“I haven’t come for them,” said Uri. “I would like to invest money in your library.”

The young man was left speechless.

“I haven’t come to take anything away but to give!”

“I understand,” he managed to croak.

He was called Salutius; he was amazed.

“Everything is going to the dogs,” Uri explained. “Tablets of stone are being smashed, tablets of bronze melted down, columns are being demolished. They might well wish to set light to any archives as well. Scrolls nevertheless have some chance of surviving.”

It entered Salutius’s head to invite Uri into the house and introduce him to the family. But Uri made a face:

“I have no interest in families,” he said emphatically. “I’d rather go somewhere and have a drink.”

They went to the Far Side docks where a pulsing life went on among the new hutments and tall loading cranes working on a pulley system. Uri picked one of the more shaded terraces.

“Well?” he said, and Salutius smiled.

Caught up in his own thoughts, Salutius held his peace. He did not tender any thanks, nor did he pander to Uri; he was disconcerted and did not disguise it.

“Wine?” Uri asked him.

“I don’t usually drink.”

“Me neither.”

Consequently, they drank wine undiluted as the water that was brought to the table looked turbid.

“I earn good money,” said Uri. “I have heaps of work, and the more atrocious the pictures I paint, the more money I am paid. I paint whatever I’m asked: nymphs, satyrs, gods, monsters, glades, boats, an idyll or a battle scene or a Trojan horse…”

Salutius nodded. He did not object that Uri, despite being Jewish, daubed representations of the human form.

“Why specifically books, though?” he asked.

“I want to invest in Jewish rarities,” said Uri. “I have a hunch that anything Jewish will soon prove to be a rarity.”

Salutius pondered.

“Why don’t you buy jewels instead?” he asked. “They’re easier to shift.”

“I don’t want to make a business,” Uri said. “I would like to preserve something that would otherwise be lost.”

They sipped their wine; it was no better than the wine from Rhodes that Uri had once stored in the amphorae, not so far from this terrace.

“To give an example,” Uri said, “to this day in Alexandria there still stands a Jewish stele inscribed on which are all the rights of the Jews there stemming from the time of Augustus. It ought to be copied and brought over here.”

Salutius was taken aback.

“You don’t see the future in too bright a light,” he remarked.

“To me the entire basin of the Great Sea, along with all its coasts, just stinks,” said Uri. “Nowadays all the things I have seen are starting to cohere in my head. I managed to come through one calamity in Alexandria, and that stele also survived it, but it won’t survive the next one.”

“Why do you think that the trouble will strike Alexandria in particular?”

“Not just there — everywhere.”

They sipped their wine. Around them buzzed the clamor of cheerful life; there were lots of high-class ladies, seamen, dockers, seers, fortune-tellers, whores, tradesmen, staring pedestrians, street musicians, vendors, beggars.

“Rome as well?” Salutius checked.

Uri pondered.

“Maybe not so badly,” he said. “There are not many Jews here, and nowadays they’re cowed, so they’re not going to kick up any fuss. I have a pretty good idea how things are going on with your people here.”

“With us?”

It was an appropriate question; Uri nodded.

“With you Jews,” he confirmed. “I say my prayers in the morning and evening, I find it gratifying, but I am not a member of any congregation. I celebrate the Sabbath on my own; I have a bite to eat, stretch out, ruminate, and nod off to sleep. On Friday afternoon my wife comes over here to see her daughters and stays until Sunday. They don’t miss me; it’s enough to feed them with money. I also pay the didrachma; that’s Jewish enough for me. I can’t regrow a foreskin, but I might well do it if I could.”

Salutius posed the logical question:

“Have you become a Nazarene?”

“No,” said Uri. “I haven’t become blinded, though I’m not sure why; perhaps the Eternal One does not wish it.”

They sipped their wine. Around them merrily abounded senseless life.

“What’s your idea of how it would work?” Salutius asked.

“When I’ve got some money, I’ll bring it here and you’ll concern yourself with acquisitions. I don’t need any receipts, I don’t want to interfere in any way: you buy whatever you choose. At most I’ll give you advice, but you won’t have to accept it.”

“I won’t have to copy the stele?”

That was the first time a note of irony had crept into Salutius’s voice; Uri was delighted.

“No, dear boy,” he said. “You won’t have to.”

Salutius chuckled.

They ordered a new round of wine. Uri let Salutius pay this time. He was an odd character, quite out of place in a drinking place down by the harbor. He rapidly blinked his dark eyes, he had a thin face and thin lips, his eyes were deep set — a complete ascetic, the whole man, with long limbs and hairy hands. He was seated with his back bowed. A real bookworm, but then he had a good eye; he had not started reading out of necessity.

“To give you one example,” Salutius broke the silence, “there is the matter of the legacy of poor Honoratus.”

“Would you ever!”

“His house was robbed, needless to say. The Germanicus statue was carried off right away, and they also took his furniture, jewels, dining service, glassware… His family had scattered, the house was left empty… But so far as I know nobody needed his collection of scrolls… Philo’s entire library is still in his cellar, as well as a lot else that he collected in his younger days, when he was just an archisynagogos… He was already stealing back then.”