György Spiró - Captivity

Uri sank to the ground and remained sitting there for a long time.

The lock had not been broken; Salutius was the only other one with a key. It had to be him who had taken the scrolls.

He trudged over to Far Side. Salutius had grown a long beard and his hair had turned white since they had last met, six months before; his look was agitated, he was even more round-shouldered than ever. The atmosphere in Far Side must have been straining his nerves.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said.

“Where are the scrolls?”

Salutius went red in the face.

“I tried to alert you,” he stammered, “but you’re constantly caught up running around on matters connected with your prisoners. Half of it is yours.”

“Half of what?”

“The money.”

Uri thought he was going to choke.

“You’ve sold the books?”

“I got a superb price for them,” Salutius protested. “Thanks to your brilliant business flair! They paid a fortune for the lot!”

“Who’s they?”

“The imperial library! They’re collecting all scrolls on Judaica; they’re buying up anything Jewish!”

Uri stared blankly.

“They paid three hundred thousand sesterces!” Salutius rhapsodized. “Half of it’s yours!”

Uri took a few deep breaths in the same way as he had seen Philo do.

“Keep it!” he muttered, getting up from his seat and staggering out.

It was possible to get them back; he had to get them back.

He needed to record what had happened; that could not be done without the source materials.

By the time he set off to see Kainis it was no longer money he wanted to ask for, but help in reclaiming his library.

He peered shortsightedly as he walked along the Via Nomentana but there was no way he could miss the massive block of the Praetorian Guard’s barracks. Kainis’s palace had to be nearby.

The palace had a long, tall, whitewashed wall; it must be enormous inside.

Uri would have liked to think that Kainis had arranged for her palace to be built not far from his own cottage with the aim of being close to him, but he could not entertain any such thoughts: Kainis had put herself under the constant supervision of bodyguards.

Uri gave his name, and a guard went inside; Uri waited. The way in which permission to enter had to be asked for was the same as it had been with Narcissus. This time he was not stricken by an urge to defecate: back then he had still been fretting over his family.

After a thorough frisking, three guards escorted him through a vestibule then across an immense, lushly verdant garden in which a brook was babbling and fountains were splashing. A circular pavilion of alabaster stood at the bottom of the garden; the guards came to a halt and one of them indicated the way with a nod of his head. Uri went up the three steps and entered the pavilion.

Kainis got up from a couch and walked toward Uri.

Uri blinked. Kainis had on a short, beautifully pleated white tunic with a maroon silk belt; her hair was now completely silvery. She came to a stop and Uri approached closer to see her better. Her features were wrinkled, her slight, slim body wizened, her legs spindly, but that did not bother Uri: she had carefully made up her eyelids and lips.

She’s titivated herself in my honor, it occurred to Uri, and he smiled.

The deep pools of Kainis’s eyes, even now wonderful to look at, flickered. Just a flash, but Uri noticed.

She wants to conceal her pity for me, he thought.

Uri had hardly any teeth and his mouth had crumpled; he was also now totally bald.

They studied each other at length before a tubby individual darted out and flung his arms around Uri’s neck.

“Gaius! Gaius!” the eunuch Posides exclaimed.

Uri sighed: he might have guessed that he was not going to be spared a head-to-head with Kainis. He patted Posides’s round cheeks.

“You haven’t aged a day!” he said.

“We don’t usually. Now give Kainis a peck! She’s been waiting so long to meet you!”

Uri halted.

Kainis turned to go back into the pavilion, followed by Uri and Posides.

Magnificent statues, paintings, furniture, rugs.

Kainis seated herself on a stool without a back. Posides indicated to Uri to take a seat on a comfortable leather armchair facing her, while he plopped down at his mistress’s feet.

“How are your protégés, the Jewish slaves?” Kainis asked. She had the same marvelously deep voice as she had of old.

“They are happy and proud to be helping build the Colosseum,” Uri replied.

Kainis chuckled. She still liked to do that.

Posides also chortled.

“My firstborn son was also castrated,” Uri tossed an aside to Posides.

“Consider yourself lucky!” he cried out merrily. “At least he’s happy!”

“He lives in Pompeii.”

“Pompeii’s divine!” said Posides. “Ten years ago there was an earthquake in Naples and the amphitheater was slightly damaged, almost burying the emperor, but the astronomers all say that there won’t be another tremor for a hundred years, and it’s true that Vesuvius has hardly been discharging any smoke!”

Uri looked at Kainis. It did not matter that Posides was present.

“It would have been nice to grow old together with you,” he said.

Kainis’s eyelids fluttered again.

“I would not have been a good wife to you, Uri,” she said. “I would never have been able to stand what I could have had to undergo beside you.”

“Certainly you could have,” Uri responded. “A person is able to take a lot. You can regret not having lived with me: I’ve had an interesting life; I learned a lot.”

“I too have had an interesting life,” said Kainis.

Uri was silent. Only now had it registered that Kainis had called him Uri; she had never done that before, it had always been Gaius. Did I mention it to her that I was called Uri at home? Most probably if she had said it.

“She’s still got an interesting life!” Posides exclaimed. “Every morning it is her who gives the password!”

“What password?” Uri asked.

“The guards’ password, of course! They come over in the tunnel and Kainis makes one up on the spot! Sometimes a devil gets into her and she spouts whole lines of poetry, but the dopes can’t remember those!”

“Are you the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, then?” Uri was astounded.

“Nominally Tija is,” said Kainis, “but the poor fellow has picked up so many ailments that in practice I substitute for him…”

“And how is our friend Titus these days?”

“He’s growing old too,” said Kainis, “but he’s still got the old sense of humor… The three of us have loads of laughs — him, Tija, and me.”

“Has his wife died, then?”

“She died fairly early on in Britannia,” Kainis said. “Not being loved can kill, and I can’t deny it, my Titus did not love his wife. After she died he sent me a message that I should hotfoot it to Britannia, but I chose not to. I was deeply offended,” Kainis giggled. “I sent him a message that he should come back here. He wasn’t able to do that for a fair time, what with having adventures with all sorts of British amazons… But then when he was made proconsul for Africa I went with him… I also followed him to Alexandria… You had told me such a lot about it, Uri, that I rather fancied having a look around myself…”

Uri laughed.

“I’ve heard that he healed by a laying on of hands.”

“I was there too! That was something to see!” Posides squealed. “I was standing there on the platform next to the Square Stoa, in the gardens of the Gymnasium, a tremendous crowd around it, Tija was also there on the platform, and the astrologers Barbillus and Seleucus in their ornamental cloaks… ‘Healer! Healer!’ the people were roaring, and he was healing all kinds of maladies: the blind saw again, the maimed started to run, the deaf to hear… With his own hands he draped a cloak over naked, jabbering, babbling lunatics and they instantly began to extol him eloquently… A superb to-do it was! Tija organized it marvelously… He even went so far as sending genuinely sick people up before Titus, not just the pretend-sick. Not knowing that they were genuine, he went through exactly the same hocus pocus for them too — and now listen to this! — he cured several of them as well! Not all, but some for sure! Those he didn’t went on making a fuss, and there was nothing he could do about it! He raged afterward that he would rip out Tija’s guts with his own bare hands, have him broken on the wheel! We just roared with laughter.”