György Spiró - Captivity

“If that is the price…”

“It’s a pretty steep price!”

“They would have died whether or not we were around.”

“That’s not true.”

Kainis’s face darkened, her wonderful eyes narrowed; she jumped up.

“You weren’t born a slave,” she said shrilly. “You don’t have the faintest idea about people!”

There was a silence. The guards rushed in, at which Kainis angrily dismissed them and they rushed out again.

Uri did not take fright, merely felt a profound sorrow and pity.

“All the same,” he murmured softly, “you would have been better off living with me.”

Kainis held her peace; she was pacing in the hall. Uri watched her: from a distance she still had the figure of a young girl. She had borne no children.

She was a miracle the Eternal One had created to ruin, and sooner than kill.

My everlasting love out of whom grew the master of Rome.

They remained hushed until Posides returned with a wax tablet and stylus.

“It’ll soon be ready,” said Uri, sketching the lift. Underneath linked by a tube there were two cylinders, one open, upon the other a weight with a suction pump connected to the latter (he wrote underneath the word “vacuum”). He also designated the position after the suction, with the weight being lifted.

He handed it to Posides, who took it and gave it to Kainis, who snatched a look.

“You can leave,” she said.

Posides bowed and glided out.

Kainis resumed her place on the stool, sitting with a straight back as before, laying the lovely, long, thin fingers of her hands in her lap, looking at Uri with her fathomless gaze.

“Clever,” said Kainis. “Air is like water; it’s just that one can’t see it… But what blacksmith can produce cylinders as tight as that?”

“I know some good sculptors,” said Uri, “who are able to make high-precision castings.”

They fell silent.

“You’ve grown ugly,” said Kainis. “Your mouth looks terrible like that with all your teeth gone… but your personality is unchanged. I liked your personality a great deal.”

“You were the only love of my life,” said Uri.

“Good,” said Kainis, “that’s how it goes. Maybe in another life.”

“There is no other life.”

“No resurrection?”

“That least of all.”

“I never thought that you’d become a Nazarene at the time you were expelled,” Kainis noted.

So, she had known about it. Uri was thrilled.

“Ordinary Jews are just as vile as anyone else; the Nazarenes are crazy,” he said. “I’m not even a Jew any more.”

“You never were,” said Kainis. “I’m not an empress either; I just sham it. Titus isn’t an emperor; he’s only shamming it. His son Titus is also only shamming it. We do it to stop being bored. The other son, Domitianus, isn’t shamming; he is going to commit wholesale carnage.”

“Your own Titus did that too.”

“That’s true, but he only did what all of them after Tiberius wanted. Vitellius wanted that, so did Caligula, so did Nero… Titus actually did it. Someone would manage it, anyway.”

Uri looked at Kainis’s wrinkled face.

“How much we would have quarreled!” said Uri wistfully. “How we would have yelled at each other! It would have been superb!”

Kainis laughed.

“So what is going to happen to my library?” Uri asked.

Kainis grew solemn.

“Our man is writing his work, taking from the source materials whatever he needs, then he burns them. After all, he’s a historian.”

Uri nodded: that was indeed the way history was usually written.

“What did you want to write about?” Kainis asked.

“Something about the Nazarenes.”

Kainis nodded.

“It’s a simple religion,” she said. “It will win through.”

Uri was astounded.

“You know about it too?”

“If you know,” Kainis said heatedly, “why wouldn’t I? Anything that calls for insight we know just the same. I’m in the habit of conversing with you in my imagination… You give such fine answers… joking, teasing…”

She left off.

Tears welled up in Uri’s eyes, and he turned away.

“It’s a dangerous religion,” he said. “It’s going to cause hideous problems.”

“Yes,” said Kainis. “It’s a brilliant idea that there should be someone, a human, who was resurrected and it’s necessary to wait until he comes back again. It’s also a good touch for it to be immaterial who’s a Jew and who isn’t — anyone can be chosen, the only thing which has to be accepted is the resurrection… You don’t need to be able to do anything, neither read nor write, nor does one have to stick to any prescriptions, and anyone can become a priest, everybody is sacred who believes in the Resurrected One, and by doing so one they will gain everlasting life! There aren’t even any ceremonies! They eat, praise his name, they are together, and that’s the solution to loneliness, to immortality… There is no religion more simple-minded than that on the market! Unholy strife will come of this within the Jewish world; that’s going to be the real war of the Jews, and a madness will be set loose out of Judaism, a madness of the losers, and it is going to prevail, because the losers are in the majority… If only Spartacus had a religion like that! The only trouble they will have is that he’s not going to come again, he doesn’t want to, and they are impatient — that is what will sow disorder among them…”

“They’ll find a solution,” Uri considered. “They will find a solution for everything as long as the faith remains. From now on they’ll lie about everything.”

“They lied up till now.”

“But not as eagerly as this.”

They fell silent.

“But if you knew all that… What was the point of demolishing the Temple? Why bring so many prisoners here to Rome?”

Kainis sighed.

“Titus — the son of my Titus, that is — held a war council when Jerusalem was already in their hands as to what should become of the Temple. Tija argued against destroying it, the others were for… Young Titus supposed that as long as the Temple was standing the Jews wouldn’t be able to rest, whether they remained faithful to their old prophets or became followers of this Messiah. Tija said that if there was no ritual center for the religion any more, it would not mean the end of it, as new centers would spring up wherever Jews live.”

“Tija, the scoundrel, will be proved right,” Uri concluded after some reflection.

“That’s my view as well,” said Kainis. “Tija also disagreed with bringing the Jewish captives to Rome… He said that Rome may have won the war but the Jews will win the peace. He concluded that on this occasion they ought to have gone about it the other way around: Rome’s Jews ought to have been repatriated to Judaea, rather than bringing Judea’s Jews over here, because in thirty years time half of Rome’s plebs will be Jewish, and half of them in turn will be Nazarene.”

“So why did that not happen?” Uri asked, his flesh creeping.

Kainis gave a peel of laughter.

“Because it would have been expensive! It was cheaper to demolish the Temple… To say nothing of a matter of vanity, as usual… My Titus would only have brought a few Jewish captives over but his son was all for a triumphal procession of an immensity such as had never been seen before with as many prisoners as possible… My Titus in the end went along with it because he is fonder of young Titus than he is of his second son. Domitianus was almost eaten up with envy to see that his brother was granted a triumphal procession as big as that because it’s one that people will remember for years to come. I warned my Titus, so it did not just come from Tija, that the Jews would be the cause of a lot of trouble in Rome, but he just waved it off airily: that was not something we would live to see, let those who are alive worry about them…”