György Spiró - Captivity

Salutius grubbed together slightly more than 3,000 sesterces; that was all he had at home of the 150,000. Uri counted it and had Salutius sign an acknowledgment of receipt.

“What did you invest it in?” he asked.

Salutius swallowed hard.

“Don’t be shy! I won’t bite your head off.”

Salutius still wavered, looking over Uri’s shoulder. Uri smiled encouragingly.

“They’re collecting for a Third Temple,” he whispered.

“Who are they — the lunatics?”

“Well, it’s Iustus and the elders. Your son dropped in personally to ask me for a donation…”

“And what if someone refuses to give?”

“People give — even those who have difficulty shelling out the Jewish tax. They take out a loan, and at a very low interest rate, I have to say.”

“Just who’s behind the money that’s being loaned, my dear son?”

Salutius did not know.

Uri snorted a laugh:

“So when is this Temple of theirs going to be built, dear son, and where exactly?”

“The promise is that if it hasn’t been built up in Jerusalem five years from now, the money will be returned with interest… They don’t take kindly at all if anyone refuses.”

Uri sighed even as he snorted:

“But every last penny of our money, dear son? A small amount would have done the trick!”

Salutius said nothing before beginning to yammer out that although the Eternal One had singled Rome out to punish the Jews for their sins, He would not abandon His people providing the people gave proof of their fidelity, and it happened that precisely in these fraught times a new alliance, more complete and deeper than ever before, was being struck between God and His people.

Uri shook his head and like a bird looked sideways at Salutius’s features, tortured as they were by heartburn and a bum heartbeat, and gave a nod.

“I’ll send around for my money in five years’ time,” he said and went off.

He wanted to find a servant.

Homer had also been blind; he dictated his Iliad to a servant, so tradition had it.

It is not true that one can’t live with blindness.

If one couldn’t, there was always the scalpel.

It was better to sleep because in his dreams he could see.

He knew he was awake by the fact that he couldn’t see. In the early days he could still make out a few patches and rejoiced that he could still see light, but after a while there was not even that.

He felt around for his hiding-places: the tiles were in place and not wobbling. Under one of them was the scalpel.

His daughters took turns visiting the Via Sacra, bringing him his meals and water and taking away the dirty things; they spent a little time with their father but they had nothing to talk about as Uri had no interest in how his grandchildren were progressing and mixed up their names.

He asked them to round him up a servant who was knew how to write, and they promised earnestly to try, but did not manage to find one.

He ought to have found one for himself earlier. Uri asked for a dog. Stray dogs, outcasts, roamed around in packs in Rome and would attach themselves to any living soul, but Uri’s daughters did not get him a dog, implying that they were scared to.

Uri sat by an open window, which faced southward, with the sunlight warming his face and imagined he could see the light. He imagined that he had the dog that had been on the ship: if he tried hard to imagine a thing, it was as if he were seeing it.

He made up stories about the dog: that it had been with him in Beth Zechariah, and with him in Alexandria, playing with him in the Gymnasium garden; he imagined the fuss the dog would kick up in the alabarch’s palace; he imagined making a present of it to Kainis, the young Kainis in Claudius’s house, and how sometimes the dog would run away to return to him in the Via Sacra and describe in a human voice the reign of the Flavian dynasty. It was a smart dog: Kainis’s intelligence and wit had rubbed off.

Uri would snicker to himself and bless the Eternal One for bestowing man with imagination when He created him.

He made up stories for himself, or dreamed them, and he laughed.

As he chewed with his toothless gums the dry flatbread that his daughters brought him he imagined he was eating barbel in Alexandria, and he could sense its aroma in his nose.

The Eternal One, may He be blessed, had also bestowed memory on man.

If a person lived long enough, his dead acquaintances cavorted like fish in silt and there was no knowing which of them might rise to the surface at any one time — maybe that was what was meant by the spirit world. Master Jehuda emerged, grumbled and laughed; appearing separately was the young, black-haired girl, and because she had been invoked by Uri she became his wife, and she lived out with him the rest of his days, and Uri sired a brood of children who miraculously were untouched by war and were even now living nicely in their village, all of them prosperous farmers. Uri also married Sotades’s younger sister, the devastatingly pretty Greek girl, slim, blue-eyed, and with the long blonde hair, and lived happily with her in Alexandria.

Theo was a frequent visitor, the trouble being that he was ruled over by a eunuch; Uri would admonish, plead, order him to be released from the eunuch’s power, to work and get himself manumitted, and Theo, a blue-eyed, slender, handsome adolescent would pledge to do everything he could: “Don’t worry about me, father!” Theo would say and chuckle.

There were many visitors, muttering and moving around the room, sampling the food on his plate, tucking him in if he fell asleep. Uri would send his little sister away to Naples: the climate was better there and she would not cough, and he gave her a lot of money to take with her. Joseph also visited, listening with amazement to Uri’s tales about Jerusalem and Alexandria, and was reassured that it was not as bad as all that in Rome either for that matter.

Sometimes Uri would have revenge: he would jab a thorn into Agrippa’s neck, trip Tija as he was running, or give the alabarch a cheeky riposte. “No need for that, dear son,” Philo would yammer. Uri had no idea that he was not sleeping on such occasions because in his dreams he was incapable of taking vengeance, and he could not control his dreams, but he was glad of them, even though they were oppressive, because at least he could see.

His daughters also paid visits, bringing him food, and Uri would tear them off a strip for not getting married, to which they would either laugh or lie that they were already married. Uri’s daughters also brought along children, maintaining that they were his grandchildren, and the children would blubber out something. The women would tell them to stroke their grandfather’s cheek, while Uri would try to nibble at their tiny hands, would bark and curse them, as a result of which they did not come again. It was cold, and Uri was freezing and demanded that they put Tadeus’s liberty cap on his head, but the evil-minded people just would not understand him so Uri pulled his tunic over his head, which the women pulled off, leaving Uri to bellow that he had to have the liberty cap on him at all times! But they refused to understand and wouldn’t hear a word about Tadeus. It was appalling to be at the whim of women like that.

Nor would the women read back to him what he had dictated to the servant. Though there were times when a light went on in his head and he was able to compose marvelous passages, by the next day he would have forgotten what these were and he needed to have it reread so that he could pick up where he had left off, but the women couldn’t read however much he yelled, and the servant would just hide away.

Joseph often visited and talked about business matters with Uri. He had changed his voice and his odor, and occasionally he said he was a physician, but Uri still recognized him. Joseph wanted to open a vein to bleed him but Uri was not prepared to allow this; he was held down but managed to free himself because every day he undertook many hours of physical exercise that could also be done blind — they had not anticipated that and so gave up.