György Spiró - Captivity

But then the sea — that was a big deal.

He saw it for the very first time when they arrived in Rhegium to take the boat to Messana across the narrow straits that Homer referred to as Scylla and Charybdis.

It was not the actual sea, because Sicily appeared as a nearby massif off in the distance, the sea really just a large lake, but all the same it was a mighty stretch of water. As they waited for the boat, Uri paddled in the shallow and, despite the winter, still fairly warm water, gawking at the wriggling fish as he bent over its surface. His companions also took a dip; they said the midday prayers and got out quickly, dried themselves on their cloaks, and dressed. Uri stayed; he felt a yearning to set out on the sea and to merge into this mighty stretch of water, to be carried off, but he controlled himself, and anyway he could not swim, as was the case with virtually everyone in those days; so he just gazed in wonder at the miraculous fish and the luxuriant aquatic plants in the completely transparent water and hummed to himself. He was undisturbed that his companions on dry land might laugh at him; he was not out to earn their favor. He did not presume that they liked him, but they had gotten used to his presence, and he did not irritate them. He had lost weight through the rigors of traveling, his body becoming leaner and stringier, the untimely rolls of fat dropping from his hips and belly; it had been days since an acrid sourness had oozed up from his stomach, even the slight irritation in his throat had stopped. A thick layer of skin had formed on the soles of his feet, and his ankles, which had hurt him since he was a small child, were inured to the suffering and did not ache anymore.

As they alighted from the ferry onto the shore they met two Jews who were headed from Sicily to the Italian mainland. Seeing they were also Jewish, they greeted them and demanded with eyes burning that they should repent immediately. They spoke brusquely, holding forth on the now-imminent end of time, which had already begun in Caesarea, and that the Lord’s wishes were now evident to one and all: He wanted the end…

But what had happened in Caesarea anyway?

Talking over one another, they explained that the prefect of Caesarea had apparently tried to smuggle some sort of military insignia into Jerusalem at night. He smuggled them into the palace on gilded shields, whereupon the people of Caesarea demonstrated for six days in front of the palace and then occupied the stadium. The prefect had sent in soldiers, who threw themselves to the ground with their arms outstretched and pleaded for death because they could not stand to see such lawlessness, so the prefect got scared, dismissed them, and removed the shields from Jerusalem.

“That’s the beginning! Strew ashes on your heads!” one of them cried out before they leapt onto the ferry.

It was amusing to watch these bulky, uniformly bearded and bald-headed men stir their short stumps. There was no reason to rush; they had only just started offloading the ferry, so it would take a good hour or two before the boat set back off. But those two wanted to be on board as early as possible; they were in a hurry.

The travelers watched them blankly. They could not take the return trip just to hear more about the details; they would have had to pay again for boarding the boat.

Matthew guffawed.

“Stark raving mad!” he said.

His companions joined in laughing.

Alexandros had heard that in Judaea, and especially in Galilee, many people these days were awaiting the Last Judgment; false prophets were claiming, with those exact same piercing eyes, that the Messiah was due any day now; their followers were wandering around the two provinces offering purification before the imminent Last Judgment, anointing people with oil or dunking them in water or fasting for weeks in penitence.

“Instead of doing something,” he added disparagingly.

“Harmless blockheads,” was Matthew’s comment. “There was a prophet in Galilee once who made rain during a drought and brought about cures by setting his hands on people. He was stoned in Jerusalem for his troubles, just after Passover, but it was before I was born and the rains didn’t come after all.”

“That must have been Honi,” said Plotius. “He would draw a circle around himself at times of drought and would not step outside it until it rained. He fasted inside the circle, the others outside it, and they would encourage each other… I once met his grandson, he was also named Honi; people thought he was also a miracle worker, and with every drought they would hound him to step inside a circle too, but he did not want to stand in a circle; he was not a sorcerer, he would snarl and hide in the outhouse, and he would not come out for days on end…”

They laughed.

“I have heard exactly the same about a man by the name of Onias,” Alexandros said.

“That’s the one,” Matthew clarified. “In Greek it’s Onias; in Aramaic, Honi.”

They chartered seven donkeys in the harbor after paying one sestertius per head in municipal duties.

It was no easy matter to bargain with the excise men, because apart from the capital tax they demanded two and a half percent of the value of the luggage. It was useless to say they had nothing of value; not only did they make them unpack the sacks, they also searched their persons. The excise men even examined the tefillin. The tax collectors also examined the cheap and crude clay water jugs, unwilling to believe that this was all they had. When they saw that there really was nothing else, they demanded a further three sesterces per head, but it was impossible to know why. Matthew haggled that down to one sestertius each, and then they could set off.

Matthew laughed: the excise men had not noticed that only six names were on the safe-conduct, and he winked at Uri. Uri did not wink back; he was still unhappy about his name not being on the safe-conduct.

They saw nothing of Messana, that charming little town.

This particular mode of transport was even less comfortable than walking, Uri soon found; his delicate behind was not made for an ass’s lumpy back. They rode the donkeys in single file, and as they tried to keep their feet off the ground and steer clear of roadside trees and rocks, they swapped theories about the inhabitants of Judaea and Galilee.

Uri figured that Matthew the boatman, Plotius the joiner, and Alexandros the merchant were all somewhat conversant in Judaean affairs, and the rest as clueless as himself. Apart from vague family myths, he had no idea what life was like and what people believed in Judaea and Galilee.

Alexandros knew the name of the present prefect; he was called Pilatus. He had held the office for nine years, and in those years had quarreled with the Jew just once, when he tried to build a new aqueduct in Jerusalem and had asked for money from the Temple’s treasury. The new aqueduct was not built because most of the community had protested, and the high priest did not dare defy them.

“They held demonstrations on the Temple Square,” Alexandros confirmed. “The soldiers allegedly attacked the crowd and slaughtered many protesters, but I have not met anyone who was there that evening. It’s not customary to slaughter in the Temple Square,” he went on. “There is not enough room for a crowd anyway — not near the tabernacle, in any case. I’ve never managed; it’s guarded dearly.”

“It’s been guarded so tightly,” chipped in Valerius, assistant to the archisynagogos, “ever since the Samaritans scattered human ashes around to desecrate the altar.”

“When was that?” Uri inquired.

“A long time back,” Valerius replied.

“Ten years before the Jews were driven out of Rome,” said Matthew. “There was a huge outcry; it was hard to keep some people from overrunning Samaria.”