György Spiró - Captivity

“They’re worth no more than two asses each, and two and a half percent of that is negligible, even if you calculate in quadrans,” Matthew asserted.

“Nevertheless,” said the excise man. “It still comes to five sesterces per head.”

“Then we’ll smash them,” Matthew said stubbornly. “They’re not worth anything anyway. Look, you can see, they’re just rough, clunky objects; we can buy replacements later.”

The customs officer was not concerned in the least.

“Then you can pay tax on the shards,” he said. “And there will be an additional fee of five sesterces per head for clean up.”

With a scowl, Matthew got out the leather pouch from under his cloak and counted the money out into the outstretched hand of the customs chief, who laughed and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Uri once again started ruminating on where they might be keeping the untold amount of cash they were supposedly carrying to Jerusalem for Passover. There was no money anywhere to be seen. Maybe others were carrying it and had arrived a long time ago. Or else there was a sack rolled up around Matthew’s body, under his tunic. He did not understand why Matthew had argued with the excise man, as the customs officials were in the habit of frisking people. It couldn’t be around his back anyway; when they had taken their dip in the sea at Messana he had been wearing nothing but a loincloth.

It occurred to Uri in retrospect that the customs officials in Syracusa had not examined the letter of safe-conduct either. Matthew had been proven right; it did not matter that only six delegates, not seven, were listed.

He was excited and disappointed all at the same time. From the crumbling city wall, this did not seem like the magnificent town that Archimedes had defended with his splendid inventions and where, while doodling in the dust, he had been knifed in the back by an idiot. Where was the spot? he wondered. Had anyone put up a memorial tablet?

The donkeys were returned. The local operator of the donkey-hire business, a Cretan scoundrel, wouldn’t accept the animals, claiming they were in poor condition, but he could be persuaded by a fairly stiff extra payment, which Matthew bargained down by half. Some debate arose among the companions as to why it was necessary to turn in the donkeys, and to make an additional payment when they had already paid once; after all, they could have just left them unclaimed at the harbor — that was the consensus. Matthew, for his part, began to yell at them for the first time on the journey: he had connections with the firm that went back decades, and however crooked they might be, he could not leave the donkeys to their fate, as that would not fetch the price of a nettle patch. If he did that, they would rent anything to him again, and they would give him a bad name in Italia and throughout the East.

The plan was to sail the next day, but two of the departures had been nixed on account of a couple of storms, and there were others who had made it there earlier. Matthew cursed, but there was nothing he could do about it; he had no luck bribing the harbor authority that booked the passengers, for they were quite happy to take his money but were unable to secure a ship. So after going to great lengths, he rented a warehouse for the night.

They slept on the bare ground with rats, mice, fleas, mosquitoes, and other living creatures for company, but at least they had a roof over their heads. They had to leave the store the next morning, because three shiploads were expected from Alexandria. No matter how much Matthew howled at the representatives of the port authority, they were not going to travel that day either, and were obliged to find somewhere to spend another night.

Matthew found a cheap basement, but Valerius, the hyperetes, was unhappy with it and haughtily stalked off, leaving his sack behind in a huff. Consequently Hilarus, the teacher, also declared that he would not spend another night in the shit — he wasn’t just anyone, he was a teacher. He tossed his sack over his shoulder and started off, but Matthew unexpectedly socked him on the jaw, took the sack, and sat down on it. Not sure what else to do, the rest just lingered around the enormous harbor, where life went on as normal and no one took the least notice of them.

“You’re not going to go mutinous on me,” Matthew yelled. “Anyone who mutinies, I’ll kill!”

Hilarus, weeping, wiped his nose and asked, “Why did you let him go? Why did you let him go?”

“Because I’ll lodge a complaint against him back home,” Matthew continued to yell. “And they’ll kick him out of the synagogue so fast his feet won’t touch the ground!”

Uri would have liked to side with Matthew, that resolute and staunch man whom he had admired up until then, even though they had barely spoken. He, the weak kid, would have liked to defend the strong man, only he had no idea what to say or do in this situation, so he too just faltered mutely, at a loss.

Hilarus acquiesced and stayed. They trudged into the cellar, locking the door behind them with a great many chains (the locks and chains were fortuitously lying in a corner, as if waiting for them), and then went off to eat.

On Matthew’s suggestion, everyone took his jug along to fill with wine later. Led by Matthew, who knew perfectly well how to handle an unruly crew and blessed power of a decent meal, they traipsed into a tavern — grubby though it might have been, packed with whores and hideous characters from any number of harbors on the Great Sea, the wine was good — after which they went to the market, bought some fish and drank more wine, before having their jugs filled and heading out to the pier to keep drinking. They got tighter than Uri ever imagined was possible, any more than he expected that one day he would puke in the sea. He did that at Syracusa, however; Iustus, the stonemason, held his forehead. Blessed be Syracusa forever, Amen! Even if there was nowhere for them to bake the fish, so by the morning it stank and had to be thrown away.

They woke up with splitting headaches in that basement, the cellar of a formerly rich man’s burnt-out villa, where a vinegary fluid was leaking from buckled containers, as it probably had been for years, when Valerius returned contritely. His face and neck were covering by angry red scratches and bites. Matthew acknowledged him with a nod and then went off to the harbor to plot a passage for them somehow; they agreed to meet on the pier.

They locked up the basement and went off to the pier, where a tall lighthouse stood; at the top was a small chamber where flares burned constantly, and, according to the locals, inside the tower was a spiral staircase. As they waited, they struck up a conversation with some other idlers, who gradually let on that the reason for the delays was probably more serious than a mere storm: the Greeks were having their way with the Jewish fleet’s gullible new local representative (the previous one had been replaced, maybe because he filched too much). The harbor’s military commander, a centurion, favored the Greeks; the Jews had obviously not greased his palm sufficiently.

The Jews were having some trouble nowadays — that was the general view of the Latini, Greeks, Syrians, Gauls, and Spaniards. When asked why, they answered with incredible stories about a revolt in Caesarea and some sort of uprising in Jerusalem. About how the Jews in Jerusalem had clashed, they said, with a Roman legion and made off with their battle standards, which were now under guard at Temple, in the innermost shrine. And how the Jews had wanted to stone the Roman prefect at a chariot race in Caesarea, and the prefect barely escaped with his life. Syracusa’s Greeks and Latini and Syrians and Arabs and Abyssinians and others regaled them with these and other ridiculous stories.