György Spiró - Captivity

“So was his mother Romulus?” Uri quipped back good-naturedly, now that he could speak in his family’s secret tongue.

The sailor didn’t get it, however, and he shook his head and vanished.

Uri clucked at the dog and called out its name, whereupon the dog wagged its tail even more enthusiastically, padded over toward Uri, and looked at him even more expectantly. Uri slowly opened the hand that had been licked and stroked him. The dog allowed him, indeed pushed his muzzle vigorously under Uri’s hand so that he would go on stroking him; not being able to do so himself because of his short legs.

Until the time for prayers came around again, Uri stroked the sleeping dog nestled in his lap.

Remus was not the only dog on board; there were eight or nine of them, the precise number varying depending on which sailor was asked. They were used to hunt any rats and mice that pillaged the freight. All were short-bodied, long-nosed dogs that could wriggle through gaps — the smaller the dog, the better. In fact, they were hunting dogs, specially bred by the Romans and very useful, because they did not have to be fed, only allowed to work and be given water now and then.

Wherever Uri went, Remus was sure to follow. He formed the view that the dog knew him better than his human companions, recognizing that he was a reliable and affectionate person. Or did loneliness have its own aura? Was that what the dog smelled?

Countless leather bottles of water, along with dried figs, salted raw fish, smoked fish, and dried fish had been stocked for the crew and passengers, along with several hundred pounds of unleavened bread, baked in thicker portions than matzos generally were. Uri grew tired of the monotonous diet by the first evening; they were taking water to sea, taking fish to sea. It seemed the Creation had not been devised to absolute perfection.

With a favorable northwesterly wind to fill the sails, they forged eastward and later northeastward. The captain said that in the spring it was always better going from Syracusa to Caesarea than the reverse. The slaves, who rowed on the lower level of the bireme, the upper level left empty, were being given a break. Uri looked down on them. They were lying, chained to each other, naked in the gloom of the ship’s belly. Light and air they got from above, from where they could be reached by clambering down a ladder, except that the ladder was pulled up right then. It was only let down when the armed slave drivers took victuals down to them, with the ladders being pulled up after them once they’d scrambled up with the vessels of excrement. One of the slave drivers was always down there with them to control the rhythm of the rowing; he was now resting alongside them — that being his occupation right then. Slave drivers were relieved, not so the slaves.

The long oars had been drawn in. There were something like forty down below. One of the drivers noticed that Uri was looking at the slaves with interest and straightaway began explaining to him in Greek that the oars that were located on the upper bank were much longer, and there were twenty of them.

“We rarely use them,” he said, “because it’s harder to row with them. They’re saved for big storms, and then they are not to move the ship forward but to stabilize it. That is when the best oarsmen are directed to the upper level.”

He was a bald-pated, muscular man, who was beginning to get paunchier from leading a comfortable life. Uri found the heavy jowls and chops, the sycophantic currying of favor, distasteful, but he was grateful that here was someone from whom he could gain information.

“How does one become a slave driver?” he asked.

The man was surprised.

“You need merit and a dose of luck,” he said.

“Could a more profitable, less dangerous occupation not be an option?”

The driver was astonished at first, but then he had a moment of realization and broke into a broad grin.

“I’m happy to be a slave driver, sir. Before that I worked in the galley down below for eight years.”

Uri looked at the reclining bodies below.

The slave driver was also a slave, only he had been promoted to leader.

The driver stood humbly waiting for any further questions, bending forward intently to catch even Uri’s sighs.

“Are they lashed?” Uri queried, indicating them below with a nod.

“Yes,” said the driver. “The language of the scourge is all they understand.”

“Were you beaten?”

“And how! It was the only language I understood.”

“And did you hate the people who beat you?”

“You bet! And they hate me now that I have become a slave driver. But while I was a galley slave I paid no thought to the possibility that those who were my slave drivers hated me. Now I know they did, because I also hate them. That’s how it has to be, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to lash them.”

Uri turned away and looked out to sea with narrowed eyes. It was a steely blue with white flecks. Somewhere far off glistened the green-brownish colors of a line blurring the horizon, like a mosaic studded with granules — that might be dry land. They were not yet far from the shore.

“We hug closely to the coast of Italia to start with,” said the driver politely, “then we cut across and sail by the Dalmatian coast to the Greek islands until we touch Crete, after which we sail on farther to the Syrian coast, where we veer left. If we get a favorable wind we won’t stop till we get to Crete. Three weeks for the whole voyage, if not less.”

Uri looked at the driver’s ear — or rather the piercing in it, which had closed. I should have spotted it earlier, he thought.

The slave driver’s presence was onerous but at the same time disturbing.

“Were you born a slave?” he asked.

“No, not at all, sir,” the driver protested. “We Jews, don’t you know, are not born slaves.”

Uri, shamefaced, stayed silent. He had no idea how things were in Judaea.

“I had a family, even had work,” the slave driver said. “I was a carpenter, but the devil got into me, and I killed my wife and her mother; I smashed their brains in with a hatchet. I also wanted to kill my children, the devil had such a hold on me, but I was wrestled to the ground. The court sentenced me to servitude for life. Though they would have been entitled to have me stoned to death. I’m grateful to the court, sir, because they spared my life, though of course I have the added punishment that until the end of my days I shall grieve my unhappy little ones, six of them altogether, who are left to fend for themselves in the world without mother and father…”

Uri was nauseated to hear the slave driver’s willing confession, though he had no idea quite why. Maybe the tone in which the man had told the tale was somehow disgusting.

“When you became a slave did it not enter your mind to kill yourself?”

The driver was brought up short, surprised by the question.

“No, sir,” he said after a pause. “It never entered my mind. I was possessed by the devil. He did what I did, not me. I can’t help it, sir. It was the demon that they punished, not me. The demon has left me since then, I have the feeling, but I am being punished because I let him take hold of me… That’s my crime, sir: I was not watching out for the devil, and allowed him into my soul.”

Uri looked at the slave driver’s troubled eye. He was looking into the distance past Uri’s unpierced ears.

“You know that you will never be able to be free,” said Uri. “Is it worth living in slavery?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said the driver, his voice recovered. “A person doesn’t think; he lives.”

“Something must keep you going, all the same,” Uri insisted.

“That could be, sir. Indeed, it very likely does. But as far as killing myself is concerned, there wouldn’t have been the means to do so. But then again, it didn’t even enter my head. When the slave drivers started to lash, and they started at once so that I’d know my place, all that I had in my mind was that one day I would be a slave driver. I would be a slave driver and repay with interest. Not to them, that’s not possible, but to the oarsmen. And I pay it back now. Yes, sir, that’s how it was. And that’s how it has turned out, sir.”