György Spiró - Captivity

Next came two athletes, who likewise proceeded along the wall, this time right by the notables, one balancing on the forehead of the other before clambering up a long pole like a monkey and balancing on one arm. He posed there for minutes on end without anything happening. The bored public, busy chomping, slurping, and gossiping, only cried out when the lower equilibrist knocked the pole off his forehead. The athlete who had been poised on one arm gracefully flew through the air and, after performing two and a half somersaults, managed miraculously to land on his feet in the sawdust, take a step or two, then bow. Applause, ovation. The two athletes scampered off.

Then the dignitaries sitting atop the wall got to their feet, marched to the steps, and began to file down. Only then did the greatest pandemonium so far break out, as they were celebrated as if they had carried out quite exceptional feats of arms. Then they too left, along with their retinues, and headed off in the direction of the stables, with the masses rising to their feet in acclamation.

“Is that it? Is it the interval now? What happened?” Uri inquired uncomprehendingly.

“If you ask me,” Alexandros said in some excitement, “it’s the women’s turn now…”

No one came. They had to wait. The public exulted. But then from over by the starting line ten women shrouded in veils trotted in, raced up the steps, and came to a stop in the middle of the wall.

A gaggle of musicians then ambled in, also from the direction of the starting line, playing percussion and wind instruments. The women started to dance, casting their veils to the ground, strutted around in mantles, cast the mantles off, danced in breast-bands and loincloths, then they discarded their breast-bands, and the public went wild, calling out colorfully, while the swaying women undid their loincloths and discarded those too, leaving them stark naked to perform their provocative dance — at the very end writhing as they lay on their backs. The public erupted. The dance over, the performers gathered their veils, draped them over themselves, and ran down the steps to the left, toward the stables. Applause. The musicians slowly plodded off after them, while servants ran in to gather the other discarded garments. One of the boys got a vigorous round of applause for dangling one of the loincloths before his nose, sniffing theatrically, and then draping it between his legs and making a jerky motion with it as he ran off.

Alexandros fumed.

“They didn’t wrestle,” he said in disappointment — though that was more to himself.

Uri didn’t understand who was supposed to have wrestled: the servants or the women.

An intermission followed. The notables reappeared, mounted the steps in dignified fashion, and resumed their seats. The procession was again accompanied by jubilation, the public being grateful that beforehand, by their absence, they had allowed what would otherwise have been a prohibited item in the program. Uri understood well enough: the local dignitaries could not watch immoral acts like that, only the plebs could do that.

He was discomposed. That was the very first time he had seen living female bosoms — twenty of them at that. True, he had barely seen them; his unflagging goggling had been to little avail, though he had seen enough to spot that they were quite varied, with even the individual units of a pair differing. A female crotch was another matter, but the one he saw had been bleeding, and in his dreams it was encircled by disemboweled guts. He would be having no dreams, good or bad, about these particular bosoms.

Following that, arriving from the direction of the stables and accompanied by several of his retinue, the philosopher stepped up onto the wall from the left. The same one, indeed, whom Uri had seen in Syracusa. Now he wore white stars on a silk mantle of dark blue, with a wreath of laurels adorning his brow. This time the short physician stopped at the foot of the steps and gazed up.

Makedonios shook hands with one of the notables and bowed deeply to one of the ladies sitting there on high before turning to bow to the spectators. He was greeted just like the chariot drivers, athletes, and women. He downed a tumbler of wine before beginning to declaim in a ringing voice that was as clearly audible as it had been in Syracusa.

He told exactly the same two stories as before, changing not a single word.

The soldiers guffawed, taking pleasure at each shoddy twist like little boys, interjecting. He was even more successful than at Syracusa, applauded almost as warmly as the naked women; their earlier triumph had obviously rubbed off on him. The philosopher gratefully made repeated bows, then, joined by his physician and a servant, he took a place at the top of the wall to watch the high point in the program: a final match in which the two earlier winners were pitted against each other. Both started in green, clearly on the principle that a green had to win; the soldiers would have that pleasure, thought Uri, and he was forced to conclude that this was hardly pure chance. Evenly matched, each won a round, leaving the third to decide the competition. The one who came second in the final contest struck his head repeatedly on the ground, threw his arms to the sky, and lashed his horses to get a laugh from the public.

They were just acting, performing a predetermined dance; they too were buffoons. The philosopher was a buffoon, so were the local dignitaries. Who knows, maybe even the chariot spills had been arranged in advance to add an element of suspense. The horse’s legs, it now occurred to Uri, were obviously insured.

Except during the number with the dancing girls, Alexandros kept scouring the auditorium with his gaze, an expression of somber attention on his face. It’s not me he’s spying on, Uri thought, but everyone here.

On the way out, they lost each other, though it was true that they had not agreed to part together. Uri thought for a brief moment before jumping over the ditch between the auditorium and the arena, and addressed the philosopher, who was wheezing his way down the steps from the wall.

He was the only one to approach the philosopher as the crowd thronged around the victorious charioteer to touch his tunic’s ornately edged hem. The competitor’s bodyguards pushed the fans farther back, and there was much gloating when two of them eventually plopped into the ditch, though they too had a laugh.

Uri congratulated him on the two highly amusing stories, and he stammered out the titles of the philosopher’s works with which he was already familiar. The philosopher came to a halt; the physician and a servant holding a fan idled impatiently as these signs of interest on Uri’s part were not to their taste. A faint smile appeared on the philosopher’s face as Uri mentioned the titles.

“I wrote those a long time ago,” he said with a dismissive gesture, and proudly drew himself up. “Nowadays it’s not possible to get acclaim for writing those sorts of works: they’re too good. The signs of decay are dreadful. That is the only word I can use, young friend: dreadful.”

Uri made no reference to the fact that he had heard exactly the same stolen tales before in Syracusa, asking instead where the philosopher’s itinerary would be taking him. The sage told him that he would be traveling northward, with audiences waiting impatiently in Sidon and Damascus, and once there he would organize the rest of the tour. From that Uri took it that he had started off from Alexandria.

“From Sicily I took a boat to Africa,” the philosopher recounted. “I had appearances in Leptis and Cyrene, but Alexandria was not one of the stops… There are too many so-called thinkers there; it’s just impossible to attract an audience. Even a Plato or Aristotle would be whistled off the stage these days; the public has been mollycoddled, and also hardened: the fashion is for their own primitive local favorites.”