György Spiró - Captivity

“That’s how I feel as well,” said Plotius.

Uri’s stomach was gripped by a new round of cramps.

“I also need peace,” he said hoarsely, “to read, because for me nothing else is of interest. I can recite to you the whole of Greek and Latin literature by heart. No one is using me to pass messages to anyone: I swear by Everlasting God who is One that this is the truth.”

After a brief hush, Plotius added, “Amen.”

All of a sudden, Simon the Magus departed for Jerusalem, leaving a letter in which he wished them a continued pleasant stay in his house. He had taken some of the servants with him; the rest were left at their disposal. Presumably he had called in all his demands and was hastening to place the money in the Temple’s treasury.

The companions returned together late that evening. Uri had seen nothing of the kind until then; previously they had reached home individually, albeit not so late. They were not in a happy state of mind.

They took their seats in the garden for supper. Hilarus roundly abused the Jews of Alexandria. A stuck-up, brainless bunch; they had money to burn but did not give a hoot for Jewry.

Matthew and Plotius held their tongues.

“The bastards didn’t even invite us for a meal,” said Alexandros.

It turned out that the companions had been at the Druseion that day with the delegation traveling from Alexandria to Jerusalem, who’d had the money to rent the most expensive suites of rooms in that miraculous edifice but had not offered the companions a thing, parting after some empty courtesies and marching off to the most expensive of the lighthouse’s restaurants, though not without making sure that the Jews from Rome should happen to catch them doing just that.

It must have been humiliating in the extreme.

“They’re delivering a hundred and thirty-three times as much money as us,” said Matthew dryly.

“How much is that?” Uri asked, flabbergasted.

“One hundred talents, near enough,” said Matthew. “Of course, that includes taxes from the whole of Egypt, not just the Jews of Alexandria…”

How in God’s name did they carry such so much money? Uri made a quick count: that must be at least 122 pounds of gold! What were they taking it by? A caravan of camels?

Uri was glad that he had not experienced the arrogance of the rich.

It then occurred to him that he was the only one they had not taken with them. That was not nice of them. So, his companions had conspired against him. Even though he had sworn he was carrying no message from Agrippa to anyone, they did not believe him. Not even Plotius or Matthew — nobody.

It occurred to him that maybe the fact that he was not doing business deals with the locals in itself looked fishy. The way their minds worked, what possible reason could there be other than that he, Agrippa’s spy, was superbly well paid and had no need to get involved in trifling business deals.

Let it be over! Let them reach Jerusalem, hand over the money, get through the festival, and return to Rome as soon as possible.

“Pity the Magus did not speak to the prefect,” said Hilarus once the mudslinging at the Jews of Alexandria had been exhausted. “He’s never going to receive us.”

Iustus endorsed that: it would have been nice to look at the palace. Maybe there would be a chance on the return leg.

“It’s possible to get in,” Alexandros supposed. “It’s possible to clamber up from the sewage system…”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t guard it,” said Plotius grimly. “A good job they do! If they didn’t guard it, I’d have words with them.”

Alexandros laughed scornfully.

Uri took that to mean that Alexandros had inspected the entire sewage system to find out how it would be possible to launch an attack against the more important buildings. This fellow was surely insane.

They sat, sipping their wine, the conversation returning once again to coins and prices in Caesarea. How cheap everything was here in comparison with Rome; a length of linen cost so-and-so much in this shop, so-and-so much in another, though it was not of the same quality; the wine here was more tart; the lamb in the tavern at the harbor was more tender than it was back at the Tiberium.

Long-forgotten tastes were reawakened on Uri’s palate, not so much the flavors of wine and lamb but of the matzo that he had eaten in boyhood, when his father had still considered him a colleague, teaching him about mark-ups on commodities and how to steer clear of forgeries of high-quality goods. These prices were for children; they couldn’t be taken seriously. The only things to be taken seriously were works of art. But it would have been better, perhaps, had his eyes not deteriorated and had he read nothing other than the Holy Scriptures, and he too had been interested in prices.

After prayers and supper they sat in a vine arbor at the highest point of the garden’s steeply sloping ground, from which they could look down on the house itself. The long table was sumptuously laden with all imaginable seafood dishes that could be considered kosher, which is to say many fishes but no crabs, snails, or shellfish. Who, Uri wondered, could have decided that, and when, because there is not a word in the Pentateuch about why fish with external bony skeletons are placed among the calcareous shellfish, and are not kosher, which ones are exceptionally kosher, and what is the difference between the skeletons? What makes a skeleton bony and what makes it a shell? If the Creator had created man in such a way that an external armor held him in place from the outside, with his flesh on the inside, would such a man not be Jewish on principle? Putting himself, in his imagination, in the shoes of the Creator, Uri pictured for himself tortoise-men and snake-men and bird-men, and the soporific conversation that was carried on among his companions about prices did not penetrate his consciousness.

The western horizon over the sea was flushed; the sun had set just a few minutes before. The tops of the larger buildings in the harbor area could be seen between the palms and cypresses, the high towers almost in their entirety. Lights glimmered in the tiny windows of the uppermost levels of the Druseion. There must be people dwelling there, living and making love, right then. That might be the Alexandrian delegation carousing.

Not that we ourselves are not carousing, Uri admitted even-handedly to himself; indeed, those Jews were paying for themselves in the Druseion, whereas we are getting free board and lodging. Perhaps we are getting the better deal.

Then he reminded himself that there was no “we.”

He was excluded from that community. And if he thought over what Matthew had said about the motives of their fellows, everyone — with the possible exception of an alliance between Matthew and Plotius — was out for himself. The delegation was not a community, but why would it need to become one? The community was hateful; its members were keeping watch, spying on each other, accusing each other of infringing on principles that were thought of as common, reporting on those infringements, even condemning each other to death. Uri very much hoped that he would never see a single one of his companions again once their mission was over.

Then it occurred to him that they were, indeed, a community, bearing all the characteristics of such, and it could even be that he, the one whom everyone was spying on, was as a matter of fact was the cohesive glue of this community, the proof of that being precisely the fact that they had not taken him — him alone — with them today to the Druseion. They competed with each other, collaborated, kept an eye on each other, but they had just one common enemy: himself. That would make him the most important member of the delegation, he concluded, and the reason they did not take me with them is because the Alexandrians support Agrippa, on whose behalf they think I am spying.