György Spiró - Captivity

“I’m not giving you that!” Jehuda declared firmly. “That’s where my workshop is! I’ll show you, you misfit! I don’t show this to just anyone, so consider yourself honored!”

Jehuda stormed ahead, Uri following.

In the barn stood a group of uncompleted tables and chairs with pleated straw seats, around a crude workbench on which lay iron and bronze tools and nails. The floor had wood shavings tamped down into it. Leaning against one wall were adzes and planks.

“Splendid, aren’t they?” Jehuda asked Uri.

Uri mumbled something.

“Masters like me,” Jehuda said with evident satisfaction, “don’t make a living from explaining the law; we have honest occupations that pay their way, and anyone who does not have an honest occupation is in no position to explain the law! We’re not priests! How is it in Edom?”

Uri did not know how matters stood in Edom of yore.

“Who explained the law to your people?” asked Jehuda.

“Where?” Uri asked.

“Back in Rome, you half-wit!”

“In Rome we have teachers to explain it,” said Uri.

“Teachers!” roared Jehuda scornfully. “Teachers indeed!”

Jehuda stalked out of the barn, Uri in his wake. They stopped in the yard. Jehuda turned to face Uri and gave him a once-over. Dissatisfied with the sight, he shook his head. He sniffed the air.

“You stink!” he declared.

Uri lifted his arms and smelled.

“Maybe,” he said.

“There’ll be times when you stink much worse,” said Jehuda, satisfied now. “Stink as bad as my slaves, I’ll have you working that hard! Have no fear!”

Uri just stood there, his stomach rumbling, and cursed Judaea, Jerusalem, and all of Palestine to Hell and high water, blessed be the Eternal One.

Jehuda set off back to the house. Uri trailed after him, but Jehuda turned around, a vicious smirk on his face.

“Yours is the henhouse!” he declared roundly. “But if any harm comes to one of my hens, I’ll flay you alive!”

At that he stormed into the house, leaving Uri in the yard.

Not the most cordial of welcomes.

It grew dark, and finally there was a cooler breeze. The chickens pecked. Uri contemplated the coop. If he had Remus, the dog from the ship, with him, he would be able to offer him a marvelous supper.

He crawled into the coop on all fours. The chicks inside did not know what to make of him but just gazed fixedly; they had not learned that man was to be feared. Uri began to bark, and the chickens finally made a panic-stricken escape outside. When Uri settled himself on his belly and stretched out, his legs stuck out, but it was better to lie on his front, pressing his stomach, which was grumbling for food.

The devil take it all.

He woke up freezing cold and famished. In prison at least he had been given something to eat; it was not always better to be free as a bird.

It was still dark, with a big stillness all around except for some animals whining in the distance. They were screeching and yelping at regular intervals, one after the other, and then falling silent. Might they be jackals?

Uri backed out of the henhouse still on his stomach, sat up, and looked at the night sky. He saw multiple shiny sparkles above him: the stars.

Where there are hens, there must also be eggs, he thought.

Flat on his belly, he wriggled back into the coop and felt around. Finally, he found a nest with three eggs in it.

Jehuda had said nothing about eggs, only his chickens. An egg was not a hen.

He picked up one of the eggs, the one on his right, picked out two small holes in the shell with a canine, one on top and one on the bottom, the way his father had instructed him, then sucked out and swallowed the contents raw. Magnificent food! He then polished off the other two eggs similarly.

His stomach and his whole being could now be at ease. I had better make good use of this until I feel hungry again. He ordered himself to fall asleep.

On Wednesday morning Jehuda ben Mordecai pulled him out of the henhouse by the ankles.

It was only outside that Uri woke up, and then only partly. Daylight, he confirmed, and at that rolled onto his side, curled up, and tried to fall asleep again.

Master Jehuda knelt and poked his head into the henhouse. By now Uri was paying attention. Jehuda was squirming his massive shoulders, powerful back, and substantial backside rather like a boa that has just swallowed an elephant. He backed out again and sat up.

“Where are the eggs?” he asked severely.

“I ate them,” said Uri with some pride.

Jehuda’s face went purple.

“You pay for those,” he demanded.

“I’ll pay,” said Uri flippantly.

“The price is four prutahs a piece,” yelled Jehuda.

“That’s four leptons,” said Uri with a knowing air.

Jehuda stared in astonishment.

“Let’s see the money, then,” he muttered.

“I have nothing,” admitted Uri. “I can’t pay.”

Jehuda was flabbergasted. There was a hush.

“You have no money?” he asked in a slightly lowered voice.

“None,” said Uri. “I’ve had not a coin since I set off on this journey.”

The master digested this answer. He looked Uri up and down as he sat there in the chicken droppings.

Master Jehuda then got up, dusted himself down, and stood over Uri, who was still seated. He thought further, and Uri also scrambled to his feet. Jehuda posed the question again softly.

“You don’t have any money?”

“None,” Uri confirmed. “I have my entire fortune on me as I stand here.”

Master Jehuda pondered hard and long. Uri could not discern what his host might be deliberating.

“The quarters you can have free,” Master Jehuda declared eventually, indicating the coop with a nod of the head. “But there’ll be no food.”

“Fair enough,” said Uri.

“You can take from the pe’ah and the water barrel,” said Jehuda, “but leave it at that. You’ll get nothing from me!”

Jehuda nodded with great conviction at his own words, as if he were sanctioning a law, before starting off.

Uri piped up after him.

“What’s the pe’ah?”

Jehuda came to a standstill, turned around, and shook his head as if he were trying to get rid of a sudden deafness.

“You don’t know what the pe’ah is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Uri.

Master Jehuda again gave some thought.

“Feel free to take the gleanings, whatever there is,” he said finally, as if he were pronouncing a particularly weighty judgment, then went into his house.

Gleanings, gleanings — that sounded vaguely familiar, but what were they?

Gleanings… gleanings!

All at once a scroll sprang into Uri’s mind’s eye, and there was the word, near the beginning of the Book of Ruth.

In Bethlehem, Ruth, the widowed Moabite who had converted to Judaism, together with her mother-in-law, Naomi, also a widow, gathered among sheaves on the field after the reapers, and she roasted half an ephah of barley. In that way Ruth did not starve to death, and she became the wife of Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi’s who had let Ruth glean in his field. And Ruth bore him a son, who was nursed by Naomi, and they called him by the name Obed, who was later the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. So Ruth was the great-grandmother of David, greatest of the kings of the Jews.

The word in Rome was that in Palestine they were awaiting the coming of a Messiah from the house of David.

Uri looked about him. Various mysterious-looking wooden implements were lying around the yard — no doubt tools for gardening. Not far from the house stood two circular brass cisterns. Uri took a handful of water and washed his face, then drank. It crossed his mind that there would come a time when he would have to pay even for that. As noon was approaching, he said the morning prayer. If one had no phylactery and on it the little box holding the law, it was permissible as a last resort to recite it from memory, but one had to take care not to add or omit any words. Uri was now saying the prayer for the umpteenth time from memory; he was well used to it by now, though he had never done it in Rome.