György Spiró - Captivity

The day it happened, though, Uri carried on sieving, but at noon, when they were chomping on their lunch (all of the more elderly ones doing so toothlessly), it was she who said to Uri, “There’s no point in your riddling with us, Theo. We’ll do your work; you’d do better keeping us amused.”

“Fair enough,” said Uri, “but what should I do?”

“Tell us stories,” the woman said.

“What stories should I tell? Nothing interesting has ever happened to me.”

“Not stories about yourself but about the big wide world, and the afterlife.”

Uri pondered. He could find things to say about the world, but the afterlife was another matter!

“In our country, in Edom,” he said, “people don’t concern themselves much with the afterlife… They know nothing about it.”

“Others do, however,” said the lady. “We have scrolls, only we can’t read them. Men occasionally try to make them out, but they don’t have the time; they are tired out by the evening when they might be able to read. They’d rather curl up and snore. People say you can read. Read out the scrolls to us, and we’ll work in the meantime.”

“Is that permitted, then?” Uri inquired.

Several voices clamored loudly that it was not forbidden, so it was allowed. They would perform Uri’s work; the supervisor could hardly object.

That was a bargain Uri was happy to enter. He would never have thought that scrolls existed in a godforsaken village such as this. What could they be?

That day he went on riddling, but the next morning one of the women thrust a thick scroll into his hands. Years ago, it had been left in the village by a wandering prophet, whom Master Jehuda had driven away in a great hurry, because he was proclaiming exactly what Master Jehuda did when inspired. The woman said that there had once been a time when her husband had tried reading out short passages to her, but he had gotten bored with that: reading did not come easily to him, and it had been impossible to persuade him to carry on. Yet the scroll concerned the one thing that was of paramount concern to people: what happens to us after we die.

The scroll must have passed through many hands, as the edges of the parchment were frayed. Uri carefully blew the dust off his sieve, and placed the scroll in that.

“I’d like to wash my hands,” he said. “I don’t want to smudge it.”

Two women jumped up and brought Uri pitchers of drinking water to pour onto Uri’s hands. That was significant, drinking water being in such short supply, but the women’s thirst for knowledge was greater than their bodily thirst. Uri asked them to take great care in pouring it out: slowly and just a little. That was how he rinsed his hands.

His tunic was mucky, and he could not dry his hands on it, so he dangled them and let them dry like that. When they were dry, he carefully took the scroll out of the sieve.

He sat down on the ground, blown-clean sieve in lap, scroll in hand. It was not as hefty as a Torah but it was as bulky as some of Ovid’s shorter works. It was not rolled onto a stick, just around itself. He threaded his left fist into the empty center of the roll and with his right hand he cautiously, delicately pulled the sheet to the right, only just enough so that he would be able to read the two columns in which the copyists had transcribed the first page. He looked at the text: it was upside down and in Greek. He rewound it and now poked his right fist into the scroll’s central gap and pulled it out with his left hand, then just when the scroll was about to roll itself onto his left arm, he grasped it at the bottom, between the left index finger and thumb, and pulled it gingerly, gently, leaving it to rewind on the left side of its own accord.

To begin he read slowly, hesitantly, having to get accustomed to the lettering, the omissions, and the language, which, though it was Greek, was an old Greek, with Hebrew words cropping up every now and then. The author of the Greek text must have translated it from the Hebrew, and any words that he did not know he had left in his mother tongue. He had become accustomed to this by the time he had reached the fourth or fifth page; anything he could not decipher he eked out from his imagination. If the ensuing sentences contradicted his guesswork, he went back and reread it and retranslated it to Aramaic as best he could. The riddling women did not make any reproving remarks on his jumping back in the text or his corrections; they were glad the reading helped them forget their physically punishing and soul-destroying work.

Uri was holding the Book of Enoch, he ascertained from the very first sentence.

He had heard of the existence of such a scroll, but not one person in Rome had a copy of it, or if they did, they were not admitting it, and it was the sort of work that the City’s public librarians never collected.

These are the words of the blessing of Enoch, wherewith he blessed the Elect and righteous, who will be living in the Day of Tribulation, when all the wicked and godless are to be removed…

Enoch begat Methuselah and lived 365 years, no less, as it states in the fifth chapter of Genesis. His father was Jared, who had lived 162 years before he begot Enoch. Like Elijah, Enoch was transported to Heaven in a chariot of fire. He may not even have died and was assumed to Heaven by the Lord in such a manner anyone witnessing it would have died. According to the Torah, his son Methuselah lived 187 years. He was Noah’s grandfather. The passage in question being found very near the beginning of the First Book of Moses, it is read out in every single Jewish prayer house on the first Sabbath of every year, not long after one year’s reading of the Torah is completed and an immediate ceremonial beginning is made to reading it out again.

Uri was helped in the translation by the fact that the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Torah made in Alexandria, was also in use in Rome; there it was not necessary to translate the Torah into the vernacular because everyone was familiar with the Greek Torah, and there was only the odd household that kept a Hebrew Torah. On the other hand, the Ten Commandments on the parchment scroll in the mezuzah affixed to the doorpost of every house, as well as in the tiny scroll in the little leather box of every tefillin, were always written in Hebrew.

It occurred to Uri that he had never given any thought before as to what it must be like to live to 365—as many years as there were days in a year by the Roman calendar. Other Jews cannot have found much to get hung up on with that number: that was what was stated in the Torah, and even if it was a fairy tale, it was a true one and there was no need to give it further thought.

The Holy Great One will come forth from His dwelling, and the Everlasting Lord will tread upon the earth, even on Mount Sinai, and appear in the strength of His might from the heaven of heavens. And all shall be smitten with fear, and the Watchers shall quake. And great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth… And the earth shall be wholly rent asunder, and all that is upon the earth shall perish, and there shall be a judgment upon all men. But with the righteous He will make peace and will protect the Elect.

Uri read with great trouble, and although the riddling women did not ask him for any correction, he had to retranslate the opening passage to make more sense of it.

He was not in a position to notice, struggling as he was, that it was not the sense of what he was saying so much as his deep, pleasantly ringing bass-baritone voice. Its meaningless music helped the women in their work and swathed their minds in a soothing warmth. It was the voice of a man, who might still be little more than a child, but nevertheless that of a man, not the eternal chirrup of riddling women.