György Spiró - Captivity

“This,” said Raphael, the holy angel, who was with Enoch: “This is the tree of which thy old father and thy aged mother, who were your ancestors, have eaten, and they learned wisdom and their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they were driven out of the garden.”

Uri was reclining, half-asleep. It was the first time in many months that he had come across letters; he was tired out by the task of translating.

Since he had been compelled to live away from Rome and his books, he had hardly missed exerting any mental effort, and now, in this godforsaken village, here was this prophetic, vision-packed ancient scroll in Greek. An odd coincidence, as if the Lord were guiding him back to his original path.

Never before had he read anything so slowly and scrupulously, so the listeners could fully absorb the material. There were not many scrolls in Judaea — the Torah and a few scrolls of the Psalms certainly. The text struck him more deeply here, precisely because there was nothing else. The more tightly the writing is rationed, the greater the effect it has.

He had been sleeping badly ever since he was forced into employment as a reader. But now the reason he could not sleep was because he saw the little girl, her pretty face, the slender neck, the eyebrows that almost ran together above her nose, the fine dark hairs on her arms and also on her legs. A woman for all that! Uri groaned. A raging emptiness was worrying his insides. A horribly happy torment.

He was apprehensive about getting up the next day. If he translated the scroll once again for the women, was he also going to return to the sieve?

He wished the scroll were longer.

The Eternal One was merciful to him, though; the scroll was in the woman’s hands again, and he was asked to read it through yet again, but now starting from the point that concerned the Lord of Spirits, because they had taken a great liking to that bit.

Uri muttered a prayer of thanksgiving as he peered around in search of the young girl. He did not see her, however, so he sighed and went on to read out the Vision of Wisdom seen by Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam. On reading and translating it this time, he discovered that this part might well be of more recent origin than the rest. Here there were only Greek words, not any Hebrew. Maybe that meant the scroll was not the work of a single author.

Deepening his already sonorous voice even further, Uri almost crooned through this reading, directing it at the young girl, even though she was not present.

And when the Righteous One shall appear before the eyes of the righteous, whose elect works hang upon the Lord of Spirits, and light shall appear to the righteous and the elect who dwell on the earth. Where then will be the dwelling of the sinners, and where the resting place of those who have denied the Lord of Spirits? It had been good for them if they had not been born. When the secrets of the righteous shall be revealed and the sinners judged, and the godless driven from the presence of the righteous and elect, from that time those that possess the earth shall no longer be powerful and exalted, and they shall not be able to behold the face of the holy, for the Lord of Spirits has caused His light to appear on the face of the holy, righteous, and elect. Then shall the kings and the mighty perish and be given into the hands of the righteous and holy. And thenceforward none shall seek for themselves mercy from the Lord of Spirits, for their life is at an end.

So taken were the vengeful women by this passage that Uri was obliged to read it out for a fourth time. They even stopped riddling, and kept nodding and calling out: “Yes, that’s how it will be; that’s exactly right.” The more prudent, being fearful of this prophecy, asked him to carry on.

He was unable to do so because one of the women, Rachel by name, said that she had seen the skies open and an angel had descended to take action against the powerful. Rachel had deep-set eyes and looked intently for long periods in one direction. All her limbs were withered. The other women, though, backed her up; what Rachel had said was true, because she had already told them as much earlier. Rachel also related that in her dream she had been visited by the same Gabriel Enoch encountered. Gabriel had spoken of huge rats, but Rachel could not fully understand why, and the angel had not come again to explain further. Still, it was quite certain that he would because she had heard his voice, albeit only briefly, when she was wide awake.

Another woman, Anna, told of how when she was young, when her mother was dying, a prophet had spoken to her about the heavens, and how up there her mother would lie on soft feather bedding and the boils would disappear from her back, and the gangrene of her legs would heal. The boils had disappeared since then, because that had been many, many years ago, and in her dreams she would see her mother on the other side, and she was completely healthy, even more sound than when she had been living in this world.

Others corroborated her claims.

“When our dead relatives visit us in our dreams they are unscathed, and Master Jehuda said that this was no mere chance, because if we were good and our souls were clean, then we would win a vision of Heaven; that was our reward for our obedience. On these occasions we were able to see our loved ones after the Day of Judgment, for which every dead person readies himself in great haste. It is necessary to be ready by the time everybody is reborn. Everybody will be as they were in the prime of life, may the Eternal One be blessed for not resurrecting anyone who is ill, as that would be a great and unjust cruelty! Surely the Lord could not want that. ‘If we were not good and our souls were shackled by our evil actions,’ said Master Jehuda, ‘then we see nothing, or only horrors.’ And we must listen to what our dead relatives say. Their chatter may seem meaningless, but they know very well what they are saying. We just have to try hard to understand.”

Others said they had seen demons exorcised from the bodies of sick people. They were exceedingly vile — hairy, with tails, hooves, and teeth like wild beasts’.

They told him that in Jerusalem many were overcome each year by a wonderful dream in which they would bathe in the Hinnom during the feast days. It was well known that the long-lost Ark of the Covenant was not in fact lost but there, wisely concealed in the bed of the river before our ancestors went to Babylon, and to this day the Eternal One was in that submerged ark. He sent dreams to his believers through the rays of the sun, and the faithful who truly observed the law dreamed the truth. They owned very little and could not sacrifice very much, but they had love for the Lord in their hearts, so they observed the law; that was what counted, not the size of the sacrifice. The wandering prophets had already told them as much when they had come here to console them, and they had surely been right.

The more sober-minded among the women asked Uri to continue; they were not curious about the dreams of common people but Enoch’s dreams. Uri resumed.

And it shall come to pass in those days that elect and holy children will descend from the high Heaven, and their seed will become one with the seed of the children of men…

“That of their daughters,” someone said.

“It says ‘children’ here,” said Uri.

“Does that mean women descend and become one with our husbands?”

“That I don’t know,” said Uri. “I’m only translating what is written here.”

The women began to argue about what the holy children who would descend from Heaven, the angels, might be. Were they boys or girls? The scroll’s owner considered that some paired with boys, others girls, depending on their own gender. An aging, stringy women said with a wheeze that devils were all male and angels all female, as could be seen on Earth. Some young women protested that they had come across a brood of women possessed by devils of both genders. A portly, loud woman reminded them that when a sorcerer had healed an unhinged Judith and successfully exorcised her demon, he said that she had a male devil in her.