Before entering the gate, Uri paused to look back. Hills, downs, fruit trees, all green, all peaceful, all sleepy. He peered as the youths respectfully waited. Earlier they had shouted out that they could see the Temple, and no doubt they did because they were approaching the City along the spine of a high elevation. One of the youths kept asserting that they were now passing over Mount Scopus, which is to say Mount Lookout. Those heading for the festival would pass this way, but they were going on still farther in the Kidron Valley, to the east of the City.
Uri could not see the Temple, try as he might. Perhaps it was a phenomenon like some sort of cloud.
Yet I seem to have better eyesight than ever, Uri mused.
And veritably he could distinguish individual trees and bushes from each other better than before. That was impossible, he thought. Still, in the village he had been able to look at, touch, and smell plants as never before; what from afar continued to be uncertain contours now filled with content. In fact, as he had to recognize, he had been seeing from memory, and he was surprised that such a phenomenon existed.
One of the youths tugged out from under his robe a leather satchel tied to his waist. This was the money. He was hugely relieved when the boy had counted out the toll for the guard, and nothing more remained in the satchel. By then their two days of provender had run out; the two youths would be walking back home without food or drink, but for them two days of hunger was not a great price to pay if they could enter Jerusalem.
His escorts prostrated themselves and wept as they prayed.
Uri was unmoved, but he too knelt and murmured a prayer.
It was approaching noon when they reached the City. People ambled slowly in this residential area of the City. It was a strange hodgepodge of new and older housing, seedy buildings and guarded palaces surrounded by high fences, broad boulevards, and narrow alleyways, and, in its center, ditches separating it from the Antonia Fortress. This was Bezetha, the Jewish name for Kainopolis or New Town, through which Uri had been led by the two guards when they had set off for Beth Zechariah. Uri did not remember a single street or house; he may well have been confused then.
The youths did not dare accost anyone; they were awestruck just to be walking through the Holy City and could only gape in astonishment. Before now they had only reached the neighborhood of Jerusalem, never the City itself. Uri had to make inquiries himself as to whether anyone knew a Joseph ben Nahum. The passersby shook their heads and carried on strolling. Uri by now was hungry and thirsty, since they had finished off the provisions for the journey yesterday evening. On top of that, he wanted to be rid of the youths.
They saw a large market to the left, so they went over to take a look. This could not be the market in the Upper City, Uri realized, as he had seen from the wall that it was situated in the square directly in front of Herod’s palace, and here there was no sign of any palace. They started asking vendors where the other market was located and were directed farther south.
They finally got to the Upper City and, upon emerging from the winding alleyways, they kept on southward until they reached the city wall. They proceeded westward beside the wall until they got to a gate. Uri recognized the large building at the southeast corner of the Upper City as the Antonia Fortress, where he had already had the pleasure of being quartered. To the right rose the Temple, its top occasionally visible among the haphazard jumble of streets and houses, as he too could now see, though he still felt nothing. The youths were trembling in their excitement, hardly able to walk, dumbfounded. Uri again asked passersby where the person in question resided, but none knew.
Finally someone came to a halt.
“Joseph ben Nahum?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t live here but in the City of David.”
“But I was told,” Uri said with some irritation, “that I should look for him in the Upper City.”
“Well, then you’d better go to the palace of the high priest. That’s where the Sanhedrin comes together.”
Uri was startled. There were memories tying him to one of the arches of that palace.
“What does he have to do with the Sanhedrin?” Uri asked.
“He’s a member,” the man said, bowed politely, and went on.
The youths were flabbergasted. Theo, whom they were accompanying, was paying a visit to no less than a member of the Sanhedrin! Uri glanced at them. They would be talking about this for weeks back home, and even next year it would still be a topic of conversation during the reaping and winnowing.
I’ve become as famous as that dumb Manasseh, Uri thought. He laughed out loud.
Everyone knew the way to the palace of the high priest, though it was far from easy getting there because they repeatedly had to turn left and right in the twisting streets.
Finally a small square opened before them in front of a two-story palace. Uri stopped and looked along the wall at ground level. Yes. Arches carved from ashlars, seven each to the right and to the left of the ornamental gateway. It was here that vendors had set up their stalls before they were moved in front of Herod’s palace and the arches were bricked up to create twelve prison cells. Their doors could only be reached from inside, each of them separately. There was just one row of bricks separating them from the square, so if a person shouted from inside, he could be heard outside. Why did it never occur to us to shout?
Something still did not add up. If he was in the cell and facing the door, then the slit window had been high up and to the right, but the windows could not have abutted one another, as there had been fresh air coming in through them.
“I’ll only take a moment,” he quickly said to the idling youths, and set off along the wall toward the left of the north-facing main entrance.
He turned at the corner of the building and looked up.
At a height of around seven feet was a small vent facing east. The slit window of the corner cell.
That was where he had been imprisoned with the two robbers and the third person and then alone.
There were women walking about in the street, baskets or pitchers in hand. People must have been roaming around like this back then as well; it would have been possible to shout to them, and they would have heard.
He listened to test whether he could hear anything from inside. Maybe there were prisoners in the cell right now. He heard nothing.
Inside they did not know they could be heard. Or else the cell was empty.
But then what could he have said back then to those on the outside? That he was innocent but had been arrested? Even if he had yelled and been heard, what were they supposed to do? They would have quickened their pace in alarm. He was surprised that he had heard no street noise through the window — or was it forbidden to come this way during festivals?
In Rome there was just one prison, the carcer, a small, aging building kept purely for show. Although in the provinces of Italia there were workhouses for escaped slaves, robbers, and thieves, all arrested people were held in their own homes. It would have been very odd to have defendants packed into the basement rooms of the palace of the Pontifex Maximus, the chief of the priests, especially given that the Pontifex Maximus for quite some time had been none other than the emperor, who lived on the Palatine (or at least lived there in principle, as Tiberius had for many years been living on the isle of Capri).