Uri strolled back to the elated youths and motioned to them that they should wait before knocking on the palace gate. It was opened, revealing two Jewish soldiers standing sentry. Uri said that he was looking for Joseph ben Nahum.
“Who’s looking?”
“Gaius Theodorus from Rome.”
There was a lull as some people inside murmured something.
“You can come in,” a voice said.
Uri turned around and waved to the youths, who just gawped as they watched him enter and the gate slam behind him.
A guard escorted him without a word along the ground level to the right — the opposite direction from where his former cell lay. Uri heaved a sigh of relief. The corridor received light from an inner space to the left; a well-trimmed garden with tall trees, clipped bushes, and fountains. He then found himself in a small room with a window cut high up in the wall, reminiscent of his old cell, and the guard shut the door.
Joseph ben Nahum was a gaunt, elderly gentleman, each and every hair white, even his eyes were a pale gray that was almost white. There were a number of stools and a table on which there were scrolls.
Joseph offered Uri a seat.
“What was it like with Master Jehuda?” he inquired affably.
“Interesting,” said Uri frankly. “I would find it hard to say what exactly I learned in the village, but I don’t have the feeling it was a waste of time.”
“Splendid,” said Joseph. “We have not placed any pilgrims with him so far, but that seems to indicate that we might do so in the future.”
Uri kept quiet; it was not his place to raise any objections to this honor.
Joseph also fell silent, and Uri sensed that he was hesitating.
He thought back to the young official who three months ago, in the Antonia Fortress, had directed him to Master Jehuda. He could not recall any of the man’s features. He glanced at Joseph’s face; this one he would be able to recollect in the future.
“We are well aware, dear Gaius, that you wish to return to Rome, but until the opportunity to do so arises, you might place your knowledge and experience at our disposal. We would be extremely grateful.”
“First of all I want to go to Alexandria,” Uri said, surprising even himself.
Joseph nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes, we can assist with that,” he said.
“It’s something I really want,” Uri said in excitement.
“I’ll do what I can,” Joseph declared.
It’s not certain that he’s an enemy, Uri thought. The white-haired man appealed to him, but caution was no bad thing.
“What was the trip from Rome like?” Joseph queried.
Uri was staggered. How far back that now seemed!
“Easier than I imagined,” Uri replied. “We didn’t drown in the sea, we weren’t slaughtered by highwaymen, we didn’t die of hunger even once.”
Joseph laughed.
“Lots of people come from Rome for Rosh Hashanah,” he said. “You could go back with them. Until then we’ll place you in a pilgrim group. We were thinking it would be good for you to be with the Babylonians. They’ve got a nice place, and they’re hospitable.”
Uri considered the proposal.
“Don’t the Jews from Alexandria have a guesthouse?” he asked.
“They do,” said Joseph, “but we would still suggest the Babylonians.”
“I’d be seen as a spy and ostracized!” Uri exclaimed. “I don’t want to live in any community! I don’t want to know anything about anybody!”
Silence reigned.
Joseph looked straight at Uri, who pursed his lips.
“If you’re not going to live in a community, where you get free food and board,” said Joseph cordially, “then you’ll have to earn your keep.”
“Fine,” said Uri.
“What skills do you have?”
Uri pondered before giving his answer.
“I learned to be quite a good cabinetmaker with Master Jehuda,” he said. “But I don’t know if people here are looking for furniture-makers. I don’t want to be a roofer, that’s for sure, because I get dizzy.”
Joseph ruminated on that.
“I know about just one builder who might be looking for a cabinetmaker,” he said, “but before I send you over there, I’ll have to ask if I’m allowed to do that.”
“Where do they make those decisions?” Uri inquired in all innocence.
“At higher levels,” Joseph replied, not without a touch of malice.
So the lunacy carries on, Uri thought to himself. They still believe I’m somebody important.
“All right, then,” said Joseph. “Until a decision is made you’ll stay at my place as a guest.”
“I’m grateful, master.”
Joseph froze. Uri fell silent; he was convinced that he was sitting opposite a Pharisee master: there was something both of Simon the Magus and Jehuda about Joseph ben Nahum. Joseph returned a rueful gaze before nodding.
The boys from the village were given a stamped acknowledgment of receipt and, in accordance with Master Jehuda’s instruction, immediately set off back to Beth Zechariah. Uri found himself thinking that he would be quite glad to be going along with them. He gazed after them before going back through the gates of the high priest’s palace.
He waited in a room on the ground floor until Joseph, worthy member of the Sanhedrin that he was, had finished his work. His accent was Galilean, Uri concluded in thinking back, and that surprised him somewhat. He was given water and fruit. The door was shut; Uri opened it once while he was waiting and looked out into the corridor, but no one was on guard. Joseph ben Nahum trusted him.
With a torch-carrying guard to accompany them, they walked down into Acra, the Lower City.
In the evening light they went along alleyways crammed with people, Master Joseph sunk in thought, Uri looking around him.
The bereft slept out on the streets, curled up in little piles like garbage set outside the houses. They had no belongings apart from the clothes they wore, and their stomachs rumbled even in their sleep, while up above, on both sides of the alley, the rich, oblivious to them, took the air and drank, shouting merrily across to one another from roof terraces ornamented with tubs of plants. Also sipping wine were their small children, who had been granted the unparalleled Jewish luck to have been born in the City; they too yelled and screeched merrily, the rich of the future, who did not have the stomach to look down onto the alleyway. The two shores of Sodom and Gomorrah, Uri reflected, and between them Sheol.
The homeless held their hands out lazily, without conviction, and did not look up at them. Perhaps they had done all the begging they could get out of themselves for that day, or else they could see it was rather unlikely that anyone escorted by a guard with a torch would be of a generous disposition.
Joseph took care not to step on them.
They passed through a gate under the Romanesque aqueduct that ran southward beside the inner city wall, then they turned north along the far side of the wall before descending a set of steps into the valley and climbing up the opposite hill. Uri asked what the valley was called.
“It’s the Tyropoeon, the Valley of the Cheesemakers,” Joseph said.
“And that is what the aqueduct bridges over?”
“Yes, only more to the north.”
They proceeded among small, old, rickety houses, through alleyways that could barely be called roads. It was a district much to Uri’s liking.
“It reminds me of Far Side,” he said, “only that’s flat.”
“I’ve never been to Rome,” said Joseph.
“It’s interesting, though.”
They ambled on. Joseph displayed to Uri no further interest in the empire’s capital city.
“I live on my own in the house,” he said. “My family does not live with me.”
The torchbearer halted outside one of the houses, and they entered, whereupon the torchbearer bowed, wished them a good evening, and set off back to the Upper City.