He shuddered. What was happening in Alexandria?
Apollos said one day to Uri:
“Come along.”
There was running that day, which everyone found a bore, and only at the end of the day would there be rhetoric.
Apollos took Uri to an amphitheater.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said, “but I’d like you too to see it and confirm that my eyes are not deceiving me.”
It was the second of the three plays that was in question. The author reeled off the story of Dionysus, and when it got to the bit where Dionysus’s body was cut into pieces, for which, as in every production, copious amounts of artificial blood were used and the musicians banged the drums with a deafening cacophony, Uri leaned forward, placed his hands in front of his face and peered through the slits between his fingers so he could see better. The actors who were murdering Dionysus on stage wore masks that made them look like Jews — exactly the sort of grotesque figures he’d seen scrawled on the walls of houses. The Jews hated Dionysus, the favorite god of the Alexandrian Greeks. The audience whistled shrilly in the way it did at the Circus when their favorite, the green chariot, did not win a race.
Uri looked at Apollos: Apollos’s eyes had not deceived him: they were wide with fear.
“Your eyes are not deceiving you,” Uri reassured him.
They did not watch the third play but took a walk in the harbor as Apollos agitatedly, almost stuttering, kept on saying how intolerable it was, it could not be ignored, this was loathsome, vile propaganda against Jews, and someone somewhere should make a speech in which an eminent person, preferably Greek rather than Jew, informed the rabble that in ancient times, when Dionysus is supposed to have lived, there were not yet any Jews anywhere in the world.
“You’ll never find any person of that kind,” pronounced Uri, who was likewise displeased by the phenomenon but was not as distraught as Apollos; he was frankly amused to see how much artificial blood had been used, and how maladroitly the actor who had played Dionysus had collected his severed legs and arms, taking the view that the miserable drama was a parody of itself, though he was bound to admit that the public had not seen it that way.
In the middle of the autumn Abdaraxus assembled the students and in a lengthy address warned them against getting mixed up in anything. They were standing in the broad, covered peristyle that connected the dormitories with the library, far from the crowds sauntering in the park area. The students should not be duped by the provocations of enemies; they should not let themselves be drawn into brawls because anyone caught taking an active part would be expelled; anyone caught scribbling on walls would be expelled. All of them should confine themselves to studying and keeping physically fit, nothing else. Students were prohibited from entering taverns. Students were also prohibited from going to the baths: the Gymnasium had its own baths, so they should use those. In marketplaces they were to comport themselves with dignity; they should give crowds embroiled in politics a wide berth; anyone asking for their opinion was to be fended off. Anyone on whom any kind of handbill was found would be punished. Everyone would be subject to inspection at all times.
The teaching staff stood somberly behind the gymnasiarch; they must have already gotten it in the neck. The teaching staff had in all likelihood been instructed — maybe even specifically assigned — by Abdaraxus to search through belongings and follow students as they made their way through the city, so it was no surprise that they looked none too happy.
Not that Abdaraxus made any specific threats; he was just doing whatever was necessary to protect the independence and impartiality of his institution. Uri nevertheless felt uncomfortable.
He noticed that nobody was disposed to be his wrestling partner, and nobody wished to stand as an advocate against him in mock court dialogues. It was not that anyone made any objection to him personally, just that nobody put themselves forward. The more decent-minded teachers changed the procedure: Uri, Tija, and Apollos were no longer placed first, but they were supposed to name a Greek student as their partner, though even they did not bother. None of the instructors bade them do it.
“Your Greek pals don’t like us,” Tija commented at the palace one Sabbath evening when the meal had come to an end.
Uri bridled:
“Who’s the Greek citizen, then?” he retorted. “They’re your Greek pals!”
“Yours, you mean, you Roman!” hissed Tija. “Your emperor is Caligula, they’re his Greeks!”
Uri was astonished.
“What do you mean: Caligula is my emperor?”
“You’ve even got the same name: Gaius!”
Marcus, who was studying some documents, laughed and looked up:
“Quit that!” he said. “Caligula is the emperor of the Jews of Alexandria, not the Greeks.”
Uri was now even more astonished.
Marcus nodded his head as if to say ‘Let’s get that clear!”
“The emperor in Rome is always the emperor for the Jews here,” he declared. “You can be sure of that. That’s why the Greeks are nursing such a grudge against us: they are scared, not without good reason, that the Jews will be given more concessions. That’s their beef with us. Cleopatra herself loathed us Jews, yet she did nothing to the very end but seek to serve Roman interests. Local minorities always tend to take sides with whoever is the central authority. It’s no doubt the same in Judaea in cities where the Greeks are in the minority: there it is they who side more strongly with the emperor in opposition to the Jews.”
Uri slowly nodded. That was plain talk if anything was: Marcus must have political talent after all.
Tija was even more infuriated:
“I despise them!” he yelled. “All of them! Sneaky, shifty, foul, furtive brutes! Is that what we’re supposed to stuff our money into? Their gymnasium? Let them all choke and be carried away by the plague!”
Uri had not seen Tija in a temper before: there was something truly human in his roar. He was not raging on account of the Greeks, Uri realized; it was his elder brother he hated, being the second in line.
That night, by the light of a luminous full moon, a thought crossed his mind: surely Flaccus, the deposed prefect, couldn’t possibly be placing his trust in a plan to stir up the Greeks into fighting a war against Rome? It did at least offer a decidedly greater chance of staying alive than the suggested course of suicide.
War… It had been a long time since Alexandrians had lived through a war, and Uri, never. Even his father and grandfather had lived in times of peace… It would be bizarre if he, Roman citizen that he was, were to take part in a war against Rome.
He resolved that tomorrow he would go to a Jewish restaurant in Delta and put out some feelers to gauge what ordinary Jews were thinking.
He was unable to go the next day, however, because Philo engaged him in a philological discourse, and he only made the trip a week later. The place that came to mind was the very first restaurant he’d visited when he arrived, the one over toward the Basilica, where he had eaten that inexpensive barbel — he had not been back that way since. He looked around but did not find it; he wandered a couple of blocks this way and that, came back and restlessly paced around, but there could be no doubt about it: a fancy leatherware shop was operating where the restaurant used to be.
The Greeks had moved out of the Jewish quarter.
It might have been pure coincidence, but nevertheless they had moved out.
He shivered.
There was going to be war.
Around the Basilica there were a lot of bistros still open, with Jews lazing idly on the sidewalk with their extensive families, their children playing around them; a balmy autumn breeze was blowing in from the sea, the edge taken off it by the chain of hills. Tranquility and peace ruled everywhere. Uri sat down on a long bench in front of an equally long table around which a lot of people were chattering away. He dipped a chunk of bread in the salt and chewed on it, gazing about. The conversation next to him was about business and family matters; his tablemates must have been members of two or three different families. And they paid not the slightest bit of notice to him. The choice of dishes was rather limited, and Uri decided to take the flatfish. He found it a bit odd that it was boneless, as in kosher Jewish restaurants they normally only cooked fish with bones, but this was obviously considered kosher. He was also brought wine and water but there was no mixing bowl so he drank down some of the water and poured in some wine.