“No don’t! Don’t,” he shouted. “Put me down!”
The servants put the litter down, and the burly man staggered off the chair and looked around. His eyes caught sight of Uri.
“I’m thirsty,” he stated.
Uri hurried to the counter where food and drink was prepared. He filled a beaker with pressed orange juice and took it over to the man, who downed it in one gulp.
“This dry land, even that pitches under my legs,” he declared indignantly. “In Egypt even the land is quaking like the sea?”
Uri did not know how to answer. There was shouting from outside.
“Send the riff-raff away!” the man wailed.
“That’s not possible now,” said Tija, who had appeared from somewhere. “It’s too late now.”
The man goggled at him.
“And who are you?”
“I’m Tiberius Julius Alexander, Alabarch Alexander’s second son.”
“Why’s it not possible now?”
“Because it’s too late!”
He signaled to the bearers who stepped back toward the litter.
“Be so good, Your Majesty, as to be seated in the chair,” Tija said in a peremptory tone.
The man sighed and sat in the litter; the servants lifted it up.
“I’m sleepy! I’m tired! I’m hungry! Where are you taking me?” the man asked forlornly.
“To Pharos island!”
The servants set off with him toward the gate.
Tija looked at him as he disappeared.
“What a creep!” he burst out. “The world has never before seen the likes of that pain in the ass!”
Uri looked aghast after the litter. They were carrying Agrippa, king of the Jews, and he was a courier for him. He hadn’t even given him a proper look.
“What happened?”
“What happened? He only went and spoiled it, the idiot! Let him die of constipation!”
More armed men trudged by them.
Tija stood there crestfallen.
“Let’s go, then,” he said. “It behooves us to join the crowd in its happy howling.”
Uri slipped on his sandals and caught up to Tija at the gate.
Outside, hordes of people were marching in procession, running, jostling. Word had spread in the Jewish district of Alexandria that the king had arrived.
Tija halted, with Uri beside him.
“His boat got here this afternoon,” Tija jeered with repugnance. “He had them anchor a fair distance off shore and waited till evening, as he should have, even got to the shore without being spotted… But then he lost his senses… He’d been told what he should do, but that wasn’t good enough for him! He’s a king! He knows best! Dickhead! He began screaming at the first Greek squad to arrive to alert the other squads and to seize Flaccus… The emperor had sent him on a special mission, he yelled, and they must seize Flaccus for him immediately! Can you believe the tosspot! King of the Jews! His own bodyguard had trouble protecting him. Even after that he couldn’t hold his peace. No wonder the Jews spotted him coming!”
Tija threw himself into the crowd. Uri just stood.
It looked as if they really had messed it up. God Almighty, and how!
Uri stepped out onto the street and was carried off by the crowd. He was being carried in the right direction, toward the Heptastadion. Delirious men, women, old folks, children — all pushed, jostled, joy on faces still puffy from sleep, the king, the king, the king is here!
The next day, Agrippa sailed on in a great hurry with his escort, headed toward his kingdom with the intention of spending Rosh Hashanah there. The Greeks, putting no obstacles in his way, breathed a sigh of relief. Flaccus did not receive Agrippa, but then Agrippa had no wish to pay him the honor: he had been sent by the emperor to seize the failed prefect and haul him off to Rome.
Agrippa had with him the Jews’ congratulatory letter to the emperor, the dispatch of which Flaccus had kept pending for a year. The non-arrival of those congratulations had thrown the emperor into a temper and ever since then he had been disparaging Jews for being so extraordinary arrogant; he is more imperial, if that is possible, than his predecessors. So it was said in Agrippa’s own words. He would later on send the congratulatory letter by courier, with the necessary apologies, when he called in at a safe haven on his way to his kingdom. The emperor would surely excuse them; he could not maintain a permanent grudge against the most populous nation in his kingdom.
The king of the Jews had been entrusted with capturing Flaccus; pity he had proved incapable of that, the news went around. But perhaps the Eternal One had willed it so, the more charitable suggested, that our hands should not be stained with blood. After his presence had been detected, there was no choice but to accompany Agrippa in triumph to the holy island; there some people spoke, it was impossible to hear them. He had gaped, open-mouthed; it was impossible to hear him either, and the Jews were deliriously happy, there were around 150,000 of them thronging the island. The Greeks were also roused and stood around gazing at the procession of the Jews. The prefect in turn was unable to move against Agrippa, not having enough men to counter a mass so large; in any case that would have amounted to an open declaration of war.
The Jews exulted, all 150,000 of them, except for those who were in the know, because they raged. Then everyone calmed down. Nothing happened. Flaccus already knew that he was condemned to die, so from his perspective nothing had changed.
It is prohibited to celebrate a triumph at a time of official state mourning, but the Jews did celebrate, and there was no way of pretending it hadn’t happened. The Jews had cheered not only Agrippa, but the emperor; the Greeks could send their delegations to the emperor, and Agrippa could send his letter, and the alabarch could dispatch couriers to Rome by roundabout ways.
Agrippa had mentioned that at Caligula’s court there was an Alexandrian Greek by the name of Helikon, a dangerous, crafty, and influential man, one of Tiberius’s manumitted slaves, who represented Greek interests — and argued against the Jews — with passable vigor and guile. But the Jews of Alexandria were also represented in Rome, since the whole of Far Side, several tens of thousands, was involved with that. We too had our spokesmen!
Let no harm come to Agrippa, though; may he reach his realm intact and act as king, then, if God wills it, his kingdom will flourish and the whole of his grandfather’s, Herod the Great’s, realm will be his. Then the Jews of Alexandria, along with the other four million Jews — all who live in the Diaspora — will have a strong homeland.
Still, it was a fine gesture on the emperor’s part that he had sent a Jew, of all people, to remove the deposed prefect. The emperor could not hate Jews if he was unable to entrust anyone but a Jew with such an important task — no one else but a Jew! The emperor holds us in affection, trusts us; indeed, it is really only us whom he trusts. That is how those who were in the know reassured each another, because ordinary Jews knew nothing of all this, they were just elated to have seen, for the first time in their lives, a genuine, real-life, anointed king of the Jews. But ordinary Jews also supposed that the emperor must hold them in affection if he had, at long last, appointed them a king. Jews had not had a king since the time of Herod the Great, only tetrarchs. There were many who had hated, loathed Herod the Great, that treacherous, bloodthirsty wild beast, always licking Rome’s boots and bribing Greeks, building Greek-style towns, aping Greek customs. He had the prime of Jerusalem slaughtered, had the priests murdered and his own people appointed in their place, had the members of the Sanhedrin murdered, had his own wife killed, had his own sons killed, and on top of all that had a Greek stadium constructed in Jerusalem. He had strewn Roman baths all over the city and organized quinquennial Greek games — squandering the dues paid by the Jewish community on such fruitless undertakings. But when all is said and done, he had been the king of the Jews, and even if he had not been entirely Jewish, he was at least half so.