Now there was again a king of the Jews, even if his kingdom was, as yet, tiny. Agrippa may only be one-quarter Jewish, yet he has still become a king of the Jews and is circumcised, and the Eternal One is thereby letting us know that the One and Only Everlasting God has not abandoned his alliance with us, His chosen people, wherever we may live in this pagan-dominated world. Agrippa’s flying visit was a heavenly sign that the Messiah, bringing the Last Judgment of the Lord, is nigh. These ideas make their way among the Jews in Delta, and spread through the other districts of Alexandria with Jewish populations, and in their synagogues they offer thanks to the Eternal One, and it is about this that Philo is writing right now, interrupting his other work. As an exception he is not striving to win recognition for the Jews from the Greeks but to boost their diminished self-esteem.
Two days later, so as not to cower the whole day long in the palace, where the alabarch and his intimates alternately raged and celebrated, Uri headed for the Paneion, in the middle of the Gymnasium’s park, to walk the corkscrew paths around it. He took a scroll with him; it would be good to immerse himself in the scandals of some bygone age. But over by the colonnade, more than a stadium long, which marked the limits of the Gymnasium’s grounds along Arsinoë Avenue he could see a crowd was forming, so he stopped a little way off to watch, narrowing his eyes to see better. Something must have happened inside the park grounds because the mass was hastening in. Uri followed, slipping between two of the columns. The throng was thicker around the Square Stoa, so Uri strolled that way. Street urchins, dockers and well-dressed citizens alike were all hurrying that way. Could it be someone was delivering a speech? Who, then? Had Isidoros come back?
Someone was standing in the ramshackle, rusty, four-horse chariot that had been placed in the park around a century ago — Cleopatra, the great-grandmother of the last Cleopatra, had been given it as a present. Whoever it was looked as if he had something on his head and was holding something in his hand. Uri came to a stop. He did not have to go closer, in fact, because the chariot lurched forward, pulled by twenty or so people in his very direction; the wheels, having been left ungreased for a hundred years, squeaked loudly. The figure standing in the chariot was naked; on his head was a paper crown, in his right hand was a paper mace: it was Carabbas in his full nudity.
“Here comes the king of the Jews! Render homage to the king of the Jews!” the Greek crowd shouted joyfully.
Carabbas grinned and waved.
“Speech! O king of the Jews. Let’s have a ripe fart from you, Carabbas!”
Carabbas grinned and waved; he clutched at the sides and then slipped down onto the floor of the chariot, he pulled himself up again and grinned. A rush mat was draped around his shoulders so that the prick of the mighty king of the Jews should not dangle in full view. The chariot was pulled right by Uri, the crowd pouring after.
“He ought to be circumcised! Otherwise it’s not realistic!”
“The king of the Jews is a monkey!”
“To the harbor with him!”
“To the palace!”
People all around to Uri were chortling, yelling, pushing one another, racing after the chariot as it gained momentum on the paved road.
“Recite the Ten Commandments!” came a cry from the crowd. “The Ten Commandments, Carabbas!”
“Get something blue on him! Something blue!”
“Give him a menorah! Make it snappy!”
“Take him through Delta! Let the Jews pay homage!”
“To the palace! The palace!”
“Through Delta! Through Delta! Take him to the Jewish Basilica!”
Uri could hear the sound of his own laughter and stopped. Do I really despise Agrippa that badly?
Yes, that badly.
He pictured Carabbas standing nude on the Basilica’s platform and could not avoid laughing.
The throng grew, and he lost sight of the chariot. Next to him the Jews were being reviled with choice profanities, and those he could no longer laugh at. Last night the Jews slaughtered two cats and threw them into the Serapeion, the stinking weasels! They’re looking to bring Rome down on us, but they’re in for a surprise! A big surprise!
Two fellow students at the Gymnasium appeared beside him, trying to wipe the grins off their faces. Uri did not know what to do, and was so confused that he forgot to greet them, but then they were carried farther along with the procession, so there was no need. Uri was by now trying to drop out of the crowd but was being jostled from all sides. I ought to get to the side of the street, he thought.
He was finally able to extricate himself once they passed under the arcades: the crowd flocked eastward, toward Delta, packing the entire hundred-foot width of the main thoroughfare. Warehousemen clutching cudgels and lugging stone blocks clattered by: the rocks must have come from some building site. This was no longer a joking matter. The Jews living in Delta ought to be alerted, but how?
Uri scurried after the procession, keeping close to the wall. At a crossroad, on the bridge arching above the canal, four or five men had broken from the crowd and were beating up a bearded man.
“I’m not Jewish!” the man was screaming.
They tugged up his tunic and tore off his loincloth.
“See! I’m not Jewish!”
In their disappointment, they set to him with their cudgels anyway, giving him such a sound drubbing that the man was laid out flat, blood streaming from his head. Uri ran off to the right down a street that ran southward by the canal, right into some Greeks who were arriving to join in the fun. They spotted him and slowed down menacingly.
“Carabbas is king!” Uri shouted toward them, and continued running south.
At the next corner he stopped. He was not being followed. He turned left and crossed over the canal to make his way back northward, together with the crowd of Greeks who were heading for Arsinoë Avenue.
The chariot was nowhere to be seen. There were some Jews living in Gamma as well; a carpet shop was on fire, a jeweler’s was in the process of being robbed, with boxes flying out of it, ragamuffins scrabbled about, scrambling on all fours for the gemstones that were scattered over the ground. Not one soldier or guard. Stone blocks were hurled at residences of Jews, a menorah was daubed in blue paint on the wall. One of the Greeks in that group, who wasn’t doing any painting personally, identified the houses in which Jews lived from a list on a sheet of papyrus he carried.
“The Jews are fighting back!” was heard as the crowd came to a standstill. There was much pushing and shoving as they were unable to proceed farther eastward, so part of the rabble split off and turned to head north toward the harbor.
Uri saw that it was pointless to stick with them, so he once again elbowed his way toward the south to try to disappear in the narrow alleys of Gamma.
Smaller knots of rowdies were breaking into locked Jewish shops with bulky beams of timber: the mourning decreed for Drusilla’s death was still being observed, so the owners were not to be found.
Uri turned west, intending to make his way back to the alabarch’s palace in Beta.
He saw a mob in one of the squares, visible through a cloud of smoke. There was much shouting, fists being shaken, leaping and whooping, both men and women. Uri squinted and edged closer. A huge bonfire of hastily gathered brushwood was smoking, and in the midst of it he could clearly see some writhing figures, their hands and feet tied. They were small.