“Only I lost track,” said Uri. “I had no writing implements in the Sector, so I was unable to get it down in writing and forgot it, and now I can’t recall it.”
Relieved, Demetrius groaned out again:
“Oh, dear!”
“I was eating smoked fish at the time, and ate smoked fish again yesterday in the hope that it would come back to me, but it didn’t. But I’m sure now that there is a proof,” Uri said as he departed.
He waited for Apollos and they wound their way up to the top of the Paneion.
“God sees, provided He is looking,” Apollos declared. “If He’s not looking, He pays no attention to the sacrificial offerings. The incineration of animals and produce at the Temple in Jerusalem should be given up. Judaism should be given up.”
Uri rocked pensively on his heels.
“Why do we imagine that we are the only chosen people?” Apollos posed the question. “Our forebears misunderstood something: Moses misheard what the Lord said to him. The Ten Commandments are valid, but nothing apart from that. I am certain that the Lord said that mankind as such was his chosen people, not one people or another; it’s wrong that we misappropriated that status for ourselves two thousand years ago. That is why we are so despised, not on account of our monotheism, because others have that kind of thing. We ought to stand out in front of all the heathens and at last announce collectively and ceremoniously that the past two thousand years were a mistake on our part. A dead-end street. Blowing something out of all proportion; a juvenile jape of a scattered slave people. Stuff and nonsense. We are nowadays no longer so small in numbers as we were then, when the Lord sent us a message to keep us going: there are as many of us as there are Latini. We ought to give up this obsolete superstition.”
Uri was still rocking back and forth on his heels.
“I’m going back to Rome,” he came out with it. “I’ve had enough of this.”
Apollos bit his lips.
“I’ll miss you,” he said eventually. “Who am I going to fool around with now?”
“There’ll be no more fooling around,” Uri averred. “A period of frightful gravity is coming, cheerless, humorless, humdrum… Wars of religions, not empires…”
“Those will come to Rome as well,” said Apollos.
“I don’t think so,” said Uri. “The Jewish population there is tiny, it’s neither here nor there, it’s left to its own devices; the place is swarming with many other, more important peoples. Here, on the other hand, horrors are on the way. Alexandria is a modeclass="underline" it will become fashionable wherever a significant Jewish minority is living, be it in Africa or Asia, anywhere, it is going to be expedited in just the same way. Not so sloppily, slackly, idiotically: for one thing, a Sector will be made with rock-solid walls, properly planned, built for the purpose, not in the hasty, hare-brained way it was here, and only when it’s ready will they cram in the Jews. And they will not be released.”
“I’m saying the same,” Apollos snorted huffily. “Exactly that! If Jews renounce the precept of their being a chosen people, holding on to everything else, then there’ll be no reason to massacre them!”
“That won’t happen,” said Uri. “Every blow will only strengthen the belief in their being chosen. A father only thrashes his own son; he doesn’t thrash another man’s son. My own father turned his back on me when it became clear that my eyesight was bad; he wasn’t aggrieved by poor eyesight in another man’s son.”
“Then an agreement needs to be reached with the Greeks that they too belong to the chosen people!”
“They do without it,”
“But they don’t!” Apollos cried out. “They can’t stand it either! Any one of them who has any soul can’t stand it! That was how I managed to survive! Are you suggesting that I should show no gratitude? I was given shelter, food, and drink, yet before that I hadn’t even been on particularly good terms with Pamphilus, and they never tired of apologizing, with pangs of conscience begging me — me! the one who they had given shelter to — to pardon them for all the crimes that they had not themselves committed! Shouldn’t I, the Jew, accept them as chosen people? Why not? Who forbids it?”
They were the only two who were shivering in the cold at the top of the Paneion. There were no tourists to bother them since Bassus had closed the harbor to tourist traffic, and neither Greek nor Jewish delegations were permitted to set off for Rome.
Philo acquired a new favorite, a young man by the name of Delphinus. He was introduced by Hippolytus, the young astronomer, who had since turned into a successful astrologer. Delphinus was a sleepy-looking, blue-eyed, girlish young man of about fourteen, all the rest of whose family had been butchered, with the boy only escaping because he had run out to the island of Pharos and had weathered the events in the cellars of the abandoned Jewish observatory among the centuries-old astronomical records; the records had been eaten up by mice, he, like a cat, ate the mice. The boy as a whole had a cat-like look about him, and displayed a certain artlessness in the immature sensuality with which he disported himself in front of the senile Philo.
The first time Uri saw him in Philo’s company, he nodded. Philo would undoubtedly have taken him — unlike me — to save him from the Bane; he would not have left the city until he had been found.
Hippolytus had his revenge — it may have taken two and a half years, but he had his revenge.
I can leave Alexandria now.
Uri announced to the alabarch that he wished to go back to Rome; it was time he returned home to his father. Delegations were still not permitted to leave Alexandria, but this did not apply to individuals.
The alabarch did not try to detain him. He provided Uri lavishly with money and entrusted him with a letter to be handed over to Severus, one of the Roman elders. Uri was not familiar with anyone of that name, but had no doubt that he existed and he would find him.
Philo was relieved to be saying farewell; he embraced Uri, tears came to his eyes, and he kept on saying “My son! My son!”
Tija, with a smile, patted the grandson of a slave on the shoulder. Marcus, who was just in the middle of reading a book when Uri announced he was leaving, waved his right hand politely and went on reading.
Uri had a feeling that the missing teeth in his lower jaw gave all of them the shudders. I remind them of the Bane; it’s best if they never see me again.
And I’ll never see them again, Uri thought happily.
He went down to Lysias’s tavern down by the harbor. He found his Greek friends sitting there; the moment they saw him they flinched, but then they invited him over, with extreme courtesy and great pleasure, squeezing together to make room, and ordering a drink which they set down before him. Uri took a seat, sipped the drink and asked about what they happened to be studying, whereupon they started to grumble about the teachers as hey had in the old days, though they were careful to skirt the matter of Abdaraxus. Lysias also came over and gave him a friendly pat of the back, quoting perfectly from memory some of Uri’s old impromptu epitaphs, which his old friends received with even greater acclaim than ever; even the new students in attendance laughed in all sincerity.
Sotades, seated at the end of the table, kept on talking to people on his right and left, before finally making up his mind, picking up a beer in one hand, getting to his feet and stepping over. Space was made for him so he could sit down next to Uri, who first asked after the health of his sister, mentioning that he had never seen a lovelier looking woman in his life and nor would he until the end of his days.
Sotades told him that there was at last a suitor whom his proud sister had not rejected out of hand, though their father was still of two minds — the fellow was decent enough, but his family did not have any money, so who knew? Maybe my sister will never get married, he said, and grow into a sour old maid. After that, he launched into what was really on his mind: Agrippa should not have given orders for a procession, that was a mistake, a big mistake, a fatal mistake. The Greeks had justifiably felt that Jews had become presumptuous, they wanted too much, and no wonder what they did after all that. He regretted hugely what had happened, he deplored it, he had taken no part in anything, but the Jews had plainly brought it upon their own heads, he was involved in nothing, he had sat it out to the end at home, didn’t so much as set foot outside the door, he had witnesses that he had never done anything.