That notwithstanding, Uri suspected that in the future he would sometimes talk to his father, and within himself might even hear the answers; he would not be able to face what had happened otherwise, because any resurrection was unforeseeably remote, and the state of death was frighteningly protracted.
It turned out that he already had a bride lined up.
A Roman man had to wed if he had no wish to pay the unmarried man’s tax, and that made no sense at all. Nor could he inherit if he remained unmarried.
Sarah eagerly listed her virtues: the girl was from a good family, not merchants it was true, just artisans, her father being a carpenter; she was what you might call sweet; she was over fourteen, her two older sisters were already married, and her younger sisters were still children. There was a firstborn son who was a carpenter like his father, and the second son worked as a docker.
Uri asked if the marriage had been arranged while his father was still alive. For a long time Sarah said nothing. Your father would be very pleased if he knew, she finally answered, after much evasion. It sounded like it was Sarah who had chosen Uri’s intended. It was a great honor, she never tired of saying, because Uri’s prospective father-in-law earned good money. Very good! “We shall not be left wanting!” she cackled, and persisted in castigating the Jews for not having granted them tzedakah after Joseph died on the grounds that they were able to make use of Uri’s tessera to get their monthly rations: “They have nothing to do with it. It’s a Roman provision, not a Jewish one!” The carpenter’s family lived in a nice house; he had given a decent dowry for the first two girls, and he was very busy with his hands, the prospective father-in-law. She could not, on the spot, off the top of her head, recall the name of Uri’s intended. “But she must be called something,” she said, before passing gloomily on to other matters: a significant debt had been left after Joseph died. It was impossible to know quite how big, and the bankers had suspended collection, counting on Uri’s return. “How on earth would we have paid — out of what?” Now that Uri had finally made an appearance, the debt would most certainly have to be repaid. That was why they had not taken the house away yet; much noise had been made about that, and several of the old houses in the neighborhood had been demolished to make way for new tenements, the foundations had already been dug. “Your father was casual with his money, son,” Sarah said. “I can’t for the life of me see why he was continually running up debts!” Uri knew but kept quiet about it. “You can’t be as casual about things, because from now on you’re the man of the house.”
“What is the monthly installment to pay off the debt?” Uri queried.
Sarah did not know, but anyway it was irrelevant because she’d had no need to pay it; there was no way for the bankers to recover the sum from her. “But we should have been given the tzedakah! Scum, they are! What scum! You never see such scum anywhere except among Jews!”
Uri asked about how his young sister had died. Sarah told him that she had coughed a lot, always coughing, and finally she had choked, gasping for air. A lot of children in the community suffered from spells of breathlessness, a lot of them died too, growing numbers of them; that must be what God wanted, they were better off close to Him. “She may be an angel by now!” Sarah exclaimed, leaving Uri wondering what training his little sister would have to go through to become an angel in the other world.
Sarah was all for taking Uri straightaway to introduce him to his future in-laws, but Uri dug in his heels: he had business with the elders, he wanted to see to that first of all. Sarah started arguing that marriage was more important, to which Uri responded mildly: “I’m the man of the house, so you’d do better to shut up.” Sarah fell into a stupefied silence, then began sobbing hysterically that she had not deserved this, she had always made sacrifices, she had never spared herself, and so on. Finally Uri escaped to the yard, and once he’d settled down he said in a low voice, too low for his mother to hear even if she tried, “I’m not your husband.”
He had difficulty tracking Severus down, but finally he succeeded in identifying a senator Severus, who also bore the name Solomon and was able to hand the alabarch’s letter over to him.
“Did you read it?” Severus asked.
“No, I didn’t,” said Uri.
Severus was a plump, wheezy man; he had started out as a weaver and turned himself into a merchant.
“Your father was a smart man,” said Severus. “You’ve got him to thank him for making your fortune.”
Uri was of a different opinion about that, but he just nodded politely.
Severus asked about the Bane in Alexandria; there had been horrific reports about it in Far Side. What was the truth of it?
“All of it,” Uri replied. “And much more besides.”
Severus gave him a cold look, having no sense of humor.
“A large number of Jews were killed, tortured, mutilated, beaten, burgled, robbed, humiliated, raped,” stuttered Uri, to satisfy the curiosity of the worthy members of Rome’s Gerousia as speedily as possible.
Severus shook his head.
“That sort of thing could never occur in Rome!” he asserted. “The Jews of Alexandria must have upset the Greeks somehow.”
Uri was unsure how to respond to that, so by way of encouragement noted.
“It’s all the better for us; Rome has thereby gained in importance.”
Severus wrinkled his brow and pondered. Lord! What on Earth can the alabarch and his lot want from this dolt? This is Solomon! Uri thought.
Severus broke the seal on the letter, unrolled it in leisurely fashion, read it, and mused. Uri just stood.
“So, when are they coming?” Severus asked.
“I have no idea,” answered Uri. It seemed somebody was coming to Rome from Alexandria.
“But one can’t just do that at a moment’s notice!” Severus exclaimed. “Quarters have to be organized to put them up! It’s not as simple as that!”
Uri was on the point of leaving and had even bid farewell, but then Severus asked him where he had gotten through the hard times.
“In the Sector,” Uri replied.
“What’s that?”
Uri sighed deeply.
“It’s a bit like Far Side over here,” he answered.
“Then you had luck on your side,” Severus declared. “It’s better to spend hard times among our kind. Jews always help one another; that is why the Eternal One helps us.”
Uri nodded fervently and departed.
At first, Joseph (and, after his death, Sarah) had made do by living off Uri’s tessera; that may have been illegal, but it had been overlooked by the municipal administration. Uri suspected that any time the question was raised at the food distribution center as to why the owner of the tessera did not come in person, Sarah would go into hysterics about how he was sick or she was taking care of his business, or would dream up some other excuse, and the officials would simply give up just to get rid of her.
Sarah never tired of weeping and imploring, saying over and over again that he should pay a visit to his bride-to-be, because word would get around soon enough that Uri was back, then they would be offended and call off the marriage. “People like us can’t dream of making a better match!”
But Uri first wanted to get a clear idea of where he stood on the matter of the debt.
Three bankers saw him and told him that after his regrettably premature death the repayment of Joseph’s loan, out of compassion and respect for the womenfolk he had left behind, had been benevolently suspended until now, but now that his legal heir had returned, they would be compelled to ask him to restart the monthly payments immediately.