“You stink!” Hagar averred.
“You stink!” averred Marcellus, with Irene and Eulogia following suit.
Uri might have wondered whether his wife or children were more repelled, but he did not wonder at all, just existed, in a light sleep that reeked of piss. He had dreadful dreams: he would be the owner of a nice big house on a hillside but it would be open on all sides and people would walk through as if he were not even there. In another recurring dream he would be residing on the top floor of a building and would want to go home but the stairs had been replaced by a rickety ladder and that had broken, so he needed to clamber up on a narrow plank, but he was dizzy and his feet slipped, leaving him hanging between ground and sky, unable to reach his dwelling. He hated most of all a dream in which long, thin worms crawled out of his toes; he would grab them and keep on pulling at them, but they were seemingly endless.
Marcellus, being his mother’s darling, gained ascendancy over the others. He remained stubby-faced and hook-nosed, with dark hair and skin; there was no knowing what strains of African or Asian tribes had spitefully taken up residence in him. Uri did not have the strength to give any instruction either to him or to his daughters, who had turned out ugly, with buck teeth, gaunt features, and hooked noses; they had picked up a smattering of kitchen Latin while roaming unsupervised about in the harbor quarter, but they never read anything. Uri also read nothing, and they had no scrolls apart from the Torah, so that the kids spent their time hanging around the harbor. Hagar now did the washing and cooking, not moving from the third floor except to shop. She was frightened of the unknown town and unable herself to get straight in her mind even which way was north or south. She had never learned to speak a word of Latin because everyone in the markets spoke Greek, and here she was unable to talk with the neighbors because they did not speak a word of Greek, coming from Latium as they did. My so-called loved ones are all going to be stupid, Uri thought. Dear God, this was Your wish.
Uri stuck with the fulling work until spring and then quit. He had collected enough money to be able to spend another few months looking for work. He bet on the tourists, hoping someone would have need for a scrivener, or something of the kind.
He ought to have taken on the job as a fuller earlier, not out of penance, but because then Theo would still be free and with them. How could he have been so insane? How could he have so completely taken leave of his senses?
He spent the entire day, day after day, on his own at the pier conversing with his father or with Theo.
He would ask Joseph why he had to stick it out with his so-called family, and Joseph would answer mournfully that he had to because he, Uri’s father, had set the miserable example.
You’re different in character from me, the father would say to the daydreaming Uri. You were a born a hedonist; it’s my fault that you are forced to be an ascetic.
But who was there to set an example for you, seeing as your father, Taddeus, died young and you never even knew him?
The Eternal One, Joseph mournfully declared, who hates His chosen people but has never abandoned them, no matter how unfaithful, wretched, selfish, extortionist, profiteering, narrow-minded, stupid, cowardly, swaggering, and blind, or how many times He might be gravely disappointed.
“Would the Lord have done better to abandon us?” Uri would ask his father.
Joseph pondered but gave no answer.
It would have been better, Uri concluded. Then the Jewish community, the Kahal, would not have banished me; I could have been a free Greek or Roman.
Joseph looked on him: My dear boy, the Greek polis operates in exactly the same way; all societies work that way. Do you think that’s why I let you stuff so many letters into that mind of yours?
There at the water’s edge Uri was overcome with shame. Even with my eyesight being so poor my father could have set me to work and yet he did not. He allowed me to read so that I might gain knowledge, may his name be blessed!
Uri asked of Theo what he was to do with his younger brother, sisters, and mother. Theo eagerly explained that no person was hopeless; a lot could be achieved with education.
So what should I turn my hand to, dear son.
Theo, the easy-going, handsome boy that he was, puckered his brow and thought very hard before saying: You know what, Father, not everyone in Dikaiarchia is literate. Sell them what you know best and you yourself enjoy doing. It was stupid that in penance for me you sold the one thing that you haven’t got: your health.
Theo also said that insanity was not a punishment; the punishment was meted out by the Almighty on a person for driving himself mad out of cowardice. Uri begged his son’s pardon because he had even gotten his penance wrong.
Theo chuckled in his usual way; he was always forgiving of everything.
Passover Sabbath was celebrated at the synagogue. The local Jews arrived in high spirits; Uri and his family skulked about aimlessly in the garden.
Uri took particular notice of an ancient woman with her back bent at a right angle, who was talking aloud to herself as she gnawed with her toothless gums at chunks of bread she had dunked in her wine. Uri edged closer: the crone was cursing in Aramaic as she rocked her head left and right, not being able to look up as her rigid spine did not allow that.
“What’s the matter?” Uri asked her in Aramaic.
“That I’m still alive,” wheezed the crone, unable to look at him.
“It won’t last much longer, never fear,” Uri assured her.
“The hell it won’t, God damn it to Hell and back,” she shrilled. “My only problem is my back! Why could I never manage to get leprosy or the plague!”
Uri laughed.
“How old are you, granny?”
“What the hell do I know!” the old woman spluttered. “My grandsons are already starting to die out on me, but I’m still here without any teeth!”
“Your gums must be good and hard by now,” Uri ventured.
“The Lord punishes me by still making it possible for me to guzzle and shit. And I still pee so tidily that I could write my name with it.”
Uri guffawed.
A plump man came over, amazed.
“You’re able to talk to her?” he asked in Greek.
“Yes, I can.”
“She’s my great-grandma. She’s been dumped on me from over there, but no one can make a word out of what she burbles on about.”
“She’s a very nice old lady,” Uri reassured him.
“She’s a nice old lady who’s been dumped on me from over-there; she wheezes on all day to the point we can stand it no longer.”
“This overfed donkey is one of my great-grandsons,” the crone said in Aramaic. “He doesn’t understand a word of what I say, just spouts like all the other idiots here, things like ‘Hey!’ and ‘Whoa!’ that even the dimmest ordinary beast understands — he can’t even latch on to things like that. I gave birth to a whole pack of them, may the Eternal One damn them all!”
“What’s that she’s saying?” the tubby man asked.
Uri interpreted her as saying:
“She regrets that she can’t speak Greek and so is unable to discourse with you about exalted matters.”
The flabby fellow looked askance at Uri.
“She said that?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Just among her grandsons — she has around twenty, and who knows how many great-grandsons — they chose me of all people to pass her on to!”
Jason, the flabby fellow, asked Uri how much he would ask for per week to take over looking after the old woman.