Jotape pointed to another panel.
“Who do you think that is?” she asked.
Uri went closer, bent down, and inspected it. It was a picture of Hermes, he could see that now.
“How much did it cost?”
“Two million.”
Uri was silent.
“Don’t you know?”
Uri sighed.
“Not bad, but it’s a copy,” he said. “An imitation Parrhasius. The face is the painter’s, but the folds of the drapery are weak… Even his pupils did better work than that…”
“It’s an original,” Jotape snorted.
“I suppose that’s possible.”
They fell silent. Jotape took stock of Uri.
“What did you actually want from me?” she eventually asked.
Uri himself was not rightly sure. Several dozens of millions of sesterces in value was amassed in the house in the form of pictures and sculptures. Herod the Great had misappropriated the money back then by blood and iron, and his descendants were able to spend it on whatever they fancied.
“I’m going to sell off the collection,” Jotape announced. “There’s no sense in just me having the pleasure. I’ve got no heir; I’ll have a Greek-Jewish shrine put up the like of which has never been seen before, and I’ll have the collection carried over.”
Uri nodded. Philo would have been delighted by the idea.
“There’s no money I can give you,” said Jotape. “Truly not! I scarcely eat a thing, barely more than a sparrow.”
“That’s one of the secrets of a long life,” Uri said approvingly.
Jotape was interested in that subject and talked about special seeds and buds which simulate meat and pasta, indeed are healthier than anything else, and she warmly recommended to Uri that he consume these, living off them every blessed day: he would feel phenomenally well. Uri refrained from pointing out to the lady that Jews were not permitted to eat seeds on feast days, but politely thanked her for the advice and took his leave.
There were hordes of beggars in the neighborhood of the Porta Capena, including as usual a lot of grubby children from Far Side.
I will not send my children out begging; it’ll never get so bad that I’m reduced to that!
He went to pick up the four hundred sesterces that he had hidden on the building site, but his colleagues must have spied on him, because the money was nowhere to be found under the tile. They did not starve to death, but they continued to go to bed with their empty stomachs rumbling.
Marcellus turned thirteen. He crammed all he needed, and went for his bar mitzvah at the synagogue; Hagar wept and the girls stood there inanely, then they went back home.
Uri carried on with the painting; it was fairly well paid but the peasant raised the rent, and Hagar had no wish to move. They had to think twice what to spend the money on.
A heavy, leaden-gray year ensued, the only point of light in which was Flora. Uri spent little time at home. Marcellus hung around town, sometimes only getting back the next day; the girls did nothing and Uri was occasionally provoked into bawling that they ought to read something, but they never did.
Marcellus turned fourteen, the age at which he could assume the garb of manhood, when was entered into the register of full Roman citizens, and also when he was granted his own tessera.
Uri was touched to examine the lead token on its leather thong when he slipped this over Marcellus’s neck in front of the municipal authority’s building.
“You’ve become a breadwinner, an equal member of the family,” he told him, raising his right hand over his head in benediction. “Lord Almighty! To have lived to see this at last!”
Hagar wept, the girls blubbered and recited a thanksgiving prayer to the Eternal One that they would no longer go hungry.
Marcellus said his prayers with them, then vanished. Uri raged with anger.
Marcellus strolled into the peasant dwelling only two weeks later in the evening and asked for his supper. Hagar clung to him and kept on endlessly asking:
“Did you come to any harm? Did anything bad happen to you?”
Uri could see that there was nothing wrong with the boy and bottled up his indignation.
“Where were you, then, young man?” he asked cordially.
“In Far Side,” said Marcellus, squatting back on his heels as he got to work on a meat dumpling.
Uri digested the information.
“So, what goes on in Far Side these days?” he asked.
“Nothing in particular.”
Marcellus smugly tucked in with Uri looking on. Hagar wept in happiness and the girls withdrew to one of the corners, knowing a storm was brewing.
There was no tessera around Marcus’s neck.
“So what did you do with your tessera?” Uri asked, also squatting, eye-to-eye with Marcellus.
“I handed it over to them,” Marcellus answered calmly.
A big stillness fell. Even Hagar stopped her weeping.
“And to just who did you hand it over, young man?” Uri asked.
“To my real family,” announced Marcellus, looking stubbornly at his father.
“So, who makes up your real family?” he asked in a hushed tone.
“There are many,” said Marcellus, “and there will be ever greater numbers!”
Uri was now certain, and he suppressed his temptation to swear.
“That wouldn’t by any chance be the Nazarenes, would it, young man?”
“I’m also one,” Marcellus declared proudly.
Hagar began to shriek but then thought it best to keep her mouth shut. The girls cowered.
“So you’ve become a Nazarene, my darling boy?”
Marcellus nodded, and a self-confident grin appeared on his lips.
Hagar hurried outside with the girls to leave the two of them together.
“How come? How did it happen?”
“I was inspired by the Holy Ghost,” declared Marcellus, looking his father steadily in the eye.
“And what’s that?”
“The Lord’s Breath, which permeates all things.”
“Do you perchance mean the Shekinah?”
Marcellus shook his head and resolutely reiterated:
“I was inspired by the Holy Ghost, which he breathed into the disciples at Shavuot.”
“Who? The Eternal One? And what’s Shavuot?”
“Not the Eternal One but the Lord! That’s when He ascended into Heaven.”
For them the Lord was not the Creator but the Anointed.
Uri looked at his son. His features were at once prematurely aged and puerile; one could make out the moronic features of Sarah and also Hagar along with everything else. The blood of a lot of my loopy ancestors runs together in that boy, Uri reflected; Plato would be glad to see it: there in front of his eyes a clear example of the idea of a pan-human imbecility.
“So, what did you have to do to be inspired by the Holy Ghost?” Uri politely asked. “Is that why you handed over your tessera?”
Marcellus shook his head, and said as though he were reciting a lesson:
“The Holy Ghost is blowing in all places and can confer its grace on anyone it wishes, the good and the evil alike, and it purifies their soul.”
Uri nodded.
“Can the Holy Ghost enter me?” he asked.
Marcellus became flustered; the sound of interconnected pulleys creaking in his brain was almost audible.
“Anyone,” he finally stammered out, flushing with irritation at having to show mercy to his father in the spirit of the Teaching.
“Eat it up nicely,” Uri urged. “Your mother cooks tasty dumplings.”
Unable to eat, Marcellus was silent.
Uri tried to recall the wording on the sheet that Theo had acquired from the Nazarenes more than five years ago, just before their expulsion.