Uri shuddered.
Ostia’s chief attraction, Matthew continued, was its public toilet, the forica, with its dozens of marble seats ornamented with statues and mural mosaics. Lots of people took shits there at any given time, all sorts of people, side by side and opposite one another, drinking, eating, chatting, making jokes, reading out loudly to each other. It was a pretty place from the outside too; if ever they went that way they should seek it out, because as far as he was aware there was no facility like it in Rome.
His wife, a good-natured soul, had given him six children. Three of the four sons had by now grown up and were sailing on ships. He himself was now in his second decade on active duty in the Jewish fleet, initially as a sailor, later as captain, and he was used to issuing orders, which is why he asked for his companions to excuse him in advance for any occasional curtness or harshness in his dealings with them; that was not due to lack of respect, merely his mind, toughened by necessity, because in the end an officer could not feel compassion if he had to direct a galley of rowing slaves. He had shipped goods most frequently to Alexandria, or else from Alexandria to Caesarea and later, to avoid paying excise in Alexandria and Egypt, he had sailed with Judaean produce straight from Caesarea to Ostia; many times he had freighted from Alexandria to Ostia and back, and sometimes also found himself going to the Greek islands as well.
Given that he had a thorough knowledge of the hazards of the port of Ostia, the high command of the Jewish fleet had asked him to settle there for good as the agent, pilot, and warehouseman for the Jewish fleet. Once he had agreed, he had taken up the posting with the speedy consent of the Roman authorities. As a person who had already settled in Ostia many, many years before, he had instantly been granted Italian citizenship and had not even had to pay for it.
Anyway, this now was the fifth time that he had led a delegation to Jerusalem, and he felt it necessary to give them a few pieces of information.
The Torah scroll was in his possession.
He had a letter with the seal of the municipal administration in his possession to the effect that he, Matthew, citizen of Ostia, and five companions were traveling on an important mission, and the Roman powers-that-be were obliged to assist and support him and his companions wherever they were.
At this point he turned to Uri and explained reluctantly that the document did not speak of six companions because Gaius Theodorus had only been added to the delegation at the last moment and there had not been time to get the safe-conduct rewritten, not that this would cause any problems, he was quite sure of that; excise men would simply be glad that there was an extra traveler to charge for. On occasions like this, they would ask for extra money, of course, though it was usually possible to haggle that down a bit.
Uri felt a numbing chill in the region of his stomach, but he forced a smile to his lips and nodded.
He was also in possession, Matthew continued, of the money that the Elders had voted to cover the costs of the delegation; that had been the case with each of his trips, and as a rule it had been spent down to the last penny; his accounts for the amount had hitherto been accepted without question, even though the Elders were somehow amazingly well informed how much things cost outside Rome.
The route, he went on, had been properly prepared. Safe places where they would be given quarters had been arranged. They would be spending their nights alternately at private houses and at hostelries as long as they were on Italian soil, though on occasion it might be outdoors, under the open sky, but only if weather permitted; it was not one of their aims to drag themselves in sickness to Jerusalem. They would land in Sicily at Messina — or Messana, as the Romans called it — then, after another dry-land journey, they would set sail from the port of Siracusa for Caesarea, near the Greek islands, whence they would take the military road to Jerusalem. Experience had shown that this was the safest and the second-shortest course, and if nothing cropped up en route, they might even cover it in as little as six weeks, but, just to be on the safe side, they always allowed an extra two weeks over and above that. One of those weeks was made up of Sabbaths, of course, when they would not be doing any traveling; the route was so devised that they would be spending the Sabbaths, wherever possible, with Jewish families who welcomed delegations and would be glad to celebrate with them.
The question might be raised, he added, why they would not be traveling by sea from Ostia to Caesarea, since that would be the simplest route and even quicker than he had outlined, if the wind was favorable, and in the spring it did tend to be favorable indeed. Well, the thing was that the boats that plied directly between Ostia and Judaea were overloaded with produce and were not really in a position to carry passengers as well, or else they were only willing to do so at sky-high prices, despite being well aware of the importance of this delegation, such that it wasn’t worth it to the Roman community. From Ostia it was possible to travel with a Greek or Latin boat to Alexandria, and from there by a Jewish ship to Judaea, but then there was a bigger risk of something untoward happening to them, and that way excise would have to be paid at Alexandria, an extortionate amount, and even then there was no guarantee that they would not be held up in the harbor for days or possibly weeks.
Finally, he expressed his conviction that it would be a good trip, and he gave his thanks to the Creator for being able to travel with such excellent companions, whom the Elders had plainly selected for this exalted task not without good reason.
Uri blushed.
Now that Matthew had finished his introduction, the others livened up and plied him with many questions.
First, a thickset man inquired as to whether Jews also frequented the public privy. On receiving an affirmative response, he became indignant at the sacrilege: only the Creator had the right to see his elect naked or in a shameful position, and a Jew shitting was absolutely no concern of non-Jews. Neither Matthew nor the others saw fit to respond to these qualms. The thickset man shook his head and growled a profanity. Uri could not even begin to imagine what his occupation might be.
Many of the questions pertained to the harbor at Ostia, with the strong, black-bearded man showing the most interest in it. Matthew said that the harbor, at the mouth of the Tiber, lay in an unfortunate position, exposed to the prevailing western winds, and the shore was not suitable to allow the bigger boats to take shelter during storms. That was a problem that had not existed in previous centuries, when boats were smaller and shallower, but nowadays they were so big that the port’s sole advantage was its proximity to Rome, no more than twenty miles. Deep-drafted craft were no longer able to pass up the Tiber; everything had to be shipped onto small vessels, which were tossed around dangerously by the waves, so that a great many accidents occurred as a result of smaller boats smashing against the sides of the big ships. The southward orientation of Puteoli’s harbor, in a gulf protected from the winds, was undoubtedly more fortunate, but he was quite certain that Ostia, once its harbor was rebuilt, would best Puteoli simply because it was much closer to Rome.
He had seen plans for how the harbor ought to be rebuilt, how the sea bottom should be excavated, what kinds of breakwaters should be constructed and where they should be located in the coastal waters, but these would be very costly operations and, in his view, the emperor, to whom the plans had been shown, was unlikely to commit himself to them. Private entrepreneurs would not finance that sort of work, as the payoff was too long-term — one or two generations, some had calculated — so the Roman state would have to put up the money. The plans would come to nothing until the day a very big storm broke up the entire fleet that were anchored off the harbor entrance, and they went down, together with their cargoes of grain, bringing Rome to the brink of starvation. Then they would get serious about rebuilding the harbor, in his view, but only then. True, he added with a laugh, it was in his interest that the harbor was not modernized, because there would be a call for experienced pilots only; he made his living from the deficiencies of Ostia’s harbor.