“I haven’t come for them,” said Uri. “I would like to invest money in your library.”
The young man was left speechless.
“I haven’t come to take anything away but to give!”
“I understand,” he managed to croak.
He was called Salutius; he was amazed.
“Everything is going to the dogs,” Uri explained. “Tablets of stone are being smashed, tablets of bronze melted down, columns are being demolished. They might well wish to set light to any archives as well. Scrolls nevertheless have some chance of surviving.”
It entered Salutius’s head to invite Uri into the house and introduce him to the family. But Uri made a face:
“I have no interest in families,” he said emphatically. “I’d rather go somewhere and have a drink.”
They went to the Far Side docks where a pulsing life went on among the new hutments and tall loading cranes working on a pulley system. Uri picked one of the more shaded terraces.
“Well?” he said, and Salutius smiled.
Caught up in his own thoughts, Salutius held his peace. He did not tender any thanks, nor did he pander to Uri; he was disconcerted and did not disguise it.
“Wine?” Uri asked him.
“I don’t usually drink.”
“Me neither.”
Consequently, they drank wine undiluted as the water that was brought to the table looked turbid.
“I earn good money,” said Uri. “I have heaps of work, and the more atrocious the pictures I paint, the more money I am paid. I paint whatever I’m asked: nymphs, satyrs, gods, monsters, glades, boats, an idyll or a battle scene or a Trojan horse…”
Salutius nodded. He did not object that Uri, despite being Jewish, daubed representations of the human form.
“Why specifically books, though?” he asked.
“I want to invest in Jewish rarities,” said Uri. “I have a hunch that anything Jewish will soon prove to be a rarity.”
Salutius pondered.
“Why don’t you buy jewels instead?” he asked. “They’re easier to shift.”
“I don’t want to make a business,” Uri said. “I would like to preserve something that would otherwise be lost.”
They sipped their wine; it was no better than the wine from Rhodes that Uri had once stored in the amphorae, not so far from this terrace.
“To give an example,” Uri said, “to this day in Alexandria there still stands a Jewish stele inscribed on which are all the rights of the Jews there stemming from the time of Augustus. It ought to be copied and brought over here.”
Salutius was taken aback.
“You don’t see the future in too bright a light,” he remarked.
“To me the entire basin of the Great Sea, along with all its coasts, just stinks,” said Uri. “Nowadays all the things I have seen are starting to cohere in my head. I managed to come through one calamity in Alexandria, and that stele also survived it, but it won’t survive the next one.”
“Why do you think that the trouble will strike Alexandria in particular?”
“Not just there — everywhere.”
They sipped their wine. Around them buzzed the clamor of cheerful life; there were lots of high-class ladies, seamen, dockers, seers, fortune-tellers, whores, tradesmen, staring pedestrians, street musicians, vendors, beggars.
“Rome as well?” Salutius checked.
Uri pondered.
“Maybe not so badly,” he said. “There are not many Jews here, and nowadays they’re cowed, so they’re not going to kick up any fuss. I have a pretty good idea how things are going on with your people here.”
“With us?”
It was an appropriate question; Uri nodded.
“With you Jews,” he confirmed. “I say my prayers in the morning and evening, I find it gratifying, but I am not a member of any congregation. I celebrate the Sabbath on my own; I have a bite to eat, stretch out, ruminate, and nod off to sleep. On Friday afternoon my wife comes over here to see her daughters and stays until Sunday. They don’t miss me; it’s enough to feed them with money. I also pay the didrachma; that’s Jewish enough for me. I can’t regrow a foreskin, but I might well do it if I could.”
Salutius posed the logical question:
“Have you become a Nazarene?”
“No,” said Uri. “I haven’t become blinded, though I’m not sure why; perhaps the Eternal One does not wish it.”
They sipped their wine. Around them merrily abounded senseless life.
“What’s your idea of how it would work?” Salutius asked.
“When I’ve got some money, I’ll bring it here and you’ll concern yourself with acquisitions. I don’t need any receipts, I don’t want to interfere in any way: you buy whatever you choose. At most I’ll give you advice, but you won’t have to accept it.”
“I won’t have to copy the stele?”
That was the first time a note of irony had crept into Salutius’s voice; Uri was delighted.
“No, dear boy,” he said. “You won’t have to.”
Salutius chuckled.
They ordered a new round of wine. Uri let Salutius pay this time. He was an odd character, quite out of place in a drinking place down by the harbor. He rapidly blinked his dark eyes, he had a thin face and thin lips, his eyes were deep set — a complete ascetic, the whole man, with long limbs and hairy hands. He was seated with his back bowed. A real bookworm, but then he had a good eye; he had not started reading out of necessity.
“To give you one example,” Salutius broke the silence, “there is the matter of the legacy of poor Honoratus.”
“Would you ever!”
“His house was robbed, needless to say. The Germanicus statue was carried off right away, and they also took his furniture, jewels, dining service, glassware… His family had scattered, the house was left empty… But so far as I know nobody needed his collection of scrolls… Philo’s entire library is still in his cellar, as well as a lot else that he collected in his younger days, when he was just an archisynagogos… He was already stealing back then.”
“Let’s buy them!”
“There’s no one to buy from.”
“What, then?”
“We can steal them,” Salutius suggested, “but I can’t cope with them on my own.”
Uri reached under his tunic and produced his money pouch, which with great difficulty he detached from a chain around his neck and offered it to Salutius.
“Hire men to do it,” he said.
Salutius accepted the pouch and weighed it up in his hand.
“I haven’t counted,” said Uri, “but it’ll be a good sum.”
Salutius was not sure where to hide the pouch, so Uri handed over the neck chain. Both pouch and neck chain disappeared under Salutius’s tunic.
Late that evening Uri made his way back from Far Side to the Via Nomentana both happy and half-drunk with the feeling that a heavy load had slipped from his shoulders.
That boy understands, he does.
He may not know it, but he understands.
I’m going to have a son.
It’s interesting that men have an instinct like that. To have a son. Those lunatics will find out one day that the Anointed in whom they pin their beliefs is actually the Creator’s own son.
Careful now, Uri cautioned himself, avoiding two drunks who were staggering along, clutching to each other. Just don’t lean too heavily on the kid. Don’t get too close; leave him his freedom. After all, he’s an adult.
In accordance with Nero’s plans, a site was marked out for a new imperial palace ornamented with parks, glades, and lakes, in front of which was quickly raised a colossal statue, something like one hundred feet high, of bronze covered with gold. The best master sculptors were unable to equal Phidias’s command of perspective, and it was only from a distance that it could be seen to have human form, but then it was not possible to view it from a distance on account of the nearby houses and a tall, multistory aqueduct, whereas seen from close at hand, from below, the head looked tiny and was dominated by the jaw. They haven’t got a clue, Uri decided smugly.