Uri held his tongue.
“That’s what Kainis dreamed up for you,” said Posides, “because she’s extremely bright, brighter than even me — giving you a monopoly on the importation of Jewish oil.”
Uri was dizzy.
Importing ritually pure oil from Judaea for a Jewish Roman population that had grown to two hundred thousand! A huge business! It ran through his head that an amphora of oil cost one drachma in Judaea, and in Rome it sold for eight or nine times that price. About half of that would go to procurement and transport costs, but the rest was clear profit. Many millions of sesterces per year. In the first year one would have to invest it all, but any banker would willingly provide a loan.
Uri held his tongue, just sighing.
“Who had the rights up till now?” he asked.
Kainis chuckled. Uri startled: it was the first time she had laughed sincerely.
“What did I tell you!” she spoke triumphantly to Posides, who growled like a dog.
“He’ll still want it!” he growled. “You’ll see!”
“Who holds the rights now?” Uri repeated the question.
“What do you care?” barked Posides. “I have on me solicitations from Jews for that very thing — three of them. They’ve shelled out to us in advance a total of forty million sesterces!”
“If I’m granted it, then I’ll have to pay them back, won’t I?”
“No way!” exclaimed Posides. “I’m not talking about loans! Not even backhanders! The money was given as a pure token of devotion; they know very well that if they are not granted that monopoly specifically they’ll get another one instead and purely because by sheer chance their names come to our mind…”
“You won’t harm anyone,” said Kainis. “Anyone who has money can invest it in something anyway.”
Uri remained quiet. The blood was starting to rush to his head.
“I don’t want any monopoly from you,” he said. “I didn’t fall in love with you so that one day you would make me a millionaire.”
There was a silence.
“I have an invention,” he went on. “It’s a lifting device. There are drawings, but they’re in my library, somewhere in the possession of your people… I could sketch it if you give me a pen and papyrus… It could replace the work of hundreds. I didn’t come here on that account but if you would buy it, that would make me very happy.”
Kainis nudged Posides on the head, and he scrambled to his feet and rolled out of the room.
There was silence.
“Was this wonder palace worth the death of two million people?” Uri asked with a nod of his head all around them to indicate what he was referring to.
“If that is the price…”
“It’s a pretty steep price!”
“They would have died whether or not we were around.”
“That’s not true.”
Kainis’s face darkened, her wonderful eyes narrowed; she jumped up.
“You weren’t born a slave,” she said shrilly. “You don’t have the faintest idea about people!”
There was a silence. The guards rushed in, at which Kainis angrily dismissed them and they rushed out again.
Uri did not take fright, merely felt a profound sorrow and pity.
“All the same,” he murmured softly, “you would have been better off living with me.”
Kainis held her peace; she was pacing in the hall. Uri watched her: from a distance she still had the figure of a young girl. She had borne no children.
She was a miracle the Eternal One had created to ruin, and sooner than kill.
My everlasting love out of whom grew the master of Rome.
They remained hushed until Posides returned with a wax tablet and stylus.
“It’ll soon be ready,” said Uri, sketching the lift. Underneath linked by a tube there were two cylinders, one open, upon the other a weight with a suction pump connected to the latter (he wrote underneath the word “vacuum”). He also designated the position after the suction, with the weight being lifted.
He handed it to Posides, who took it and gave it to Kainis, who snatched a look.
“You can leave,” she said.
Posides bowed and glided out.
Kainis resumed her place on the stool, sitting with a straight back as before, laying the lovely, long, thin fingers of her hands in her lap, looking at Uri with her fathomless gaze.
“Clever,” said Kainis. “Air is like water; it’s just that one can’t see it… But what blacksmith can produce cylinders as tight as that?”
“I know some good sculptors,” said Uri, “who are able to make high-precision castings.”
They fell silent.
“You’ve grown ugly,” said Kainis. “Your mouth looks terrible like that with all your teeth gone… but your personality is unchanged. I liked your personality a great deal.”
“You were the only love of my life,” said Uri.
“Good,” said Kainis, “that’s how it goes. Maybe in another life.”
“There is no other life.”
“No resurrection?”
“That least of all.”
“I never thought that you’d become a Nazarene at the time you were expelled,” Kainis noted.
So, she had known about it. Uri was thrilled.
“Ordinary Jews are just as vile as anyone else; the Nazarenes are crazy,” he said. “I’m not even a Jew any more.”
“You never were,” said Kainis. “I’m not an empress either; I just sham it. Titus isn’t an emperor; he’s only shamming it. His son Titus is also only shamming it. We do it to stop being bored. The other son, Domitianus, isn’t shamming; he is going to commit wholesale carnage.”
“Your own Titus did that too.”
“That’s true, but he only did what all of them after Tiberius wanted. Vitellius wanted that, so did Caligula, so did Nero… Titus actually did it. Someone would manage it, anyway.”
Uri looked at Kainis’s wrinkled face.
“How much we would have quarreled!” said Uri wistfully. “How we would have yelled at each other! It would have been superb!”
Kainis laughed.
“So what is going to happen to my library?” Uri asked.
Kainis grew solemn.
“Our man is writing his work, taking from the source materials whatever he needs, then he burns them. After all, he’s a historian.”
Uri nodded: that was indeed the way history was usually written.
“What did you want to write about?” Kainis asked.
“Something about the Nazarenes.”
Kainis nodded.
“It’s a simple religion,” she said. “It will win through.”
Uri was astounded.
“You know about it too?”
“If you know,” Kainis said heatedly, “why wouldn’t I? Anything that calls for insight we know just the same. I’m in the habit of conversing with you in my imagination… You give such fine answers… joking, teasing…”
She left off.
Tears welled up in Uri’s eyes, and he turned away.
“It’s a dangerous religion,” he said. “It’s going to cause hideous problems.”
“Yes,” said Kainis. “It’s a brilliant idea that there should be someone, a human, who was resurrected and it’s necessary to wait until he comes back again. It’s also a good touch for it to be immaterial who’s a Jew and who isn’t — anyone can be chosen, the only thing which has to be accepted is the resurrection… You don’t need to be able to do anything, neither read nor write, nor does one have to stick to any prescriptions, and anyone can become a priest, everybody is sacred who believes in the Resurrected One, and by doing so one they will gain everlasting life! There aren’t even any ceremonies! They eat, praise his name, they are together, and that’s the solution to loneliness, to immortality… There is no religion more simple-minded than that on the market! Unholy strife will come of this within the Jewish world; that’s going to be the real war of the Jews, and a madness will be set loose out of Judaism, a madness of the losers, and it is going to prevail, because the losers are in the majority… If only Spartacus had a religion like that! The only trouble they will have is that he’s not going to come again, he doesn’t want to, and they are impatient — that is what will sow disorder among them…”