“What’s an alabarchos?” queried Iustus.
“The customs and excise chief,” Plotius answered.
Matthew tried to persuade the seemingly sympathetic Jewish captain to sail back to Alexandria via Caesarea, offering quite a substantial sum of money, but the captain spread his arms in a gesture of powerlessness: he sailed on a timetable, and he could not account for the four-day delay that such a detour would cause. It wouldn’t work, even if he could pick up a valuable cargo at Caesarea: there was room on the ship, but Judaea produced nothing that would be worth taking to Alexandria.
Matthew disputed that, whereupon the captain inquired why there was no regular boat traffic between Caesarea and Alexandria.
In Matthew’s opinion it was the excise rates in Alexandria, which were outrageously high and were exacted impudently on ships coming from Judaea.
The captain, being an Alexandrian Jewish patriot, held the view that this was proper; he had visited Jerusalem, and the two-drachma toll that they collected from every pilgrim was typical of the brazen extortion in Jerusalem. They made their living from fleecing pilgrims; a fee of two drachmas that was also collected for using a vessel of clean water, a mikveh, as though smaller coins were not in circulation over there, and anyone who is proven not to have ritually cleansed themselves for six days, which means twelve drachmas, is not permitted to enter Temple Square. Lodgings were also overpriced, because cheap rooms had to be booked at least a year in advance, and that was not possible for a sailor. Food was cheap, no argument there, but on the other hand it was lousy.
The indignant captain proposed that they come with him to Alexandria, and go from there over dry land to Judaea; he would take them on his ship cheaply, and the next day at that. Uri was keen to see the marvelous city of Alexandria, but Matthew did not take up the opportunity; in his view the delay would undermine their mission, and moreover he had never made the journey from Alexandria to Judaea by foot, nor did he wish to. He had no wish to ride a camel, and anyway he would not take the responsibility, because he had met people who had completed the journey with extreme difficulty and had come within a hair’s breadth of death. The Nile was unnavigable close to Alexandria. They needed to get to Nicopolis somehow and board a ship there. They would have to disembark at Thmuis and go east on foot. It was inconceivable that they would not pass through Heracleopolis and Pelusium, yet excise dues in those cities were undoubtedly high. Only at Pelusium would they be able to ford the Nile, and that was where the desert began; even at a forced march, it would take eight to ten days over arid land to reach Gaza — that is, if they did not die of thirst. Only a well-equipped military unit on iron rations or a major commercial caravan could take on the overland route from Alexandria to Judaea, not a delegation a few strong that was just delivering money.
Iustus was amazed that a navigable channel between the Nile and the port of Alexandria had not been constructed already.
“If even the Pharaohs did not build one,” Plotius ventured, “there can be only one reason.”
“And what would that be?” Iustus asked.
The others snickered, Uri included, because they knew the answer: it would have cost too much even for the Pharaohs who built the pyramids. Iustus took offense and spoke to no one for the rest of the day.
Alexandros maintained that the Pharaohs had the money to make the Nile navigable up to the seacoast, but they did not want to make it easy for their enemies, by capturing the seacoast, to penetrate into the heart of the country. It was an opinion that surprised Uri, and he looked pensively at Alexandros, the merchant.
The next day, Matthew went off early “to arrange matters”; the other six knocked around aimlessly on the pier. Hilarus, the teacher, took the line that they too ought to do something because, to their shame, they were going to miss Passover in Jerusalem.
Matthew is a great man, but he ought to be pressing harder for us to set sail, he thought.
In Plotius’s opinion, they had only lost three days, and, since they had set off early, they were still safely within their two-week margin of error, even allowing for six Sabbaths altogether.
Hilarus proposed that they choose from among themselves a deputy leader who would give orders when Matthew was not around.
Alexandros, being a seasoned traveler, immediately volunteered, with Iustus taking his side. Valerius recommended Hilarus. Everyone now turned expectantly to Uri, and he sought eye contact with Plotius, who was staring into the distance.
The tension between them suddenly mounted; Uri did not understand it. If he were to come out for Hilarus or Alexandros, Plotius could do nothing to block the selection of a deputy leader besides plumping for the other, in which case there would be a tie and nothing would happen. But then why choose a deputy leader when he would have no more idea where to start than any of the others? Besides, Matthew would turn up soon anyway.
Plotius broke the silence: he announced that he was going off to think until the evening. Hilarus started yelling about what would happen if a ship were suddenly ready to leave; where would Plotius be found?
“There will be no ship ready to go by evening,” said Plotius, “because even if a boat arrives, it will have to be unloaded then loaded, and it will not leave before tomorrow morning.”
On that note, he left and walked off along the pier toward town.
They looked at Uri for the decisive vote. He sighed and said that he too wanted to think it over, and he hurried after Plotius.
Plotius was strolling slowly, as if he had been waiting. When Uri caught up, he nodded. They vanished together among the houses.
“It’s remarkable how many morons there are in the world,” Plotius declared as they passed through an alley. “One can’t give them their way on everything, but it’s best not to pick fights with them either. They can’t help being morons; the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, wills it so.”
Uri was amazed to hear such a thing from Plotius, the joiner, who had barely spoken a single word the entire trip, yet Plotius was speaking directly to him, who had likewise held his tongue for the most part.
They took a seat at the back of a tavern; they did not settle down on the street, like the locals, because the sun was shining fiercely. Plotius did not mince words. He came straight out and asked Uri how he managed to get himself squeezed into the delegation as a supernumerary at the last minute.
Uri told him frankly that the whole thing was a gift that his father had extracted from Agrippa in return for an immense loan, but he was glad about it because it suggested that his father still considered him his son, even though he had poor eyesight and was useless at everything. Plotius nodded. He had noticed that Uri did not see well but thought he could still make it as a joiner. Then Uri told the story about falling off the roof on his first day of work, at which Plotius chortled: only someone trying very hard would fall off. Uri protested, but Plotius brushed that aside. The mind knows what we want better than we do.
Plotius ordered wine and set down a pitcher, and again Uri protested: he didn’t drink. Plotius urged him on, so Uri took a sip. The wine tasted good; it was heavily honeyed.
“Have you got your own money?” Uri asked with surprise.
“Everybody has some,” Plotius admitted, “except you.”
Uri pondered for a moment, then he asked what Plotius had meant when he called him the supernumerary.
“The decision is made weeks in advance,” he said, “as to who will be in the delegation. Not a word was said about you till the very last moment. We couldn’t really figure out why a feeble young boy had been foisted on us.”
Uri quietly sipped he wine.