“Were you beaten?”
“And how! It was the only language I understood.”
“And did you hate the people who beat you?”
“You bet! And they hate me now that I have become a slave driver. But while I was a galley slave I paid no thought to the possibility that those who were my slave drivers hated me. Now I know they did, because I also hate them. That’s how it has to be, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to lash them.”
Uri turned away and looked out to sea with narrowed eyes. It was a steely blue with white flecks. Somewhere far off glistened the green-brownish colors of a line blurring the horizon, like a mosaic studded with granules — that might be dry land. They were not yet far from the shore.
“We hug closely to the coast of Italia to start with,” said the driver politely, “then we cut across and sail by the Dalmatian coast to the Greek islands until we touch Crete, after which we sail on farther to the Syrian coast, where we veer left. If we get a favorable wind we won’t stop till we get to Crete. Three weeks for the whole voyage, if not less.”
Uri looked at the driver’s ear — or rather the piercing in it, which had closed. I should have spotted it earlier, he thought.
The slave driver’s presence was onerous but at the same time disturbing.
“Were you born a slave?” he asked.
“No, not at all, sir,” the driver protested. “We Jews, don’t you know, are not born slaves.”
Uri, shamefaced, stayed silent. He had no idea how things were in Judaea.
“I had a family, even had work,” the slave driver said. “I was a carpenter, but the devil got into me, and I killed my wife and her mother; I smashed their brains in with a hatchet. I also wanted to kill my children, the devil had such a hold on me, but I was wrestled to the ground. The court sentenced me to servitude for life. Though they would have been entitled to have me stoned to death. I’m grateful to the court, sir, because they spared my life, though of course I have the added punishment that until the end of my days I shall grieve my unhappy little ones, six of them altogether, who are left to fend for themselves in the world without mother and father…”
Uri was nauseated to hear the slave driver’s willing confession, though he had no idea quite why. Maybe the tone in which the man had told the tale was somehow disgusting.
“When you became a slave did it not enter your mind to kill yourself?”
The driver was brought up short, surprised by the question.
“No, sir,” he said after a pause. “It never entered my mind. I was possessed by the devil. He did what I did, not me. I can’t help it, sir. It was the demon that they punished, not me. The demon has left me since then, I have the feeling, but I am being punished because I let him take hold of me… That’s my crime, sir: I was not watching out for the devil, and allowed him into my soul.”
Uri looked at the slave driver’s troubled eye. He was looking into the distance past Uri’s unpierced ears.
“You know that you will never be able to be free,” said Uri. “Is it worth living in slavery?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the driver, his voice recovered. “A person doesn’t think; he lives.”
“Something must keep you going, all the same,” Uri insisted.
“That could be, sir. Indeed, it very likely does. But as far as killing myself is concerned, there wouldn’t have been the means to do so. But then again, it didn’t even enter my head. When the slave drivers started to lash, and they started at once so that I’d know my place, all that I had in my mind was that one day I would be a slave driver. I would be a slave driver and repay with interest. Not to them, that’s not possible, but to the oarsmen. And I pay it back now. Yes, sir, that’s how it was. And that’s how it has turned out, sir.”
Uri screwed his eyes up. The slave driver was standing in front of him. If I were to slap him across the face, thought Uri, no one would chide me, and he wouldn’t dare hit me back.
Strange.
Both of us are identical creatures of God, and yet not the same. What exactly did the Creator have in mind?
“That is what drives them as well,” the driver said, gesturing down toward the slaves with his head. “You can’t row year in, year out, without a person wanting something. They want to become drivers — all of them! If not now, then next year, in ten years, twenty years. Because being a slave driver is good: better to beat than be beaten. To thrash someone is freedom itself, sir. Anyone who doesn’t want that, and doesn’t want it hard enough, is dead in a few weeks — even the strongest of men, if he does not want at any cost to become a slave driver. If the spirit of revenge does not live in him.”
Uri turned away again and looked at the sea. If he looked to the left, he could still see the greenish-brown spots of the coast, and if he looked to the right, the steely blue of the sea. Who would ever suppose that at the far end of the endless expanse of water lay Africa?
They had been sailing for a day and a half when, to their left, on the far-off shore huge lights flared up and the sounds of muffled clamor reached them. The companions gathered on the port side of the deck and gazed toward the shore. Uri also stared, his eyes screwed up, through the fingers of one hand. He was not concerned that in addition to his companions the sailors could also see how shortsighted he was. Uri saw a mass of little colored fireflies in the distance, with the small circlets of light touching one another.
“Today is the anniversary of shipping,” said Matthew touchingly. “Today’s the eighth of March.”
“Pity we didn’t stay in Syracusa for another few days,” Plotius ventured. “We might have seen some real wonders.”
Uri was not the only one who did not know about the anniversary of shipping; neither did Hilarus and Iustus, though Valerius, the hyperetes, did know.
“It’s not customary to set sail till the eighth of March,” he said, “unless it’s in an emergency.”
“All year round, in other words,” Matthew laughed. “Commercial shipping is under way the whole winter.”
“Ah, but they don’t carry passengers,” Valerius countered. “And that’s still hazardous from now right up till the twenty-seventh of May, when the Pleiades rise into the sky. One can sail safely from then until Arcturus rises…”
“On September the twenty-fourth,” said Matthew.
“Yes, on September the twenty-fourth the equinoctial gales blow in, on the fifth of October rain-bringing Capricorn rises, and around October thirteenth you have Taurus, the bull. In November, the Pleiades go down, and that marks the end of the sailing year.”
“Military galleys and rapid gunboats run all year,” noted Plotius.
“At least one thing is true out of all that,” said Matthew with a smile. “On the eighth of March, in every town along the coast they will be celebrating the anniversary of shipping. In Syracusa on these occasions there are usually gladiatorial contests, they hold chariot races, and performances are staged in the amphitheater,” and here he turned to Uri, “the place where the amusing philosopher spoke. One eighth of March I saw a play in that theater; they were performing a comedy of some sort. Quite immoral it was, and much else besides — dances that it is not seemly to relate… I did indeed see some real wonders…”
They all looked with longing toward the coast, where immense lights must have been burning if they could see them, and real wonders were no doubt happening among the celebrating throng.
“So why did we set sail when it was still perilous to do so?” Hilarus asked in alarm.
“That’s right,” said Plotius gravely. “Over the last two days there was every chance of our being wrecked. It’s a miracle we’re still alive.”
They laughed at Hilarus’s jitters, Uri included.
“Will we be following the coastline all the way?” Iustus asked, perhaps in the hope that if the ship were wrecked he would somehow manage to flounder ashore.