That was before the long tide of African prosperity had finally withdrawn, and Caesarea became the last refuge of a dozen other cities. Now, the colonnades had been closed up with crude brickwork, the pavements behind made into habitations for the poor. The fountains were dry and the basins choked with rubbish. Every ten yards or so, the ancient statues – some dressed in all the opulence of merchants made good, some nude – still held their plinths. Whatever paint and gold leaf had been applied to heighten their semblance to the living was gone. It was replaced by the grime of many open fires and by white streams of shit from the birds. The nudes had been disfigured to accord with modern ideas of propriety. But they all still looked from their sightless eyes on the broken-down jumble their city had become.
I picked my way carefully across the uneven and impacted dust that now coated the paving stones of the long street. Its smooth line had been broken by a row of makeshift houses that wandered down the centre and forced all traffic into six-foot passageways on either side. By much shoving and bumping, Edward was able to force the wheelbarrow through the crowded ways.
The central square was an improvement on Cartenna. At least all the buildings were still standing, and there were a few signs of a more organised civic life. Looking at the shabby crowds, though, it was plain that the public baths hadn’t been open for some while past. I rather think that, of all the hundreds there who pushed and shouted as they went about their business, we were the cleanest.
‘Don’t look at those young men with your mouth open,’ I whispered at Edward. ‘You’re supposed to be from Carthage. It doesn’t do to behave like some barbarian in a border fort.’ But, since Cartenna didn’t really count, this was the first city he’d ever seen. To me, it was just another disappointing slum, interesting only for a spot of highly selective viewing of ancient sights. There was, for example – or once had been – a column put up by Hadrian with a trilingual inscription that might say something about Punic. If, however, I thought myself behind his eyes, I could see how it appeared to Edward. The largest human settlement he’d probably seen didn’t contain more than a few hundred people or above one brick building, if that. For him, this place was everything Hrothgar had promised him when he’d been forced to hand over all direction of his life for purposes he wasn’t given to understand. He stared round and round at the people in their mean finery, and looked at the huge, solid buildings that had come down to us from better days. And – fair’s fair – clean up both people and buildings, forget the surrounding streets, and the place wouldn’t have looked half bad.
‘I think we should try again to force some water into poor Wilfred,’ I suggested.
Edward nodded and reached for the water skin. He was paying rather less attention to us, though, than to a couple of the local whores who’d drifted over for a look at the newcomers. To me, every bloated wrinkle screamed contagion. But, again, I was a jaded old me. They doubtless appeared otherwise to a boy who hadn’t managed sex with anyone but himself in over two months. I thought of the money hanging from his belt and decided to take charge.
‘Come, Edward,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s no good served in dawdling here. If we don’t get him under cover soon, poor Wilfred will dry up in this sun.’ I turned to someone close by who was trying to sell dried fruit from a bag.
‘I shall be grateful,’ I said in my assumed accent, ‘to know the whereabouts of the Jewish district.’
The man scowled and spat. Then he pointed at the largest church in the square.
Silly me! I thought. Of course, the Jews would be clustered behind the main church. It was the best place for bribing the priests when the mob turned ugly. I peered in the dazzling sun for evidence of an alley or some other exit from the square.
Chapter 22
When I began frequenting them as a very young man, I always used to find Jewish districts alien. I suppose that sounds rich coming from someone who was a barbarian until he was nearly twenty, and who never quite fitted into the ways of the Empire. But if I didn’t believe in either, I’d come to regard the Christian Faith and the Old Faith that preceded it as inseparable from civilisation. The churches, the crosses, the statues, the converted temples – they were all part of the furniture of everyday life. It was a shock to find that the Jews had none of these things. More than this, though, it was the dark eyes and the darker beards, the words and gestures that might have one meaning for outsiders and another between the Jews themselves. And even when long familiarity and the joint acquisition of wealth had made them almost normal, I could never forget, as a servant of the Empire, that I was dealing with a people who were in the Empire, but who could never regard themselves entirely – not, at least, since Christianity was established – as of the Empire.
Stepping into the Jewish district of Caesarea was in one sense a homecoming. In another, the long absence from any Jewish place of residence brought back that early feeling of its being a world parallel to but separate from the one that had been mine.
If hardly spotless, though, this place was a sight better than the streets we’d now left. There was no longer need to look out for pyramids of dog shit or puddles of congealed saliva, or for the omnipresent cutpurses. The streets here were decidedly quieter. But what had brought me here? I told myself for the dozenth time that I was mad. I hobbled forward, Edward pushing the wheelbarrow and himself behind me. He was a strong boy – no doubt of that. However, even he was now wilting in the powerful noonday sun.
Then, as we turned a corner, I came upon an old man. He couldn’t have been my age, or anything approaching that. But he was old and shrivelled. Sitting in the middle of the street, surrounded by boys of about Edward’s age, he was scowling into a linen roll he’d arranged on his lap, and droning away at them in one of the Eastern languages. I stopped and leaned against one of the high, blank walls of the houses. I listened hard. I’d thought at first it was Hebrew. But this old Jew wasn’t so learned in his people’s ancient language. It was Aramaic, and he was reading out something nonsensical from one of the more recent prophets. It was no worse than anything you hear in church every Sunday. But even if you aren’t a believer, foreign religions always sound more stupid than your own.
No one noticed me, and I stood there quite a while, trying to keep a smile off my face as the boys repeated the bottom-wiping instructions one phrase at a time, and copied the gestures that accompanied them. Then, without waking, Wilfred moved slightly in the wheelbarrow and groaned. The old man looked up and glared at us.
‘Your sort isn’t allowed in here!’ he cried indignantly in Latin. He stood up and clutched the roll to his chest. ‘Get out now, or we’ll have the magistrates on you.’ He bent slowly down, his hand reaching for a stone.
‘I’ll go where I fucking please, you bag of apikoros dirt!’ I replied in Aramaic.
He shrank back as if I’d thrown lime in his face. I don’t know if it was because I’d spoken in his own language, or because I’d used the worst insult one Jew can give another – as if, mind you, calling someone a follower of the Great and Wondrous Epicurus, Master of All Wisdom, can be other than a compliment. But I’d shut the old man up. He glanced nervously down at his linen roll, and crushed it harder against his chest.