The Deadliest Lie

by June Trop

  Still other Jews had been hauled into the marketplace to be stoned, pummeled, torn limb from limb, or burned alive. Their properties were burned, their corpses were desecrated, and their women, under threat of torture, were forced to eat the flesh of swine. One night, when Noah and Amram were attending a meeting to organize an appeal to Caligula, a gang of thugs trapped Leah and the girls in their home, smashed their shutters, and hurled volleys of lit torches through their windows to set their furnishings ablaze. Then they mocked their cries as the smoke suffocated them and the hissing flames devoured them.

  “Don’t you think it’s only right that your father remember your mother and sisters and pay his respects to Philo?” Papa’s goading Noah was useless. Noah was too tame, too morally fastidious to ever raise his voice, let alone to my father, let alone on Shabbat.

  “Philo may fancy himself the great advocate, but he accomplished nothing for our people. All he did was truckle to Caligula, tagging along with his delegation to Caligula’s seaside villa, begging for a hearing. Instead, Caligula treated the five of them like a theatrical farce. We had to wait for Claudius’s ascension to have our rights reaffirmed.”

  I got the feeling Noah was playing to Papa’s disdain for Philo more than challenging his father’s admiration for him. And when he continued, I was sure of it.

  “Besides, it’s useless to dwell on the past. I’d rather look ahead to my marriage to Miriam and our rearing a family.”

  More ammunition for Papa.

  After a considerable silence, I heard someone, probably Papa, open a fresh amphora of wine, dilute it with water in the crater, a two-handled earthenware basin, and ladle it from the crater into crystal goblets.

  Next, Papa started on Binyamin. “Your geometry tutor says you’re absent even when you’re present.”

  “Are you flattering me for my talent as a phantom, Papa?” I could picture Binyamin’s full lips curling in a faint sneer. He also knew how to bait and snare.

  “I’m saying you need to work at your studies so you can make something of yourself. I’ve already given up any hope of your helping Miriam and Noah run the business.”

  “Good. I had no intention of counting money for the rest of my life.”

  I could feel the fragile peace of Shabbat crumbling.

  “So what is your intention? To become a beggar? A pickpocket? Because I won’t continue to support you much longer.” Papa’s raspy voice had climbed to a higher octave.

  “That’s fine with me. I want to enroll in the ludus at Capua to train as a gladiator.”

  My brother has always aimed high. The ludus at Capua, the oldest in the Empire, is the school Spartacus made famous. Still, Binyamin is an exceptional athlete, fierce in combative sports like boxing, wrestling, and pankration, a strenuous combination of both that ends only when one competitor is either unconscious or dead, unless he manages to surrender first.

  But Binyamin, indifferent to the slime and stink of his own wounds, would never surrender. Even as a baby, he never cried. Once, when we were hardly more than toddlers, he escaped from Iphigenia and ran into the street. Before she could catch him, a startled mule kicked him in the chest and sent him to the pavement bleeding. Instead of crying, he tried to run after the mule to kick it back. Today, his noble body, muscular neck, and haughty eyes bristle with power. His flattened but still aggressive nose and the threadlike scar that wriggles across his left cheek only confirm his experience as a formidable combatant.

  I could picture blotches of anger spreading from Papa’s neck to his hairline.

  “A gladiator? Are you crazy? How do you expect to get to Capua? First you’d have to book passage on a grain ship to Rome, apply for an exit visa, and pay the port official in Alexandria for that visa. You’d have to pack your own provisions, cutlery, crockery, a makeshift bed and tent, even your own piss pot. You’d have to wait around on a rat-infested pier, maybe for weeks, until the ship was ready to sail. Then you’d have to amuse yourself on deck for at least a couple of months—that’s if there’re no storms, G-d forbid, and the sailors have clear skies.”

  Papa paused for effect.

  “On second thought, you could easily amuse yourself onboard. You’d pass the days scheming with every swindler and shooting dice with every trickster, and you’d pass the nights discharging your passion with every whore.” Papa forced a laugh, but it sounded false, more like a bray. When he continued, he spoke slowly. His voice was shaking, but his body was motionless.

  “And that’s just to get to Rome. After that, you’d have to make your way overland to Capua, walking or riding on a hired mule from filthy inn to filthy inn along the entire length of the Via Appia. For this, you’d need even more gear: heavy shoes, a broad-brimmed hat, a woolen or leather paenula fitted with a hood to protect you from the rain, and a birrus brittanicus, a long woolen cloak also with a hood, to protect you from the cold. How do you expect to pay for all that?”

  Didn’t Papa understand that the logistics were our least concern? But, then again, he was just warming up.

  “Don’t you realize, Binyamin, I’ve given you the best of everything, in this, the most splendid city in the world? That you’re on a path to ruin? That once you sign a contract and take the oath, you relinquish everything: your citizenship, your freedom, the ownership of your very life? You’ll be branded like the lowliest animal and subject to every humiliation. You’ll long for the days when your body belonged only to you. And you’ll be corralled to breathe the stench and share the lice of the Empire’s most wretched criminals, slaves, and prisoners of war.”

  I hugged my ribs to quell the frisson pulsing through me.

  “No, Papa, you’re wrong.” Binyamin hammered out his words in a cold, brittle staccato, but then his voice took on a zealous tone. “There are more free gladiators than ever in Alexandria, and that’s because gladiators are heroes, showered in every city of the empire with fame, fortune, and the company of eager women.”

  Binyamin might have been thinking of Sergius, the gladiator who’d taken refuge here in Alexandria with Eppia, the senator’s wife, who’d given up everything to be with him. But while the love for a gladiator can cut across all social boundaries, most people still regard them, even those most admired in the arena, as outcasts.

  “Binyamin, you’ve reached a new low. You’re nothing but a reprobate, a disgrace to your mother’s memory, and a stain on our family’s name.”

  I imagined the three of them: my father, his nostrils flared, his lips compressed into a thin line; my brother, his scar blanched against an empurpled face, his eyes glazed and narrowed to hostile slits; and Noah, embarrassed and alarmed, the fine hairs of his polished brow clinging to glossy beads of perspiration. Then I heard two claps in rapid succession, each followed by the clatter of shattering pottery and the tinkle of showering smithereens. That racket could mean only one thing, that my brother had hurled his leather sandals at my father’s collection of antique Etruscan vases.

  Chapter 3

  Friday (Shabbat) Evening

  I WELCOMED AMRAM at the carved oak entry doors of our limestone townhouse, his yellow face more cadaverous than usual, his stoop more pronounced. Ushering him into the atrium, I seated him on a teak bench among the planters beside the pool. Serving him a silver goblet of pomegranate wine mixed with honey, I hoped to drive away any despondent memories seeing Philo might have aroused and refresh him from having walked from the Great Synagogue in the Bruchium Quarter (the Palace Area) to our house in the Jewish Quarter.

  Although we have many synagogues throughout the city, none surpass the size and splendor of the Great Synagogue. This double-colonnaded basilica, modeled after the Jerusalem Temple, boasts seventy-one thrones of gold to correspond to the seventy-one elders of the Great Sanhedrin, and a sanctuary so vast that on the High Holy Days the sexton has to wave a flag to signal the thousands of us when to
say Amen. My neck cramps just watching him as he stands on the wooden platform above the rest of us who are pressed together in our finery. And my eyes squint as I face east gazing at the dazzling gold and silver threads on the richly embroidered red curtain that covers the Ark. Dulled by the heat, the drone of the sermons, and the rustle of skirts, I feel my head throb and my stomach lurch when the scent of sweat on metallic jewelry clashes with the sweet-smelling pomades, the exotic perfumes, and the fetid breath of dowagers chattering through their rotting teeth.

  Still the Synagogue is more than a house of prayer. It’s the very center of our community life, the seat of educational and cultural programs and our religious court, the place where Jews come for advice about settling here, and where the members of our various craft associations come to socialize and discuss their business concerns along the airy colonnades of its central hall.

  Aside from the Jewish Quarter, which is an exclusively Jewish neighborhood, a substantial number of Jews live to our west in the Bruchium Quarter among the city’s Greeks. Studded with palaces and gardens as well as the city’s grandest institutions and public buildings, the Bruchium Quarter embraces the Great Harbor, a circular bay about a mile and a half across. This larger and more eastern of our two harbors is both a public harbor and the port for Roman warships, with an inner harbor for the royal yachts.

  In the early morning, when we were kids, Binyamin and I would rush a mule cart and climb over its tailgate to hitch a ride toward the Great Harbor. Binyamin would go first, vaulting into the cart with a somersault, but I’d occasionally lose my perch and tumble onto my buttocks in the middle of the fiery pavement, sometimes on a pillow of spilled grain but just as often on a pile of fresh horse dung. Binyamin would toss handfuls of fodder at me from the scuttle the driver keeps for his mule and further embarrass me with his guffaws until the tide of clip-clopping traffic and the parade of peddlers hauling their handcarts eclipsed him.

  Once we’d reach the harbor, I’d admire the curving shoreline, inhale the breath of the sea, and lick its brine off my lips. I’d listen to the ships groan and creak in synchrony with the tide and time my breathing to coincide with its rhythm. I’d follow the gulls, some gliding on the wind high above their shadow, others riding the iron-colored swells or swooping below the surface to return with a silvery fish. And I’d watch the wind darken the water and kick up whitecaps.

  Binyamin would watch the warships split the sea as they glided into the harbor. Smaller, lighter, and swifter than the sluggish hulks the Ptolemies built and the clumsy war galleys Mark Antony commanded, these biremes, each with its two levels of oars on each side, its large square sail, and its pointed prow, maneuvered with an agility that would fascinate Binyamin for hours.

  The smaller and more western of the two harbors, the Eunostos (meaning The Port of Good Return), is our major port for the exchange of goods with the cities of the Mediterranean, the interior of Africa, and the Orient. Like the Great Harbor, it also has an inner harbor, a small, square artificial port called the Kibotos (meaning the Box). A canal across the western section of the city connects the Kibotos to Lake Mareotis, a huge tidal pool to our immediate south that was formed and is maintained by the gentle flooding of the Nile. During the summer, Amram would take Noah, Binyamin, and me for a daytrip beginning on a ship leaving the Kibotos and passing through the canal to serve the string of ports along the lake’s marshy banks. I’d watch the sky slide by, listen to the water slap the sides of the ship, and feel the breeze ruffle my hem, tickle the back of my neck, and tangle my hair, all the while imagining miniature villages of fish living in stone palaces beneath the shallows.

  When we’d get off at a port, we’d explore the town and then sail back on a different ship, but not before Amram had a chance to taste the local wine mulled with sugar and cinnamon. We’d share a basket of fresh apricots, goat cheese, and olives; and we’d watch the glassmakers, brewers, linen weavers, or papyrus-makers in one of the waterfront factories.

  I remember seeing the papyrus-makers: the dusty, walnut-faced workers jabbering away in their gravelly voices, their hands a blur as their needles split the plant stems into strips, the longer and thinner the better. Others busily wove the strips into crisscross-patterned sheets on boards kept damp with muddy water from the Nile. Next, they trimmed the edges of the sheets, pressed out the water, dried them in the sun, and pasted them together side by side with a vinegar-smelling mixture. The last workers then wound the whole length, about fifteen to twenty feet, on a freshly-cut wooden dowel to make a roll about six inches in diameter that any student, scholar, scribe, broker, or merchant in the city could buy. The spicy scent of the freshly-cut wood and the moldy smell of the old sawdust clung to my clothes and filled my nostrils long into that afternoon.

  Amram explained to us how these modest factories—scores of them speckle the lake’s shoreline—maintain our position as the literary center of the world. No wonder. The sheets and rolls are so perfectly uniform that anyone would be proud to own them. But Noah was impressed by the sheets made from the center of the stem.

  “When I grow up,” he boasted, “that’s the only kind of papyrus I’ll buy. I won’t write on anything but the smoothest sheets.”

  If we’d gotten an early start, we’d ride a mule-drawn wagon into the countryside to get a glimpse of the lavish estates, many of them owned by retired legionnaires. I’d pretend to be an explorer commissioned to recover the artifacts of a lost civilization while Binyamin would pretend to be a legionnaire, no doubt a senior centurion commanding his cohort in battle. As a Roman citizen, he’d have been eligible for the legion, but the term of service is twenty-five years, too long a commitment for a boy to consider. So he decided to become a gladiator instead.

  Lost in the memories of my childhood while Amram sipped his wine, I refocused on him when he put his goblet down on the bench and struggled to unwrap his himation. Underneath it he wore a rumpled tunic of bleached linen decorated with a double blue stripe darned into the material and running down its center front and back. Like most men, he wore it knee-length, fastened at the shoulder with a fibula. He’d girded his at the waist with a heavy leather belt that bunched the extra fabric around his fleshless frame.

  “A peaceful Shabbat, Miriam,” he said after a deep sigh and a long blink over his filmy gray eyes. He’s been punctuating his sentences like that since the Pogrom, since its sadness pinched his lips, engraved his forehead, and hung his skin in loose folds along the sides of his mouth.

  Despite his greeting, I had to look away when I saw his wizened hands, each finger hardly more than a string of bones. Before taking hold of his goblet again, poor Amram tried repeatedly to brush away the trail of wine stains he’d dribbled onto his tunic. My pity and impatience colliding, I only wanted to still his hands.

  To cover my irritation, I asked, “How was Philo?”

  His countenance enlivened as soon as he heard my question.

  “He’s getting old like the rest of us, Miriam. He’s almost seventy by now, but he still holds himself upright, and he still participates in every aspect of city life. People see the cuff of his silver beard, the arch of his drooping mustache, and the zeal in his ascetic eyes everywhere. He’s at the Great Synagogue, the festivals and banquets, the theater and the games, and, of course, the chariot races, which are his favorite.”

  I could hardly believe I was listening to Amram. His voice was robust now, full of pride, as if Philo were his father. When he expanded his chest and raised his chin, I could see that a clear moisture had washed away the film in his eyes.

  He paused for a moment and closed his eyes. When he opened them and started to speak again, his shift in position told me he’d recalled something about Philo and chariot racing.

  “Remember when Philo wrote that column excoriating the reckless fans who, in their excitement, smashed the barriers and charged onto the track? Not only were so many trampled
to death, but they triggered a riot.”

  Amram was referring to the recent carnage in the hippodrome. That’s the stadium outside and just east of our city walls. It had once been a mere field, groomed for racing and surrounded by a raised bank for spectators. But the Romans elaborated the site. They built around the elongated oval track an immense stone structure with graduated tiers for seating a hundred thousand spectators. Then they added awnings to shade the wealthy and a protective barrier between the spectators and the professional racing teams that now dominate the sport.

  Before the Roman occupation, chariot racing was, like all sports in the Greek tradition, strictly for the pleasure of competing. Papa tells of our paternal great-grandfather, Binyamin ben Jacob, who was an Olympic champion not only in chariot racing but four years later in the grueling pentathlon. Perhaps Binyamin inherited his athletic prowess from his namesake. But today the races, like all the games, are rowdy spectacles.

  Still, I’ve gone many times. We have twelve or more races in the hippodrome almost once a week, namely on every holiday, festival, and special occasion. General admission is free to the poor so everyone, man or woman, slave or freedman, can bring or rent a pillow and sit in the stands. You can also buy a program with a list of the horses (each with its name, breed, and pedigree) and drivers, their records, and the betting odds for each team. A centenarius, a horse that’s won at least a hundred races, could be more famous than its driver. Excitement builds as you anticipate the fanfare to signal the first race. You watch the starting gates spring open; feel the ground thunder as the chariots rumble into the arena; thrill in the scent of the richly-oiled leather on the teams’ straps, protective gear, and fastenings; and choke on their swirls of dust as the fans’ voices merge into a universal roar.