Sophia came into the shop through the back door in time to hear him. In tones of reproof, she said, “The blessings of the saint on the grappling hooks couldn’t have hurt, Father.”
“Couldn’t have hurt,” George admitted, “but they didn’t help, either.” Sophia and Irene and Theodore all stared at him; he had to remind himself that they hadn’t been up on the wall. He explained: “The Slavs and Avars found a magic to cut through the power in that blessing.”
His family exclaimed in dismay. “How can we beat them if they defeat our power?” Sophia said.
“We managed, just now,” George said. His daughter looked puzzled. He went on, “Powers or no powers, we’re still men, and so are they. It was a straight-up fight on the wall today, and we won it.”
“And outside the wall, too,” Theodore said. “I wish I could have been out there instead of you.”
“Instead of, no,” George said. “Alongside me--that may happen, son. You haven’t got much practice with weapons, but you don’t need much practice to fight from the wall.”
Theodore looked about ready to explode with joy and excitement. Irene looked about ready to puncture George with an awl. She hadn’t been delighted to hear her husband had gone down and fought outside the wail. To hear her son sounding so eager to imitate his exploits left her shaking her head about the male half of the human race.
Sophia sniffed, not scornfully but in a practical sort of way. “I think supper is about ready,” she said, and went upstairs to check. Her voice floated down to the shop: “Come eat, everyone.”
Supper was a porridge of peas and beans and onions, with bread and salted olives alongside. “Good,” George said. “Good as anything we could have had before the Slavs and Avars came.” It would have been a plain supper then and was rather a fine one now, but that didn’t mean he was wrong--not quite. It tasted all right and filled his belly. In the end, what else mattered?
Daylight’s twelve hours were short as autumn drew on toward winter, while those of night stretched like clay in a potter’s hands. George hoped the Slavs and Avars wouldn’t use the long night hours for deviltry. He intended to use every last moment of them for sleeping.
With a yawn, he said, “I’m turning in. Fighting a war is harder work than making shoes.” A lot of warfare, he’d discovered up on the wall, consisted of doing nothing. The moments when he wasn’t doing nothing, though, he knew he’d have those moments printed on his memory till a priest chanted the burial service above his corpse.
No one argued with him, but what he’d said didn’t mean making shoes was easy. His wife and daughter washed the supper dishes in the last fading glow of twilight. When full darkness fell, everyone went to bed.
Lying there beside George, Irene asked, “Have we beaten them back for good, then?”
For the first time in all the years since they’d wed, he got the feeling she wanted him to lie to her. Try as he would, he couldn’t do it. “I don’t know,” he answered, but I don’t think so. They’ll try something else, or maybe he same thing over again, to see if it works better the second time.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “All right.” It wasn’t, lot by the way she said it. But he didn’t hear her. He’d heady fallen asleep.
V
Some nights, George did not want to go straight to bed. After the noble Germanus gave him a good price for a second pair of embossed boots like the ones he’d bought before the siege of Thessalonica started, the shoemaker, coins jingling in the pouch he wore on his belt, went over to Paul’s tavern to spend some of his profit as enjoyably as he could.
He was glad to duck inside. “Close the door!” someone yelled, even as he was doing so. It was chilly outside, but fire kept the tavern cozy.
He looked around for people he knew. Sabbatius sat at a table by the wall, not far from the fire. He didn’t see George. He was already slumped against the wall, half asleep. In the couple of years they’d been in the same militia company, George had never found out what he did for a living. Drink, mostly, as far as the shoemaker could see.
Paul was frying in olive oil some squid a customer had brought in. Fishing boats still sailed out onto the Gulf of Thessalonica to help keep the city fed. They didn’t go far from shore, though, not when autumn storms could blow up almost without warning. The hot, meaty aroma of the sizzling squid sent spit squirting into Georges mouth.
He made his way toward the taverner, who used wooden tongs to take one of the squid out of their bath of bubbling oil and pass it to the fellow who’d given them to him to cook. “Hot!” the man yelped, sticking burned fingers in his mouth. Paul gave him the other fried squid. He burned his fingers on that one, too, but then began to eat.
“Red wine,” George said. Paul filled his mug. He lifted it in salute. “A pestilence on the Slavs!”
Everyone who heard that toast drank to it. George poured down the wine, tossed another follis on the counter, and held out his mug for a refill. This time, he sipped instead of guzzling. He was a moderate man, sometimes even in his moderation.
Somebody waved. George pointed to himself. “No, I don’t want you,” John said. “I’m trying to talk that dipper on Paul’s wall over there to sit by me.”
Shaking his head, George plunked himself down on a stool by John. “Are you going up there tonight?” he asked, pointing to the little raised podium where entertainers performed.
“Easiest way I know to earn my wine,” John said.
“It wouldn’t be for me,” George said. “I’d sooner have the Slavs shooting arrows at me than stand up there and tell jokes in front of a big crowd of people.”
“Yes, well, when they don’t laugh, they’re meaner than the Slavs, too,” John said, a faraway expression on his lean face--he was, George thought, probably remembering times when they hadn’t laughed. After a moment, one of John’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “They’re generally drunker than the Slavs, too,” he added.
“You can joke about making jokes,” George said. “What do you do when they don’t laugh?”
“Die,” John said succinctly. “It happens. If it happens too often, you have to go out and work for a living. I’ve done that, too. Telling jokes is more fun--and besides, I’m no good at anything else.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” George said. “You could work in a stable, because--”
He didn’t get away with it, not this time. “--Because I already know everything about horseshit,” John finished for him. “Ha. Ha. Stage fright isn’t the only reason you don’t go up there, pal.”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” George said. “I tell jokes the way you make shoes. I admit it.” He looked sidelong at John. “Of course, when I make shoes, I don’t run the risk of having to get out of town in a hurry because I’ve made somebody with more money than me angry.”
“What? You mean you didn’t tool germanus likes pretty boys into those fancy boots you made for him?” John said. “I’m disappointed in you. Maybe you did it in tiny letters, or in fancy ones that look like part of the design till you see them just right?”
George coughed, which wasn’t a good idea, because he’d taken a swig of wine a moment before. “I don’t know that Germanus does like pretty boys,” he said once he wasn’t trying to choke to death.
“Neither do I,” John said cheerfully. “That wouldn’t stop me from telling jokes about him, though.” He took a sip of his own wine, making a point of doing it neatly. A moment later, though, he looked glum, which added close to ten years to his apparent age. “Of course, that’s why I don’t live in Constantinople anymore, which I suppose proves your point.”
A barmaid came around with a bowl of salted olives. Before the Slavs came, a big handful had cost only a quarter of a follis. They were up to three quarters of a follis now, but that was still cheap. George bought some and ate them one by one, spitting the pits onto the rammed-earth floor. By the time he’d finished them and licked his fingers clean, he was thirsty again. He called for another cup of wine. The wine was where Paul really made his money.
John ordered more wine, too. When the girl brought it to him, he slipped an arm around her waist and said, “After I get done tonight, why don’t we go someplace quiet and--”
She twisted away, shaking her head. “I’ve heard about you. If you don’t like me in bed, you’ll call me names so nasty, they’ll make me cry, and then you’ll tell jokes about me tomorrow night. And if you do like me, you’ll sweet-talk me till I don’t know up from down--and then you’ll tell jokes about me tomorrow night. No thank you, either way.” She went off, her nose in the air.
George had heard John tell a lot of jokes about a lot of different women, which made him think the barmaid was likely to be right. John peered down into the cup of wine the girl had given him. Harsh, black shadows from the hearthfire and the torches on the wall kept George from reading his expression.
After a while, Paul thumped his fist down on the bar in front of him, once, twice, three times. The racket in the tavern faded, though it did not vanish. Paul said, “Now, folks, here’s someone who can keep us laughing, even with the Slavs all around. Come on, tell John what you think of him.”
“Not that!” John exclaimed as he bounced to his feet and, seeming like a builder’s crane, all built of sticks, with joints in curious, unexpected places, made his way up to the little platform that might at another time have housed a lyre-player or a fellow with a trained dog. Most of the people in the tavern clapped for him. A few did tell him what they thought--likely those who’d been his butts in the recent past.
He ignored them, with the air of a man who’d heard worse. “Being a funny man is hard work, you know that?” he said, swigging from the cup of wine he’d brought with him. “I was trying to talk a girl into bed with me, and she turned me down, just on account of I’m a funny man.”
“Who says you’re a funny man?” a heckler called.
John turned to Paul, who was dipping up a mug of wine behind the bar. “You’ve got to stop feeding your mice so much. They keep squeaking for more while I’m doing my show.” He waited to see if the heckler would take another jab at him; he disposed of such nuisances with effortless ease. When the fellow kept quiet, John shrugged and resumed: “Like I was saying, she told me that if I didn’t like her, I’d insult her and then tell jokes about her, but if I did like her, I’d say all sorts of nice things to her--and then I’d tell jokes about her.” He waited for his laugh, then went on, “So you see, friends, this isn’t easy work.”
George looked around the tavern till he spotted the barmaid who’d turned down John’s advances. She stood with both hands pressed to her cheeks. She hadn’t said yes--and, by the same token, John hadn’t waited till the next day to tell a joke about her, even if it was the same joke she’d told about him. George envied the comic his ability to take something from everyday life and incorporate it into his routine as if he’d been using it for years.
Thinking about the way John told jokes kept him from paying attention to the jokes John was telling. He started listening in the middle of one: “--so the Persian king had this new woman brought in before him, and he looked her over, and she was pretty enough, so he said, ‘Well, little one, tell me, are you a virgin or what?” And she looked back at him, and she said, ‘May it please you, your majesty, I am what.’ “
About three quarters of the people in the tavern got the joke and laughed. “What?” several people said at the same time, some of them smugly, showing they understood, others sounding bewildered enough to prove they didn’t.
“Day after tomorrow,” John said, “I promise you, an angel of the Lord will come in here and write it out in letters of fire, but it probably won’t do you any good, because if you can’t figure that one out, it’s a sure bet you can’t read, either.”
“Oh, John,” George said softly This was how his friend got into trouble: when he started insulting his own audience, they stopped thinking he was funny. George instinctively understood how and why that was so. Clever though he was, John had never figured it out.
But tonight, John steered clear of that danger, at least for the moment. “Talk about your miracles, now,” he said with a wry grin. “Isn’t it wonderful how God gave Menas back his legs just in time for him to run away from the Slavs?”