Thessalonica

By explaining, George had missed some of John’s routine. The comic was saying, “--and the fellow’s son promised to come back from the sally with a Slav’s head. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ the fellow answered. ‘I don’t care if you come back without a head.’”

Somebody threw a roll at him. He caught it and ate it. “That’s one way to get something to eat around this place,” he said pointedly, and stared over toward Paul.

After a moment, the taverner had a barmaid bring over a plate of olives. John made as if to grab the girl instead of the plate, and stared out at his audience in mock indignation after she escaped. “How did she know what I wanted to eat?” he said. The barmaid threw a roll at him. He caught that one, too.

“We all had a hard time,” he said. “No two ways around that. What I want to know is, why didn’t the barbarians have the decency to besiege us in the summertime, when we wouldn’t have had to stay up on the wall in such miserable weather? I know one fellow” --he pointed to Sabbatius, who had started to snore by then-- “who stood out in the rain so long, he jumped in the river to get dry.”

“Christ!” Rufus said. “They were telling that joke in Italy when I was a lad.”

“They were telling that joke in Italy when Caesar was a lad,” George said, and couldn’t resist adding, “and he’s only a little younger than you.”

“God will punish you for that,” Rufus growled, convincingly angry, “and if He doesn’t, I will.” They laughed together, as old friends will. Why not? The siege was over.

George laughed at John’s jokes, too: at some more than others, as is the way of such things. What pleased him best about the comic’s routine was that John did not mention Menas even once. Maybe, however late in life, he’d learned the beginnings of discretion. Or maybe, and perhaps more likely, events of the past few weeks had given him so much new material that, for the time being, he didn’t need to bait the rich noble.

John ran a hand through his hair and said, “I suppose you’re wondering why I don’t have so much up here these days.” His hair was cut a little shorter than it had been before George got locked out of Thessalonica, but only a little. He went on, “I have to tell you, it’s Rufus’ fault.”

“Just because you have to tell it, that doesn’t make it so,” Rufus exclaimed.

John ignored him. “There at the end of the siege, he was throwing us up onto the wall with anybody who was still healthy, not just with men from our own company.” Because George had been out of the city, he didn’t know whether that was so or not. John continued, “Me, one night I was up there doing a shift with old bald Basil and with Victor the barber. Sometimes, when nothing much is happening, you’ll doze up there instead of tramping back and forth all the damn time.”

“You’d better not!” Another exclamation from Rufus, this one in an altogether different tone of voice.

John kept right on ignoring him, saying, “So that’s what I did, and Basil, too. I told Victor to wake me in an hour’s time, and then I’d do the same for him. I fell asleep, good and hard. So did Basil. Well, Victor got bored while we were snoring away. He got out his little razor and shaved my head for a joke. When he finally shook me, I thought it was colder than it should have been, and I rubbed my head and found out I didn’t have any hair left. “What a fool you are,’ I told Victor. You’ve gone and woke Baldy there instead of me.’”

“Here,” somebody called. “I’ll give you a miliaresion not to tell that one again.”

John leered at him. “And how much will you give me not to tell the next one on you?” He looked over the crowd and held out his bowl. “Or on you? Or on you there, with the ugly tunic. Yes, you. You know who I mean.”

He was grinning when he came back to the table, the bowl nicely heavy with money. “Not a bad take,” he said. “Not a bad take at all.” He started separating the coins with his usual quick dexterity, then looked up from his work. “Where are you going, George?”

“Home,” the shoemaker answered with a yawn. “I’m not like Sabbatius” --who was still snoring away-- “I don’t sleep in taverns.”

“And besides,” Dactylius put in, “you don’t want to wake up bald, the way John says he did.”

“Everybody thinks he can do my job,” John muttered darkly. Then he brightened. “Ha! Justus really did give me silver. Now you can go home, George.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” George said. “I take orders from Rufus.”

“Go home, George,” Rufus said. laughing, George did.

George said, “Dear, I think we really have to dicker with Leo now.”

Irene let out a sigh. “I wish we didn’t. Constantine’s not a bad lad, mind you, but I think we can do better for Sophia.”

“I don’t think Sophia wants better. She wants Constantine, and I think she’s going to get him no matter what we say about it.” George told how the two of them had been kissing when he came back into Thessalonica after the Slavs and Avars gave up the siege.

“And what did you do about that?” his wife asked.