Thessalonica

by Harry Turtledove

  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?”

  That got a laugh, too, but a nervous laugh. Some people were probably nervous about John’s questioning the will of God, others about what Menas would do to John if the joke got back to him. George, who prided himself on being a thorough man, was nervous about both at once.

  “It’s all right,” John said soothingly. “I saw another miracle, too: when St. Demetrius told Rufus to let the rest of us know the Slavs were attacking, old Rufus didn’t swear once. If that’s no miracle, what is?”

  George looked around again, and saw he wasn’t the only one doing so. He didn’t spy Rufus in the audience, which meant nothing would happen to John right away. Sooner or later, though, the veteran would hear about the joke. That was the way life worked. Rufus had been around a long time. He might laugh it off. If he didn’t, being a shoemaker would have nothing to do with why George wouldn’t have cared to stand in John’s sandals.

  If John knew he’d skirted trouble again, he didn’t let on, but then, he never did. He went on with another story: “Did you hear about the fellow who got an audience with the Roman Emperor by claiming he was God? The Emperor told him, “You’d better think about this, because last year a man came before me saying he was a prophet, and I ordered his head cut off.’ And the fellow looked at him and said, ‘Your Majesty, you did the right thing, because I did not send that man.’ “

  More people groaned than laughed over that one, but John didn’t mind. If anything, he looked happy: the silly story let him slip away from the dangerous ground on which he’d been treading. Listening to him tell more tales, George fully realized for the first time that he wasn’t just spinning one story after another; they all fit together in a pattern as elaborate as any a mosaicist could make with colored tiles. And part--much--of the art here lay in concealing from the audience that a pattern existed. One more reason, George thought, I couldn’t match what John is doing.

  “Do you know,” John said, “our friend Sabbatius there” --he pointed to Sabbatius, who seemed to have slept through his entire performance-- “has never seen a drunken man in his life?”

  “Oh, come on now!” Several people said that, or words to that effect, at the same time. Nobody who came regularly to Paul’s tavern--or to any of a good many others in Thessalonica--could fail to know Sabbatius was a tosspot of epic proportion.

  But John only grinned his lopsided grin. “It’s true,” he insisted. “He drinks himself to sleep before anybody else, and he doesn’t wake up till long after everybody else is sober again. Deny it if you can.” No one could; he got an appreciative hand instead. Raising his voice to a shout, he called, “Isn’t that right, Sabbatius?”

  The plump militiaman thrashed and almost fell off his stool. “Wuzzat?” he said thickly, before sliding back into deeper slumber.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” John said, more quietly now. He looked out at the people packing the tavern. “And aren’t you all wonderful? And don’t you wish you could be sure your name would never, ever show up in one of my stories? Best way I can think of is to make me too rich and happy ever to think of you in an unkind way.” He nudged with his foot a plain earthenware bowl up there on the platform with him.

  Quite a few people made their way over to him and tossed coins into the bowl. George watched their faces as they went back to their seats or to the bar. Some looked pleased: they’d rewarded a man who’d entertained them. More, though, wore a tight, intricate expression, almost as if they’d made up their minds to have a tooth pulled to end continuous pain. They were the ones who feared John would mock them next.

  “How does it feel to be a blackmailer?” George asked when money stopped rattling into the bowl and John carried it back to the table.

  “Don’t know yet,” the comic answered. “Let me count the take first.” He dumped the bowl out onto the tabletop. Shuffling coins into stacks, his fingers were as quick and deft as a money changer’s. He let out a little happy grunt at spotting silver among the bronze. “Ah, isn’t that nice? Somebody gave me a miliaresion. And here’s another. Good, good--one would be lonely by itself.” In a couple of minutes, the reckoning was done. “Tonight,” John declared, “being a blackmailer feels pretty good.”

  “Don’t go away, folks,” Paul called. “In half an hour or so, the special duo of Lucius and Maria, who’ve sung in Sicily and Illyria, will give you old love songs and some new ones all their own. I’m sure you’ll want to stay and hear them--they’ll send you home in a happy mood.”

  “Now I know when to leave,” John said, scooping his take into a leather pouch. “I’ve heard Lucius and Maria, by God. T
hey’re funnier than I am. The only difference is, they don’t mean to be.”

  George hadn’t heard them. He said, “If they’re that bad, how have they been able to perform in all those places?”

  “Are you kidding?” John rolled his eyes. “They stink up a town once, they get ran out, and they bloody well have to go somewhere else--in a hurry. And so, before they come on, I’ll bloody well go somewhere else, too. Good night.”

  But before he could escape, the barmaid whose intended insult he’d turned to his own purposes came up to the table. “That wasn’t very nice, what you did there,” she said, hands on hips.

  John said, “The best stories come from what really happens. Anybody silly enough to tell me not to use one would probably marry a eunuch.”

  She glared at him. “Is that all that matters? That I gave you a story you could use to make people laugh?”

  “Of course not,” he answered, which, with John, was as likely as not to mean yes. He leered. “I told you beforehand, I had something else in mind.”

  Confronted with a line like that, George would have poured, or maybe broken, a jar of wine over John’s head. Like anyone else, he judged other people by his own standard, and so was astonished when the barmaid said, “That’s right, you did,” in a purr that announced she suddenly had something else in mind, too. She and John left the tavern together.

  Muttering to himself, George got another cup of wine from Paul (the barmaid having disappeared) and settled down to see whether Lucius and Maria were as bad as John had claimed. They weren’t. They were worse.

  After a stint on the wall early the next morning, George went back to his shop to get some work done. He wasn’t working so much as he would have liked these days, not with the siege. People were still buying shoes; he’d sold several pairs to refugees who hadn’t bothered putting on any before fleeing the Slavs and Avars.

  Having sewn the last strap onto a sandal, he looked into the box where he kept little bronze buckles. It was empty. When he made an exasperated noise, Theodore said, “I’m sorry, Father--I used the last ones in there a little while ago. Haven’t we got any more?”

  “No, those were the last,” George answered. “I’ll have to walk down to Benjamin and buy some new ones.” He grumbled something inaudible even to himself: more time when he wouldn’t be able to get anything useful done.

  Theodore must have figured out what that grumble meant. “You could send me, Father,” he said.

  “I could... .” George considered. Not without a certain amount of regret, he shook his head. “No, I’d better not. He’d skin you alive on the price. He’ll skin me, too, but not so bad.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” Theodore said. “Just because he’s a Jew--”

  “I’m not afraid of him because he’s a Jew,” George answered. “I’ve got the better of plenty of them. I’m afraid of him because he’s Benjamin.”

  Like most of Thessalonica’s Jews, Benjamin lived and had his shop in the southwestern part of the city. The whole street echoed with the taps and clangs of hammers on metal: Jews dominated the bronze- and coppersmithing trades.

  Benjamin looked up from his work when George walked into the shop. The bronzeworker was a few years older than George, lean and wiry and dark. “Ah, good morning, good morning,” he said in Greek. “I thought you would be one of the bishop’s men, and that order is not yet ready.”

  George scratched his head. “If you don’t mind my asking, what would Bishop Eusebius want from you?”

  “Arrowheads, of course,” the Jew answered, holding up a file with which he’d been sharpening one. “I’m supposed to deliver another five hundred day after tomorrow, but if they wanted them today, I couldn’t do it.”

  “Arrowheads. I should have thought of that,” George said.

  “Iron points are harder, of course, but when you’re in trouble you use everything you have,” Benjamin said, and George nodded. The bronzeworker gave him a tired smile of sorts. “You, though, I do not think you have come for arrowheads.”

  “Well--no,” George said, and smiled back. “I’ve finally gone through that last batch of buckles you sold me, and I wanted to buy some more.”

  “I have a few,” Benjamin said, “but not many. You’re lucky you came in today, George. After I finished this order I’m working on now, I would have melted them down for the next one.”

  “I am lucky, then,” George said. He’d been dealing with Benjamin for a long time; the man did good work. Finding someone else who had buckles or could make them would have been an annoyance at least, and, with bronze going into arrowheads, might have been impossible. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Benjamin showed him the couple of dozen buckles he’d made. They were, without a doubt, up to his usual standard of quality. The Jew coughed apologetically. “I am going to have to ask more for them. Otherwise, melting them down would pay me better.”

  “How much more?” George asked warily. He didn’t think Benjamin was lying to him. He wished the bronzeworker were lying; that would have made the dicker easier.

  “For most people, I would double the price,” the Jew said. “For you, half again as much. We’ve been doing business a long time, and you’ve always been fair with me.” He looked thoughtful. “And besides, don’t I remember that you did something brave when the city had trouble with the cisterns a while ago?”

  “I did what needed doing. You don’t think about things till afterwards.” Praise made George nervous. He turned the subject, at least to some degree: “How did this part of the city come through the attack from the Slavs’ water god or whatever he was?”

  “The Lord be praised, we had no trouble here,” Benjamin said. “The demon did not show itself at the cistern that serves us.”

  Us Jews, he meant. George stared. “Not at all?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” Benjamin said.

  Again, George didn’t think he was lying. He leaned his chin on his hand and thought about what that might mean. Maybe the Slavic demigod had experience dealing with the powers of Christianity and had never run up against anything Jewish before. Maybe the Jews, a minority everywhere in the Roman Empire and an unhappy minority to boot, prayed harder than most of Thessalonica’s Christians and so averted trouble. One other possibility occurred to him, not one that made him happy but one he thought he could not ignore, either: maybe the Jews held on to a bigger piece of truth than did his own coreligionists.

  “Why do you suppose that was?” he asked Benjamin, curious to hear what the Jew would say.

  “Why? I don’t care about why,” Benjamin said with complete and utter sincerity. “All I care about is that it did not happen, for which I praise the Lord.”

  George had trouble understanding anyone who didn’t care about why, but he hadn’t come down here to understand Benjamin; he’d come down to buy bronze buckles from him. Half again the usual price wasn’t outrageous, not with the way everything had shot up in Thessalonica. But a day without haggling was like a day without sunshine. “Maybe a third again as much--” George began tentatively.

  Benjamin shook his head. “Half again keeps you even with the arrowheads. Anything less and I’m better paid to melt down the buckles.”

  “Don’t do that. I’ll pay you. I’ll pass it along to my customers, so they can grumble at me, the same way I’m grumbling at you.” George laid money on the counter in front of the bronzeworker. “If we run out of other copper, we can melt down folleis.”

  “No profit in it--not yet,” Benjamin answered. George had meant it for a joke, but the Jew had plainly made the calculation.

  The shoemaker took the buckles and started out of the shop. He almost ran into a youth coming in. The youngster showed clearly what Benjamin had looked like at about twelve. His dark stare wasn’t aimed at George for having almost collided with him, but at everyone not a Jew for everything that had happened to all the Jews for the past two thousand years.

  Benjamin said, “It’s all right,
Joseph. George is a very good . . customer.”

  “All right, Father,” the youth said, and bobbed his head to George. Tm sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to bump you.” He sounded as if he meant it. His eyes, though--George did not fancy facing those eyes.

  “No harm done, Joseph,” George said, speaking to him as if he -were a man. Joseph nodded, polite but distant. Suddenly, George wished with all his heart that Benjamin had called him a good man, not a good customer. No help for it. The Jews didn’t have it easy, and they saw no point in making it easy for anyone else. He didn’t suppose he could blame them. Buckles jingling in his belt pouch, he left the bronzeworker’s shop.

  “The Lord keep you safe,” Benjamin called after him. He waved to show he’d heard, but feared he’d gone too far for the Jew to see the gesture.

  He’d intended bringing the buckles straight back to his shop and getting to work, but found himself waylaid when he walked past Dactylius’ place. The little jeweler dashed out the door toward him as fast as if he’d had a swarm of Slavs on his tail. “Come on in, George,” he said, grabbing his friend’s arm. “Your wife and daughter deserve some pretties--Claudia told me you fixed her sandal.”

  “I’d almost forgotten,” George said. “Listen, Dactylius, I really ought to--”

  Dactylius wasn’t listening to him--or letting go of his arm, either. “Come, come, come,” he said. It was either come or pry him loose with a stick. George came.

  As soon as he walked inside the jeweler’s shop, he sneezed. That happened about every other time he went into the shop, which smelled of hot metal and of the abrasive powders Dactylius used to shine it and to polish his precious stones.

  “Here, let me give you these while I still can,” Dactylius said, presenting him with thin bracelets of bright bronze.

  From the back room, Claudia asked in indignant tones, “What goes on? What are you giving away now, Dactylius? The whole shop, most likely.” But when she came out to see what was going on and found the shoemaker there, her manner changed. “Oh, it’s you, George. That’s all right, then.”