by Stella Duffy
She made sure to get to the rehearsal room before the other performers. The company members would know she was joining them, today was not the day to make a late entrance. She sat carefully on one of the bench seats, leaning back against the wall and tucked her legs beneath her in a twisted position only a girl with her years of training could possibly achieve. She then made sure the folds of her pale blue gown fell open at exactly the right point, perfectly revealing henna-tinted toenails. She lifted her hands to her hair and pulled it back behind her ears, checking that the dark curls – curls made by hand, not nature – were not obscuring her fake pearl earrings. Finally she pulled a bracelet from her leather bag, and pushed the coiling silver snake above the elbow to sit proud against her acrobat’s bicep. She took a deep breath, and waited.
Slowly the room filled. Comito was there, aware of Theodora’s preparations and worried that it might all backfire horribly. Several other singers and dancers arrived, each surprised to see the young woman in the corner, sitting there so very familiar and yet so wrong. There were a few nervous giggles. Then, as Sophia’s raucous yell was heard from upstairs, shouting for water, wine, bread with honey, anything to help her start this fucking new day, dear God, how she hated morning – the room became silent.
Sophia-the-half-size walked into the room in mid-rant and stopped still. She stared at Theodora, glared at the young woman who was wearing her own trademark pale blue dress, famous silver snake armlet, and a version of the long pearl earrings she herself always wore – not genuine though, Sophia could see that at twenty paces. Which would be enough to rip them off the sallow bitch, she supposed, once she’d found out what the fuck was going on.
‘Good morning, Lady.’ Theodora began, leaving just enough pause before ‘lady’ to make everyone in the room wonder how quickly the fight would start.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, not good, exactly,’ and now she stretched her legs out from beneath her body, just managing to hide the wince as the blood flowed painfully back into her limbs. ‘I had a little trouble with the toenails, they’re not as neatly coloured as I’d have liked, I couldn’t quite keep a perfect edge on the henna. I suppose it’s easier for you? Being so much closer to your own feet?’
Sophia blinked, opened her mouth to let out a stunned half-laugh, took in Theodora’s poorly made curls that even now were beginning to fall lank and straight again, and then, planting her hands firmly on her low-slung hips, asked, ‘So who’s the smart-mouthed bitch?’
Theodora, still leaning against the wall, looked Sophia up and down, and answered, ‘You are, of course. But I thought, perhaps, it was time you had an apprentice.’
‘Are you suggesting I’m of an age to have an apprentice?’
Theodora waited, lowered her face just a little, and then looked up again through half-shaded lashes. ‘I’m saying, Miss Sophia, that you must have skills – and tricks – you would like to pass on.’
‘Two or three.’
‘And a half?’
There was a pause, a stifled groan from one of the actors who had to rehearse a scene this morning with Sophia and knew she’d be hell to work with if she was in a bad mood, and then Sophia flung her head back in pleasure, her dark – natural – curls bouncing up and down with the bellows of her laughter. ‘Dear God, I do like a cheeky cunt.’
‘So, Madam …’ Theodora said, rising from the bench and at the same time sinking immediately to her knees, so that at no point did she raise herself above Sophia’s height, ‘I have heard.’
At this, the room erupted in the nervous laughter it had been stifling for twenty minutes, causing the stage manager to run down the dangerous wooden staircase, shouting that they were all late, everyone would be fined if they weren’t careful, and for fuck’s sake, noting Theodora now standing at her full height beside her new mentor, had half-size-Sophia suddenly grown in her night off? And if she had, why in the name of the sainted Helena couldn’t she have grown a little prettier at the same time? Upstairs now. Please. God, are there no hardworking actors in the world any more, must he turn to pagans and Barbarians to fill the stage?
When both Sophia and Theodora rounded on the man and told him to bite his balls, with no care for the consequent fines, the dwarf and the acrobat knew each had made a new friend.
Six
When Theodora told Menander she was too young for the main company, she was not referring to their acting roles. She had no problem imagining herself accepting the applause of a grateful crowd who, released from the shackles of their old and boring actresses, would frantically welcome her advent on their stage. She meant that she was too young to start working as a whore.
The company master Cosmas agreed and left her alone for the first few months, drilling her instead in their famous routines, finding out where she needed more rehearsal, where her skills came in useful on stage. By her twelfth birthday though, Theodora was deemed ready. She had, as Cosmas said to his colleagues, seen plenty of bed-work while in Menander’s company, it was not as if she didn’t know what was coming. Or, he lowered his voice, as if she wasn’t ready for it: she could do with something to sap her wilder energies. It was common knowledge among the other girls – and therefore among their bosses – that Theodora had not yet had her first period, but the precociousness that had been noted when she was in Menander’s troupe was even clearer now she was strutting the main stage, taking absolute control of the five-minute interlude slot she’d been given, where she played up the comedy with two other dancers and far outshone her more technically adept older colleagues. She had plenty of energy, too much most of the time; in Cosmas’ opinion it was better to put that energy to work, than to allow it to run wild on stage.
Theodora took her concerns to Sophia.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to … I mean, I don’t know if I do or not, right? Some people enjoy it?’
‘Most people enjoy it Theodora, once they’ve had some practice, and some just enjoy it more than others.’
‘But don’t you think I’m too young?’
‘You didn’t bleed yet, so yes, theoretically, you’re young. But there are girls bleeding younger than you, and eunuch boys younger than you, they are also working.’
‘I don’t think I want to do it.’
Sophia shook her head, remembering the horror of her own first time, the performance it had turned into, the ghastly spectacle of a huge man deflowering a tiny dwarf virgin, the pain and the blood, but more the humiliation, as the man who had paid for her chose to share his moment of triumph with half a dozen of his friends. It should have put her off for life, it certainly put her off a certain type of man, the all too many who saw her as a freak, an act to be indulged rather than enjoyed. She had, though, found some men could, with the right coaxing, be kinder, more careful, and there she could help Theodora. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘You’ll tell him I can’t do it?’ Theodora was grinning in relief.
Sophia looked up at her new friend. ‘No girl, I won’t say that. You don’t have any choice.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’ll take care of it. I can’t make it wonderful, but maybe I can make it less frightening for you. Yes? Trust me?’
Sophia did not need to explain the act itself to a girl brought up beneath the Hippodrome, who had played among the animal cages since she was a toddler, nor did she need to coach her in skills of either temptation or coquettishness: both had been learned in Menander’s dance classes for years. Instead she told her about dealing with the customer, encouraging him to talk to waste time, then to play him with her body before he played with hers, and finally how to speed him to his release so the act itself was concluded faster. She explained about the use of herbs and wine to ease any pain and further told Theodora to listen to her own body, to use her acrobatic and dancer’s skills of relaxation, of ease in the physicality, most of all to see the thing itself as a show. A private show, a more revealing show than usual, but a show nonetheless. She taught Th
eodora to see her body in the act as that of a performer, not her real self. It was the old prostitute’s trick of dissociation, and no less useful for being so ancient.
And then, when she thought Theodora had learned all she could from mere talk, she set her up with her first paying customer. The son of a senator, who already – at nearly sixteen – knew he preferred the company of boys to girls, eunuchs to women, soldiers to anyone else, but whose father had declared it was time that he too got on with the deed.
It was not good sex, for either of the parties, but it was not bad either. It was perfunctory, and a little messy, and it was done. And when it was done, Theodora accepted Sophia as her pimp, as most of the other girls in the company had done. Cosmas had no problem with this, he took his cut after all, knew Sophia was probably better than he would be at matching girl to client, at keeping them all happy, and a happy actress was both a good performer and a better earner off-stage. He certainly didn’t want to give reluctant girls to his clients, his men liked cheerful girls.
‘This is the new Rome after all – we’re good Christians, not Barbarians who would force unwilling girls to fuck.’
And his friends raised their wine glasses in agreement.
*
Soon after Theodora’s backstage debut, Anastasia took her place as Comito’s stool-bearer and cloak-holder, and Theodora graduated to bigger roles. Comito had quickly become a favourite and the public didn’t care who stood behind their new songbird beauty, just as long as no one interrupted the perfect view. The comet-like streak of her hair that matched her name, the height and majesty in such a young woman, in addition to her lovely voice – within a very short time Comito had earned both fame and, for an actress, was even starting to amass a certain amount of fortune, not least because she had a mastery of the old songs the audience knew and loved, as well as a knack for choosing the best of the new ones regularly offered her. On the several occasions she was invited to give private performances in the homes of respectable matrons – having graduated from the private dinners that quickly became private brothels – Comito behaved with impeccable grace and tactful discretion. The fact that on the public stage she refrained from singing the old pagan songs, even in the Kynegion, despite the building itself being ringed round with pre-Christian statues, and that she kept her body fully covered, albeit in the most translucent of costly silk, meant she was now at least on nodding terms with patrician society. Even in Constantinople, the stage and the circus kept their old function as a vent for the wilder excesses of the masses. That those masses loved Comito could have made her dangerous, but Comito knew her place, was grateful for it. She was no threat to society – a singer and actress, she didn’t even speak her own words – the upper echelons were safe with her. The same could not be said of Theodora.
From the moment she was first allowed on the main stage as a fully fledged public performer rather than as Comito’s assistant or just a comedic interlude, Theodora was totally at ease. The people did not fall in love with her immediately, years of watching her father, as well as other actors and singers, had taught her they would not – she knew she would have to make them want her, and so she wooed them, won them without their even noticing it. While Theodora allowed the audience to think she was earning their applause and working for their appreciation, she was actually forcing them to come to her. From her first monologue, she never once changed her manner, she simply convinced the audience – offering her routines in the same style over and over again – that she was hilarious. She had been studying this crowd all her life, she believed she knew exactly what they wanted, and she would make them learn it, earn it.
Gradually, once the public started to smile as soon as they caught sight of her waiting off-stage, or parrying a mock blow from an outraged classical actor whose line she’d stomped over with a joke of her own, once she could be certain that her mere presence guaranteed a relaxed anticipation in the audience – they knew Theodora would be on time, on cue, could be heard, always hit her mark – she began to play up to them, give them exactly what they expected and just a little more. A nod of the head that included a secret wink for the first two rows only. A single line, perfectly enunciated, ideally when the piece was at its bawdiest, while sticking word for word to the writer’s actual script, would be delivered in just the right tone and timbre to recall immediately one of the City’s most famously arrogant matrons, a patrician lady renowned for her virginal piety, even after two marriages.
As she grew older, her audience watching her turn from girl to young woman, Theodora learned to use the tricks of adulthood as well. One week there was a wave to a non-existent character just off-stage, allowing her gown to slip off her shoulder, revealing a hint of swelling breast and nothing more. The following week there was the barest possibility of a nipple, almost revealed. The week after that she turned, just as she lifted her hand to wave, and berated an old man in the front row for daring to sit so close when he knew what was coming – and then, as the audience applauded her telling him off, she let the robe fall away anyway.
Theodora had trained her body to accomplish astonishing acrobatic feats; now she took her audience by the hand and, knowing she did not have Comito’s voice, Anastasia’s grace, she made them leap and jump and dance to her whim. She taught the crowd to assume she would be good even before she started. Having done so, she made them love her.
Eventually, all three of Hypatia’s daughters from her first marriage were living the life she’d hoped to spare them. The two older girls learned to cope with the disparity between their fame on stage, and that other fame backstage, fame on their backs, but as members of the main company they were at least working at a higher level, earning well. Courtesy of their own fan base and Sophia’s management skills, Comito quickly had several wealthy patricians who vied for her favours and the income from their attention was enough to take care of herself and contribute to the family, especially once she was a few years older and living in the small villa on the third hill, where a grateful patron kept her, a comfortable walk from the Hippodrome in a quiet street, carefully placed to avoid too much of the raucous Mese crowd. Less reserved than Comito and far less delicate than Anastasia, once she’d been introduced to the process, Theodora had no qualms about fucking a wealthy man for an evening if the family purse demanded it, but her friendship with Sophia ensured that the men were of a higher class than most who paid for theatre girls, and better looking too. She had always seen her body as a tool of work. Theodora found that as long as she maintained the split between her body and her spirit, she could enjoy whoring for Sophia and, not surprisingly given her other physical skills, that she was good at it as well. But no matter how much money she made from the men, Theodora’s main focus, and all her real energy, was reserved for her time on stage. She loved her work, loved her audiences, and in a very few years she was their star.
Theodora stood alone, waiting. The audience were restless, eager. They were, she knew, giggling in anticipation of the belly laughs to come. These people were here specifically because they expected Theodora to make them laugh – she had trained them well in the past five years, her hungry public were now ready to enjoy themselves before she’d even made her entrance. Forty minutes earlier, Comito had opened the show with a song the whole crowd knew, a song made successful by another actress more than a generation earlier, but even the old men had to agree, Comito sang it better. Anastasia was ready to help with the fast change into her second costume, and then Comito hurried back on with the dancers to perform their chorus number, a chanted rendition of an old speech by Euripides. This crowd were not much interested in traditional theatre, they liked song and dance, adored bawdy comedy, but they would sit through an artistic number they understood to be good for them, as long as the Golden Voice was singing and there were barely dressed dancers to watch.
Comito left the stage to a generous round of applause, and then the dancers were joined by three young acrobats, bringing on an even higher energy, rea
dying and enticing the crowd. With each layer of soft silk removed from a dancer’s body by a leaping tumbler, with every scarf pulled away and thrown to the ground, there was another whoop, another cry of pleasure. From the Green section of the audience came a yell of feigned ecstasy, taken up and amplified by a dozen or more of the Blues opposite, always keen to stress that Theodora was rightfully theirs. The echoing call was a crowd-sized impersonation of Theodora’s most successful character, the one they had all come to see, a character she was about to disappoint them by not performing. Theodora had a new showpiece to offer, a further edge over which to push her already bold reputation. As Menander had always said, the girl was nothing if not daring. And, as Theodora now understood, if she was not daring, she would be nothing. The audience loved her, and would keep doing so as long as she kept feeding them what they wanted. She was about to feed them something they didn’t even know they wanted.
Semi-naked dancers, tumbling acrobats, covered the centre of the stage. The crowd could tell they were being primed for something, but were not certain what that something was. Various whispers had gone out, secrets told to the right gossips, several members of the audience alerted that there’d be something different in this show, their excitement filtering through to those who knew nothing yet, but felt the frisson immediately on arriving. A new performer perhaps, or a new piece. This crowd loved their singers and dancers, adored Theodora’s comedy sketches, her soft-porn mime shows. Like any crowd they enjoyed both the comfort of sitting back to watch old pieces they knew to be good, and also the nervous anticipation of the new – that knife edge where, no matter how well written and well rehearsed, a new piece might fall flat on its face in front of a full crowd. For the regular theatre-goers, an on-stage disaster could be almost as much fun as triumph.
The drumming intensified. Theodora was locked into a private space of her own – performing her private ritual as she always did before walking out to the crowd, lightly slapping her body all over, arms, legs, feet, torso, head, face, striking her skin, her flesh, snapping her mind into awareness, total concentration. She took a deep breath, held and then relaxed her shoulders, lifted her chin. Then, at her signal, the dancers parted, the acrobats threw their last tumble and, focusing directly ahead, Theodora walked out between them, centre stage.