Thessalonica

“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.”