As Verina swept up the shards of the broken mugs, John said, “Like I told you, Paul’s a good fellow. Instead of taking it out of Verina s pay, he could have taken it out some other way.” He leered at the barmaid. The largely male crowd whooped. Verina looked ready to throw the pieces of crockery at him. Again, though, he’d only used the situation to help set up a story: “I remember the poor fool who was talking with a good-looking woman, and he said to her, ‘I wonder whether you or my wife tastes better.’” He leered again, and ran his tongue lewdly over his lips. “And the woman said, “Why don’t you ask my husband? He’s tasted us both.’”
He got his laugh, but George, listening to it, thought it had a certain nervous undertone. Not everyone had as much confidence in his wife as he did with Irene, and everyone there, no doubt, had been devastated by an unexpected answer at one time or another, even if not by that particular unexpected answer. When John’s jokes worked well, they touched a central core of humanity all his listeners shared.
“Then,” said the comic, “there was the fellow who went to Maurice and wanted to be named Augustal prefect of Egypt. ‘I already have one,’ Maurice told him. ‘Well, all right, you’re the Emperor--make me governor of Thrace,’ the man said. And Maurice answered, ‘I can’t do that, either--I like the job the man there now is doing.’ And the fellow said, ‘In that case, give me twenty solidi!’ So Maurice did. As the fellow was walking out of the palace with his gold pieces, his friend asked, ‘Aren’t you disappointed you got so little?’ And the fellow said, ‘Are you crazy? I never would have got this much if I hadn’t asked for all the other stuff.’ “
That got a laugh, too, both for the sake of the joke and, again, for the obvious truth it contained: Maurice, among the most parsimonious Roman Emperors of all time, never parted with a copper if he could help it.
John got down from the platform, went over to the bar, and spoke to Paul in a loud, wheedling voice: “How about giving me half an interest in this tavern, my good and wise friend?”
“What?” Paul jerked as if a wasp had stung him. “Are you out of your mind, John? Go away.”
“Well, if you won’t do that, how about letting me have all the roast pork I can eat for the next year?” John asked.
“Are you crazy?” said the taverner, who obviously hadn’t been paying attention to the routine. “Go back there and be funny.”
“Give me a mug of wine, then.”
Paul dipped it out for him. “There. Go on, now.”
John turned to the crowd. “You see?” he said with an enormous grin. People laughed and cheered as he finally went back to the platform, and Paul never did figure out where the joke lay. John knocked back the wine in one long draught, then ruefully shook his head. “ ‘Go back there and be funny,’ the man says. I’ll tell you people what’s funny. That’s funny. Our beloved host thinks he can tell somebody to be funny and have it happen, just like that.”
“You’d better be funny,” said Paul, who was listening now.
John ignored him. Now the comic’s face bore a wistful expression: maybe a true one, maybe only a trick of the light. “I wish it were that easy. I wish you could walk into a shop and say, ‘I’d like a pound of funny, please,’ and put it in a sack and take it home with you. Wouldn’t that be fine, if you could buy funny the way you buy a loaf of bread from Justin the baker or a pair of shoes from George here?”
Now George jumped. John hadn’t been in the habit of including him in his routines, and he would have been as well pleased had his friend left him out of this one, too.
And, sure enough, John sent a sardonic stare his way as he went on, “Come to think of it, you can buy some pretty funny shoes from George, all right.”
“I’ll remember you in my nightmares,” George called.
“Your nightmares are ugly enough without me,” John retorted; he wasn’t shy about mocking himself, either. He went on, “Besides, it’s hard to be funny in Thessalonica these days. God is punishing us for our sins. The Slavs and Avars are outside the wall, there’s not enough food inside the wall, and He gave Menas back his legs so he could go around shouting at everybody.”
Some people laughed. Others looked alarmed, either because God might have been insulted or because Menas had been. George put his elbows down on the tabletop and buried his face in his hands. Sure as sure, that crack would get back to Menas. And, sure as sure, Menas would think George had said it, not anyone else. Fourteen people might tell him it had come from John’s lips; he would hear George every time.
The shoemaker didn’t really listen to the rest of John’s routine. People laughed every so often, so he suspected his friend was doing well. And, when John finally came back to the table, the bowl he brought with him was nicely full of coins. He sorted them with his usual quick dexterity.
George said, “I do wish you wouldn’t tell jokes on Menas so often.”
“Why, in God’s name?” John didn’t look up from what he was doing. “He’s funny, is what he is. I can’t think of anybody funnier in the whole world, him swaggering around like he’s got God’s hand in his drawers.”
“The trouble is, he does--or he did, anyhow--have God’s hand in his drawers,” George said uncomfortably,
“Yes, but God didn’t put it there to play Menas’ trumpet for him,” John answered, setting a silver miliaresion off by itself with a pleased grunt. “Menas still hasn’t figured that out, even though it’s been months. He’s pretty stupid, too; he may never get the idea.”
“Regardless of how stupid he is” --a sentiment with which George heartily concurred-- “he’s rich, too, and he’ll get you in trouble if you keep making jokes about him.” He’ll get me in trouble if you keep making jokes about him. But George remained too stubborn to tell John about that.
“What’s he going to do?” the comic asked. “Make me leave town? I can’t go by land, and if he puts me on a ship he does me a favor.”
“He can make your life miserable while you’re here,” George said. “Believe me, I know.” That was as close as he would come to revealing the trouble to which his friend had contributed.
“My life is already miserable while I’m here,” John said. “A little less miserable,” he amended, “because the night’s take is pretty good. And if Verina’s in the right kind of mood--” He raised his voice and called to the barmaid: “Hello, sweetheart! What do you say you and I--”
“I say no, whatever it is,” Verina answered. “All those broken cups I was cleaning up, I wish I’d broken them over your head.” George didn’t know what John had done to her, or what she thought he’d done to her, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with him now, stalking off nose in air.
If he was embarrassed, he didn’t show it. Going up in front of an audience to tell jokes for a living had no doubt hardened him against embarrassment. “It doesn’t matter,” he said lightly. “She’s no good in bed, anyhow.”
That, for once, hadn’t been pitched to carry to Verina’s ears, but she heard it and came storming back. “For one thing, you’re a liar,” she snapped. “For another, you’ve never had the chance to find out whether you’re a liar. And for one more, you’re never going to have the chance.” Off she went again.
John got more laughs than he had through his whole routine, all of them aimed at him. Had George been publicly humiliated like that, he wouldn’t have dared show his face on the street for weeks afterwards. John took it all in stride. By the calculating look on his face, he was figuring out the jokes he’d tell about it the next time he got up in front of a crowd.
Having gone to Paul’s tavern, George was glad he had an afternoon shift on the wall the next day. He was less glad about staring into the westering sun; the day was cold but brilliantly clear. The glare in his face made it hard for him to keep an eye on whatever the Slavs and Avars might be doing.