Theodora (2 page)

I’d give her a go, says a third: your oldest girl, with the lovely hair.

Take the mother, returns the first voice, at least she’ll know what to do, and we all know – the crowd wait, aware the shout is directed at a famed pedagogue in their midst – you’re a hopeless teacher.

A roar of laughter, applause for the heckler, even less attention for the four at the centre of the ground. Time passing, the
races will start again soon, three little girls in white dresses and wilting flower garlands holding supplicant poses, a pregnant mother begging for her family, no one listening.

And then the middle girl steps out and takes up another pose. One she has seen her father take up time after time, in rehearsal, in training, and on this very ground. The little sister catches on quickly: this is a game they play every day at home; Anastasia is the bear, Theodora the keeper. Comito is shocked, Hypatia furious, as the little sisters begin to play. Theodora raps Anastasia on the back of the head with her knuckles, the ‘bear’ turns and growls, the rich men in the front seats smile, someone grins, another laughs. The bear lumbers in a confused circle. Theodora mimes a stick, poking it from behind, whispers directions to Anastasia, who – as always – is happy to do as she is told. Laughter, as Theodora will learn to anticipate, picks its way through the crowd, at first faltering, and then catching in an eager fire. When a critical mass of attention is finally reached, Hypatia steps forward again, the girls once more take up their pose – though not before Theodora has demanded a round of applause with a saucy bow – and the mother pleads her family’s case. And even so, she is rejected. It is too late. Her dead husband’s job has gone to another man. The leader of the Greens is adamant – there is nothing to be done, it is over.

She should have left it there. Hypatia knew the rules, the gesture had been daring enough, brave enough. But something of Theodora’s spirit – a spirit Hypatia was always trying to dampen, knowing it was dangerous in any young girl – had infected her. She grabbed Anastasia’s hand, pulled all three children right across the arena and stood instead before the Blues. The girls in their same pose. The mother with the same speech. The Greens behind them silent in disbelief, the Blues in front, cat-calling and whistling to their rivals at the audacity of the bear-keeper’s woman. The leader of the Blues, knowing exactly
what he was doing, acknowledged Hypatia’s entreaty, complimented her on her well-trained daughters, the elder one’s beauty, the little one’s prettiness, the middle girl’s – he paused, he too was an orator – the middle girl’s passion. Then, not speaking now to the woman and her daughters at all, but addressing himself directly to the callous, uncaring – a pause again before uttering the worst of epithets – ‘uncivilised’ Greens, he offered aid to the woman and her family. Said there was, of course, with the Blues, always with the Blues, hope for an ambitious man, alms for an honest woman, succour to children in need. He gave her new husband a job. After more than two hundred years with the Greens, champions of the artisan, the merchant, the working man, Theodora’s family joined the more conservative Blues. And Theodora learned her first lesson in stagecraft. An actress may be as beautiful as nature, or makeup, will allow, but if the audience don’t care, there is no point.

Back beneath the Hippodrome, in a rehearsal room that smelt strongly of horse-racers and charioteers, of caged bears and lions, Menander the dance-master ensured his protégée Theodora knew exactly how much he cared. In the six years since that scene in the Hippodrome, six years under his tutelage, Theodora had often seen her teacher angry, but this morning was worse than most. She knew his head ached from the wine he’d had last night. She’d served the wine and, because she was tired, as were all the girls, and because the night was always easier when Menander slept deeply, she did not water his wine; not much, not after the first few glasses, once he had a taste for it. And so they had a good night’s sleep without singing or lectures, or worse, from their teacher and his friends. When the girls had finished work yesterday, Menander had warned them today would be hard, there was a lot to get on
with, much ground to cover, and the other girls were grateful for Theodora’s actions. Glad she had poured the undiluted wine and given them a quiet night of rest. A quiet night she was paying for now.

Theodora had had a bad day. Arms and legs uncoordinated, her body as stiff and stupid as her feeble mind – Menander’s words, but she was always her own worst critic, and Theodora knew her teacher was right. She was among the least skilled of the girls in dancing, with a singing voice more frail than most: that was not news to any of them, but this morning Menander had been a bear with a sore head and Theodora understood bears only too well, she’d known what was coming, tried merely to hold it off as long as she could. Their eunuch master was a respected teacher and a severe taskmaster. For once Theodora had realised that making the others laugh would not work. Sometimes it did – occasionally coaxing an unwilling smile was a way to deflect his disappointment in her small frame, her dark colouring, her sallow skin. Some days she left practice with no scars at all, just the joy of having pleased her mentor, but those days were rare. And not today.

There was a moment, quite early in the rehearsal, four somersaults in, none of them perfect, each one executed more nervously than the last, each one a little more uncertain, a lot more faulty, when she heard his first groan. Then, not long after, she slipped, pushing a leg out of line, and jolted one of the older girls, who knocked the youngest, who fell flat on her perfect face, a frail nine-year-old screaming in pain. That was enough to send him into a rage. Understandable, too. Theodora knew she was not the prettiest – that was her little sister’s role, Anastasia was delicate and small and so sweet. Though slightly less sweet now, with swollen lips and her eye cut from the fall. All Theodora’s fault. She knew what was
coming, let her muscles go slack, and prepared her mind in the twenty seconds it took Menander to limp across the sandy floor and reach her, grab her by her hair, wrench her to him as the other girls stepped back, ducking away from his anger, leaving Theodora to soak up their teacher’s fury.

He slapped her first: that was normal. Hit her across the back and buttocks with his stick: that was normal. As was the list of questions, the reminders of their place as dancers, as baby whores to the great and the good. Then, using her hesitation as his excuse, he held her down for fifteen minutes. Twisting her into shape he explained to Theodora, and to the others, what he was doing. Pointing out where her muscles were too tight, her legs too stiff, that she needed to loosen, to let go, to be free in her body and then her energy would flow. She was too proud, he said, her head so high, her back so tight, too fond of making others laugh, never knew when to shut up, when to just work, to let it be about the whole, not just about her. She was too fond of being watched. Given her family background, her stature, her colouring, she was damn lucky to have a job at all. He would teach her to yield, cede, it was his duty to her as teacher and mentor, he would be failing her if he did not, it would only be harder later, when she was in the chorus and the director gave instructions she could not follow because she was too fond of standing out. And, if Menander could not get through that wilful mind, then he would start with muscle and bone. Her flesh would make her learn.

Theodora fought back, resisted him, she fought because the other girls did not. And still Menander forced himself on her, pushing her body into position, laying himself out across her back to keep her still, keep her in place. She could not move beneath his weight; big and strong for a eunuch, Menander had spent his life fighting the constraints of the biology his own parents had sold him into, he would make Theodora overcome her
physical limitations too. Eventually she grew silent. It was permissible to fight back once, it was what everyone expected of her. Twice and she would be in real trouble. Three times and she would be out of a job. Theodora readily acknowledged she could be wilful, disobedient, was merely an adequate dancer, with an ordinary voice, good only for acrobatics and comedy, but she had always been responsible and she was also ambitious. She could not afford to lose this job.

One ear ground into the sand and dirt, the other twisted beneath Menander’s flat palm, she listened to him training the other girls. Their rehearsal went on; she would have to make up practice in the brief break. This was punishment and lesson. The girls, encouraging each other, were talking to her, their coded messages and shouts, apparently intended for one or the other of them but really for Theodora in the dust beneath their teacher’s body. Menander counted out instruction, method, placement, action, talking the girls through one scene and into the next, taking his team through their everyday paces. Theodora had displeased him and so here she was, exactly as he said she would be, as he had threatened, promised, so many times before. He whispered she was not as pretty as the other girls, she needed other skills. He would make sure she knew those skills, that her body knew those skills, that she – as he had himself – would overcome nature’s limits.

Theodora’s older sister Comito was already being considered for the public stages at the Hippodrome and the Kynegion amphitheatre, she was known for her voice and her beauty. Little Anastasia was so fine and delicate – or she would be once the cold water had taken down the swelling on her lip and the makeup woman had painted her face for the evening. Their friend Chrysomallo would never be as good a dancer as the others, but she had that long, golden hair, and a pretty voice. Helena had done well today too, and the half-dozen others in
the company. Everyone had done well but Theodora who, with her lack of skill and her big mouth and her ignorance, had done this to herself. Ending up posed in pain beneath the body of the man she feared and loved. She wanted only to please and daily found herself fighting instead, forced to yield instead.

Later, Theodora lay on her stomach as Comito massaged oil into her sister’s aching back and cramped thighs.

‘Sometimes I think you do it on purpose.’

‘Do what?’

‘Annoy Menander. To get his attention.’

‘Yes, you’re right. A six-foot, fifteen-stone ex-acrobat eunuch lying on top of me, while I eat dirt – that’s exactly the kind of attention I crave. Careful!’ she shouted as Comito dug into a particularly knotty muscle in her calf. ‘It hurts.’

‘It’s supposed to.’

‘Like everything else I have to endure.’

‘You’re such an actress. You could just work harder and have him sit on you less.’

‘I’m sure he’d rather go and sit on his Armenian.’

Both girls laughed then, at the idea of their harsh teacher and his supposedly even tougher boyfriend, the eunuch soldier.

‘You know I work hard, but it’s different for me. I don’t have a beautiful voice like you, and I’m not sweet like Anastasia. If I’m not careful I’m going to end up as one of the swimming whores.’

‘You’ll never be a swimming whore, you’re not pretty enough.’

Comito wasn’t being unkind. The girls who wore thin silk robes and danced in the water when part of the Hippodrome was flooded for their shows, were much less dancers than beautiful models for the men to ogle, more lovely once the water rendered their expensive silk costumes practically transparent.

‘God, you’re right. Can’t sing, can’t dance, not pretty. I don’t fit.’

Comito smiled, digging her thumbs into the knotted muscle, her hands keeping time with her words. ‘You don’t fit because you don’t want to. You wouldn’t want to be just pretty, you’d rather stand out, make them laugh.’

‘Nothing wrong with comedy.’

‘Not at all.’

‘It’s dull, all that looking lovely and keeping quiet, and there are so many funny things, absurd things.’

‘You don’t need to point them out every time.’

‘I can’t help it. Menander hates it when I get laughs, says it distracts from the show.’

‘It does – and it’s useful. He knows that, every audience needs a break from even the best singer, the loveliest dancers. We’re just a sideshow to the main event, when they want a break from the racing: the old men go to piss, the young men place their bets.’

‘So you singers are their sideshow and I’m yours?’

‘You are when you make your performance about the laughs. It’s good, it works. You just need to judge when to speak out and when to stay silent. Menander’s only another man, little sister, don’t worry so much about what he thinks.’

‘I fight him. I argue more than any of you.’

Comito wiped her hands on her rehearsal gown and helped Theodora sit up. ‘That’s just another way of begging him to see you. None of us is perfect all the time, not even me, but he hardly ever shouts at me, because he knows I don’t care. I’ll do my best, not his. If you didn’t care so much about gaining his praise, you’d get a lot less blame as well.’

Two

An hour later, walking away from the rehearsal space beneath the Hippodrome, Theodora broke away from her sisters. Comito and Anastasia were both keen to hurry home, to grab whatever they could find to eat, have a quick rest and then return, ready for a final rehearsal before the evening’s show in a private home overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Theodora told her sisters she wanted a moment to rehearse alone. Anastasia, the tiny and delicate little one, had the appetite of a dock worker – if Theodora didn’t care to eat and rest before they were called again, then all the more for her. With too many mouths to feed with their stepbrother and sisters, and too little to feed them on, the household did not do leftovers, and certainly not for girls who upset their teacher and bruised their little sister, accident or not.

Comito knew Theodora was lying, but she also knew that after a day like today, so close to tears with every shout and blow Menander directed at her, Theodora would risk even their mother’s wrath to have some time to herself. Comito knew Theodora ached for room to spread her body, and peace in which to think, neither of which was available in their three rooms, a mile and a half from the city centre, in the jumble of half-finished, overcrowded slum houses between the old Constantine Wall and the Golden Gate. It had been a hard day, a hard week, and tonight’s private performance was very important to Menander; food was the last thing Theodora
cared about right now, and anyway, if she found herself hungry later, there would always be a passing worker she could beg for a share of his bread dole. Theodora might be too smart-mouthed for their teacher, but it was a mouth that could charm and cajole a coin from even the hardest-hearted patrician, hidden behind the curtains of the sedan chair that carried him from one place to another without ever having to touch the polluted ground.