It was a very different Theodora who limped back to Constantinople many months later. The misfortunes prophesied for her by the Syro-Phoenician had been concentrated into a single year, and they had been very bitter ones. Our gay, self-reliant Theodora, who had never failed to tell us her most ludicrous and painful adventures, kept pretty silent on the subject of her experiences in Egypt and her humiliating return journey by way of Caesarea and Antioch and the interior of Asia Minor. We nursed her slowly back to health, but even when she was strong enough, to all physical appearances, she did not feel equal to resuming her work at the club-house.' I would rather spin wool all day than begin that life again,' she cried. Much to our surprise, she actually borrowed a spinning-wheel and began learning to use this melancholy if serviceable instrument in the solitude of her room. The other ladies did not laugh at her, because she was their friend and had evidently suffered almost beyond human endurance. So the steady sound of the spinning-wheel was now heard in the clubhouse at all hours of the day and night; and when clients asked, 'Will that damned whining noise never stop?' the ladies would answer, 'That is only poor Theodora earning an honest living.' But they took it for a joke. They never caught sight of her.
One of our clients was a strange, round-faced, smiling, lecherous fellow named Justinian, a nephew of the illiterate old barbarian commander of the Imperial Guards, Justin. Justin had sent for Justinian when a youth, from the mountain village in Illyria where he had himself once been a shepherd-boy, and had given him the education that he regretted himself not having had. Justinian – whose baptismal name was Uprauda, 'the upright' – still talked Greek with a strong foreign accent and far preferred Latin, the official language of his native province. None of the ladies knew what to make of Justinian, and though he was courteous and amusing and seemed destined to become a person of importance, he made them feel uncomfortable, in sonic obscure way, as if he were not quite human. None of them enjoyed taking him to her private room. My mistress Antonina, for one, successfully avoided doing so on every occasion, and without incurring his hostility. Indaro told a queer story: how one evening she had fallen asleep while Justinian was in bed with her and, suddenly waking up and finding herself alone, had seen a large rat scuttle from under the coverlet and out through the window. With my own eyes I saw a still queerer sight. Justinian said one night, as he and the ladies were talking together, 'I heard noises at the front door.' But all were too lazy to investigate, and I was busy at some task behind the wine-bar. Then I noticed an emanation float out from Justinian's shoulders, a phantom head which swooped out of the door and presently returned. Justinian said: 'The noise was nothing: let us continue our talk.' The ladies had not seen what I saw; but it was a characteristic of these phenomena that not more than one person ever saw them at a time, so that each one doubted his senses, and no argument was possible as to the authenticity of any particular vision.
He was a Christian and revelled in theological discussions, as much as, or more than, in faction gossip and salacious jokes and stories; and he used to fast regularly. he always came to the club-house at the close of his fast-days and would cat and drink enormously. Sometimes he had fisted, he said, for three days, and his appetite would have supported his boast if he had called it three weeks. But he never lost that rosy complexion of his, not to the day of his death in extreme old age.
My mistress Antonina used to call him Phagon, after the famous old trencherman who once, giving a display before the Emperor Aurelian, devoured at a sitting: a pig, a sheep, a wild-boar, and 100 loaves of full weight.
Justinian, too, complained of the spinning-wheel whine and derided our explanation of it. But one morning, when he happened to be there on a visit, Theodora came into the club-room to warm her hands at the fire, not expecting to encounter any guests at that hour. When she noticed Justinian on a couch behind the door, she was going away again; but he pulled at her dress and begged her to stay. So she stayed and warmed her hands. Justinian began a religious discussion with Chrysomallo, who liked that sort of tiling, and was getting the better of her as usual when Theodora suddenly interposed with a quiet comment which showed her to be extremely well-informed on the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ, which was the subject under dispute. Justinian exclaimed admiringly: 'That is most ingenious, but also most unorthodox,' and turned his attack on her.
