The Sheen of the Silk

Seventy-two

CONSTANTINE PACED THE FLOOR OF HIS BEAUTIFUL ROOM with the icons, grasping at the air with his hands.

“Please help her, Anastasius. She is so wounded by the betrayal, she is ill with grief. I think she does not care if she lives or not. I have done all I can, but I am no use. Theodosia is a good woman, perhaps the best I know. How can a man abandon a wife of years for some… some harlot with a pretty face, just because she may give him a child?”

“Yes, of course I’ll go to her,” Anna replied. “But I have no cure for grief. All I can do is wait with her… try to persuade her to eat, help her to sleep. But the pain will still be there when she wakens.”

Constantine breathed out a great sigh. “Thank you.” He smiled suddenly. “I knew you would.”

Anna found Theodosia Skleros suffering in spirit as deeply as Constantine had said. She was a dark-haired woman of great dignity, if not beauty. She was sitting in a chair, staring out of the window with unfocused eyes.

Anna carried over another chair and sat near her, for a long time saying nothing.

Finally Theodosia turned to her, as if her presence required some response. “I don’t know who you are,” she said politely. “Or why you have come. I did not send for you, and I seek no counseling. There is no purpose you can serve here, except the easing of your own sense of duty. Please feel released from obligation and leave. There is probably someone you can serve elsewhere.”

“I am a physician,” Anna explained. “Anastasius Zarides. I came because Bishop Constantine is deeply concerned for you. He told me you are the finest woman he knows.”

“There is no comfort in being ‘fine’ alone,” Theodosia said bitterly.

“There is not much comfort in doing anything alone,” Anna replied. “I hadn’t imagined you did it for comfort. From what Bishop Constantine said, I had thought it was simply who you were.”

Theodosia turned slowly and looked at her, very slight surprise in her face, but no light, no hope. “Is that supposed to cure me?” she said with mockery. “I have no interest in being a saint.”

“Perhaps you would like to be dead, but you haven’t the anger yet to commit that sin, because it would be irrevocable. Or perhaps you are just afraid of the physical pain of dying?”

“Please stop insulting me and go away,” Theodosia said clearly. “I have no need of you.” She looked back out of the window.

“Would you want him back, if he came?” Anna asked her.

“No!” Then Theodosia drew in her breath sharply and turned to face Anna again. “I’m not grieving for him, I am mourning what I believed he was. Perhaps you can’t understand that…”

“Do you imagine you are the only person to taste the dregs of disillusion?”

“Did you not understand me when I told you to go away?”

“Yes. The words are simple enough. You keep twisting your hands. Your eyes are sunken and your color is bad. Do you have a headache?”

“I ache everywhere,” Theodosia replied.

“You are not drinking enough. Your skin will begin to hurt soon, I expect, then your stomach, although I imagine that pains you already. And you will become constipated.”

Theodosia winced. “That is too personal, and it is not your business.”

“I am a physician. Are you trying to punish someone by deliberately afflicting your body? Do you imagine your husband cares?”

“My God, you are cruel! You’re heartless!” Theodosia accused.

“Your body doesn’t care about just or unjust, only practical,” Anna pointed out. “I cannot stop your heart aching, any more than I could stop my own, but I can heal your body, if you don’t leave it too long.”

“Oh, give me the herbs, then go away and leave me in peace,” Theodosia said impatiently.

But Anna stayed until Theodosia was asleep. And she returned every day for the next week, then every second or third day. The grief did not go, but the urgency of it abated. They spoke together of many things, seldom personal, more of art and philosophy, of tastes in food, of works of literature and thought.

“Thank you,” Constantine said to Anna a little more than a month later. “Your gentleness of spirit has bound the wound. Perhaps in time God may heal it. I am truly grateful.”

Anna had seen Theodosia at her deepest distress, at her most vulnerable and humiliated. Anna understood very well why she did not wish their association to continue. It was forever taking the plaster off the wound to look at it again. It was wiser to leave it alone to mend unseen.

She acknowledged Constantine’s thanks and changed the subject.