Procopius Bronze Coins: A Portrait of a Short Revolt

Damas set the broken door across his best bench and found his brother's mark beside the hinge.

It was only a small cut shaped like a hook. Leo had made it on every joint he finished. Damas used to tease him about it.

“No one looks at the edge of a door,” he would say.

Now he turned that edge toward the wall.

The customer wanted the door back before evening. Damas had said he could mend it. He had not said that Leo made the joint, or that he had not spoken to Leo for three weeks.

Outside, a boy stopped to read the shopboard. It said DAMAS in large white letters. His brother had painted those letters before their last quarrel.

Damas pulled the hinge loose. The wood beneath it split farther than he expected. He could make a new piece, but the joint would show. Leo knew how to fit one so neatly that a thumb could pass over it without finding the seam.

He sent the boy to fetch him.

Leo arrived carrying his own tools. He stayed in the doorway.

“What is broken?”

Damas pointed at the bench.

“The door,” Leo said. “Or something else?”

“I have to return it today.”

“Then you should begin.”

“I thought we could do it together.”

Leo looked at the shopboard, then at the empty bench in the back corner.

“Together in the back again?”

Damas put the hinge down. At their last job, the customer had praised the smooth doors. Damas had accepted the praise. When Leo asked him to say who had fitted them, he called his brother childish in front of the men carrying them away.

“I should not have said that,” he told Leo.

“No.”

“I was angry.”

“I was there.”

The customer came before Damas could find a better answer. He carried a cloth to wrap the door and a small purse to pay for the repair.

“Finished?”

“Not yet,” Damas said.

Leo stepped aside to let the man in.

The customer bent over the door. “You have taken the hinge off.”

“The wood had split beneath it.”

“I know. That is why I brought it.” He ran his finger along the edge and found the little hook. “This is your brother's work.”

Damas looked toward the doorway.

“Yes,” Leo said.

“I remember you fitting it,” the man told him. “You tried it six times. My wife said she would grow old waiting for a door.”

“It opened properly on the seventh.”

The man smiled. “It did, until the hinge split. Will you mend it?”

Leo glanced at Damas. “That depends.”

The customer emptied his purse onto the bench. Among the coins lay a bronze with a face Damas did not know. The man picked it up.

“Another emperor,” he said. “Procopius, they tell me.”

Leo took it and turned it toward the light.

“How soon a face gets made,” Damas said.

“Faster than a door,” the customer answered.

Damas waited for Leo to laugh. He did not.

“You can put a name anywhere,” Leo said, returning the bronze. “It does not tell you who did the work.”

The customer gathered his coins. “I will come back this afternoon. If you cannot mend it, tell me now.”

Damas could let the job go. He could say his brother was busy, shut the shop and make a new piece tomorrow. The repair would be clumsy, but no one would hear him ask Leo for help again.

Instead he moved his own tools off the best bench.

“Leo will mend it,” he said. “If he agrees. He made the joint. I should have told you that when I took the door.”

The customer looked from one brother to the other.

“And you?”

“I will help him.”

After the man left, Leo still stood near the doorway.

“One door does not settle it,” he said.

“I know.”

“And I am not working in that corner.”

Damas lifted the shopboard from its hooks. For a moment he held it against his chest. The white letters had taken him years to make familiar to the people passing by.

He laid it on the back bench and fetched a narrow board from the wall.

“What are you doing?” Leo asked.

“Making room for another name.”

“There is no paint.”

“Then I will cut it.”

Leo put his tools beside the door. He tested the damaged joint, then held out his hand for the hinge.

“I will work today,” he said. “We can talk again afterward.”

Damas gave it to him.

By afternoon the door lay wrapped and ready. Beneath the old shopboard hung the narrow one, with LEO cut into the bare wood. The letters leaned a little. Damas had never been good at cutting them.

His brother stood back to look.

“The last one is crooked.”

“I can mend it tomorrow.”

Leo moved closer and steadied the board while Damas drove in the second nail.