Owl to Athens

by H. N. Turteltaub

  Menedemos knew she was angry. He also knew he had to risk that anger. “I do, darling,” he said seriously. “If you happen to be with child, he’d better be able to think it’s his.”

  “Oh.” To his relief, Xenokleia’s anger evaporated. She sighed. “After you, he’ll be moldy salt-fish after mullet.”

  “You’re sweet,” he said, and, poising himself above her, stretched her feet up toward the roof, though she wasn’t wearing slippers. Afterwards, she started to cry again. “Don’t do that,” he told her, running a hand along the sweet curve of her hip. “It was fun. We enjoyed it. Remember that. Forget the rest.”

  “It’s over.” Xenokleia wept harder than ever.

  “Maybe we’ll find another chance, if your husband goes to a symposion or something,” Menedemos said. “But it was good—for what it was—even if we don’t.”

  “For what it was.” Xenokleia plainly didn’t like the sound of that. “I wanted it to be . . .” She sighed. “But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

  “No.” Menedemos was, in his own way, honest. “And even if it did, after a while you’d decide you would rather have kept this. Believe me, my dear—you would.”

  “You don’t know how little this is,” Xenokleia said. To someone like Menedemos, who associated an Attic accent with wisdom and authority, her words carried extra weight because of the way she said them. She said, “If I do take Protomakhos to bed, he’s liable to fall over dead from surprise.”

  “Do it anyhow,” Menedemos told her. No matter how much weight her words held, he remained sure of what this situation needed. “And besides, love—who knows? If you make him happy, maybe he’ll make you happy, too.”

  Xenokleia’s voice held only vinegar. “Not likely! All he cares for is his own pleasure. That’s why ...” She didn’t go on, not with words, but squeezed him tight.

  “You could teach him, you know. I think he can learn if you do. He’s not a stupid man. Friendly women taught me,” Menedemos said.

  Protomakhos’ wife stared at him, her eyes enormous in the darkness.

  She laughed again, this time on a different note. “Funny that an adulterer should give me advice about how to get on better with my husband. “

  “Why?” Menedemos asked, stroking her. “He’s going to be here. I’m not. You should have all the fun you can, no matter where you get it.”

  “You mean that,” Xenokleia said wonderingly.

  Menedemos dipped his head. “Yes, of course I do.”

  “‘Of course,’ “ she echoed, and laughed once more. “No wonder you get so many women—don’t try to tell me this is the first time you’ve played this game, because I know better. You’re too good at it, much too good. But you really do want everybody to have a good time, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” Menedemos said. “Life’s a lot more enjoyable when you do, and a lot of the time you can, if only you’ll work at it a little. Don’t you think so?” Now he squeezed her, and bent his head to tease her nipple with his tongue.

  Her breath sighed out. “If you keep doing that, I won’t ever want to let you go, and I have to, don’t I?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He kissed her one last time, put on his chiton, and slid downstairs without a sound. The bedroom door closed softly behind him.

  He peered out across the courtyard from the darkness at the bottom of the stairway. No slaves stirring. Good. He hurried over to the little chamber Protomakhos had given him. He’d almost got there when a churring nightjar swooping low after a moth flew in front of his face and made him recoil in alarm.

  “Stupid bird,” Menedemos muttered. Here was the door. He let out a sigh of relief. He’d made it.

  He worked the latch, opened the door, stepped inside, and closed and barred it behind him. The room was inky black. No lamp was lit, but he needed none to find the bed. He’d taken one step toward it when a deep voice spoke from out of the gloom: “Good evening, son of Philodemos.”

  Menedemos froze. Ice climbed his spine faster than a squirrel racing up a tree. If Protomakhos had caught him sneaking back to his chamber, that was almost as bad as catching him in bed with Xenokleia. “I— I can expl—” he began, and then broke off as wit started to penetrate the first shock of terror. “Furies take you, Sostratos!” he burst out.

  His cousin laughed softly, there in the darkness. “I just wanted you to think about a big radish up your arse, or whatever else Protomakhos might choose to do with you if he caught you with his wife.”

  “Think? No!” Menedemos tossed his head. “What you wanted me to do was fall over dead from fright, and you almost got your wish.” His heart still thumped as if he’d run from Marathon to the city. But that wasn’t exertion he felt; it was the dregs of panic.

  “Had you done nothing wrong, you wouldn’t need to fear,” Sostratos pointed out.

  “When I was a little boy, my mother could talk to me that way,” Menedemos said. “I’m not a little boy any more, and my mother’s dead. And even if she were still alive, you aren’t her.”

  “Someone needs to talk sense into you,” Sostratos answered, “or scare it into you if talking doesn’t work. Our own host—”

  “Now that the Dionysia’s over, his wife and I are probably done, so stop fretting,” Menedemos said. “If he didn’t neglect her, she wouldn’t have looked at me, would she?”

  “He doesn’t,” Sostratos said.

  “And how do you know that?” Menedemos jeered. “I know what Xenokleia told me.”

  “And I know what I saw the first day of the Dionysia, while you were still chasing other women through the city,” Sostratos retorted. “What I saw was Protomakhos coming downstairs from the women’s quarters with the look of a man who’s just enjoyed himself with a woman. How much truth was his wife telling you, do you suppose?”

  “I... don’t know.” Menedemos muttered to himself. Xenokleia had certainly sounded convincing—but then, she would have, wouldn’t she? He tried to rally: “For all you know, Protomakhos bedded a slave girl, not his wife—if he bedded anybody at all.”

  “The only married men who sleep with slaves in their own houses are fools,” Sostratos said, “Are you going to tell me Protomakhos is that kind of fool?”

  “You never can tell,” Menedemos replied, but he knew the response was weak. As he’d said to Xenokleia, he didn’t think her husband was any kind of fool; by all the signs, the stone merchant was a very clever man. That being so, he went on, “I already told you—whatever happened between Xenokleia and me, which is none of your business—”

  “It is if what you do lands us in trouble in Athens,” Sostratos broke in.

  “It won’t, because we’re through. I told you that,” Menedemos said. “Now kindly get out of my room, where you had no business coming in the first place.” As Sostratos pushed past him—almost walked into him—going to the door, Menedemos added, “And don’t think I’ll forget this, either, because I won’t. I owe you one, and we both know it.”

  “I quiver. I shudder. I quake.” Sostratos opened the door and closed it behind him. He didn’t slam it; that would have drawn attention to them. A moment later, his own door opened and then closed. The bar thudded into place.

  Menedemos barred his door again. He lay down, wondering if he’d sleep after the fright Sostratos had given him. He also wondered how many lies he’d heard from Xenokleia. He’d told more than a few lies in his time to end up in bed—or leaning against a wall, or sitting on a stool, or in any number of other postures—with a woman. Having a woman lie to him for the same reason was—he thought—something new.

  Why had she? To get sympathy? To make him angry at Protomakhos? He shrugged. It wasn’t likely to matter now. It had better not, he told himself. The Dionysia was over. Starting tomorrow, he would get down to business. And, no matter how enjoyable Xenokleia had been, he looked forward to it. He yawned, wiggled, stretched . . . and slept.

  When he woke the next morning, rain was pattering down on Protomakhos’
courtyard. It was late in the season, but not impossibly late. He was glad the Aphrodite already lay tied up at Peiraieus; sailing in the rain was asking for trouble.

  Menedemos and Sostratos emerged from their rooms at the same time. They both hurried to the andron. The Rhodian proxenos was eating bread and oil when they came in. “Good day, best ones,” he said after swallowing a bite. “The herbs and flowers will grow later than usual and better than usual this year.”

  “And we’ll get muddy,” Menedemos said, looking down at his feet. They already had. A slave brought breakfast for him and his cousin. “I thank you,” he murmured, and began to eat.

  “Fewer people will come to the agora on a day like today,” Protomakhos said. “You might want to stay here and take it easy till the rain eases up.”

  Though Menedemos, for several reasons, wouldn’t have minded at all, Sostratos spoke up before he could: “Many thanks, most noble one, but we’d better go down to the ship and bring up some of our goods. If you could set aside a storeroom or two for them, we’d be in your debt even more than we are already. Much easier to do business out of Athens than to have to go back and forth to the akatos.”

  “You’re diligent,” the proxenos said approvingly. “Men who work even when they don’t have to often go far. Let me talk to my steward, and we’ll see just which space we can set aside for you. You’ll have all you need, I promise you that.”

  As the two Rhodians started down toward Peiraieus in the rain, Menedemos said, “By the dog of Egypt, Sostratos, I wasn’t going to sneak up to Xenokleia with her husband in the house. You didn’t have to drag me away by the ear like that.”

  “So you say now,” his cousin replied. “For one thing, I didn’t want to take the chance. For another, we do need to get to work.”

  “While it’s raining?” Menedemos skirted a puddle in which something nasty bobbed.

  “What’s the easiest way to steal a victory?” Sostratos answered his own question: “To move faster than your foe. Look at Alexander, time and again. Look at Antigonos, when he used a forced march to fall on Eumenes before Eumenes even knew he was anywhere close by.”

  “I’m not planning on spearing any Athenian merchants, only prying silver out of them,” Menedemos replied. Sostratos was in no mood to listen to banter. More often than not, Menedemos could lead his cousin. Today, he had to follow in Sostratos’ muddy wake.

  They left Athens and made their way down to the great polis’ port between the Long Walls. The soldiers on those walls wrapped themselves in cloaks and capes and himatia. They still looked miserable up there. Menedemos felt pretty miserable himself. He was mud-splashed almost to the knee. So was Sostratos, but he ignored it. When Menedemos complained, all his cousin said was, “We’ve both got hats back at the Aphrodite. They’ll keep the rain out of our eyes when we go up to Athens again.”

  “Hurrah,” Menedemos said sourly. “I’ve never yet seen a hat that will keep my legs dry, though. Almost makes me want to wear trousers like a Kelt.”

  “Barbarous garments,” Sostratos said, which was certainly true, and then, “Besides, do you want to have wet, muddy wool flopping and flapping on your calves and thighs?” That was not only true but sensible—very much like Sostratos to manage both at once.

  Few people were on the road down to Peiraieus, or, for that matter, coming up from the port, either. Without Sostratos’ dragging him out of Protomakhos’ house, Menedemos wouldn’t have been on the road, either. He glumly squelched along. To his relief and more than a little to his surprise, Sostratos didn’t nag him about seducing Xenokleia— not that she’d taken much seducing. Since it was also very much like his cousin to nag, he wondered why Sostratos was holding back now. He didn’t wonder enough to ask, though; that probably would have got Sostratos going.

  They were already in the port and close to the wharves when Sostratos sighed and remarked, “I do sometimes wonder, my dear, if you’ll ever learn.”

  Of course I learn. I can talk women into bed who would have ignored me when my line was rougher a few years ago. Menedemos came within a digit of saying that out loud. But it would have started the quarrel he didn’t feel like having, and so, reluctantly, he swallowed the words. He gave back a soft answer instead: “Look, you can see the Aphrodite’s mast and yard from here. I hope everything’s been all right while we were celebrating the Dionysia.”

  “Diokles would have sent word up into Athens if he’d run into real trouble,” Sostratos said. He was right again. He was also successfully distracted, which made Menedemos even happier.

  Menedemos waved to the Aphrodite as he and Sostratos came up the pier toward the merchant galley. Someone aboard the akatos waved back. Squinting through the rain, Menedemos called, “That you, Diokles?”

  “It’s me, all right,” the oarmaster answered. “I know the two of you well enough by your size next to each other.” Menedemos was most of a head shorter than Sostratos. Not caring to be reminded of it, he glowered at his cousin as if it were Sostratos’ fault. The oblivious Diokles went on, “Everything’s fine here, young sirs.”

  “That’s good news,” Menedemos and Sostratos said together. Menedemos added, “Nobody got in trouble celebrating the festival?”

  “Not so you’d notice,” Diokles replied. “Somebody—I forget who—lost a tooth in a tavern brawl. A few more men got black eyes and such, and we’ve been gobbling cabbage like you wouldn’t believe to fight our hangovers.”

  “I’ve never found it does much good,” Menedemos said. “Well-watered wine the next morning works better.”

  “We’ve done that, too,” Diokles said. Teleutas, who was—as often happened—lounging around not doing much, let out an indignant squawk. Diokles dipped his head. “Oh, yes—Teleutas says he had his pouch slit at a brothel. Only a couple of drakhmai lost, though, if he did. He’d just gone through most of his pay on wine before he got himself a woman.”

  The sailor squawked again. “What do you mean, if? It happened just like I said.”

  Diokles shrugged. “I wasn’t there.” Menedemos and Sostratos looked at each other. They shrugged in unison. Teleutas was a less than reliable witness. He’d proved as much many times over. Smiling slightly, Sostratos muttered something under his breath. Menedemos couldn’t make out what it was, but had a pretty good idea: amusement that an occasional thief should complain of theft.

  “We’re going to take some of our goods up to the proxenos’ house in Athens proper,” Menedemos said. “That way, Sostratos and I can do business without running back here whenever we sell something.”

  Sostratos ducked under the poop deck, emerging with the leather sacks that held beeswax, papyrus, embroidered cloth from the east, and the truffles they’d got in Mytilene. “These are all light,” he said. “I can take them myself.”

  “I haven’t got a whole lot of sailors here, skipper,” Diokles said worriedly. “If you don’t want to be going back and forth all day, you’ll need to hire some of these harborside loungers and scroungers.”

  “What do you think, Sostratos?” Menedemos asked. “You handle the silver.”

  His cousin was a slow man with an obolos, one of the things that made him a good toikharkhos. He dipped his head now without the least hesitation. “Yes, we’d better do it,” he said. “The point of bringing things up into Athens is that we shouldn’t be going back and forth all the time. Pay them three oboloi each, four if they squawk—this isn’t an all-day job, or one that takes any skill.”

  “Right,” Menedemos said. A drakhma—six oboloi—a day would keep a man fed and housed, though not in fancy style. The way prices kept rising nowadays, though, he wondered how much longer that would stay true. But there was a worry for another time. Now he cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shouted: “Hauling work! Half a day’s pay! Who wants to bring home some silver?”

  Some of the layabouts wanted a drakhma even for a half day’s hauling work. One of them said, “You don’t know how expensive things are here, strang
er. This is Athens, after all, not some little polis where nothing ever happens.”

  “We’re from Rhodes,” Menedemos snapped. “We know what a drakhma’s worth, by the dog of Egypt—and when things happen in our polis, they happen because we choose them.” That got home to the toplofty Athenian. Menedemos went on, “If you won’t take four oboloi”—he’d quickly discovered he couldn’t get anyone to take three—”well, hail, friend. Will you or won’t you?”

  “I will,” the fellow said, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not a cheapskate.”

  Menedemos batted his eyes, as if he were a youth teasing a suitor. “You say the sweetest things, my dear,” he murmured—he’d had plenty of practice at that role in his younger days.

  “Cistern-arsed effeminate,” the Athenian said under his breath, a sneer right out of Aristophanes. It wasn’t quite loud enough to make Menedemos notice it and run the man out. When they started back up towards Athens, he did set the fellow to hauling jars of wine on a carrying pole, the heaviest work he had.

  “We’ve got quite a parade here,” Menedemos remarked as they started away from the waterfront. “All we need is some rattling chains and we could be taking slaves to the market.”

  “I’m glad we’re not in that business—too risky,” Sostratos said. “Selling a barbarian every now and again is all right, I suppose, but you’re asking for trouble if you do it too often.”

  “I’m not arguing,” Menedemos said. “I never wanted to be a slave trader, either. Oh, maybe once in a while, if the chance comes up, but I wouldn’t care to make a habit of it. People look down their noses at men who buy and sell other men. I do myself. I don’t quite know why—we couldn’t very well live the lives of free Hellenes if we didn’t have plenty of slaves to labor for us—but people do.”

  “Most of the men who buy and sell slaves aren’t the sort the better classes care to deal with—except when they need a new serving woman or workman or what have you,” Sostratos said. “That’s part of it, I think. And the other part is, we all know what can happen to us if an enemy sacks our polis. Not all slaves are barbarians. Hellenes say they don’t enslave their fellow Hellenes, but it happens. Look what Alexander did to Thebes. Look what happened to the Athenians who went to Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.”