Melite said, “Demetrios plays with women the way a child plays with soldiers carved from wood. Because he is who he is, he can do that. But no woman would put up with it from an ordinary man.”
Menedemos drew himself up to his full height, which was considerably less than Demetrios’ godlike stature. “If you were to know me, you would find I am no ordinary man, either.”
“Oh? Would you also give me golden bracelets and necklaces and rubies and emeralds for a single night, the way Demetrios did?” Melite asked.
Backtracking, Menedemos answered, “I didn’t claim I had Demetrios’ money. But I would give silver in due measure. And I would give you something I daresay Demetrios didn’t.”
“Would you?” the hetaira said. “And what is that?”
Joy-She cocked her head to one side, studying him. He could feel her eyes, even if they remained indistinct behind the veiling, “You are brash,” she said, Menedemos bowed again, though he wasn’t sure she’d paid him a compliment. She went on, “One of the things a hetaira does not do is talk about her friends. That is how and why they stay friends with her.”
Hetairai, as Menedemos knew perfectly well, were no more immune to gossip than any other people. Still, he didn’t really care to learn how Demetrios reverenced Aphrodite. He was more interested in paying his own respects to the goddess.
But when Melite said, “Is it not true that you came here to sell me perfume, not yourself?” he decided he wouldn’t worship Aphrodite in her company.
A grin let him put the best face on it he could. “My dear, I would never be so rude as to charge you for that,” he said. Both the hetaira and her slave laughed then. Menedemos held out a jar of perfume. “For this, on the other hand ...”
“Let me smell it,” she said. He undid the stopper and handed her the jar. She sniffed. “That is sweet,” she admitted, returning it to him. “What is your price? For the perfume, I mean, not for anything else.” When he told her, she gasped in artfully simulated anger. “That’s robbery!”
“Your slave didn’t think so, when I told her the same thing in the agora,” Menedemos replied.
“What does a slave know?” Melite said with a scornful toss of her head. The glare she aimed at the barbarian woman said her slave should have known enough to keep her mouth shut. The slave looked as if she wanted to vanish into thin air. Melite gave her attention back to Menedemos. “Anyhow, that’s much too much. I’m not made of silver. I’ll give you half of what you asked.”
“No.” Menedemos shoved the stopper back into the jar. “You will have bought perfume before, I’m sure. You know what it’s worth. And what perfume is finer than essence of Rhodian roses?”
Melite sent him a sly, sidelong look. “Half what you asked, then—and what you asked for earlier,”
With real regret, he tossed his head. “I’m sorry—I am sorry—but no. Business is business, and pleasure is pleasure, and I would be a fool to mix them. I’m not just in business for myself—I have my cousin and my father and my uncle to think of. How would I explain the owls I ought to have?”
“Gambling losses?” she suggested, with the air of a woman who’d made such suggestions many times before. “You can always explain such things if you use a little wit. Who would know?”
But Menedemos answered, “I would.” Melite’s shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. The Rhodian went on, “Family counts for more than half an hour of fun. Family lasts.” His lips quirked again. “Family, you’re stuck with.”
“If you say so.” Melite’s tone showed she had a different opinion. She pointed to the perfume. “What I say is, you still want too much.” She named a new price, higher than her first offer but still much lower than Menedemos’.
“No,” he repeated. “I didn’t give you a price much too high to begin with. I can haggle well enough when I need to, but I don’t always haggle for the fun of it; I’m no Phoenician. I’ve told you what I need. If you don’t feel like paying it, I’ll go back to the market square.”
“Maybe I should have taken you to bed at the start,” Melite said thoughtfully. “Then you might not have been so stubborn.” She came up again.
Now Menedemos moved down, just a little. He had left himself some room to maneuver. He sold her four jars of perfume at a price as good as he’d got in Athens. Melite went upstairs for the money herself; she didn’t trust the slave woman to bring it. She gave Menedemos a mix of coins from all over Hellas, a mix that said not all her friends were Athenians. Some of the coins were lighter than the Athenian standard; others, like the turtles from nearby Aigina, were heavier. Overall, he thought it evened out. Sostratos would probably have insisted on finding a scale and weighing every drakhma and tetradrakhm from other poleis. Menedemos didn’t intend to bother.
Melite spoke to her slave, who carried away the jars of perfume she’d bought. To Menedemos, the hetaira said, “Now I can smell like roses the rest of my life.”
“May it be long,” he answered politely. “Have you a sack I can use to carry this silver back to the Rhodian proxenos’ house where I’m staying?”
“Of course.” Melite called after the slave woman, telling her to fetch one. Then she said, “For someone like me, I wonder whether long life would be gift or curse.”
“Why would you want to die?” Menedemos asked in surprise.
“You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re healthy, and you can’t be poor if you just spent so much money on perfume.”
“But when I get older, when my looks fade?” Melite sounded genuinely worried. “I bought the perfume because I think it will earn me more in the long run. But if I don’t get rich now, what will I do if I’m still alive in twenty years? I won’t be able to do this anymore; men won’t want me. Maybe someone will marry me, but more men make promises to hetairai than ever keep them. I don’t want to end up a washerwoman or something like that, fretting over every obolos and going hungry half the time. In your trade, no one will care if you go gray or get wrinkled. Me? It’s a different story.”
She wasn’t the first woman Menedemos had heard who was alarmed about losing her looks. Hetairai, though, depended on theirs more than most women. Even so, looks weren’t all that counted for them. He said, “If you sing well, if you quote from poetry and plays, if you make men feel good about themselves while they’re with you, all that will stave off the evil day.”
“It helps,” Melite agreed. “Still, though, if a man has a choice between a sweet young thing who can sing and quote and do everything else a hetaira should do and a dumpy older woman, where will he go? That works for me now, but I’ve seen women who were famous once trying to sell themselves to slaves for a couple of oboloi so they could buy sitos.” She shivered. “Death is better than that, I think.”
Menedemos thought of his father and uncle, who no longer put to sea. They weren’t sitting around waiting for death to overtake them, though. They were still busy with the family firm. But Melite was right: what they looked like had nothing to do with how well they could carry on. Briefly, Menedemos wondered what he would be like if he reached his father’s age. He felt his imagination failing. The only thing be was sure of was that he wouldn’t be eager to go to his tomb. He didn’t think Melite would, either, no matter what she said now.
Here came the slave woman with a cloth sack, Menedemos dumped the silver into it. He dipped his head to Melite. “Farewell.”
“And to you,” she replied. “I hope you go back safe to Rhodes.”
“Thanks,” he answered. “I hope you do well here. I hope the perfume helps.”
“It will—for a while.” Melite shrugged. “After that? Who knows?” The slave led Menedemos to the door. Neither he nor Melite said any-thing about her. Who worried over whether a slave did well? No one doing well ever became a slave in the first place.
On his way out of Melite’s home, Menedemos suddenly stopped: so suddenly, he might have turned to marble like a man who’d seen Medusa’s head; so suddenly, one foot stayed up in th
e air, almost but not quite completing a step. That last thought wasn’t quite true. If your polis fell, anything might happen to you, no matter how well you were doing. Anything at all.
Sostratos went into the storeroom at the back of Protomakhos’ house. The room was nearly empty. Hardly any wine, little perfume, only a few jars of crimson dye, and a few rolls of papyrus remained. The silver he and Menedemos had earned for their goods, and die honey and other bits of merchandise they’d acquired here in Athens, already lay aboard the Aphrodite. Sostratos smiled a slow, pleased smile. He knew what they’d spent. He knew what they’d made. He knew they would go home with a solid profit for this journey.
Menedemos came in behind him, perhaps to look things over, too; perhaps to make sure he wasn’t someone else who aimed to pilfer what remained here. Over his shoulder, Sostratos said, “Hail.”
“Oh. It’s you. Hail,” Menedemos answered, which showed what he’d been thinking. “Everything safe here?”
“Safe enough,” Sostratos said. “And it seems to me we’ve done about as much as we can do here in Athens. We aren’t likely to make enough from now on to cover the cost of our rowers day by day.”
“Are you sure?” Menedemos asked, and then waved his hand, “Forget I said that. Of course you’re sure. You don’t tell me things like that unless you’re sure. You want to head back to Rhodes, then? It’s earlier than I expected to leave.”
“Which only means the weather is likely to stay good,” Sostratos said. “Don’t you want to be somewhere else before Demetrios starts wondering how much money we’ve made and whether he can get his hands on it?”
“He wouldn’t do that. We’re Rhodians. His father would skin him if he angered Rhodes ... wouldn’t he?” But conviction leaked from Menedemos1 voice, sentence by sentence. When he laughed, it was sheepishly. “Who knows what Demetrios might do if he set his mind toil?”
“That’s how it seems to me, too. We have good reasons to go. To the crows with me if I can find any good reason to stay,” Sostratos said.
Menedemos looked back over his shoulder. No one from Protomakhos’ household stood within earshot. “Xenokleia . .” Menedemos whispered.
Sostratos tossed his head. “Any good reason, I said. If she’s not a bad reason, I’ve never heard one,”
“She wasn’t bad at all,” his cousin said. “I still don’t know if she was telling the truth about her husband, but I don’t much care, either. She wasn’t bad.”
There were times when Sostratos could have gleefully strangled Menedemos. His cousin knew that, and just as gleefully exploited it. And so, instead of losing his temper now, Sostratos reminded himself of that. He said, “Do you truly think the woman is reason enough to stay here, when measured against all the reasons we have for leaving?”
“Well, no, not when you put it like that,” Menedemos admitted.
“All right, then,” Sostratos said. “If we’re agreed, I’ll go down to the harbor and bring back enough sailors to carry our leftovers to the Aphrodite. This has been a soft cruise for the men. They’ve been able to live it up—”
“As much as you can live it up on a drakhma and a half a day,” Menedemos put in.
“True. But all they’ve been buying are food and wine and women. They don’t have to worry about lodging or anything like that,” Sostratos said. “I’m sure Diokles will know which taverns they favor.”
As Sostratos walked between the Long Walls, he kept looking back toward Athens and the marvelous buildings on her akropolis. He sighed. He’d done more than sigh after his father sent word he had to leave the Lykeion and come home to Rhodes. He’d wept bitter tears every step of the way down to Peiraieus. Not now. He’d changed in the years since then. He wasn’t sure the change was for the better, but he was sure it was real. His visit to his old haunt, his talk with Theophrastos, had shown him the life of the Lykeion, however marvelous he’d thought it while younger, didn’t suit him anymore.
Demetrios’ soldiers swaggered through the streets of Peiraieus. When the Aphrodite first came to Athens, Kassandros’ soldiers had done the swaggering. Aside from the master they served, Sostratos saw little difference between one set of Macedonians and mercenaries and the other.
Demetrios had proclaimed the liberation of Athens, and had even torn down the fortress of Mounykhia to show he was serious, but Athenians still got out of the way in a hurry when Macedonian soldiers came by.
So did Sostratos. He didn’t want trouble with Demetrios’ men. No great warrior himself, he knew what was too likely to happen if trouble somehow started. He sighed again, this time in relief, when he reached the quays without hearing a shout of, “What do you think you’re doing, skinny?” or anything of the sort.
Diokles waved as Sostratos came up the pier toward him. “Hail, young sir,” the keleustes said. “You’ll be planning to sail soon, won’t you?
Sostratos started. “How did you know that?”
“You’ve taken up just about everything we brought here to sell,” Diokles answered. “By now, you’ve had it a while. Either you’ve got rid of it all, or else there’ll be some odds and ends left to bring back to the ship. One way or the other, what’s the point to staying around any longer?”
“Odds and ends it is,” Sostratos said. “I’ll need some sailors to haul them here, and then we’ll head for Rhodes.”
The oarmaster dipped his head. “Suits me. I haven’t had much to do since we got here, and I’m tired of sitting around and rusting. I don’t enjoy staying drunk for a week at a time the way I did when I was younger, and I can’t screw as often as I used to, either. I’m ready to go to sea.”
He was so very ready, he tramped up to Athens himself with Sostratos and some sailors, and didn’t complain about shouldering a carrying pole and helping to haul a jar of Byblian back to the Aphrodite. Most of the time, that would have been beneath his dignity.
Before sailing, Sostratos checked the silver stowed under the poop deck. He smiled when he 6nished. Everything was as it should have been. He was ready to see Rhodes again, too—and how better than coming home with a nice profit?
10
From his station on the raised poop deck of the Aphrodite, Menedemos looked forward toward the bow. “Are we ready?” he called to the rowers waiting at the oars.
No one said no. Two of the crewmen were Athenians, new men hired to take the place of a pair of Rhodians who’d fallen in love with women here and decided not to leave. The newcomers had known enough to bring cushions for the rowing benches, so they probably had a fair notion of what they needed to do. Menedemos’ eyes flicked to the quay. Yes, the mooring lines had been loosed and brought aboard the akatos. And yes, the anchors were raised and stowed near the bow. Satisfied with the last-minute check, he dipped his head to Diokles.
The oarmaster raised his bronze square and the little mallet with which he hit it. “Back oars!” he shouted, and smote the square to set the stroke.
Grunting, the men at the oars got to work. Clang. . . Clang! . . Clang! The first few strokes hardly moved the merchant galley. Menedemos had expected nothing different, especially with the ship’s timbers heavy with seawater because she hadn’t been dragged up onto the beach and dried out.
As Diokles had been going to sea since Menedemos was a little boy, he’d doubtless expected nothing different, either. He railed at the rowers anyhow: “Come on, you worthless lugs! Put your backs into it! You’re not lotos-eaters any more—no more lying around or drinking or screwing and getting paid for it. Now you’ve got to earn your silver. Let’s see you work, by the dog!”
Little by little, the Aphrodite slid away from the pier, picking up speed with each stroke as she backed out into the harbor. Menedemos glanced over to the quay again to make sure an irate Protomakhos wasn’t rushing up to scream, “Adulterer!” at the last moment. Some women couldn’t keep a secret (neither could some men, but Menedemos chose not to dwell on that). Xenokleia, though, seemed to have stayed quiet long enough.
&n
bsp; Harborside loungers and sailors aboard round ships, fishing boats, and some of Demetrios’ war galleys watched the akatos pull away from the quay. Menedemos caught Diokles’ eye. “Let’s give them a little show, shall we?” he said.
“Right you are, skipper.” The keleustes knew what Menedemos had in mind. He raised his voice to carry all the way up to the bow: “At my order, portside rowers keep backing oars, starboard switch to normal stroke. Ready? . . . Now!”
Menedemos helped the turn with the steering oars. The Aphrodite spun through half a circle almost in her own length, so that her bow faced out to sea and her stern the quays she was leaving. Diokles ordered both sets of rowers to switch to normal stroke as the turn neared completion; Menedemos finished it with the steering oars alone, and guided the merchant galley out into the Saronic Gulf.
A couple of men aboard one of Demetrios’ sixes patrolling the harbor waved to the Aphrodite, complimenting her on a smart maneuver. As soon as his course suited him, Menedemos took his right hand off the starboard steering-oar tiller and waved back. One of those men wore an officer’s cloak. Praise from someone who didn’t have to give it was doubly welcome.
“We’ll do better next time,” Diokles promised, and glowered at the rowers. “Won’t we?” He turned it into a threat.
“I’m sure we will,” Menedemos said. The oarmaster played the villain’s role. Menedemos, by contrast, could be the easygoing one, the one who sometimes took the edge off Dioldes’ strictness. He enjoyed that role more than he would have liked playing the harsh taskmaster himself.
The breeze came from off the land. “Unbrail the sail and let it down from the yard,” Menedemos said. The sailors leaped to obey. Down came the big square sail, brails and bracing lines cutting it into squares. It flapped two or three times before filling with wind. Once it did fill, Menedemos took more than half the men off the oars. Even the ones who stayed at their benches didn’t row; they only waited to make sure the breeze didn’t suddenly slacken. The Aphrodite wasn’t in such a hurry that she needed to speed along under wind and oars both.
Owl to Athens Page 34
