Owl to Athens

by H. N. Turteltaub

  He strolled through the market square, mostly listening or watching, now and then pausing to examine merchandise or to gossip or to spend an obolos for a handful of chickpeas fried in olive oil. The name of Demetrios son of Antigonos was on a lot of men’s lips. With his youth and energy—and with his spectacular swoop on Athens—he seemed to have eclipsed his father in many people’s minds. “What will Demetrios do next?” was a question Sostratos heard again and again.

  He heard it so often, in fact, he finally lost patience and said, “Demetrios will do whatever Antigonos tells him to do, that’s what. He’s Antigonos’ right arm and right hand, yes, with his brother Philippos the left, but Antigonos is the brain and the heart.”

  “And how do you know so much about it, O marvelous one?” sneered the last What will Demetrios do next?-sayer, a man who stood behind a table full of painted terra-cotta statuettes.

  “Because I got back from Athens less than a month ago,” Sostratos answered. “Because I heard Demetrios speak in the Assembly, and heard how he always gave credit to his father for everything he did. Because I had supper with him, when my cousin and I sold him truffles and wine. And because Antigonos has been an important marshal for more than thirty years now—since the days of Philip of Macedon— and he’s not going to disappear like so much dandelion fluff.”

  The man with the table next to the statuette-seller’s laughed. “Guess he told you, Lapheides.”

  Lapheides remained unquelled. “Huh!” he said. “Antigonos is as old as Zeus by now.”

  “He’s almost as sly as Zeus, too,” Sostratos said. “Forget Demetrios. Would you want Antigonos for an enemy? Would you want Rhodes to have Antigonos for an enemy? I know I wouldn’t.”

  “I’d rather have him than Demetrios,” Lapheides said stubbornly.

  Sostratos wondered how some people could be so blind, and how Rhodes could hope to survive if they were. The only answer occurring to him was that other poleis also had their share of such fools, and so things evened out. That left him imperfectly reassured. “Don’t you see?” he said, almost pleading. “You can’t have Demetrios without Antigonos, because Demetrios doesn’t do anything his father doesn’t tell him to.”

  “He screws pretty women—lots of ‘em, by what people say,” Lapheides replied.

  Was he changing the subject? Or did he honestly think that was a real comeback to what Sostratos had said? Sostratos wasn’t sure, but suspected the worst. He said, “The best thing that could happen to Rhodes would be for both Antigonos and Demetrios”—he used the dual number to show the two of them made a natural pair—”to forget all about her.”

  Grammatical subtleties were lost on Lapheides. The statuette-seller stuck out his bristly chin and said, “I’m not afraid of ‘em.”

  “You’re surely swift-footed Akhilleus come again,” Sostratos said. Taking the sarcasm for a compliment, Lapheides preened. Sostratos sighed. He’d feared the statuette-seller would.

  12

  Baukis turned a pirouette in the courtyard. The hem of her long chiton flew up for a moment, displaying a pair of shapely ankles. Menedemos watched appreciatively while doing his best not to be noticed at it: she was showing off for his father, not for him. Sounding anxious, she asked, “Do I look all right?”

  Menedemos couldn’t help dipping his head. Philodemos’ eyes, fortunately, were on Baukis. The older man dipped his head, too. “You look fine, my dear,” he said. There, for once, he and Menedemos agreed completely.

  His wife clapped her hands together in excitement. Gold glittered on her fingers and on her wrists and in her ears. One of her rings held a big, deep-green emerald Philodemos had bought for himself—for her, in other words—after Menedemos got a good many of the precious stones from a merchant skipper from Alexandria.

  “I get to go out in the city!” Baukis said—squeaked, really. She clapped her hands again. “I get to go out in the city without a veil! I even get to go out of the city without a veil!”

  Philodemos muttered something, but had the sense not to make it any too clear. The parade to the temple of Hera eight or ten stadia south of the city wall—out beyond the graveyards—was a festival the women of Rhodes looked forward to every year. It gave them a momentary taste of the free and open life custom kept them from living most of the time.

  Clouds drifted across the sky. The setting sun tinged them with pink. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” Baukis exclaimed. “That would be awful.”

  Philodemos and Menedemos shared an amused glance. Both of them were weatherwise. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, my dear,” Philodemos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. “No rain in those clouds. That shower we had day before yesterday was enough to lay the dust, but we shouldn’t expect much more till later in the rainy season.”

  “Oh, good.” Baukis’ smile showed her projecting front teeth, but it also showed how very happy she was. “If you two sailors tell me it’s so, then it must be.” She pointed at Philodemos. “And if it does rain now, I’ll blame you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course. People always blame me for everything that goes wrong around here,” Menedemos’ father answered. “The rain’s bound to be my fault, too.” Baukis stuck out her tongue at him. He made as if to swat her on the backside. They both laughed. No Persian torturer could have devised anything more excruciating to Menedemos than the casual, happy byplay between them. Philodemos went on, “Make sure you stay with Lysistratos’ wife and the other women of the neighborhood, mind you. You know how the young rowdies get when the women come out.”

  He lowered his brows a little as he looked toward Menedemos. Scandals on nights of religious processions and festivals did happen. Plenty of comedies revolved around who met whom or who ravished whom on such nights. And Menedemos had stolen a kiss or two, and once or twice more than a kiss or two, during festivals. But he just smiled back at his father. Philodemos might be fretting about him and some other woman, but wasn’t worrying about him and Baukis.

  “I’ll be careful,” Baukis promised. “And now I’d better go, or else I’ll be late.” She waved to Philodemos and then, plainly as an afterthought, to Menedemos, and hurried toward the door.

  That left Menedemos and his father standing in the courtyard by themselves. They turned away from each other, both seeming nervous about being alone together. Menedemos cocked his head to one side and listened to Baukis and other women out and about calling greetings to one another. The same excitement rang in all their voices. They were out on a holiday, out doing something special, out doing something they thought was wonderful.

  “And what will you do while the women are having their festival?” Philodemos asked suddenly, swinging back toward Menedemos. “Go out into the city and see if you can grab one and drag her off into the darkness somewhere while she’s on her way home?”

  “Did you ever do that, Father, when you were younger? Did you have a favorite spot near the route of the procession where you’d wait and hope for someone pretty to pass by?” Menedemos asked.

  “Never mind me,” his father said, a little too quickly. But then Philodemos rallied: “I never brought scandal to the family, and you’d better not, either. Now answer my question. What are you going to do tonight?”

  “Me? I was going over to Uncle Lysistratos’ house myself, to play Sostratos a game or two of diagrammismos. He just bought himself a new game board and pieces.” Menedemos smiled. “Now we can play with dogs even if we don’t go out hunting hares.”

  “Pah! You and your foolishness.” But Philodemos dipped his head. “Well, go on, then. That’s not a bad way to spend some time. And if you put a little money on who takes how many dogs, you won’t want to get too drunk, for fear of playing like an idiot and costing yourself some silver.”

  “Sostratos never likes to drink much when he’s playing games,” Menedemos said, and then hurried out of the house before his father could start singing hymns of praise to his cousin. He’d heard too many of those, and did
n’t care to listen to another.

  When he got to the door of his uncle’s house, Sostratos opened it. “The slaves have gone to bed,” he said. “I’ll keep the lamps filled and the wine coming—not that we ought to drink a lot. The game deserves a clear head.”

  “Slaves are lazy creatures,” Menedemos said, forgetting that they’d no doubt been working since the sun came up. He set a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I told my father you’d want to go easy on the wine.”

  “You know me. We know each other. We’d better, by now, like it or not.” By Sostratos’ tone, he wasn’t sure he did always like it. He stepped aside to let Menedemos in. “Come on. I’ve got the game board set up in the andron.”

  As Menedemos found when he went into the men’s chamber, Sostratos had also arranged the lamps so they shone on the board to best advantage. A bowl of olives and another of figs sat on the little round table by it, so the cousins could snack as they played. Sostratos dipped up two cups of wine from the mixing bowl. When Menedemos sipped, he said, “What is this? One of wine to three of water?”

  “Exactly,” Sostratos said. “That’s a little too weak for an ordinary drink, but it should be about right when we have to pay attention to what we’re doing.”

  To Menedemos, it was too weak anyhow, but he let it pass. He sat down in front of the white pieces, Sostratos in front of the black. Diagrammismos was played on a twelve-by-twelve square board. Each player had thirty men, deployed at the start of the game on every other square of the first five rows. Playing the white pieces was supposed to give a slight advantage. Menedemos knew he would need all the help he could get, and probably more besides. He took hold of one of the bone dogs and shoved it forward one square.

  Sostratos answered with a move on the far side of the board. The struggle developed rapidly. Whenever Menedemos moved his dogs so that a black piece was between two white ones, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, he captured the enemy dog. Whenever his cousin got a white between two blacks, Menedemos’ dog was lost. A clever move could capture more than one piece at a time; a dog could also be sacrificed, losing itself to capture one or, with luck, more of his opponent’s pieces. A piece could leap over an enemy to an open square just beyond, but did not necessarily capture by doing so. Sostratos massed his dogs into a formation experienced players called a polis. Menedemos tried to match him, but his mind wasn’t altogether on the game. Before too long, he was down to one lonely dog, and Sostratos, with eight black pieces left, hunted him down and captured him.

  “Got you!” he said, picking up the last white dog. “Try again?”

  “Yes, let’s,” Menedemos answered. “You’re a better player than I am, but I can put up more of a fight than that.” They rearranged the dogs. Menedemos went first again. He did give Sostratos a tougher game the second time, but lost again.

  Sostratos set up the dogs to show a crucial position late in the game. “If you’d gone here instead of here, you would have had me in trouble,” he said, moving a piece different from the one Menedemos had chosen. “Do you see?”

  “Afraid I do,” Menedemos said ruefully. “And I see you’re going to bring that polluted board along when we sail next season, aren’t you, so you can thump me like a drum every night?”

  “It won’t be so bad,” said Sostratos, who plainly intended to do just that. “You win some of the time when we play, and you get better when we play regularly. I’ve seen that. And watching is fun, too. It’ll help keep the whole crew happy.”

  “Maybe.” Menedemos sounded unconvinced. “I’ll tell you, though, when somebody who’s watching a game says, ‘You thick-skinned idiot, you should have moved there,’ I don’t think it’s fun. I want to clout the whipworthy villain.”

  “Mm, that’s true. So do I,” Sostratos said. “Most people know better, but one bigmouth is plenty to ruin things.” He paused and muttered, then spoke aloud: “Teleutas would do something like that, and laugh afterwards.”

  “He probably would. But many goodbyes to him. He’s sailed with us four years in a row, and this’ll be the last,” Menedemos said.

  “About time.” His cousin reached for the dogs, which sat on the table by the board. “One more game? After that, I think I’ll turn in.”

  “All right. Why not?” Menedemos set up the pieces with him. He made the first move. Again, he gave Sostratos a hard fight. Again, Sostratos beat him. Sighing, Menedemos helped his cousin put the dogs back in the drawer built into the game board. “Almost,” he said. “Almost, but not quite. Do you terrorize Uncle Lysistratos, too?”

  “Father and I are pretty even, as a matter of fact,” Sostratos replied. “I haven’t played your father lately. From what I remember, though, and from what my father says, he’s the dangerous one in the family.”

  “He would be,” Menedemos said darkly. He hadn’t played diagrammismos with his father since he was a youth. He’d lost then, but marked it down to youthful inexperience. He didn’t want to try it again now. Knowing his father, he’d get trounced again, and would get sardonic lessons on the game along with the trouncing. That he could do without.

  Sostratos ignored his comment, which was probably just as well. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the door,” he said. “Do you want a torch-bearer to light your way back to your house? I can wake a slave.”

  “If I were going across town, I would,” Menedemos answered. “Across the street? Not likely, my dear, though I thank you for the thought. Farewell.” He went out through the door. Sostratos closed it after him.

  Menedemos looked toward his own house. No lights showed at any of the windows he could see. His father’s room faced toward Uncle Lysistratos’ house. It was as dark as the rest, so presumably the older man had already gone to bed. Bare feet silent on the hard-packed dirt of the street, Menedemos went around till he could see all the windows. No, not a lamp lit anywhere.

  The sky was dark, too. The moon wouldn’t rise till midnight; the festival of Hera took place on the night of the third-quarter moon. Zeus’ wandering star had blazed low in the west when the evening began, but it was setting now; buildings kept Menedemos from being sure whether it had already slipped below the horizon. Kronos’ wandering star, dimmer and yellower, still glowed in the southwestern sky. It was the only wanderer Menedemos could see. Only starlight and a few lamps shining through shutter slats in other houses gave his eyes something to work with.

  Someone hurried down the street not far away. Menedemos’ hand fell to the knife he wore on his belt. Maybe I should have had a torch-bearer after all, he thought. As in any Hellenic city, night was the time when the thieves and robbers came out. Rhodes had fewer than most, or so Menedemos had always thought. But meeting even one could prove disastrous.

  This fellow, though, ignored Menedemos. He hurried south, toward the center of town. Menedemos brought a hand up to his mouth to muffle a chuckle. The other man was no thief, except perhaps of love. He was probably off to grab a woman—maybe one woman in particular, maybe any woman he could—when the celebrants came back from Hera’s temple. Menedemos had done the same thing himself in years gone by. Sometimes he’d had good luck, sometimes none.

  Another man, and then another, also slipped south. Menedemos stayed where he was. Only one woman mattered to him right now. He knew Baukis would be coming back to this part of town, to this very street. He didn’t have to go looking for her. She would be here.

  And then what? he asked himself. She’s still your father’s wife. If you do anything like what you’re thinking of doing . . . He tossed his head. He hadn’t done anything yet, or hadn’t done anything much, anyhow. One kiss in three years—what was that? It couldn’t be anything.

  You shouldn’t be out here. You should be in bed. You should be asleep. Relentless as the Furies, relentless as storm waves, his conscience battered him. At last, to his surprise, it beat him back inside the house. Maybe I really will curl up and go to sleep. I’ll feel good about it in the morning. For him, feeling virtuous wa
s a pleasant novelty.

  He lay down, but sleep, no matter how coaxed, would not come. He stared up at the ceiling, his thoughts full of trouble. He knew what he should do, and he knew what he wanted to do, and the one had nothing to do with the other. Presently, the darkness in his room grew a little less absolute. A strip of moonlight came through the window. Menedemos muttered a curse.

  Not too long after the moon came up, he heard in the distance hundreds—no, thousands—of women’s voices raised in song. As they returned to the polis from the shrine, the women of Rhodes were praising the majesty of white-armed Hera. The chorus grew louder and sweeter as they drew nearer.

  “ ‘Of Hera I sing, she of the golden throne, to whom Rheia gave birth,’ “ the women chanted.

  “ ‘Queen of the immortals, who is outstanding for her beauty, And the wife and sister of loud-thundering Zeus. The glorious one, of whom all the blessed on lofty Olympos Stand in awe and honor like Zeus who delights in thunder.’ “

  “Zeus!” Menedemos said. It wasn’t a prayer. He sprang to his feet and threw on his chiton. When he left his room, he closed the door behind him. Anyone walking by would think he remained inside. Quiet as an owl gliding on soft-feathered wings, he went downstairs and left the house.

  The women’s song filled the city as one group after another left the main procession and went off toward their homes. Here and there, Menedemos also heard squeals and giggles and a couple of shrieks as Rhodian men paid calls of one sort or another on the returning women.

  Voices raised in song came up the street toward Menedemos’ house and the one where Sostratos lived. Menedemos ducked into a moon shadow blacker than the ink he and his cousin had sold in Athens. “Farewell!” he heard again and again, as women left the group, left the festival, and returned to their homes and their everyday lives.