Strong Wine

by A. J. Demas

  “Do we look alike?” Timiskos asked. “We’re only half-brothers, really.”

  “You look alike,” said the friend. He reached across the table to shake Damiskos’s hand. “Soukios Sousiades.”

  “Damiskos Temnon. Are you a sculptor?”

  “Eh? No, I do mosaics.”

  “Ah, that explains it. I have a friend who’s a sculptor,” Damiskos explained. “He’s always covered in marble dust too.”

  Suddenly he wished Timiskos’s friend would ask about this sculptor, giving him the opportunity to talk about Ariston, whom he had begun to think of almost as a nephew or—well, a brother-in-law.

  Soukios, who said he had just finished work for the day, polished off their bottle and called for another one. They refilled their cups, and Timiskos’s friend began a salacious story about the family that had commissioned his master’s latest work. Outside the light was beginning to fail, and Damiskos wondered if they should order some food.

  “Soukios was a school-mate of mine,” said Timiskos, interrupting the story. After a moment, Damiskos realized that he’d felt the need to explain why he was friends with a mere mosaicist.

  “That’s right,” said Soukios humorously. “I’ve got an education—and here I am working with my hands. Oh, the shame of it! Nah, I’m joking. I make good money. My folks are proud of me.”

  “That’s great,” said Damiskos sincerely. He thought of Ino and her silversmithing, and wondered if he should ask some leading questions to express an interest. But Soukios didn’t seem to want to talk endlessly about his craft; he seemed more interested in the wine.

  Damiskos turned to his brother. “Do you ever think of taking up a trade like that, Timiskos?”

  “What? No, I couldn’t. No.”

  Soukios wiped his mouth and made an emphatic gesture. “I keep telling him he should, though. You know he helped his stepmother redecorate her apartment? And he did a great job. You can make money doing that, for wealthy clients. And it’s pretty genteel—it’s not grubbing around with mortar and marble dust. Not that I mind that, I’m just saying.”

  “I don’t want to decorate people’s houses for a living, Soukios. Just leave it, will you?”

  “All right, all right.”

  “Sorry, did he just say Mother’s redecorating?” said Damiskos. That was probably where the money for Xanthe had gone.

  “So I didn’t get to finish my story,” Soukios went on. “There they were, bent over the couch, him with his—”

  “Damiskos is just back from Boukos,” Timiskos interrupted again. “So he probably has some stories of his own.” He gave a rather forced laugh.

  “Yeah?” said Soukios eagerly. “Did you visit any of the Pigeon Street girls?”

  “I did not.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot,” said Timiskos. “You were there to see your, uh. Your brother in arms or whatever.”

  Soukios frowned. “I’d’ve thought an old army buddy would have taken you to sample all the—”

  “He’s not an ‘old army buddy.’” Damiskos suddenly felt very tired.

  “What was it the parents wanted you to come back for, anyway?” Timiskos asked. “It has something to do with Simonides and his wife, or something?”

  Damiskos sighed. He found himself pinching the bridge of his nose and realized it was a gesture he had picked up from Varazda. “They want me to marry Ino because she’s inherited some shit business in Kargania.”

  Timiskos blinked at him. “What is it? The business.”

  “Shit. It’s shit. It’s literally shit, selling shit. In Kargania.”

  “What?” demanded Soukios. “They sell shit in Kargania? They buy shit?”

  “For fertilizer. I think people buy and sell it here, but there’s a lot more farming in Kargania, so there’s probably more, you know, shit-selling.”

  “What kind of shit? Karganian shit from—what? Mountain goats? What do they have there?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe.”

  “Mountain goat shit, seriously?”

  “Shut up, Soukios,” said Timiskos. “Yeah. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound great, but it’s a business, though, isn’t it? It would mean a steady income. And Kargania’s not that bad these days—it’s peaceful compared to fucking Sasia, and you liked it there. And Ino’s nice-looking, right? Weren’t you going to marry her, when I was little? Or was that someone else?”

  “No, that was her.”

  “I mean, she’s definitely weird—”

  “No, she’s not. You just have to be understanding with her—I mean you just have to try to understand her. It’s not even that hard. It’s just that her shitty parents have never made an effort—even though her father’s obviously the same way she is.”

  Terza’s head, he hated both of them. He should never have left her with them sixteen years ago. But at the time there had seemed to be nothing he could do. And he remembered something else, something she had said to him at the time.

  “So there you go,” Timiskos was saying. “You like her. You’d be happy together.”

  With no warning, tears started to leak out of Damiskos’s eyes. He covered his face with his hands. He felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  Soukios groaned. “He wants to marry someone else, you moron! Ah, Anaxe’s tits, I’m going to get us another bottle of wine.”

  Damiskos scrubbed at his eyes. “I shouldn’t—sorry—shouldn’t drink any more. We should get home, Timi. They’ll want us to be there.”

  “Home?” Timiskos repeated. “You’re staying with Father and Myrto?”

  Damiskos levered himself up from the table. “Like you, I’ve nowhere else to go.”

  “Uh-uh, you can’t go yet,” said Soukios, reappearing with a wine bottle. “I can’t drink this all by myself.”

  Damiskos took another swipe at his eyes and sat back down.

  “Tell us about her,” Soukios said as he filled Damiskos’s cup.

  Damiskos looked into his wine cup. Varazda wouldn’t have minded being described as a mistress; Damiskos could even imagine that there were situations in which he would like it a lot. It was Damiskos who didn’t want to do it just then—didn’t want to talk about Varazda at all.

  So it was Timiskos who corrected his friend: “It’s a ‘he.’”

  “Ohhhhh,” said Soukios. Then, after a moment, “You know, I’ve heard a lot of wives don’t care—or, I guess if they do, there’s nothing they can do about it, because you’re the husband.”

  “Kargania,” Timiskos reminded him. “Shit business? It doesn’t matter whether she cares or not. Anyway, leave him alone.”

  Soukios shrugged, and topped up Damiskos’s cup after he had taken a swallow.

  “So,” Soukios began again, “there he was, with his dick … ”

  In the end, they did not stay much longer. Timiskos saw someone entering the wine shop to whom he—or rather, Damiskos’s parents—owed money, and made a discreet exit. Damiskos paid for the wine and followed him. The brothers walked most of the way home together in awkward silence. It was not quite dark, the streets emptying as the shops’ shutters closed.

  Timiskos cleared his throat. “Look, I’m sorry I was callous, before. About Ino and the whole thing. I guess sometimes you just want someone to be happy, so you try to come up with reasons why their situation isn’t so bad. You know?”

  Damiskos nodded. “I know. I was doing that with you and the army. When I think back now, I should have been able to tell you weren’t happy.”

  “I guess,” said Timiskos after another moment, “you want to stay in Boukos with your, your guy?”

  Damiskos ran his knuckles along his jaw, rasping over his beard. He wondered if Varazda had picked up that habit. He found himself hoping absurdly that he had, and that he laughed about it when he found himself doing it, because he didn’t have a beard. (“Neither do you,” he could hear Varazda saying. “You have stubble.”)

  “Nah,” he said. “
It’s not that kind of thing. Couldn’t last.”

  It could have lasted. He could so easily picture himself as an old man in Varazda’s house, tottering around while Varazda—old too but still poised and elegant, all silver hair and gold jewellery—looked after him.

  He didn’t tell his brother that, for the same reason Timiskos hadn’t told him why he went into the legions. Maybe it was stupid, but he couldn’t bring himself to say, “Yes, I want to stay in Boukos, more than I’ve ever wanted anything—I feel like an animal in a trap, desperately looking for a way out, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling that way.”

  They arrived on their parents’ street. The barbershop at the front of the house was shuttered, but there were a pair of men standing outside the door that led up to the Temnons’ apartment. Damiskos stopped in the street as soon as he caught the glint of light on their helmets and naked swords, but he had seen it too late. The men started forward into the street.

  “Which one of you is Damiskos Temnon?” one of them demanded.

  Chapter 5

  “Holy angels, it’s cold in here!” Varazda announced to anyone who had perhaps not noticed. He had crept out of the bedroom with a blanket around his shoulders to light the brazier in the sitting room.

  “Have you heard from Damiskos yet?” came the usual question from the kitchen.

  “Yazata, I just got up! I don’t get messages from him in my sleep.” He snickered at the idea of a dream messenger from Dami. It would have been kitted out in a crisp uniform, and would probably have marched.

  “I just thought something might have come last night, after I went to bed,” said Yazata. “It’s been nearly a week, hasn’t it?”

  “Five days,” Varazda corrected him. “And I’m the one who’s supposed to be counting them, not you.”

  Remi bounced into the room and tried to wrap herself up in the trailing end of his blanket. He scooped her up and walked through into the kitchen.

  “Are you sure there wasn’t a letter last night after you got in?” Yazata persisted.

  “I got in at midnight. I’m sure.”

  “Have you written to him?”

  Varazda deposited Remi at the table and slid in next to her, rewrapping the blanket around both of them. “Twice. Once in Zashian, to show him that I was practicing. It said, ‘Hello how are you we are all well here Yazata misses you.’”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Oh.” Yazata brought over bowls of porridge, two large and one small. “Don’t touch, Remiza, it’s hot. I do, though. Miss him.”

  “Blow on it, blow on it!” Remi demanded. “Not you, Yaza—Papa.”

  Ariston and Kallisto came down as Varazda was cooling Remi’s porridge for her.

  “Brr! It’s as cold as Anaxe’s, uh, private parts,” said Ariston.

  Kallisto gave him a quelling look. “Still rude. You should not swear by any of Anaxe’s body parts.”

  “Yes, my lady,” said Ari meekly. “Varazda, has there been—”

  “No! Five days. And yes.”

  “What?”

  Kallisto pushed him toward a seat at the table. “No, he hasn’t had a letter from Damiskos. It’s been five days since Damiskos left. And yes, Varazda has written him. You and Yazata really need to stop pestering him. Damiskos is his lover.”

  She sat next to Ari, which put her directly opposite Varazda. He finished blowing on Remi’s porridge and returned it to her.

  “I think you should go to Pheme after him,” said Kallisto.

  Varazda looked up, surprised. She accepted her own bowl of porridge from Yazata, and blew on a spoonful.

  “It’s just my opinion, and you don’t have to listen to it any more than to these two. It isn’t any of our business. But personally, I think, if you can make the time, you should go to Pheme. You know his address. You could show up and surprise him. Of course I don’t know him as well as you do, but he strikes me as the sort of man who might not write because he doesn’t know what to put in a letter, but would be overjoyed to see you.”

  “We all know he would be overjoyed to see you,” said Yazata.

  “Duh,” said Ariston.

  He left later that morning. He hadn’t really needed to be convinced. The truth was, he was worried. He didn’t think Kallisto was quite right about Dami not knowing what to put in a letter. Dami had written three times in the first month they’d been apart, and they had been rather ridiculous letters to send your lover, but Dami knew very well Varazda had appreciated them. Varazda had been expecting more of the same, maybe with some stilted military terms thrown in, to make it clear that it was a joke. To have heard nothing at all … well, it was probably because a letter had gone astray, that was all.

  Yazata, Ariston, and Kallisto had all been eager to help Varazda clear his schedule by conveying messages and cancelling engagements for him after he was gone, and he preferred to get on the ship as quickly as possible so he wouldn’t have too much time to dread it. He hated sailing and had never made the trip from Boukos all the way around the island of Pheme to the city. But he judged all sea travel against the journey across the open sea to Boukos from the south-west coast of Zash, and compared to that, this was not so bad. He passed most of the time during the day-and-half and the uncomfortable night of the journey trying not to worry about Dami.

  Their parting had been so unsatisfactory. They should have been able to make love the night before Dami left, and it was entirely Varazda’s fault that they hadn’t. But he shouldn’t have snapped at Dami for trying to insist he didn’t mind. It wasn’t as if Dami had been lying. With his generosity, he probably didn’t mind. Why was it so hard to accept that you needed your lover to be generous in order for the whole thing to work?

  And was the whole thing working? Varazda wondered, as he had several times in the intervening days, whether he should have turned that grave conversation in the garden into something more tender, more monumental, after all. He did want Dami to stay forever. He should have said so.

  The fog shrouding the harbour of Pheme thinned as the ship approached, and Varazda had as good a view of the biggest city in the world as anyone ever got. It was the first time he had seen it. Against a background of dramatic green mountains, the city sprawled over a series of hills ringing the harbour, a huge jumble of rooflines and walls chequered with windows, streets winding up hillsides like dark fissures. An especially wide fissure held the river, winking in the sun as it scrolled down from the mountains. Here and there, columned temples or civic buildings peeked out from behind tiled roofs, as if the city had grown up willy-nilly around them, hiding their prominence. There was, of course, no hill-surmounting, gilt-roofed palace, as there would have been in a Zashian city. But Varazda could see now why Dami laughed about the size of Boukos. Pheme made it look like a village.

  Disembarking in the harbour after taking in that view of the city from a distance, Varazda felt rather like a bird walking on the floor of a forest that it had just flown over. He could still look up and see some of the city’s hills—it had seven, didn’t it, famously?—past the buildings bulking around the harbour, but he couldn’t orient himself toward any of the things he had seen from the ship. Not that it would have helped him much if he had.

  He had come in Pseuchaian dress: his plainest tunic and boots, with a dark green mantle of Dami’s and his hair tied back simply, no jewellery at all. Trousers and a coat would have been warmer in this weather, and he was far from the only foreigner on the docks, so perhaps he needn’t have bothered. His kept his hennaed hands tucked inside Dami’s mantle, all the same.

  He looked around the crowded quayside, and decided to follow the clearest current of traffic flowing up into the city. He knew where he was going, roughly. Dami lived in a place called Vallina Hill. Varazda had seen a map of Pheme at the Palace of Letters once, but he hadn’t had time to consult it before leaving Boukos, so he was relying on his memory that it was near the river Phira to the south. He would find the
river and follow it into the city until he thought he might be close and then ask for directions.

  It was a longish walk just to get from the harbour to the mouth of the river, and he began to get the feeling that he was probably going out of his way. He was also hungry, but he passed up several insalubrious-looking wine shops full of sailors before he found one he wasn’t afraid to enter. He was surprised by how unsafe the city made him feel.

  “Am I near Vallina Hill?” he asked the man behind the wine-shop counter after he’d paid for a greasy sausage on a skewer.

  “Not really,” said the man, and rattled off a string of directions that made Varazda decide to stick to his original plan of following the river.

  He walked through a neighbourhood of warehouses and shipyards, where the Phira was so wide that the other bank looked like an island in the distance, and boats ferried passengers across. The river narrowed, and the warehouses gave way to smart-looking shops and houses. Then it forked around a small, built-up island, and the two streams became narrow enough for bridges. Varazda, looking to his right, away from the river, caught his breath at a sight of gleaming marble buildings and statues in a wide open square, just visible down one of the crooked fissures of streets. He turned into it and emerged in the Phemian agora, the heart of the biggest city in the world.

  Varazda had been to Suna—briefly, on his way from Gudul to Boukos—and seen the inside of the Great Palace of the King of Zash. This, he thought, should not have impressed him. It was just a big square—not square, in fact, but irregularly shaped—with buildings all around it. There were market stalls in the middle that ought to have looked tacky, and crowds of people, slaves and labourers and well-dressed women, coming and going. And all around them were soaring, columned porches, painted statues of winged deities, marble inscriptions commemorating the victories of the Republic. It was not harmonious, but it was alive. It ranked easily among the most impressive sights Varazda had ever seen.

  He could tell that one building was a temple—to Amphiaraos, the patron god of Pheme? Another would be the Civil Assembly, the main seat of government. And was the Marble Porches, the philosophy school, located here too? He only realized how long he had been standing gaping around at the agora when someone bumped into him and swore, and someone else—probably working in tandem—tried to steal his bag.