Harry Turtledove - Salamis

“That will make her easier for me to find, won’t it? I’ll shout, ‘Hey you!’ and she’ll come running.” Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “How can you screw somebody if you don’t even know who she is?”

“My pole did the talking, my pole and her piggy,” Menedemos said. Sostratos made that tongue-clicking noise again. They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

In Greek letters, the palace girl’s name was Seseset, or something close to that. It had a couple of the sneezing consonants Aramaic also used but Greek didn’t. She gave herself to Sostratos as readily—maybe as greedily—as she did to Menedemos. Now that she knew about foreskins, she seemed to take them in stride.

Sostratos also soon discovered his cousin was right. Seseset gave what she gave cheerfully enough, but she cared little for either Hellene beyond the silver they paid her. She was honest about it, at least. Sostratos preferred that to drama. A lot of things he enjoyed watching in a play at the theater were less enjoyable in real life.

So when he got the urge and he had a drakhma he didn’t mind parting with, he found Seseset and slaked his lust. Sometimes he thought she enjoyed it; others, her attitude toward him put him in mind of his when he petted a friendly dog. The creature was there. It was amusing for a moment. Past that, it wasn’t worth getting excited about.

He could have had exactly what Seseset gave him, and clever conversation with it, for much more money from any of the hetairai who’d flocked to Alexandria. A city full of rich men naturally attracted women who wanted some small share of riches for themselves.

Sostratos had no interest in visiting the fancy women. For one thing, he was stingy; he didn’t always care to part with even a single drakhma. For another, he was shy. Holding up his end of the conversation with a hetaira might have strained him. So Seseset suited him fine.

It was funny, in a way. As he’d told Menedemos, he hoped for a wife with whom he’d be able to share all his thoughts. Once he got to know herSeseset, he wouldn’t—he might not—be shy around her. And she wouldn’t have the hard, bright, bitter edge of so many professionally witty women.

Meanwhile …. Meanwhile, business went on. Finding wine merchants was much easier than coming up with jewelers who’d pay the price he wanted for his amber; neither of his leads the morning Menedemos first bedded Seseset came to anything. The wine merchants didn’t always want to buy, either.

A plump fellow named Dromeus peered closely at an amphora a sweating sailor had lugged to his shop. “Everything seems to be in good order, my dear fellow,” he said in Greek that declared he came from Athens. “The jar has the proper shape for Thasian vintages. The stamps on the neck are as they should be. Your first price isn’t too outrageous, if the wine matches the container it comes in and I may be able to talk you down some. But, you see”—he spread his hands in regret—“I don’t know you.”

“By the dog, sir, you know the Ptolemaios, don’t you?” Sostratos usually spoke an Attic-flavored Greek himself. When he got annoyed, as now, more of Rhodes’ native dialect came now.

“I have met him, yes—I’ve had that privilege,” Dromeus answered warily. “Why?”

“Suppose you ask him whether my cousin and I would pour swill into a Thasian amphora and pitch up the stopper again,” Sostratos growled. “ He’s bought from us. He knows honest men when he meets them.”

Dromeus’ face fell: a good impersonation of well-bread dismay. “I assure you, my friend, I meant no such thing. I have no doubt your integrity is above reproach.”

“Then you’ll buy, of course,” Sostratos said. The Alexandrian wine dealer stood mute. Sostratos had expected no more, or he would have got angry. Wearily, he said, “My cousin and I have a room in the palace. You can send someone there to find out if that’s true and if we really have dealt with the Ptolemaios. Once you satisfy yourself, you can send a messenger back to me, and I’ll dicker with you. But I promise my price will be ten drakhmai a jar higher because of the time you’ll make me waste. That’s the way of the world, you know.”

Dromeus lost his air of gentility. He said something Aristophanes would have been proud of. Sostratos made himself remember it so he could tell it to Menedemos, who adored the Athenian comic poet.

To the wine merchant, he replied, “I love you, too, my dear.”

Dromeus glared. “All right. All right . It’s Thasian, and you’re an honest shark—excuse me, an honest man. If we don’t go through the rigmarole, you’ll let me have it for an honest price, not a ridiculous one, yes?”

“It wouldn’t be ridiculous,” Sostratos said steadily—now he had his fish on the hook. “And I’m sure you’ll make a nice profit off the wine no matter what you pay me. Alexandria is swimming in the cheap stuff, but it’s a long way from where the good vintages grow.”

Dromeus still glared, but in a different way now. “Why couldn’t you be another stupid oaf who doesn’t know what the daimon he’s doing?”

“You say the sweetest things,” Sostratos murmured, though the extremely backhanded compliment did warm him. “I’ve been doing this for a while know. I try to do it as well as I can.”

“Faugh!” Dromeus made a disgusted noise. “For a while!” He had a double chin. His hair was retreating at the temples and starting to go gray. “Your mother hasn’t even licked you dry yet.”

They started the dicker on that cheery note. Sostratos got the price he wanted, and a few more drakhmai for the amphora besides. He left Dromeus’ shop well pleased with himself. The rower who’d lugged the jar dozed outside in what little shade he could find. Sostratos gave him a drakhma for his hard labor. Grinning, the fellow headed for a tavern that sold cheap stuff.

MENEDEMOS glanced up at the sky with a certain apprehension. It was cloudless and bright, the sun beating down. A drop of sweat slid along his cheek. Rhodes got weather like this in midsummer. It wasn’t even midspring yet. When Menedemos thought about midsummer here in Alexandria, he wanted to hide under a flat rock like a lizard.

The Egyptians on the streets took the weather in stride. They’d been born to it, so why wouldn’t they? Quite a few Hellenes wore petasoi—broad-brimmed felt hats—or low, conical headgear woven from straw or rushes to keep the pitiless sun from baking their brains.

“Hail, friend!” Menedemos called to a thin-faced man with a straw hat. “Can you tell me where to buy one of those?”

“There’s a fellow named Marempsemis who makes good ones,” the Hellene replied. “His shop is … let me see … three blocks up and two blocks over from here.” He pointed. “And my name is Diophantes. Tell him I sent you—he’ll knock a bit off the price.”

“Thanks. Marem …. Sounds like an Egyptian, however you say it. Does he speak Greek?”

“Enough to sell you a hat, stranger. Remember, tell him Diophantes sent you.”

“I will.” Menedemos had no idea whether using the thin-faced man’s name would win him a discount. He suspected it would get Diophantes a rakeoff, though. Maybe he’d trot out the name, maybe not. He did give the man an obolos himself, even if Diophantes didn’t have his hand out. Keeping people sweet went with being a trader.

He found Marempsemis’ little shop between that of a man who sold little terra-cotta statuettes—“Servants for next world!” he called in accented Greek as Menedemos walked by—and an eatery run by a middle-aged woman who ladled beans out of a big kettle and into bowls.