“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 didn’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.