Khremes the carpenter waved to Sostratos. “Hail, son of Lysistratos. How are you today?”
“Well, thanks,” Sostratos answered. “And yourself?” “Pretty well,” Khremes said. “My son gave me a grandchild this summer, while you were at sea.”
“Congratulations!” Sostratos said. “You’re young to be a grandfather.” That was no idle compliment; he doubted Khremes was much above fifty, and most men among the Hellenes didn’t marry till they were thirty or so.
Sure enough, the carpenter chuckled in mingled embarrassment and pride. “I’ll tell you what it is: we’re a hot-pronged bunch, my family. I liked the thought of screwing without paying for it so well, I talked my father into letting me wed early. And Aristion, he’s the same way. I had to marry him off. I was afraid he’d get some respectable girl in trouble.”
“You don’t want that,” Sostratos agreed. “A feud between families doesn’t do anybody any good.”
They chatted a little while longer, then went their separate ways. Sostratos strolled south along the edge of the Great Harbor, eyeing the ships tied up at the quays or drawn up onto dry land. Most of them were as familiar to him as acquaintances he might meet in the agora. Every so often, he would note one that had had some major work done since the last time he saw her. He started with the same surprise he might have shown on seeing a bald man who came out sporting a wig.
He also saw a few ships that were new to him. One in particular gave him pause: a merchant galley bigger than the Aphrodite, and almost lean enough to make a pirate ship. Pointing to her, he asked a harborside lounger, “What ship is this, O best one?”
The man didn’t answer. He might have been afflicted with deafness, or perhaps with idiocy. He might have been, but he wasn’t. Sostratos knew exactly what his trouble was. An obolos effected a miraculous cure. Once the lounger had popped the little silver coin into his mouth, he said, “That’s the Thalia, friend.”
“Abundance, eh? A good name for a merchant ship,” Sostratos said. “Who owns her?”
He wondered if the other Rhodian would have the hubris to try to squeeze a second obolos from him. The fellow started to, then visibly thought better of it. He said, “She belongs to Rhodokles son of Simos.”
“Does she?” Sostratos said, and the lounger dipped his head. “He’s come into some silver, then.” Rhodokles was a competitor. Up till now, he’d never been a serious competitor. His ships had all been older and smaller than the Aphrodite and the other vessels Philodemos and Lysistratos owned. The Thalia, though, could go anywhere on the Inner Sea, and could get where she was going as fast as anything afloat.
Thoughtfully, Sostratos asked, “Has he got any others like her?”
This time, the other man did dummy up. Instead of paying him again, Sostratos turned his back. That earned him some of the hottest, earthiest curses he’d ever got. He ignored them and walked away. The lounger cursed louder, which won him no money.
Sostratos paused by a large, ramshackle warehouse only a long spit from the sea. No one stirred there till he stuck his head in the doorway and called, “Somebody’s giving away decorated drinking cups in the agora.”
He waited. He didn’t have to wait long. A deep-voiced, gutturally accented rumble came from the bowels of the building: “Giving them away?” Out came Himilkon the Phoenician, swaddled in his long robe. A gold ring gleamed in one ear; more gold shone on several fingers. When he spotted Sostratos, suspicions spread across his narrow, hook-nosed face. “You liar, you cozener, you trickster!” he began, and went on from there. When he ran out of Greek, he switched to Aramaic.
Since he’d taught Sostratos that language, the Rhodian followed some of it. Even if he hadn’t, the sounds would have been plenty to show Himilkon’s displeasure. With its coughs and grunts and choking noises, Aramaic was a tongue made to show anger.
When Himilkon at last slowed down a little, Sostratos used a sentence of Aramaic of his own: “Peace be unto you, my friend.”
“And to you also peace,” Himilkon said grudgingly, “so long as you do not trick an honest man like that. What do you want? Besides trouble, I mean.”
“Trouble? Me? No.” Sostratos spoke in Aramaic, as the Phoenician merchant had. Having learned the language, he was glad to get a chance to use it, to keep it fresh. He did his best to look innocent. Instead of tossing his head to show that he hadn’t meant to cause trouble, he shook it. He wanted to act as much like a native speaker as he could.
Himilkon noticed. Very little went on around Himilkon that he didn’t notice. Still in his own language, he said, “Most Ionians”-in Aramaic, all Hellenes were Ionians, probably because Aramaic-speakers had met them first-”Most Ionians, I say, who took the trouble to learn my speech (and precious few care about any language but their own) would not bother with the gestures my folk use.”
“If I do something, my master, I want to do it well. I want to do it as I should.” In Greek, Sostratos would never have called any man his master. In Aramaic, though, it was only a polite phrase: another illustration of the difference between the two tongues, and of the differences in the thoughts of the men who spoke them. The Rhodian cast about for a word in Himilkon’s language. Failing to find it, he dropped back into Greek: “When I do something, I want to do it thoroughly.”
“Your slave has known you for some years now, and has noticed this about you, yes.” Even speaking Greek, Himilkon kept flowery Aramaic turns of phrase. Sostratos tried not to talk like a Hellene when using Aramaic; how well he succeeded might have been a different story.
Sostratos wondered how many people had noticed that about him. When men talked about him while he wasn’t there, did they say things like, “Sostratos will drive you mad, trying to nail down every last little detail”? He hoped they did. A reputation for taking pains was far from the worst thing in the world.
Himilkon returned to Aramaic: “If you did not come here to wring my liver with your japes, my master, for what reason did you assail my peace?”
“To see what you got while Menedemos and I were in Athens,” Sostratos replied. He had to pause for a heartbeat to come up with the second-person plural masculine verb form; Aramaic conjugations took gender into account, which Greek verb forms (except participles) didn’t. “To learn if you have anything we might want for the next sailing season.”
“When you bought papyrus from me last winter, you called me a thief,” Himilkon said. “But now you want to do more business, eh?”
“I had to beat you down to a price where I could add in my profit and still sell in Athens at a level where other people could afford to buy,” Sostratos said-in Greek, the idea being too complex for his rusty Aramaic. “I managed to do that. And besides, tell me you’ve never called me such names and I’ll tell you you’re a liar.”
“I?” Himilkon was the picture of affronted dignity. He too went on in Greek: “I am calm. I am restrained. I am judicious.” Sostratos laughed out loud. Himilkon glared. “I am going to bash you in the head with a board.”
“A calm, restrained, judicious board, I have no doubt,” Sostratos replied.
That made Himilkon laugh. “No one who grew up speaking Aramaic would ever think to call a board restrained or judicious. You Hellenes can do strange things with your language. That is probably why you are such a peculiar folk.”
Now Sostratos, reminded he was a Hellene, tossed his head to show he disagreed. “We’re not strange,” he said. “It’s all you folk who aren’t Hellenes who are strange.”