“Which means what?” Philodemos asked. “That you won’t do it anymore? I hope that’s what it means, by the gods.”
“I hope it does, too,” Sostratos said. He’d enjoyed his little foray into adultery much less than Menedemos enjoyed his affairs. “I hope so, but who can know for certain? The future’s a book that hasn’t yet been unrolled.”
Philodemos bristled. He wanted promises, not hesitation. Before he could say anything, though, someone knocked on the door. A house slave hurried over to see who it was. A moment later, the man came back to the andron and spoke to Philodemos: “It’s your friend Xanthos, master.”
Sostratos leaped off the stool where he’d been sitting. “Well, I’d better be getting back to my father’s house,” he said. Xanthos was honest and sincere and friendly-and deadly dull, never a man to use a word when an oration would do.
“Bring him in, Bryaxis,” Philodemos said. “Bring him in out of the rain and fetch him some wine. You’ll stay and talk with him, won’t you, son?” He turned to Menedemos with appeal in his eyes.
“Stay and listen to him, you mean?” Menedemos said as the slave- and Sostratos-headed for the door. Now he had his chance to take revenge on his father for giving him a hard time about his habits-had it and used it. “No, thank you, sir. I have some things I need to do upstairs, and I’m afraid they won’t keep. I’m sure Xanthos will have a great many-a very great many-interesting things to say. Farewell.”
He left the men’s chamber as Bryaxis brought Xanthos toward it. The other merchant, plump and gray-haired, waved to him. He waved back-and kept walking to the wooden stairway that would let him escape. Behind him, he heard Xanthos drone out a greeting to his father, and Philodemos’ valiantly polite reply. Chuckling, Menedemos went on up the stairs.
Behind the closed doors of the women’s quarters, his father’s second wife and a slave woman were making cloth from wool. The frame of the loom creaked and rattled as Baukis worked. Menedemos had always found it impossible to think of her as his stepmother. How could he, when she was ten or eleven years younger than he was?
She said something to the slave, who answered. The closed door muffled sounds so that Menedemos could hear voices, but not words. Both women laughed. Menedemos wondered what sort of women’s gossip had amused them.
He went on to his own room. It held a bed, a stool, and a chest of drawers. At the moment, with the shutters closed against the rain, it was dark and gloomy and dull. Menedemos didn’t care. Anything- including a dull, gloomy room-was better than staying in the andron and listening to Xanthos rehearse a speech he was going to give in the Assembly or, worse yet, repeat a speech he’d already given there.
After a while, the rising and falling cadences of Xanthos’ rather froggy baritone came from downstairs. Menedemos smiled to himself. Sure enough, his father’s friend was in full rhetorical flight. Menedemos wondered how long his father would have to endure the drivel. Xanthos could go on for a couple of hours without noticing he was making people around him wish they were dead or he was dead or everyone was dead.
Instead of dying, Menedemos fell asleep. When he woke up, Xanthos was still going on. Menedemos yawned, stretched, and chuckled softly. Philodemos couldn’t match him there, no matter how much he might want to. If he started to snore and fell off his stool down there in the andron, Xanthos might notice. On the other hand, he might be so carried away with his own eloquence that he didn’t. Still, it was a chance a polite man wouldn’t take.
And Philodemos was polite, especially to everyone but his son. Menedemos chuckled again. Now his father was paying the price for his good manners.
When Sostratos got out of bed and opened the shutters, he blinked in delighted surprise. Yesterday’s rain clouds had blown away. The sky was a brilliant, velvety dark blue, shading toward pink in the east. Something flew by overhead: by its skittering path through the air, probably a bat returning to wherever it would hide during daylight hours.
Sostratos went back to his bed and pulled the chamber pot out from under it. After he’d used the pot, he dumped it out the window into the street below. This early in the day, he didn’t have to worry about splashing passersby with its contents. He stuck the pot under the bed once more, put on his chiton, and went downstairs for breakfast.
His father was already sitting out in the courtyard with a chunk of bread, a plate of olive oil into which to dip the bread, and a cup of un-watered wine. “Hail, son,” Lysistratos said. He was Philodemos’ younger brother, and a good deal more easygoing than Menedemos’ father. “How are you today?”
“Not bad, thanks,” Sostratos answered. “Yourself?”
“Tolerable, tolerable,” his father said. “My bones ache when I get up in the morning, but that comes of living as long as I have.” He smiled. “If I weren’t alive, I don’t suppose I’d ache at all.”
“Well, no,” Sostratos said. He went into the kitchen and came out with a breakfast identical to his father’s. He was just sitting down beside Lysistratos when a slave girl emerged, yawning, from her little room. “Hail, Threissa.”
“Hail, young master,” she replied in accented Greek. As her name suggested, she came from Thrace. She was red-haired and snub-nosed, a few years younger than Sostratos himself. She yawned again, then went to get her own breakfast. Lysistratos wasn’t a slaveowner who measured out his slaves’ rations to the last grain of barley. Threissa would eat about what he and his son had had.
Sostratos and Lysistratos both followed her with their eyes. Lysistratos always contented himself with watching her: a man who slept with a slave girl in his own house was asking for trouble with his wife. Sostratos took her up to his room every now and again. Had she shown any sign of enjoying his attentions rather than simply enduring them as a slave had to do, he would have made love to her more often.
The first rays of the sun touched the roof tiles. A few birds began to sing. More would come to Rhodes later, as they returned from the south. Lysistratos said, “I wonder how long this weather will hold. If it stays good, you’ll be able to put to sea before long.”
“I hope so!” Sostratos exclaimed. The thought of sailing for Athens so excited him, he hardly noticed Threissa coming out of the kitchen with bread and wine.
His father chuckled. “Athens is your beloved, sure enough.”
“I’ve never said otherwise,” Sostratos replied. He laughed, mostly at himself. “I couldn’t very well, could I?-not if I wanted to tell the truth, anyhow.”
“I was sorry to have to bring you home from the Lykeion as soon as I did,” Lysistratos said. “We needed a good toikharkhos, though, and you’re the one in the family with far and away the best head for figures.”
“No, that’s Menedemos-or aren’t you talking about women?” Sostratos asked innocently.
His father rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not. And you know I’m right, too.”
With a sigh, Sostratos dipped his head. He was the one best suited to keeping track of the cargo a ship carried, and of how much money, to the obolos, every item brought. He did know as much. He was a good bargainer, too, though his cousin might have been even better.
All the same… He sighed again. All the same, he wished he could have gone right on studying in Athens. Some men were lucky enough- and rich enough-to be able to pursue the love of wisdom their whole lives long. He wasn’t. He’d had to come back to Rhodes to help his family and make his own way in the world. Though five years had passed since that sorry day, he still felt as if he’d torn his heart out and left it behind when he sailed away from Peiraieus.
Most of him still longed to return. The rest… For the rest, it was too late. He’d quoted Herakleitos the day before at Uncle Philodemos ’ house. The Ionian philosopher had surely been right: you couldn’t step into the same river twice. When you went back in, it wasn’t the same river any more.