As Baukis had, Menedemos snorted. His cousin, sometimes, thought too much for his own good. A more perceptive man, one who felt more and perhaps thought a little less, might well have realized what was wrong with Menedemos. Or maybe Sostratos needed to fall in love himself before he could recognize the symptoms in others. They weren’t-or Menedemos hoped they weren’t-something that could be known by reason alone.
He stole another glance at Baukis… and caught her stealing a glance at him. Their eyes met for a heartbeat, then jerked away. Hers went to the stairway leading up to the second story, his to the stone bench in the courtyard. He pointed. “Look-there’s a wall lizard, soaking up the sun. He thinks spring is here.”
The motion of his arm made the grayish-brown lizard dash to the edge of the bench, leap off, and disappear amongst the plants in the garden. Baukis said, “I’m glad to see it. They eat insects. Have you ever seen one with a grasshopper in its mouth?”
“Oh, yes.” Menedemos dipped his head.
Talk of lizards was safe enough. When Lydos returned with the hydria, he couldn’t have noticed anything the least improper. A sour expression on his face, the slave emptied the jar not far from where the little animal had taken shelter. It fled again, this time across the courtyard. It vanished into a crack in the mud-brick inner wall of the house.
Menedemos laughed. “Poor thing must have thought Deukalion’s flood was sweeping down on it.”
“Yes.” Baukis gave Lydos a severe look. “You don’t need to drown the plants, you know.”
“Sorry.” He sounded anything but.
“Be more careful next time,” Baukis told him. His nod was so impatient, so perfunctory, that Menedemos would have called him on it if Baukis hadn’t. But she did: “Be more careful, Lydos, or you will be sorry.”
That got through. “Yes, mistress. I’ll remember,” the slave said, and this time Menedemos believed him.
“See that you do, because I’ll remember, too,” Baukis said. “Now go on.” Lydos hurried away, carrying the hydria.
“You handled that very well,” Menedemos said.
“Oh, slaves aren’t so hard. I was dealing with slaves before I was married, too, you know,” Baukis said. But then she checked herself. “Most slaves aren’t so hard. On the other hand, there’s Sikon.”
“Yes.” For a moment, Menedemos left it at that. Baukis and Sikon had feuded ever since she came to Philodemos’ house. She wanted to be a good household manager, and was convinced he was trying to bankrupt the place with the fancy fish he bought. He wanted to turn out the best suppers he could, and was convinced she wanted everyone in the house to live on barley porridge, beans, and salt fish. The truth, as usual, lay somewhere in between-or so Menedemos thought, anyhow. He said, “Cooks are a law unto themselves, you know.”
“Really? I never would have noticed,” Baukis said tartly. But then she relented: “I suppose it is better not to be quarreling with him all the time.”
They’d come to a tentative truce the autumn before. It had already held longer than Menedemos had expected. He said, “I’m glad you’re not squabbling anymore.” That gave him another excuse to smile at Baukis. It gave her another excuse to smile back. And no one who saw them or listened to them could have noted anything out of the ordinary.
Sostratos held his nephew with exaggerated care, as if afraid Polydoros were about to leap from his arms and precipitate himself headfirst onto the dirt of the courtyard at Damonax’s house. For all his care, both Erinna and a wet nurse hovered close by, ready to snatch the baby out of his inexperienced hands.
Trying to reassure them that he had some idea what he was doing, he said, “He sure looks a lot better than he did right after he was born.”
His sister scowled. “What was wrong with him right after he was born?” she demanded in irate tones.
“He looked just fine, I’ll have you know,” the wet nurse added.
“All right. All right. Fine. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Sostratos said hastily. The women relaxed. Sostratos looked down at Polydoros. The baby was a healthy pink now, not the reddish-purple color he’d been. His head had been almost cone-shaped. It was much rounder now, and getting more so each time Sostratos saw him. Even his expression seemed more alert, less confused, than it had when he first came into the world.
Some things hadn’t changed, though. Sostratos suddenly realized the cloths around the baby’s middle were moist. He thrust Polydoros at the wet nurse and wiped his hands on his chiton.
“There, there,” the woman told the baby. “We’ll take care of that. Don’t you worry about a thing.” She carried him away.
When she came back, she sat down on a bench, slipped her chiton down from one shoulder, and gave Polydoros her breast. Sostratos watched the baby suck, as interested in the process as he was in the bare breast. He also listened to his nephew nursing; he hadn’t realized it could be so noisy. He could hear every gulp Polydoros took. Then the baby swallowed wrong and choked. The wet nurse took him away from the breast and held him up against her shoulder, patting him on the back till he belched: a surprisingly large, surprisingly deep sound. Then she brought him down and let him nurse some more.
“You’ll be sailing soon, won’t you?” Erinna asked.
“What?” When Sostratos concentrated on something, he did so to the exclusion of everything else around him. He had to pause and make himself remember what his sister had said before he could dip his head and answer, “Yes, very soon, especially if the weather stays fine like this. Athens!” He couldn’t hold the excitement from his voice.
“Athens.” Erinna sounded resigned-or was it merely wistful? For her, leaving her husband’s house was an adventure. Sailing off to another city? When she’d come back to Lysistratos’ household after losing her first husband, she’d listened with endless fascination as Sostratos told her stories of the distant places he’d seen. With the circumscribed lives respectable women led among the Hellenes, listening was all she could do. She would never see distant places herself.
Sostratos eyed her with some concern. Like him, she’d always been on the lean side. Now, though, she still kept the flesh she’d put on while carrying Polydoros. To his eye, it didn’t suit her frame: it seemed added on, not a natural part of her. “How are you, my dear?” he asked, hoping his worry didn’t show.
“Tired,” she answered at once. “After you have a baby, you feel as though someone’s dropped a wall on you. I don’t think you can help it.”
“Oh, yes.” The wet nurse dipped her head. “That’s true, by the gods.”
“What… What is it like? Having a baby, I mean,” Sostratos asked hesitantly. As they often did, curiosity and decorum warred within him. This time, curiosity won.
Not that it got him much. Erinna only laughed. “It’s not like anything,” she said. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think it’s the hardest thing anyone can do.”
“Oh, yes,” the wet nurse said again, and then, softly, “‘What’s it like?’ Men!” She didn’t have to worry about keeping Sostratos sweet.
“I can’t very well know unless I ask, can I?” he said, stung by the scorn in her voice.
If he thought his question would get him less, he rapidly found himself wrong. “Men!” the wet nurse said again, this time not bothering to hold her voice down. “What you don’t understand is, you can’t know even if you do ask.”
“Gorgia’s right, I’m afraid.” Erinna sounded sad. She knew of Sostratos’ unrelenting itch to find out whatever he could. Sad or not, though, she tossed her head here. “Unless you had a baby yourself, you couldn’t know what it was like. You’re not.. equipped for it.” That made the wet nurse-Gorgia-giggle.
It made Sostratos angry, at least for a moment. “But-” he began. Then he spread his hands in defeat. “No, I suppose not, any more than you can understand what growing a beard is like.” He scratched his own hairy chin. Most Hellenes of his generation, Menedemos among them, shaved their faces as Alexander had done. Sostratos thought his beard made him look like a philosopher. Maybe he was right.