The Macedonian took his sarcasm literally. “No, I don’t want to tell you that,” he said.
“But you have them.” Menedemos didn’t make that a question.
Demodamas answered as if it were: “I don’t want to tell you that, either.” He looked unhappy. Menedemos judged he would have lied if he’d had the faintest hope of being believed. He turned abruptly and stamped away.
Menedemos watched him roll along like Sisyphos’ boulder going downhill. Other people in the hall jumped out of his way. They saw he wouldn’t move aside for them. Only after Demodamas turned a corner did Menedemos go back inside and close the door.
So Ptolemaios used spies to keep an eye on people, did he? It surprised Menedemos less than he wished it would have, but it saddened him. Ptolemaios had always struck him as a decent man for a warlord. If he stooped to such things, no doubt Antigonos and Demetrios, Seleukos, and all the other Macedonian generals battling over Alexander’s empire did, too.
Till that moment, Menedemos hadn’t thought a great deal about just what living in a free and independent polis meant. If it meant not having men spy on you for the rulers, that was plenty to make the Rhodian all for it.
VIII
Ptolemaios’ nomarch in Memphis was a grizzled Macedonian officer named Alexandros. He’d lost half an ear and the last joint of his right middle finger in one or another of Alexander the Great’s battles. “Talk to my cooks, if you want to,” he told Sostratos. “If they say your oil’s worth buying, I’ll buy it. And if they don’t, many good-byes to you.”
He had more than his share of Macedonian bluntness, plainly. “Do you want to sample it yourself, sir?” Sostratos asked. “Taste what you’re getting?”
“Nah.” Alexandros tossed his head. “All I know about food is, if it’s there, I eat it. Once you’ve made a stew of dead donkey that’s starting to go off—and been glad to have it, mind—you don’t worry about this stuff. Nikodromos, take the Rhodian to the kitchens.”
“Yes, your Excellency.” Nikodromos was Alexandros’ Greek secretary. He had two; the other was an Egyptian who also spoke decent Greek. The Hellene set down a waxed tablet and rose from his stool. To Sostratos, he said, “If you’ll come with me, O best one ….”
Sostratos came. So did Leskhaios, who carried the amphora full of Damonax’s oil. The nomarch’s residence was a maze King Minos might have envied. It had housed Persian provincial governors before Alexander took Egypt, and probably native Egyptian nomarchs before them. There’d been a lot of adding and rebuilding over the centuries.
As Alexandros had a Greek secretary and an Egyptian one, so he had both Hellenes and Egyptians in the kitchens. The most senior Greek cook was a plump, graying man named Rhodoios. “Are you from the island whose name is like yours?” Sostratos asked him, taking as much of the Attic overlay as he could from his speech.
“Bugger me blind if I’m not,” the cook answered. “Born and raised in Ialysos, came to Alexandria, got work with Alexandros, and I’ve stayed with him going on fifteen years now.”
Sostratos beamed. So did Rhodoios. Their accents were almost identical. And Sostratos had another reason to like the man from his own island. As far as he was concerned, any cook who stayed skinny on what he made himself was not to be relied on.
Also …. “From Ialysos, you say? Do you recall a fellow named Damonax? He would have lived on a farm outside of town, but his family had a place in Ialysos, too. He’s about my age, a bit older, so he would have still been a youth when you came to Egypt.”
Rhodoios screwed up his face in thought. “I just might. Good-looking, if he’s the one I think he is. Liked himself pretty well, too.”
“That’s him,” Sostratos agreed, trying not to giggle. Rhodoios had nailed Damonax down in a couple of sentences. “As it happens, he’s my brother-in-law. I’m selling his oil here.”
“Isn’t that something?” Rhodoios whistled softly. “So this’d be oil like the oil I grew up with, is what you’re saying.”
“I’d think so. It is good oil, or I wouldn’t have brought it to Egypt in an akatos. You can get plenty of the ordinary stuff here,” Sostratos said.
“True enough, but that’s not the same. I can get what they call good oil, too—I’m buying with Alexandros’ silver, after all,” Rhodoios said. “And it is good, or good enough. But it’s not what I think of when I think of good olive oil. Different aroma, different savor on the tongue, even a different color. Can I have a taste of yours?”
“That’s why I brought it to you,” Sostratos answered. “The amphora’s sealed, so it should be as fresh as when it went in last fall.”
“I can take care of that, by the gods.” Rhodoios cut away the pitch securing the stopper with a paring knife. After he pulled the stopper out, he bent over the opened jar to sniff the oil. A slow smile spread across his face. “Oh, doesn’t that take me back, now? Doesn’t it just?”
“Taste it, too,” Sostratos urged. “I want you to be sure of what you’re getting.”
“I’ll do that, and gladly,” Rhodoios said. An Egyptian cook had just taken four loaves of bread from the oven and set them on a stone counter to cool. Rhodoios tore a chunk off the end of one. The other man shouted at him in Egyptian. He came back in the same language, with enough effect to make several Egyptians laugh. To Sostratos, he remarked, “I don’t let these sons of crocodiles talk about me without knowing what they’re saying.”
“Good for you. I learned some Aramaic when I went to Phoenicia and Palestine a couple of years ago,” Sostratos said.
“You’re from Rhodes, all right. They don’t grow too many stupid people there.” Rhodoios poured a little of Damonax’s oil into a bowclass="underline" a funny little bowl that stood on short legs and hippotamus feet. Then he blew on the chunk of bread—steam still rose from it—and dipped it in the oil. He took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.
“What do you think?” As any good trader would have, Sostratos tried to sound casual. If Rhodoios didn’t like it, he would have to try to unload the olive oil on other Hellenes here, and the nomarch’s headquarters seemed the best bet. Or he would have to go back to Rhodes and tell his brother-in-law he couldn’t sell the oil. That didn’t bear thinking about.
But Rhodoios smiled beatifically. “I taste that oil and I’m seventeen years old again and just finding out about girls.” With what looked like a real effort, he brought himself back from long-ago Ialysos to Memphis. “Alexandros will like it, too. He goes for that new-oil taste—almost leafy, you know?”
“He talks about not caring what he eats,” Sostratos said.
“That’s till he wants to eat it,” the cook replied. Sostratos grinned.
The Egyptian whose loaf Thodoios had torn turned out to know some Greek, too. “Is olive oil. Is nasty olive oil,” he said. “You Hellenes is nasty people for liking it.”
“If your arsehole were any wider, Khamouas, you’d fall right in,” Rhodoios said without rancor. He added something in Egyptian that sounded just as polite. Khamouas said something back to him. They both chuckled. Rhodoios eyed Sostratos again. “So how much have you got, and how much do you want for it?”
Sostratos told him. He waited for Rhodoios to bubble and boil like a pot of beans forgotten over the fire. He thought he had the older man’s measure, and felt sure he’d make a nasty haggler.
But Alexandros’ cook hardly haggled at all, though he wanted only half the oil Sostratos had brought to Memphis. Oh, he made a show of dickering, for the benefit of the other men who were watching and listening to the bargain. But when he clasped Sostratos’ hand, the price was still high enough to keep Damonax not just happy but overjoyed.