Lysistratos drained his cup fast. After finishing it, he looked a bit glassy-eyed—or maybe it was only reflections from the lamps. He let out a long sigh. “We’re sprats. You know that, son? Nothing but sprats. And the days when anchovies can make a living—can live at all—are just about gone. Pretty soon, the sea will hold nothing but tunny and sharks.”
“Menedemos and I talked about the same thing. I hope you’re wrong,” Sostratos said, fearing his father was right.
“So do I, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Only I am, aren’t I, with my life and everything I care about?” The older man got to his feet. “And I’ve drunk myself stupid, or at least tired. I’m going up to bed. Good night, both of you.” Stepping slowly and carefully, he left the andron.
“Will you come up to my room with me?” Sostratos asked Threissa as soon his he heard his father’s footsteps on the stairs.
She bit her lip. “Do I have to, young master?”
He tossed his head. “No. I won’t make you. But if you can put up with me ….” He could have beaten her, or just spent the next year making her life miserable in ways small and large. He knew he wouldn’t do anything like that. He hoped Threissa knew him well enough so she also understood he wouldn’t. The way he’d said what he’d just said should have told her he didn’t expect miracles of passion.
She thought for longer than he wished she would have. In the flickering lamplight, he had trouble reading her face. At last, she shrugged. “We can do. Why not? You don’t try to hurt me or anyt’ing.” By her tone, she understood how lucky a slave woman was to be able to say even so much.
“Come on, then.” Part of Sostratos knew he should have felt shame, but desire swamped it. He got up and walked toward the stairs, picking up a lamp to light the way. Threissa followed.
He closed and barred the door to his room, then set the lamp on a stool near the bed. He pulled his tunic off over his head. A moment later, Threissa did the same with her longer one. Even the small lampflame showed her skin milk-pale where the sun didn’t touch her. Unlike Greek or Egyptian women, she didn’t pluck or shave her bush.
They lay down together. His hands roamed her. He kissed her mouth, and kissed and caressed her breasts. He wanted to make her happy if he could. He knew he hadn’t when he’d taken her before. Pleasing her felt like a challenge.
He put her on elbows and knees and went into her from behind, as he would have done if she were a Hellene. His pleasure built and built and overflowed … and if she felt any at all, she hid it very well.
When he slid out, she squatted over the chamber pot and got rid of as much of his seed as she could. Women who didn’t want to conceive commonly did that. Maybe it helped, maybe not. They thought so. Sostratos had no idea, though he was sure it couldn’t hurt.
She picked up her tunic and put it on. Sostratos had thought about a second round, but it wasn’t urgent enough for him to say anything. He gave her a drakhma instead. “For your patience,” he said.
“T’ank you,” she said, and then, “Women got to be patient with men. We get in too much trouble when we not.”
Any number of stories from history and tragedy sprang into Sostratos’ mind. “I believe you,” he said. “Good night.” She opened the door and slid out. He pissed in the pot himself, then blew out the lamp, lay down, and fell asleep almost as fast as if he’d been clubbed.
XV
Menedemos yawned as he ate bread and oil and drank watered wine at breakfast. His father was yawning, too. “I’d forgotten what a racket you used to make all night long,” Philodemos said.
“Diodoros takes after me, all right,” Menedemos answered, and then quickly raised his cup to his mouth so his father couldn’t see his face. Careful, fool! he told himself. He didn’t know whether the baby was his or his father’s. He never would. But he knew his father would want to kill him for lying with Baukis whether he’d got her with child or not.
Philodemos chuckled. “I expect I did the same thing when I was tiny. Everyone does.”
“Tiny is right!” Menedemos could safely say that. “He fit in the crook of my elbow when I held him last night. And he doesn’t seem to weigh anything at all.”
“You have to be careful to keep something under their heads for the first few months,” his father said. “They aren’t strong enough to hold them up for themselves at first.”
“Yes, Father. Your wife told me the same thing before she let me pick him up,” Menedemos said. The way Baukis looked had shocked him. She seemed to have aged five years, and to have worked through those five years in the mines. They didn’t call it labor for nothing. And she hadn’t given the smallest sign of remembering the passion they’d shared. Everything centered on Diodoros to her.
“I’m glad to see what a good mother she makes. And she’s come through childbirth as well as a woman can—better than your mother did after she had you.” Philodemos stared down into his own cup of wine. He still mourned his first wife, while Menedemos hardly remembered her or the sister she’d died birthing.
As if in one of Aristophanes’ comedies, Diodoros chose that moment to start crying again. Philodemos rolled his eyes. He’d been going through this since the baby came into the world. Menedemos said, “He has good lungs, that’s for sure. Gods grant he stay healthy, and the lady your wife, too.”
“I’ve prayed. I’ve sacrificed. I’ve done everything a man can do,” his father said. “The midwife and the physician both think she’s doing as well as anyone could hope—and your brother, too.”
“May it be so!” Menedemos exclaimed.
“Yes. Losing a wee one is hard. You know you shouldn’t love them—they’re so fragile when they’re small—but you can’t help yourself,” his father said. He would know what he was talking about, too.
Menedemos emptied his morning cup and thought about pouring himself another, this one with less water in it. That might make his heart beat faster. But people joked about men who started drinking hard as soon as they rolled out of bed. He knew a couple of men like that, and he joked about them … when they weren’t around to hear him, anyway.
His father also cast a longing glance at the amphora and at the mixing krater, but he didn’t fill his cup again, either. His father was a sensible man—not annoyingly sensible like, say, Sostratos, but sensible all the same. Philodemos slid off his couch and stood up. “Do you want to come upstairs with me and have another look at Diodoros?” he asked.
“I’ll do that.” Menedemos also rose. A house slave could clean up what they’d left—and likely eat some of the bread and oil. The household had never been one that fed its two-legged property barely enough to stay alive. You got runaways when you did that, and even the slaves who wouldn’t flee also wouldn’t work hard or take any pains at what they did.
And seeing his half-brother (if Diodoros wasn’t his son) would also let him see Baukis. She wouldn’t care, not the way she was right now, but he would. He followed his father to the stairs.
As they went up, the older man remarked, “I have to give you credit, son. You show more interest in the baby than I thought you would. My guess was, you’d just complain all the time about how much noise he made.”
That made Menedemos miss a step. He grabbed at the handrail to keep from falling on his face. Then he said, “He’s part of the family, too, sir. Depending on how things work out for Sostratos and me, he may end up running the business one of these years.”