If I’m so smart, why did I fall in love with my stepmother? Menedemos knew that had no good answer, unless you thought Because Aphrodite willed you should was one. He was pious enough, in a conventional way, but he didn’t think that. As far as he could see, love like his was a kind of madness. If it struck you, you couldn’t hope to fight it. The most you could hope for was that it wouldn’t harm you too badly.
“What brains I have, I got from my father.” Menedemos would have said something else if the slave woman weren’t listening, but she was. He might be mad with love, but he wasn’t raving mad. He went on, “And it’s not as if you’re a fool. The way you manage the household …. A banker would be proud to do so well.”
“Sikon will tell you a different story,” Baukis said, her mouth twisting in annoyance.
“He’s a cook. Cooks always think they’re entitled to every obolos ever minted,” Menedemos said. “And he’s a good cook, so he thinks he gives extra value for what he spends. He’s a good enough cook, I sometimes think he’s right.”
“You would,” she said. Menedemos laughed, but she wasn’t joking, or not very much. And she had good reason not to be in a joking mood, for she asked, “Will Demetrios and Antigonos attack us? Your father seems to think so.”
“They’re the only ones who know for certain, but I’m afraid I think so, too,” Menedemos answered. “Why wouldn’t they? We’re rich, and the Ptolemaios can’t help us for a while. No one can. Whatever we do, we’ve got to do for ourselves.”
“What happens if … if a polis falls?”
“Nothing good.” Menedemos left it there. The best a woman could hope for was to be sold into slavery, and have to come to her master’s bed whenever he summoned her. If she was very lucky, she might get to raise Diodoros … as a slave himself. More likely, the soldiers who caught her would smash the baby’s head against a wall. If they’d already taken a lot of captives, they might not bother with one more to sell, just cut her throat after they’d had their fun with her.
Menedemos knew he’d die before he let any such thing happen to her. But if Demetrios’ soldiers got into Rhodes, death or slavery was all he had to look forward to himself.
The woman with the fan—they called her Lyke because she came from Lykia (and also because it was a joke of sorts: it meant “she-wolf”)—spoke up for the first time: “Being a slave is never good. How bad it is depends on who owns you.” She knew what happened when a city fell, all right, probably from experience.
Menedemos asked the question he couldn’t very well avoid: “How does the family measure up?”
She shrugged. “There’s always enough to eat. There’s a lot of work, but not a terrible lot of work most of the time, if you know what I mean. You and your father don’t treat slave women like we’re nothing but piggies with legs.” She brought out the Greek obscenity as matter-of-factly as if she were talking about the weather.
“Are things different other places?” Baukis, who got out less than Menedemos did, seemed more curious.
Lyke nodded, as someone born a barbarian would. “Oh, yes, Mistress! Some of the things you hear …,” She rolled her eyes.
“Where do you hear them?” Menedemos asked—that kind of thing interested him.
“Oh, you know, sir. When I’m getting water at the fountain two streets over, I’ll talk with some of the other women filling hydriai. I chat with slaves at the shops, too, or when I have time off for a festival.”
“All right,” he said. He didn’t know in detail how slaves lived their lives when their masters’ eyes weren’t on them, but what Lyke said sounded likely enough. It also sounded like the bits of business modern comic poets put in their plays. Either they drew from life or they were good at making things up.
Diodoros started to fuss. Baukis sighed. “He’s hungry again. He’s always hungry. Turn your back for a moment, Menedemos.” He obeyed. He wasn’t foolish enough to sneak a glance at what he shouldn’t see, not with Lyke there. He didn’t turn back till his father’s wife told him he could. By then, she’d arranged things so the baby’s head and her breast were decently covered.
His son or half-brother nursed noisily. “He’s really slurping it up there, isn’t he?” Menedemos said.
“He’s sucking in too much air,” Baukis said. “When I burp him, he’s liable to spit up.”
“Ah,” Menedemos said, as if in wisdom. Nursing babies was as much a mystery to him as the picture-writing the Egyptians used. More of a mystery, perhaps: he had a chance at figuring out what some of the pictures meant. He asked, “How do you make him not do that?”
“If I knew, I’d do it,” she said. He shut up.
As the baby slowed, Lyke said, “Let me get you a rag, Mistress. If he does spit up, it won’t get all over your chiton then. Or it may not, anyhow.”
“It may not is right” Baukis said. “But yes, go do that, please. Thanks for thinking of it.”
As Lyke came back with a raggedy scrap of wool, she remarked, “In some houses, they never say please or thank you to a slave. Some people think a slave is a brute beast like a sheep, or even a tool like a mallet or a chisel. Living in places like that must be hard.”
An uneasy silence followed. Menedemos would have told anyone he’d always believed in freedom and democracy: freedom for men who owned enough in the way of property, and courses chosen for the polis by the votes of an assembly of those property-owning men, who in their decrees called themselves the people of Rhodes.
Freedom for the people of Rhodes, whether the phrase meant those prosperous men who ran things—men like his father and uncle and cousin, men like himself—or the polis’ whole population, looked less likely to go on than it had a little while before. And of course it seemed sweeter when it also seemed more likely to be taken away.
Diodoros punctuated his uneasy thoughts with another one of those burps that seemed too loud and too deep for the baby producing them. And he didn’t just make noise. “You see?” Baukis exclaimed. “I knew he’d give back some of what he ate there.”
“You were right,” Menedemos said.
Lyke used the rag to wipe off the baby’s face—and Baukis’ shoulder, since the cloth hadn’t perfectly protected her. “I wonder if this is even worth rinsing out one more time,” she said. “It will smell like sour milk forever.”
“The baby can go into the cheese-making business,” Menedemos said—the rag was covered with what looked like curds. Lyke laughed. Baukis glared at him.
Then something noisy and unpleasant happened at Diodoros’ other end. Plenty of things to say about that would have occurred to Menedemos even if he hadn’t adored Aristophanes. The comic poet offered him more—and filthier—choices, though.
He opened his mouth, but then closed it again without saying anything. Sometimes whatever you came out with would only land you in more trouble. He wished he’d remembered that a little more often—or a lot more often—when talking to his father. But, while he loved the older man as a dutiful son should (when he wasn’t sick-jealous of him for lying with Baukis whenever he pleased, anyhow), he wasn’t in love with him. That made all the difference.
When he kept quiet, he saw something on Baukis’ face he’d never found there before—never aimed at him, at any rate. He had too-brief proof she wanted him the way he longed for her, and worried about him because of that. This was different. It was quiet gratitude mixed with equally quiet approval. It was the kind of look one adult was apt to give another.
Sostratos had talked about growing up as he neared thirty. Menedemos hadn’t felt like listening to him. Menedemos rarely felt like listening to anybody. Skippering the Aphrodite meant he didn’t have to listen to anybody very often. But, while he didn’t like listening, he didn’t forget what he heard. Sostratos had a point. His cousin often did, however little he cared to admit it.