“Of course not,” Sostratos said. Glaukias talked right through him. Maybe that was the wine; maybe Sostratos’ remark had struck a chord. Either way, Sostratos was glad to escape his shop.
But that didn’t mean he was done with scribes. Nikandros son of Nikon had a place of business only a few blocks away from Glaukias’. Sostratos didn’t like his work as well as the other scribe’s. He wrote quickly; he could copy out a book faster than Glaukias could. With his speed, though, came sloppy handwriting and more mistakes than Glaukias would have made.
Sostratos didn’t like Nikandros himself as well as he liked Glaukias, either. Nikandros had a face like a ferret’s, a whining voice, and an exaggerated sense of his own worth. “I couldn’t possibly part with a book for less than nine drakhmai,” he said.
“Farewell.” Sostratos turned to go. “If you come to your senses before we sail, send a messenger to the Aphrodite .”
He wondered if Nikandros would call him back. He’d almost decided the scribe wouldn’t when Nikandros did say, “Wait,” after all.
After some considerable haggling-Nikandros did not offer him wine-he got the books for the same price he’d paid Glaukias. “This shouldn’t have taken so long,” he grumbled. “We both know what these are worth.”
“What I know is, you’re flaying me.” Nikandros was not, however, too badly wounded to scoop up the silver coins and put them in his cash box.
“I’m not paying you any less than I paid Glaukias,” Sostratos said, “but to the crows with me if I can see why I ought to pay you more.”
“Oh, Glaukias.” Nikandros sniffed. “I see. I’m paying the price because he’s not a better bargainer. That’s fair. It certainly is.”
“Your ordinary book is five drakhmai in Athens,” Sostratos said. “You know that as well as I do, O marvelous one. Why should it be any different here in Rhodes?”
“And the Athenian scribes are just as scrawny and starving as Glaukias is,” Nikandros said. “I want something better for myself. I deserve more customers.”
“I want all sorts of things. Just because I want them doesn’t mean I’m going to get them, or even that I should have them,” Sostratos said.
Nikandros sniffed again. “Good day,” he said coldly. Now that the bargaining was done, he had trouble even staying polite. How will you get those customers you think you deserve when you do your best to drive people away?
Polykles son of Apollonios also copied books for a living, but when Sostratos went to his shop he found it closed. The carpenter next door looked up from a stool to which he was adding a leg. “If you want him,” he told Sostratos, “you’ll find him in the tavern down the street.”
“Oh,” Sostratos said. The word seemed to hang in the air, “Will he be worth anything when I do find him?”
“Never can tell,” the carpenter answered, and picked up a small file.
The tavern smelled of stale wine and of the hot grease in which the proprietor would fry snacks customers bought elsewhere. The mug in front of Polykles was almost as deep as the sea. The scribe-a pale man with a withered left arm that probably made him unfit for any more strenuous trade-looked up so blearily, Sostratos was sure he’d already emptied it several times, too.
“Hail,” Sostratos said.
“Hail t’you, too.” Polykles’ voice was thick and blurry. Sostratos could hardly understand him. The scribe blinked, trying to focus. “I sheen you shomewheresh before, haven’t I?” He gulped from that formidable mug.
“Yes,” Sostratos said without much hope. He gave his name.
Polykles dipped his head and almost fell over. As he straightened up, he said, “Oh, yesh. I know you. You’re that trader fellow-one of thoshe trader fellowsh, Watcha want?”
“Books,” Sostratos answered. “Exciting books from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Have you got any copied out? I’ll buy them if you do,”
“Booksh?” Polykles might never have heard the word before. Then, slowly, he dipped his head again. This time, he managed to stay upright. “Oh, yesh,” he said once more, “I ‘member thoshe.”
“Good. Congratulations.” He was so fuddled, Sostratos was amazed he remembered anything. “Have you got any?”
“Have I got any what?”
“You’d do better to ask him questions when he’s sobered up, pal,” the taverner said.
“Does he ever sober up?” Sostratos asked. The man only shrugged. Sostratos gave his attention back to Polykles. “Come on. Let’s go back to your house. If you’ve got the books I want, I’ll give you money for them.”
“Money?” That idea seemed to take the scribe by surprise, too.
“Money,” Sostratos repeated, and then, as if speaking to an idiot, drunken child, he explained, “You can use it to buy more wine.” He knew shame a moment later; wasn’t he encouraging Polykles to ruin himself?
Whatever he was doing, it worked. The scribe drained the mug and lurched toward him. “ Let’sh go. Go back to the houshe. Don’t… quite… know what I got there. We can shee.”
He tried to walk through the wall instead of the doorway. Sostratos caught him and got him turned in the right direction just before he mashed his nose against the mud brick. “Come on, friend. We can get you there,” Sostratos said, wondering if he told the truth.
Steering Polykles down the street was like steering a sailing ship through a choppy sea and shifting, contrary winds. The scribe jibbed and staggered and all but capsized in a fountain. Maybe I should let him get good and soaked, Sostratos thought as he grabbed him again. It might sober him a little. He tossed his head. If he goes into the fountain, he’s liable to drown.
The carpenter who lived next door to Polykles looked up from that stool. “Euge,” he told Sostratos. “I never thought you’d pry him out of the wineshop.”
“As a matter of fact, neither did I.” Sostratos wasn’t proud of how he’d done it. “Now let’s see if it was worth doing.”
Once they went inside, Polykles pawed through rolls of papyrus. “ Here’sh one.” He thrust it at Sostratos. “That what you want?”
Sostratos undid the ribbon holding the scroll closed. When he unrolled the scroll so he could read what was on it, he let out a long sigh of sorrow and pain. He turned the scroll so the scribe could see it. It was blank.
“Oh, apeshtilensh,” Polykles said. “I’ll End you another one… Here!”
Without much hope, Sostratos took the new scroll. He opened it. It wasn’t Homer, either. It was a poem of sorts, by a writer Sostratos had never heard of. It was also, as the first few lines showed him, one of the most remarkably obscene things he’d ever read. Aristophanes would have blushed.
He started to give it back to Polykles. Then he hesitated. If I were a bored Hellenic soldier in Phoenicia, would I want to read this? he asked himself. He dipped his head. That seemed true without a doubt. In fact, he read a few more lines himself. Just to make sure it’s all of the same sort, he thought. And it was.
“I’ll take this one,” he told the scribe. “What else have you got?”
“I don’t know,” Polykles said, as if he hadn’t the slightest idea of what he’d been doing lately, And, drunk as he was, maybe he didn’t. He gave Sostratos yet another scroll. “Here. Thish one’sh new.”
Sostratos began to read the book. It was part of Xenophon ’s treatise on horsemanship, something else a soldier might find interesting, or at least useful. It began very well, in a hand as neat and precise as Glaukias’. But Sostratos didn’t have to go far before he found the quality sinking. Polykles must have been working while he was drunk, he thought sadly. The script grew scraggly. Lines wandered now one way, now another. Errors in grammar appeared, errors that would have earned a switching for a boy just learning his alpha-beta. Words were scratched out. Other inkblots seemed to be only that-blots. And, a little more than halfway through the scroll, words petered out altogether.