“There, you see? You can be reasonable,” Menedemos said. Odds were, the words went straight past the innkeeper. Menedemos raised his own price very slightly. The Phoenician made a wounded noise and clutched at his chest with both hands, as if Menedemos had shot him with an arrow. When that bit of theater failed to impress Menedemos, the barbarian nodded brusquely and stuck out his hand. “Deal,” he said.
Clasping it, Menedemos wondered if he’d made a good bargain or a bad one. In Rhodes, he would have been pleased to rent a room for this price. But were prices here generally higher or lower than those back home? He didn’t know. Figuring it out wasn’t easy, either. Working back and forth between drakhmai and sigloi made his head ache; the local silver coins were worth just over two Rhodian drakhmai each. Sostratos seemed to have little trouble shifting from one to the other, but Sostratos had been born with a counting board between the ears. Menedemos’ mathematical accomplishments were much more modest.
The room itself was about what he’d expected. It was small and close, furnished with a bed, a couple of rickety stools, and a chamber pot. Who’d been in the bed before? What bugs waited there for the next arrival? Just thinking of the question was enough to make Menedemos start scratching.
He knew he dared not leave anything in the room unguarded. He sighed. That would mean paying a sailor something extra to keep an eye on things while he went out to sell. The expense would make Sostratos grumble. Any expense made Sostratos grumble. But the expense of missing trade goods would be worse.
When Menedemos walked back from the room to the front of the inn, he found the Phoenician arguing with his wife. Menedemos had to fight to hold back a laugh. Here was one woman who wouldn’t tempt him into adultery. She was fat and gray-haired, with a sickle of a nose dominating her face. She had a harsh voice that did nothing to soften the rough Aramaic language.
But when she saw Menedemos, she broke off berating her husband and, absurdly, batted her eyelashes at the Rhodian. “Good days,” she said in Greek even worse than the innkeeper’s. “How you is?”
“Well, thank you,” Menedemos answered. Politely, he added, “And you?”
“Good.” She smiled at him and, turning her face away from her husband, ran her tongue over her lips. Then she batted her eyelashes again.
Oh, by the gods! Menedemos thought in alarm. Sostratos doesn’t want me seducing anybody, and I don’t want this harridan seducing me. He wondered if he ought to find another inn. But he didn’t feel like wasting his time in another dicker over another unappealing little chamber. The less I’m here, the less I’ll have to deal with her, he told himself.
She said something in Aramaic to her husband. Whatever it was, it started the argument once more. Menedemos didn’t want to get stuck in the middle. He was about to retreat to his room when a man came in carrying a chunk of pork. Menedemos remembered Sostratos saying Ioudaioi didn’t eat swine’s flesh. That plainly didn’t hold for Phoenicians. The newcomer gave the innkeeper a bronze coin. The innkeeper took the meat and threw it into hot oil. The oil bubbled and sizzled. A savory aroma filled the chamber.
But it wasn’t so savory as it might have been. The meat couldn’t have smelled better. The oil could have. It wasn’t very fresh, and hadn’t been very good to start with. Menedemos wrinkled his nose. So did the fellow who’d brought in the pork. He said something in Aramaic. Menedemos didn’t know how the innkeeper replied, but he sounded defensive. The way he spread his hands also made that likely.
Menedemos had an inspiration. As the innkeeper turned the meat with a pair of wooden tongs, the Rhodian asked him, “Do you want to buy some better olive oil?”
“What you say?” The fellow’s Greek was horrible.
“Olive oil. Good olive oil. You buy?” Menedemos spoke as if to an idiot child-not that an idiot child would have been interested in buying olive oil, of course.
He wasn’t sure the innkeeper understood the Greek for olive oil, and wished Sostratos were here to translate for him. But he had to do the best he could. He pointed into the pan and held his nose. The man whose pork was frying did the same thing.
“Olive oil? You? How much?” the innkeeper asked.
“Yes. Olive oil. Me.” Menedemos started to dip his head, then remembered to nod instead. He named his price.
The Sidonian stared at him. He said something in Aramaic- Menedemos guessed it was the price, translated into his own language. The innkeeper’s wife and the customer both exclaimed in what certainly sounded like horror. The innkeeper then doled out one word of Greek: “No.”
That wasn’t an invitation to haggle. It was rejection, plain and simple. As the innkeeper took the fried pork out of the pan, wiped oil off it with a bit of rag, and handed it to the man who’d brought it in, Menedemos asked him, “Well, what do you usually pay for olive oil?”
He had to simplify that before the innkeeper understood him. When the fellow told him, he let out a wistful sigh. The innkeeper bought oil as cheap as he could get. He wouldn’t have been interested in Damonax’s fine oil at any price that let Menedemos break even, let alone turn a profit. So much for inspiration, he thought.
The man with the fried pork walked out gnawing on it. The innkeeper and his wife didn’t start quarreling again, but the woman did send Menedemos a wink and a leer. He retreated faster than the Persian king had after each battle against Alexander. The Phoenician woman let out a sigh doubtless intended to be alluring. It only made Menedemos retreat faster still.
When he told Sostratos about it on the Aphrodite, his cousin said, “Yes, now give me another story. You’re trying to back out of your oath, is what you’re doing.”
“By the gods, I am not!” Menedemos said with a shudder. “Come to the inn with me and you’ll see for yourself. I tell you, I wouldn’t have this woman on a bet, and to the crows with me if I can understand why the barbarian married her.”
“Maybe she brought a large dowry,” Sostratos suggested.
“Maybe,” Menedemos said. “That makes more sense than anything else I can think of, but even so…” He shuddered again, then went halfway toward changing the subject: “I tried to sell the innkeeper some of your brother-in-law’s olive oil.”
“Did you? Well, thanks,” Sostratos said. “Let me guess-no luck?”
“I’m afraid not, my dear. He was using some dreadful, nasty stuff to fry meat, and I hoped he might want something better, but no. He used the nasty oil because it was cheap, and he turned green when I told him what I wanted for ours-as green as if he were seasick, or as if he’d been tasting his own oil. I did try, though.”
Sostratos sighed. “I already said thank you. I’ll say it again. Gods only know how we’re going to unload that stuff. It is good oil, but even so…” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I wouldn’t mind breaking an amphora of it over Damonax’s head.”
“Have you got your donkey yet?” Menedemos asked. “Besides your brother-in-law, I mean?”
“Heh,” Sostratos said, and then tossed his head. “No, not yet. Prices for beasts of burden are higher than I want to pay, because Antigonos’ soldiers have bought up-or maybe stolen, for all I know-so many of them. But there’s one-a mule, actually, not a donkey-I have my eye on, if I can get the man who owns it down to something like a reasonable price.”
“I wished I had you along today, so you could have told the innkeeper just how vile his olive oil was,” Menedemos said. “Maybe I should have learned some Aramaic after all.”