“I know what I believe,” Sostratos said, sipping at the wine.
“What is that?” Zilpah asked gravely.
“I believe you are beautiful.” Sostratos hadn’t known he was going to say that till the words were out of his mouth.
Zilpah had started to turn away from him. She turned back, suddenly and sharply. If she was angry, Sostratos knew he’d found himself more trouble than he’d helped Moskhion escape. But her voice was quiet, even amused, as she answered, “And I believe you have been away from your home too long. Maybe you should go down the block with your friends.”
Sostratos tossed his head. He needed a heartbeat to remember to shake it instead. “I do not want that. The body of a woman…” He shrugged. Trying to tell Zilpah how he felt in a language he didn’t speak at all well was one more problem, one more frustration. He wondered if even Menedemos would have had any luck under such circumstances. He did his best, continuing, “The body of a woman matters not so much. A woman I care about, that matters.”
If Zilpah squawked and ran for her husband, he’d already said enough to get himself in deep trouble. But she didn’t. She said, “I have had this happen before. A traveling man happens to be kind enough to think I am pretty, and then he thinks he is in love with me because of that. It is only foolishness, though. How can you think you care about me when you do not even know me, not in any way that matters?”
That was the sort of question Sostratos often asked his cousin when Menedemos imagined he’d fallen in love with some girl who’d caught his eye. Having it come back at him would have been funny if he’d looked at it the right way. Just then, he was in no mood for that.
“I know ways that matter,” Sostratos said. Zilpah giggled. He realized he’d used the feminine verb form, as she had. “I know,” he said again, this time correctly. “I know you are kind. I know you are patient. I know you are generous. I know these are good things for a woman to be.” He managed a wry grin. “I know my Aramaic is bad.”
She smiled at that, but quickly became serious once more. “The other Ionian here tried to give me money so I would give him my body,” she said. “I have had that happen before, with us and with foreigners.”
“If I want a woman I can buy, I will go down the block,” Sostratos said.
“Yes, I believe you. You are a strange man, do you know that? You pay me these compliments-they make me want to blush. I am an innkeeper’s wife. I do not blush very often. I have seen too much, heard too much. But I think you mean what you say. I do not think you say it to lure me into bed.”
“Of course I mean it,” Sostratos said. Menedemos might not have, but he was a practiced seducer. Telling anything but what he saw as the truth hadn’t occurred to Sostratos.
Zilpah smiled again. “How old are you, Ionian?”
“Twenty-seven,” he answered.
“I would have guessed you younger,” she told him. He wondered if that was praise or something else. Maybe she didn’t know, either; she went on, “I have not had anyone say such things to me.”
“Not even your husband?” Sostratos asked. “He should.”
“No.” Zilpah’s voice was troubled. “When no one says these things, you do not miss them. But when someone does… I am not going to take you into my bed here, Sostratos son of Lysistratos, but I think you have made my marriage a colder place even so.”
“I did not mean to do that,” Sostratos said.
“No. You meant to lay me. That would have been simpler than making me wonder why I have had no praise since I stood under the wedding canopy with my husband.”
“Oimoi!” Sostratos said. That was Greek, but Zilpah took the meaning from the sound, as he’d thought she could. In Aramaic, he went on, “I did not mean to make you unhappy. I am sorry I did.”
“I don’t think you made me unhappy,” Zilpah said. “I think I was unhappy. I think I have been unhappy for years without even knowing it. You made me see that. I ought to thank you.”
“I am surprised you are not angry,” Sostratos said. When someone pointed out to him something he hadn’t seen before, he was-usually, when he remembered to be-grateful. Most people, from everything he’d seen, got angry when anyone made them change their view of the way the world worked. If anything did, that marked the difference between those who aspired to philosophy and ordinary men.
“Angry? No.” The innkeeper’s wife shook her head. “It is not your fault. It is Ithran’s fault for taking me as much for granted as the bed he sleeps in, and my fault for letting him do it, for not even noticing he was doing it.” Sudden tears glinted in her eyes. “Maybe it would have been different if either of our children had lived.”
“I’m sorry,” Sostratos said. So many families had a lament like Zilpah’s. Infants died so readily, burying them inside city walls brought no religious pollution, as it did with the bodies of older people.
“Everything is as the one god wills,” Zilpah said. “The priests say this, and I believe them, but I cannot understand why he willed that my babies died.”
“We Ionians wonder about these same things,” Sostratos said. “We do not know. I do not think we can know.” He finished his wine and held out the cup to her. “May I have more, please?” He was usually very moderate with the unmixed stuff, knowing how strong it was, but nerves made him want a refill.
“Of course. You hardly drink at all,” Zilpah said. It didn’t seem that way to Sostratos, but he let it go. She poured his cup full and her own as well. He spilled out a little libation onto the floor, while she murmured the blessing the Ioudaioi used over wine. They both drank. Zilpah managed a small laugh. “Here we are, pouring down wine to drown our sorrow because neither of us got what we wanted.”
“That is funny, is it not? Or it could be,” Sostratos said. The wine, sweet and thick, went down very smoothly. Sostratos hooked another stool with his ankle and slid it over to the table where he sat. “Here. No need to stand. If you do nothing else, you can sit by me.”
“I suppose so.” When Zilpah did sit, she perched on the edge of the stool like a nervous bird. She gulped her wine, got up to pour herself another cup, and sat again. “I don’t know why I drink,” she remarked, looking down into the purple wine. “After I am done, everything will still be the same.”
“Yes,” said Sostratos, who felt the same way himself. “But while you drink…” He usually spoke as she did. Today, he found himself praising wine.
“For a little while, yes,” Zilpah said. “For a little while, even things you know are foolish seem… not so bad.”
In Greek, Sostratos would have answered, That’s why people use wine as an excuse for doing things they would never dream of doing sober. He knew he couldn’t say anything so complex-and so far removed from the world of trade and bargaining-in Aramaic. But a nod, once he remembered to use the local gesture and not the one he was used to, seemed to get his meaning across well enough.
“More wine?” Zilpah asked him. Her cup was already empty again.
His was still half full. He took another sip from it and nodded again. He would never have drunk so much neat wine in the morning back in Rhodes, but he wasn’t in Rhodes any more. If he had a thick head later in the day, then he did, that was all.
Zilpah got up and filled a pitcher with wine. She stood beside Sostratos to pour more into his cup. People use wine as an excuse for doing things they would never dream of doing sober, Sostratos thought again. Before he could tell it not to, his right arm slipped around Zilpah’s waist.
She could have screamed. She could have broken the pitcher over his head. She could have done any number of things that would have led to quick irrevocable catastrophe for him. She didn’t. She didn’t even try to twist free or to knock his hand away. She just shook her head a little and murmured, “Wine.”