“Why?” Menedemos said. “I’ll tell you why. Because silver is silver, that’s why. Now kindly tell your brother that in Aramaic, too.”
“You’ve got your nerve,” Tenashtart said, but he sounded more admiring than otherwise. He and Ithobaal did go back and forth in their own language, a crackle of sounds strange to Greek ears. When they finished, Tenashtart named another price, this one only a little more than half as high as what he’d suggested before.
“Well, that’s better,” Menedemos said. “I don’t know that it’s good-I still think you charge your own folk less than that-but it’s better. We’ll talk more later. First, though, do you want silver, or are we working a trade?”
“You came here in an akatos,” Tenashtart said. “That means you’re bound to have goodies tucked away under the rowers’ benches. What have you got, and what do you want for it?”
“My cousin took perfume into the country of the Ioudaioi, but I’ve still got plenty left,” Menedemos answered. “A merchant galley can carry a lot more than a pack donkey’s able to.”
“You talking about the rose essence you Rhodians make?” Tenashtart asked. Menedemos dipped his head. The Sidonian said, “That’s good stuff, and it doesn’t get over here all that often. You sell it in those little tiny jars, though, don’t you?”
“Yes. It’s concentrated, so a little goes a long way,” Menedemos said.
“What do you want for one of those jars? No. Wait.” Tenashtart held up a dye-stained hand. “Let’s settle on how many jars of perfume go into one jar of dye. As long as we’re talking about jars, and not sigloi or drakhmai, it seems friendlier, whether it really is or not.”
It didn’t seem friendly to Menedemos for very long. Tenashtart mocked his initial offer. He scorned Tenashtart’s. Each accused the other of being a brigand descended from a long line of pirates and thieves. Each claimed the other was thinking of his own profit at the expense of the deal as a whole. Each was undoubtedly right.
Half a digit’s breadth at a time, they got closer together. The closer they got, the more they railed at each other. After a while, Menedemos grinned at Tenashtart and said, “This is fun, isn’t it?”
Tenashtart got up from his stool and folded Menedemos into a bear hug. “Ah, Hellene, if you’d only stay in Sidon for a year, I’d make a Phoenician out of you, to the crows with me if I wouldn’t.” Then he made an offer hardly more reasonable than his previous one.
Menedemos didn’t want to be a Phoenician. Coming out and saying so struck him as impolitic. He made another offer of his own. Tenashtart rained curses down on him in Greek and Aramaic. They both started laughing, which didn’t mean they stopped yelling at each other or trying to best each other in the bargain.
When at last they clasped hands, they were both sweating. “Whew!”
Menedemos said. “Now we’re both going to say we got cheated, and then we’re both going to make a pile of money on what we just did. But if we see each other again in a couple of years, neither one of us will admit it.”
“That’s how it goes,” Tenashtart agreed. “You’re pretty good, Hellene, Furies take me if you’re not.”
“You’re pretty good yourself,” Menedemos replied. I skinned you, he thought. Tenashtart, no doubt, thought the same. It was a good bargain all the way around.
9
As Sostratos and the sailors from the Aphrodite left Jerusalem, Teleutas heaved a sigh. “That wasn’t such a bad town, even if I couldn’t speak the language,” he said. “The wine was pretty good-”
“And plenty strong,” Moskhion broke in. “Drinking it unmixed isn’t so bad, once you get used to it.”
“No, not half bad,” Teleutas agreed. “The girls were friendly, too, or they acted friendly enough once you gave ‘em silver.” He eyed Sostratos. “You ever get yourself laid while we were there, young sir?”
“Yes, once or twice,” Sostratos answered truthfully. “The girls in the brothel I went to were just girls in a brothel, as far as I’m concerned. They didn’t seem special one way or another.”
He couldn’t say the same about Zilpah, but he didn’t care to talk about the innkeeper’s wife with his escorts. For one thing, he hadn’t actually done anything with her. For another, even if he had… He tossed his head. Menedemos bragged about his adulteries. Sostratos sometimes thought his cousin committed them not least so he could brag about them. If I ever seduce another man’s wife, I hope I’ll have the sense to keep my mouth shut about it.
Aristeidas asked, “How long before we get to this Engedi place?”
“Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days,” Sostratos answered. “It’s supposed to lie by the edge of what they call the Lake of Asphalt, or something like that. They say all sorts of funny things about that lake. They say it holds so much salt, nothing can live in it. And they say that if you walk out into it, you can’t even sink-it’s so salty, you just float in it, the way an egg will float in water if you put enough salt into it.”
“People say all sorts of silly things,” Aristeidas observed. “Do you believe any of that nonsense?”
“Right now, I don’t know whether to believe or disbelieve,” Sostratos said. “Some strange things turn out to be true: look at peafowl. And look at the gryphon’s skull we had last year. Who would have thought gryphons were anything but legendary beasts till we came across that? But I’m not going to worry about it now, not when I’ll see for myself in a day or two.”
“All right. I guess that’s fair,” Aristeidas said. “This place we’re going to, though-it can’t be as big as Jerusalem, can it?”
Sostratos tossed his head. “I wouldn’t think so, anyhow. By the way the Ioudaioi talk, Jerusalem is the biggest city in their land.”
“It’s not much,” Teleutas said.
He spoke slightingly as a matter of course. Even if things did impress him, he didn’t let on. Here, though, Sostratos had to agree with him. Next to Athens or Rhodes or Syracuse, Jerusalem wasn’t much. Sidon, with its tall buildings, outdid this little local center, too. One day before too long, he supposed, people would forget all about it. Even the temple of the Ioudaioi would probably lose its importance as people hereabouts took on more and more Hellenic ways.
Eventually, he thought, they’ll sacrifice a pig on that altar and no one will care. The world belongs to us Hellenes nowadays.
The road from Jerusalem toward Engedi first ran south through the hilly country in which the main town of the Ioudaioi sat and then east toward the Lake of Asphalt. Sostratos had asked several different people in Jerusalem how far Engedi was and had got several different answers. No one had ever properly measured distances in this country, as Alexander ’s surveyors had done during his campaigns of conquest. Eventually, too, Sostratos supposed, whichever of Antigonos or Ptolemaios held on to Ioudaia would do the job. Till then, each man’s opinion seemed as good as that of the next-and was certainly maintained with every bit as much passion. Though the precise distance remained loudly in doubt, Sostratos did think Engedi lay about two days’ journey from Jerusalem, as he’d told Aristeidas.
He and his men paused to rest in the heat of the day at the little town of Bethlehem. They bought wine from a tavernkeeper and used it to wash down the loaves they’d brought from Jerusalem. The taverner’s daughter, who was about ten, stared and stared at them as she carried the wine to their table. Sostratos would have bet she’d never seen a Hellene before.
“Peace be unto you,” he said in Aramaic.
She blinked. “And to you also peace,” she answered. If it hadn’t been a set phrase, she might have been too startled to bring it out. Her dark eyes were enormous in a skinny, none too clean face that still promised considerable beauty as she got older.
“What’s your name?” he asked.