As soon as the fellow caught it, his manner changed. “I can give you one sip right now,” he said. A sip? Menedemos wondered, and then remembered that Aiolic used s instead of t in front of i. The longshoreman went on, “And that’s steer clear of Apollonides. He adulterates what he sells.”
“Thanks, friend,” Sostratos said. “Knowing whom to stay away from is as important as knowing whom to go to.”
“Try Onetor,” the local suggested, “and after him Neon. Onetor’s brother, Onesimos, sells wine. Neon and Onetor are both honest, more or less, but Onetor is more likely to have the best truffles than Neon is.”
Now Menedemos gave him an obolos. The longshoreman was effusive in his thanks. In a low voice, Sostratos said, “We’ll do some more checking before we deal. This fellow may not know what he’s talking about, or else he may be Onetor’s cousin, or Neon’s, and get a cut of whatever business he brings in.”
“I know that,” Menedemos answered, also quietly. “We’ll ask around in the agora. Still, we’ve got a place to start.”
Like sparrows scattering when a jay fluttered down to peck at seeds, the longshoremen drew back as a swaggering soldier in a swirling red cape strode up the quay toward the Aphrodite . He was wide through the shoulders, at least as tall as Sostratos, and looked taller because of the crested and brightly polished bronze helm he wore. His eyes were gray; his close-cut beard had big red streaks in it. When he spoke, the Macedonian that poured from his lips made Aiolic dialect seem straightforward by comparison.
Menedemos stood there dumbfounded, wondering how to tell him he was speaking gibberish. Sostratos undertook the job: “I’m very sorry, O best one, and I do not mean to offend you, but I cannot follow what you say.” He made his own speech as Attic as he could: that was the dialect people who learned Greek were most likely to follow, and to use.
After an incomprehensible Macedonian oath, the soldier tried again. This time, he managed intelligible Greek, asking, “What ship be ye here? Where be ye from? What might ye carry?” Menedemos told him. He followed Doric Greek about as well as Sostratos’ almost-Attic, and asked another question: “Whither be ye bound?”
“Athens.” Sostratos spoke before Menedemos could. By the way his tongue caressed the city’s name, he longed for it as Menedemos might have longed for one of the women who lived there.
“Athens, eh?” The Macedonian dipped his head, smiling a little, and said something more in his native speech. He turned and marched down the pier, his rawhide boots thudding on the sun-baked, bird-splashed planks.
“What was that last bit?” Menedemos asked Sostratos.
“It sounded like, ‘Maybe I’ll see you there,’ “ his cousin answered.
“It sounded like that to me, too, but that’s not likely, is it?” Menedemos said. “He’s Antigonos’ man, and Athens belongs to Kas-sandros.”
“They don’t love each other,” Sostratos agreed.
“We probably heard it wrong,” Menedemos said. “I’d almost rather listen to a Thracian than a Macedonian. At least Thracian’s a real foreign language, and you know ahead of time it won’t make any sense to you. When you hear Macedonians talking, you pick up a word now and then, and you hear other bits that sound like they ought to make sense, but then you listen a little longer and you realize you don’t know what in Tartaros they’re talking about.”
“Usually it’s something like, ‘Surrender right now. Give me your silver,’ “ Sostratos said. “Macedonians aren’t very complicated people.”
As unobtrusively as he could, Menedemos kicked him in the ankle, saying, “You’re pretty simple yourself, to scoff at them where the Lesbians might hear you and blab. We want to do business here, not get in trouble.”
“You’re right, my dear. I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” Sostratos was much more ready than most Hellenes to apologize when in the wrong. That made Menedemos have a hard time staying angry at him, but also roused faint contempt. Did his cousin have no self-respect?
Diokles asked, “Are you young gentlemen going to an inn tonight, or will you sleep aboard ship?”
“Good question.” Menedemos turned to Sostratos. “How about it? Do you feel like a bed tonight, with maybe a slave girl in it to show us what women in Lesbos are famous for?”
“We’d probably get better lodgings at the house of the Rhodian proxenos here.” Sostratos eyed the setting sun. “Too late to send anybody to his house this evening. Tomorrow would do better for that, and so I’d just as soon sleep here tonight.”
After a moment’s thought, Menedemos dipped his head. “You make good sense,” he said. “All things considered, you usually do.”
“Thanks-I think,” Sostratos said. “I am fairly good at being right. One of the things I’ve found, though, is that it’s much less useful than people think.”
“That’s a what-do-you-call-it-a paradox,” Menedemos said. “What’s wrong with being right?”
“For one thing, a good many questions aren’t important, so whether you’re right or not really doesn’t matter very much,” Sostratos said seriously. “For another, being right annoys people a lot of the time. They think you think you’re better than they are, when all you truly think is that you’re more accurate.”
Menedemos had watched Sostratos look down his nose at him and at other people too many times to be altogether convinced by that. Saying so, though, would have sparked a quarrel. Instead, he got himself a couple of barley rolls, some olives, and some dried fish. “Why don’t you pour us some wine?” he said. “This won’t be much of a supper, but it’ll keep us going.”
His cousin got out their cups. “We’ll eat better at the proxenos’ house than we would at an inn,” he said. “The only thing innkeepers know how to do is to fry whatever you bring them in hot oil.” Sostratos dipped wine from an amphora of the rough red the crew drank, then diluted it with water from another jar.
“You’re bound to be right about that,” Menedemos said as Sostratos gave him his cup. “I’ve had some ghastly suppers in inns.”
“Who hasn’t? Only men who never travel,” Sostratos said. “And this is another one of those places where, even if I am right, so what?” He took a sip of wine, then fixed a supper for himself. “You see? My being right didn’t even get you to bring out any food for me, though I poured your wine.”
“Well, now you’ve embarrassed me,” Menedemos said, which was true; he knew he should have taken sitos and opson for Sostratos as well as himself. “I’m just lazy and useless, that’s all.” He hung his head.
“If you were on the stage, they’d throw cucumbers and squishy apples at you, the way you overact,” Sostratos said. Menedemos snorted, though Sostratos was probably right again.
When Sostratos woke up on the Aphrodite’s poop deck, he needed a moment to remember in which city’s harbor the ship lay. Kos? Samos? Khios? No, this was Mytilene, on Lesbos. The wind blew from the north, and carried the city stink of dung and smoke and sweat and garbage from the part of the polis on Lesbos proper straight into the harbor. When Sostratos was inside a city, he stopped noticing the smell after a while. Going out to sea, though, reminded him of it whenever he came back to port.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The eastern sky, the sky above the Anatolian mainland, was gray with advancing dawn. Menedemos still snored beside him. That seldom happened; more often than not, Menedemos woke before him. And Diokles still slept sitting up on a rower’s bench, leaning against the planks of the ship’s side. Sostratos rubbed his eyes again, wondering whether to believe them-he couldn’t remember the last time he’d got up ahead of the keleustes.
He got to his feet and walked, naked, to the rail to ease himself. Even one man moving about gave the merchant galley a small but perceptible motion, enough to rouse both Menedemos and Diokles. “Hail,” Menedemos said. “Not such a sleepyhead as usual, eh?”
“Oh, go howl!” Sostratos said. “Sleeping later than you do doesn’t make me a lazy wretch.”