Hippalos turned back to his dancers, beating time with his hand and exclaiming:
"Come on, Lyka, you're slow on your turns! Get in step! Ryp-pa-pa-pai! Ryp-pa-pa-pai! That's better!"
The girls finished their dance, and a male singer took their place. Then more girls, then a snake charmer, more girls, a team of tumblers, and more girls. As the evening passed, the dancing became wilder and the girls, nakeder. I sighed for my youth, when to witness such a show would have made it embarrassing for me to stand up afterwards. Now my lance lay as limp as a dead eel. I saw Hippalos whisper in the ear of the Numidian, Varsako, who showed white teeth against his brown skin in a grin of eager interest. Not all the girls would be lonesome that night.
BOOK II — Agatharchides the Knidan
Making preparations for the Persephoneia kept me busy all next day. At the appointed time, Father Noptes led me to the chamber that the king used for intimate suppers. A pair of guards at the door searched me for weapons. The chamber was larger than any commoner's dining room, although smaller than the visitors' banquet hall.
Present were Hippalos, representing the Sister; Colonel Ananias, representing the Wife; the gray-bearded Agatharchides of Knidos, tutor to the young Ptolemies; Kydas the Librarian, and his assistant Ammonios. Kydas was big, fat, and white-bearded; Ammonios, a small, slender, swarthy, clean-shaven man. There were also an admiral, a man from the Treasury, and Physkon's First Secretary.
As we stood around making talk, eating snacks of salt fish and sipping a light, dry wine, the king waddled in with a golden wreath on his egg-bald pate. A pair of slaves steadied him by the elbows. After him came ten Celtic mercenaries with long hair in various shades of yellow, red, and brown, to guard his precious person.
Physkon greeted us affably, flipping his hand and naming each guest. His servants lowered him, groaning, into a huge armchair; for, as he said: "With my bulk I find it too hard to eat from a couch. You will, my good Eudoxos, excuse the barbarism. Let me see—you are a shipowner, are you not? The head of Theon's Sons of Kyzikos?"
"In name, O King," I replied. "I have lately left the routine of the firm to my brothers and my brother-in-law and my cousin. I travel to scout for new business and to gather material for my books."
"Do you find it difficult to write while being interrupted on business matters?"
"Extremely so, sire. That is why I have retired from active direction of the company."
"It is the same with me, Master Eudoxos. You know, I have published one book—a miscellany of observations on natural history—and should like to complete another before joining the majority. But whenever I try to devote a morning or an afternoon to my writing—phy! that is just the time some embassy arrives from the Romans or the Syrians or the Parthians with urgent business, or word comes of a frontier clash with the Ethiopians or the Judaeans, or one of the queens wants her allowance raised so she can buy a solid gold lamp stand. Away go the thoughts I had meant to commit to papyrus, and it takes me a ten-day to gather them again. Happy the man with a literary bent and no worldly business to distract him from it, like those featherless parrots in the Library! And now, tell me about your work in progress."
The king continued his probing questions throughout a repast of veal braised in a fish-and-raisin sauce, with onions and the disk-shaped loaves of Egyptian bread. A slave sampled each dish before the king partook of it. Physkon's comments showed him a very shrewd, intelligent man. I will not say that I liked him; his physical repulsiveness and the memory of his frightful crimes forbade. Nevertheless, I found myself making excuses for him. I told myself that the murder of one's kin was a matter of course in royal families. Besides, Physkon's crimes had been committed long ago, in his youth. For the last twenty or thirty years, his conduct had been no worse than that of most kings.
Afterwards, I decided that I had been so flattered by his attention that I had given him more credit than he deserved. His questioning meant, not that he found me especially wise or charming, but that I was the only man present whom he did not already know. Therefore, I was the one most likely to have something new and interesting to say.
Whatever Physkon's physical shortcomings, there was nothing wrong with his appetite. He ate twice as much as I did, and in those days I was deemed a hearty eater. Such, however, was his corpulence that his monstrous torso got in the way of his pudgy arms, and his servitors were kept busy wiping spilt food off the front of his robe.
When the food had been taken away and the servants had washed our hands, Physkon wheezed: "Gentlemen, I have called you here to discuss the plans for exploration that have been urged upon My Majesty, and if possible to choose amongst the alternatives." He snapped his fingers and said to a hovering flunkey: "Fetch Rama, will you?"
Then he turned to me. "This," he said, "is an Indian mariner whom my men rescued from shipwreck some months ago. His ship had lost its sail in a storm and drifted to the Ethiopian side of the Strait of Dernê, at the entrance to the Red Sea. Rama was the only survivor. My people brought him hither, and I have had men teaching him Greek, so that we could converse without an interpreter."
Physkon glowered at the two librarians, Kydas and his assistant. "You two keep wailing that you need more money for your polluted Library. Yet, when I ask a simple thing—for somebody who can teach Greek to an Indian—you're of no help at all. Your kept pedants can split hairs over the name of Achilles' dog, but none of them knows anything useful, like a foreign language. I had to dig an old Arabian sailor out of a waterfront grogshop ... But here he comes."
The flunkey led in the Indian—a man of medium height and sturdy build, almost as black as an Ethiop. He wore a short-sleeved jacket and a long skirt pulled up between his legs in back and tucked in at the waist. His long, black hair was tied in a bun at the nape of his neck, and on his head a long scarf was wound round and round and tied in a huge bow knot. He had a square face with a sharp, hooked nose; like most modern Hellenes, he was clean-shaven. His lips twitched in a nervous little smile, while the expression in his eyes remained somber and sad. Arriving before the king, he placed his palms together before his breast, as if praying, and bowed over them, first to the king and then to each of the other guests in turn.
The king snapped a finger. "Fetch a cushion for the gentleman." To the Indian he said: "Now, my good Rama, tell these men your proposal."
Rama sat cross-legged on the floor on his cushion and spoke bad Greek in a strange and disagreeable accent: a staccato, nasal monotone. He said:
"My lords, I—I from city of Barygaza come. In dry time— what you call winter—we are sailing from Barygaza to ports in—how you say—Arabia. Wind all time that way blow. In summer, she blow other way and take us back home. Sometimes big storm is coming. He to other place blow us. That to me happen. All my shipmates die. Thanks to Lord Buddha, I live.
"Now, I like to go home. You like to sail to India from Strait of Dernê, all in one sail, not stopping in Arab ports. Arabs are taking your goods, are taking your money, are leaving you no profit. If you straight to India sail, you are not needing to pay money to Arabs. You can to India sail in summer with six-month wind and sail back in winter. You much profit are making. You are sending ship; I be your pilot. Everybody happy is."
The admiral spoke: "O Rama, if your people know about this direct passage from India to the Red Sea, why have they not put it to use?"