Menedemos said, “We’ll find out where the people who advise Ptolemaios live, the ones who help him run Egypt and fight his wars for him. They’re the men who can afford the best, and the men who sell it to them will have their shops close by.”

  He was trying to get away from whatever private woe gnawed at him. Sostratos could see that. But what he said made good sense. Sure enough, he was less silly than he sometimes liked to pretend.

  “That’s a fine plan!” Sostratos meant it and was acting—perhaps overacting—at the same time. Have to steer the akatos of conversation away from the rocks, he thought. “We’ll do it! It will give us the excuse for more sightseeing, anyhow.”

  “As if you need an excuse,” Menedemos gibed. His eyes were grateful. He went on, “I know you. I know you too well, in fact. First chance you get, you’ll climb on a riverboat and go down the Nile to see the Sphinx and the whatever-you-call-’ems.”

  “The Pyramids,” Sostratos supplied. “I’d like to. Wouldn’t you? We’re so close and they’re so grand. Nothing else like them anywhere, not in the whole world. Be a shame to go back to Rhodes without looking at them if we can.”

  “And then you’ll go a little farther down the Nile, and a little farther yet, and then I’ll hear you’re living in a mud hut with an Egyptian girl and raising a flock of brown babies,” Menedemos said.

  “If I ever live with a woman, I’ll want one I can talk to,” Sostratos said. “That will be hard enough if she speaks Greek.”

  His cousin snorted. “Talking is for men. Women are for babies and for running your household.”

  “If that were true, hetairai would go out of business,” Sostratos said.

  “Hetairai are different. I thought you were talking about wives,” Menedemos said.

  Sostratos didn’t see the distinction. “Hetairai or wives, they’re all women, aren’t they? If you have a wife you can talk to, you don’t need to go looking for a hetaira who’d never look at you if you didn’t give her silver or perfume or fancy jewelry.”

  “You’d best be careful, my dear.” Menedemos eyed him the way he’d inspected a lizard in Palestine whose like he’d never seen in Hellas. “You tell that to someone who isn’t related to you and doesn’t know you’re a bit daft, he’ll think you’re a dangerous radical.”

  “Well, let him.” Sostratos rather liked the idea. “If I tell it to women, by the gods, I bet it will draw them to me the way spilled wine draws ants.” He rubbed his chin. He rather liked that idea, too.

  Most of the servants in Ptolemaios’ palace were Egyptians. Hellenes came to Egypt hoping to get rich and have slaves and servants working for them. They didn’t come to sweep other people’s floors or wash clothes or put fresh linen on beds. Menedemos understood that. If you were someone else’s subordinate, were you truly a free man?

  He had no trouble coaxing one of the little brown women into bed one morning after Sostratos went out looking for jewelers and wine merchants. He spoke not a word of Egyptian, while she knew only a little Greek, but a charming manner and some kisses and the promise of a drakhma proved persuasive enough. More than persuasive enough, in fact; the eagerness with which she nodded her head convinced Menedemos he’d overpaid.

  When he took off her chlamys, he found she was as nicely made as he’d hoped. When he took off his own tunic … she laughed in surprise and pointed at his phallos. “What wrong with it?” she asked. “I never did with Hellene before. All Hellenes like that?” She didn’t seem to care for the notion.

  “There’s nothing wrong with it, and of course we’re all like that. How else would we be?” Menedemos said in some annoyance. He’d wanted a good time, not a girl who mocked him for how he was made. But then he remembered some of the stories Sostratos had brought back from the land of the Ioudaioi. “Wait! Do Egyptian men circumcise?” Her blank look said she didn’t follow. He tried again, with simpler words: “Do Egyptian men cut off their foreskins?” He used fingers to show what he meant, too.

  She nodded so vigorously, it made her breasts bob. “Oh, yes. Men do. Not look—funny.”

  “I don’t think I look funny. I think men with naked cockheads look funny,” Menedemos said with dignity. He wasn’t sure she followed him. She didn’t get off the bed and run out of the chamber, though, so he went on, “No matter what it looks like, it works the same way once it’s in there. Come on!”

  Egyptians and Hellenes proved to differ even in their preferred postures. He would have bent her forward and gone in from behind. When she lay on her back and urged him atop her, though, he acquiesced. He wasn’t fussy, and he expected it would be fine any which way.

  And it was. Of course, it was almost always fine for a man. His partner also seemed happy enough. After he got off her, she squatted over the chamber pot and let his seed dribble out of her. “No baby,” she said. “I hope no baby.”

  Menedemos dipped his head. He didn’t want a little brownish bastard, either. “Did being the way I am make any difference?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Not much. Still funny-looking.”

  “Is this funny-looking?” He gave her a Rhodian drakhma with the head of Helios the sun god on one side and his polis’ rose on the other.

  She looked surprised and pleased. “I not even got to asking. You my first Hellene. All honest like you?”

  “Don’t count on it, sweet one!” Menedemos exclaimed. She understood his tone if not the words. He asked, “How does it happen that I’m your first Hellene?”

  Bad grammar and small vocabulary made her need to back and fill several times before he got the story. Her uncle was a baker in the palace, and had just got her a position here. Plainly, though, she hadn’t been a shy innocent in whatever Delta village she came from. She wasn’t a maiden, and she knew what to do in bed.

  As she put her tunic back on, she asked, “You want again, another time? And your friend here?”

  Menedemos chuckled. “Dear, you love us for our silver alone! But we aren’t the mines of Laureion in Attica.” That flew straight over her head. She opened the door, blew him a kiss, and was gone.

  After Sostratos got back from his ramble through the overgrown city, he told Menedemos, “Well, I’ve found a couple of men who seem to have the money and the interest to buy some of the amber, anyway.”

  “Euge!” Menedemos said, miming applause.

  “And how was your morning?” Sostratos’ tongue didn’t really drip venom, but he enjoyed acting as if it did.

  “Pretty good. Better than pretty good, in fact. She wasn’t used to a sausage still in the skin, but that didn’t keep her from enjoying it.”

  Sostratos stared at him. “A sausage still in the—? What are you going on about now?”

  Menedemos told him exactly what he was going on about. He added, “She asked about you, too.”

  “Did she?” his cousin said. “Well, a drakhma’s not a terrible price. I don’t know how you feel about sharing a woman, though. Come to that, I don’t know how I feel about it, either. We’ve never tried that before.”

  “She’s only an Egyptian. It’s not as though either one of us will fall in love with her or anything, She won’t fall for us, either. She’s as mercenary as one of those Cretans who sells his sling to whoever pays him most.”

  “I’ll have a look at her, I suppose. If I like what I see, I’ll try her,” Sostratos said. “Then she can laugh at my prong, too, so you won’t feel all alone. What’s her name, anyhow?”

  “Her—?” Menedemos’ mouth fell open. He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “By the gods, I’m an idiot! I never asked her!”

  “That will make her easier for me to find, won’t it? I’ll shout, ‘Hey you!’ and she’ll come running.” Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “How can you screw somebody if you don’t even know who she is?”

  “My pole did the talking, my pole and her piggy,” Menedemos said. Sostratos made that tongue-clicking noise again. They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

  In Greek letters, the palace girl’s name was Seseset, or something close to that. It had a couple of the sneezing consonants Aramaic also used but Greek didn’t. She gave herself to Sostratos as readily—maybe as greedily—as she did to Menedemos. Now that she knew about foreskins, she seemed to take them in stride.

  Sostratos also soon discovered his cousin was right. Seseset gave what she gave cheerfully enough, but she cared little for either Hellene beyond the silver they paid her. She was honest about it, at least. Sostratos preferred that to drama. A lot of things he enjoyed watching in a play at the theater were less enjoyable in real life.

  So when he got the urge and he had a drakhma he didn’t mind parting with, he found Seseset and slaked his lust. Sometimes he thought she enjoyed it; others, her attitude toward him put him in mind of his when he petted a friendly dog. The creature was there. It was amusing for a moment. Past that, it wasn’t worth getting excited about.

  He could have had exactly what Seseset gave him, and clever conversation with it, for much more money from any of the hetairai who’d flocked to Alexandria. A city full of rich men naturally attracted women who wanted some small share of riches for themselves.

  Sostratos had no interest in visiting the fancy women. For one thing, he was stingy; he didn’t always care to part with even a single drakhma. For another, he was shy. Holding up his end of the conversation with a hetaira might have strained him. So Seseset suited him fine.

  It was funny, in a way. As he’d told Menedemos, he hoped for a wife with whom he’d be able to share all his thoughts. Once he got to know herSeseset, he wouldn’t—he might not—be shy around her. And she wouldn’t have the hard, bright, bitter edge of so many professionally witty women.

  Meanwhile …. Meanwhile, business went on. Finding wine merchants was much easier than coming up with jewelers who’d pay the price he wanted for his amber; neither of his leads the morning Menedemos first bedded Seseset came to anything. The wine merchants didn’t always want to buy, either.

  A plump fellow named Dromeus peered closely at an amphora a sweating sailor had lugged to his shop. “Everything seems to be in good order, my dear fellow,” he said in Greek that declared he came from Athens. “The jar has the proper shape for Thasian vintages. The stamps on the neck are as they should be. Your first price isn’t too outrageous, if the wine matches the container it comes in and I may be able to talk you down some. But, you see”—he spread his hands in regret—“I don’t know you.”

  “By the dog, sir, you know the Ptolemaios, don’t you?” Sostratos usually spoke an Attic-flavored Greek himself. When he got annoyed, as now, more of Rhodes’ native dialect came now.

  “I have met him, yes—I’ve had that privilege,” Dromeus answered warily. “Why?”

  “Suppose you ask him whether my cousin and I would pour swill into a Thasian amphora and pitch up the stopper again,” Sostratos growled. “He’s bought from us. He knows honest men when he meets them.”

  Dromeus’ face fell: a good impersonation of well-bread dismay. “I assure you, my friend, I meant no such thing. I have no doubt your integrity is above reproach.”

  “Then you’ll buy, of course,” Sostratos said. The Alexandrian wine dealer stood mute. Sostratos had expected no more, or he would have got angry. Wearily, he said, “My cousin and I have a room in the palace. You can send someone there to find out if that’s true and if we really have dealt with the Ptolemaios. Once you satisfy yourself, you can send a messenger back to me, and I’ll dicker with you. But I promise my price will be ten drakhmai a jar higher because of the time you’ll make me waste. That’s the way of the world, you know.”

  Dromeus lost his air of gentility. He said something Aristophanes would have been proud of. Sostratos made himself remember it so he could tell it to Menedemos, who adored the Athenian comic poet.

  To the wine merchant, he replied, “I love you, too, my dear.”

  Dromeus glared. “All right. All right. It’s Thasian, and you’re an honest shark—excuse me, an honest man. If we don’t go through the rigmarole, you’ll let me have it for an honest price, not a ridiculous one, yes?”

  “It wouldn’t be ridiculous,” Sostratos said steadily—now he had his fish on the hook. “And I’m sure you’ll make a nice profit off the wine no matter what you pay me. Alexandria is swimming in the cheap stuff, but it’s a long way from where the good vintages grow.”

  Dromeus still glared, but in a different way now. “Why couldn’t you be another stupid oaf who doesn’t know what the daimon he’s doing?”

  “You say the sweetest things,” Sostratos murmured, though the extremely backhanded compliment did warm him. “I’ve been doing this for a while know. I try to do it as well as I can.”

  “Faugh!” Dromeus made a disgusted noise. “For a while!” He had a double chin. His hair was retreating at the temples and starting to go gray. “Your mother hasn’t even licked you dry yet.”

  They started the dicker on that cheery note. Sostratos got the price he wanted, and a few more drakhmai for the amphora besides. He left Dromeus’ shop well pleased with himself. The rower who’d lugged the jar dozed outside in what little shade he could find. Sostratos gave him a drakhma for his hard labor. Grinning, the fellow headed for a tavern that sold cheap stuff.

  V

  MENEDEMOS glanced up at the sky with a certain apprehension. It was cloudless and bright, the sun beating down. A drop of sweat slid along his cheek. Rhodes got weather like this in midsummer. It wasn’t even midspring yet. When Menedemos thought about midsummer here in Alexandria, he wanted to hide under a flat rock like a lizard.

  The Egyptians on the streets took the weather in stride. They’d been born to it, so why wouldn’t they? Quite a few Hellenes wore petasoi—broad-brimmed felt hats—or low, conical headgear woven from straw or rushes to keep the pitiless sun from baking their brains.

  “Hail, friend!” Menedemos called to a thin-faced man with a straw hat. “Can you tell me where to buy one of those?”

  “There’s a fellow named Marempsemis who makes good ones,” the Hellene replied. “His shop is … let me see … three blocks up and two blocks over from here.” He pointed. “And my name is Diophantes. Tell him I sent you—he’ll knock a bit off the price.”

  “Thanks. Marem …. Sounds like an Egyptian, however you say it. Does he speak Greek?”

  “Enough to sell you a hat, stranger. Remember, tell him Diophantes sent you.”

  “I will.” Menedemos had no idea whether using the thin-faced man’s name would win him a discount. He suspected it would get Diophantes a rakeoff, though. Maybe he’d trot out the name, maybe not. He did give the man an obolos himself, even if Diophantes didn’t have his hand out. Keeping people sweet went with being a trader.

  He found Marempsemis’ little shop between that of a man who sold little terra-cotta statuettes—“Servants for next world!” he called in accented Greek as Menedemos walked by—and an eatery run by a middle-aged woman who ladled beans out of a big kettle and into bowls.

  When Menedemos paused to look at a couple of hats on display on poles, a little dog ran out of the shop and yapped at him. When it made as if to nip an ankle, he drew back his foot. That was plenty to send the dog away in a hurry, its stumpy tail down.

  An Egyptian following the dog scooped it up and scratched it behind the ears. “Good you no kick,” he said to Menedemos in bad but understandable Greek. “He no bite you. He better not bite you.” He aimed a stream of crackling Egyptian syllables at the dog as he set it down. It scooted into the shop.

  “Are you Marempsemis, by any chance?” Menedemos asked.

  “That me.” The Egyptian jabbed a thumb at his own chest. He was within a digit of Menedemos’ height, and strikingly handsome. Had he been a Hellene, suitors would have misspelled his name scrawling it on walls when he was a youth. He had a thick head of jet-black hair, regular features, and a strong chin. His smile, though, showed a missing front tooth, lost in an accident, in a brawl, or to a dentist.

  “A man named Diophantes told me you make fine hats.” Menedemos decided to try the experiment.

  Marempsemis nodded. “Ah. Him. Yes. He buy hat from me every year.”

  “Will you show me what you have?”

  “I do.” The hatmaker nodded again, then disappeared into his shop, which was also plainly his home. He came back with half a dozen hats. Some were of straw, some of rushes. Some were wide, others narrower. Two had cloth straps that could go under the chin to help hold them on if the wind blew hard; the rest didn’t.

  Menedemos took a wide one with a chinstrap. He put it on his head. “What do you think?” he asked the hatmaker.

  Marempsemis winked at him. “I think I try sell you hat.”

  That made Menedemos chuckle. “I think you just sold me one, my dear. How much did you sell it to me for?”

  “Usually four oboloi. Since you know Diophantes, for you three oboloi, four chalkoi. I take off half-obolos for friend of friend.”

  And maybe he did, and maybe the hat usually cost three oboloi and he’d give the extra bronze coins to the Hellene Menedemos had met on the street. Menedemos didn’t worry about it for long. Even four oboloi wouldn’t have been a bad price. A lot of skilled work went into weaving the straw into shape.

  As Menedemos was paying the Egyptian, the little dog ran out again. A boy of about ten followed. He had a half-finished hat in his hands and looked just like Marempsemis, though he still owned all his front teeth. Marempsemis put an arm around his shoulder. “Son of my,” he said.

  Menedemos dipped his head to the boy. “Hail, sonny! Do you speak Greek?”

  “Only a little bit,” the hatmaker’s son replied. He had a better accent than his father. Well, he’d started picking it up younger than Marempsemis had. With a shy smile for Menedemos, he grabbed the dog and went back in.