Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,38

hand, keeps honest numbers.”

Hmmm. So no mention of tutoring children? I did not look like a wife and mother. Not good.

The Greek sneered and looked away. He said softly under his breath in piercing Latin that if I did spend money for him, I was spending it for a dead man. His voice was soft and beautiful, though weary and full of contempt, his enunciation unaffected and refined.

I threw off all patience. I spoke quickly in Greek.

“Learn from me, you arrogant Athenian idiot!” I said, red in the face, and furious to be so misjudged both by a slave and a slave dealer. “If you can write Greek and Latin at all, if you have in fact studied Aristotle and Euclid, whose name you misspelled, by the way, if you have been schooled in Athens and have seen battle in the Balkans, if even half of this great epic is true, why wouldn’t you want to belong to one of the most keenly intelligent women you’ll ever meet, who’ll treat you with dignity and respect in exchange for your loyalty? What do you know of Aristotle and Plato that I don’t? I’ve never struck a slave in my life. You pass up the one mistress to whom your loyalty might earn you any reward of which you could dream. That tablet is a pack of lies, isn’t it?”

The slave was stunned, but not angered. He sat forward, trying to appraise me further, without being obvious. The merchant gestured furiously for the slave to rise to his feet, which the slave did, giving him an admirable height over me. His legs were sound and strong up to the ivory limb.

“What about telling me the real truth as to what you can do?” I said, switching to Latin.

I turned to the slave dealer. “Get me a pen to correct this, the spelling of these names. If this man has any chance of becoming a teacher, these misspellings destroy it. He looks like a fool for writing such.”

“I didn’t have space enough to write!” declared the slave suddenly, whispering in perfect Latin fury. He bent towards me, as if I should understand.

“Look at this little tablet, if you’re so keenly intelligent! Do you realize the ignorance of this dealer here. He has not sense enough to know he has an emerald, and thinks it a piece of green glass! This is wretched. I crammed here what generalities I could.”

I laughed. I was seduced and thrilled. I couldn’t stop laughing. This was too funny! The slave merchant was confused. Chastise the slave and lower his value? Or let the two of us work this out?

“What was I to do,” he demanded in the same confidential whisper, only this time in Greek, “shout to every man passing, ‘Here sits a great teacher, here sits a philosopher!’?” He grew a little calm, having thus released this rage. “The names of my grandfathers are carved on the Acropolis at Athens,” he said.

The merchant was mystified.

But I was so obviously delighted and interested.

My mantle slipped again and I gave it a hard jerk. These clothes. Had no one ever told me silk slides on silk?

“And what about Ovid?” I said, taking a deep breath. I almost laughed myself into tears. “You wrote Ovid’s name here. Ovid. Is Ovid popular here? Nobody would dare write that on your card in Rome, I can tell you. You know, I don’t even know if Ovid is still alive, and it’s a shame. Ovid taught me to kiss when I was ten years old, when I read the Amores. You ever read the Amores?”

His entire demeanor altered. He softened and I could see he was just on the verge of hope, hope that I might be a good mistress for him. But he couldn’t let himself believe it.

The merchant was waiting for the slightest signal as to what he might do. Clearly he could follow our exchanges.

“Look, you insolent one-legged slave,” I said. “If I thought you could even read Ovid to me in the evenings, I’d buy you in a moment. But this tablet here makes you a glorified Socrates and Alexander the Great smashed in one. In what war in the Balkans did you carry arms? Why are you dumped in the hands of this lowly merchant rather than taken at once to some fine house? How could anyone believe all this? If blind Homer had sung such a preposterous tale, people would have gotten up and left the tavern.”

He