Galatea(3)

“Fine,” he said. Just that ugly, nothing word.

“Is she happy?”

“How could she be, after what her mother did?”

I was ready for this, and tipped the tears onto his chest. “I am so sorry, my darling. I wish I could make it up to her.”

He pushed me off him and sat up. “You grovel for her, but not for me.”

I wanted to say, What do you think I have been doing? But of course my husband would not appreciate that. He is a man who likes white, smooth surfaces. I knelt on the floor, my hands pressed together over my breasts. “My love, there is nothing more in the world I want than to come home with you. Just today I wished that I had something of you to comfort me. A painting, maybe. A painting of you.”

This surprised him. “A painting,” he said. “Not a statue.”

“Oh my darling, a statue would torment me too much,” I said. “It would be too much like you to bear.”

“Mmm,” he said. I let my hands fall a little so that he might see my breasts better. They were very fine, he had made sure of it.

“Do you not miss me? Even a little?”

“It is your own fault if I do.”

“It is, I know, I know it is. I’m so sorry, darling. I was such a fool, I don’t even know what I was doing.”

“A fool,” he said. He was looking at my breasts again.

“Yes, a terrible fool. An ungrateful fool.”

“You should not have run,” he said.

“I will never run again, I swear on my life. I can barely stand when you leave me. I live every day yearning for you to come. You are my husband, and father.”

“And mother,” he said.

“Yes, and mother. And brother too. And lover. All of these.”

He said, “You say this only because you want to see Paphos.”

“Of course I want to see her. What kind of mother would I be if I did not? Cold, and shameless. That is not how you and the goddess made me.”

I was breathing very hard, but trying to pretend I was not. The floor was hurting my knees, but I did not move.

“Shameless,” he said.

“Shameless,” I said.

I felt him looking at me, admiring his work. He had not carved me like this, but he was imagining doing it. A beautiful statue, named The Supplicant. He could have sold me and lived like a king in Araby.

He frowned, pointing. “What is that?”

I looked down at my belly and saw the faint silvery tracks on my skin, caught in the light.

“My love, it is the sign of our child. Where the belly stretched.”

He stared. “How long have they been there?”

“Since she was born.” Ten years ago now.

“They are ugly,” he said.

“I’m so sorry, my love. It is the same for all women.”

“If you were stone, I would chisel them off,” he said. Then he turned and left, and after a little while the doctor came with the tea.

THE THING IS, I don’t think my husband expected me to be able to talk. I don’t blame him for this exactly, since he had known me only as a statue, pure and beautiful and yielding to his art. Naturally, when he wished me to live, that’s what he wanted still, only warm so that he might fuck me. But it does seem foolish that he didn’t think it through, how I could not both live and still be a statue. I have only been born for eleven years, and even I know that.

I conceived that very first time, a moment after I was born. And though I had been stone, and though the goddess made me, my pregnancy was real enough, and I was tired and sick and my feet were too swollen for the delicate golden sandals he liked to see them in. It made him angry, but it did not stop him from pushing me onto the bed or up against the wall, and I worried that because of it I would have not one child, but a whole litter, like the cats in the street.

My daughter was beautiful and stone-pale and born in a summer that was so viciously hot the calves died in the fields. But she and I were always perfectly cool, rocking in our chair together. When we would go walking, everyone whispered but no one would speak to us, except once an old woman touched Paphos’ foot and asked for my blessing. I murmured something, and she touched my arm in thanks. Her fingers were strange, like twigs on bare trees, but her skin was very soft.

Sometimes, when my husband was working, we were allowed to go as far as the hillsides. Paphos was older by then, and she would pretend to be a shepherd and I would pretend to be her sheep. She liked that. She liked it even better when I was a goat, and leapt barefoot from rock to rock, and never wobbled. When she got older still, I insisted on a tutor, though my husband thought that would ruin her. No, I said, she will be useful to her husband, as I am not. And he had smiled at me. You are useful enough. But he hired the tutor in the end, because I fawned on him every time he mentioned it.

In the countryside, Paphos would teach me. Look, she would say, you can use sticks for the letters, and I would say, But some of them are round. And she frowned and said, You’re right, shall we go to the beach and use sand? So we did, and it was better than sticks, and even better than the tutor’s tablet, because the sea washed it for you. She was a smart girl, very smart, and I didn’t have to tell her to say nothing to her father.

At night, my husband sent her to bed. He would say, “And you too, wife, are you not sleepy?” And I would know it was time to go arrange myself in bed so that we might pretend again that I was waking from the stone to him.