Stone Blind(28)

She reached up to touch her head and found she could not.

She screamed until her voice was gone.

It changed nothing.





Stone


This statue has never been seen, because it lies on the bed of the ocean. Perhaps that’s just as well, because it would never stand up: it is too narrow at the base, top-heavy.

It’s a cormorant, diving for fish, and it is just about to make its catch. Its beak is open, ready to snatch the fish from the waves. It seems impossible that the beak will not be filled in a heartbeat, that the cormorant will not rise from the water with its belly full. That droplets will not fall from its sleek, damp wings. But it is impossible, because this is only a stone bird.

But it looks so real. Its whole being is focused on its goal: wings folded back to elongate its body as it enters the water, feet tucked in beneath them, pointing to the sky. The bird knows that the fish have the advantage as soon as it breaks the surface, so it does everything possible to make itself faster, increase its chances. Besides, there is a whole shoal of fish. The cormorant only needs to get lucky once.

If someone had painted this statue, it would be black, but not a true black: there is a tinge of green beneath the blackness on cormorant feathers that only reveals itself in the brightest sunlight. Would the artist have captured that? A green that is almost black, a black that is scarcely green? The bird has glassy dark eyes; a membrane runs down the centre. It is represented by the slightest ridge in the stone.





Part Three


Blind





Cassiope


The queen of Ethiopia had every reason to admire herself as she stared into the mirror her husband had made for her. When they first married, he had been so dazzled by her beauty he had gazed at her all day and then demanded the torches be lit so he could continue to gaze at her all night. Cassiope told her mother he did this; her mother made a sign to ward off evil spirits. No man could maintain such intensity of desire, she said. Cassiope must ensure she was pregnant before his stupefied pleasure dissipated.

Cassiope had been very young at this point, she remembered, and prone to the fear that her mother might be correct. She wanted to have Cepheus’s child before he could tire of her. And yet, she also wanted to continue their lives as they were. She didn’t want to watch her body swell and distort. She was not ready for what the women whispered about when they believed their new queen couldn’t hear. And her husband didn’t seem concerned when she was not pregnant straightaway. Stroking her flat belly, he adored her as she was.

And, contrary to her mother’s fears, Cepheus never wearied of gazing at his wife’s face. One day, he decided that the pleasure should be shared by her. She asked him what he meant and he smiled in a way which he intended to be enigmatic, but instead made him look like a small child struggling to keep a secret. Cassiope’s mother had belatedly decided to keep her counsel but – within the confines of her home – she told her slave-women that the king was a child himself, and this was why the couple felt no urgency to produce an heir.

For a day or two there was a great deal of noise and slaves rushing around with cloths to remove dust and then Cepheus took his wife by both hands, and asked her to close her eyes. He walked her carefully – as though he were carrying a priceless object – from their bed chamber into a room that had never seemed to have much purpose. She followed him, keeping her eyes closed even when he told her there were two steps coming, even when he paused to check he would not walk backwards into the wall. Finally he stopped and told her she could look. She opened her eyes to see the palm of his hand, which he had placed a little way in front of them, so she wasn’t dazzled by the bright torches. And as he watched her pupils contract, he moved his hand away so that she could see a large, very shallow pool filled to the brim. Now she could stare at her reflection for as long as she wished. She never found it wanting.

Her beauty was her proudest possession, more than all the gold and jewels Cepheus had showered on her when she became his queen. These things were intimately connected, of course: she would not have been chosen as queen had she not been beautiful. And not many queens had jewellery like hers. But none of the gems gave her quite as much pleasure as her long elegant neck, her perfectly poised shoulders, her smooth ebony skin. And none of those satisfied her as much as the frank intelligence that brightened her eyes. Her mouth was always quick to smile because she was happy with what she saw, and that gave her an expression which was both challenging and amused. Visitors to Cepheus’s palace could rarely remember anything about the building, the furnishings, the food or the wine. They could hardly remember what they discussed with the king, although they had always enjoyed talking to him because he was a kind man, full of generous interest in his guests and their stories. But all of this was driven from their minds by the magnificent gaze of his wife.

Just as their subjects were beginning to murmur that a happy king was better than the other kind but that their kingdom nonetheless required an heir, Cassiope realized she was pregnant. The marriage was already a success in her mind, but now even her mother stopped carping. The midwife assured her it would be a boy, but sitting by the pool one night, illuminated by the flickering torches, she told the gods that she wanted a daughter. She wanted to watch another iteration of her beauty growing up, because nothing could stop her own looks from fading, she knew.

And when Andromeda was born – the midwives tense in the moments after her birth, in case their blithe predictions of a son were met with punishment – Cassiope looked down at her tiny face and saw exactly what she had hoped to see: a miniature perfect echo of herself. She did not resent her daughter’s beauty (although no seller of unguents and creams ever went away from the palace with his goods untried). Rather, she relished her daughter’s loveliness. Every visitor would always say that Andromeda looked just like her, then they looked away from the child so they could spend their gaze on her instead. And Cepheus never stopped telling her that her beauty was without equal in the whole of Ethiopia. So instead of resenting her daughter, Cassiope viewed her much as she viewed her glorious reflection in her pool. Another way of looking at herself and finding nothing wanting.