Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Pygmalion walked around her to take in the thrilling generosity of the curve of her buttocks and the glorious fullness of her thighs. Dared he put a hand to that flesh? He reached out – gently, so as not to bruise her. But his fingers met cold marble. Hard, unyielding marble. To the eye and through to the depths of her Galatea seemed quick, warm and alive, but to Pygmalion’s stroking hands and to the loving cheek he rested on her side she was as cold as death.

He felt both sick and supercharged with life at one and the same time. He jumped up and down. He shouted out loud. He groaned. He laughed. He sang. He swore. He exhibited all the wild, deranged, furious, euphoric and despairing behaviours of a young man tempestuously and frighteningly in love.

At last he threw himself at his Galatea, encircled her with his arms and with his legs, nuzzled himself against her, kissing and pawing and rubbing until everything inside him exploded.

The madness that consumed his soul did not abate after that first frenzy. He now devoted himself to Galatea with all the ardour and attentive tenderness of a true lover. He called her affectionate names. He went out to the market and bought her gowns, garlands and trinkets. He adorned her wrists with bangles and bracelets and her throat with necklaces and pendants of jasper and pearl. He bought a couch that he adorned with silks of Tyrian purple. He lay her upon it and sang ballads to her. Like most great visual artists he was an incompetent musician and a deplorable poet.

His love was passionate and generous but – except to his fevered imagination in its most optimistic moods – wholly unreciprocated. This was a one-way wooing and in the depths of his bursting heart he knew it.

The day came for the festival of Aphrodite. Pygmalion kissed the cold but lovely Galatea goodbye and left the house. All of Cyprus and thousands of visitors from the mainland had gathered in Amanthus for this annual holiday. The great square in front of the temple was crowded with pilgrims who came to pray to the goddess of love and beauty for success in matters of the heart. Garlanded heifers were sacrificed, the air was thick with frankincense and every column of the temple had been entwined with flowers. The prayers came thick, fast and loud.

‘Send me a wife.’

‘Send me a husband.’

‘Improve my performance.’

‘Slow me down.’

‘Take these feelings away from me.’

‘Make Menander fall for me.’

‘Stop Xanthippe from cheating on me.’

Beseeching cries and wails filled the air.

Pygmalion shouldered blindly through the press of pedlars and petitioners. He reached the temple steps, bribed the guards, coaxed the priestesses and at last was led into the inner sanctum where only the richest and most influential citizens were allowed to pray directly in front of a great statue of Aphrodite. He fell to his knees before it.

‘Great goddess of love,’ he whispered. ‘It is said that you grant wishes to ardent lovers on this your festal day. Grant the wish of a poor artist who begs that you might …’

At the altar rail important men and women were babbling their imprecations to Aphrodite, and although the chances of Pygmalion being overheard were slim, some kind of modesty or shame stopped him from uttering his real desire.

‘… poor artist who begs that you might provide him with a real living girl just like the one he fashioned from marble. Grant this, dread goddess, and you will have won a devoted slave whose life and art will be devoted always to the service and praise of love.’

An amused Aphrodite saw through the prayer. She knew perfectly well what Pygmalion really wanted. The candles on the altar in front of him flared up and leapt in the air nine times.

Pygmalion flew home. To his dying day he could not tell you the way he went or how long he took. He may have knocked over one person or forty as he charged through the crowds.

The lifeless statue is lying on its gorgeous couch just as he left it. Never has the carved figure seemed less accessible or more icily remote. Yet, with the faith and demented fury of the lovestruck, Pygmalion kneels down and kisses the cold brow. He kisses it once, twice … twenty times. Then he kisses its neck, its cheeks … and, wait! Is it just that the fire of his kisses has warmed the marble, or can he feel a growing heat beneath his hungry lips? He can! Beneath the touch of his mouth the unyielding stone is easing into flesh, into quick, warm delicious flesh!

Again and again he kisses, and as the wax from the honeycomb softens and melts in the sun, so the cold ivory of his beloved softens from each gentle caress of mouth and hand.

He is amazed. He cannot believe it. He puts a finger to the veins of her arm and feels the surge and pulse of hot human blood! He stands. Can it be true? Can it be true? He cradles Galatea in his arms and feels her frame expanding as she takes in her first breaths of air. It is true! She lives!