Galatea Revised

“Hello?” the woman said.

“You should go.”

“I know who you are. I’m not afraid of you.”

“Who are you?” the hooded figure spoke but did not turn around.

You’ve heard this story before, in one form or another. Maybe it had our names in it, maybe someone else’s, maybe even your own. In all my years in this earth, only a fraction have been spent walking it, but I’ve read so many stories in that time. I think mine is a fairy tale. The kind that people say is shiny and beautiful, because they don’t get close enough to see the dirt and cracks.

 It starts with a woman. She is very strange, and very cold, and she wakes in this world knowing too much. When Galatea opens her marble eyes for the first time, the sculptor is afraid. She knows everything, and nothing at all. She knows the goddess who gave her life and the sculptor who gave her form. She knows he cares for her by the way kisses her gently, like she might truly shatter, and takes her hand to help her off her pedestal. She knows of the earth and the stars and all the physical world. She knows nothing of what it is to be human.

Humans are born slowly. They creep towards life for nine whole months, growing in warmth, a slow development of cells and bones and finally even thoughts. Then comes the growing up, waiting patiently for talking, walking, object permanence. Years and years pass before the brain even finishes knitting itself together. The first time you wake up you’ve started on a path towards the last time, but still…you have so much time to learn who you are. You get to learn how to be before you learn who to be.

I was born all at once. Sudden growth of skin over stone and the halting sensation of sentience. Newborns aren’t supposed to know. You have been imagining me wrong. I’m not a statue turned into a woman; I’m a statue come to life. I don’t think that’s what he was expecting, but the gods are tricky like that. I am pale, and cold, and sometimes when I stood very still, I could blend in with the rest of his art.

They walk in the garden together. It’s the height of summer, but Galatea’s hand is cold in his.

“Are you cold, my love?” he asks.

“Of course,” she says it matter of factly, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. He rubs her hand, thinking to warm it, but she doesn’t notice. They walk on, towards the lake. He begins pointing to nearby things, a bird, a stone, a plant, and asking Galatea if she knows they are. He calls it “The Question Game” and thinks he’s very clever, but she is annoyed.

“How do you know the nature of all these things before you see them? You were brought to life out of nothing, in my studio, far from here.”

“Not out of nothing, sculptor,” she says, patiently, “out of stone. My bones are stone; my flesh is stone.  Stone comes from the natural world, so I know the natural world. The stone that makes me has spent many years observing it.  And all the world was created by the gods, so I know the gods. You shaped my stone, so I know you. It’s very simple.”

“You’re very clever you know,” he smiles.

“What is ‘clever’”

“You know, intelligent.”

She stares at him blankly, always blankly.

“You’re knowledgeable, Galatea,” he sighed, “you know things.”

“I am what I am. I know what I know.”

He was kind, in his own way, but he liked to get his way. And  he may as well have built me from mirrored glass.

“Why do you always do this?” Galatea says, as the sculptor offers her an orange.

“What?”

“You know I do not need this,” she holds up the fruit.

He looks at her, and there is something of pleading in his eyes, “can’t you try? Can’t you just—”

“If you wanted me to eat oranges, Pygmalion, perhaps you should have carved me from living flesh,” she snaps.

“I—fine,” he reaches out his hand for the fruit, but Galatea holds in her impossibly firm grip. He raises an eyebrow.

“I like the skin,” she says, running cold fingers over the textured peel. “It is an interesting texture,” she says softly, stepping away evenly, “such a beautiful color.”

            “You understand beauty?”

            Of course, I understood beauty. Did he not remember who my divine mother was? She who gave me life. Do you really think Aphrodite would keep herself from her own creation? I used to hate her, curse her. I used to wish I could face her in battle. That I could steal a carved spear from one of Pygmalion’s statues and drive it through her beautiful heart. What gave her the right? What gave her the right to make me for him? But maybe she didn’t. I can’t—I haven’t tried—to ask her, but… Perhaps I was born to be like her. A eternal creature.

            “What’s your name,” asks the woman. She is young, but not too young, and holding a basket of fabric.

“Galatea,” she says, “Have you not heard of me?”

“Should I have?” She smiles like sunshine.

She is about to tell the woman that yes, she is the statue who lives with the famous sculptor, hasn’t she heard the rumors…but she stops. It’s nice to not be known. She smiles, just a little.

“Have you come for a shawl?” She holds up the basket.

“No, I—”

“Any of them would suit you. You dress all in white, you need a little variety,” she begins draping fabric over Galatea’s shoulders, holding them up to her, explaining colors and fabrics and asking what she likes. Galatea leaves the market wrapped in red.

She stands in the doorway, too still. After a few minutes, the sculptor looks up from his work. He is startled, seeing the figure in red in his studio, he doesn’t remember draping fabric on any of his sculptures.

“Pygmalion,” she says.

“Oh! It’s you!”

“Who did you think it was?”

“No one, nothing, just—”

She gives him a cutting look, and sweeps out of the studio in a whirl of red.

            He wasn’t cruel, he was just in love with his art. Narcissus by another name.

            Galatea and the woman from the market lie together in a field of flowers. They have spent many hours together, many days.

            “If I had hair like you, hair with color, what do you think it would look like?

            The woman laughs, “I don’t think that’s really up to me.”

            “What do you think though?”

            “Alright, brown.”

            “Why brown?”

            “I don’t know,” she laughs again, “leave the business of hair colors to the gods, Galatea.”

            “What about my eyes,” she asks.

             “Gray eyes would suit you, or blue,” the woman giggles, “anything bright and flashing.”

            “Why?”

            “You’re intelligent, like the bright-eyed goddess.”

            “Hmm,” this answer seems to satisfy Galatea. She lets the comfortable silence grow and fill with birdsong and breezes.

“Do my eyes not bother you?” she asks, tracing circles on the woman’s warm hands with her cold fingers.

            “They’re strange,” she says, “but it’s a nice strange. You are a nice sort of strange.”

I used to pray to Athena. I felt a connection. She was born all at once too, born with armor on. I thought we were the same kind of cold. She died young, the woman from the market. That was the first crack in my heart. Stones don’t understand death, we are forever, the symbol of stillness. We may crumble, but we don’t die. The mountains stand the test of time.

            “Do you love me, Galatea,” he asks.

            “Isn’t that what you made me for?”

He waits, stares at his hands.

            “I don’t know,” she says. And, after a pause, “Do you love me?”

He stares at the marble he’s working into the form of a swan, “I don’t know.”

Silence, and the sound of the sculptor’s tools.

People think that my feelings were a simple thing and not knotted up threads I could never untangle. Or that I don’t feel at all. But sometimes I want to scream, “I am the most interesting part of my story! Why does no one listen! My unhappy birth granted me tired eternities, for I lack the transient spark which burns in the chest of the human race. I am pale, and cold, and I have yet to learn who I am.

“Look at me”

“I can’t. You’ll die.”

“I won’t.”