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“Why did your mother choose this myth?” August asked. “Or was it David’s idea?”
“I suggested it,” Lia said. “And Mum liked the idea. Said it reminded her of her and Daddy. They’d eloped right after meeting. She said being married to Daddy was like having a stranger in her bed, just like Eros with Psyche. But eventually, she saw who he really was, and she loved him.”
“Why did you suggest it?”
“This myth has always fascinated me,” she admitted. “The fantasy of a powerful stranger summoning you to his home to be his wife. Then having sex with that complete stranger in the dark every night so you can’t see who he is. And finally you discover the whole time you’ve been shagging the god of sex?” Lia laughed. “Better than what happened to me. I thought I was sleeping with a god. Turns out he was monster.”
“I’m sorry, Lia,” August said. He touched her cheek. She smiled for him.
“Why didn’t Cupid—” she began. August glared. “Eros, sorry. Why didn’t Eros just tell her who he was from the beginning?”
“A few reasons,” he said. “Common sense, for starters. What passes for common sense among the gods. If you love a mortal you can’t tell a mortal what you are, or they’ll be too frightened and run away. Or they’ll love you for your power and not for yourself. Eros wanted her to fall in love with him, not his power or his majesty. They had to meet as strangers and there was only one way to do that—he had to keep Psyche in the dark. Literally.”
They stood in silence, both of them, gazing up at the ceiling. David had done marvelous work. The mural took up the entire center of the ceiling. Eros, a beautiful winged youth with dark curling hair, approached a magnificent canopied bed where a girl with flowing chestnut hair sat in a gown of white—with a dark blue sash, embroidered with silver crescent moons and golden stars, tied over her eyes. The implication was obvious. Eros was about to make love to the girl on their wedding night and he’d hidden her eyes, so she couldn’t see that it was a god in her bed and not a mortal prince. Of course, Psyche cheated and peeked at her sleeping husband. She was cast out for breaking the rules and nearly died trying to win back his love. Poor Psyche. Lia always felt so bad for her. What girl wouldn’t want to know who was making love to her every night?
“Why the blindfold on Psyche?” August asked. “She wasn’t blindfolded. They made love at night, in the dark.”
“David said unless we wanted the entire mural to be one solid black square—night—he’d have to improvise. Mum suggested the blindfold. It was my idea to make it midnight blue and put little stars and moons on the fabric to symbolize night.”
“Ah,” August said. “You’re very clever, Lia.”
She blushed.
“David finished the main panel but that was it before I sent him packing.” Lia pointed up at the scene of Psyche in her blindfold on the bed and Eros approaching. “The rest of the ceiling was going to be scenes from Psyche’s quest to win back Eros’s love. And then the frame was supposed to be all butterflies. See?” She pointed out a framed pencil sketch on the fireplace mantel that showed the completed mural, butterflies and all.
“She never lost his love,” August said, staring at the sketch.
“What do you mean?”
“The writer Apuleius was a novelist, not a historian. He invented most of the Eros and Psyche myth. But there were pockets of truth in it. Eros saw the mortal princess and fell in love with her. He wanted to marry her but knew his mother wouldn’t approve of him marrying the mortal girl who people said was more beautiful than Aphrodite. He had to sneak behind her back.”
“What did he do?”
“He had the god Apollo give an oracle to Psyche’s father, saying Psyche must go to a hill and there she would see the palace where she would live with her new husband. He didn’t want to get in trouble with his mother for marrying a mortal, so he kept Psyche in the dark about his identity. If he told her his name, she might tell her sisters...eventually it would get back to Aphrodite. But Psyche found out and was furious he’d lied to her. Eros didn’t cast her out because she spied on him in his sleep. She ran away from him when she learned she’d been lied to by her husband, who was too cowardly to even tell her his real name.”
“You’re being very hard on poor Eros,” Lia said, smiling.
“It wasn’t his finest moment,” August said. “You can’t keep secrets about yourself from the person you love. If they don’t truly know you, they can’t truly love you. Eros tried to win her back, and she did forgive him, but Psyche didn’t want to be married to a being who would stay ageless and immortal while she grew old and died. He begged his mother to give his wife the gift of immortality, but Aphrodite refused.”
“What happened to her, then?”
“Eros had to let his wife go. She remarried, had children, lived and loved and died.” August took a breath, smiled. “They were married a week, but during that week, no two beings ever loved each other so much. And Eros never quite forgave his mother for letting Psyche die. Though maybe she had a point.”
“Gods and mortals don’t mix?”
“Not well,” he said. “Don’t think of the Olympic gods as these wise, ancient beings. They’re more like eternal children with much too much power. A human man betrays his wife a dozen times and she divorces him, and he never sees his children again. Zeus seduced thousands of mortal women, destroyed their lives, their marriages, forced them to give birth to monsters sometimes. Zeus carried on, no consequences except a dirty look or two from Hera.” August looked at her. “Death is a gift in a way. And weakness, frailty, too, all gifts. Human actions have meaning, consequences. With gods, everything’s a game. Everyone’s a toy. Nothing matters. They never learn. Be grateful you’re a mortal human, Lia. Even if it hurts sometimes.”
Lia returned to the center of the room, gazed up at the scene of Psyche waiting for her new husband to come to bed and Eros, lovely long-limbed Eros, approaching.
“It’s not fair a wanker like David gets to be such a good painter,” Lia said. “Why are so many great artists such awful people?”
“Because they’re people.”
“I used to love watching David work. I’d bring him water and snacks while he was in here having one of his marathon painting sessions.” She looked at August, blushed. “I modeled for Psyche.”
“Did you?” His voice was far away, like he’d been sucked into the painting. She knew how he felt.
“David was having trouble figuring out how to paint a woman’s hair when she had a blindfold around her head. I volunteered. Glad Mum and Daddy were gone that day.”
