Cupid (9 page)

Invisible hands undressed Psyche, then escorted her into the pool. She lay back and closed her eyes. The water warmed not only her body but, as if it had hands, it smoothed away her lingering fears and anxieties. She could not believe that harm could come to her in a place of such beauty.

When she came out of the pool, the invisible ones were waiting with a large towel to dry her. They anointed her body with oil, then dressed her in a gown of white silk.

Psyche could not remember ever feeling so cared for. Was this what it was like to feel loved? Whoever her husband was, it seemed he wanted nothing of her except her pleasure.

The invisible hands guided her toward the Great Hall where a long table stood. Psyche sat down and immediately a goblet of wine shimmering with the reds of sunset appeared before her eyes and settled gently on the table next to her right hand. Smiling, she sipped. Although her father had the finest wine cellar in the kingdom, no wine in it came close to the complex flavors of this one.

Dishes of fruit, greens, soups, and meats floated through the air and silently alit on the table. As she started to eat, a melody of exquisite sweetness came from an invisible lyre. It was joined by a chorus of voices. Still, Psyche saw no one.

When she finished eating, the dishes vanished as mysteriously as they had arrived. The music stopped.

"Thank you," Psyche said.

"It is an honor to serve you who are about to become a bride," returned the familiar voice. "Is there anything else you desire?"

"No. Thank you."

Psyche returned to her bedroom, feeling alive in every part of her body. Now, for the first time in her life, she understood: eating began not with putting food into one's mouth but with the eyes luxuriating in the many reds in one goblet of wine, with the shades of green in just one salad leaf. Eating included the aromas that rose from the food. Eating was chewing slowly in order not only to taste but to know the textures of greens, bread, meat, and vegetables.

Psyche took off her gown, pulled the sheet over her warm and expectant body, and waited eagerly for her husband's arrival. Though the god Apollo was incapable of telling an untruth, she could no longer believe that the man coming to her that night was a monster. Or if he was, perhaps every man should be a monster like him.

You might be wondering where Cupid was while all this was going on. Well, he was seeing to every detail—checking the temperature of the water in Psyche's bath; in
the basement, deciding on the bottle of wine; in the kitchen, overseeing the cooking. He wanted everything to be perfect for Psyche, which was why he had gotten Cinxia involved, though not without paying a price. She had made him promise that he would stop shooting lead-tipped arrows into the husband or wife in a happy marriage. He readily agreed, shuddering to think how he would feel if someone should turn Psyche against him. He even felt bad for all the good marriages he had broken up.

Cinxia had been happy to assist Cupid. Although he was the god of love, he knew nothing about marriage. There was so much she wanted to tell him, but there was not time, and he would not have listened. She was aware that mortals, and even gods, thought love was a feeling, but feelings could come and go like rain. Love was a choice one made each day, regardless of how one was feeling toward or about the beloved. Perhaps Cupid would learn that in time. He thought he was choosing Psyche, but he was being chosen by an emotion that was more lust than love. However, her part in the love story of Cupid and Psyche was finished for the time being. What happened next was up to Cupid.

"Thank you for everything," Cupid said to her as she prepared to go. They were sitting on a stone bench in the palace garden.

"It was my pleasure. I have trained the spirits who remain in everything they should do, not that they needed much training."

"If I might ask, who are they?"

Cinxia smiled sadly. "They are the spirits of those who married and their partner died before the marriage reached its fulfillment. Now, I must return to Olympus. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to attend a more formal and proper wedding between you and Psyche in our celestial realm?"

"Of course," Cupid responded, knowing that the only way he could marry Psyche on Olympus was over his mother's dead body—and Venus could not die.

Cinxia went to her waiting chariot, which was pulled by two phoenixes, and she was off.

Cupid was alone now. The moment he had been waiting for, the moment to go to Psyche and make her his wife, had arrived. And he was afraid.

As far as I'm concerned, he should have been. Now, I'm not bragging or anything like that, but it has been my privilege to—how shall I say this?—to know, in the Biblical sense, more than one woman over the course of my long life. Knowing someone else is not easy. To truly know another, you have to open yourself to being known. For me, at least, this embrace of the soul through the medium of the body was and is terrifying. I've been with my present wife fifteen years, and I'm learning that the act of knowing and being known is not something that happens once. It must happen repeatedly if the love is going to expand throughout the course of her life and mine.

Cupid did not know any of that. All he knew was that he was afraid. What if he went to Psyche and she didn't like
him? What if she took one look at him and found him unattractive? What if she didn't like the way he kissed?

Suddenly he stopped what he was thinking and feeling. Had he lost his mind? Why was he, the god of love, caring about a mortal's opinion of him?

He was acting like a mortal who had been pierced by one of his gold-tipped arrows. How did they tolerate the constant yearning for the other? How did they withstand the overwhelming desire to merge themselves with the other and become one being?

Cupid was disgusted with himself. He hated that Psyche was so important to him, hated that he would do almost anything to put a smile on her face, and most of all, he hated feeling that he was incomplete without her.

He still did not want to think about what his mother would do when she found out how completely he had disobeyed and deceived her. Her fear of his arrows would keep her from doing anything to him directly. Instead she would unleash her wrath on Psyche. But anything Venus did to Psyche would be as if she were doing it to him.

"Love
is
madness!" he exclaimed, angry now. He wanted to apologize to every person he had ever shot with a gold-tipped arrow. He had not known he was infecting mortals with helplessness, with a loss of will and control, with a loss of self. Love had put him in a state where he was no longer who he had been but had no idea who he would become. That depended on Psyche.

"I am Cupid and I will not have it!" he declared. "I will
send a breeze to Favonius and have him come and return her to her parents and let her meet whatever fate waits her there. Perhaps I wrongly interpreted Apollo's words. Perhaps there is truly a monster waiting to marry her, and I took her away before the monster could claim her. Better she be with a monster than remain here and turn my life into chaos."

Cupid got up. Then he stopped. He looked toward the far end of the palace where Psyche's room was. He imagined her lying on the bed awaiting him. He stood for a long while, staring. Finally he said, "It will do no harm if I look at her one last time before Favonius returns her to where she belongs."

He flew to the balcony outside her room. The double doors opened of themselves. Cupid walked silently into the room. Moon, as if obeying orders, shone her light directly on Psyche.

He was startled by a hesitant shyness that made him afraid to go closer to her. He who had been so bold as to shoot a gold-tipped arrow into a god as great as Apollo was suddenly afraid to utter a word, or even breathe loudly in the presence of such beauty.

Cupid stood transfixed. Looking at Psyche, a softness came over his face, and gentleness suffused his body. He was filled with a tender yearning. The mere sight of her promised satisfaction of a hunger he had not known he had until he saw her that first time.

Her oval face was shaped like the heart beating so rapidly in his chest. Long, dark hair framed the face and softened it. Though her eyes were closed, he thought he could see the dark eyes beneath the closed lids. Her lips were relaxed and slightly parted, as if waiting for his lips. Psyche was more beautiful than he had remembered, more beautiful than anyone had the right to be. He wanted to be—
had
to be—a part of that beauty.

You, dear reader, and I know that Cupid's eyes did not stop at her face. Cupid may have been a god, but he was a
male
god, and many men, your storyteller included, like to look at women's faces
and
bodies, and not necessarily in that order.

The sheet beneath which Psyche lay clung to her body like it had been made exclusively for her to wear as a garment, because it outlined the slope of her breasts and curves of her body. Cupid gasped as he imagined himself pulling back the sheet and gazing on the full beauty of the body hidden beneath it. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his eternal life.

There are many, men and women, who say such male attention to women's bodies is sexist. This is true, but it is also true that there is an undeniable beauty to the female form, which has entranced men and women for at least as long as humans have made visual records of their lives. Women's fashions are designed to enhance the beauty of the female form, to draw the attention of men and women to that form. All of us, men and women, do everything we know to make ourselves attractive.

So Cupid should not be faulted for staring so hungrily at Psyche. More than sexual feelings were aroused in him as he gazed on her. Some of you may think I am trying to rationalize and justify lust. That is not so. I do not think I am alone in experiencing sexual desire and transcendent ecstasy as two halves of a godly wholeness, a wholeness we call beauty.

Whether it is physical or spiritual (and I'm not sure the two should be separated), beauty takes us out of our narrow self-centeredness. In beauty we experience ourselves as part of and belonging to something larger and greater than what is encompassed by our "I." When we are penetrated by beauty, human or divine, we become transcendent. And that is so, even if the one being penetrated is a god.

Cupid still could not move, which is not an uncommon response in the presence of beauty. Even gods and goddesses are not exempt from beauty's forbidding and terrifying power. Let there be no mistake: Cupid was afraid. Perhaps more than any of the deities on Olympus, he was the one always in control of himself. Let the other deities entrap themselves in human emotions, but he knew better. And so it was until he saw Psyche.

Now standing there, looking at her, for the first time in his eternal life Cupid faced a choice: maintain control and leave Psyche, or submit to his desire for her and never be wholly in control of his life ever again. (And for him,
ever
was not a figure of speech.)

There come moments in each of our journeys when we
can no longer continue our lives as they are. But neither can we see what we will become. We either go forward, with no idea of where we are going or what we are doing, or we remain as we are—and begin to die, though we do not realize that is the choice we have made. This is why love is such a fearful undertaking, and why, for so many women especially, the wedding day is fraught with terror and tears. Why do people voluntarily agree to relinquish a degree of control over their lives and pledge themselves to take into consideration the needs, desires, and shortcomings of another for the rest of their lives?

Cupid had no answer, except the certain knowledge that a life without Psyche's beauty was not a life he wanted.

Trembling inside, he crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. Leaning over, he kissed her softly on the cheek. Psyche's eyes opened, but as if obeying a command, clouds moved in front of the moon, plunging the room into darkness so that Psyche could not see.

"Who—," she started to say, but Cupid placed a finger on her lips, silencing her. Then his arms reached down to cradle her head, and as he brought her up to meet his lips, the sheet slid from her. As her arms encircled his neck and his encircled hers, their bodies met.

It occurs to me to wonder: was this the first time Cupid made love? I think so. How odd that the god of love had never made love until this night. Was he nervous? Did he perspire with anxiety? Was his heart beating with fear? All that and more.

The making of love is not simple. To make love, we
touch
the body of another but we
grasp
that which cannot be seen—the strands of desire, fear, anxiety, pleasure, and beauty—and with that person, we braid these emotions so that two become one and the boundary dissolves between where you end and the other begins, and you and the other become a single being.

So it was with Cupid and with Psyche that night.

So it was.

Love requires close and careful attention by each to the other. You would think that Cupid, the god of love, would have known this. Apparently he did not.

Each night he came to Psyche and they made exquisite love. However, after a while, that was not enough for Psyche. She wanted to know who came to her in the night and made her feel more alive than she had known was possible. She wanted to make love in all the ways, and not just with their bodies.

"What is your name?" she asked Cupid one night.

"Why do you need to know my name when you possess my soul?"

"If I cannot know your name, may I light a lamp so I can see your face?"

"If you should ever see my face, you will lose me forever."

"Why?" Psyche wanted to know. "Are you ugly? Are you afraid I won't love you if I see your face?"

"Perhaps I am afraid that if you see my face, it will be
that
that you will love and not me."

"I understand, believe me. I know what that feels like."