Cupid (19 page)

"I have a question for you," he said before she could utter a word.

"Of course, dear."

Cupid walked across the room and stood before her. Venus had never seen such intensity in his eyes. She wasn't sure she liked what she was seeing.

"Why are you so angry?" he asked.

Venus was flustered. "I-I-I'm not angry, dear. I'm hurt."

"Why?"

"Because you disobeyed me. You allowed yourself to become bewitched by my enemy, someone whose beauty threatens to usurp my place in the hearts of mortals."

Cupid laughed softly. "And that's what I don't understand. Since you knew how beautiful she was, why did you send me to her? If you were so afraid of her beauty, why didn't you do everything in your power to make sure I never saw her?"

Venus opened her mouth to speak, then slowly closed it. There was nothing to say. Could it be that she had desired what she claimed she hated? Why had she been so sure Cupid would be immune to Psyche's beauty when she herself had seen that beauty as a threat? She had no answer.

"I must find her. Where is she, Mother? Is she here? What have you done to her?"

Venus turned to walk away, but Cupid grabbed her by the arm and turned her around. "Where is Psyche, Mother?"

"You're hurting me," Venus complained at the tightness of Cupid's grip on her arm.

"And you are hurting me. Where is Psyche?"

Venus looked up at Cupid, tears in her eyes. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"This is not about you. I know you find that hard to believe. But this has nothing to do with you. This is about me."

"But she's a mortal!"

"Like Adonis?"

Venus gasped.

"Is that why you do not want me to love Psyche? You lost Adonis, and now, you do not want me to have happiness."

Venus dropped her head in shame. Was she so selfish that she would deny love to her son because love had been taken from her?

"I sent Psyche to the underworld," she said quietly, her head still down.

"You
what?
" Cupid exclaimed.

"I sent her to the underworld to get a box of beauty from Proserpine. But ... but I told Proserpine not to put beauty in the box." Venus stopped.

"What did you tell her to put in it?" Cupid demanded to know.

"I told her to fill it with a cloud of death. I told Psyche not to open the box, but I doubt there exists a woman who would not want to take for herself some of what she believes to be divine beauty. When she opens the box, she will be enveloped by a cloud of death."

"Which portal to the underworld did she enter?"

"The one on Taenarus."

Cupid fled—out the door, out of the mansion—and, spreading his wings, flew into the air. He did not know how much time he had, but he knew he had to hurry.

As he left Olympus and entered Earth's sky, Favonius saw him.

"Cupid!"

"Favonius! I need your help. Psyche is in danger and I
am afraid I cannot fly fast enough to reach her in time. Will you help me?"

"We all will!" The western wind sent strong currents to the east, north, and south to summon his brothers. Never had all four of them used their powers at the same time, but Favonius knew no other way to get Cupid to Taenarus in time to save Psyche. Favonius did not know if the world could withstand the power of all four winds blowing at the same time, but nothing mattered now except Psyche's life.

The Four Winds went as high into the sky as they could to lessen the effect on Earth. They merged into one great force, and holding on to Cupid, they blew across the heavens. They moved with such power and speed that they tore the blue out of the sky. When Sun saw what was happening, he took blues from all those he collected at the end of each day and hurriedly restored the sky to its rightful color.

Cupid was glad the Four Winds were holding him as tightly as they were. Otherwise he would have been blown clear out of the universe. But in the space between the beat of his heart, Cupid was set down at Taenarus just as the cloud of death billowed out of the box and enveloped Psyche.

Without hesitating Cupid rushed to the cloud. Careful not to enter it himself, he used his wings to push the cloud back into the box. However, a thin layer of the cloud covered Psyche like a veil. Slowly, carefully, Cupid brushed it off and into the box.

Then he kissed Psyche softly on the lips. Her eyes fluttered open and when she saw Cupid's face above hers, she put her arms around his neck and the two held each other as if they would never again let go.

After the Four Winds had disentangled themselves from each other, they picked up Cupid and Psyche. Slowly and majestically, they carried the two across the heavens and through to the other side, where all Olympus waited, the gods and goddesses having witnessed for themselves Cupid's rescue of Psyche from death.

The deities walked in procession behind the two lovers as they made their way to Jupiter's palace, where he waited with Apollo and Venus.

"Welcome!" Jupiter greeted them. "It is a good thing this has happened," he addressed the assembled deities. "We all know of what mischief our Cupid is capable. Indeed, even I have not been exempt from the power of his arrows. Now that he knows for himself what it is to love and to lose that love, perhaps he will use his arrows with more consideration."

Cupid blushed and bowed his head. "Indeed, I will."

"Good! We are all relieved to hear that." Then Jupiter turned to Venus. "You, in your wrath, have disappointed me."

"I am sorry," Venus said softly, her head bowed. "Having loved a mortal and lost him to death, I would ask that my son be spared the same eternal anguish."

"So be it. Bring me the nectar of immortality!"

Mercury appeared with a crystal goblet filled with a shining red liquid.

"Come and drink!" Jupiter said to Psyche.

Psyche drank the nectar. Never had she tasted anything so delicately sweet. Her being glowed with warmth as the drink coursed through her body.

"From this day forward, you are immortal," Jupiter told her. "You and Cupid will have eternity for your love. And now, to the feast prepared in your honors!"

Everyone hurried into the Great Hall of Jupiter's palace and sat at the long table filled with dishes of food. But being deities, they did not eat what mortals ate. They dined on salad of pine breath with starshine dressing, ray-of-sunset soup, filet of dawn in a sauce made from the smells of spring, and for dessert, winter custard with cloudberries. Bacchus saw to it that everyone's glasses were always filled with his latest wine made from the flavors of summer.

Then it was time for the formal wedding of Cupid and Psyche. The muses read poetry and played instruments and sang. Apollo played on the lyre a composition of his own making.

Then Jupiter stood before Cupid and Psyche. "I now pronounce you to be married, body to body, and soul to soul, forever and ever."

Cupid took Psyche, not to his palace hidden in the mountains, but to the palace of her mother and father, so she would not be alone during the times he went out to create love among mortals.

Eight months after they were wed, Psyche gave birth to their daughter, whom they named Pleasure.

And so it is when Love and Soul become one.

So it is.

And that's the story of Cupid and Psyche. Of course, if you were listening closely, and I know you were, I bet you heard a lot of your own story, didn't you? That's the tricky thing about stories. You think you're hearing a story about somebody else, and then something clicks and you start to feel that the story is about you.

The interesting thing about this particular story is that it taught me that sometimes I act like Cupid and sometimes I act like Psyche. Stories don't much care who's male and who's female, because everybody has a little of both inside them.

That's why this story and my story and your story, well, they're all the same story. You know what I mean? If this story which was first told way back in the year one hundred fits you and me today like it was ours to begin with, then just because we have different names and different faces, it doesn't mean we're not living the same story. Because we are.

We certainly are.

The story of Cupid and Psyche is found in a book called
The Transformation of Lucius Apuleius of Madaura,
a book we know today as
The Golden Ass.

Lucius Apuleius lived between 123 and 180 CE. Born in what is now Algeria as the son of a wealthy provincial magistrate, Apuleius was educated in Carthage, Greece, and Rome. He married Pudentila, a wealthy woman, but was accused by her family of using magic to seduce her. In 158, Apuleius was put on trial, defended himself, and was acquitted.

The Golden Ass
is the only novel in Latin to have survived antiquity. The most famous story in it is "Cupid and Psyche," which is one of the enduring tales of Western civilization. It is a story I first encountered through my interest in the psychology of Carl Jung. In Jungian psychology the tale is considered an important metaphorical delineation of the archetypal psychology of women. (See Robert Johnson's
She: Understanding Feminine Psychology
and Marie-Luise von Franz's
Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man.
)

My original idea for retelling the story of Cupid and Psyche was to do a book of seventy-five or so pages in which I would basically retell the story, but in the voice of a Southern black storyteller. However, as so often happens, when I
started writing, I found myself bothered by what I considered to be gaps in the story, especially the large one in which Cupid simply vanishes from most of the story only to miraculously reappear to save Psyche. So I began researching Greek and Roman mythology and found all kinds of wonderful lesser deities, like Oizys the goddess of pain, Favonius the West Wind, Aeolus the keeper of the winds, and others. Because it was not my intent to faithfully retell Aupelius's story, I have taken deities and figures from both Greek and Roman mythology. I have also brought together all the stories about Cupid (or Eros).

What began as a projected seventy-five-page book became what you have here. I had much fun researching and writing this book, as it became a book I wished I had had during the frightening and difficult years of my own adolescence when I first encountered the mysteries of girls, love, and myself.

The experience of love is the most central and profound of our lives. Yet we are given no instruction in the ways of love. Popular music and movies are our primary sources for what we think love is and should be, and as entertaining as these media are, the views of love they present are more often expressions of sentimentality instead of representations of the very hard realities of what it means to be human and what the act of loving presents us with.

I ended up writing a book in which I shared something of what I've learned over these seven decades through marriages and many wonderful love affairs. Which is not to say that everything the narrator says is autobiographical. The narrator's voice is mine, and then again, it isn't. Some of the opinions he expresses are mine, and some are very definitely his.

I am deeply grateful to Michael Joseph, the moderator of the Child_Lit Internet group of critical theory in children's literature. Michael is a librarian at Rutgers University. As a visiting instructor there, he has taught the tale of Cupid and Psyche—and he knows it and the critical literature surrounding it far better than I. The e-mail conversations we shared were extremely helpful, and he was gracious enough to agree to read the manuscript. His careful reading and insights were invaluable.

I also want to thank Betsy Hearne, professor of library and information services at the University of Illinois, for helping me think through an important element of the story. I came across a reference (I don't recall where now) that said in some versions of the Cupid and Psyche story, the smoke from the box she receives from Proserpine turns her black. I toyed with the idea of making this part of my retelling. Though neither Betsy nor Michael expressed an opinion on my doing this, after exchanging e-mails with them, I decided that doing so would change the focus of the story. But I am still tantalized by the notion of the god of love marrying a black Psyche.

Finally, and as always, I am grateful to the one with
whom I have shared so much love for a decade and a half now, my wife, Milan Sabatini. Since 1991 she has been the first person to read my manuscripts, and all of them, including this one, have been improved enormously by her attention to details.

Julius Lester
Belchertown, Massachusetts
August 30, 2005

Books

Apuleius.
The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche.
Translated by Walter Paler. New York: Heritage Press, 1951.

———.
The Transformations of Lucius; Otherwise Known as The Golden
Ass. Translated by Robert Graves. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.

Birberick, Anne L.
Reading Undercover: Audience and Authority in Jean de la Fontaine.
Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1998.

Cavicchioli, Sonia.
The Tale of Cupid and Psyche: An Illustrated History.
New York: George Braziller, 2002.

Craft, Charlotte M.
Cupid and Psyche.
New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Edwards, Lee R.
Psyche as Hero: Female Heroism and Fictional Form.
Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984.

Eliot, Alexander, ed.
Myths.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

Encyclopedia of World Mythology.
Foreword by Rex Warner. New York: Galahad Books, 1975.

Ficino, Marsilio.
Commentary on Plato's Symposium.
Translated by Sears Reynolds Jayne. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Studies, vol. XIX, no. 1, 1944.

Guirand, Félix, ed.
New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology.
Translated by Richard Aldington and Delano Ames. New York: Prometheus Press, 1974.

Grant, Michael, and John Hazel.
Who's Who in Classical Mythology.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.