Cupid

by Julius Lester

  "What's going on where?" Venus asked sleepily. "Ouch! Not so hard on my shoulders. Ahh! Yes, that's better." She sighed and closed her eyes. "Did you say something was going on?" she asked sleepily.

  "Over there," Oizys replied, pointing to a tiny kingdom at the edge of the Great Blue Sea. "All those people. They look like they're waiting for something, or someone."

  Reluctantly, Venus raised up and looked down on the world. It took her a moment to find what Oizys was pointing to, but finally she saw crowds lining both sides of a road. Venus smiled wistfully. "That's how it used to be when I walked among mortals," she thought.

  The crowd stirred as the great doors to the palace grounds swung open. People jostled each other to get a better view.

  "The king of this realm must be very loved," Venus whispered. She was eager to see the man who inspired such devotion from his subjects.

  But the person who walked out was a young woman of a beauty unlike any Venus had ever seen, including that which looked back at her from her mirror each morning. The crowds were so quiet you could hear green color flowing into new leaves. Some people were so overcome at the sight of the young woman, they fainted. Others simply gazed, tears streaming down their faces.

  As the young woman continued walking, petals from flowers bordering the road drifted off the blooms, braided themselves into a wreath, and settled on her head.

  "Who is that?" Venus demanded to know, not wanting to believe what she was seeing.

  "Oh, I wonder if that is who I overheard Mars and Apollo talking about the other day." Oizys stopped suddenly, as if afraid that she had said too much. Not too long ago, Mars and Venus had a passionate affair. When Vulcan learned of it, he rigged a net over her bed. The next time she and Mars lay together, the net fell on them. Vulcan had called all the gods and goddesses to come and look at the two in their naked togetherness.

  Venus frowned at the mention of her former lover's name. Even though they were no longer lovers, she did not like the idea of him looking at another woman, especially a mortal.

  "What were Mars and Apollo saying?"

  "Oh, nothing," Oizys muttered.

  "Answer me!"

  "It was nothing. Just men talking, and you know how they are. What they said is not worth repeating."

  "I'll determine what is and is not worth repeating. Now, tell me what was said."

  Oizys sighed again, but smiled to herself. She had set a trap for Venus even more subtly than Vulcan had. "Well, they said she was more beautiful than any goddess on Olympus."

  Venus was furious. "Who said that?" she demanded to know. "Which one of them?"

  "It was Apollo," said Oizys, feigning reluctance.

  "Apollo!" Venus exclaimed. It would have broken her heart had Mars spoken the words, but it was worse coming from Apollo because he was incapable of telling a lie.

  But Oizys was not, for it was she who had just put a lie into Apollo's mouth.

  "Who do you think is the most beautiful woman in all of creation?" Venus asked.

  "You are," Oizys responded hastily. "What mortal could come close to matching your great beauty?"

  What mortal, indeed? Venus said silently. "What is the name of this—this thing on Earth who thinks she is more beautiful than I?"

  "I believe Apollo referred to her as Psyche."

  "Psyche!" Venus repeated in disgust. "Leave me, Oizys."

  "But, goddess, I have not finished your massage. Nothing would be more soothing at such a moment than a deep massage."

  "Yes, yes, I know, but I need to be alone. Now, leave me."

  Smiling to herself, Oizys picked up her vials of oils and left.

  Venus went inside where the hot tub had already been filled with steaming water by her servants. She disrobed, stepped in, and sat down. She had to do something about this Psyche. Could she be the reason people had stopped coming to worship Venus at her temples? Perhaps people had forgotten just how beautiful she was. She would go immediately to her temple in the Kingdom-by-the-Great-Blue-Sea. When people saw her, they would remember what true beauty looked like, and they would abandon their foolish adulation of that young woman whose beauty was merely mortal and would fade sooner than later.

  When Venus finished her bath, her servants, the Three Graces—Aglaia, Charis, and Pasithea—came quickly with towels made from the warm breezes of South Wind. They dried her, then dressed her in a white gown of silk and cashmere. The goddess's long, dark straight hair was oiled until each strand shone with the luster of desire. By then, her golden chariot drawn by swans was waiting for her on the great lawn outside her palace. The Graces helped Venus into the chariot, then she flew down to reclaim her rightful place in the hearts of the people.

  When she arrived at her temple on a hillside by the Great Blue Sea, Venus was shocked at what she saw. The temple's roof was sagging; the altar on which supplicants used to place offerings had fallen over and was covered with dust and spiderwebs. The marble floor could barely be seen beneath thick layers of dead leaves. Where were the temple's caretakers? Were they, too, among the crowds waiting for the appearance of Psyche?

  Angry, Venus returned to her swan-drawn chariot and flew to the very road Psyche had walked along mere hours before. People still lingered there, hoping the young woman would come out again. No one noticed Venus's chariot when it landed in front of the huge doors to the palace. No one noticed when the goddess began walking along the road. Venus looked into the faces of the people, hoping to see a spark of recognition in their eyes. But although their eyes were open, they could not see Venus for looking at the image of Psyche imprinted on their minds.

  Unable to abide the humiliation an instant longer, Venus returned quickly to Olympus, more furious than she had ever been. If she didn't do something, she was going to find herself wandering through the world and being ignored. That's what happened to gods and goddesses when people stopped believing in them. She had seen them—Astarte, Isis, Osiris, Marduk, Gilgamesh—so many of the old deities walking among the people who did not recognize them. It was as if they had never existed, but deities could not die. If no one recognized your existence, however, was that not death?

  "Where in Jupiter's name is Cupid?" she screamed.

  If ever she needed her son, it was now. He knew better than anyone how to torture humans with lust and love. Indeed, she herself knew just how powerful the love potion was that Cupid put on his arrows. She still grieved for a love unlike any she had ever known or would ever know again.

  Venus and Adonis

  It happened when Cupid was still a child. Venus was visiting her temples, but her mind was not focused on the love problems of mortals. She was thinking about Cupid, whom she missed more than she thought possible. She finished her temple duties quickly and hurried back to Olympus and her beloved son.

  "I'm going to get you," she announced playfully, standing in the doorway of his chambers.

  Cupid knew that meant she was going to tickle him, and he began giggling. He was sitting on his bed and hurriedly crawled beneath the blanket as his mother came toward him.

  But just as Venus reached the bed, she tripped over Cupid's bow, which was lying on the floor. She fell onto the bed—and the quiver of arrows Cupid had carelessly tossed there when he had come in from practicing.

  His mother had told him countless times, "Cupid! Hang your bow and quiver on the back of the closet door." But, yet once again, he had forgotten, or more likely, not felt like doing as his mother asked.

  A gold-tipped arrow was sticking out of the quiver, and the tip penetrated the skin just above Venus's breasts. She gasped. Both she and Cupid knew what had happened. He laughed! Venus wanted to slap him, but the arrow's potion would make her fall hopelessly in love with the first person she saw. Juno forbid that should be her own son! Shielding her eyes, she ran from the room, down the long corridor, across the entranceway, and into her suite, in the opposite wing, the sound of Cupid's laughter in her ears.

  For three days Venus kept to her c
hambers and saw no one. The wound appeared to heal quickly, but the potion on the arrowhead was more potent than she knew. Some of the potion was still in her bloodstream.

  Thinking herself healed, Venus went outside and looked down on Earth to see what had transpired in the days she had locked herself away. The first person she saw was a young man of amazing beauty and faster than the blink of her eyes, she wanted him, needed him, could not conceive of being able to live without him. Too late she realized: she was still infected, but she did not care. Never in the years of her eternity had she loved anyone as she loved the one on whom she was gazing at that moment.

  His name was Adonis, and he was as handsome as Venus was beautiful. He was standing in a meadow, practicing throwing his spear, when out of the sky came a golden chariot drawn by two swans. Even before Venus took one step toward him, he only needed the slightest of glances to be as in love with her as she was with him. What mortal could have resisted the goddess of love?

  Venus had loved many, but her feelings for all the others had as much substance as fog compared to her ardor for Adonis. In the past, she realized, she had confused love with lust. But lust was nothing except caring for one's own pleasure. As long as her lust was sated, it had not mattered to her whom she lay with. However, with Adonis, lust was replaced by a deep and passionate caring for the well-being and happiness of another.

  Adonis loved to hunt, and Venus gladly went with him, running alongside her lover through woods and over hills, as he chased after rabbit and deer.

  However, Adonis became bored hunting harmless game. Where was the challenge in that? He wanted to go after bigger and more dangerous animals, like boars, wolves, bears, and lions, animals whose teeth were bloody after they had killed and eaten. But Venus was afraid for him.

  "My love. The time for boldness is when you hunt the animals that are timid and run away at the sound of your footsteps. Do not go after the beasts who do not quail before human boldness. What are your two arms and legs compared to the four limbs and many teeth of the beasts? I beg you. Do not be bold when to do so is to put my heart at risk. Do not place your desire to prove yourself above my love. Your beauty enchants me, but it does not move the hearts of the boar, wolf, bear, or lion."

  Reluctantly, Adonis respected her wishes. But the day came when Venus had to attend to her duties as goddess, duties she had neglected so she could be with Adonis.

  As soon as Venus and her swan-drawn chariot flew heavenward, Adonis went into the woods. How odd, but almost immediately a boar stood in the path as if waiting for him and him alone. Some say this was no ordinary boar, but Mars in the guise of the tusked beast because he was jealous that Venus loved someone more than she had loved him. Others maintain that the boar was Vulcan, angry, yet again, that Venus was making a mockery of their marriage.

  But perhaps the boar was only a boar. Adonis, eager to test himself and his skill, threw his spear at the animal. Alas. The tip of the weapon penetrated only far enough into the boar's tough hide to anger but not wound it. With its long tusks, the animal dislodged the spear. Angry now, the boar charged Adonis.

  What are the two legs of a man to the four of a beast? The boar easily caught him. Adonis screamed as the tusks went deeply into his side and chest.

  Venus was scarcely halfway on her journey to her temple on Atlantis when she heard a loud and terrified cry in the voice she knew from all others on Earth and Olympus.

  "Adonis!" Quickly, she turned the chariot around. Even from afar she could see her beloved's body lying on the forest path, wrapped in blood as if it were a cloak. The swans had scarcely set the chariot on the ground before Venus was running to him. He was already dead.

  Holding him on her lap, she cried out to the Fates, "How could you allow this to happen? But I will not let you have all the victory!"

  She sprinkled nectar on Adonis's voluptuously red, red blood. The blood began to bubble. Then arising from it came a blood-colored flower as light and delicate as slowly healing sorrow. This is how the anemone, also known as the wind flower, came into being. It is a flower whose petals are weak, and when a wind blows against them, they fall and die.

  It was a sad but fitting memorial to the beautiful Adonis.

  Even now Venus could not think of Adonis without his loss throbbing within her as if it had its own heart. He had been taken from her, and now this Psyche was taking the love of the people from her. There was nothing she could have done to prevent Adonis's death, but she woiald make Psyche wish she had never been born.

  Enter Cupid

  When you think of Cupid, I bet you see a cute, chubby baby with little wings and a bow and arrow. As many times as I've been in lust and in love (and if the truth be told, I was in lust a lot more than I was in love), I know that a diaper-wearing baby had nothing to do with it. It took a god with a devious mind and no morals to get me entangled with some of the women to whom I proclaimed eternal love.

  So if you are thinking that you're going to hear a story about some rosy-cheeked little boy flying around in the clouds, you should close the book now. The Cupid I'm going to tell you about was a young man who was tall and very handsome. His body was so sculpted, you could see every muscle, sinew, and tendon. Long, flowing wings grew out of his shoulder blades like a melody looking for a singer.

  Of all the deities, he was probably the most beautiful, which befits the god of love. His special emblem was the rose, and as you know, a rose is beautiful to look at and beautiful to smell, but its stem is studded with thorns. That is a good metaphor for describing Cupid. Behind his beautiful face and body was a personality the gods and goddesses did not want to get close to. They were always wary of making him angry, because he might shoot them with one of his arrows, and they would end up being passionately in love with a cow, or a stone wall.

  The Greek poet Sappho described Cupid as "bittersweet," while Hesiod, another Greek poet, wrote that Cupid "loosens the limbs and overpowers the good judgment of people and gods." I wish someone had brought Hesiod's words to my attention when I was fifteen. Maybe I would not have spent so much of my life with loose limbs. If my judgment about women had been any worse, I would have been arrested and put in jail with no possibility of parole.

  As I can testify, Cupid cared about nothing except spreading lust and passion with his gold-tipped arrows, and pain and confusion with the lead-tipped ones. It did not matter to him if he created or destroyed relationships. It did not matter if the persons whom he infected with passion were exalted or crushed by the emotions that overwhelmed them. As long as passion and lust or pain and confusion reigned in the lives of mortals, Cupid was happy.

  This was why Venus wanted him to take care of Psyche. No deity was better suited to carry out her revenge than her very own son, someone she could trust to do exactly as she wished.

  She found Cupid in his basement woodworking shop, making a new set of arrows and tips. Arrows with tips of gold were dipped in a potion that infected mortals with the passions of love and lust. The arrows with leaden tips were dipped in another potion. These arrows turned lovers against each other and destroyed even memories of happiness in the most loving of couples.

  Cupid had just completed making the new arrows and tips when Venus came in. "There's my darling boy!" she greeted him.

  "Mother," Cupid responded warmly. He stopped what he was doing and gave her a hug and kiss. The two gazed into each other's eyes like lovers. I don't know about you, but I don't think that's the way mothers and sons are supposed to look at each other. But Venus was the only female in his life. Although he had a beautiful palace of his own hidden in a mountain valley of the Kingdom-by-the-Great-Blue-Sea, he spent scarcely any time there. Like a lot of men, he wanted to continue living at home and to be taken care of by his mother. This was fine with Venus. What she would do to the woman who tried to take him away from her would not be a pretty sight.

  "I need a favor, son."

  "Name it and it's yours. You know that."

  "You are su
ch a sweet boy."

  "How could I not be, with a mother like you?"

  Venus smiled. "There is a young woman in the Kingdom-by-the-Great-Blue-Sea. Her name is Psyche, a rather pretentious name for a mortal, if you ask me. She is very pretty, though in a rather plain and ordinary way. I suspect she is some kind of demon disguised as a mortal, because people are coming from all over to worship her as if she were, well, as if she were me. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in your life? Of course you haven't.

  "Well, I can't allow this to continue. Could you make this Psyche fall in love with the most unlikely man in the entire kingdom, someone ugly beyond belief, someone who chews his food with his mouth open, snores loudly, and has no money? You get the idea. Would you do that for me, darling?"

  "Consider it done, Mother."

  "That's my sweet boy."

  Cupid was surprised to see her forehead creased with tension and a nervous anxiousness in her eyes. He had never seen his mother so worried.

  "Don't worry. Perhaps I'll make this imposter fall in love with a pig, or a large boulder. No one will want to worship her after they hear her declaiming love poems to a piece of stone."

  Venus laughed, but her laugh was a little too loud and went on for a little too long. "I'll be waiting eagerly for your return," she said in a tight voice.

  "I'll take care of things this evening," he assured her.

  Cupid wondered why his mother was so distressed about a mortal woman. How could the beauty of any woman condemned to die rival that of an immortal goddess, and especially that of Venus? The thought was ridiculous. And what kind of woman would dare allow herself to be compared to, and even mistaken for, the goddess of love? He would teach this Psyche a lesson she would never forget.