Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

by Ali Smith

  I throw up under a tree at the side of the road on my way home. I look up. The tree I’ve just been sick under is in full white blossom.

  (Adolescent backwardness.)

  (I am fourteen. Myself and Denise MacCall are in a geography classroom. It is interval. We have somehow managed to stay in; maybe Denise said she was feeling sick or maybe I did; that was how you got to stay in over interval. We often said we felt sick if it was raining or cold.

  There is a pile of homework jotters on the table. Denise is going through them, reading out people’s names. We say out loud at each name whether we pass or fail the person, like the game Anthea and I play at home at the countdown of the chart on Top of the Pops. Hurray for someone we like. Boo for someone we don’t.

  Denise finds Robin Goodman’s jotter.

  For some reason Denise MacCall really dislikes Robin Goodman from Beauly, with her short curly dark hair thick on top of her head, her darkish skin, her long hands that the music teacher is always going on about when she plays her clarinet, her serious, studious, far-too-clever face. I dislike her too, though I hardly know her. She is in two or three of my classes, that’s all I know about her, apart from that she plays the clarinet. But it makes me feel happy to dislike her right now, because this is proof that I am Denise’s friend. Though I am not so sure that I like Denise all that much either, or that Denise wouldn’t boo me if she got to a jotter with my name on it and I wasn’t here in the room with her.

  Denise and I write the letters L, E and Z, on the front of Robin Goodman’s jotter, with the black Pentel I have in my pencil case. Or, to be more exact, I write the letters and she draws the arrow pointing at them.

  Then we slide the jotter back into the middle of the pile.

  When geography class starts, and Horny Geog, which is what we call Miss Horne, the old lady teacher who teaches us it, gives out the jotters, we watch to see Robin Goodman’s response. I am sitting a couple of rows behind her. I see her shoulders tense, then droop.

  When I go past her at the end of the period and glance down at the book on her desk I can see that she’s made Denise’s arrow into the trunk of a tree and she’s drawn hundreds of little flowerheads, all around the letters L, E and Z, like the letters are the branches of the tree and they’ve all just come into bloom.)

  The same Robin Goodman, ten years later, with her long dark hair and her dark, serious, studious face, is

  (oh my God )

  right here in my house when I get home. She is sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in front of her. She is reading a book. I am too drunk and dizzy to make out the cover of the book she is reading. I stand in the doorway and hold on to the doorframe.

  Hi, she says.

  (Oh my God and also my sister is a )

  What have you done with my sister? I say.

  Your sister’s in the bath, she says.

  I sit down. I lean my head back. I feel sick.

  (I am sitting in the same room as a )

  Robin Goodman leaves the room. When she comes back, she puts something into my hand. It’s a glass. It’s one of my glasses from the cupboard.

  Drink that, she says, and I’ll get you another one.

  You haven’t changed much, since school, I say. You look exactly the same.

  So do you, she says. But some things have changed, thank God. We’re not schoolgirls any more.

  Apart from. Your hair. Got longer, I say.

  Well, ten years, she says. Something’s got to give.

  I went away to unversity, I say. Did you go?

  If you mean university, yes, I did, she says.

  And you came back, I say.

  Just like you, she says.

  Do you still play the clarnet? I say.

  No, she says.

  There’s a silence. I look down. There’s a glass in my hand.

  Drink it, she says.

  I drink it. It tastes beautiful, of clearness.

  That’ll be better, she says.

  She takes the empty glass and leaves the room. I hear her in my kitchen. I look down at myself and am surprised to see I’m still wearing the tracksuit I put on after work. I’m not completely sure where I’ve just been. I begin to wonder if I made up the whole evening, if I invented the pub, the curryhouse, the whole thing.

  That’s my kitchen you were just in, I say when she comes back through.

  I know, she says and sits down in my sitting room.

  This is my sitting room, I say.

  Yep, she says.

  (I am sitting in the same room as a )

  She is the kind of person who does not really care what she is wearing or what it looks like. At least she is wearing normal clothes. At least she is not wearing that embarrassing Scottish get-up.

  Not wearing your kilt tonight? I say.

  Only for special occasions, she says.

  My company that I work for, you know, Pure Incorported, is going to take you to court, I say.

  They’ll drop the charges, she says.

  She doesn’t even look up from her book. I have to look at my hand because it’s covered in the water I’ve spilled on myself. I hold the glass up and look through it. I look at the room through the bit with water in it. Then I look at the same room through the bit with no water in it. Then I drink the water.

  Eau Caledonia, I say.

  Need another? she says.

  (I am sitting in the same room as a )

  A lass and a lack, I say.

  This pun makes me laugh. It is unlike me to be witty. It is my sister who is the really witty one. I am the one who knows the correct words, the right words for things.

  I lean forward.

  Tell me what it is, I say.

  It’s water, Robin Goodman says.

  No, I say. I mean, what’s the correct word for it, I mean, for you? I need to know it. I need to know the proper word.

  She looks at me for a long time. I can feel her looking right through my drunkness. Then, when she speaks, it is as if the whole look of her speaks.

  The proper word for me, Robin Goodman says, is me.

  us

  Because of us, things came together. Everything was possible.

  I had not known, before us, that every vein in my body was capable of carrying light, like a river seen from a train makes a channel of sky etch itself deep into a landscape. I had not really known I could be so much more than myself. I had not known another body could do this to mine.

  Now I’d become a walking fuse, like in that poem about the flower, and the force, and the green fuse the force drives through it; the force that blasts the roots of trees was blasting the roots of me, I was like a species that hadn’t even realised it lived in a near-desert till one day its taproot hit water. Now I had taken a whole new shape. No, I had taken the shape I was always supposed to, the shape that let me hold my head high. Me, Anthea Gunn, head turned towards the sun.

  Your name, Robin had said on our first underwater night together deep in each other’s arms. It means flowers, did you know that?

  No it doesn’t, I’d said. Gunn means war. The clan motto is Either Peace or War. Midge and I did a clan project at school when I was small.

  No, I mean your first name, she said.

  I was named after someone off the tv, I said.

  It means flowers, or a coming-up of flowers, a blooming of flowers, she said. I looked you up.

  She was behind me in the bed, she was speaking into my shoulder.

  You, she was saying. You’re a walking peace protest. You’re the flower in the Gunn.

  And what about you? I said. I tried looking you up too. I did it before we’d even met. What does the weird name mean?

  What weird name? she said.

  It isn’t in the dictionary, I said. I looked. I Googled you. It doesn’t mean anything.

  Everything means something, she said.

  Iphisol, I said.

  Iff is sol? she said. Iffisol? I don’t know. I’ve no idea. It sounds like aerosol. Or
Anusol.

  She was holding me loosely, her arms were round me and one leg over my legs keeping me warm, I could feel the smooth new skin of her from my shoulders down to my calves. Then the bed was shaking; she was laughing.

  Not Iffisol. Eye fizz ol, she said. Iphis is said like eye fizz. And it’s not ol, it’s 07. Like, the name, Iphis, but with the year, the oh and the seven of two thousand and seven.

  Oh. Iphis oh seven. Oh, I said.

  I was laughing now too. I turned in her arms and put my head on her laughing collarbone.

  Like double oh seven. Daniel Craig in Casino Royal, rising out of the water like that goddess on a shell, I said. Lo and behold.

  Ursula Andress did it first, she said. I mean, after Venus herself, that is. In fact, Daniel Craig and Ursula Andress look remarkably alike, when you compare them. No, because last year I used Iphis06. The year before I was Iphis05. God knows what you’d have thought they said. Iffisog. Iffisos.

  It had been exciting, first the not knowing what Robin was, then the finding out. The grey area, I’d discovered, had been misnamed: really the grey area was a whole other spectrum of colours new to the eye. She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl’s toughness. She had a boy’s gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and rough as a girl. She was as pretty and delicate and dainty as a boy. She turned boys’ heads like a girl. She turned girls’ heads like a boy. She made love like a boy. She made love like a girl. She was so boyish it was girlish, so girlish it was boyish, she made me want to rove the world writing our names on every tree. I had simply never found anyone so right. Sometimes this shocked me so much that I was unable to speak. Sometimes when I looked at her, I had to look away. Already she was like no one else to me. Already I was fearful she would go. I was used to people being snatched away. I was used to the changes that came out of the blue. The old blue, that is. The blue that belonged to the old spectrum.

  My grandfather used to say that all the time, lo and behold, I told her. They’re dead, my grandparents. They drowned. This used to be their house.

  Tell me about them, she said.

  You tell me about you first, I said. Come on. Story of your life.

  I will, she said. Yours first.

  If my life was a story, I said, it’d start like this: Before she left, my mother gave me a compass. But when I tried to use it, when I was really far out, lost at sea, the compass didn’t work. So I tried the other compass, the one my father had given me before he left. But that compass was broken too.

  So you looked out across the deep waters, Robin said. And you decided, by yourself, and with the help of a clear night and some stars, which way was north and which was south and which way was east and which was west. Yes?

  Yes, I said.

  Then I said it again. Yes.

  Now do you want to know mine? she said.

  I do, I said.

  It begins one day when I come down a ladder off an interventionist act of art protest, and turn round and see the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. From that moment on, I’m home. It’s as if I’ve been struggling upstream, going against the grain, until that moment. Then we get married, me and the person, and we live together happily ever after, which is impossible, both in story and in life, actually. But we get to. And that’s the message. That’s it. That’s all.

  What sort of story’s that? I said.

  A very fishy sort, she said.

  It sounds a bit lightweight, as stories go, I said.

  I can be heavy-handed if you want, she said. Fancy a bit of heavy-handing? Or would you prefer something lighter? You choose.

  Then she held me tight.

  Lo and be held, she said.

  You’re very artful, you, I said.

  You’re not so bad yourself, she said.

  We woke up. It was light. It was half past two in the morning. We got up and opened the window; we leaned together on the sill and watched the world wake up, and as the birds fought to be heard above one another before all the usual noise of day set in to drown them out she told me the story of Iphis.

  A long time ago on the island of Crete a woman was pregnant and when the time came close to her giving birth her husband, a good man, came to her and said, if it’s a boy we’ll keep him, but if it’s a girl we can’t. We can’t afford a girl, she’ll have to be put to death, I’m so sorry, but it’s just the way things are. So the woman went to the temple and prayed to the goddess Isis, who miraculously appeared before her. You’ve been true to me so I’ll be true to you, the goddess said. Bring the child up regardless of what it is and I promise you everything will be fine. So the child was born and it was a girl. The mother brought her up secretly as a boy, calling her Iphis, which was a name both boys and girls could be called. And Iphis went to school and was educated with her friend Ianthe, the beautiful daughter of a fine family, and Iphis and Ianthe grew up looking into each other’s eyes. Love touched their innocent hearts simultaneously and wounded them both, and they were betrothed. As the wedding day approached and the whole of Crete prepared for the celebration, Iphis got more and more worried about how, being a girl like Ianthe, she would ever be able to please her bride, whom she so loved. She worried that she herself would never really enjoy her bride the way she longed to. She complained bitterly to the gods and goddesses about it. On the night before the wedding, Iphis’s mother went back to the temple and asked the goddess to help. As she left the empty temple its walls shook, its doors trembled, Iphis’s jaw lengthened, her stride lengthened, her ribcage widened and broadened, her chest flattened, and the next day, the wedding day, dawned bright and clear and there was rejoicing all over the island of Crete as the boy Iphis gained his own Ianthe.

  Though actually, the telling of it went much more like this:

  A long time ago, on the island of Crete, Robin said behind me, into my ear –

  I’ve been there! We went there! I said. We had a holiday there when we were kids. We spent a lot of it at the hospital in Heraklion, actually, because our dad went to hire a motorbike to impress this woman in a motorbike hire shop, and before he’d hired one he rode it a few yards round a corner to get a feel for it, and fell off it and scraped the skin off half the side of his body.

  A long time ago, Robin said, long before motorbike hire, long before motors, long before bikes, long before you, long before me, back before the great tsunami that flattened most of northern Crete and drowned most of the Minoan cities, which, by the way, was probably the incident responsible for the creation of the myth about the lost city of Atlantis –

  That’s very interesting, I said.

  It is, she said. There’s pumice stone fifty feet up on dry land in parts of Crete, and cow-bones all mixed up with sea-creature remains, far too high for any other geological explanation –

  No, I mean that thing about responsibility and creating a myth, I said.

  Oh, she said. Well –

  I mean, do myths spring fully formed from the imagination and the needs of a society, I said, as if they emerged from society’s subconscious? Or are myths conscious creations by the various money-making forces? For instance, is advertising a new kind of myth-making? Do companies sell their water etc by telling us the right kind of persuasive myth? Is that why people who really don’t need to buy something that’s practically free still go out and buy bottles of it? Will they soon be thinking up a myth to sell us air? And do people, for instance, want to be thin because of a prevailing myth that thinness is more beautiful?

  Anth, Robin said. Do you want to hear this story about the boy-girl or don’t you?

  I do, I said.

  Right. Crete. Way back then, she said. Ready?

  Uh huh, I said.

  Sure? she said.

  Yep, I said.

  So there was this woman who was pregnant, and her husband came to her –

  Which one was Iphis? I said.

  Neither, she said. And her husb
and said –

  What were their names? I said.

  I can’t remember their names. Anyway, the husband came to the wife –

  Who was pregnant, I said.

  Uh huh, and he said, listen, I’m really praying for two things, and one of them is that this baby gives you no pain in the giving birth.

  Hmm, right, his wife said. That’s likely, isn’t it?

  Ha ha! I said.

  No, well, no she didn’t, Robin said. I’m imposing far too modern a reading on it. No, she acted correctly for her time, thanked him for even considering, so graciously, from his man’s world where women didn’t really count, that there’d be any pain at all involved for her. And what’s the other thing you’re praying for? she asked. When she said this, the man, who was a good man, looked very sad. The woman was immediately suspicious. Her husband said, look, you know what I’m going to say. The thing is. When you give birth, if you have a boy, that’ll be fine, we can keep it, of course, and that’s what I’m praying for.

  Uh huh? the woman said. And?

  And if you have a girl, we can’t, he said. We’ll have to put it to death if it’s a girl. A girl’s a burden. You know it is. I can’t afford a girl. You know I can’t. A girl’s no use to me. So that’s that. I’m so sorry to have to say this, I wish it wasn’t so, and I don’t want to do this, but it’s the way of the world.

  The way of the world, I said. Great. Thank God we’re modern.

  Still the way of the world in lots of places all over the world, Robin said, red ink for a girl, blue for a boy, on the bottom of doctors’ certificates, letting parents know, in the places it’s not legal to allow people just to abort girls, what to abort and what to keep. So. The woman went off to do some praying of her own. And as she knelt down in the temple, and prayed to the nothing that was there, the goddess Isis appeared right in front of her.