Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

by Ali Smith

  Like the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, I said.

  Except much, much earlier, culturally and historically, than the Virgin Mary, Robin said, and also the woman wasn’t sick, though certainly there was something pretty rotten in the state of Knossos, what with the whole kill-the-girl thing. And the goddess Isis had brought a lot of her god-friends and family with her, including that god whose head is like a jackal. What’s his name? Damn. I really like – he’s got, like, these jackal ears, and a long snout – a kind of dog-god – he guards the underworld –

  I don’t know. Is it a crucial part of the story? I said.

  No. So Isis thanked the woman for the constant faith she had in things, and told her not to worry. Just give birth as per usual, and bring the child up, she said.

  As per usual? I said. A goddess used the phrase as per usual?

  The gods can be down-to-earth when they want, Robin said. And then she and all her god-friends disappeared, like they’d never been there, like the woman had just made them up. But the woman was very happy. She went and stood under the night sky and held her arms out open to the stars. And the time came for the baby to be born. And out it came.

  You can’t stay in the womb all your life, I said.

  And it was a girl, Robin said.

  Of course, I said.

  So the woman called her Iphis, which was the child’s grandfather’s name –

  I like that, I said.

  – and was also, by chance, a name used both for girls and boys, which the woman thought was a good omen.

  I like that too, I said.

  And to keep her child safe she brought her up as a boy, Robin said. Lucky for Iphis, she looked rather good as a boy, though she’d also have looked very handsome as a girl. She was certainly every bit as handsome as her friend, Ianthe, the beautiful fair-haired daughter of one of the finest families on the island.

  Aha, I said. I think I see where this is going.

  And Iphis and Ianthe, since they were exactly the same age, went to school together, learned to read together, learned about the world together, grew up together, and as soon as they were both of marrying age their fathers did some bargaining, swapped some livestock, and the village got ready for the wedding. But not just that. The thing is, Iphis and Ianthe had actually, for real, very really, fallen in love.

  Did their hearts hurt? I said. Did they think they were underwater all the time? Did they feel scoured by light? Did they wander about not knowing what to do with themselves?

  Yes, Robin said. All of that. And more.

  There’s more? I said. Man!

  So to speak, Robin said. And the wedding day was set. And the whole village was coming. Not just the village, but all the fine families of the island were coming. And some people off faraway other islands. And off the mainland. Several gods had been invited and many had actually said they’d come. And Iphis was in quite a bad way, because she couldn’t imagine.

  She couldn’t imagine what? I said.

  She couldn’t imagine how she was going to do it, Robin said.

  How do you mean? I said.

  She stood in a field far enough away from the village so nobody would hear except maybe a few goats, a few cows, and she shouted at the sky, she shouted at nothing, at Isis, at all the gods. Why have you done this to me? You fuckers. You jokers. Look what’s happened now. I mean, look at that cow there. What’d be the point in giving her a cow instead of a bull? I can’t be a boy to my girl! I don’t know how! I wish I’d never been born! You’ve made me wrong! I wish I’d been killed at birth! Nothing can help me!

  But maybe her girl, what’s her name, Ianthe, wants a girl, I said. Clearly Iphis is exactly the kind of boy-girl or girl-boy she loves.

  Well, yes. I agree, Robin said. That’s debatable. But it’s not in the original story. In the original, Iphis stands there shouting at the gods. Even if Daedalus was here, Iphis shouted, and he’s the greatest inventor in the world, who can fly across the sea like a bird though he’s just a man! But even he wouldn’t know what to invent to make this okay for Ianthe and me. I mean, you were kind, Isis, and you told my mother it’d be fine, but now what? Now I’ve got to get married, and it’s tomorrow, and I’ll be the laughing stock of the whole village, because of you. And Juno and Hymen are coming. We’ll be the laughing stock of the heavens too. And how can I get married to my girl in front of them, in front of my father, in front of everyone? And not just that. Not just that. I’m never, ever, ever going to be able to please my girl. And she’ll be mine, but never really mine. It’ll be like standing right in the middle of a stream, dying of thirst, with my hand full of water, but I won’t be able to drink it!

  Why won’t she be able to drink it? I said.

  Robin shrugged.

  It’s just what she thinks at this point in the story, she said. She’s young. She’s scared. She doesn’t know yet that it’ll be okay. She’s only about twelve. That was the marriageable age, then, twelve. I was terrified, too, when I was twelve and wanted to marry another girl. (Who did you want to marry? I said. Janice McLean, Robin said, who lived in Kinmylies. She was very glamorous. And she had a pony.) Twelve, or thirteen, terrified. It’s easy to think it’s a mistake, or you’re a mistake. It’s easy, when everything and everyone you know tells you you’re the wrong shape, to believe you’re the wrong shape. And also, don’t forget, the story of Iphis was being made up by a man. Well, I say man, but Ovid’s very fluid, as writers go, much more than most. He knows, more than most, that the imagination doesn’t have a gender. He’s really good. He honours all sorts of love. He honours all sorts of story. But with this story, well, he can’t help being the Roman he is, he can’t help fixating on what it is that girls don’t have under their togas, and it’s him who can’t imagine what girls would ever do without one.

  I had a quick look under the duvet.

  Doesn’t feel or look like anything’s missing to me, I said.

  Ah, I love Iphis, Robin said. I love her. Look at her. Dressed as a boy to save her life. Standing in a field, shouting at the way things are. She’d do anything for love. She’d risk changing everything she is.

  What’s going to happen? I said.

  What do you think? Robin said.

  Well, she’s going to need some help. The father’s not going to be any good, he doesn’t even know his boy’s a girl. Not very observant. And Ianthe thinks that’s what a boy is, what Iphis is. Ianthe’s just happy to be getting married. But she won’t want a humiliation either, and they’d be the joke of the village. She’s only twelve, too. So Iphis can’t go and ask her for help. So. It’s either the mother or the goddess.

  Well-spotted, Robin said. Off the mother went to have a word with the goddess in her own way.

  That’s one of the reasons Midge is so resentful, I said.

  The what who’s so what? Robin said.

  Imogen. She had to do all that mother stuff when ours left, I said. Maybe it’s why she’s so thin. Have you noticed how thin she is?

  Yep, Robin said.

  I never had to do anything, I said. I’m lucky. I was born mythless. I grew up mythless.

  No you didn’t. Nobody grows up mythless, Robin said. It’s what we do with the myths we grow up with that matters.

  I thought about our mother. I thought about what she’d said, that she had to be free of what people expected of her, otherwise she’d simply have died. I thought about our father, out in the garden in the first days after she went, hanging out the washing. I thought about Midge, seven years old, running downstairs to take over, to do it instead of him, because the neighbours were laughing to see a man at the washing line. Good girl, our father had said.

  Keep telling the story, I said. Go on.

  So the mother, then, Robin said, went to the temple, and she said into the thin air: look, come on. You told me it’d be okay. And now we’ve got this huge wedding happening tomorrow, and it’s all going to go wrong. So could you just sort it out for me? Please.

  And as s
he left the empty temple, the temple started to shake, and the doors of the temple trembled.

  And lo and behold, I said.

  Yep. Jaw lengthens, stride lengthens, absolutely everything lengthens. By the time she’d got home, the girl Iphis had become exactly the boy that she and her girl needed her to be. And the boy their two families needed. And everyone in the village needed. And all the people coming from all over the place who were very anxious to have a really good party needed. And the visiting gods needed. And the particular historic era with its own views on what was excitingly perverse in a love story needed. And the writer of Metamorphoses needed, who really, really needed a happy love story at the end of Book 9 to carry him through the several much more scurrilous stories about people who fall, unhappily and with terrible consequences, in love with their fathers, their brothers, various unsuitable animals, and the dead ghosts of their lovers, Robin said. Voilà. Sorted. No problemo. Metamorphoses is full of the gods being mean to people, raping people then turning them into cows or streams so they won’t tell, hunting them till they change into plants or rivers, punishing them for their pride or their arrogance or their skill by changing them into mountains or insects. Happy stories are rare in it. But the next day dawned, and the whole world opened its eyes, it was the day of the wedding. Even Juno had come, and Hymen was there too, and all the families of Crete were gathered in their finery for the huge celebration all over the island, as the girl met her boy there at the altar.

  Girl meets boy, I said. In so many more ways than one.

  Old, old story, Robin said.

  I’m glad it worked out, I said.

  Good old story, Robin said.

  Good old Ovid, giving it balls, I said.

  Even though it didn’t need them. Anubis! Robin said suddenly. The god with the jackal head. Anubis.

  Anubis colony? I said.

  Come on, Robin said. You and me. What do you say?

  Bed, I said.

  Off we went, back to bed.

  We were tangled in each other’s arms so that I wasn’t sure whose hand that was by my head, was it hers or mine? I moved my hand. The hand by my head didn’t move. She saw me looking at it.

  It’s yours, she said. I mean, it’s on the end of my arm. But it’s yours. So’s the arm. So’s the shoulder. So’s everything else it’s connected to.

  Her hand opened me. Then her hand became a wing. Then everything about me became a wing, a single wing, and she was the other wing, we were a bird. We were a bird that could sing Mozart. It was a music I recognised, it was both deep and light. Then it changed into a music I’d never heard before, so new to me that it made me airborne, I was nothing but the notes she was playing, held in air. Then I saw her smile so close to my eyes that there was nothing to see but the smile, and the thought came into my head that I’d never been inside a smile before, who’d have thought being inside a smile would be so ancient and so modern both at once? Her beautiful head was down at my breast, she caught me between her teeth just once, she put the nip into nipple like the cub of a fox would, down we went, no wonder they call it an earth, it was loamy, it was good, it was what good meant, it was earthy, it was what earth meant, it was the underground of everything, the kind of soil that cleans things. Was that her tongue? Was that what they meant when they said flames had tongues? Was I melting? Would I melt? Was I gold? Was I magnesium? Was I briny, were my whole insides a piece of sea, was I nothing but salty water with a mind of its own, was I some kind of fountain, was I the force of water through stone? I was hard all right, and then I was sinew, I was a snake, I changed stone to snake in three simple moves, stoke stake snake, then I was a tree whose branches were all budded knots, and what were those felty buds, were they – antlers? were antlers really growing out of both of us? was my whole front furring over? and were we the same pelt? were our hands black shining hoofs? were we kicking? were we bitten? were our heads locked into each other to the death? till we broke open? I was a she was a he was a we were a girl and a girl and a boy and a boy, we were blades, were a knife that could cut through myth, were two knives thrown by a magician, were arrows fired by a god, we hit heart, we hit home, we were the tail of a fish were the reek of a cat were the beak of a bird were the feather that mastered gravity were high above every landscape then down deep in the purple haze of the heather were roamin in a gloamin in a brash unending Scottish piece of perfect jigging reeling reel can we really keep this up? this fast? this high? this happy? round again? another notch higher? heuch! the perfect jigsaw fit of one into the curve of another as if a hill top into sky, was that a thistle? was I nothing but grass, a patch of coarse grasses? was that incredible colour coming out of me? the shining heads of – what? buttercups? because the scent of them, farmy and delicate, came into my head and out of my eyes, my ears, out of my mouth, out of my nose, I was scent that could see, I was eyes that could taste, I loved butter. I loved everything. Hold everything under my chin! I was all my open senses held together on the head of a pin, and was it an angel who knew how to use hands like that, as wings?

  We were all that, in the space of about ten minutes. Phew. A bird, a song, the insides of a mouth, a fox, an earth, all the elements, minerals, a water feature, a stone, a snake, a tree, some thistles, several flowers, arrows, both genders, a whole new gender, no gender at all and God knows how many other things including a couple of fighting stags.

  I got up to get us a drink of water and as I stood in the kitchen in the early morning light, running the water out of the tap, I looked out at the hills at the back of the town, at the trees on the hills, at the bushes in the garden, at the birds, at the brand new leaves on a branch, at a cat on a fence, at the bits of wood that made the fence, and I wondered if everything I saw, if maybe every landscape we casually glanced at, was the outcome of an ecstasy we didn’t even know was happening, a love-act moving at a speed slow and steady enough for us to be deceived into thinking it was just everyday reality.

  Then I wondered why on earth would anyone ever stand in the world as if standing in the cornucopic middle of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but inside a tiny white-painted rectangle about the size of a single space in a car park, refusing to come out of it, and all round her or him the whole world, beautiful, various, waiting?

  them

  (It is really English down here in England.)

  First class all the way. I was the only person in Carriage J when we set off. Me! A whole train carriage to myself! I am doing all right

  (and that train getting more and more English the further south we came. The serving staff doing the coffee changed into English people at Newcastle. And the conductor’s voice on the speakers changed into English at Newcastle too and then it was like being on a totally different train though I hadn’t even moved in my seat, and the people getting on and sitting in the other seats round me all really Englishy and by the time we’d got to York it was like a different )

  OUCH. Oh sorry!

  (People in England just walk into you and they don’t even apologise.)

  (And there are so many, so many! People here go on and on for miles and miles and miles.)

  (Where’s my phone?)

  Menu. Contacts. Select. Dad. Call.

  (God, it is so busy here with the people and the noise and the traffic I can hardly hear the)

  Answerphone.

  (He never answers it when he sees my name come up.)

  Hi Dad, it’s me. It’s Thursday, it’s a quarter to five. Just leaving you another to tell you I’m not in first class on the train any more, I’m in that, eh, Leicester Square, God it’s really sunny down here, it’s a bit too warm, I’ve got half an hour between very important business meetings so was just calling to say hi. Eh, right, well, I’ll give you a wee call when I’m out of my meetings, so bye for now. Bye now. Bye.

  End call.

  Menu. Contacts. Select. Paul. Call.

  Answerphone.

  (Damn.)

  Oh hi Paul, it’s just me, it’s just
eh Imogen. It’s Thursday, it’s about a quarter to five, and I was just wondering if you could check with secretarial for me, I eh can’t get through, I’ve been trying and it’s constantly engaged or maybe something’s up with the signal or something, anyway sorry to be calling so late in the afternoon, but because I couldn’t get through I thought what’ll I do, oh I know, I can always phone Paul, he’ll help me out, so if you’d just check with them for me that the market projection email and the colour printouts went off to Keith down here and whether he’ll have seen it all before I get over to the office? I should be there in about fifteen minutes. I’ll wait for your call, Paul. Thanks, Paul. Bye for now. Bye now. Bye.

  Menu. Contacts. Select. Anthea. Call.

  Answerphone.

  Hi. This is Anthea. Don’t leave me a message on this phone because I’m actually trying not to use my mobile any longer since the production of mobiles involves slave labour on a huge scale and also since mobiles get in the way of us living fully and properly in the present moment and connecting properly, on a real level, with people and are just another way to sell us short. Come and see me instead and we’ll talk properly. Thanks.

  (For God’s sake.)

  Hi, it’s me. It’s Thursday, it’s ten to five. Can you hear me? I can hardly hear myself, it’s so noisy here, it’s just ridiculous. Anyway I’m on my way to a meeting and I was walking through a kind of a park or square at the back of the Leicester Square, where I got the underground to, and there was this statue of William Shakespeare there in it, and the thought came into my head, Anthea’d like that, and then, like, you wouldn’t believe it! About two seconds later I saw right across from it this statue of Charlie Chaplin! So I thought I’d just phone and tell you. I’m actually coming up to Trafalgar Square now, it’s all, like, pedestrian now, you can walk right across it, the fountains are on, it’s so warm down here that people are actually jumping about in the water, it can’t be hygienic, loads of people are wearing shorts down here, nobody’s got a coat on, I’ve actually had to take mine off, that’s how warm it is, oh! and there’s Nelson! but he’s like so high up you can’t really see him at all, I’m right under him now, anyway I was just phoning, because every time I come here and see the famous things it makes me think of us, you know, watching tv, when we were kids, and Nelson’s Column and Big Ben and wondering if we’d ever in a million years get to see them really, for real, eh, well now I’m waiting for the green man at a pedestrian crossing right under Nelson’s Column, you should hear all the different languages, all round me, it’s very very interesting to hear so many different voices at once, oh well, now I’m on a road that’s all official-looking buildings, well, just calling to say I’ll see you when I get back, I’m back tomorrow, I’ll have to have a wee look at my map now, I’ll have to get it out of my bag, so, well, I’ll stop now. Bye for now. Bye.