Free Galatea by Madeline Miller Page A

might have been the time I could faint. But I had not done it, and now it was too late.
    I said, “I think I would feel better if I could walk.”
    “You are too weak,” the doctor said. “What would I tell your husband if you hurt yourself?”
    “I used to be stone,” I said. “I can’t hurt myself from just a walk.”
    “That’s enough,” he said, in that voice that meant he was going to send for the tea. The tea is the thing they give me when I won’t lie back, and I hate it, for they sit beside me until I drink it all, and then my head aches and my tongue hurts and I piss the bed.
    I lay back. “You’re right, this is better,” I said. “Mmmm, that feels good.” Through my lashes I watched him. He was suspicious, so I snuggled down closer. “You’re right, I was so tired and I didn’t know it.” I hoped that this was enough to save me from the tea.
    “Be sure you stay there,” he said. “Your husband’s coming to see you today.” And I thought, I should have saved the snuggling bit, because they don’t give me the tea when my husband comes. He hates the smell of piss, and he likes me to be able to use my tongue.
    I lay down and arranged myself in the right way. It’s easy, because I’ve had a lot of practice, but also because I think there’s some part of me, the stone part, that remembers and is glad to settle into its old lines. The only hard thing is the fingers, which my husband likes to say he spent a year on, making them look real instead of still and limp, like lazy sculptors do. So I have to concentrate and hold them just the way he likes, or it ruins everything.
    Time passed, I wasn’t sure how much. Then through the door I heard the jingle of coins and the nurses exclaiming. My husband is quite rich now, and has enough to pay for a thousand more doctors who all tell me to lie down. He is rich because of me, if you want to know, but he doesn’t like it when I say that. He says it’s the goddess’ gift first, and then his own since he was the one who made me from the marble. After I was born—and maybe that is not the right word, but if not, then I don’t know what is—woke? Hatched? No, that is worse. I am not an egg.
    I will say born. After I was born, he tried to keep me inside as much as he could, but there were servants, and people began to talk about the sculptor’s wife, and how strange she was, and how such beauty comes only from the gods. Some people believed that, and some people didn’t, but suddenly they all wanted statues from him. So he chiseled maiden after maiden, and I said, Do you think any of them will come to life? And he said, Of course not, these people are not worthy of the goddess’ gift. And he told me again how well he had cared for me, dressing me in silks, and draping me in flowers and jewels, and bringing me seashells and colored balls, and praying to the goddess every night. Would it not have been easier to marry a girl from the town? I asked. Those sluts, he said, I would not have them.
    The door opened. “Leave and do not disturb us,” my husband said to the maids, which was unnecessary, since they’ve never disturbed us, not in a year’s time. But my husband thinks himself a potentate these days.
    There was silence, because he was looking at me, checking my fingers and all the rest. I didn’t open my eyes, because my job was to lie on the couch without moving so that he might murmur, “Ah, my beauty is asleep.” A few times in the past, I had let out a little snore at that moment, just for verisimilitude. But he did not like that at all.
    “Asleep?” he said. He stepped into the room. “I am a fool to say so. She is marble and nothing more.” He knelt beside the bed, and lifted his hands. “O goddess! Why cannot I find a maiden such as this for my wife? Why must such perfection be marble and not flesh? If only she might—” Abruptly, he covered his eyes. “No, I cannot say it.”
    I thought about making a little snore right