My questions and ideas would have remained only questions and ideas if I hadn't found the behavior of the two other nymphs, on the left side of the picture, so peculiar: like the brown-skinned god, one of the nymphs was sitting on a white rock; she was wearing a red cloak, holding a small tambourine in her lap and two drumsticks in her hands, but her face was missing; the paint had simply peeled off the wall, though the position of her body suggested that when she still had a face she was looking straight ahead, she was the one looking out of the picture at us, her gaze, be it severe, forgiving, or gentle, following us wherever we might move in front of the picture; but what piqued my interest even more was the other nymph, standing directly behind the faceless one and wearing a turquoise cloak, the only one in the scene who showed any interest in the youth whom I ventured to identify as Pan; she was the most beautiful of the three nymphs, her face full, her brow clear, her blond hair loosely braided in a crown, her body slight and delicate; she stood there with her hip thrust out just a little and her arms intertwined behind her back, a pose that radiates calm, confidence, and openness; her eyes were huge, brown, and warm, a bit sad, too, sad with longing, and then — I almost yelled out at the joy of discovery — I realized that this same sadness was reflected in the youth's eyes, although his head was turned away and he hardly took notice of the third nymph's wistful glance brushing his bulging chest; over the shoulder of the lyre-strumming Dryope, he was looking out of the picture, and — no mere coincidence — he, too, must have been looking at someone and was likewise being watched by that someone, but that someone was not visible, because he or she must have been standing not here in the clearing but among the trees of the forest.
And it was the forest I was mainly interested in, where this impossible love could be possible, even if it would never really come to pass; it was this love I wanted to write about.
But to return to the picture, hoping to make clear in the light of what follows why I was so preoccupied with it, even though in my story I wasn't even going to mention the mural or any of the characters in it, I thought I recognized Salmakis in the figure of the nymph hidden in the background; while the name further fueled my already inflamed imagination, and feeling as if I'd been given the key to a puzzle, I thought of yet a third, equally complicated story: this is the one, I thought to myself with some satisfaction; as we know, Hermes had another son — a dubious designation, perhaps, for the issue of his union with Aphrodite, if only because according to some genealogies, the two of them had to have been siblings, children of Uranus the night sky and Hemera the light of day, and not only siblings but twins! for we also know that they were born on the fourth day of the lunar month, and therefore the fruit of their love possessed in equal proportions the features of their parents' faces, bodies, and characters, just as when two ample streams converge and, with much splashing and bubbling, flow into one another, and who can separate water from water! consequently, in their offspring there was an equal measure of what our language calls boy and girl but what coexists quite naturally in some gods, and to make this divine mingling of male and female unmistakable, the child was given a name that contained equal proportions of its father's and mother's names, Hermes and Aphrodite.
By now everyone can guess whom I'm thinking of: yes, the newborn was Hermaphrodites, and immediately after his birth Aphrodite entrusted him to the care of the nymphs of Mount Ida, who properly raised the child — we have here another case of a mother abandoning her child, but once we get over our disillusionment, we must see that for the gods this is only natural: every one of them is complete unto himself, this is what they all have in common, the gods are born democrats, one might say; but to continue with Hermaphrodites' story: he grew to be such a dazzlingly beautiful youth that many mistook him for Eros, thinking that Eros must also have been the fruit of Hermes' loins and Aphrodite's womb, which of course was highly unlikely; at the age of fifteen, Hermaphrodites set out on a journey across all of Asia Minor, and wherever he went he kept up his curious habit of admiring all bodies of water, until he reached Caria, where, on the bank of an enchanting spring, he came upon Salmakis.
And at this point our third story also becomes hopelessly tangled; many versions of it have come down to us, and we can sense how time obscures the actual event, but this is the very nature of tales, to indicate the limits of human memory; but if our inferences are correct, we may imagine that at its source the clear spring formed a small pond, and Salmakis, wearing her turquoise robe, was combing her long hair while looking at her reflection in its surface, and when she managed to comb out the tangles of the night, something was amiss: either she did not like the way her hair looked or ripples may have disturbed the water's mirror, so that she began anew, and then kept on combing her hair; today we would call her mad, for she did nothing but comb her hair, that's how she spent her life, and since she was a fountain-nymph, we can't claim that what she did had neither rhyme nor reason.
And just as in any promising human encounter, it is the first moment, the very instant of catching sight and discovering the unexpected presence of the other, that offers the most insignificant, one might say imperceptible, change — no, it doesn't happen accidentally, for in what follows, the two beings, created for and guided to each other by the gods, would recognize themselves in the other, but since each sees his or her own reflection in the other, they are not compelled to do what is so common in everyday encounters, namely, to step out of themselves and, because of the other, break the boundaries of their own personalities; no, the two separate personalities can penetrate each other while remaining intact; what is usually most delimited is now limitless, and later, looking back on this moment that proved to be so significant, one simply has the feeling that one hadn't noted, most curiously, the very thing one had indeed noted most of all; something like that must have happened with the gods as well: Hermaphroditos looked at the water, and to him Salmakis combing her hair in the water's mirror was nothing more than a feature in the infinitely attractive body of water, another of its details, one might say; he saw it, of course, but so many other things were reflected in that water — sky, rocks, white patches of slowly moving clouds, dense sedge— and to Salmakis, intent on her own reflection and on combing her hair, it was of little importance that besides her face, the flash of her naked arm, and the gleam of her comb, she also saw, beneath her own reflection, the silver streak left by swiftly swimming fish or the golden ridges of sand at the bottom of the pond, so for her the appearance of Hermaphroditos' image in the water meant little more than, let's say, when a water spider, its long legs barely sinking into the surface and creating minuscule ripples in its wake, flitted across her reflected face; at that moment Hermaphroditos was not thinking of anything, he was sad, infinitely sad, as sad as he had ever been, and sadness keeps one from thinking in great detail; not only had creation granted him all at once what it grants us only piecemeal, but as a bonus he also received every possible desire; however, he knew nothing of the exciting little games used to attain those desires, because in him all desire was already attained; we might also say that creation had denied him ordinary gratification because he himself was creation's own gratification — hence the sadness, that infinite sadness which, it so happened, reinforced my suspicion that the figure in the painting was neither Hermes nor Pan, both known to be cheerful and wild, and sadness was not one of Apollo's attributes either, for though he was attracted with equal passion to goddesses and divine youths, nymphs and ordinary shepherd boys, we know of no instance when he would have been at a loss at fusing in himself this dichotomous world; no, sadness came naturally only to Hermaphroditos, it was his special trait, I decided, and this was his great moment: without tearing herself away from her reflection, a surprised Salmakis lowered her comb onto her lap; although each saw the other, they were still not looking directly at each other, and then Salmakis thought (what in later stories became the source of much confusion) she was seeing Eros, that it was his beautiful face gliding over hers like a water spider; and Salmakis was respectful enough to fall in love promptly; she was a kind of ancient bluestocking, but the question of why and how it happened was completely irrelevant at the moment when the two reflections overlapped, eyes over eyes, nose on nose, mouth inside mouth, forehead in forehead, and sad Hermaphrodites now felt what he could never have felt before — his two lips stifled a divine roar! — what an ordinary mortal feels when able to reach out of his self and make contact with another — think of it! — and while everything is perfectly still, there is yet thunder and a raging storm, the rumble of rocks crashing into the sea — think of it! — how great the pleasure when a god tears out of his own boundaries! at that moment Salmakis lost her reflection and Hermaphrodites lost the water; they both lost the very things for whose possession they had been created, and so it should come as no surprise to anyone that they could not remain in one another, as we mortals can, even if the legend speaks of a perfectly consummated love.
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