Just Delta Persei, please. Its magnitude?
"That doesn't count."
Do answer, then. I haven't forgotten Calyxa's mistake in I-F-1. Who did the Chemmis stonework, by the way?
"If you want to make me happy, please forget both picture and artist. Her subject matter, anyhow, I remind you, came from me. As for the star you vulgarly inquire of: its magnitude is sufficient and fairly constant, you may take my word, as it stands directly in my line of sight all night long till the end of time. More than that you'd be in sorry taste to ask, since for all you know I may be with you from the neck up only."
Not even to be able to see you! Just from the corner of my eye I glimpse a twinkle now and then. . You're not winking at someone out there?
"Really, Perseus, it is my turn! For your information — but I'm counting this, so I get to ask two in a row — my right eye, unlike your precious Delta P., has a variable magnitude. If I'm winking at anyone, it's the whole wretched world down there, which I'm glad to be out of. Back to your story-telling now: much as I et cetera, isn't it just possible the style is too mannered?"
Excellent Medusa, sweet salvatrix: leave such questions. I don't mind sleeping with a critic now and then, but I wouldn't spend eternity with one. That's two. Three?
"You're the monster in this ménage! Do reflect, darling, that if the Perseid weren't my favorite fable I'd have starred us in a different one, with a more nattering role for me and a less for you. Now I will ask another literary question: that business just before the climax, where Andromeda flings herself between you and Danaus. . You'll agree it's melodramatic?"
Heavens yes. In fact, from this perspective, a clumping klitsch. As is the whole story nowadays, I daresay. But that's how it was, and at the time we were archetypes, not stereotypes; reality, not myth. Your own stonework, so realistic in its day; I'll bet it's legendary now. So it goes.
"I yield."
And I pass, until you've done questioning my narrative technique.
"I do have one more tiny one. The auricle-ventricle business at the story's climax? I'm not sure of that metaphor, quite."
No more was I then of my heart.
"And now?"
Now it's my turn. Let's see. Why does Cassiopeia spend half the night with her head in the ocean?
"If you could ask her, she'd say she's washing her hair. Athene made me put her where she'd have to soak her head now and then, to mollify the Nereids. Your heart's not in that question."
Well. What ever happened to Cousin Bellerophon?
"That's another story. Look, I'm counting two halfhearted questions as one whole. Do ask a real one; you've only four left."
Calyxa?
"Must you, Perseus? No question."
Calyxa.
"It was brutal of you, darling! Brutal to jump from my arms into hers, when I'd rescued you; brutal again to compare us in bed, as if my awkwardness were anything but innocence, loving innocence, which you should have treasured! Don't reply. And brutal finally to dwell on her the way you did and do. Don't you think I have feelings?"
No question. I'm more or less contrite. But look here: in the first instance, don't forget I thought I'd lost you. .
"Your own fault."
Quite. In the second, although my friend Calyxa isn't at the heart of the story, it's her fate — her immortal part's fate — to spend eternity at its navel, where it and I both came to light. Have you done something dreadful with her?
"Sweetheart, you are a perfect prick!"
R.S.V.P.
"Only if you promise you'll never ask this question again for all eternity. One of the jewels, if you must know, in one of the manacles on one of Andromeda's wrists — make it her navel, you're such a fetishist — happens to be a spiral nebula, and that nebula happens to be your little friend. It also happens to be quite striking, I'm sorry to report, like fossil ammonite done in gold: in fact, a smasher. On the other hand, you may be sure I've seen to it she's simply oodles of light-years from us; out of our galaxy altogether."
Thank you, Medusa.
"Don't mention it. Now tell me, P.P. — "
"Prince Perseus?"
"A pretty presumption. How comes it to pass, sweet — what all this lit-crit's been building up to — that in a drama whose climax and dénouement consists ostensibly of your choice however belated and three-quarter-hearted, of Yours Truly for eternity's second half, the two female leads are Andromeda and What's-Her-Name, that bit of fluff in your Egyptian omphalos? That strikes me as a weakness in your plotting, to say the least."
The less said the better: they're the ones I speak of; you're the one I chose.
"I withdraw all restrictions. Ask me anything."
How long have we been here, Medusa?
"Can't tell. What you're really asking me is — "
Yes. All this about mortal and immortal parts. Out there, in the world, are Andromeda and Phineus. .
"Truly, Perseus, I don't know. And truly, do excuse me, that isn't our affair."
I withdraw the question.
"Sorry: you touched the piece. And my intuitions tell me you'd better ask your Number Seven before I my Six."
Beloved voice; sweet Medusa whom I cannot hold and couldn't see even when I could: not long since, you exhorted me to forget panel I-F-1 in a certain mural in some temple along the Nile, together with its first-draughtsman; but our arrangement here, whereof yourself are sole designer, suggests that that same scene may be still graved in your own imagination. What have you done to us? In what condition are we? Have you indulged yourself in a monstrous martyrdom to gratify what would be in me a perverse, unspeakable vanity? I retch, I gag at that idea! To see nothing; to feel nothing of you but your hair in my left hand! Why is it I look at empty space forever, a blank page, and not at the woman I love?
"Let me assume you mean myself. ."
I'm not being clever, Medusa.
"No more am I. At that last moment in the banquet hall — it's not easy for me to say these words, Perseus — when you discovered me and kissed me open-eyed. . what I saw reflected in your pupils was a Gorgon."
In the name of Athene, love, don't forget her conditions! Eyes are mirrors!
"I've forgotten nothing. Quite possibly it was a false reflection. Just as possibly your tricky sister never un-Gorgoned me at all. ."
What an idea!
"I entertain it with deadly calm, let me assure you. But even assuming you'd abandoned your childish wish for rejuvenation — "
You know I had!
"— and granting a measure of vanity in my own wish — that you'd love me enough to throw everything overboard to have me. ."
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please.
". . it nonetheless remains a distinct and distinctly unpleasant third possibility that your kiss was in complete bad faith: an act not of love but of suicide, or a desperate impulse to immortality-by-petrification. In that event, I revealed my 'beauty' to the wrong man and became a Gorgon forever."
Pause. Hear how quietly, how calmly I reply. To give that unmentionable hypothesis one moment out of eternity, which is one more than it deserves: suppose it true. How would you feel?
"Sorry: your questions are all used up, and I haven't come to mine. When you opened your eyes, Perseus; when you saw me. . what exactly did you see?"
My Medusa: I've thanked you for the pretty memory of Andromeda; for my own estellation; for all the selfless, supererogatory gifts you've showered on me, from bright Calyxa to a four-star likeness of my crescent blade. I even thank you for unstoning Phineus, and wish him and his companion well. Now listen and believe me, if there's any truth in words: it wasn't you who discovered your beauty to me, but I who finally unveiled it to myself. And what I saw, exactly, when I opened my eyes, were two things in instantaneous succession, reflected in yours: the first was a reasonably healthy, no-longer-heroic mortal with more than half his life behind him, less potent and less proud than he was at twenty but still vigorous after all, don't interrupt me, and grown too wise to wish his time turned back. The second, one second after, was the stars in your own eyes, reflected from mine and rereflected to infinity — stars of a quite miraculous, yes blinding love, which transfigured everything in view. Perhaps you find the image trite; I beg of you not to say so.