The sculptures on the island of Naxos.
Wednesday July 20, 2011
It is said that over on the windward side of Naxos there lives a sculptor of superhuman skill, whose stilled unbreathing creations can fool not only the eye but even the touch, for a moment, until the alabaster stone beneath one’s fevered hand fails to blush and warm with the heat of blood.
It is also said that mothers marry their daughters at an early age to husbands away on other islands, and that sons who threaten to grow into handsome men are pressed into spending long days and nights at sea in fishing boats. It is said this is done because beautiful young men and women are prone to disappear in the pine forests along the spiny ridge of the island of Naxos. It is said the sculptor carves his remarkable statues in the likenesses of those who’ve vanished. A memento, he says, if asked. Or so it’s said. These islands have many such folktales, that grow, no doubt, in the telling.
But I do know that a woman of uncommon beauty stepped from a storm-battered merchant ship yesterday, and took a room above the taverna. Her face was empty and she spoke to no one but already the black-garbed fishwives whisper how she’d lost her husband to a beautiful witch from Sikyon, and she’s come here to still her broken heart. This morning dressed only in a loose white robe and sandals and carrying a skin of wine she set off up the dusty goat-track into the forest.
I wonder if she will ever come back down to pay for her room.