To Set the Goldfinch Free

“This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.” -C.S. Lewis

To Jack

I

Pain. It was a word I experienced long before I assembled the letters. The syllable slipping from my lips feels empty, yet reminiscent, like the lingering aroma of wine after the cup has been drained. Stray drops drip down the vessel, coalescing into a puddle that dries into a red stain, a memento of a drink consumed to the dregs.

My memories of the chisel’s first blows creep down the brim of my mind. Clack and strike, clack and strike, hammer against metal, chisel against ivory. Clack and strike. Ravenously the chisel ate as the tooth consumed in rhythmic blows. The gnawing removes what was once part of me. Clack and strike, drops in an empty wine glass. Pain, a dried puddle reminding me of what consumed me.

II

On the striking goes. Like rain the pieces of me crash to the ground, my milk-white form broken and reduced. So much of me is lost to the chisel. Straight lines and smooth surfaces become wondering curves and ragged edges. Who is this so hungry for my ivory? What is this anger driving his chisel? Like thunder driven from heaven his tools crash down to rend my shape.

Yet slowly his storm steadies to a rumble. Lightning still streaks across clouds, and his chisel still strikes a consuming line. But his tempest is tempered. No longer does he crack and hammer; rather, his blows are short and targeted. What his chisel shaves is becoming a shape. Smooth, slender lines emerge under my sculptor’s touch. Though he carves away my block, he doesn’t leave me exposed. Delicately he forms an arm over my supple chest while the other cascades toward my legs bent at a slight angle. My sculptor has forsaken his clamorous strikes to carve curves and layer lines. Though I have no eyes for my own form, his tender touch lingers over what he shaped. His fingers trace the contours of my arms and graze the arch of my back. As his touch moves upward, his hand rests lightly on my cheek. For a lingering moment he tenderly holds my face and whispers, “It is good.”

III

“Oh, dear heart,” my sculptor sighs, “to see your face. Were my eyes a mirror, they would reflect beauty known only by the gods.” His hand rests on my shoulder before he pulls away. He sits on a rickety wooden bench, cradling head between palms.

With delicate touch in the past days, he shaped my ivory to gift me with vision. Light peeked through with every crack he made. When his chisel carved the final strike, a supernova of sight burst upon me, and for the first time I saw the world and him.

Yet this beatific moment introduced me also to his sadness. Achingly he spoke to me, every word a hope, each touch a prayer. “You are the shape fit for my love,” he whispered to me. For days he unfurled the scroll of all his unmet longings.

Today my wistful artist continues to sew his sighs. He ambles to the windowsill and looks up to the afternoon sky. “Had I the wings of Icarus I would fly to your sun just to feel your love melt my cold heart,” my sculptor muses. His eyes rise to meet mine. “Just a moment in your heaven would grant grace to all my remaining earth-bound moments.”

He walks to his workbench and grabs his chisel. “Dear heart, do you know why I’m making you?” he ponders. Had I the power to move my lips, I would tell stories of all our joys yet to come, assure him that our life is not a melting flight to the heavens, but the very apotheosis of affection. Yet I can’t speak. I can only listen to the mourning of my maker.

“Though many women make home on our island,” he says, “none strikes the spark to ignite my love. Maybe I’m a wooden alter soaked in seven sorrows, but the Cretan women seek not passion’s fire. Their wanton ways are a deluge to my desire.” He lets go of his chisel in exchange for hammer. “I pound away your milk-white ivory to implore the gods for a maiden as fair and holy as you.” He drops his tool and rises to examine my face and a hand cups my cheek. “You, dear heart, are my prayer. May your snow-white form rise like incense to Olympus to declare to fair Venus, ‘I am the sum of my sculptor’s longing. Grant him the sacred love for which his heart yearns. His name is Pygmalion, and I, Galatea, am his prayer.’”

Could I shed tears, they would fall free, yet could I smile, I would as well, for the one who opened my eyes gave me a name and told me his.

IV

Pygmalion sets a small iron cage on his workbench. He sits on his stool and leans his head against his hand. As he looks at the cage, a chorus of chirps slip between the bars. Streaks of yellow flit about the tiny jail as the serene song escapes. Who could sing such a melody in prison?

Slowly Pygmalion rises a few inches from his stool to reach toward the cage. With one hand he unlatches the door while the other cautiously cups the song-maker within. He brings the chirruping creature over to me. “This, dear heart,” he said, “is a goldfinch. When all the world slumbers, these little birds rise to greet the sun with the happiest song. No star ever rose to a merrier chorus.” He then opens his hand and sets the golden bird on my milk-white shoulder. Tiny feet hop around the curves and grooves as it chirps cheery notes in my ear.

“This little bird sings with the same joy you have brought me,” my sculptor says with a soft smile. Yet no sooner than the last syllable leaves his lips, the goldfinch launches off my shoulder to fly free through the open window. Like lightning Pygmalion’s present streaks away to azure heights. With all the force my mind could muster, I imagine myself catching the fugitive fowl and grasping him so tight he’d never soar away again. Yet my arms remain stuck, petrified limbs carved only to be seen and never used. I can receive, but never give. So, I grieve the escaped goldfinch and the love I could never return to my maker.

I remember the other trinkets and baubles Pygmalion brought me before the bird. On the left side of his workbench is a single-file line of stones smoothed by the ocean’s tide. Though these pebbles litter the beaches of Crete, Pygmalion selected these six to be the first I’d see. One day he burst through the door of his workshop, a boyish grin streaking his face. “The ocean!” he shouted with breath he was trying to catch. “If only you could see it,” he wistfully panted.

The winded sculptor then ran up to me and held his prize inches from my eyes. “This,” he spouted, “is a beach rock. Day by day and night by night it soaks in the ocean’s rising and falling tide.” For silent seconds he kept the pebble aloft to my face. Then he bounded to his workbench where he laid six of these stones in an orderly line. As he placed them in increasing size, he said, “You are much like these pebbles, dear heart. Once they were jagged and uncut, fragmented pieces from a greater mountain. With some mysterious force, nature hewed these rocks from their boulder and cast them to the seashore. There the waves lapped hourly against their rugged surface until they were polished to the smooth orbs you see now.”

Though he gazed at the ordered stones as he spoke, I knew his words were meant for me. Intently he then rose and came to me. His eyes locked in mine as his hand ran over my ivory hair, stroke after stroke, like a stone in the tide. “If you could only see the form of you I have treasured in my heart. Neither chisel nor hammer can convey it one a simple stroke. Only the carving of hours and days will yield the beauty you will be.”

He then stopped and with both his hands, he grabbed mine. “But a moment will come, I promise you this, dear heart, when the final strike will crash and you will rise from your pedestal, a milk-white beauty worthy of Olympus’s halls.” O for him to see my heart swell at this promise! I longed for the day where I could raise my arms by the strength of my own desire, lay my hand upon his shoulder, stare into his eyes, and shed every tear joy would lend me. My life, my love, my heart would be the gifts I offer him. But until that day, I wait with tears stored tightly for his promise.

V

Down comes the rain, a deluge douring the day. Biting wind gusts through the open window. Pygmalion sidles up to the hearth and swaddles himself in a cloak. Reflections of leaping flame dance in the sculptor’s eyes. Intently he watches the choreography of their crackle.

Hues of orange and red flicker across my milky ivory. The kaleidoscope of color seems to set me ablaze. But Pygmalion’s gaze is captive to the hearth, his thoughts smoldering like logs. “Had my arm the strength of flesh and blood,” I sigh inwardly, “instead of this cold stillness, I would enfold Pygmalion in my arms and warm his cold gaze.” But steady as stone I remain.

With the rain still pattering outside, I watch my maker in his own vigilant gaze at the hearth. A small droplet soon coalesces in the corner of his eye. Slowly it traces a downward line on the contour of his face, leaving a moist trail in its wake. Then it splashes to the dirty floor. Quickly the sculptor shoots up from his seat and dashes to the door. Into the torrential night I watch my sculptor flee.

VI

A single spark leaps from the smoldering hearth. Alone it ascends, only to burn out before its apex, and a single gray ash falls to the heap of other dead sparks. The once blazing hearth is now a graveyard for extinguished flames.

Between me and this moribund fire stands naught but empty air. Where my sculptor’s hands once held me, bare space is now the only embrace I receive. How I long to feel his caress on my cheek or hear his honeyed voice sooth me. Yet into the night-blackened storm he fled, and I, immobile memorial to impossible love, remain alone, a spark cast from broken love leaping into the empty air around me. Pain clips my ascent and stifles my ardor. To the pyre of dying loves I fall. O Pygmalion, dearest heart of my heart, stretch forth your hand and halt my descent. Defy gravity and decay that we may love again! O Venus, love holy and true, vouchsafe, if all things you can grant, my sculptor’s smothered heart shall beat again.

VII

Slight and slow I see the door open. A set of fingers gingerly grips the edge, pushing back the partition to reveal my sculptor paler than ivory. Pygmalion hovers beneath the lintel, blanching with disbelief at his workshop. With cautious, heavy step he moves toward me until his eyes are inches from mine. Tears pool in his ducts as he gazes at me with watery look. He cups my cheeks in his palms and whispers, “My dearest heart. Can it be? Can this cold ivory live?” Had I a heart that could beat, it would burst through my ivory chest and there upon the organ my sculptor would see his face engraved. Yet I remain silent and still, a songless goldfinch locked in her cage.

“When last night I fled to Jupiter’s fury poured out,” Pygmalion recounted, “I found shelter under the eaves of Venus’s temple. The storm and the deluge boxed me in. Throughout the night I whispered prayers to heaven, though thunder consumed all sound. ‘Vouchsafe, O gods,’ I bleakly implored, ‘if all things you can grant, my bride shall be the living likeness of my ivory girl’ (for I dared not presume life’s breath inspiring your cold frame).” As that last word drips from his lips, he turns away from me and sits down with his back to me at the smoldering hearth. He grasps a poker and absentmindedly shuffles the ash.

“And then,” he breathes in a silent whisper, “Somnus, the lord and giver of sleep, answered my cries with heavy slumber. When he returned to Olympus, morning came with bright sun to dispel the storm.”

Then he rises from the dying hearth fire and walks to the open window and continues, “Bleary-eyed I gazed upon the shining world before me, free to leave Venus’s eaves. As I strolled the plaza fronting her temple, throngs of worshippers danced and gamboled about. Tunics twirled in their gyration and a kaleidoscope of streamers colored my sight, a rainbow promising a bright day ahead. But these pious dancers were satellites revolving around a magnificent bonfire. Despite the sun’s ardent blaze, Venus’s flame dared burn brighter. Weaving through the orbiting worshippers, I approached Love’s fire. With my eyes lifted to the conflagration, I lifted my prayer once more. ‘Vouchsafe, o gods,’ I spoke with head bowed and eyes furrowed, ‘if all things you can grant, my bride shall be the living likeness of my ivory girl.’ As I prayed these words, gentle heat enveloped me, summoning my gaze upwards. And my eyes rose to meet a most holy sight. Three times did the flame leap high and burn brilliant. In this thrice-lifted fire I saw the face of Love beaming on me.”

With a rhythm I learned first from chisel and then from rain, my sculptor’s words set a steady beating in my center, an external sensation now within me. As my new heart leaps, Pygmalion slowly walks to me. He lays one hand on my arm. Heat pulsates through my cold ivory. His other cups my cheek, but his fingers press softly into me where once a hard surface stopped affection. And then he places his lips against mine, the door to the goldfinch’s cage swings open, and the tiny bird flies free.