(In Which Persephone Apportions Blame)

(from 07.08.06)

When there is a beautiful boy in their midst, goddesses tend to misbehave.

Adonis was a beautiful boy. Persephone should have known better. She should have read the omens; any child borne of a myrrh tree can only spell trouble (myrrh masks the stench of death and mortals all must die). To be honest, even amongst the gods, there was something a little off about a daughter seducing her father. Someone should have had words with Aphrodite but she fluttered her eyelashes and flaunted her girdle and everyone forgot what they were going to say in a chorus of lovelorn sighs.

Adonis cannot be blamed that Aphrodite never learned; no more can Paris or Hippolytus be blamed for the quirks of the immortal. Aphrodite will blame them all and more, sitting at the near end of the bar with a Cosmopolitan in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

She put Adonis into a chest to keep him safe. Perhaps it seemed like a good idea at the time. In any case, the logic of the love-struck should not be questioned. (It never occurred to her to stick Hephaestus out of sight but, then again, he would never have stood for it.)

It was a very nice chest, she will tell anyone who listens. He didn’t want for anything. Persephone saw to that, she will say breezily, because Persephone was at hand to keep Adonis safe, to treasure him always, to have and to hold him, if Aphrodite would have allowed it. Again, it was Aphrodite’s fault for leaving temptation on the doorstep of another goddess. Persephone was never as cold and unfeeling as she seemed. She has never understood why she could only spend four months of the dreary long year with a boy to whom she had been mother and then lover and all she could rely on were her own charms. No one realises that she is not as unfeeling as she seems.

Adonis would come back to Persephone every eight months with red tulips because he decided they should be her favourite flower; they matched her lips, he said tactfully, and her white cheeks would suffuse with red goddess blood and, of course, she could never stay mad at him. It was not his fault.

Aphrodite brought him to life, Aphrodite brought him to death. Persephone will tell that to all within earshot as she sits at the far end of the bar with a Bloody Mary. That harridan has far too many jealous lovers, she’ll say, and they are no match for Ares’ gun or Ares’ temper. Adonis was too pretty to die, he is to pretty to die but he dies again and again.

It’s Aphrodite’s fault. It always is.