as I finished painting the walls of the entire chapel, I covered over a wall and began painting again. I could not make my nymphs and goddesses to suit my standards. Their figures were not slender enough for me, and the arms not graceful enough. Their hair was not right. And as for the gardens I rendered, there were not enough kinds of flowers for me to include.
Always, there was that sense of familiarity¡ªthat I had seen this garden that I had known it long before I was allowed by Akasha to drink her blood. I had seen the stone benches in it, I had seen the fountains.
I couldn't shake the sensations of being in it as I painted, so strong was the feeling. I'm not sure it aided me in my work. Perhaps it hurt.
But as I gained skill as a painter, and I did indeed gain skill, other aspects of the work disturbed me.
I was convinced that there was something unnatural in it, something inherently ghastly in the manner with which I drew human figures so nearly perfectly, something unnatural in the way I made the colors so unusually bright, and added so many fierce little details. I was particularly repelled by my penchant for decorative details.
As much as I was driven to do this work, I hated it. I composed whole gardens of lovely mythic creatures only to rub them out.Sometimes I painted so fast that I exhausted myself, and fell down on the floor of the shrine, spending the paralytic sleep of the whole day there, helpless, rather than going to my secret resting place¡ªmy coffin¡ª which was hidden not far from my house.
We are monsters, that is what I thought whenever I painted or looked on my own painting, and that's what I think now. Never mind that I want to go on existing. We are unnatural. We are witnesses with both too much and too little feeling. And as I thought these things, I had before me the mute witnesses, Akasha and Enkil.
What did it matter to them what I did?
Perhaps twice a year I changed their fancy garments, arranging Akasha's gown with fastidious care. I brought new bracelets for her more often and put these on her cold sluggish arms with slow tender movements so as not to insult her by what I did. I fussed with the gold in the black plaited hair of both Parents. I arranged a handsome necklace around the naked shoulders of the King.
I never spoke to either of them idly. They were too grand for that. I addressed them only in prayer.
I was silent in the shrine as I worked, with my paint pots and brushes. I was silent as I sat there peering in frank disgust at what I'd done.
Then one night, after many years of diligence in the shrine, I stood back and tried to see the whole as never before. My head was swimming.
I went to the entrance to take the stance of a man who was new the place, and forgetting utterly the Divine Pair, I merely looked at the walls.
A truth came clear to me in painful clarity. I had painted Pandora. I had painted her everywhere. Each nymph, each goddess, was Pandora. Why hadn't I known?
I was amazed and defeated. My eyes are playing tricks on me, I thought. I wiped them, actually wiped them as a mortal might do, to see all the better and looked again. No. It was Pandora, rendered beautifully everywhere that I looked. Dresses changed and style of hair, yes, and other adornments but these creatures were all Pandora, and I had not seen it until now.
Of course the never ending garden looked familiar. Never mind that. Pandora had little or nothing to do with those feelings. Pandora was inescapable and came from some different fount of sensations. Pandora would never leave me. That was the curse.
I concealed all my paints and brushes behind the Divine Parents as I always did¡ªit would have been an insult to the Father and Mother to leave them¡ªand I went back to Rome.
I had before me several hours before dawn in which to suffer, in which to think of Pandora as never before.
The drunken party was winding down a bit as it always did in the small hours, with a few guests asleep in the grass outside, and others singing together in a small group, and no one took notice of me as I went into my library, and sat