Adrienne Rozells

I Sing of Girls Loved by Gods

I came into this room not for the goddess, but for the music. I will learn anything better if there’s a tune to go with it, so when I heard strings I followed them, curious what the notes might teach me this time. I found myself face to face with a goddess. She sat on a red dais that matched the red pants of the other tourist standing next to me. “Testa di Minerva” had no nose, no top lip, and no diadem to declare her godliness. Yet her hair swirled back from her face in perfect waves.

Her head tilted on a slender neck, looking at me with those smooth eyes, all iris, no pupil. I turned to find a small pixelated screen. Instrumental music underscored a woman carefully lasering discoloration off the goddess’s upper lip. With each blast of the laser a red dot appeared and a beep sounded and then all of a sudden what had been splotchy dark became marble white, as if the stone had never faded in the first place. I could feel Minerva watching over my shoulder. Another zap, and I felt it, my leg up on the kitchen counter with an at-home laser hair removal kit stinging my skin, making me sweat. The TV played in the background then too.

Under the goddess’s gaze, the art conservator (just a grad student according to the plaque) became an augur, burning sustenance so that the gods might feed on the smoke. Except in this case there was no meat, just rust being burned away by electromagnetic radiation, offering up the smell of burning ozone. I wondered what Minerva tasted. I thought I’d miss the meat, the blood and fat and bones.

Next the grad student used a thin tool to slice open the back of Minerva’s neck. I shivered. She marked the marble column holding up that wise head the way a plastic surgeon marks a patient’s skin. Minerva’s neck turned to blocks. Those blocks were pulled out to reveal green rot inside her throat. I felt my face scrunch up until the green was cleaned away, and Minerva was refilled with something more suitable. They couldn’t smooth away the lines in her marble face, but at least her insides were clean.

Throughout the process, the grad student’s face folded into a soft smile. She basked in the presence of this massive marble head, which may have once belonged on an acrolith: a statue made up of naked body parts, such as the head, arms, and feet, fastened to a wooden structure dressed up in precious materials. The body appeared expensive and stood tall. No audience could guess at the cheaper structure underneath. In her time, this Minerva watched over a sacred space, seen by only a select few. Now she stands in one of the world’s oldest public museums, at eye-level with mortals such as myself, the excavation of her body playing on a loop.

I turned away from the video and resituated my mind in the Capitoline. I wanted to look the goddess in the eye knowing what she used to be, and what she has on the inside now. The woman in red pants had drifted off. Alone among the artworks, I leaned down and met smooth marble with my stare. Minerva smirked right back as if she already knew me inside out.