The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid is a replica sculpture that Jubal Harshaw shows Ben Caxton during a conversation about art, courage, and Valentine Michael Smith. Ben sees an object of uncomplicated beauty; Jubal sees a figure who has chosen a life that leaves her between worlds, homesick and in pain. The statue’s force in the scene lies in that difference: beauty invites looking, while Jubal’s interpretation turns looking into an act of recognition.

The sculpture and Ben’s response

Jubal introduces the statue as the one sculpture in his collection that Valentine Michael Smith did not give him. He does not tell Ben why he acquired it, preferring to praise it as one of humanity’s most delightful artistic creations. Ben accepts the simpler account: the figure is “just plain pretty!” His response is not dismissive. It establishes a way of seeing the statue that does not require a hidden message in order to value it.

The exchange distinguishes aesthetic pleasure from interpretation without making them enemies. Jubal agrees that prettiness is sufficient in itself, comparing its appeal to that of kittens and butterflies, but adds that the statue carries further meaning for him. Ben can admire the object without adopting Jubal’s reading; his later preference is to look at the mermaid rather than dwell on the pain Jubal attaches to her.

A figure between land and sea

Jubal describes the mermaid as neither entirely mermaid nor entirely human. She sits on land, where she has chosen to remain, while looking out to sea, separated from what she left behind. He connects her to the story by Hans Christian Andersen and identifies the Copenhagen statue as the work’s point of reference. The replica thus brings a familiar literary figure into the room as both artwork and a prompt for considering the cost of choice.

In Jubal’s account, the mermaid does not regret her decision, but that does not make it painless or reversible. Her human feet are dearly bought, and every step cuts like a knife. The statue gathers the paradox into a still image: she has chosen where to sit, yet cannot simply become what she left or move through her new life without suffering. Her enduring gaze toward the sea makes longing part of the cost rather than proof that the choice was mistaken.

Jubal’s comparison with Mike

Jubal tells Ben that the mermaid reminded him of Mike. He does not claim that Mike knows the Andersen story, or even that Mike would make the same connection; he explicitly suspects that Mike does not know the story, or at least does not know Jubal associates him with it. The identification belongs to Jubal’s private interpretation, and his request that Ben not tell Mike preserves it as an unspoken comparison rather than a message delivered to its subject.

The comparison rests on the mermaid’s in-between condition and the price attached to her choice. Jubal imagines that Mike, like the figure, must walk on knives. The statement gives the statue a double function: it remains an artwork in its own right, but it also offers Jubal an indirect way to think about Mike’s difficult position. The scene does not specify every part of that position through the sculpture; its emphasis is on Jubal’s sense that a consequential choice can be maintained without regret and still demand continual pain.

Beauty, pain, and looking

Ben promises not to tell Mike. Looking again at the replica, he says he would rather simply see the figure than think about the knives. His response leaves the tension intact: the sculpture can sustain both an immediate visual pleasure and a more troubling allegorical reading, and neither cancels the other. Jubal has made suffering legible in the mermaid’s posture and story; Ben resists letting that interpretation replace the pleasure of looking.

The conversation ends not with a settled explanation but with a return to the limits of looking. Jubal calls the mermaid delightful and jokes about coaxing her into bed, prompting Ben to call him evil. Jubal answers in kind, then says that three sculptures in an hour are more than enough; he usually allows himself no more than one a day. The joke punctures the solemnity without erasing the image that came before it. The Little Mermaid remains at once a beautiful object, an emblem of costly choice, and a figure through which Jubal privately imagines Mike’s burden.