The Melancholy Korean

It’s an odd thing, this.  Bachelor life, I mean.  I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it.  I am sure, though, I don’t like it very much, but one can’t quarrel with Fate, I suppose.  Make do and get on, my grandmother used to tell us.  She was quite something, that woman.  Rather funny the things I remember about her, the strangest details.  Like her spectacular posture, if you would permit me to use such an excitable adjective to describe the angle of her back to the floor, or the tiny pearl necklace with the jade pendant she liked to wear during dinner.  A veritable tornado woman, always doing things, always in motion, yes, helping others, starting groups—reading groups, cooking and gardening clubs, even knitting circles, though she hated knitting—going on protest marches, organizing parties, first onto the dance floor, last to leave church, she was that woman.  Religious, but devilishly funny, wickedly funny, in private and among close friends and family.  Make do and get on.  It’s advice she practiced, I did not want for a role model growing up, but, of course, and this you know, or at least, you suspect it about me, despite our relatively brief acquaintance, I’m not as strong as she was, and this is all just a long way of saying the last month has not been very easy for me.

I’m glad you’re still here.  Dear, sweet guests.  If only I could express myself like Melancholy, I would tell you how much your presence has meant to me.  I apologize for darting in and out.  I sometimes feel like a butterfly on the lip of a flower.  There has been so much going on, too much, and I have forgotten, on several occasions, that we have guests.  Prune sometimes has reminded me to check in on you, but, well, it’s all been so hectic, so strange, so odd, these past few days. 

May I confess something to you?  

Ah, thank you.  You are so kind to listen.  You do have good manners.  My grandmother, I know she would not have approved of this little confession, in public and among strangers her manner was, well, never rude exactly, but glacial would not be an inaccurate description, but she would have approved, I know, of your good manners in indulging my weaknesses.  To those with good manners, all is forgiven.

My confession:  despite appearance to the contrary, you’ve just met him, so I can’t very well expect you to understand completely what I mean, but I fear Melancholy is very ill.  Depressed.  Possibly suicidal, although the doctor was satisfied on that score, so I should be too.  Melancholy has hardly spoken to me since Felicity left, and he stays in his room all day.  It’s true the doctor ordered him to bed, but Dr. Coffin is no longer here, and he has taken Melancholy off the “suicide watch,” but Melancholy will not leave his room.  Prune brings the meals up to him, and I guess he eats dinner sitting on his bed with the food on his lap, or something awful like that, while I must sit down here and also eat alone.

That’s what I’ll never get used to.  Eating alone.  You see, we used to have dinner together, the three of us, every night.  That was one of those principles Melancholy had and which he strictly enforced: families eat dinner together.  Of course, we were hardly a family, the three of us, I mean, no one could mistake us for a family, of course, I mean, I’ve known Melancholy since elementary school, and we are great friends, and we even went to the same university, but we aren’t exactly blood relations, and Felicity he’s known only for the past few years, and she only started living here, about six months ago, and only part of the time, since Melancholy insisted she keep her apartment in the city, but he called us a family, and families eat dinner together, so we ate dinner together, every night.

I don’t blame her for leaving, you understand.  It’s not easy to have someone disappear like that, and she was so afraid something had happened to him.  The doctor and I tried to dissuade her, but Felicity insisted we file a police report, and once the great public safety bureaucracy is in motion, a missing person report and such, the whole thing takes on an ominous tone.  I wanted to tell her about Trieste, but of course I couldn’t tell her, she was dating Melancholy, they were living together, if only part of the time, but still. I respect limits. 

***

My thought was simple. Nothing I said would comfort her, and I knew Trieste would only make her feel worse, even though it should have made her feel better. So I said nothing. But for you, dear, sweet guests, if you promise to keep the secret… What am I saying? How can I keep anything from you, you who have been so kind as to listen to my confession and who have showed by your patience the true meaning of Christian love? So, between ourselves, sotto voce I think is the Italian term, let me whisper the story into your ear.

I can’t remember the summer, it was when Melancholy and I were still at university, but the particular year slips my mind. Sigh. I am constantly reminded of my ever approaching mortality by my inability to remember anything. Melancholy and I had been in Venice a few days, staying at the Gritti in San Marco, a terribly inappropriate hotel for two undergraduates — luxurious is how the guidebooks would probably put it (an ugly word, that one, don’t you think?) — I don’t mean to be snobby, but it was rather over the top. The Gritti, though, was the only hotel Melancholy knew in Venice, I think Melancholy’s grandfather stayed there in the years before the war, and Melancholy’s father picked up the habit from him. 

I did have a lovely time in Venice, I must admit, the luxury hotel was a pleasant departure from the severity of the New England style—I mean, mostly, the furniture, and, in particular, the bed, of our respective colleges at university. But Melancholy did not like the crowds and the heat was not pleasant, that year in May was particularly hot in the Veneto and strangely, although the lira was not strong, it was never very strong, I guess, but that was a particularly depressed time for Italian currency, and Melancholy was worried about spending too much money and kept saying how much of a disappointment Venice was to him, how much he wanted to leave. 

I was happy to travel wherever he wished to go, Melancholy has such good taste, you know, should you ever need a recommendation for restaurants or galleries or trips or even ideas, you must ask him, but I will admit my heart fell a little, with disappointment, I should hasten to add, rather too young for a heart attack then (while not the most diligent student, I do try to keep my metaphors unmixed, within reasonable boundaries, since it is the least anyone with half a brain like me can do), when he suggested we visit Trieste.

***

We took the morning train from Venice, and there is a moment near Trieste when the train makes a corner and, suddenly, as if from a dream, out of the green hills and trees, in the window of the train appears a white castle, a 19th century folly built by an Austrian archduke, and I will never forget this, his reaction was so strong, how the sight of Castello Miramare affected Melancholy.

“You are ok, Melancholy?”

He had been writing in his journal for most of the two hour trip, but now, he was just staring out the window, in silence, his pen pressed into the pages of the notebook. He did not respond.

“Melancholy?”

When he looked back at me, I was shocked. His face - it was like, and I’m terribly sorry to speak in clichés, but I can do no better - it was like he had seen a ghost. His skin was pale, and his eyes had that faraway look, perhaps you have seen it yourself, even in the few days you have known him, it was like he had been transported to another place and time. He was looking at me, but he was not looking at me, if that paradox can ever hope to make any sense. His hands were trembling.

“Carlotta.”

I knew better than to respond.

“Carlotta,” he whispered again.

Melancholy closed his eyes and started squeezing his left hand with his right. Carlotta, again and again. I had no idea who she was.

On balance, Melancholy’s presence, I am speaking now of his corporeal, not spiritual, presence, is reassuring and strong. Whenever I am feeling anxious, dinner or a drink with Melancholy, or even a few words, flecked with his inimitable indignation (rather nice alliteration, don’t you think?), is enough to help me feel calm again. All is right with the world, as long as Melancholy can rail against some injustice or tomfoolery or pretension. Woe to the one who would take up airs in front of him! He is unfailingly polite in public, of course, but in conversation, well, like my grandmother, he can be wickedly funny.

But the chanting and rubbing hands like that, it must have hurt terribly, he was squeezing his hand so tightly, I don’t know what happened, but as suddenly as that castle appeared in the window of the train, a dark cloud came over my heart. I can’t describe it. I was scared. Frightened. It’s odd to me how these words for fear seem so attenuated compared to the emotion that they are asked to describe. Terrified. Well, all of the above.

I leaned forward and grabbed his hands.

“What happened? Who is Carlotta?” I asked. My voice betrayed my concern.

He held up his hand and pressed his finger against the window. Miramare was behind us now, and all I could see was the endless blue water of the Gulf of Trieste.

It was still early when we arrived, perhaps just past noon, too early to check in. We decided to leave our bags at the hotel, the aptly named Grand Hotel Duchi d’Aosta. I guess Melancholy’s concerns about money were short-lived, or perhaps just trumped by his desire “not to have to worry about it.” I never learned what “it” was. 

“It’s so typical, isn’t it?” 

We were standing outside the hotel.

“It’s so typical of the Italians. This piazza is a fucking disaster, Harry.”

“I don’t know, Melancholy. I like it.”

He wiped a teardrop of sweat that had formed on his neck using a handkerchief. Melancholy refused to go anywhere without at least three of them, all brightly colored and never ironed, stuffed into the pockets of his pants and jacket. This one was gingham check. That’s an odd word. Gingham. 

“Come on, Harry. I’ll bet you like that horrid monument to Victor Emmanuel in Rome, too.”

I wonder if it’s related to ginger. Too much ginger gives one gingivitis.

“Which monument is that?”

I wonder if that’s true.

“Christ, Harry. Altare della Patria.”

I had no idea what monument Melancholy meant. But I knew that under no circumstance was I supposed to answer Melancholy’s question.  He had that tone in his voice I’ve learned to recognize as a warning to stop speaking. If I agreed with him, he might leave the subject alone, but one misspoken judgment, and I would never hear the end of it.

“Can you think of anything more pompous? Altar of the Fatherland? Are you fucking kidding me?”

It was coming now. The big blow-up.

“These Northern Italians want so badly to be taken seriously. It’s undignified how desperate they are for respectability. We get it. You’re not all lazy mafiosi. But what do they do?” 

Another rhetorical question.

“They all pretend to be German.”

I took a step away from him. His hands started making strong, jerky movements.

“I’ll bet this fucking piazza was designed by a German.”

We both looked out over the marble buildings in the piazza. Each one looked like a palace. Very imposing.

“Albert Speer could have designed this. I mean, it’s right up a Nazi’s alley. Just like that eyesore in the middle of Rome.”

“Don’t you think…”

“A brilliant momument to pretension, hypocrisy, pomposity and hideous taste.”

***

Melancholy was insistent we have lunch in the Città Vecchia, which I assumed meant the old part of the city. It’s always a good bet with these European cities, isn’t it? What I mean is… oh, never mind. It’s a banal observation. I must remember to check myself in front of company. What would my grandmother say? I fear I may have already tried your patience with my circumlocutious manner of telling this story. I can only ask for your forbearance, dear guests, sweet and patient and loving guests. My mind has a tendency to wander. 

Yes, alas, back to the story. Melancholy’s knowledge of Trieste astonished me. He even had the exact name of the cafe, Pirona something, and he must have known exactly where it was. I could barely keep up with him, he was walking so forcefully through the streets. He didn’t pause to double-check street names or even to consult a map. The cat had silenced Melancholy, so he wasn’t saying much now, just taking long strides that cut across the pavement.

About the cat. Didn’t I mention the cat? Stupid of me. You see, it was the cat that finally stopped his ranting about Nazis and Italians and bad architecture and someone named Primo Levi—it lasted a while, this one—and only the cat stopped him.

You must know, in case you ever see him, that Melancholy hates cats. He absolutely detests them. If he ever had the power of God, he told me once, he would exterminate all the cats in the world, cleanse the Earth of them.

This was a time when Melancholy was drinking heavily, and he was prone to… well, I shouldn’t really say. Strong outbursts, if you understand what I mean. He was never violent, exactly, except… well, now I really shouldn’t say. I don’t wish to hold anything back from you, of course, you are our guests and that would be rude of me, but you must understand my position. Discretion is the better part of valor and all that. Let me just say it was a difficult period for all of us, a period I know Melancholy deeply regrets.

I can’t say I blame Sybil, of course. What that poor girl had to put up with. I mean, Melancholy had become totally outrageous. But now you see what is happening? My mind is wandering again. These are stories for another time, yes?

We both wanted to take a closer look at the Adriatic Sea, no, no, not the Adriatic, the Gulf of Trieste, I mean, and we were walking near the ferry terminal on the main pier, when suddenly, from behind one of the garbage cans, a cat jumped out in front of us. I nearly died. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’ve never understood why people are so embarrassed to admit fear. I was shaking in my boots, as they say.

But this cat. I’d never seen anything like it. It immediately began hissing at Melancholy! Absolutely an absurd sight. But true. I swear on the memory of my grandmother. It was a horrid screeching sound. And Melancholy? Well, he hated cats, remember, he wasn’t afraid of them. I could see his hand tighten around the Herald Tribune he had just bought, and I swear, I thought I heard him hissing back. 

That’s ridiculous, of course. But sometimes, I wonder.

You want to know about Sybil. No, no, dear, sweet guests, you don’t need to deny it, my feelings won’t be hurt. I can see it in your impatience with my endless story, I can hear the questions on your lips, Who is Sybil? What did Melancholy do to her? Did he hit her? 

Alas, this is all my fault. Here I am trying to tell you a story about Trieste, a story that I wanted, but couldn’t, tell Felicity in order to make her feel better about Melancholy’s disappearance, so there I was, and now here I am, opening up more cans of worms only to confuse you and prolong the agony of listening to this story. (Can of worms is not a very a pretty metaphor, is it? But perhaps that’s the point.)

Sybil. I don’t even know where to begin. Dear guests, had I known where to begin, I might have done better at school. As it was… well. I know you are not here to listen to Harry Best prattle on and on, but I do confess that I wish I had brains like Melancholy to entertain you, but, I’m afraid I was not the most attentive scholar at university. I did like the old buildings, and the lovely elms, and afternoon teas at the Master’s house, all those books in the library were so beautiful, but, you see, when it came time to read some of those old books, those couches in the reading rooms were so comfortable, it would be after dinner, and the rooms so warm, so you can see how one might have been inclined to a more gently relaxing activity than study. It would have taken the will-power of a greater man than myself to resist the power of those couches, and I, of course, could never resist.

“Riddle me this, Syb.” 

“God, you think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

“I make myself laugh, yes.”

“Very amusing, Melancholy, comme toujours, but I’m going out now, so…”

“No, please. I need to talk.”

“Oh? You do? I’m terribly sorry to hear that.”

(silence)

“A remarkable coincidence, don’t you think so, Melancholy?  Felicity leaves you, and now you call me. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Just one question.”

“This conversation stopped being amusing at ‘hello.’ But, wait, you couldn’t be bothered to say ‘hello,’ could you?”

“If someone is trying to prevent a fu… I mean, something awful from happening, but the only way he can prevent the awful thing is by doing something that makes it even worse, should he do?”

“Try this, Melancholy. Repeat after me. ‘Hello, how are you? It’s been a long time. Let me apologize for being a jerk.’”

“Sybil. Please.”

‘I’m so glad to hear you’re doing well.”

“Dam— I mean, please, Syb. I need this.”

“God, you’re so tiresome.”

(silence)

“I see you’re spending too much time with your broker friends these days. I’m sure Felicity would be happy to hear that.”

“Please. Seriously.”

“And thank you for not cursing around me.  I admire a man who can restrain himself.”

(silence)

“I do distinctly remember, however, you did not extend that courtesy to me, the last time we saw each other.  That was a lovely evening, Melancholy.  I don’t know if I ever thanked you for dinner.  A first for me. Being humiliated in a restaurant.  Le Bernardin, even.  You certainly have a flair for the dramatic.”

(quietly)

“You’re the only one left I can talk to.”

“The compliment is gratifying, Melancholy.  But I think I mentioned I have plans this evening.”

“Bitch.”

“There he is! You know, Melancholy, in the turbulent times we live in, it’s so nice to know some things never change.”

“How do you know Trieste so well, Melancholy?”

He didn’t respond at first.  No, he was huffing and puffing away, focused on climbing the main hill that overlooks the city. Smokers, you know, don’t have particularly wonderful lung capacity, and Melancholy was concentrating on the walk and didn’t hear me. I asked him again.

“I don’t, Harry. No one does.”

We were walking close to the church dedicated to San Giusto (Melancholy told me later this meant “Saint Just”) when I had the epiphany.  I felt like a fool for not realizing the truth sooner.

“One of the city’s best journalists,” Melancholy continued, “Mazzi, once wrote that to know Trieste is impossible.  We can only love her. Capire Trieste, da lontano e da vicino, è difficile. Forse la si può solo amare, e basta. Can’t you see, Harry? We don’t need to understand something to love it.”

We don’t need to understand something to love it. Oh, sweet and patient guests. He didn’t need to say anything more. I knew why Melancholy had a photographic image of Trieste imprinted on his mind.  

James Joyce had lived in Trieste. It was so obvious. Melancholy loved Joyce and is there a writer more impossible to understand? And, now, I knew exactly where we were going to lunch, I knew exactly what that cafe Pirona or something was—some horrid working man’s cafe that the crazy Irishman probably liked to frequent. Melancholy, you will not be surprised to learn, preferred to eat in very nice restaurants, unless… how do I put this. Unless they fit a particular aesthetic sensibility, if that’s not too precious a way of saying it. 

Did I say frequent? Well, perhaps, more accurately, Mr. Joyce liked to get drunk in. The Irish, you know.  

I should explain before you think me a terrible snob. I’m part Irish myself, and of course I know not all Irish people are drunkards. I don’t really like alcohol so much myself. And I don’t like to announce this to just anyone, but since you are our guests, and such well-mannered ones—really, I should think your children must be angels and sweet paragons of good behavior, (i must ask, do you pick them up when they cry? Because my grandmother thought the best way to teach little children good character was not to hold them so much, especially when they cried without reason)—but where was I? Oh yes, I know you will not think I am boasting if I tell you that my family has a rather famous connection to Stephen Dedalus. 

One of those great, great uncles, or something. (I can never understand family trees beyond the first couple generations.) Richard Best. Richard Irvine Best. Lovely name, yes? He was the director of the National Library in Dublin in the years before the war, and one of our family’s great heroes. 

You don’t know him, do you? 

He was friends with Stephen MacKenna in Paris, and they used to read Mallarmé together. (Do you know Mallarmé? A strange poet, very odd, impossible to understand—appropriate, yes, since we are speaking of obscurantist writers. Come close. I’ll give you a taste.)

JAMAIS

          QUAND BIEN MÊME LANCÉ DANS DES CIRCONSTANCES

ÉTERNELLES

                     DU FOND D’UN NAUFRAGE

(Shall I translate? I don’t know French so well, but Melancholy used to recite this “poem”—I hope you will not think me unsophisticated, if I put quotes around that word, since it doesn’t look like any poem that I ever studied in school, Shakespeare mostly, but it was a very traditional school—but since he recited it so much to me, I’ve come to know the meaning, almost as well as I do my own grandmother: “Never / even when launched in eternal / circumstances / from the depths of a shipwreck.” As I said, a very odd poet. An odd poem. Please don’t ask me to explain, it seems unfinished to me.)

Well, but back to my relation and Stephan MacKenna. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of either of them. If Richard Best weren’t a relation, I certainly wouldn’t have known who the director of the National Library was, either, or his friends in Paris. Stephen MacKenna was a great translator of Plotinus. Actually, this is how we first met Dr Coffin at university. Ken is a wonderful collector of books, and he had formidable taste even as an undergraduate, and he had heard, through the “grapevine” (please, one day, when it’s your turn to speak, explain how one can hear anything through grapevines—I strain to understand how the one came to signify the other) well, he had heard, anyway, that I owned a copy of Plotinus, signed by Stephen MacKenna, and he came to visit us and wouldn’t let us alone until he heard the whole story. That’s how he and Melancholy became great friends—goodness, this brings to mind those heady first weeks at school, you wouldn’t have believed it, how many parties there were in New Haven that first month, “happy, golden bygone years,” and all that—but, yes, back to the story, where was I?

***

“Sybil, please.”

“Who is this?”

“Sybil. I’m begging you.”

“What are you begging, exactly?”

“I’m so lonely.”

“Can’t sleep, is it?”

(silence)

“I need to see you.”

“Need or want, Melancholy? You used to lecture me on the difference, I remember. Such lovely times. You certainly know how to entertain a girl.”

“Please.”

“You’re lonely, Melancholy?” 

“Get a dog.”

***

I remember the name of the cafe now: Pasticceria Pirona. And the rest of the story is coming back very strong now—I can almost see the desserts in my mind’s eye. Mind’s eye. I’ve always found that a gross expression. Mind’s eye. Not very stimulating to the appetite.

But back to the story, yes, back before the tides of memory wash me away completely. I must say it’s funny how memories work. I think they’re called madeleines, those cakes that provoke the great remembrance of things past. (No, I haven’t read it.  Before I could ever start, its length always defeated me.  That row of volumes, quite intimidating. I declined to stand on the field of honor in that particular duel.)  I can see one of them now. The cafe had an excellent version of them.

Pasticceria Pirona, it turned out, dear guests, was not a working man’s bar. I had thought we would be eating at a dimly lit cafe, filled with Union Jacks and Old Men Just Back From The Sea, who played checkers in a corner and ogled the not-so-young serving women. Or perhaps I don’t know James Joyce as well as my family connection to Stephen Dedalus should warrant. But Pirona turned out to be an elegant little coffee shop that served sweets and cakes and madeleines to customers best described as very nice. Very nice, of course, is supposed to connote a certain, well, shall we say, particular background?

(Incidentally, very nice was an expression Melancholy liked to use at university. He taught me the full range of meaning those two words could have with different inflections. But his favorite was the more cryptic, “OK, OP.” Whenever someone walked by Melancholy did not approve of, he would whisper to me, “not OK, OP.” Had a nice ring to it. And now you are going to ask me what that expression means, and I must demure. Perhaps another time. I don’t mean to hold anything back from you, but we will never get to the end of this story unless I show a little restraint.)

There was no place to sit. That’s the first thing I noticed. And the food was not appropriate for lunch. Breakfast that morning had been a pastry and coffee in Venice before our train ride, and so we were starving. That’s when the clown came in.