The Melancholy Korean

The message on the envelope is harmless enough.  It says simply, “Notice of Jury Summons.” But its bold typeface and red color bring to mind darker possibilities. Prohibitions (No Swimming Allowed) and warnings (No Lifeguard on Duty) are often written in red, and the bright red color of the words “Notice of Jury Summons,” like a flashing indicator light on a car’s dashboard, suggests the more urgent phrase: Danger! Immediate Attention Required.  All the havoc of jury duty—how it wrecks the course of our day-to-day routine, how it demands we bring our lives to a full stop for several days or weeks in order to sit in judgment on the actions of others, its intrusiveness and its promise of public spectacle—we can find in those four words.

Three years ago, when Juror Ten moved to New York to begin his life anew, he imagined meeting people would be an unavoidable consequence of his act of escape.  He realized, soon enough, that the city provided even greater opportunities to hide from those he judged the “vulgar masses,” a group that included most of humanity.  He discovered he could live like an Oriental despot, never straying from his throne, every need met by slaves, every whim satisfied, with no thought beyond his own pleasure.  For Juror Ten, his slaves were Mexican immigrant deliverymen, who brought him prepared food and freshly laundered clothes, and their wives, who cleaned his apartment.  He found an escort service, staffed by unsmiling Ukrainian girls, willing to provide house calls, albeit after a background check and a higher-than-usual negotiated fare. His own harem, in Manhattan.  

Juror Ten needed to leave his apartment for only two reasons, and they took place on the same day. Tuesday mornings, he would first go to see his therapist, and, after a desultory conversation interrupted by long silences, a conversation that never seemed to vary from week to week, a conversation that occurred only because his father had made therapy a condition of continued financial support, he would walk across the park to the Metropolitan Museum for his second appointment, one he found much more to his liking, a fact Juror Ten was not hesitant in telling Dr. ———, whenever the doctor suggested the possibility of medication.  His second appointment was with Jean-Jacques Tissot.  

“Thank God you’re here.  I was so worried.”

“Worried?”

“That I’d be the only one.” 

Juror Two was talking to him.  They were standing in the hallway outside the courtroom.  

“That I’d be the only one,” she repeated, “who walked into that awful room so late.  The prosecutor’s got the lecher look, don’t you think?  Wait.  Don’t think.”  She waved her hand as if to dismiss him.  “I know all about guys like him.  I hate to think of him staring at me.  Listen. I once had a teacher, mister Moron.  Excuse me, doctor Morón.  Don’t laugh.  He wanted to be called ‘doctor.’  He used to get so mad, oh Jesus, it was priceless.  I mean, just imagine the scene — ‘I didn’t spend five years of my life in grad school just to be called mister Moron.”  Priceless.  Anyway, where was I, oh yes, so with a name like that, could you blame the guy for being a spanker?”

“Your teacher used to spank you?”  Juror Ten tried to hide the excitement in his voice.

“Darling, I don’t look that old, do I?  Besides, it wasn’t that kind of school, not even when girls weren’t allowed to board.  He wanted to, though.  But my father was a trustee, and, boy, he would’ve strangled the doctor, if even one dirty fingernail of his… well, you get the picture.  Not that I would have minded a pat on the bottom—not necessarily.  But my father — I’m not kidding. He would’ve enjoyed strangling señor Moron.  He never liked foreigners.” 

She was assigned to the seat directly in front him.  The day before, on their first day of jury duty, he had spent the interminable voir dire pretending to doodle on a yellow legal pad, but instead had stared the whole day at her long hair, which tumbled over the back of the seat.  He had wanted so much to run his fingers through her hair.  He had imagined how soft they would feel between his fingers, how ticklish. His seat had been so close he could make out the scent of her shampoo—lavender lilac, a favorite of his. He used to buy it for Bohdanna, his last “regular” Ukrainian girl, to use before her appointment with him. Their arrangement had lasted six months, until she was rotated out and sent off to London.  The whole deal nearly broke his heart.  He had learned his lesson with Bohdanna: no more regular girls, no more favorites.  After all, escorting wasn’t exactly dating.

Juror Two’s hair recalled the painting of Venus by Chassériau:

“Come on, Ten.  We’re late.  What are you waiting for?  The Voice of God?”

The mention of “God” startled Juror Ten.  Bohdanna was Ukrainian for “Given from God.”  Ten froze.  He could feel the approach of an attack.  

Juror Two, oblivious to any change in him, stepped closer and smiled. The scent of lilacs grew stronger, and he was suddenly confronted with her abundant, overwhelming golden hair.  Too close, too close! She was standing too close!

He was no longer in the hallway outside the courtroom.  He was standing in a field of lilacs, staring into the sun.  His vision overfilled with light.  

She reached out as if to grab his arm.  He shuddered.  Plath’s angel threatened to “flare at his elbow.”  

But there was no danger.  She didn’t touch him. 

The advertisement had been promising.

You are a gentleman of refinement and taste, out of place in the modern world. I am a very well-read, slim, reserved classic European beauty who belongs to an older, more elegant generation of women. I own no pants, no shoes without heels, and am never found without makeup and a smile.

I offer a session of sensual touching, fully unclothed, for our mutual pleasure.  I will enjoy our time together as much as you will.  No F-S. 

The picture had been cropped to hide the face. Normally, Juror Ten would never have considered an escort who chose to hide her face — that seemed to him contrary to the spirit of the transaction — but he had been intrigued by the self-description “well-read.” 

For reasons he chose not to discuss with Dr. ———, Juror Ten needed to know a woman’s taste in books before he could get interested. His last girlfriend had been a reader, with a fearsome intellect, and they used to have sharp, bracing arguments over politics, but her interest in books was primarily philosophical. “I like ideas,” Blue once told him (Blue Stocking had been his nickname for her). “Poetry’s for the birds. All that mooning over lost love and pretty sunsets. How can you stand it?” Her passion for Kant finally broke him — “Anyone who can’t appreciate his prose style is just being a stupid pig—a fat, stupid pig” (she knew how best to cut him) — and he ended the relationship a few months after graduation, just as he was starting his banking job in Connecticut.

The advertisement had been promising.  The elegance of the writing, its concision and lack of the overused, clichéd adjectives so common to the escort ad genre, tired words like “sophisticated” and “classy,” piqued his interest, and so, it was with high hopes and great expectations that he called the number of this mystery woman.

Critical opinion of Tissot among writers of his acquaintance was curious. The tone of contemporary biographical sketches and gallery reviews hint at personal dislike, or perhaps, as Juror Ten imagined, disrespect, of this popular French painter—not only of his work, but also of his person. “He is an inconsequential, garrulous character,” wrote Edmond de Goncourt in his journal, “with a flood of tiring words among which an occasional painterly phrase attracts your attention and puts you back into contact with what he is saying.” That backhanded occasional—oh, how it set Juror Ten’s teeth on edge! But worse, so much worse, was Henry James: 

He is a painter of modern manners, and he generally chooses a subject which it takes a kind of tour de force to render.  One of his pictures represents a corner of the deck of one of the Queen’s ships at Portsmouth, with two ladies and a young officer leaning over the side and looking down at a boat containing a party of their friends, which is putting off. 

They are women of fashion, and dressed in garments, which have come straight from Brussels; the one in front, in particular, who twists her perfect figure with the most charming gracefulness as she rests her elbows on the bulwark, and, with her head a little thrown back, smiles down lazily and luxuriously at her friends.  She wears a dress of frilled and fluted white muslin, set off with a great number of lemon-coloured bows, and its air of fitting her well, and, as the ladies say, ‘hanging’ well, is on the painter’s part a triumph of perception and taste.  M. Tissot’s taste is highly remarkable; what I care less for is his sentiment, which seems sterile and disagreeable.  Like so many other pictures representing the manners of the day, his productions suggest a curious and, I confiess it seems to me, an insoluble problem.  What is it that makes such realism as M. Tissot’s appear vulgar and banal, when an equal degree of realism, practised three hundred years ago, has an inexhaustible charm and entertainment?  M. Tissot’s pretty woman, with her stylish back and yellow ribbons, will, I am convinced, become less and less charming and interesting as the years, or even the months, go on.  Certain I am, at any rate, that I should not be able to live in the same room with her for a week without finding her intolerably wearisome and unfreshing. 

That James, the man who “made love to his Muse,” would know anything about living with any woman “in the same (bed)room” was hard enough for Juror Ten to endure, but the cruelty of his curt dismissal, so needlessly personal, that nasty “intolerably wearisome and unfreshing,”—had James had the misfortune to meet Juror Ten in the London streets during the “picture season” of 1877, the young writer would have found a ready, quick-to-the-draw, defender of Kitty’s honor. 

Kitty.

***

They met at the university art gallery.  The Tissot retrospective.  Juror Ten would never forget the painting: Les Adieux. “Farewells.” Tissot moved to London the year he painted it, 1871—the madness of the Paris Commune finally drove him abroad—and the popularity of the painting at the Royal Academy established his reputation in the new city.

Tuesday, early December.  Six months after graduation, six years since the move to New York, six years, or a lifetime, or ten, removed from his life now. 10:30 in the morning. They were alone.

“What do you think those scissors are for?” she asked. 

She was whispering.

“What scissors?”

“The ones on that piece of string.”

Juror Ten squinted at the painting.

“The ones right here.  Can’t you see?” 

“No.”

She stepped in front of him and took his hand into hers.  She pointed his index finger at the scissors.  Her hands were cold.

But for that moment, the shipwreck that was to be his life thereafter would never have happened.  Yet, as Leopardi wrote:

E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.

Scholars are divided on the exact date when James Tissot met Kathleen Newton, but the question is academic.  They must have met no later than 1876, for it is after that date when her face appears, over and over again, in all of Tissot’s paintings. Before she was identified, scholars called her the “ravissante Irlandaise,” or sometimes, “la Mystérieuse.” The mystery woman was given a name in 1946, when the journalist Marita Ross’s open letter asking for help was answered by Miss Lilian Hervey, Kathleen Newton’s niece.

Kathleen Irene Ashburnham Kelly was born in May or June 1854 in Agra, India. She was baptized on August 29, 1860 in Holy Trinity Church, St. Bride’s, London and educated at Gumley House Convent School in Isleworth. She married Dr. Isaac Newton, a surgeon in the Indian Civil Service, on the 3rd of January 1871, in what was then called Hoshearpore in India, but the couple separated one week after the marriage. Her new husband, presumably, had not been happy to find out she was having an affair with a naval officer, Captain Palliser. They divorced on January 20th, 1872. 

Whatever date it was they met, her effect on Tissot’s life was immediate. Friends of Tissot at the time recalled that he “withdrew from social life as he became increasingly absorbed with the liaison.” She begins to appear everywhere in his work. Where before his style was stiff and severe, Tissot’s paintings acquire fluidity and grace. His creativity is renewed. He begins his popular Seasons series at this time.  

To the etching titled A Walk in the Snow, Tissot appended two lines from “Fancy,” written by Keats in 1818 and published 1820.

She will bring, in spite of frost, 
Beauties that the earth hath lost; 
She will bring thee, all together, 
All delights of summer weather; 
All the buds and bells of May, 
From dewy sward or thorny spray; 
All the heaped Autumn’s wealth, 
With a still, mysterious stealth: 
She will mix these pleasures up 
Like three fit wines in a cup, 
And thou shalt quaff it:—thou shalt hear 
Distant harvest-carols clear; 
Rustle of the reaped corn; 
Sweet birds antheming the morn: 
And, in the same moment—hark! 

It is quite possible, writes one scholar, that “Kathleen, whose convent education prepared her to be a sophisticated and cultured helpmate, introduced Tissot to the poetry of Keats.” One of the harshest critics of Kathleen Newton, Michael Wentworth, in a book published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford, railed against this “divorced adventuress” and warned against seeing her as “some sort of bluestocking muse.” He later, confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in a catalogue for an exhibition that toured Japan, reversed his position. For the essential fact about Tissot is this: it is only because of Kathleen Newton — Kitty — that Tissot paints those pictures which make him famous.

Little wonder, then, Juror Ten had so much trouble with women.  He wasn’t looking for a girlfriend.  He was looking for his Muse.

Juror Two was reading a book. He started awake. Had she been reading this whole time? He tried to remember if she had pulled out a book the day before, during the first day’s session, but the only image that came to mind was her blonde hair and the yellow legal pad and his endless, looping doodles on the lined paper.

Good readers approach books with their entire being — to devour a book, Juror Ten believed it was literally true, that engaged reading was a physical activity, requiring participation of the entire body — perhaps she was a good reader? He angled himself left and leaned forward, slowing down his breathing, so he wouldn’t disturb her hair with his breath, or somehow tickle her neck, as much as he was tempted, and he noticed a good sign. She was pressing the tips of her slim, white fingers against the pages to mark her place on the line. A very good sign. She didn’t want to miss a word. 

“Do you think we’re going to start soon, mate?” asked the juror to his right.  

One could tell a lot about a woman from her taste in books. What was she reading? He couldn’t quite make out the title.

“I say, do you think…”

“I don’t know.”

After a moment’s pause, for dramatic effect, he added,

“Don’t touch me.”

His seat-mate quickly removed his hand from Juror Ten’s shoulder. He didn’t sound Australian, or look it, Juror Ten thought. Mate had a very intense look, with the obligatory intellectual’s goatee. What was with the fake, breezy cheeriness?

“Sorry, mate. But don’t you think it’s funny how lawyers don’t value our time as much as their own?” 

Juror Two laughed.

Maybe Mate had his eye on Juror Two? 

“What do you charge for your time, Ten?” She turned around in her seat. “Wait, don’t tell me. Let me guess.”

***

Two hundred dollars an hour.

“You must understand, I’m not an escort. Not Full Service. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“When you arrive, you must first call me. Then I will tell you how to come to my room. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“What will you be wearing?”

“What will I be wearing?” Juror Ten looked quizzically at his phone, as though this mystery woman from the advertisement could see him. “Isn’t that a question I should be asking you?”

“Look, Funny Guy. Don’t mess with me, ok? What will you be wearing?”

“A grey overcoat and plaid scarf. Ferragamo shoes, if…”

“I’ll see you in one hour. Don’t be late. This hotel is very strict. We must be careful. You must not be late. Do you understand?”

Then, she hung up before he could respond.

It wasn’t the most famous hotel in New York, not by a long shot, and he would know, but when he walked through the revolving door, its interior, so “tastefully appointed” — he shuddered to think of the clichés the guidebooks might use — recalled something out of Robbe-Grillet’s decadent oeuvre, or, more firmly within Juror Ten’s circle of experience, the George V in Paris, and he immediately felt at home.

Already the morning had been different from his usual routine, more hopeful. He had even enjoyed talking to his therapist.

“I’m going to have to cancel today’s appointment. I’m feeling sick.”

“I require at least 24 hours notice to issue a refund. You know that. You will owe the full fee for our missed session.”

“I understand.”

“You certainly don’t sound sick. Are you trying to pull something?”

“No, no, no. It’s food poisoning. I can’t…”

“I’m going to call your father.”

“Please. I’ll mail the check today. Full session fee. Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

Normally, Juror Ten would have let his therapist’s threat to call his father wreck his day, but the prospect of meeting the mystery woman had made him insensible to the world, confident, invincible. On the subway, he even met a woman, a stunning piece of work, and he had escaped the encounter without damage. She had not been able to wound him, unlike the others.

***

Aphrodite, you bitch. It was you, wasn’t it? Of course it was.

I was minding my own business, taking a walk up Fifth Avenue in Midtown, there I was, enjoying the brisk morning air and the sight of the women fashionably dressed for spring in their spring skirts, we were on the corner of Fifth and Forty-Eighth, I was minding my own business, waiting to cross the intersection, then something caught my eye, a flash of gold, and I turned my head and there you were. My God. Right next to me.

I saw the golden hair, the pale and flawless skin, the impeccably tailored pencil skirt. Right away, I recognized it was you. You looked at me too, only for a second, but so close, we were so close, I could have run my fingers through your hair, we were so close, it was only for a second, then your green eyes darted down to my tie, the orange one with little daisys, and you smiled.

My God.

As fast as I could, I crossed the intersection. A van with Jersey plates, one of those ugly cars driven by one of those ugly people who pollute our city and make us so unhappy, that van almost ran me over, and Jersey yelled at me, but I didn’t care. I had to escape.

But the crowds, my God—they were everywhere, the elderly couples taking pictures of Saint Patrick’s, the German teens with their Abercrombie bags, the dumpy inbreds and their waistband packs and white sneakers, worn in earnest, they slowed me down, and then — how did you find me? — you glided next to me, taking long strides, now you were ahead of me, your golden hair swishing to and fro, your image, like the song of the sirens, luring me onward toward danger.

You were ahead of me, following my pace, if I slowed down, you slowed down, when I quickened my pace to pass you, you quickened your pace so I could not pass, and I realized I had transformed. I was no longer myself. I was Nick Carraway.

I was Nick Carraway, stalking you on Fifth Avenue, imagining the life we could have together, our first date, our honeymoon, our third child. I was Nick Carraway, would be bond man, cousin of Daisy Buchanan, only friend of Jay Gatsby.  I was Nick Carraway and I was living in Fitzgerald’s nightmare. I had dinner last night at the Yale Club, Nick was right, he was right about everything, it was a depressing place, full of lonely bachelors and unfaithful husbands, all drinking too much Scotch and reading the newspaper.

I beg you. Please. Not again.

***

The woman on the subway recalled the famous picture of Hercolani.

Jack Kennedy, who followed my work, once rolled down the car window at the Everglades Club in Palm Beach and asked me, ‘Slim, that shot of the Hercolani princess in Rome, is she really that good-looking?’

‘Better!’ I told him.”  

She had taken the seat across from him in the empty subway car.  For six stops, as the train rumbled downtown, she kept looking at him. Their eyes briefly met. 

At Fifty-Ninth Street, she got up to leave the train, and he watched her closely as she smoothed out the folds of her scarf to rewrap around her neck. Its yellow color reminded him of the story of the young Vogue editor who called on Matisse, in the heady days after the war. The painter was near the end of his life, confined to a wheelchair and nursed by a former model, a Russian girl named Lydia, as his marriage had not survived the ominous early warning signs — Matisse had told his wife at the beginning of their courtship, “I love you, but I will always love painting more” — and in response to a lifetime of being misunderstood, he had taken to wearing tweed, fully buttoned up, for encounters with nosy foreigners, so the editor received, instead of a discussion of painting or a studio tour or a life story, fashion advice. Juror Ten liked to imagine that Matisse had been both ironic and sincere, when he suggested the young woman wear a yellow scarf to match her orange Balenciaga coat, for the young woman followed his advice, and, lo, that season in Paris she had her first great social success.   

Hercolani stopped by the open subway door. There was no pretense now—she stared right at him, and he looked, without fear, into her blue eyes.  She was holding the door open with a bare hand, and they remained in this pose for a moment.  Then, she turned, gathered her tweed skirt in her other hand, stepped briskly onto the platform, her blond hair falling to and fro, and disappeared from his life forever.

When he later thought back on his encounter with Hercolani, amazed that he had escaped unscathed, Juror Ten concluded it was his suit, as well as the prospect of meeting the mystery woman, that had protected him. But mostly the suit. He had been well armored for battle.