A Lesser Shade of Melancholy

1.

When I was young, I was a fool. I was a very lavish fool though. I squandered my time and money on the cheap booze and cheaper whores on St.Bernard’s Street, I learned to exude a false aura of intelligence from the Bohemian artists and writers in the clubs on Middletown Square, I kept my soul clean by confessing to the priest in the church down the street from where I stayed.

In those days the world was ripe, and my life seemed so full of possibilities. I wore the finest clothes - the latest in fashion - and dined at the finest restaurants. When I was not drunk, I courted respectable ladies from respectable families. Looking back, I often wonder if they ever realised how much of a sham my life was. I had no job, I was staying in an inn, and I was down to my last penny from what I had stolen from home before absconding here.

My family name carried a lot of weight in the social circles I frequented. I could thus ask for money from many of the people in those cirlces, who gladly lent it to me without hesitation. But I spent the money I borrowed within a week. It occured to me, that if I borrowed enough money from enough people, I could leave here too. But then, like I said - I was a fool. I was too enchanted by the bright lights and the beautiful faces of that town.

And it was a beautiful face that changed everything for me. I was in a drunken stupor at The Oneiros, when she came to me. The Oneiros was called the ‘abode of Absinthe and Aphrodites,’ where the greatest poets and writers of the time came to get their inspiration from alcohol and courtesans. The friends with whom I had come with, had left with their selection of nightly delights. And since I was too drunk to walk, they left me there. Grischa, the owner of the bar did not mind. He was a large man, previously from the Tsar’s palace guards, known for his easy wit and tremendous physical strength.

“One must not drink so much. One should be drunk just enough to enjoy the drink. If one drinks more, then one becomes no different from the drunk peasants on the corner of Baker’s Street,” she said. She wore a dress of emerald colored silk, and she was a vision to behold. From her accent, it was clear that she was from a different land. But I couldn’t figure out where she was from.

“Who are you?” I asked her. She sat opposite me; her face was expressionless.

“I am a lady looking for company for a night. Are you the gentleman I should be speaking to?” Her leg touched my leg under the table. A smile formed on her lips, without touching her eyes. It was a cold smile.

“No my lady. That gentleman is not good enough for a woman of your beauty. I am better than he for this night,” I said using my most charming voice. She kept smiling that hollow smile, evidently studing me closely.

“Let’s leave then, I have much planned for the night.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Lethe.”

2.

We made love till the early hours of the morning. She smelled of long forgotten flowers and freshly cut grass. We did not speak from when we started kissing, till we lay spent many hours later on the bed in her room at the Thyme, an inn outside the city.

“Where are you from?” I asked her, rolling tobacco in paper and licking it to make it hold while smoking.

“I am not of this land,” she said staring at the ceiling. I lit the end of the rolled tobacco and turned to face her. He breasts lay uncovered by the sheet, her lips were parted and her eyes were lit from within. She turned to look at me.

“Where are you from Lethe?” I asked her again.

She leaned over and kissed me. “It’s a long story,” she said, “you will not believe most of it.”

I noticed it then, behind her beautiful face, under her facade of bravado. She was afraid of something. She was running away from something. “Try me,” I said.

She got out of bed, her naked body silhouetted by the moonlight from the window. She walked to the chair by the fireplace and sat down. Her black hair fluttered slowly in the wind from the window. The fire lent her a divine hue, and formed for her an unearthly dark shadow.

“I was a river once, flowing from Hades. All who drank from me, washed away their memories to begin life anew.”

[To Be Continued]