Page 12 of Deja New
SIX
1640
OXFORD, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, hic jacet Democritus Junior, cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia.*
So it was coming for him again, the serious ailment, the settled humor. The timing was dark and sweet because with the beauty and simplicity of knowing when you are predicted to succumb, if one so chooses, you can make the astrologer a seer or a liar.
“So, a seer,” he said aloud. Friends would have been surprised to hear how low and hoarse he sounded. When it was on him, he went days without speaking. Or bathing, heremembered, glancing at his reflection in the mirror. Or shaving. Or eating. He couldn’t even muster the will to gasp in horror at his reflection. What little energy he had he needed for breathing. There was room for nothing else.
Ah, but euphoria might be on the way! He knew that as a dying brain fought and clawed for oxygen, chemicals flooded the system with joy and jubilation in a burst of biochemistry. That would be delightful, but it wasn’t a requirement. All he required was nothing. Forever.
He changed into a (reasonably) clean suit even as part of him knew it was idiotic: He’d shuffle off the mortal coil, but not before pissing and shitting himself. But the idea of ending it all in the same pajama pants he’d lived in for the last month was unpleasant.
He found the rope, ran it through his fingers for the tenth, sixtieth, hundredth time. Sturdy, strong. The knot would hold, and the beam, and the chair (until he had no use for the latter—or, he supposed, the ladder he needed to reach the noose).
No note, at least not in the traditional sense. Friends would say he had been writing his suicide note for the last three decades:The Anatomy of Melancholy.*Five printings in seventeen years, and every page dedicated to recognizing, treating, and enduring that wretched and serious ailment.
His friends would also point out his inconsistency on suicide. He had expressed conflicting points of view about the last act, stating at times that taking one’s own life was a naturalconsequence of the fiend Melancholia, as a tumor was of cancer, and other times seeing it as a moral choice. Readers had chided him for the disparate views, as they did not understand a fundamental truth of his condition: Sometimes he wished to be dead. And sometimes he did not.
It would never be done.The Anatomy of Melancholycould never be done, which was the work’s most dreadful and wonderful characteristic. And he was tired.
So then, what next? He positioned the chair, tossed the rope, tightened the knot, and wondered about what he would face as he left. Nothing? Or choirs of angels? Or another life?
What if I come back? What if Melancholia finds me again?
Don’t think of it. Don’t.He stepped off the chair and simultaneously gave it a savage kick, so there was no way to get his feet back under him, so his traitorous brain couldn’t rebel and force his legs to find purchase.
What if it finds me?
Don’t.
But what if it does?
Don’t.
Oh please, please d—
