The Secret History (32 page)

“Of course, he didn’t know a thing,” Francis said. “Really, he didn’t. It was all a big joke to him. He liked to throw out references to that farmer we’d gone and murdered, just to see me jump. One day he told me he’d seen a policeman out in front of my house, asking my landlady questions.”

“He did that to me, too,” said Henry. “He was always joking about calling the tips number in the newspaper, and the five of us splitting the reward money. Picking up the telephone. Pretending to dial.”

“You can understand how thin that wore after a time. My God. Some of the things he said in front of
you
—The terrible
thing was, you could never tell when it was coming. Right before school let out he stuck a copy of that newspaper article under the windshield wiper of my car. ‘Mysterious Death in Battenkill County.’ It was horrible to know that he’d saved it in the first place, and kept it all that time.”

“Worst of all,” said Henry, “there was absolutely nothing we could do. For a while we even thought of telling him outright, throwing ourselves on his mercy so to speak, but then we realized, at that late date, it was impossible to predict how he’d react. He was grouchy, and sick, and worried about his grades. And the term was nearly over too. It seemed that the best thing to do was to stay on his good side until the Christmas break—take him places, buy him things, pay a lot of attention to him—and hope it would blow over during the winter.” He sighed. “At the end of virtually every school term I’ve been through with Bunny, he’s suggested that the two of us go on a trip, meaning by this that we go to some place of his choosing and that I pay for it. He hasn’t the money to get to Manchester on his own. And when the subject came up, as I knew it would, about a week or two before school was out, I thought: why not? In this way, at least, one of us could keep an eye on him over the winter; and perhaps a change of scenery might prove beneficial. I should also note that it didn’t seem to be such a bad thing if he were to feel a bit under obligation to me. He wanted to go to either Italy or Jamaica. I knew I couldn’t bear Jamaica, so I bought two tickets for Rome and arranged for some rooms not far from the Piazza di Spagna.”

“And you gave him money for clothes and all those useless Italian books.”

“Yes. All in all it was a considerable outlay of money but it seemed like a good investment. I even thought it might be a bit of fun. But never, in my wildest dreams.… Really, I don’t know where to begin. I remember when he saw our rooms—actually, they were quite charming, with a frescoed ceiling, beautiful old balcony, glorious view, I was rather proud of myself for having found them—he was incensed, and began to complain that it was shabby, that it was too cold and the plumbing was bad; and, in short, that the place was completely unsuitable and he wondered how I had been duped into taking it. He’d thought I knew better than to stumble into a lousy tourist trap, but he guessed that he was wrong. He insinuated that our throats would be cut in the night. At that point, I was more amenable to his whims. I asked
him, if he didn’t like the rooms, where would he prefer to stay? and he suggested why didn’t we just go down and get a suite—not a room, you understand, but a suite—in the Grand Hotel?

“He kept on, and finally I told him we would do nothing of the sort. For one thing, the exchange rate was bad and the rooms—besides being paid in advance, and with
my
money—were already rather more than I could afford. He sulked for days, feigning asthma attacks, moping around and honking at his inhaler and nagging me constantly—accusing me of being cheap, and so forth, and when
he
traveled he liked to do it right—and finally I lost my temper. I told him that if the rooms were satisfactory to me, they were certainly better than what he was used to—I mean, my God, it was a palazzo, it belonged to a
countess
, I’d paid a fortune for it—and, in short, there was no possibility of my paying 500,000 lire a night for the company of American tourists and a couple of sheets of hotel stationery.

“So we stayed on at the Piazza di Spagna, which he proceeded to transform into a simulacrum of Hell. He needled me ceaselessly—about the carpet, about the pipes, about what he felt was his insufficient supply of pocket money. We were living just a few steps from the Via Condotti, the most expensive shopping street in Rome.
I
was lucky, he said. No wonder
I
was having such a good time, since I could buy whatever I wanted, while all he could do was lie wheezing in the garret like a poor stepchild. I did what I could to placate him, but the more I bought him, the more he wanted. Besides which, he would hardly let me out of his sight. He complained if I left him alone for even a few minutes; but if I asked him to come along with me, to a museum or a church—my God, we were in
Rome
—he was dreadfully bored and kept at me constantly to leave. It got so I couldn’t even read a book without his sailing in. Goodness. He’d stand outside the door and jabber at me while I was having my bath. I caught him going through my suitcase. I mean—” he paused delicately—“it’s slightly annoying to have even an unobtrusive person sharing such close quarters with one. Perhaps I’d only forgotten what it was like when we lived together freshman year, or perhaps I’ve simply become more accustomed to living alone, but after a week or two of this I was a nervous wreck. I could hardly bear the sight of him. And I was worried about other things as well. You know, don’t you,” he said abruptly to me, “that sometimes I get headaches, rather bad ones?”

I did know. Bunny—fond of recounting his own illnesses and
those of others—had described them in an awed whisper: Henry, flat on his back in a dark room, ice packs on his head and a handkerchief tied over his eyes.

“I don’t get them so often as I once did. When I was thirteen or fourteen I had them all the time. But now it seems that when they do come—sometimes only once a year—they’re much worse. And after I’d been a few weeks in Italy, I felt one coming on. Unmistakable. Noises get louder; objects shimmer; my peripheral vision darkens and I see all sorts of unpleasant things hovering at its edges. There’s a terrible pressure in the air. I’ll look at a street sign and not be able to read it, not understand the simplest spoken sentence. There’s not much that can be done when it comes to that but I did what I could—stayed in my room with the shades pulled, took medicine, tried to keep quiet. At last I realized I would have to cable my doctor in the States. The drugs they give me are too powerful to dispense in prescription form; generally I go to the emergency room for a shot. I wasn’t sure what an Italian doctor would do if I showed up gasping at his office, an American tourist, asking for an injection of phenobarbital.

“But by then it was too late. The headache was on me in a matter of hours and after that, I was quite incapable either of finding my way to a doctor or making myself understood if I had. I don’t know if Bunny tried to get me one or not. His Italian is so bad that when he tried to speak to anyone he would generally just end up insulting them. The American Express office was not far from where we lived, and I’m sure they could have given him the name of an English-speaking doctor, but of course that’s not the sort of thing that would occur to Bunny.

“I hardly know what happened for the next few days. I lay in my room with the shades down and sheets of newspaper taped over the shades. It was impossible even to have any ice sent up-all one could get were lukewarm pitchers of
acqua semplice
—but then I had a hard time talking in English, much less Italian. God knows where Bunny was. I have no memory of seeing him, nor much of anything else.

“Anyway. For a few days I lay flat on my back, hardly able to blink without feeling like my forehead was splitting open, and everything sick and black. I swung in and out of consciousness until finally I became aware of a thin seam of light burning at the edge of the shade. How long I’d been looking at it I don’t know, but gradually I became aware that it was morning, that
the pain had receded somewhat, and that I could move around without awful difficulty. I also realized that I was extraordinarily thirsty. There was no water in my pitcher, so I got up and put on my dressing gown and went to get a drink.

“My room and Bunny’s opened from opposite ends to a rather grand central room—fifteen-foot ceilings, with a fresco in the manner of Carracci; glorious sculptured-stuccoed framework; French doors leading to the balcony. I was almost blinded by the morning light, but I made out a shape which I took to be Bunny, bent over some books and papers at my desk. I waited until my eyes cleared, one hand on the doorknob to steady myself, and then I said, ‘Good morning, Bun.’

“Well, he leapt up as if he’d been scalded, and scrabbled in the papers as if to hide something, and all of a sudden I realized what he had. I went over and snatched it from him. It was my diary. He was always nosing around trying to get a look at it; I’d hidden it behind a radiator but I suppose he’d come digging in my room while I was ill. He’d found it once before, but since I write in Latin I don’t suppose he was able to make much sense of it. I didn’t even use his real name.
Cuniculus molestus
, I thought, denoted him quite well. And he’d never figure
that
out without a lexicon.

“Unfortunately, while I was ill, he’d had ample chance to avail himself of one. A lexicon, that is. And I know we make fun of Bunny for being such a dreadful Latinist, but he’d managed to eke out a pretty competent little English translation of the more recent entries. I must say, I never dreamed he was capable of such a thing. It must have taken him days.

“I wasn’t even angry. I was too stunned. I stared at the translation—it was sitting right there—and then at him, and then, all of a sudden, he pushed back his chair and began to bellow at me. We had killed that fellow, he said, killed him in cold blood and didn’t even bother to tell him about it, but he knew there was something fishy all along, and where did I get off calling him Rabbit, and he had half a mind to go right down to the American consulate and have them send over some police.… Then—this was foolish of me—I slapped him in the face, hard as I could.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t even do it from anger, but frustration. I was sick and exhausted; I was afraid someone would hear him; I just didn’t think I could stand it another second.

“And I’d hit him harder than I meant to. His mouth fell open.
My hand had left a big white mark across his cheek. All of a sudden the blood rushed back into it, bright red. He began to shout at me, cursing, quite hysterical, throwing wild punches at me. There were rapid footsteps on the stairs, followed by a loud banging at the door and a delirious burst of Italian. I grabbed the diary and the translation and threw them in the stove—Bunny went for them, but I held him back until they started to go up—and then I yelled for whoever it was to come in. It was the chambermaid. She flew into the room, screaming in Italian so fast I couldn’t understand a word she said. At first I thought she was angry about the noise. Then I understood it wasn’t it at all. She’d known I was ill; there’d been hardly a sound from the room for days and then, she said excitedly, she’d heard all the screaming; she had thought I’d died in the night, perhaps, and the other young
signor
had found me, but as I was standing now in front of her, that was obviously not the case; did I need a doctor? An ambulance?
Bicarbonato di soda?

“I thanked her and said no, I was perfectly all right, and then I sort of
dunque-dunque
d around, trying to think of some explanation for the disturbance, but she seemed perfectly satisfied and went away to fetch our breakfast. Bunny looked rather stunned. He had no idea what it had been about, of course. I suppose it seemed rather sinister and inexplicable. He asked me where she was going, and what she’d said, but I was too sick and angry to answer. I went back to my bedroom and shut the door, and stayed there until she came back with our breakfast. She laid it out on the terrace, and we went outside to eat.

“Curiously, Bunny had little to say. After a bit of a tense silence, he inquired about my health, told me what he’d done while I was ill, and said nothing about what had just happened. I ate my breakfast, and realized all I could do was try to keep my head. I had hurt his feelings, I knew—really, there were several very unkind things in the diary—so I resolved to be as pleasant to him from then on out as I could, and to hope no more problems would arise.”

He paused to take a drink of his whiskey. I looked at him.

“You mean, you thought problems might
not
arise?” I said.

“I know Bunny better than you do,” Henry said crossly.

“But what about what he said—about the police?”

“I knew he wasn’t prepared to go to the police, Richard.”

“If it were simply a question of the dead man, things would be different, don’t you see?” said Francis, leaning forward in his
chair. “It’s not that his conscience bothers him. Or that he feels any compelling kind of moral outrage. He thinks he’s been somehow
wronged
by the whole business.”

“Well, frankly, I thought I was doing him a favor by not telling him,” Henry said. “But he was angry—
is
angry, I should say—because things were kept from him. He feels injured. Excluded. And my best chance was to try to make amends for that. We’re old friends, he and I.”

“Tell him about those things Bunny bought with your credit cards while you were sick.”

“I didn’t find out about that until later,” said Henry gloomily. “It doesn’t make much difference now.” He lit another cigarette. “I suppose, right after he found out, he was in a kind of shock,” he said. “And, too, he was in a strange country, unable to speak the language, without a cent of his own. He was all right for a little while. Nonetheless, once he caught on to the fact—and it didn’t take him long—that, circumstances to the contrary, I was actually pretty much at his mercy, you can’t imagine what torture he put me through. He talked about it
all the time
. In restaurants, in shops, in taxicabs. Of course, it was the off season, and not many English around, but for all I know there are entire families of Americans back home in Ohio wondering if … Oh, God. Exhaustive monologues in the Hosteria dell’Orso. An argument in the Via dei Cestari. An abortive
re-enactment
of it in the lobby of the Grand Hotel.