Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'Yes.'

'And what do you suppose that will solve?'

'You've ruined my life, you son of a bitch.' He had the gun pointed at Henry's chest. With a sinking feeling, I remembered what an expert shot he was, how he'd broken the rows of mason jars one by one.

'Don't be an idiot,' Henry snapped; and I felt the first prickle of real panic at the back of my neck. This belligerent, bullying tone might work with Francis, maybe even with me, but it was a disastrous tack to take with Charles. 'If anyone's to blame for your problems, it's you.'

I wanted to tell him to shut up, but before I could say anything Charles lurched abruptly to the side, to clear his shot.

Camilla stepped into his path. 'Charles, give me the gun,' she said.

He pushed the hair from his eyes with his forearm, holding the gun remarkably steady with his other hand. 'I'm telling you, Milly.' It was a pet name he had for her, one he seldom used.

'You better get out of the way.'

'Charles,' said Francis. He was white as a ghost. 'Sit down.

Have some wine. Let's just forget about this.'

The window was open and the chirrup of the crickets washed in harsh and strong.

'You bastard,' said Charles, reeling backwards, and it was a moment before I realized, startled, that he was speaking not to Francis or Henry but to me. 'I trusted you. You told him where I was.'

I was too petrified to answer. I blinked at him.

'I knew where you were,' said Henry coolly. 'If you want to shoot me, Charles, go ahead and do it. It'll be the stupidest thing you ever did in your life.'

'The stupidest thing I ever did in my life was listening to you,'

Charles said.

What happened next took place in an instant. Charles raised his arm; and quick as a flash, Francis, who was standing closest to him, threw a glass of wine in his face. At the same time Henry sprang from his chair and rushed in. There were four pops in rapid succession, like a cap gun. With the second pop, I heard a windowpane shatter. And with the third I was conscious of a warm, stinging sensation in my abdomen, to the left of my navel.

Henry was holding Charles's right forearm above his head with both hands, bending him backwards; Charles was struggling to get the gun with his left hand, but Henry twisted it from his wrist and it dropped to the carpet. Charles dove for it but Henry was too quick.

I was still standing. I'm shot, I thought, I'm shot. I reached down and touched my stomach. Blood. There was a small hole, slightly charred, in my white shirt: my Paul Smith shin, 1 thought, with a pang of anguish. I'd paid a week's salary for it in San Francisco. My stomach felt very hot. Waves of heat radiating from the bull's-eye.

Henry had the gun. He twisted Charles's arm behind his back – Charles fighting, thrashing wildly about – and, nosing the pistol into his spine, shoved him away from the door.

I still hadn't quite grasped what had happened. Maybe I should sit down, I thought. Was the bullet still in me? Was I going to die? The thought was ridiculous; it didn't seem possible. My stomach burned but I felt oddly calm. Getting shot, I'd always thought, would hurt a lot more than this. Carefully, I stepped back, and felt the back of the chair I had been sitting in bump against my legs. I sat down.

Charles, despite having one arm pinned behind him, was trying to elbow Henry in the stomach with the other. Henry pushed him, staggering, across the room and into a chair. 'Sit down,' he said.

Charles tried to get up. Henry mashed him back down. He tried to get up a second time and Henry slapped him across the face with his open hand with a whack that was louder than the gunshots. Then, with the pistol on him, he stepped to the windows and drew the shades.

I put my hand over the hole in my shirt. Bending forward slightly, I felt a sharp pain. I expected everyone to stop and look at me. No one did. I wondered if I should call it to their attention.

Charles's head was rolled against the back of the chair. I noticed that there was blood on his mouth. His eyes were glassy.

Awkwardly – he was holding the gun in his good hand Henry reached up and took off his spectacles and rubbed them on the front of his shirt. Then he hooked them over his ears again. 'Well, Charles,' he said. 'You've done it now.'

I heard some kind of commotion downstairs, through the open window – footsteps, voices, a door slamming.

'Do you think anybody heard?' said Francis anxiously.

'I should think they did,' Henry said.

Camilla went over to Charles. Drunkenly, he made as if to push her away.

'Get away from him,' Henry said.

'What are we going to do about this window?' said Francis.

'What are we going to do about me?' I said.

They all turned and looked at me.

'He shot me.'

Somehow, this remark did not elicit the dramatic response I expected. Before I had the chance to elaborate, there were footsteps on the stairs and somebody banged at the door.

'What's going on in there?' I recognized the innkeeper's voice.

'What's happening?'

Francis put his face in his hands. 'Oh, shit,' he said.

'Open up in there.'

Charles, drunkenly, mumbled something and tried to raise his head. Henry bit his lip. He went to the window and looked out the corner of the shade.

Then he turned around. He still had the pistol. 'Come here,' he said to Camilla.

She looked at him in horror. So did Francis and I.

He beckoned to her with his gun arm. 'Come here,' he said.

'Quick.'

I felt faint. What's he doing? I thought, bewildered.

Camilla took a step away from him. Her gaze was terrified.

'No, Henry,' she said, 'don't…'

To my surprise, he smiled at her. 'You think I'd hurt you?' he said. 'Come here.'

She went to him. He kissed her between the eyes, then whispered something – what, I've always wondered – in her ear.

'I've got a key,' the innkeeper yelled, pounding away at the door. Till use it.'

The room was swimming. Idiot, I thought wildly, just try the knob.

Henry kissed Camilla again. 'I love you,' he said. Then he said, out loud: 'Come in.'

The door flew open. Henry raised the arm with the gun. He's going to shoot them, I thought, dazed; the innkeeper and his wife, behind him, thought the same thing, because they froze about three steps into the room – but then I heard Camilla scream, 'No, Henry!' and, too late, I realized what he was going to do.

He put the pistol to his temple and fired, twice. Two flat cracks. They slammed his head to the left. It was the kick of the gun, I think, that triggered the second shot.

His mouth fell open. A draft, created by the open door, sucked the curtains into the gap of the open window. For a moment or two, they shuddered against the screen. Then they breathed out again, with something like a sigh; and Henry, his eyes squeezed tight, and his knees giving way beneath him, fell with a thud to the carpet.

Alas, poor gentleman,

He look'd not like the ruins of his youth

But like the ruins of those ruins.

– John Ford, The Broken Heart; i pounds

I managed to get out of taking my French exams the next week, due to the very excellent excuse of having a gunshot wound to the stomach.

They said at the hospital that I was lucky, and I suppose I was.

The bullet drilled me clean through, missing my intestinal wall by a millimeter or two and my spleen by not much more, exiting about an inch and a half to the right of where it came in. I lay flat on my back in the ambulance, feeling the summer night flash by warm and mysterious – kids on bikes, moths haunting the street lamps – and wondering if this was what it was like, if life sped up when you were about to die. Bleeding richly. Sensations fading round the edges. I kept thinking how funny, this dark ride to the underworld, the tunnel illuminated by Shell Oil, Burger King. The paramedic riding in the back wasn't much older than I was; a kid, really, with bad skin and a downy little moustache.