Donna Tartt - The Secret History

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 1 write in Latin I dnn'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 signer 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? Bicarbonate di soda?

'I thanked her and said no, I was perfectly all right, and then I sort of dunque-dunqued 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.

'One afternoon at a cafe, he was going on and on and I noticed that a man at the next table was hanging on every word. We got up to leave. He got up too. I wasn't sure what to think. I knew he was German, because I'd heard him talking to the waiter, but I had no idea if he had any English or if he'd been able to hear Bunny distinctly enough to understand. Perhaps he was only a homosexual, but I didn't want to take any chances. I led the way home through the alleys, turning this way and that, and I felt quite certain we'd lost him but apparently not, because when I woke up the next morning and looked out the window he was standing by the fountain. Bunny was elated. He thought it was just like a spy picture. He wanted to go out and see if this fellow would try to follow us, and I had practically to restrain him by force. All morning I watched from the window. The German stood around, had a few cigarettes, and drifted away after a couple of hours; but it wasn't until about four o'clock when Bunny, who'd been complaining steadily since noon, began to raise such a ruckus that we finally went to get something to eat. But we were only a few blocks from the piazza when I thought I saw the German again, walking behind us at quite a distance. I turned and started back, in hopes of confronting him; he disappeared, but in a few minutes I turned around and he was there again.

'I'd been worried before, but then I began to feel really afraid.