Donna Tartt - The Secret History

He's thinking of going into the Church, I just know it. Perhaps that girl has something to do with it, do you suppose?'

He meant Marion. He had a habit of attributing all of Bunny's faults indirectly to her – his laziness, his bad humors, his lapses of taste. 'Maybe,' I said.

'Is she a Catholic?'

'I think she's Presbyterian,' I said. Julian had a polite but implacable contempt for Judeo-Christian tradition in virtually all its forms. He would deny this if confronted, citing evasively his affection for Dante and Giotto, but anything overtly religious filled him with a pagan alarm; and I believe that like Pliny, whom he resembled in so many respects, he secretly thought it to be a degenerate cult carried to extravagant lengths.

'A Presbyterian? Really?' he said, dismayed.

'I believe so.'

'Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians.'

In the first week of April the weather turned suddenly, unseasonably, insistently lovely. The sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and the sun beamed on the muddy ground with all the sweet impatience of June. Toward the fringe of the wood, the young trees were yellow with the first tinge of new leaves; woodpeckers laughed and drummed in the copses and, lying in bed with my window open, I could hear the rush and gurgle of the melted snow running in the gutters all night long.

In the second week of April everyone waited anxiously to see if the weather would hold. It did, with serene assurance. Hyacinth and daffodil bloomed in the flower beds, violet and periwinkle in the meadows; damp, bedraggled white butterflies fluttered drunkenly in the hedgerows. I put away my winter coat and overshoes and walked around, nearly light-headed with joy, in my shirtsleeves.

'This won't last,' said Henry.

In the third week of April, when the lawns were green as Heaven and the apple blossoms had recklessly blown, I was reading in my room on a Friday night, with the windows open and a cool, damp wind stirring the papers on my desk. There was a party across the lawn, and laughter and music floated through the night air. It was long after midnight. I was nodding, half-asleep over my book, when someone bellowed my name outside my window.

I shook myself and sat up, just in time to see one of Bunny's shoes flying through my open window. It hit the floor with a thud. I jumped up and leaned over the sill. Far below, I saw his staggering, shaggy-headed figure, attempting to steady itself by clutching at the trunk of a small tree.

'What the hell's wrong with you?'

He didn't reply, only raised his free hand in a gesture half wave, half salute, and reeled out of the light. The back door slammed, and a few moments later he was banging on the door of my room.

When I opened it he came limping in, one shoe off and one shoe on, leaving a muddy trail of macabre, unmatched footprints behind him. His spectacles were askew and he stank of whiskey.

'Dickie boy,' he mumbled.

The outburst beneath my window seemed to have exhausted him and left him strangely uncommunicative. He tugged off his muddy sock and tossed it clumsily away from him. It landed on my bed.

By degrees, I managed to extricate from him the evening's events. The twins had taken him to dinner, afterwards to a bar in town for more drinks; he'd then gone alone to the party across the lawn, where a Dutchman had tried to make him smoke pot and a freshman girl had given him tequila from a thermos.

('Pretty little gal. Sort of a Deadhead, though. She was wearing clogs, you know those things? And a tie-dyed T-shirt. I can't stand them. "Honey," I said, "you're such a cutie, how come you want to get yourself up in that nasty stuff?"') Then, abruptly, he broke off this narrative and lurched away – leaving the door of my room open behind him – and I heard the sound of noisy, athletic vomiting.

He was gone a long time. When he returned he smelled sour, and his face was damp and very pale; but he seemed composed. _, 'Whew.' he said, collapsing in my chair and mopping his forehead with a red bandanna. 'Musta been something I ate,' j| 'Did you make it to the bathroom?' I asked uncertainly. The I vomiting had sounded ominously near my own door. | 'Naw,' he said, breathing heavily. 'Ran in the broom closet. I Get me a glass of water, wouldja.'

In the hall, the door to the service closet hung partly open, J providing a coy glimpse of the reeking horror within. I hurried past it to the kitchen.

Bunny looked at me glassily when I came back in. His expression had changed entirely, and something about it made me. J. uneasy. I gave him the water and he took a large, greedy gulp. '- 'Not too quick,' I said, alarmed.

He paid no attention and drank the rest in a swallow, then set the glass on the desk with a trembling hand. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

'Oh, my God,' he said. 'Sweet Jesus.'

Uneasily, 1 crossed to my bed and sat down, trying to think of some neutral subject, but before I could say anything he spoke again.

'Can't stomach it any longer,' he mumbled. 'Just can't. Sweet Italian Jesus.'

I didn't say anything.

Shakily, he passed a hand over his forehead. 'You don't even know what the devil I'm talking about, do you?' he said, with an oddly nasty tone in his voice.

Agitated, I recrossed my legs. I'd seen this coming, seen it coming for months and dreaded it. I had an impulse to rush from the room, just leave him sitting there, but then he buried his face in his hands.

'All true,' he mumbled. 'All true. Swear to God. Nobody knows but me.'

Absurdly, I found myself hoping it was a false alarm. Maybe he and Marion had broken up. Maybe his father had died of a heart attack. I sat there, paralyzed.

He dragged his palms down over his face, as if he were wiping water from it, and looked up at me. 'You don't have a clue,' he said. His eyes were bloodshot, uncomfortably bright. 'Boy. You don't have a fucking clue.'

I stood up, unable to bear it any longer, and looked around my room distractedly. 'Uh,' I said, 'do you want an aspirin? I meant to ask you earlier. If you take a couple now you won't feel so bad in the '

'You think I'm crazy, don't you?' Bunny said abruptly.

Somehow I'd always known it was going to happen this way, the two of us alone, Bunny drunk, late at night… 'Why no,' I said. 'All you need is a little '

'You think I'm a lunatic. Bats in the belfry. Nobody listens to me,' he said, his voice rising.

I was alarmed. 'Calm down,' I said. 'I'm listening to you.'

'Well, listen to this,' he said.

It was three in the morning when he stopped talking. The story he told was drunken and garbled, out of sequence and full of vituperative, self-righteous digressions; but I had no problem understanding it. It was a story I'd already heard. For a while we sat there, mute. My desk light was shining in my eyes. The party across the way was still going strong and a faint but boisterous rap song throbbed obtrusively in the distance.

Bunny's breathing had become loud and asthmatic. His head fell on his chest, and he woke with a start. 'What?' he said, confused, as if someone had come up behind him and shouted in his ear. 'Oh. Yes.'

I didn't say anything.

'What do you think about that, eh?'

I was unable to answer. I'd hoped, faintly, that he might have blacked it all out.

'Damndest thing. Fact truer than fiction, boy. Wait, that's not right. How's it go?'

'Fact stranger than fiction,' I said mechanically. It was fortunate, I suppose, that I didn't have to make an effort to look shaken up or stunned. I was so upset I was nearly sick.

'Just goes to show,' said Bunny drunkenly. 'Could be the guy next door. Could be anybody. Never can tell.'