The Secret History - Donna Tartt [242]
“I don’t understand what this has to do with anything,” I said, to his back.
“I’m not sure that I do, either,” he said, assessing the balance of his rosebush, then removing, very carefully, another cane in the center. “Except that there’s not much which matters a great deal. The last six months have made that plain. And lately it has seemed important to find a thing or two which do. That’s all.”
As he said this, he trailed away. “There,” he said at last. “Does that look all right? Or do I need to open it up more in the middle?”
“Henry,” I said. “Listen to me.”
“I don’t want to take off too much,” he said vaguely. “I should have done this a month ago. The canes bleed if they’re pruned this late, but better late than never, as they say.”
“Henry. Please.” I was on the verge of tears. “What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your mind? Don’t you understand what’s going on?”
He stood up, dusted his hands on his trousers. “I have to go in the house now,” he said.
I watched him hang the shears on a peg, then walk away. At the last, I thought he was going to turn and say something, goodbye, anything. But he didn’t. He went inside. The door shut behind him.
I found Francis’s apartment darkened, razor slits of light showing through the closed Venetian blinds. He was asleep. The place smelled sour, and ashy. Cigarette butts floated in a gin glass. There was a black, bubbled scorch in the varnish of the night table beside his bed.
I pulled the blinds to let some sun in. He rubbed his eyes, called me a strange name. Then he recognized me. “Oh,” he said, his face screwed up, albino-pale. “You. What are you doing here?”
I reminded him that we had agreed to visit Charles.
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Friday.” He slumped back down in the bed. “I hate Fridays. Wednesdays, too. Bad luck. Sorrowful Mystery on the Rosary.” He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Then he said: “Do you get the sense something really awful is about to happen?”
I was alarmed. “No,” I said, defensively, though this was far from true. “What do you think’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” he said without moving. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
“You should open a window,” I said. “It smells in here.”
“I don’t care. I can’t smell. I’ve got a sinus infection.” Listlessly, with one hand, he groped for his cigarettes on the night table. “Jesus, I’m depressed,” he said. “I can’t handle seeing Charles right now.”
“We’ve got to.”
“What time is it?”
“About eleven.”
He was silent for a moment, then said: “Look here. I’ve got an idea. Let’s have some lunch. Then we’ll do it.”
“We’ll worry about it the whole time.”
“Let’s ask Julian, then. I’ll bet he’ll come.”
“Why do you want to ask Julian?”
“I’m depressed. Always nice to see him, anyway.” He rolled over on his stomach. “Or maybe not. I don’t know.”
Julian answered the door—just a crack, as he had the very first time I’d knocked—and opened it wide when he saw who it was. Immediately Francis asked him if he wanted to come to lunch.
“Of course. I’d be delighted.” He laughed. “This has been an odd morning indeed. Most peculiar. I’ll tell you about it on the way.”
Things which were odd, by Julian’s definition, often turned out to be amusingly mundane. By his own choice, he had so little contact with the outside world that he frequently considered the commonplace to be bizarre: an automatic-teller machine, for instance, or some new peculiarity in the supermarket—cereal shaped like vampires, or unrefrigerated yogurt sold in pop-top cans. All of us enjoyed hearing about these little forays of his into the twentieth century, so Francis and I pressed him to tell us what now had happened.
“Well, the secretary from the Literature and Languages Division was just here,” he said. “She had a letter for me. They have in and out boxes, you know, in the literature office—one can leave things to be typed or pick up messages there, though I never