The Secret History - Donna Tartt [266]
Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! Les aubes sont navrantes. What a sad and beautiful line that is. I’d always hoped that someday I’d have the chance to use it. And maybe the dawns will be less harrowing in that country for which I shortly depart. Then again, the Athenians think death to be merely sleep. Soon I will know for myself.
I wonder if I will see Henry on the other side. If I do, I am looking forward to asking him why the hell he didn’t just shoot us all and get it over with.
Don’t feel too bad about any of this. Really.
Cheerily,
Francis
I had not seen him in three years. The letter was postmarked Boston, four days earlier. I dropped everything and drove to the airport and got on the first plane to Logan, where I found Francis in Brigham and Women’s Hospital recuperating from two razorblade cuts to the wrist.
He looked terrible. He was pale as a corpse. The maid, he said, had found him in the bathtub.
He had a private room. Rain was pounding on the gray windowpanes. I was terribly glad to see him and he, I think, to see me. We talked for hours, about nothing, really.
“Did you hear I’m going to get married?” he said presently.
“No,” I said, startled.
I thought he was joking. But then he pushed up in his bed a bit and riffled through his night table and found a photograph of her, which he showed to me. Blue-eyed blonde, tastefully clad, built along the Marion line.
“She’s pretty.”
“She’s stupid,” said Francis passionately. “I hate her. Do you know what my cousins call her? The Black Hole.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the conversation turns into a vacuum whenever she walks into the room.”
“Then why are you going to marry her?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he said: “I was seeing someone. A lawyer. He’s a bit of a drunk but that’s all right. He went to Harvard. You’d like him. His name is Kim.”
“And?”
“And my grandfather found out. In the most melodramatic way you can possibly imagine.”
He reached for a cigarette. I had to light it for him because of his hands. He had injured one of the tendons that led to his thumb.
“So,” he said, blowing out a plume of smoke. “I have to get married.”
“Or what?”
“Or my grandfather will cut me off without a cent.”
“Can’t you get by on your own?” I said.
“No.”
He said this with such certainty that it irritated me.
“I do,” I said.
“But you’re used to it.”
Just then the door to his room cracked open. It was his nurse-not from the hospital, but one that his mother had privately engaged.
“Mr. Abernathy!” she said brightly. “There’s someone here who wants to see you!”
Francis closed his eyes, then opened them. “It’s her,” he said. The nurse withdrew. We looked at each other.
“Don’t do it, Francis,” I said.
“I’ve got to.”
The door opened, and the blonde in the photograph—all smiles—waltzed in, wearing a pink sweater with a pattern of snowflakes knit into it, and her hair tied back with a pink ribbon. She was actually quite pretty. Among her armload of presents were a teddy bear; jelly beans wrapped in cellophane; copies of GQ, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire: good God, I thought, since when does Francis read magazines?
She walked over to the bed, kissed him briskly on the forehead. “Now, sweetie,” she said to him, “I thought we’d decided not to smoke.”
To my surprise, she plucked the cigarette from between his fingers and put it out in the ashtray. Then she looked over at me and beamed.
Francis ran a bandaged hand through his hair. “Priscilla,” he said tonelessly, “this is my friend Richard.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Hi!” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
“And I about you,” I said politely.
She pulled up a chair to Francis’s bed. Pleasant, still smiling, she sat down.
And, as if by magic, the conversation stopped.
Camilla showed up in Boston the next day; she, too, had got a letter from Francis.
I was drowsing in the bedside chair. I’d been reading to Francis, Our Mutual Friend