The Secret History - Donna Tartt [93]
“He kept on, and finally I told him we would do nothing of the sort. For one thing, the exchange rate was bad and the rooms—besides being paid in advance, and with my money—were already rather more than I could afford. He sulked for days, feigning asthma attacks, moping around and honking at his inhaler and nagging me constantly—accusing me of being cheap, and so forth, and when he traveled he liked to do it right—and finally I lost my temper. I told him that if the rooms were satisfactory to me, they were certainly better than what he was used to—I mean, my God, it was a palazzo, it belonged to a countess, I’d paid a fortune for it—and, in short, there was no possibility of my paying 500,000 lire a night for the company of American tourists and a couple of sheets of hotel stationery.
“So we stayed on at the Piazza di Spagna, which he proceeded to transform into a simulacrum of Hell. He needled me ceaselessly—about the carpet, about the pipes, about what he felt was his insufficient supply of pocket money. We were living just a few steps from the Via Condotti, the most expensive shopping street in Rome. I was lucky, he said. No wonder I was having such a good time, since I could buy whatever I wanted, while all he could do was lie wheezing in the garret like a poor stepchild. I did what I could to placate him, but the more I bought him, the more he wanted. Besides which, he would hardly let me out of his sight. He complained if I left him alone for even a few minutes; but if I asked him to come along with me, to a museum or a church—my God, we were in Rome—he was dreadfully bored and kept at me constantly to leave. It got so I couldn’t even read a book without his sailing in. Goodness. He’d stand outside the door and jabber at me while I was having my bath. I caught him going through my suitcase. I mean—” he paused delicately—“it’s slightly annoying to have even an unobtrusive person sharing such close quarters with one. Perhaps I’d only forgotten what it was like when we lived together freshman year, or perhaps I’ve simply become more accustomed to living alone, but after a week or two of this I was a nervous wreck. I could hardly bear the sight of him. And I was worried about other things as well. You know, don’t you,” he said abruptly to me, “that sometimes I get headaches, rather bad ones?”
I did know. Bunny—fond of recounting his own illnesses and those of others—had described them in an awed whisper: Henry, flat on his back in a dark room, ice packs on his head and a handkerchief tied over his eyes.
“I don’t get them so often as I once did. When I was thirteen or fourteen I had them all the time. But now it seems that when they do come—sometimes only once a year—they’re much worse. And after I’d been a few weeks in Italy, I felt one coming on. Unmistakable. Noises get louder; objects shimmer; my peripheral vision darkens and I see all sorts of unpleasant things hovering at its edges. There’s a terrible pressure in the air. I’ll look at a street sign and not be able to read it, not understand the simplest spoken sentence. There’s not much that can be done when it comes to that but I did what I could—stayed in my room with the shades pulled, took medicine, tried to keep quiet. At last I realized I would have to cable my doctor in the States. The drugs they give me are too powerful to dispense in prescription form; generally I go to the emergency room for a shot. I wasn’t sure what an Italian doctor would do if I showed up gasping at his office, an American tourist, asking for an injection of phenobarbital.
“But by then it was too late. The headache was on me in a matter of hours and after that, I was quite incapable either of finding my way to a doctor or making myself understood if I had. I don’t know if Bunny tried to get me one or not. His Italian