The Secret History (21 page)

At night I lay shivering on the floor, watching the illuminated snowflakes sift in a column through the hole in the ceiling. On the margin of stupefaction, as I was sliding off the steep roof of unconsciousness, something would tell me at the last instant that if I went to sleep I might never wake: with a struggle I would force my eyes open and all of a sudden the column of snow, standing bright and tall in its dark corner, would appear to me in its true whispering, smiling menace, an airy angel of death. But I was too tired to care; even as I looked at it I would feel my grasp slackening, and before I knew it I had tumbled down the slanted edge, and into the dark abyss of sleep.

Time was beginning to blur. I still dragged myself to the office, but only because it was warm there, and I somehow performed the simple tasks that I had to do, but I honestly do not know how much longer I would have been able to keep this up had not a very surprising thing happened.

I’ll never forget this night as long as I live. It was Friday, and Dr. Roland was going to be out of town until the following Wednesday. For me, that meant four days in the warehouse, and even in my clouded state it was clear I might freeze to death for real.

When Commons closed I started for home. The snow was deep, and before long my legs to the knees were prickling and numb. By the time the road came around into East Hampden I was wondering seriously if I could make it to the warehouse, and what I would do when I got there. Everything in East Hampden was dark and deserted, even the Boulder Tap; the only light for miles around seemed to be the light shimmering around the pay phone in front. I made my way towards it as though it were a mirage in the desert. I had about thirty dollars in my pocket, more than enough to call a taxi to take me to the Catamount Motel, to a nasty little room with an unlocked door and whatever else might await me there.

My voice was slurred and the operator wouldn’t give me the number of a taxi company. “You have to give me the name of a
specific
taxi service,” she said. “We’re not allowed to—”

“I don’t know the name of a specific taxi service,” I said thickly. “There’s not a phone book here.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not allowed to—”

“Red Top?” I said desperately, trying to guess at names, make them up, anything. “Yellow Top? Town Taxi? Checker?”

Finally I guess I got one right, or maybe she just felt sorry for me. There was a click, and a mechanical voice came on and gave me a number. I dialed it quickly so I wouldn’t forget, so quickly that I got it wrong and lost my quarter.

I had one more quarter in my pocket; it was my last one. I took off my glove and groped in my pocket with my numbed fingers. Finally I found it, and I had it in my hand and was about to bring it up to the slot, when suddenly it slipped from my fingers and I pitched forward after it, hitting my forehead on the sharp corner of the metal tray beneath the phone.

I lay face down in the snow for a few minutes. There was a rushing noise in my ears; in falling, I had grabbed for the phone and knocked it off the hook, and the busy signal the receiver made as it swung back and forth sounded as if it were coming from a long way off.

I managed to get up on all fours. Staring at the place where my head had been, I saw a dark spot on the snow. When I touched my forehead with my ungloved hand the fingers came away red. The quarter was gone; besides, I had forgotten the number. I would have to come back later, when the Boulder Tap was open and I could get change. Somehow I struggled to my feet, leaving the black receiver dangling from its cord.

I made it up the stairs half walking, half on my hands and knees. Blood was trickling down my forehead. At the landing I stopped to rest and felt my surroundings slide out of focus: static, between stations, everything snowy for a moment or two before the black lines wavered and the picture snapped back; not quite clear, but recognizable. Jerky camera, nightmare commercial. Leo’s Mandolin Warehouse. Last stop, down by the river. Low rates. Remember us, too, for all your meat-locker needs.

I pushed the workshop door open with my shoulder and began to fumble for the light switch when suddenly I saw something by the window that made me reel with shock. A figure in a long black overcoat was standing motionless across the room by the windows, hands clasped behind the back; near one of the hands I saw the tiny glow of a cigarette coal.

The lights came on with a crackle and a hum. The shadowy
figure, now solid and visible, turned around. It was Henry. He seemed on the verge of making some joking remark, but when he saw me his eyes got wide and his mouth fell open into a small round o.

We stood staring at each other across the room for a moment or two.

“Henry?” I said at last, my voice scarcely more than a whisper.

He let the cigarette fall from his fingers and took a step towards me. It really was him—damp, ruddy cheeks, snow on the shoulders of his overcoat. “Good God, Richard,” he said, “what’s happened to you?”

It was as much surprise as I ever saw him show. I stood where I was, staring, unbalanced. Things had got too bright, white around the edges. I reached for the door frame, and the next thing I knew I was falling, and Henry had jumped forward to catch me.

He eased me onto the floor and took off his coat and spread it over me like a blanket. I squinted up at him and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Where did you come from?” I said.

“I left Italy early.” He was brushing the hair back from my forehead, trying to get a look at my cut. I saw blood on his fingertips.

“Some little place I’ve got here, huh?” I said, and laughed.

He glanced up at the hole in the ceiling. “Yes,” he said brusquely. “Not unlike the Pantheon.” Then he bent to look at my head again.

I remember being in Henry’s car, and lights and people bending over me, and having to sit up when I didn’t want to, and I also remember someone trying to take my blood, and me complaining sort of feebly about it; but the first thing I remember with any clarity was sitting up and finding myself in a dim, white room, lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm.

Henry was sitting in a chair by my bed, reading by the table lamp. He put down his book when he saw me stir. “Your cut wasn’t serious,” he said. “It was very clean and shallow. They gave you a few stitches.”

“Am I in the infirmary?”

“You’re in Montpelier. I brought you to the hospital.”

“What’s this IV for?”

“They say you have pneumonia. Would you like something to read?” he said courteously.

“No thank you. What time is it?”

“One in the morning.”

“But I thought you were in Rome.”

“I came back about two weeks ago. If you want to go back to sleep I’ll call the nurse to give you a shot.”

“No thanks. Why haven’t I seen you before now?”

“Because I didn’t know where you lived. The only address I had for you was in care of the college. This afternoon I asked around at the offices. By the way,” he said, “what’s the name of the town where your parents live?”

“Plano. Why?”

“I thought you might want me to call them.”

“Don’t bother,” I said, sinking back into my bed. The IV was like ice in my veins. “Tell me about Rome.”

“All right,” he said, and he began to talk very quietly about the lovely Etruscan terra-cottas in the Villa Giulia, and the lily pools and the fountains in the nymphaeum outside it; about the Villa Borghese and the Colosseum, the view from the Palatine Hill early in the morning, and how beautiful the Baths of Caracalla must have been in Roman times, with the marbles and the libraries and the big circular calidarium, and the frigidarium, with its great empty pool, that was there even now, and probably a lot of other things besides but I don’t remember because I fell asleep.

I was in the hospital for four nights. Henry stayed with me almost the whole time, bringing me sodas when I asked for them, and a razor and a toothbrush, and a pair of his own pajamas—silky Egyptian cotton, cream-colored and heavenly soft, with HMW (M for Marchbanks) embroidered in tiny scarlet letters on the pocket. He also brought me pencils and paper, for which I had little use but which I suppose he would have been lost without, and a great many books, half of which were in languages I couldn’t read and the other half of which might as well have been. One night—head aching from Hegel—I asked him to bring me a magazine; he looked rather startled, and when he came back it was with a trade journal
(Pharmacology Update)
he had found in the lounge. We talked hardly at all. Most of the time he read, with a concentration that astonished me; six hours at a stretch, scarcely
glancing up. He paid me almost no attention. But he stayed up with me on the bad nights, when I had a hard time breathing and my lungs hurt so I couldn’t sleep; and once, when the nurse on duty was three hours late with my medicine, he followed her expressionless into the hall and there delivered, in his subdued monotone, such a tense and eloquent reprimand that the nurse (a contemptuous, hard-bitten woman, with dyed hair like an aging waitress, and a sour word for everyone) was somewhat mollified; and afterwards she—who ripped off the bandages around my IV with such callousness, and poked me black and blue in her desultory search for veins—was much gentler in her handling of me, and once, while taking my temperature, even called me “hon.”

The emergency room doctor told me that Henry had saved my life. This was a dramatic and gratifying thing to hear—and one which I repeated to a number of people—but secretly I thought it was an exaggeration. In subsequent years, however, I’ve come to feel that he might well have been right. When I was younger I thought that I was immortal. And though I bounced back quickly, in a short-term sense, in another I never really quite got over that winter. I’ve had problems with my lungs ever since, and my bones ache at the slightest chill, and I catch cold easily now, whereas I never used to.

I told Henry what the doctor had said. He was displeased. Frowning, he made some curt remark—actually, I’m surprised I’ve forgotten it, I was so embarrassed—and I never mentioned it again. I think he did save me, though. And someplace, if there is a place where lists are kept, and credit given, I am sure there is a gold star by his name.

But I am getting sentimental. Sometimes, when I think about these things, I do.

On Monday morning I was able to leave at last, with a bottle of antibiotics and an arm full of pinpricks. They insisted on pushing me to Henry’s car in a wheelchair, though I was perfectly able to walk and humiliated at being rolled out like a parcel.

“Take me to the Catamount Motel,” I told him as we pulled into Hampden.

“No,” he said. “You’re coming to stay with me.”

Henry lived on the first floor of an old house on Water Street, in North Hampden, just around the block from Charles and Camilla’s and closer to the river. He didn’t like to have people over and I had been there only once, and then for a minute or
two. It was much larger than Charles and Camilla’s apartment, and a good deal emptier. The rooms were big and anonymous, with wide-plank floors and no curtains on the windows and plaster walls painted white. The furniture, while obviously good, was scarred and plain and there wasn’t much of it. The whole place had a ghostly, unoccupied look; and some of the rooms had nothing in them at all. I had been told by the twins that Henry disliked electric lights, and here and there I saw kerosene lamps in the windowsills.