The Madness Of Love | The Secret History

XVII

Bunny, for all his appearance of amiable stability, was actually a wildly erratic character. There were any number of reasons for this, but primary among them was his complete inability to think about anything before he did it.

To the casual observer he seemed pretty much his jolly old self. But behind that bluff facade some distinct changes were taking place.

In some respects, it was as if nothing had happened at all. We went to our classes, did our Greek, and generally managed to pretend among one another that things were all right.

At the time it heartened me that Bunny continued to follow the old routine so easily. I suppose the others sensed that the continuation of the old rituals was in some respects a charade for Bunny's benefit, but I didn't have any idea how disturbed he really was until the following event took place.

We were spending the weekend at Francis's house. Aside from the barely perceptible strain, things seemed to be going smoothly and Bunny had been in a good mood at dinner that night.

When I went to bed he was still downstairs, drinking wine and playing backgammon with Charles, to all appearances his usual self; but some time in the middle of the night I was awakened by a loud bellowing, from down the corridor in Henry's room.

I say up in bed and switched on the light.
"You don't care about a goddamn thing, do you?" I heard Bunny scream; this followed by a crash.
"Not a thing but your own fucking self, you and all the rest of them, especially that bitch- Don't touch me" he shrieked "get away - !"

More crashing, as of furniture overturned, and Henry's voice. Bunny's rose above it.
There were rapid footsteps down the hall. Then the muffled noise of sobs.

About three o'clock, when everything was quiet, I heard soft footsteps in the hall and, after a pause, a knock at my door. Surprisingly, it was Lilith.

"I'm glad you're awake, Richie" she said distractedly, looking around my room. "I saw your light."
"Why are you awake?" I asked.
"Francis is asleep on my bed. He really doesn't know how to drink, you know."
"I think he'd say the same about you."

Lilith chuckled and pulled out a little bottle of whiskey from her pocket. "Want some?" she didn't wait for my answer. "Did you hear the noises? God, I hope Henry is fine."

She passed me the bottle. I stayed quiet for a moment. "Are you... together with him?" my voice came out more like a whisper. She looked at me with a slightly confused look. "With whom?..."

There was another knock. It was Henry. "Oh" he said, looking at Lilith. "I'm glad to find you here. Do you have an aspirin?" She gave him two.

"What was all the noise about?" I asked.
"I don't know, really." he said blankly. "I must have done something to set him off, though for the life of me I don't know what. I was reading in my room, and he came up and -" Lilith lit a cigarette. "You wouldn't happen to have one for me?"

She quietly searched through her pockets, took out a box of Lucky Strikes and gave one to Henry. I didn't think anything about it then, only recently I realised that she hated Lucky Strikes and never smoked them.

Henry sighed and sat down heavily in an armchair. "Richard, could you go to my room? There's this blue enamel pillbox." He was so pale and shaken, I wondered if he was ill.
"Why?" "I don't want to go in there. Bunny's asleep on my bed."

I looked at him. "Well, Jesus. I'm not going to-"
"Just go, Richie." said Lilith softly, not even looking at me.

And so I went. I was unprepared for what I found there: books were scattered across the floor; the night table was knocked over; against the wall lay the remains of a black Malacca chair. In the middle of the room Bunny was laying on the edge of Henry's bed. I grabbed up his pillbox and left as fast as I could.

As I was walking to my room, I heard muffled talking and whispers coming from it. When I went in, Henry was still in the armchair, head dropped back. Lilith was looking through the booklets on my night table. When she turned, the light shone on her face and I noticed that her dark red lipstick was smeared a little bit. I also saw some of it on Henry's lips too.

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As troubling as they were, these eruptions of hysteria were infrequent. But they made it plain how upset Bunny was. It was Henry he was angriest at. Yet in a strange way, it was Henry he was best able to tolerate on a daily basis.

If he treated Henry with deference, it was she rest of us who were forced to bear the wearing brunt of his anger. Most of the time he was simply irritating: for example, in his frequent tirades against the Catholic Church.

Bunny's family was Episcopalian, Lilith worshipped Dionysus, and my parents had no religious affiliation at all; but Henry, Francis, and the twins had been Catholics; and though they never went to church, Bunny's ignorant, tireless stream of blasphemies enraged them.

What was worse was when he chose to zero in on one person. Charles was good-natured and slow to anger, but he was sometimes so disturbed by these anti-Catholic diatribes that his teacup would clatter upon its saucer. He was also sensitive to remarks about his drinking.

With Francis things were more pointed and unpleasant. Nobody said anything about it, but we all knew he was gay. I don't really have the heart to recount all the vile things he did and said to Francis, the remarks about faggots and queers, humiliating stream of questions about his preference and practices.
"Just once" I remember Francis hissing, through clenched teeth. "Just once I'd like to..."

One might expect that I myself wouldn't be a target of his ongoing sniper fire. Unfortunately I was. Ruthless, he picked up the traces of everything I was most insecure about. He tortured me about what prep school I'd gone to.
I'd gone to the public school in Plano, which was nothing particularly shameful, but I still lied.

Camilla and Lilith he tormented just because they were girls. Bunny tried to insult Camilla in a variety of ways. She met his eye, unblinking as he told the most vulgar and humiliating jokes and laughed if he attempted to insult her taste or intelligence.

With Lilith it was a little bit different story. When talking about prep school he asked her where she went, and when she stayed silent he started to say that she must be from a third world country. Since she never told us where she's from, it was a frequent 'joke' Bunny used.

Religious slurs, temper tantrums, insults, coercion, debt: all petty things - too minor, it would seem, to move six reasonable people to murder. But it wasn't until I had helped to kill a man that I realised how complex an act a murder can actually be, and not necessarily attributable to one dramatic motive.

It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Bunny deserved death.
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