The Madness Of Love | The Secret History

XXVII

The translations of the latin phrases are at the end of the chapter x

Hampden, suddenly was green as Heaven again. Most of the flowers had been killed by the snow except the late bloomers, but the trees had come back bushier than ever, deep and dark.

On Monday I arrived at the Lyceum a little early and, in Julian's office, found Henry and Lilith. Henry was half-sitting on the windowsill and Lilith was holding a bouquet of fresh peonies.

Henry looked as if he'd lost ten or fifteen pounds, which was nothing to someone Henry's size though I still saw the thinness in his face, but he still seemed strangely content, maybe even happy.

Julian and Lilith were talking in mocking, pedantic Latin, and by their look they were talking about the flowers in Lilith's hands. A dark smell of brewing tea hung strong in the air.

Henry glanced up. "Salve, amice." he said. "Valesne? Quid est rei?"
"You look well." I said to him and Lilith chuckled, glancing at us.

Henry inclined his head slightly. His eyes, which have been murky and dilated while he was ill, were now the clearest of blues.
"Benigne dicis," he said. "I feel much better."

Even though it was quite obvious he was better, I couldn't say the same about Lilith. She did look slightly better, but the paleness in her face was almost even more visible and she still seemed a little drugged up.

Francis arrived, and then Camilla; no Charles, he was probably in bed with a hangover. We all sat down at the big round table.
"And now," said Julian, when everything was quiet, "I hope you're ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?"

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One afternoon I wandered by Henry's house and found him in his back yard digging a flower bed. Lilith, with a glass of wine in hand, was slightly swinging on a swing (that Henry apparently put up in his garden) and looking at him.

Henry had on his gardening clothes - old trousers, shirtsleeves rolled up - and in the wheelbarrow were tomato plants and cucumber; three or four rosebushes with their roots tied in burlap.

I let myself in through the side gate. I was quite drunk. "Hello," I said. "hello, hello, hello."
Henry stopped and leaned on his shovel. A pale flush of sunburn glowed on the bridge of his nose.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"Putting out some lettuces."

Lilith looked at me and smiled softly. There was a long silence, in which I noticed the ferns Henry had dug up the afternoon we killed Bunny. He had planted them on the shady side of the house, where they grew dark in the cool.

I lurched back a bit. "Are you going to stay here this summer?" I said.
He glanced at Lilith and then looked at me closely. "I think so," he said. "What about you?"

"I don't know." I said. I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, but I had put in an application for an apartment-sitting job, in Brooklyn, for a history professor.

Henry was still looking at me. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. "You can give me a hand with these lettuces," he said. "There's another spade in the toolshed."

He went back to work, sticking the shovel into the ground, stepping down hard on one side of the blade. His suspenders made a black X across his back and I noticed Lilith looking at him like I never saw her look at anyone.

-------------------

Late that night - two a.m. - I had a phone call. It was Francis. "What do you want?" I said.
"Richard, I'm having a heart attack."
"You're all right," I said into the receiver. "Go back to sleep."

"Listen to me." his voice was panicky. "I'm having a heart attack. I think I'm going to die."
"No you're not."
"I have all the symptoms."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to come over here and drive me to the hospital. I'm scared of the ambulance."
There was a brief silence. "All right. Give me a few minutes." I said and hung up the phone.

When I picked him up he was still panicking. But still, all the way to the hospital, he smoked. After we came in the emergency room we had to wait for about half an hour. Francis filled out his chart and sat sullenly reading the Smithsonian magazine.

By the time we left the hospital, it was a quarter after three.
"Are you mad?" Francis said when we were in the car. It was the second time he asked.
"No." I said.
"I know you are."

The car top was down. We drove past dark houses. "Please don't be mad at me." said Francis. I ignored him. We were rounding a corner. Suddenly, a large animal lloomed in my path.

"What was that?" said Francis.
"I don't know. A deer maybe. Or a dog." I said.
"It looked like some kind of cat to me."
I put the car in gear.

-------------------

Francis had ask me not to tell anyone about our excursion to the emergency room (though I'm sure he told Lilith), but at the twins' apartment on Sunday night I found myself telling the story to Charles.

Charles was sympathetic. "Poor François," he said. "He's such a fruitcake. Is he going to see a shrink?"
"I don't know."

That was a cozy night, a happy night; lamps lit, sparkle of glasses, rain falling heavily on the roof. The windows were open and a damp cool breeze swirled through the curtains.

Henry was in excellent spirits. Relaxed, he was sitting on the sofa next to Lilith, with her legs in his lap. He was alert, well rested, quick with a laugh. Lilith, on the other hand, seemed quite sleepy, but also content.

She wore a lacy sleeveless dress, black-colored, which exposed her collarbones. The dress exaggerated her body. Once again I saw how pretty she is: the way she would blink when telling something, the way she held a cigarette, the way she'd paint her nails a burgundy blood color.

The mirror over the fireplace was the center of attention; nothing remarkable, but it was the first thing one saw when one stepped inside and now even more conspicuous because it was cracked.

How that happened was such a funny story that Charles had to tell it twice, though it was his reenactment of it that was funny, really - spring housecleaning, sneezing himself right off his stepladder and landing on the mirror.

"What I don't understand," said Henry, stroking the arch of Lilith's foot, "is how you got it back up without the glass falling out."
"It was a miracle. I wouldn't touch it now. Don't you think it looks kind of wonderful?"
Which it did, the spotty dark glass shattered like a kaleidoscope and refracting the room into a hundred pieces.

'Salve, amice' - Hello, friend
'Valesne?' - Are you okay?
'Quid est rei?' - What's the matter?
'Benigne dicis" - You speak kindly

I love writing again x
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