The Secret History

The problem, basically, was that I had been taking too many pills; the ups now, periodically, mixed with the downs, because though the latter had ceased to put me effectively to sleep, they hung me over in the daytime, so that I wandered in a perpetual twilight. Unmedicated sleep was impossible, a fairy tale, some remote childhood dream. But I was ru

Behind the mountains the sky was overcast, dark as slate. There was pressure in the air; rain coming, sometime soon. Geraniums blazed from the white housefronts, the red of them, against the chalky clapboard, fierce and harrowing.

I turned down Water Street, which ran north past Henry's house, and as I approached I saw a dark shadow in the back of his garden. No, I thought.

But it was. He was on his knees with a pail of water, and a cloth, and as I drew nearer I saw that he was washing not the flagstones, as I'd thought at first, but a rosebush. He was bent over it, polishing the leaves with meticulous care, like some crazed gardener from Alice in Wonderland.

I thought that any moment he must stop, but he didn't, and finally I let myself in through the back gate. 'Henry,' I said. 'What are you doing?'

He glanced up, calmly, not at all surprised to see me. 'Spider mites,' he said. 'We've had a damp spring. I've sprayed them twice, but to get the eggs off it's best to wash them by hand.' He dropped the cloth in the pail. I noted, not for the first time lately, how well he looked, how his stiff sad ma

And that is a Madame Isaac Pereire. The flowers smell of raspberries.'

I said: 'Is Camilla here?'

There was no trace of emotion upon his face, or of any effort to conceal it. 'No,' he said, turning back to his work. 'She was sleeping when I left. I didn't want to wake her.'

It was shocking to hear him speak of her with such intimacy.

Pluto and Persephone. I looked at his back, prim as a parson's, tried to imagine the two of them together. His big white hands with the square nails.

Henry said, unexpectedly: 'How is Charles?'

'All right,' I said, after an awkward pause.

'He'll be coming home soon, I suppose.'

A dirty tarpaulin flapped loudly on the roof. He kept working.

His dark trousers, with the suspenders crossed over his white shirted back, gave him a vaguely Amish appearance.

'Henry,' I said.

He didn't look up.

'Henry, it's none of my business, but I hope for God's sake you know what you're doing,' I said. I paused, expecting some response, but there was none. 'You haven't seen Charles, but I have, and I don't think you realize the shape he's in. Ask Francis, if you don't believe me. Even Julian's noticed. I mean, I've tried to tell you, but I just don't think you understand. He's out of his mind, and Camilla has no idea, and I don't know what we'll do when he gets home. I'm not even sure he'll be able to stay by himself. I mean '

'I'm sorry,' interrupted Henry, 'but would you mind handing me those shears?'

There was a long silence. Finally, he reached over and got them himself. 'All right,' he said pleasantly. 'Never mind.' Very conscientiously, he parted the canes and clipped one in the middle, holding the shears at a careful slant, taking care not to injure a larger cane adjacent to it.

'What the hell is wrong with you?' I had a hard time keeping my voice down. There were windows open in the upstairs apartment that faced the back; I heard people talking, listening to the radio, moving around. 'Why do you have to make things so hard for everybody?' He didn't turn around. I grabbed the shears from his hand and threw them, with a clatter, on the bricks. 'Answer me,' I said.

We looked at each other for a long moment. Behind his glasses, his eyes were steady and very blue.

Finally, he said, quietly: 'Tell me.'

The intensity of his gaze frightened me. 'What?'

'You don't feel a great deal of emotion for other people, do you?'

I was taken aback. 'What are you talking about?' I said. 'Of course I do.'

'Do you?' He raised an eyebrow. 'I don't think so. It doesn't matter,' he said, after a long, tense pause. 'I don't, either.'

'What are you trying to get at?'

He shrugged. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Except that my life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless. Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me. I was incapable of enjoying even the simplest things. I felt dead in everything I did.'

He brushed the dirt from his hands. 'But then it changed,' he said. 'The night I killed that man.'

I was jarred – a little spooked, as well – at so blatant a reference to something referred to, by mutual agreement, almost exclusively with codes, catchwords, a hundred different euphemisms.

'It was the most important night of my life,' he said calmly. 'It enabled me to do what I've always wanted most.'

'Which is?'

'To live without thinking.'

Bees buzzed loudly in the honeysuckle. He went back to his rosebush, thi

'Before, I was paralyzed, though I didn't really know it,' he said. 'It was because I thought too much, lived too much in the mind. It was hard to make decisions. I felt immobilized.'

'And now?'

'Now,' he said, 'now, I know that I can do anything that I want.' He glanced up. 'And, unless I'm very wrong, you've experienced something similar yourself 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Oh, but I think you do. That surge of power and delight, of confidence, of control. That sudden sense of the richness of the world. Its infinite possibility.'

He was talking about the ravine. And, to my horror, 1 realized that in a way he was right. As ghastly as it had been, there was no denying that Bu

'I don't understand what this has to do with anything,' I said, to his back.

'I'm not sure that I do, either,' he said, assessing the balance of his rosebush, then removing, very carefully, another cane in the center. 'Except that there's not much which matters a great deal. The last six months have made that plain. And lately it has seemed important to find a thing or two which do. That's all.'

As he said this, he trailed away. 'There,' he said at last. 'Does that look all right? Or do I need to open it up more in the middle?'

'Henry,' I said. 'Listen to me.'

'I don't want to take off too much,' he said vaguely. 'I should have done this a month ago. The canes bleed if they're pruned this late, but better late than never, as they say.'

'Henry. Please.' I was on the verge of tears. 'What's the matter with you? Have you lost your mind? Don't you understand what's going on?'