The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits Read online

  ELIZABETH

  PETERS

  THE NIGHT OF

  FOUR HUNDRED

  RABBITS

  TO CAROL

  in fond recollection

  of our joint Mexican adventures Contents

  ONE

  I wish some university, somewhere, offered a course in survival.

  1

  TWO

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by books, notes, and…

  23

  THREE

  The taxi stopped again. Danny leaned forward to expostulate with…

  55

  FOUR

  If it hadn’t been for Ivan, I’d probably have taken…

  74

  FIVE

  I remembered the Kahlua as soon as I woke up…

  105

  SIX

  When Ivan spoke of a couple, I thought he meant…

  136

  SEVEN

  “Well,” I said. “Well, well.”

  169

  EIGHT

  I was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching… 195

  NINE

  Uncle Jaime’s pots of pot were doing splendidly. When I…

  214

  TEN

  The household dined early, for a Latin family; by nine…

  250

  ELEVEN

  I wasn’t in the best of all possible moods when…

  271

  TWELVE

  Ivan was wearing his favorite black shirt and slacks. I’m…

  303

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  BOOKS BY ELIZABETH PETERS

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Chapter 1

  I wish some university, somewhere, offered a course in survival.

  Not how to survive when your plane crashes in the jungle, or when you get lost in the woods. Not even how to survive in the jungle-cities of today. Maybe, if I’d studied karate or carried a gun, I would have managed matters more efficiently during my recent misadventures. But I don’t think karate or firearms would have helped. What I needed was a course in how to understand human beings.

  There are courses in everything else. All of them lead, by some obscure chain of connection, to the ac-quisition of the Good Life—a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice husband who has a nice job, and a parcel of nice kids. These days they

  1

  2 / Elizabeth Peters

  even teach you how to produce the kids—complete with anatomical charts and tests to find out whether or not you’re frigid. If my only experience of S-E-X had come from that classroom, I might have decided it would be more fun to set up a workshop and build some nice little robots. You could program the robots to be “nice,” which is more than you can do for real children.

  But there are no courses in survival.

  When you’re small, you don’t worry about surviving.

  Other people protect you from danger. They hide the bottles of bleach and the aspirin, and they won’t let you ride your tricycle down the middle of the street.

  Eventually you realize that drinking bleach can make you dead, and so can cars, when you’re in the middle of the street.

  So what I want to know is: At what age do you learn about people? Your parents can’t teach you that; they can’t put the bad guys on a high shelf, like bottles of bleach. And one of the reasons why they can’t is because they can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys either. That’s maturity—when you realize that you’ve finally arrived at a state of ignorance as profound as that of your parents.

  I’ve had my experience, enough to last a life-time, and all crammed into ten days. I’d like to think that I’ve learned something from it. But I don’t know; if anything, decisions are harder to make now, because so many of the nice neat guidelines I used to accept have become blurred

  The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits / 3

  and confused. As I look back on it, I suspect I’d probably go right ahead and repeat the same blunders I made the first time.

  If they were blunders. That’s what I mean, about things getting blurry. Every action seems to produce a mixture of results, some good, some bad, some immediate, and some so far removed from the original event that you can barely see the connection.

  Take, for example, that stupid comment I made the day I arrived home from college for Christmas vacation.

  It was snowing outside, and the Christmas tree glittered with colored lights and shiny ornaments; and I looked at the packages under the tree, which were all, by their shapes, dress boxes and sweater boxes and little boxes made to hold costume jewelry and stock-ings; and I opened my big, flapping mouth, and I said, “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

  It was a feeble attempt at wit, I admit. It was also a tactical error, and I should have known better. I did know, even before I saw my mother’s face congeal like quick-drying plaster. Helen liked to reminisce about my childhood, but this was the wrong kind of memory.

  The reading aloud—that was George’s thing. It went on for years, long after I reached an age when I could read to myself. And Little Women 4 / Elizabeth Peters

  was one of our private jokes—George protesting feebly that no male should ever be expected to read Little Women, and me insisting that Little Women was the greatest book ever written, and that no literary education, male or female, was complete without it.

  Helen never did understand those idiotic private jokes of ours. I can remember her standing there in the doorway, with her face wrinkled in an irritable smile, while I lay on my bed giggling and George read solemnly through Little Women, word by word, each phrase articulated with the uncertain accent of someone reading aloud in a language he doesn’t really understand…. Oh, well, I guess it doesn’t sound funny.

  Private jokes never do when you try to explain them.

  And poor Helen, standing there, with that puzzled half-smile, trying to figure it all out….

  She wasn’t trying to smile, that afternoon before Christmas. I wondered, disloyally, if Helen realized how much older she looked with that tight plaster mask of resentment. Helen doesn’t like being old. She isn’t, really. As she is fond of pointing out, I was born when she was only eighteen, and she spends a lot of time and money trying to look ten years less than her real age. More time and money lately, with her fortieth birthday coming up. I don’t know why women flip over being forty. I won’t mind, especially if I can look like Helen—tall, slim, with a head of The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits / 5

  reddish-blond hair that shines like the shampoo ads on TV. She has beautiful legs, and she wears the right clothes. Of course she gets them at a discount; she’s head buyer at the biggest department store in town, and she looks the part.

  “What do you mean, no presents?” she asked sharply. “I’d hate to tell you how near I am to being overdrawn.”

  “I mean—I meant, I was thinking of the toys you used to get me for Christmas—the dolls and the beautiful clothes for them, the cute little doll-house furniture from Germany and Denmark. When I was that age, I never considered clothes real presents.”

  Not like dolls—or books. But I didn’t say that.

  George was the one who gave me the books.

  My diversion worked. But as Helen’s face relaxed, I felt a little nauseated—at myself. It was a reflex, by now, keeping that look off Helen’s face. When I was little, her speechless, white-lipped anger sent me into a panic. Kids learn quickly when they’re afraid; I soon realized that the way to keep Helen smooth and smiling was never, ever, to say anything that could remind her of George.

  But now there was something c
ontemptible about my instinctive avoidance of unpleasantness. Surely, after all these years, she should have reached the stage of indifference. And surely I was old enough to learn the truth about my father.

  6 / Elizabeth Peters

  “That doll collection,” Helen said reminiscently. “It’s still in the attic, you know. I hadn’t the heart to give it away.”

  “Save it for your grandchildren.”

  Helen gave me one of those maternal looks—the suspicious maternal look, not the sentimental one.

  “I hope there are none in the offing.”

  “Oh, Mother, for heaven’s sake—”

  Helen laughed.

  “Sorry, darling, I guess I’m just an old-fashioned mum. That particular worry is completely out of style, isn’t it? After all, I should be sure that you know how to take care of yourself.”

  I looked away. Somehow I hated it when Mother got onto that subject. I suppose I should have been grateful for Helen’s handling of the problem; I had been told, in dry, clinical language, all I needed to know, and Helen had even made sure, when I went off to college, that I was supplied with the Magic Po-tions. The other girls envied me. But there was something about Helen’s matter-of-fact briskness that repelled me. I remembered my blank astonishment after The Talk; and my feeling, “Is that all there is?”

  It was not late in the afternoon, but the day was dark, pregnant with snow, and Helen had lit the lamps.

  Outside the window, the lawn lay hidden under a thick white blanket, and the pine trees were frosted along every branch. The bare branches of the big maples by the fence traced

  The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits / 7

  dark lines against the lighter sky, as formal and precise as a Chinese drawing. Beyond them were the lighted windows of the Wallsteins’ house. There were six juvenile Wallsteins, and I fancied I could almost see the big old house vibrate with excitement. Christmas was only two days away.

  My eyes moved from the window to the room itself.

  It was a big, old-fashioned room which wore its modern furnishings rather awkwardly. The house was too big for the two of us, far too big for Helen, now that I was away most of the time. Yet she had refused to move after George left. You would have thought that since she hated all memories of him, she would not want to stay in the home they had shared. There was not a single object belonging to George in the house—not a stitch of clothing, not a picture, not a book. Perhaps the house represented Helen’s triumph.

  She had survived without him; and she had obliterated him within the physical framework he had once dominated.

  It was not a pretty thought. I picked up my knitting, in an effort to improve my mood. The soft blue wool slid through my fingers, and I began to relax. This was the second sleeve; the front and back were already done. I had meant to finish the sweater before I left school, but I hadn’t succeeded. So Danny would get a belated Christmas present. I wasn’t sure he would wear it; he might think the color too feminine. But it was the same

  8 / Elizabeth Peters

  vivid blue as his eyes. That was the reason why I had chosen the wool.

  “I’m sorry your friend—Danny—couldn’t spend Christmas with us,” Helen said.

  “ESP,” I said. “How did you know I was thinking about him?”

  “Logic, not ESP. Seeing you grinning foolishly at that knitting. I’m not that old, darling; I can remember a time when one young man or another filled all my waking thoughts.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “You’re purring,” Helen said accusingly. “How serious is this boy, anyhow?”

  “Pretty serious.”

  “You mean my fears about incipient grandchildren are not without foundation? And don’t say, ‘Oh, Mother!’”

  “You leave me speechless, then.”

  “No. Really.”

  My hands slowed to a stop, but my eyes remained fixed on the knitting needles and their banner of blue wool. I wanted to talk seriously to Helen about Danny; actually, I didn’t want to talk about anything else but Danny. Yet in a perverse way, I didn’t want to talk about him, I wanted to hug my feelings to myself, keep them safe and secret. I was afraid of laughter.

  “Well,” I said slowly, “he mentioned getting married.”

  I hadn’t meant to put it that way. I felt The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits / 9

  my cheeks redden, and braced myself for a smile or chuckle.

  “He’s supposed to come and ask my consent,” Helen said.

  “Oh, Mother!”

  I looked up and met Helen’s twinkling cynical eye, and then we both laughed, together. That kind of laughter I didn’t mind. A wave of affection swept over me as I watched Helen’s mouth curve and her hazel eyes narrow with amusement. She could be such fun when she wanted to be.

  “I certainly don’t mean to rush you,” Helen said, reaching for a cigarette. “And I’ll be honored if you so much as mention the date of the wedding to me; I guess, these days, I should be relieved that you even plan to marry. But I’d like to know more about Danny.”

  “You know everything important.”

  “That he’s blond, blue-eyed, handsome, and brilliant? All that is undoubtedly important, but there are other considerations.”

  It was almost dark outside; the lighted windows of the Wallstein house shone bravely through the gray twilight, and small white flakes of snow drifted against the pane.

  “What is his full name?” Helen persisted. “You must have told me, but I’ve forgotten.”

  “Linton. Daniel Cook Linton the Third.” I took a deep breath; might as well get it over with. “His 10 / Elizabeth Peters

  mother has remarried, to someone named Hoffman, he’s a stockbroker or something in New York. Danny has a stepsister, much younger than he, no other brothers or sisters. He really is brilliant; Professor Marks said his last paper—”

  “Hoffman.” Helen took a deep drag on her cigarette.

  She was always trying to quit smoking and never succeeding. “The name sounds familiar.”

  “Maybe you’ve seen it in The New York Times. His mother is some big deal in society.”

  Helen blew out smoke. Her face was peaceful, but I wasn’t fooled. Helen was thinking.

  “What is Mr. Daniel Whatever the Third doing at a second-rate cow college, instead of one of the Ivy League schools?”

  “You would,” I said. “You would think of that. He did go to one of the fancy prep schools, but he—well, he got into a little trouble. Just jokes, nothing serious…His mother decided that a nice healthy midwest-ern school would be good for him.”

  “You mean Harvard wouldn’t take him,” Helen said.

  She put out her cigarette. To my relief, I saw that she was smiling. “Well, that’s not too important. A few wild oats…I gather that what they call his ‘prospects’

  are good.”

  I was saved by the bell from the sort of answer I would probably have regretted. It was the doorbell.

  “Who can that be, on a night like this?” Helen wondered. As she moved across the room toward the door, her hands were busy, brushing The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits / 11

  back her hair, straightening her skirt.

  “Don’t be such a ham. Your boyfriends don’t let sleet or snow or dark of night or—”

  “Boyfriends, indeed. How vulgar.”

  We had time for one quick, conspiratorial grin—mother and grown-up daughter—before Helen opened the door and admitted a flurry of snow and the distinguished lawyer who was her latest conquest.

  He was carrying an enormous parcel, wrapped in gold paper adorned with ribbons and sprigs of mistletoe. I suppressed a grin as I rose to greet him. Mistletoe, I thought; silly old man.

  So it was a lovely Christmas, complete with snow and mistletoe and old friends dropping in for punch, and dozens of presents, and more old friends dropping in for Christmas brunch, and sledding with the Wallstein kids, whom I had baby-sat, singly and in bunches, over the years. It was a lovely Christmas
vacation. Up till the last day.

  The balding salesman in the seat next to me was sulking. I didn’t feel guilty; he had asked for it. Some of them won’t give up till you’re rude. What gets me is how they have the conceit. I mean, he had too much stomach and not enough hair, and he must have been at least forty. A man that age looks silly chasing college girls—unless his conversation runs to remarks more scintillat

  12 / Elizabeth Peters

  ing than “Come on, honey, a little drink won’t hurt you.”

  Momentarily, though, I wished I had accepted the offer. My thoughts weren’t very good company.

  The weather was unusually clear. Far down below, I could see the plane’s shadow skimming over the snow-covered fields. The view, which was so rich and green in summer, now had the stark beauty of a Wyeth painting; the pale symmetrical squares of fields and pastures were cut by India-ink lines of highways and broken by the black shapes of fir trees. Another hour, I thought. Another hour before I can see Danny.

  Tall, blond, blue-eyed, and handsome; it was like describing mountains as big stony things with snow on top. His hair was a silvery gilt color, as fine as floss; he kept it cut short because it wouldn’t stay flat otherwise. Against his fair skin his eyes stood out with startling vividness—an electric, vibrant blue, like sapphires, like a lake with the sun on it….

  The plane window reflected my own features dimly, like a clouded mirror. It wasn’t much of a face, even in a good light—too broad through the forehead, narrowing down to a pointed chin. Helen kept telling me I ought to do something about my hair. A rinse, to give its dishwater-blond color some highlights; a hair-cut, for heaven’s sake! My eyes are my only good feature, big and dark The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits / 13

  against my pale complexion; but now they looked like empty eyesockets. I look like my father. Even though there wasn’t a picture of him in the house, I knew what he looked like. I would have recognized him instantly if I had met him on the street.