Portraits and Observations by Truman Capote
The conversation moved with an increasing ease; he ate a piece of Hershey, he laughed, his heels clicked; and then I offered him some books. They were stacked on the table, and his eyes continually strayed toward them, a gaudy collection of twenty-five-cent thrillers mixed in with Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station, a history of the rise of Socialism, and Nancy Mitford’s biography, Madame de Pompadour. I told him he could have them, if he liked.
At first, he was pleased. Then, as he reached for the books, his hands hesitated, withdrew, and his personal tic started; more shrugs, shrinkings, until he was swallowed again in the looseness of his clothes. “I have not the time,” he said regretfully. Afterward there seemed nothing left to say. He informed me that my passport was in order, and left.
Between midnight and two in the morning, The Blue Express stood still in a railroad siding near Moscow. The exterior coldness had stolen into the cars, forming lenses of ice on the inside surface of the windowpanes; looking out, one saw merely spectral diffusions, as if your vision were deformed by cataracts. As soon as the train left Moscow, a restless mood rippled through the compartments; those who had been asleep wakened, began to flutter about like chickens tricked by a false dawn. The stay-ups poured another drink and breathed a second wind. Already the pendulum was swinging toward the tensions of arrival.
Miss Thigpen woke up, calling, “Earl! Earl!” as though she’d had a bad dream.
“Gone,” said Miss Ryan, who was curled in her berth nursing a brandy and reading Mickey Spillane. “He’s out defying the law. Somebody’s running a bootleg Tonk in the next car.”
“That’s no way to do. Earl ought to be getting his rest,” said Miss Thigpen grouchily.
“Give him hell,” Miss Ryan advised her. “He’s got to marry you.”
“Nancy, quelle heure est-il?”
“Twenty to four.” At four Miss Thigpen again inquired the time; and again at ten past. “For God’s sake, Helen. Either get a watch or take an Oblivon.”
Miss Thigpen kicked back her covers. “No sense trying. I’m better off dressed.” It took her an hour and twenty-five minutes to select her costume and apply the right proportions of cosmetics and perfume. At five thirty-five she put on a feathered hat with a veil and sat down on her berth, completely clothed except for stockings and shoes. “I’m worried sick what to wear on my legs. I don’t want to be poisoned,” she said. Her fear was founded on a memo the Russians had issued to the ladies of the company on the subject of nylon hosiery. In conditions of severe cold, nylon, they announced, had a tendency to disintegrate, which might cause nylon poisoning. Miss Thigpen rubbed her naked legs and groaned. “What kind of place is this we’re going? Where a lady’s stockings fall to pieces on the street and maybe kill her?”
“Forget it,” said Miss Ryan.
“But the Russians …”
“How the hell would they know? They don’t have any nylons. That’s why they say it.”
It was eight in the morning before Jackson returned from his Tonk game. “Earl,” said Miss Thigpen, “is this how you’re going to do after we’re married?”
“Sweet-girl,” he said, wearily climbing into his berth, “the cat has howled his last. He’s zero point zero. Ooble-ee-dood out.”
Miss Thigpen was unsympathetic. “Earl, don’t you dare go to sleep now. We’re almost there. Go to sleep for such a little bit and you’ll wake up an ugly mess.”
Jackson muttered and drew a blanket over his head.
“Earl,” said Miss Ryan softly, “I suppose you know they’re going to make newsreels at the station?”
Very shortly afterward, Jackson had shaved, changed shirts and arrayed himself in a caramel-colored fur coat. He owned a hat of the same fur that he’d had “custom-made” fedora-style. While working his hands into a pair of gloves with holes along the fingers to reveal his rings, he gave his fiancée instructions on how to handle the expected cameras: “See, honey, we don’t want to get stuck with a lot of still-men. That’s a waste of time when they’re busting out the flicker stuff.” He scratched at the window with his jeweled fist, and squinted out; it was nine-five and still pitch-black, not the ideal color for photography. But half an hour later the darkness had turned to steel-gray mist and one could see the blueness of lightly falling snow.
One of the Ministry’s representatives, Sascha, passed through the car, knocking at compartment doors. “Ladies and gentlemen, in twenty minutes we are arriving Leningrad.”
I finished dressing and squeezed my way into the crowded corridor, where an excitement was moment by moment accelerating like the wheels of the train. Even Twerp, shawl-wrapped and hugged in Miss Putnam’s arms, was prepared to disembark. Mrs. Gershwin was more prepared than Twerp. She bristled with mink, was frosted with diamonds, and her curls peeked charmingly from under a rich soft sable hat. “The hat, darling? I bought it in California. I’ve been saving it for a surprise. You do, love? How sweet of you, darling. Darling …” she said, an abrupt silence adding volume to her voice, “we’re there!”
A stunned instant of disbelief, then a collective pushing toward the vestibule. The sad-eyed car attendant, stationed there to receive his tips, found himself not only ignored but also crushed against the wall. Alert as horses at the starting gate, Jackson and John McCurry jockeyed by the exit for position. McCurry is the heftier of the two, and when the door opened, he was the first man out.
He stepped straight into a gray throng, and a flash bulb’s pop. “Bless you,” said McCurry, as women vied to thrust bouquets into his hand. “Bless your little pointed heads.”
“As we arrived, there were many birds flying about—black and white,” wrote Warner Watson, as he later recorded the scene in his diary. “The white ones are sakaros. I write it down for my bird-watching friends. We were greeted by many friendly Russians. The women and men (of the company) were given bouquets of flowers. I wonder where they got them this time of year. Pathetic little bouquets like those made by a child.”
Miss Ryan, also the keeper of a diary, wrote: “Official welcoming party of giant men and shabby ladies dressed more to meet a coffin than a theatrical company (black clothes, gray faces) but perhaps that’s what they were doing. My useless plastic galoshes kept falling off, making it impossible to elbow efficiently through the press of microphones, cameras, and those battling to get at them. The Breens were on hand, Robert still half asleep but Wilva smile-smiling. At the head of the quay, dull brass letters spelled out LENINGRAD—and then I knew it was true.”
The poet, Helen Wolfert, composed for her journal a lengthy description. Here is an excerpt: “As we advanced along the platform to the exit, two columns of people stood on either side applauding. When we reached the street a press of spectators closed in on us. Policemen pushed them away to let us pass but the people in return pushed them with equal vigor. The actors responded to the warmth and bustle and welcome with grace, graciousness, expansiveness and flair. If the Russian people fell in love with them, they weren’t alone. I fell in love with them myself.”
Perhaps a few footnotes should be added to these entries. The persons Miss Ryan refers to as “giant men and shabby ladies” were a hundred or more of Leningrad’s leading theatrical artists who had been organized to meet the train. Remarkably, none of them had known in advance that Porgy and Bess had a Negro cast, and before the committee could rearrange their bewildered faces into expressions of positive welcome, the company were halfway out of the station. The “press of spectators” noted by Mrs. Wolfert consisted of ordinary citizens whose presence was the result of an item printed in the local edition of the previous day’s Izvestia. “A touring American opera company will arrive by train tomorrow morning in Leningrad. It is expected they will perform here.” These two lines were, by the way, the first publicity the Soviet press had given Breen’s venture; but despite its meager detail, the announcement had proved sufficiently intriguing to attract the at least one thousand Leningraders who lined the length of the station, casca
While the Russian reaction may have been inscrutable, the official Company Historian, Leonard Lyons, had a very definite opinion of his own. Taking professional note of the scene, he shook his head. “It hasn’t been handled right. No showmanship. Why, if Breen knew his business,” he said, passing through the door of the station, “we would’ve come out singing!”
PART 2
The Leningrad première of Porgy and Bess, an event expected to reap international publicity, was planned for the evening of Monday, December 26, which gave the company five days to prepare and rehearse, a sufficient time considering that the show had been touring the world nearly four years. But Robert Breen, the production’s director, was determined that the audience at the Leningrad première would see the finest possible rendering of the Negro opera. Breen and his energetic partner-wife, Wilva, and their chief assistant, the gentle, yet highly strung Warner Watson, were confident that the Russians would be “stunned” by the musical folk tale, that they would “never have seen anything like it.” Several observers, though sympathetic, were not as sure. However looked at, by the Americans or by their Russian sponsors, the opening night promised to be one of the most suspenseful in theatrical annals. But that event was, on the morning of arrival, over a hundred hours away; and after the company had been driven in chartered buses from the Leningrad terminal to the Hotel Astoria, their feelings of suspense were centered around room accommodations.
The Astoria, situated on the impressive expanse of St. Isaac’s Square, is an Intourist hotel, which means that it is run by the Soviet agency in control of all hotels where foreigners are permitted to stay. The Astoria justifiably claims to be the best hotel in Leningrad. Some think it the Ritz of all Russia. But it contains few concessions to Western ideas of a deluxe establishment. Of these, one is a room off the lobby that advertises itself as an Institut De Beauté, where guests may obtain Pedicure, and Coiffeur pour Madame. The Institut, with its mottled whiteness, its painful appurtenances, resembles a charity clinic supervised by not too sanitary nurses, and the coiffure that Madame receives there is liable to leave her hair with a texture excellent for scouring pans. There is also on the lobby floor a trio of restaurants, each leading into the other, cavernous affairs cheerful as airplane hangars. The center one is Leningrad’s smartest restaurant, and in the evenings, from eight till midnight, an orchestra plays Russian jazz for a local haut monde who seldom dance but sit morosely counting the bubbles in syrupy glasses of Georgian champagne. The hotel’s Intourist office is located behind a low counter in the main lobby; its dozen desks are so arranged that the employees have a broad view, which simplifies their task of keeping tabs on the comings and goings of the guests. It is a job they have made still simpler, or foolproof, by stationing dormitory matrons on each of the residential floors, vigilantes who are on duty from dawn to dawn, never allowing anyone to leave his room without giving her the key, and constantly, like human punch-clocks, recording ins and outs in a bulky ledger. Perhaps Houdini could’ve eluded them, but it is hard to see how, since they sit at desks that face both the staircase and the elevator, an ancient birdcage that creaks on its cables.
Actually, there is a rear, unguarded staircase connecting the upper floors with a remote side-lobby; and for the clandestine visitor, or the resident wishing to depart unnoticed, this would make the ideal route. Would, except that it is barricaded top to bottom with wooden fences reinforced by old settees and armoires. It might be that the management can find nowhere else to stash these pieces of furniture. Certainly there is no more room in the rooms. For the average Astoria abode is like the annex in a Victorian attic where some poor relation lives buried among the family discards: a miasma of romantic marble statuary, weak-bulbed lamps with tulle shades like ballerina skirts, tables, several of them, covered with Oriental carpeting, chairs galore, plush settees, armoires that could store steamer trunks, flower-papered walls kaleidoscopic with gilt-framed paintings of fruit and country idylls, beds concealed in cavelike alcoves behind dank velvet curtains: all this crammed into a tomb-dark, unventilated area (you can’t open the windows in winter, and wouldn’t want to if you could) quadruple the size of a train compartment. The hotel has grander quarters, of course, suites with five and six rooms, but the effect of the décor is the same, merely more abundantly so.
Nevertheless, the majority of the Porgy and Bess company were most approving of the Astoria, many because they had anticipated “something so much worse” and, instead, found their rooms “cozy,” “kind of atmospheric” or, as the production’s sophisticated publicist, Willem Van Loon, put it, “Full of art-nouveau charms. Really me!” But when the troupe first entered the lobby of the hotel, already milling with Chinese dignitaries and high-booted Cossacks, actual occupancy of these rooms was, in some instances, distant and debatable.
The Astoria’s assigning of the rooms and, particularly, the suites seemed to be governed by a protocol, or lack of one, that embittered rather a few. Nancy Ryan volunteered a theory that the Russians had arrived at their system of room distribution by consulting Everyman Opera’s payroll: “The less you get the more they give you.” Whatever the reason, several of the leading players and prominent personalities, who were traveling as guests of the company, thought it “grotesque” and “crazy, man, crazy” that stagehands and wardrobe mistresses, carpenters and electricians were being led straight-away to the V.I.P. apartments, while they, the “real people,” were supposed to content themselves with the hotel’s backwater leftovers. “Are they kidding?” said Leonard Lyons. Another company guest, the New York financier Herman Sartorius, had valid cause to complain; he’d been assigned no room at all. Nor had Mrs. Gershwin, who sat on her luggage in the lobby being soothed by Wilva Breen and Warner Watson.
“Don’t you worry, baby,” said Mrs. Breen, who had arrived the night before by plane and was ensconced with her husband in six rooms of Astorian splendor. “The Russians may be slow, they may get things a little mixed up, but everything comes out straight in the end. Look what happened when I went to Moscow,” she added, referring to a visit she had made to Moscow the previous October in connection with the present tour. “It took me nine days to do two hours’ work. But everything came out fine in the end.”
“Sure, Lee,” said Warner Watson, brushing down his graying crew-cut with an agitated hand. “Sure, honey, we’ll get this room business fenced in.”
“Darling, I’m perfectly happy, darling,” Mrs. Gershwin assured them. “I just think it’s so wonderful being here.”
“To think we really made it,” said Mrs. Breen, beaming round her. “And what sweet, kind, adorable people. Wasn’t that adorable when the train arrived?”
“Adorable,” said Mrs. Gershwin, glancing at the mass of wilting bouquets that had been given her at the station.
“And the hotel’s simply beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Wilva,” said Mrs. Gershwin blankly, as though her friend’s enthusiasm was beginning to tire her.
“You’ll have a beautiful room, Lee,” said Mrs. Breen, and Warner Watson added, “If you don’t like it, you can change it. Anything you want, Lee, we’ll get it fenced in.”
“Darling, please. It’s not important, not the tiniest bit. If they’ll just put me somewhere, I wouldn’t dream of moving,” said Mrs. Gershwin, who was destined, in the course of the next few days, to insist on changing her accommodations three times.
The Ministry of Culture’s delegation, headed by Nikolai Sa
St. Isaac’s Square is hemmed on one side by a canal stemming from the Neva, a river that in winter threads through the city like a frozen Seine, and on the other by St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which is now an antireligious museum. We walked toward the canal. The sky was sunless gray, and there was snow in the air, buoyant motes, playthings that seethed and floated like the toy flakes inside a crystal. It was noon, but there was no modern traffic on the square except for a car or two and a bus with its headlights burning. Now and then, though, horse-drawn sleds slithered across the snowy pavement. Along the embankments of the Neva, men on skis silently passed, and mothers aired their babies, dragging them in small sleds. Everywhere, like darting blackbirds, black-furred schoolchildren ice-skated on the sidewalks. Two of these children stopped to inspect us. They were twins, girls of nine or ten, and they wore gray rabbit coats and blue velvet bonnets. They had divided a pair of skates between them, but by holding hands and pushing together, they managed very well on one skate apiece. They looked at us with pretty brown puzzled eyes, as though wondering what made us different: Our clothes? Miss Ryan’s lipstick? The soft waves in her loose blond hair? Most foreigners in Russia soon become accustomed to this: the slight frown of the passer-by who is disturbed by something about you that he can’t at once put his finger on, and who stops, stares, keeps glancing back, even quite often feels compelled to follow you. The twins followed us onto a footbridge that crossed the Neva, and watched while we paused to look at the view.