Portraits and Observations by Truman Capote
“Almost the whole of the murder sequence is being photographed in total darkness—except for the use of flashlights. This has never been done before, because ordinarily a flashlight is incapable of producing light sufficiently powerful to register a scene without the aid of extra illumination. In the present case, however, the production’s technicians have invented flashlights fixed with special batteries that generate solid shafts of white blaze—extremely effective as the beams wander in the darkness, crossing and crisscrossing.
“Brooks’s attention to detail can occasionally be comic. Today he noticed that between takes inside the Clutter house several of the crew were smoking cigarettes. Suddenly he clapped his hands and shouted, ‘All right! Cut that out! Mr. Clutter never allowed anyone to smoke in this house, so I’m not going to allow it either.’ ”
Presently undermined by flu and the strain of reliving painful events, I left Brooks and his company to get on with their work free of my critical surveillance. No director can abide an author staring over his shoulder; and, agreeable as our relationship was, I sensed that Brooks felt my presence made everyone edgy, himself included. He was not unhappy to see me go.
Returning to New York, I was surprised to find that few people asked me how the film was progressing. Rather, they were curious to know what the reaction of the townspeople was to the fact of the film’s being made in their midst: Was the atmosphere antagonistic? Cooperative? What? To answer the question, I have to refer to my own experiences during the years I spent roaming around Finney County, accumulating material.
When I arrived there in 1959 I knew no one, and no one, except the local librarian and several schoolteachers, had ever heard of me. As it happened, the first person I interviewed turned out to be the only genuine enemy I made there—at least the only one both openly and covertly hostile (a contradiction in terms, but nevertheless accurate). This fellow was, and is, the editor of the local daily paper, the Garden City Telegram, and therefore in a position to constantly publicize his belligerent attitude toward me and the work I was attempting to do. His columns are signed Bill Brown, and he is as plain as his name: a thin, rumpled man with mud-colored eyes and a beige complexion. Of course, I understood his resentment, and at first sympathized with it: here was this “New York” writer, as he often drawlingly described me, invading his terrain and presuming to write a book about a “sordid” subject that was best swept away and forgotten. His continuous theme was: “We want to forget our tragedy, but this New York writer isn’t going to let us.” Therefore, it came as no surprise when Brown started a campaign to prevent Brooks from filming the Kansas scenes in Garden City and Holcomb. Now his theme was that the advent of these “Hollywood people” would attract “undesirable elements,” and everything in Finney County would go to hell. Huffed and puffed, did Mr. Brown, but his efforts failed. For the simple reason that most of the people I met in western Kansas are reasonable and helpful; I couldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for their consistent kindness, and I made friends among them that will last a lifetime.
That was in March of last year. In September, I traveled to California to see a rough cut of the finished film. On arrival, I had a meeting with Brooks, who was screening the picture for me the following day. Brooks is a very secretive man; he hoards his scripts, locks them up at night and never lets anyone read a complete version. Shooting on In Cold Blood had ended in June, and since that time Brooks had worked only with a cutter and a projectionist, not allowing anyone else to view a foot of the film. As we talked he seemed under the kind of whitened strain one does not associate with so assertive and vigorous a man. “Of course I’m nervous,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I be? It’s your book—and suppose you don’t like it?”
And suppose you don’t like it? Excellent question; and, strangely, one I’d never asked myself, principally because I had chosen the ingredients, and I always have faith in my own judgment.
The next day, when I arrived at Columbia studios around noon, Brooks was even more nervous. My God, he was glum! He said, “I’ve had some rough moments with this picture. But today’s the roughest.” On that note we walked into the screening room, and the sensation was not unlike entering a death cell.
Brooks picked up a telephone connected with the projectionist’s booth. “All right. Let’s go.”
The lights dimmed. The white screen turned into a highway at twilight: Route 50 winding under draining skies through a countryside empty as a cornhusk, woebegone as wet leaves. In the far horizon a silvery Greyhound bus appears, enlarges as it hummingly approaches, streaks by. Music: solitary guitar. Now the credits start as the image changes, dissolves into the Greyhound’s interior. Slumber hangs heavily. Only a weary little girl roams the aisle, gradually wandering toward the darkened rear, lured there by the lonely, disconnected plunk-plunk-plunk of a guitar. She finds the player, but we do not see him; she says something to him, but we cannot quite hear what it is. The guitarist strikes a match to light a cigarette, and the flame partially illuminates his face—Perry’s face, Perry’s eyes, sleepy, remote. Dissolve to Dick, then to Dick and Perry in Kansas City, then to Holcomb, and Herbert Clutter breakfasting on the final day of his life, then back to his future executioners: the contrapuntal technique I used in writing the book.
The scenes move with striking fluidity, but I am increasingly gripped by a sense of loss; and a ring forms around my heart, like the frosty haze around a harvest moon. Not because of what is on the screen, which is fine, but because of what isn’t. Why has such-and-such been omitted? Where is Bobby Rupp? Susan Kidwell? The postmistress and her mother? In the midst of my dilemma of not being able to concentrate appreciatively on what was there because of what wasn’t, the film caught fire—literally. One could see the tiny fire burning on the screen, a zipper of flame that separated the images and crisped them. In the silence following the abrupt halt, Brooks said, “Nothing serious. Just an accident. It’s happened before. We’ll have it fixed in a minute.”
A lucky accident, for during the time it took the projectionist to repair the damage and resume the screening, I managed to resolve the quarrel I was having with myself. Look, an inner voice said, you’re being unrealistic, unfair. This picture is two hours long, and that is as long as it can reasonably be. If Brooks included everything you would like to have shown, every nuance you’re grieving over, it would last nine hours! So stop worrying. Watch it for what it is: judge from that.
I did, and it was like swimming into a familiar sea only to be surprised by a muscular wave of sinister height, trapped in a hurtling current that carried me downward to ocean-floor depths, escorted me, pummeled raw and groggy, onto a beach uniquely desolate—not, unfortunately, the victim of a bad dream, or of “just a movie,” but of reality.
The screen returned to its pristine state; overhead lighting resumed. But again, as in the motel room in Garden City, I seemed to wake up not knowing where I was. A man was sitting near me. Who was he, and why did he look at me so intently, as if expecting me to say something? Ah, Brooks. Finally I said, “By the way, thank you.”
GREEK PARAGRAPHS
(1968)
A few summers ago Italian friends invited me on a cruise through the Greek Islands aboard an especially graceful sailing yacht. We were to depart from Piraeus on a morning in July. The sea was calm, the ship sparkled, the captain and his crew awaited us in uniforms as white as the churches of Mykonos; and I was there, oh yes. Unfortunately, a sudden tragedy, a death in the family, had detained my hosts; but, though unable to meet me, they insisted I should proceed with the cruise. Just imagine!—a whole yacht at the disposal of one passenger. Only the nuttiest, richest, most selfish person could deliberately conceive such an adventure. However, as it happened by accident, I felt neither guilt nor hesitation. Avanti.
Herewith, some notes from the voyage.
PEACHES
I dislike Greek wines; however, there is one unresinated white wine that is as dry and light as the best Italian soaves.
The crew have gone ashore: up Up UP to Santorin village. Quite a climb, a matter of several thousand steps and dizzying views. I made it there this afternoon astride one of these fragile and courageous little fly-pestered donkeys, bless its put-upon heart. Felt very ashamed of myself, also was rump-sore, so returned afoot.
The sky, a bonfire of stars—as ablaze as the skies above the Sahara. The sway of caiques. The sway of moored caiques. Music from a harbor café. An ouzo-scented old man dancing in front of the café. The cool King Minos warming my veins, the taste of peaches lingering, the perfume of peach skins saturating the soft, salt-tart air.
MELTEMI
That cursed wind, the Meltemi. Yesterday we were caught in one, an inevitable event on the summer seas of Greece, for the damn thing blasts about the whole of July and August. Some years ago I spent a summer in the Cyclades on the island of Paros, which is surely the meltemi’s favored haunt: indeed, it seldom departs, but hurls around the island howling like the spectral voices of drowned sailors, centuries of sailors smashed against its shores.
It is an evil wind, scratchy, nerve-twisting. And look what it does to the economy, the diet of the islanders: when fishermen can’t fish, as they can’t when the meltemi roars, an islander’s already sufficiently meager menu is reduced by half.
April is the finest month to visit here: fields of wild flowers, wild anemones, white violets, and the water, green as spring buds, is just warm enough for a brisk swim. April … or late September, when the water is still warm enough (if you don’t object to sharing it with migrating geese who abruptly plunge from the heavens and swim along beside you), and the meltemi has stopped prowling.
But until yesterday I had never experienced one at sea. I was below when it arrived; even so, I could hear it approaching across the water—a dark rippling feathery noise. The ship lurched, spun, fish peered into the portholes; it seemed the mast must crack: how close we all come to joining that complaining choir of drowned mariners! At dusk it died and we hurried to hide in a cove.
A TERRIBLE TALE
There are Yugoslavs in the crew, Greeks, mostly Italians. the captain is Italian. He doesn’t much like the yacht because he doesn’t like sailing yachts, not even that black pearl of the Aegean, Niarchos’s Creole. He says they are romantic but too much work for the crew. He speaks English, speaks it well, and is a rather youngish man with dramatic eyes and a dark-toned voice; he might easily have been an actor, and all actors are liars, I’ve never met one that wasn’t. But perhaps the captain is not a liar. Anyway, this morning we passed Delos, not stopping because I’d been there twice before, and a glimpse of the marble ruins drifting by in a shimmering lavender haze reminded him of a story. At lunch he told it to me. He swore it was true.
“This happened when I was a boy of seventeen, and in the crew of a yacht owned by an Englishman, Lord Sickle. Now, Lord Sickle often chartered his yacht, and in August of that year he chartered it to a beautiful Englishwoman: a widow, I would say forty, very tall, a tiny waist, so elegant. She had a son, a lad sixteen or so and also very beautiful and elegant. Crippled, however: a withered leg in a brace, and he walked with two canes. But a genius, this boy. A scholar. It was for his sake that the mother undertook a Greek cruise; he wanted to see the places he knew so well from his studies.
“They came aboard accompanied by a maid and a manservant; otherwise they were alone, and I’ve often thought what a pity that was. Perhaps it wouldn’t have happened if they had had friends with them.
“There was a strange island the boy wanted to visit. North of Delos. Yes, north. I can’t remember precisely. It was an island of only a few acres and all but unknown; still, he knew of it and spoke of a well-preserved temple there.
“We arrived après midi, and because of the shallows, had to anchor more than a mile offshore. The boy was very excited. He had made up his mind to pack a supper and spend the night alone with his mother on the island; he wanted to see the temple by moonlight and sleep on the shore. The mother loved him very much. Too much. She laughed and ordered a picnic.
“It was I who rowed them there, set them ashore; and it was I who returned at dawn to collect them. The boy was dead, stripped to a skeleton; and the mother, whom I found wading in the water, was unrecognizable—fearfully mutilated, half mad.
“Only months later, months spent in an Athens hospital, was she able to tell a court of inquiry what had happened. She said, ‘At first it was very peaceful and lovely. We wandered around the temple until twilight, then spread our supper on a flight of steps; my son Eric said oh, look, it’s going to be a full moon. We could see the lights of the yacht riding far out—I wished we had kept the sailor with us. Because, as the moon thickened, brightened, somehow I mistrusted the landscape. And gradually I became aware of a sound. Claws. An icy scuttling. And a huge brown rat, another and another, leapt with tearing teeth into our picnic. A horde of rats pouring out of the temple, hundreds flailing in the moonlight. Eric screamed; he tried to run and fell, and I had to drag him by the arms, but the rats were at us, all over us, they even swam after us into the water, pulled Eric back onto the beach, and no one heard me the whole night I bled and screamed and cried there in the sea.’ ”
The captain lit a cigar. “This woman is still alive. She lives in Nice. I’ve seen her—sitting in a chaise on the promenade. She wears a full veil. I’m told she never speaks to anyone.”
OBSERVATIONS
(1) Numerous educated Greek men share a snobbish affectation—obsessed by their fingernails, they pamper them ceaselessly, letting the nails on either little finger grow to Dragon Lady length. This is to let the lesser folk know that they work with their heads, not their hands. (2) Greek businessmen also share an eccentric hobby: playing with ropes of amber or ivory beads, their nervous fingers twitching from bead to bead, rubbing, counting. This conduct is said to relieve the pressure of affairs and prevent ulcers. (3) And what most Greeks, male or female, have in common are medical superstitions. The humblest village has a vendor who sells small replicas, stamped from sheets of polished tin, of hands, hearts, feet, ears, eyes. If, say, you are recovering from a coronary, why, you simply acquire a tin heart, carry it on your person, and presently the actual ailing organ will have magically healed itself. The True Believers are not limited to peasants and middle-class housewives, but include many intellectuals. Once, when I was living on Paros, I mentioned to a Professor Calliope, a linguist of great renown, that my father was virtually blind and that I myself had a considerable fear of failing eyesight. He bought me a pair of tin eyes, and insisted we walk, through curtains of quivering August heat, to a nunnery in the mountains where there resided a remarkable abbess endowed with witch-powers: once she had blessed my medals, my worries were over. At the monastery I was made to feel like a missionary captive in some perilous Hottentot village: the nuns, very unused to visitors, gathered around me, all giggling and poking and pinching—really pinching, as if to judge how juicy I’d be when put to boil. But soon the professor had them calmed down and we were served cool water and a crystal candy that smelled of roses and contained inside each piece a roseleaf. As for the abbess—we were too late: she had died the week before.
A BLUE COVE
The only scenery that bores me is any that I can’t imagine purchasing a part of: usually, if a place provides the slightest uplift, I instantly consider buying or building a house. The hundreds of properties I’ve constructed mentally!
At night I think, Yes I will, but in the morning I recall—politics, old mortality, inconvenient emotional commitments, the impossibilities of the Greek tongue, a trillion difficulties. Still, I ought to have the courage; I’ll never again find anything quite as ideal as that.
AT A CAFE
I left the yacht at Rhodes, and this morning flew to Athens. Now at not quite midnight am sitting alone in an outdoor café on Constitution Square. There are not many patrons, though I recognize one of them as someone I’d seen years ago in Tangier, where she was quite the Queen of the Casbah (Southern Belle Version): Eugenia Bank-head, Tallulah’s even more voluble sister. She is arguing with a Negro companion.
Come to consider, many of the world-trampers who used to hang around Tangier now frequent Athens. Across the street from where I sit I see every conceivable breed of hustler, from muscled dock-hands to plump Egyptian lovelies wearing wavy platinum wigs.