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Breakfast at Tiffany'sTruman Capote, 1958I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where,during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one roomcrowded with attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular redvelvet that one associates with hot days on a tram. The walls were stucco, and a colorrather like tobacco-spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Romanruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so,my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all itsgloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars ofpencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.
It never occurred to me in those days to write about Holly Golightly, and probably it would not now except for a conversation I had with Joe Bell that set the whole memoryof her in motion again.
Holly Golightly had been a tenant in the old brownstone; she'd occupied the apartment below mine. As for Joe Bell, he ran a bar around the corner on LexingtonAvenue; he still does. Both Holly and I used to go there six, seven times a day, not for adrink, not always, but to make telephone calls: during the war a private telephone washard to come by. Moreover, Joe Bell was good about taking messages, which in Holly'scase was no small favor, for she had a tremendous many.
Of course this was a long time ago, and until last week I hadn't seen Joe Bell in several years. Off and on we'd kept in touch, and occasionally I'd stopped by his barwhen passing through the neighborhood; but actually we'd never been strong friendsexcept in as much as we were both friends of Holly Golightly. Joe Bell hasn't an easynature, he admits it himself, he says it's because he's a bachelor and has a sourstomach. Anyone who knows him will tell you he's a hard man to talk to. Impossible ifyou don't share his fixations, of which Holly is one. Some others are: ice hockey,Weimaraner dogs,
Our Gal Sunday
(a soap serial he has listened to for fifteen years),
and Gilbert and Sullivan -- he claims to be related to one or the other, I can't rememberwhich.
And so when, late last Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang and I heard "Joe Bell here," I knew it must be about Holly. He didn't say so, just: "Can you rattle right overhere? It's important," and there was a croak of excitement in his froggy voice.
I took a taxi in a downpour of October rain, and on my way I even thought she might be there, that I would see Holly again.
But there was no one on the premises except the proprietor. Joe Bell's is a quiet place compared to most Lexington Avenue bars. It boasts neither neon nor television.Two old mirrors reflect the weather from the streets; and behind the bar, in a niche
surrounded by photographs of ice-hockey stars, there is always a large bowl of freshflowers that Joe Bell himself arranges with matronly care. That is what he was doingwhen I came in.
"Naturally," he said, rooting a gladiola deep into the bowl, "naturally I wouldn't have got you over here if it wasn't I wanted your opinion. It's peculiar. A very peculiar thinghas happened."
"You heard from Holly?"He fingered a leaf, as though uncertain of how to answer. A small man with a fine head of coarse white hair, he has a bony, sloping face better suited to someone fartaller; his complexion seems permanently sunburned: now it grew even redder. "I can'tsay exactly heard from her. I mean, I don't know. That's why I want your opinion. Letme build you a drink. Something new. They call it a White Angel," he said, mixing one-half vodka, one-half gin, no vermouth. While I drank the result, Joe Bell stood suckingon a Tums and turning over in his mind what he had to tell me. Then: "You recall acertain Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi? A gentleman from Japan."
"From California," I said, recalling Mr. Yunioshi perfectly. He's a photographer on one of the picture magazines, and when I knew him he lived in the studio apartment onthe top floor of the brownstone.
"Don't go mixing me up. All I'm asking, you know who I mean? Okay. So last night who comes waltzing in here but this selfsame Mr. I. Y. Yunioshi. I haven't seen him, Iguess it's over two years. And where do you think he's been those two years?"
"Africa."Joe Bell stopped crunching on his Tums, his eyes narrowed. "So how did you know?"
"Read it in Winchell." Which I had, as a matter of fact.He rang open his cash register, and produced a manila envelope. "Well, see did you read this in Winchell."
In the envelope were three photographs, more or less the same, though taken from different angles: a tall delicate Negro man wearing a calico skirt and with a shy, yet vainsmile, displaying in his hands an odd wood sculpture, an elongated carving of a head, agirl's, her hair sleek and short as a young man's, her smooth wood eyes too large andtilted in the tapering face, her mouth wide, overdrawn, not unlike clown-lips. On aglance it resembled most primitive carving; and then it didn't, for here was the spit-image of Holly Golightly, at least as much of a likeness as a dark still thing could be.
"Now what do you make of that?" said Joe Bell, satisfied with my puzzlement."It looks like her.""Listen, boy," and he slapped his hand on the bar, "it is her. Sure as I'm a man fit to wear britches. The little Jap knew it was her the minute he saw her."
"He saw her? In Africa?""Well. Just the statue there. But it comes to the same thing. Read the facts for
yourself," he said, turning over one of the photographs. On the reverse was written:Wood Carving, S Tribe, Tococul, East Anglia, Christmas Day, 1956.
He said, "Here's what the Jap says," and the story was this: On Christmas day Mr. Yunioshi had passed with his camera through Tococul, a village in the tangles ofnowhere and of no interest, merely a congregation of mud huts with monkeys in theyards and buzzards on the roofs. He'd decided to move on when he saw suddenly aNegro squatting in a doorway carving monkeys on a walking stick. Mr. Yunioshi wasimpressed and asked to see more of his work. Whereupon he was shown the carvingof the girl's head: and felt, so he told Joe Bell, as if he were falling in a dream. Butwhen he offered to buy it the Negro cupped his private parts in his hand (apparently atender gesture, comparable to tapping one's heart) and said no. A pound of salt andten dollars, a wristwatch and two pounds of salt and twenty dollars, nothing swayedhim. Mr. Yunioshi was in all events determined to learn how the carving came to bemade. It cost him his salt and his watch, and the incident was conveyed in African andpig-English and finger-talk. But it would seem that in the spring of that year a party ofthree white persons had appeared out of the brush riding horseback. A young womanand two men. The men, both red-eyed with fever, were forced for several weeks to stayshut and shivering in an isolated hut, while the young woman, having presently taken afancy to the wood-carver, shared the woodcarver's mat.
"I don't credit that part," Joe Bell said squeamishly. "I know she had her ways, but I don't think she'd be up to anything as much as that."
"And then?""Then nothing," he shrugged. "By and by she went like she come, rode away on a horse."
"Alone, or with the two men?"Joe Bell blinked. "With the two men, I guess. Now the Jap, he asked about her up and down the country. But nobody else had ever seen her." Then it was as if he couldfeel my own sense of letdown transmitting itself to him, and he wanted no part of it."One thing you got to admit, it's the only
definite
news in I don't know how many" -- he
counted on his fingers: there weren't enough -- "years. All I hope, I hope she's rich. Shemust be rich. You got to be rich to go mucking around in Africa."
"She's probably never set foot in Africa," I said, believing it; yet I could see her there, it was somewhere she would have gone. And the carved head: I looked at thephotographs again.
"You know so much, where is she?""Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down and maybe right in this very city."
He considered a moment. "No," he said, and shook his head. "I'll tell you why. If she was in this city I'd have seen her. You take a man that likes to walk, a man like me, aman's been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years he's
got his eye out for one person, and nobody's ever her, don't it stand to reason she'snot there? I see pieces of her all the time, a flat little bottom, any skinny girl that walksfast and straight -- " He paused, as though too aware of how intently I was looking athim. "You think I'm round the bend?"
"It's just that I didn't know you'd been in love with her. Not like that."I was sorry I'd said it; it disconcerted him. He scooped up the photographs and put them back in their envelope. I looked at my watch. I hadn't any place to go, but Ithought it was better to leave.
"Hold on," he said, gripping my wrist. "Sure I loved her. But it wasn't that I wanted to touch her." And he added, without smiling: "Not that I don't think about that side ofthings. Even at my age, and I'll be sixty-seven January ten. It's a peculiar fact -- but, theolder I grow, that side of things seems to be on my mind more and more. I don'tremember thinking about it so much even when I was a youngster and it's every otherminute. Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action,maybe that's why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden. Whenever Iread in the paper about an old man disgracing himself, I know it's because of thisburden. But" -- he poured himself a jigger of whiskey and swallowed it neat -- "I'll neverdisgrace myself. And I swear, it never crossed my mind about Holly. You can lovesomebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's afriend."
Two men came into the bar, and it seemed the moment to leave. Joe Bell followed me to the door. He caught my wrist again. "Do you believe it?"
"That you didn't want to touch her?""I mean about Africa."At that moment I couldn't seem to remember the story, only the image of her riding away on a horse. "Anyway, she's gone."
"Yeah," he said, opening the door. "Just gone."Outside, the rain had stopped, there was only a mist of it in the air, so I turned the corner and walked along the street where the brownstone stands. It is a street withtrees that in the summer make cool patterns on the pavement; but now the leaves wereyellowed and mostly down, and the rain had made them slippery, they skiddedunderfoot. The brownstone is midway in the block, next to a church where a blue tower-clock tolls the hours. It has been sleeked up since my day; a smart black door hasreplaced the old frosted glass, and gray elegant shutters frame the windows. No one Iremember still lives there except Madame Sapphia Spanella, a husky coloratura whoevery afternoon went roller-skating in Central Park. I know she's still there because Iwent up the steps and looked at the mailboxes. It was one of these mailboxes that hadfirst made me aware of Holly Golightly.
I'd been living in the house about a week when I noticed that the mailbox belonging
over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, Miss Golightly, to be sure, floated round intheir, arms light as a scarf.
But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered,from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted oftabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esotericcigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and melba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that shereceived V-letters by the bale. They were always torn into strips like bookmarks. I usedoccasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing.
Remember
and
miss you
and
rain
and
please write
and
damn
and
goddamn
were the words that recurred most often on
these slips; those, and
lonesome
and
love
Also, she had a cat and she played the guitar. On days when the sun was strong, she would wash her hair, and together with the cat, a red tiger-striped tom, sit out onthe fire escape thumbing a guitar while her hair dried. Whenever I heard the music, Iwould go stand quietly by my window. She played very well, and sometimes sang too.Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boy's adolescent voice. She knew all the showhits, Cole Porter and Kurt Weill; especially she liked the songs from
Oklahoma!
, which
were new that summer and everywhere. But there were moments when she playedsongs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from.Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pineywoods or prairie. Onewent:
Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin' through the
pastures of the sky;
and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she
continued it long after her hair had dried, after the sun had gone and there were lightedwindows in the dusk.
But our acquaintance did not make headway until September, an evening with the first ripple-chills of autumn running through it. I'd been to a movie, come home andgone to bed with a bourbon nightcap and the newest Simenon: so much my idea ofcomfort that I couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hearmy heart beating. It was a feeling I'd read about, written about, but never beforeexperienced. The feeling of being watched. Of someone in the room. Then: an abruptrapping at the window, a glimpse of ghostly gray: I spilled the bourbon. It was somelittle while before I could bring myself to open the window, and ask Miss Golightly whatshe wanted.
"I've got the most terrifying man downstairs," she said, stepping off the fire escape into the room. "I mean he's sweet when he isn't drunk, but let him start lapping up thevino, and oh God quel beast! If there's one thing I loathe, it's men who bite." Sheloosened a gray flannel robe off her shoulder, to show me evidence of what happens ifa man bites. The robe was all she was wearing. "I'm sorry if I frightened you. But whenthe beast got so tiresome I just went out the window. I think he thinks I'm in the
bathroom, not that I give a damn what he thinks, the hell with him, he'll get tired, he'llgo to sleep, my God he should, eight martinis before dinner and enough wine to washan elephant. Listen, you can throw me out if you want to. I've got a gall barging in onyou like this. But that fire escape was damned icy. And you looked so cozy. Like mybrother Fred. We used to sleep four in a bed, and he was the only one that ever let mehug him on a cold night. By the way, do you mind if I call you Fred?" She'd comecompletely into the room now, and she paused there, staring at me. I'd never seen herbefore not wearing dark glasses, and it was obvious now that they were prescriptionlenses, for without them her eyes had an assessing squint, like a jeweler's. They werelarge eyes, a little blue, a little green, dotted with bits of brown: vari-colored, like herhair; and, like her hair, they gave out a lively warm light. "I suppose you think I'm verybrazen. Or
très fou
. Or something."
"Not at all."She seemed disappointed. "Yes, you do. Everybody does. I don't mind. It's useful."She sat down on one of the rickety red-velvet chairs, curved her legs underneath her, and glanced round the room, her eyes puckering more pronouncedly. "How canyou bear it? It's a chamber of horrors."
"Oh, you get used to anything," I said, annoyed with myself, for actually I was proud of the place.
"I don't. I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead." Her dispraising eyes surveyed the room again. "What do you
do
here all day?"
I motioned toward a table tall with books and paper. "Write things.""I thought writers were quite old. Of course Saroyan isn't old. I met him at a party, and really he isn't old at all. In fact," she mused, "if he'd give himself a closer shave ...by the way, is Hemingway old?"
"In his forties, I should think.""That's not bad. I can't get excited by a man until he's forty-two. I know this idiot girl who keeps telling me I ought to go to a head-shrinker; she says I have a fathercomplex. Which is so much
merde
. I simply
trained
myself to like older men, and it was
the smartest thing I ever did. How old is W. Somerset Maugham?"
"I'm not sure. Sixty-something.""That's not bad. I've never been to bed with a writer. No, wait: do you know Benny Shacklett?" She frowned when I shook my head. "That's funny. He's written an awful lotof radio stuff. But quel rat. Tell me, are you a real writer?"
"It depends on what you mean by real.""Well, darling, does anyone
buy
what you write?"
"Not yet.""I'm going to help you," she said. "I can, too. Think of all the people I know who know people. I'm going to help you because you look like my brother Fred. Onlysmaller. I haven't seen him since I was fourteen, that's when I left home, and he was
already six-feet-two. My other brothers were more your size, runts. It was the peanutbutter that made Fred so tall. Everybody thought it was dotty, the way he gorgedhimself on peanut butter; he didn't care about anything in this world except horses andpeanut butter. But he wasn't dotty, just sweet and vague and terribly slow; he'd been inthe eighth grade three years when I ran away. Poor Fred. I wonder if the Army'sgenerous with their peanut butter. Which reminds me, I'm starving."
I pointed to a bowl of apples, at the same time asked her how and why she'd left home so young. She looked at me blankly, and rubbed her nose, as though it tickled: agesture, seeing often repeated, I came to recognize as a signal that one wastrespassing.
Like
many
people
with
a^
bold
fondness
for
volunteering
intimate
information, anything that suggested a direct question, a pinning-down, put her onguard. She took a bite of apple, and said: "Tell me something you've written. The storypart."
"That's one of the troubles. They're not the kind of stories you
can
tell."
"Too dirty?""Maybe I'll let you read one sometime.""Whiskey and apples go together. Fix me a drink, darling. Then you can read me a story yourself."
Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to read aloud. I made us both a drink and, settling in a chair opposite, began to read to her, my voicea little shaky with a combination of stage fright and enthusiasm: it was a new story, I'dfinished it the day before, and that inevitable sense of shortcoming had not had time todevelop. It was about two women who share a house, schoolteachers, one of whom,when the other becomes engaged, spreads with anonymous notes a scandal thatprevents the marriage. As I read, each glimpse I stole of Holly made my heart contract.She fidgeted. She picked apart the butts in an ashtray, she mooned over herfingernails, as though longing for a file; worse, when I did seem to have her interest,there was actually a telltale frost over her eyes, as if she were wondering whether tobuy a pair of shoes she'd seen in some window.
"Is that the
end?
" she asked, waking up. She floundered for something more to say.
"Of course I like dykes themselves. They don't scare me a bit. But stories about dykesbore the bejesus out of me. I just can't put myself in their shoes. Well really, darling,"she said, because I was clearly puzzled, "if it's not about a couple of old bull-dykes,what the hell
is
it about?"
But I was in no mood to compound the mistake of having read the story with the further embarrassment of explaining it. The same vanity that had led to such exposure,now forced me to mark her down as an insensitive, mindless show-off.
"Incidentally," she said, "do you happen to know any nice lesbians? I'm looking for a roommate. Well, don't laugh. I'm so disorganized, I simply can't afford a maid; andreally, dykes are wonderful home-makers, they love to do all the work, you never have
to bother about brooms and defrosting and sending out the laundry. I had a roommatein Hollywood, she played in Westerns, they called her the Lone Ranger; but I'll say thisfor her, she was better than a man around the house. Of course people couldn't helpbut think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. Sowhat? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on. Look at theLone Ranger, married twice. Usually dykes only get married once, just for the name. Itseems to carry such cachet later on to be called Mrs. Something Another. That's nottrue!" She was staring at an alarm clock on the table. "It can't be four-thirty!"
The window was turning blue. A sunrise breeze bandied the curtains."What is today?""Thursday."" Thursday
." She stood up. "My God," she said, and sat down again with a moan.
"It's too gruesome."
I was tired enough not to be curious. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. Still it was irresistible: "What's gruesome about Thursday?"
"Nothing. Except that I can never remember when it's coming. You see, on Thursdays I have to catch the eight forty-five. They're so particular about visiting hours,so if you're there by ten that gives you an hour before the poor men eat lunch. Think ofit, lunch at eleven. You can go at two, and I'd so much rather, but he likes me to comein the morning, he says it sets him up for the rest of the day. I've
got
to stay awake,"
she said, pinching her cheeks until the roses came, "there isn't time to sleep, I'd lookconsumptive, I'd sag like a tenement, and that wouldn't be fair: a girl can't go to SingSing with a green face."
"I suppose not." The anger I felt at her over my story was ebbing; she absorbed me again.
"All the visitors
do
make an effort to look their best, and it's very tender, it's sweet
as hell, the way the women wear their prettiest everything, I mean the old ones and thereally poor ones too, they make the dearest effort to look nice and smell nice too, and Ilove them for it. I love the kids too, especially the colored ones. I mean the kids thewives bring. It should be sad, seeing the kids there, but it isn't, they have ribbons intheir hair and lots of shine on their shoes, you'd think there was going to be ice cream;and sometimes that's what it's like in the visitors' room, a party. Anyway it's not like themovies: you know, grim whisperings through a grille. There isn't any grille, just acounter between you and them, and the kids can stand on it to be hugged; all you haveto do to kiss somebody is lean across. What I like most, they're so happy to see eachother, they've saved up so much to talk about, it isn't possible to be dull, they keeplaughing and holding hands. It's different afterwards," she said. "I see them on the train.They sit so quiet watching the river go by." She stretched a strand of hair to the cornerof her mouth and nibbled it thoughtfully. "I'm keeping you awake. Go to sleep."
"Please. I'm interested."
I waited until ten past six, then made myself delay five minutes more.A creature answered the door. He smelled of cigars and Knize cologne. His shoes sported elevated heels; without these added inches, one might have taken him for aLittle Person. His bald freckled head was dwarf-big: attached to it were a pair ofpointed, truly elfin ears. He had Pekingese eyes, unpitying and slightly bulged. Tufts ofhair sprouted from his ears, from his nose; his jowls were gray with afternoon beard,and his handshake almost furry.
"Kid's in the shower," he said, motioning a cigar toward a sound of water hissing in another room. The room in which we stood (we were standing because there wasnothing to sit on) seemed as though it were being just moved into; you expected tosmell wet paint. Suitcases and unpacked crates were the only furniture. The cratesserved as tables. One supported the mixings of a martini; another a lamp, aLibertyphone, Holly's red cat and a bowl of yellow roses. Bookcases, covering one wall,boasted a half-shelf of literature. I warmed to the room at once, I liked its fly-by-nightlook.
The man cleared his throat. "You expected?"He found my nod uncertain. His cold eyes operated on me, made neat, exploratory incisions. "A lot of characters come here, they're not expected. You know the kid long?"
"Not very.""So you don't know the kid long?""I live upstairs."The answer seemed to explain enough to relax him. "You got the same layout?""Much smaller."He tapped ash on the floor. "This is a dump. This is unbelievable. But the kid don't know how to live even when she's got the dough." His speech had a jerky metallicrhythm, like a teletype. "So," he said, "what do you think: is she or ain't she?"
"Ain't she what?""A phony.""I wouldn't have thought so.""You're wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you're right. She isn't a phony because she's a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can't talk herout of it. I've tried with tears running down my cheeks. Benny Polan, respectedeverywhere, Benny Polan tried. Benny had it on his mind to marry her, she don't go forit, Benny spent maybe thousands sending her to head-shrinkers. Even the famous one,the one can only speak German, boy, did he throw in the towel. You can't talk her outof these" -- he made a fist, as though to crush an intangible -- "ideas. Try it sometime.Get her to tell you some of the stuff she believes. Mind you," he said, "I like the kid.Everybody does, but there's lots that don't. I do. I sincerely like the kid. I'm sensitive,that's why. You've got to be sensitive to appreciate her: a streak of the poet. But I'll tellyou the truth. You can beat your brains out for her, and she'll hand you horseshit on a
platter. To give an example -- who is she like you see her today? She's strictly a girlyou'll read where she ends up at the bottom of a bottle of Seconals. I've seen it happenmore times than you've got toes: and those kids, they weren't even nuts. She's nuts."
"But young. And with a great deal of youth ahead of her.""If you mean future, you're wrong again. Now a couple of years back, out on the Coast, there was a time it could've been different. She had something working for her,she had them interested, she could've really rolled. But when you walk out on a thinglike that, you don't walk back. Ask Luise Rainer. And Rainer was a star. Sure, Hollywas no star; she never got out of the still department. But that was before
The Story of
Dr. Wassell
. Then she could've really rolled. I know, see, cause I'm the guy was giving
her the push." He pointed his cigar at himself. "O.J. Berman."
He expected recognition, and I didn't mind obliging him, it was all right by me, except I'd never heard of O.J. Berman. It developed that he was a Hollywood actor'sagent.
"I'm the first one saw her. Out at Santa Anita. She's hanging around the track every day. I'm interested: professionally. I find out she's some jock's regular, she's living withthe shrimp. I get the jock told Drop It if he don't want conversation with the vice boys:see, the kid's fifteen. But stylish: she's okay, she comes across. Even when she'swearing glasses
this
thick; even when she opens her mouth and you don't know if she's
a hillbilly or an Okie or what. I still don't. My guess, nobody'll ever know where shecame from. She's such a goddamn liar, maybe she don't know herself any more. But ittook us a year to smooth out that accent. How we did it finally, we gave her Frenchlessons: after she could imitate French, it wasn't so long she could imitate English. Wemodeled her along the Margaret Sullavan type, but she could pitch some curves of herown, people were interested, big ones, and to top it all, Benny Polan, a respected guy,Benny wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? Then wham!
The Story of Dr.
Wassell
. You see that picture? Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper. Jesus. I kill myself, it's
all set: they're going to test her for the part of Dr. Wassell's nurse. One of his nurses,anyway. Then wham! The phone rings." He picked a telephone out of the air and held itto his ear. "She says, this is Holly, I say honey, you sound far away, she says I'm inNew York, I say what the hell are you doing in New York when it's Sunday and you gotthe test tomorrow? She says I'm in New York cause I've never been to New York. I sayget your ass on a plane and get back here, she says I don't want it. I say what's yourangle, doll? She says you got to want it to be good and I don't want it, I say well, whatthe hell do you want, and she says when I find out you'll be the first to know. See what Imean: horseshit on a platter."
The red cat jumped off its crate and rubbed against his leg. He lifted the cat on the toe of his shoe and gave him a toss, which was hateful of him except he seemed notaware of the cat but merely his own irritableness.
" This
is what she wants?" he said, flinging out his arms. "A lot of characters they
aren't expected? Living off tips. Running around with bums. So maybe she could marryRusty Trawler? You should pin a medal on her for that?"
He waited, glaring."Sorry, I don't know him.""You don't know Rusty Trawler, you can't know much about the kid. Bad deal," he said, his tongue clucking in his huge head. "I was hoping you maybe had influence.Could level with the kid before it's too late."
"But according to you, it already is."He blew a smoke ring, let it fade before he smiled; the smile altered his face, made something gentle happen. "I could get it rolling again. Like I told you," he said, and nowit sounded true, "I sincerely like the kid."
"What scandals are you spreading, O.J.?" Holly splashed into the room, a towel more or less wrapped round her and her wet feet dripping footmarks on the floor.
"Just the usual. That you're nuts."Fred knows that already.""But you don't.""Light me a cigarette, darling," she said, snatching off a bathing cap and shaking her hair. "I don't mean you, O.J. You're such a slob. You always nigger-lip."
She scooped up the cat and swung him onto her shoulder. He perched there with the balance of a bird, his paws tangled in her hair as if it were knitting yarn; and yet,despite these amiable antics, it was a grim cat with a pirate's cutthroat face; one eyewas gluey-blind, the other sparkled with dark deeds.
"O.J. is a slob," she told me, taking the cigarette I'd lighted. "But he does know a terrific lot of phone numbers. What's David O. Selznick's number, O.J.?"
"Lay off.""It's not a joke, darling. I want you to call him up and tell him what a genius Fred is. He's written barrels of the most marvelous stories. Well, don't blush, Fred: you didn'tsay you were a genius, I did. Come on, O.J. What are you going to do to make Fredrich?"
"Suppose you let me settle that with Fred.""Remember," she said, leaving us, "I'm his agent. Another thing: if I holler, come zipper me up. And if anybody knocks, let them in."
A multitude did. Within the next quarter-hour a stag party had taken over the apartment, several of them in uniform. I counted two Naval officers and an Air Forcecolonel; but they were outnumbered by graying arrivals beyond draft status. Except fora lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed strangers amongstrangers; indeed, each face, on entering, had struggled to conceal dismay at seeingothers there. It was as if the hostess had distributed her invitations while zigzaggingthrough various bars; which was probably the case. After the initial frowns, however,they mixed without grumbling, especially O.J. Berman, who avidly exploited the new
company to avoid discussing my Hollywood future. I was left abandoned by thebookshelves; of the books there, more than half were about horses, the rest baseball.Pretending an interest in
Horseflesh and How to Tell It
gave me sufficiently private
opportunity for sizing Holly's friends.
Presently one of these became prominent. He was a middle-aged child that had never
shed
its
baby
fat,
though
some
gifted
tailor
had
almost
succeeded
in
camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom. There wasn't a suspicion of bone in hisbody; his face, a zero filled in with pretty miniature features, had an unused, a virginalquality: it was as if he'd been born, then expanded, his skin remaining unlined as ablown-up balloon, and his mouth, though ready for squalls and tantrums, a spoiledsweet puckering. But it was not appearance that singled him out; preserved infantsaren't all that rare. It was, rather, his conduct; for he was behaving as though the partywere his: like an energetic octopus, he was shaking martinis, making introductions,manipulating the phonograph. In fairness, most of his activities were dictated by thehostess herself:
Rusty, would you mind; Rusty, would you please
. If he was in love with
her, then clearly he had his jealousy in check. A jealous man might have lost control,watching her as she skimmed around the room, carrying her cat in one hand butleaving the other free to straighten a tie or remove lapel lint; the Air Force colonel worea medal that came in for quite a polish.
The man's name was Rutherfurd ("Rusty") Trawler. In 1908 he'd lost both his parents, his father the victim of an anarchist and his mother of shock, which doublemisfortune had made Rusty an orphan, a millionaire, and a celebrity, all at the age offive. He'd been a stand-by of the Sunday supplements ever since, a consequence thathad gathered hurricane momentum when, still a schoolboy, he had caused hisgodfather-custodian to be arrested on charges of sodomy. After that, marriage anddivorce sustained his place in the tabloid-sun. His first wife had taken herself, and heralimony, to a rival of Father Divine's. The second wife seems unaccounted for, but thethird had sued him in New York State with a full satchel of the kind of testimony thatentails. He himself divorced the last Mrs. Trawler, his principal complaint stating thatshe'd started a mutiny aboard his yacht, said mutiny resulting in his being deposited onthe Dry Tortugas. Though he'd been a bachelor since, apparently before the war he'dproposed to Unity Mitford, at least he was supposed to have sent her a cable offering tomarry her if Hitler didn't. This was said to be the reason Winchell always referred to himas a Nazi; that, and the fact that he attended rallies in Yorkville.
I was not told these things. I read them in
The Baseball Guide
, another selection off
Holly's shelf which she seemed to use for a scrapbook. Tucked between the pageswere Sunday features, together with scissored snippings from gossip columns.
Rusty
Trawler and Holly Golightly two-on-the-aisle at "One Touch of Venus" preem
. Holly
came up from behind, and caught me reading:
Miss Holiday Golightly, of the Boston
Golightlys, making every day a holiday for the 24-karat Rusty Trawler
childhood."
"If it was so stinking, why does he cling to it?""Use your head. Can't you see it's just that Rusty feels safer in diapers than he would in a skirt? Which is really the choice, only he's awfully touchy about it. He tried tostab me with a butter knife because I told him to grow up and face the issue, settledown and play house with a nice fatherly truck driver. Meantime, I've got him on myhands; which is okay, he's harmless, he thinks girls are dolls, literally."
"Thank God.""Well, if it were true of most men, I'd hardly be thanking God.""I meant thank God you're not going to marry Mr. Trawler."She lifted an eyebrow. "By the way, I'm not pretending I don't know he's rich. Even land in Mexico costs something. Now," she said, motioning me forward, "let's get holdof O.J."
I held back while my mind worked to win a postponement. Then I remembered: "Why
Traveling
"On my card?" she said, disconcerted. "You think it's funny?""Not funny. Just provocative."She shrugged. "After all, how do I know where I'll be living tomorrow? So I told them to put
Traveling
. Anyway, it was a waste of money, ordering those cards. Except I felt I
owed it to them to buy some little
some
thing. They're from Tiffany's." She reached for
my martini, I hadn't touched it; she drained it in two swallows, and took my hand. "Quitstalling. You're going to make friends with O.J."
An occurrence at the door intervened. It was a young woman, and she entered like a wind-rush, a squall of scarves and jangling gold. "H-H-Holly," she said, wagging afinger as she advanced, "you miserable h-h-hoarder. Hogging all these simply r-r-riveting m-m-men!"
She was well over six feet, taller than most men there. They straightened their spines, sucked in their stomachs; there was a general contest to match her swayingheight.
Holly said, "What are you doing here?" and her lips were taut as drawn string."Why, n-n-nothing, sugar. I've been upstairs working with Yunioshi. Christmas stuff for the
Ba-ba-zaar
. But you sound vexed, sugar?" She scattered a roundabout smile.
"You b-b-boys not vexed at me for butting in on your p-p-party?"
Rusty Trawler tittered. He squeezed her arm, as though to admire her muscle, and asked her if she could use a drink.
"I surely could," she said. "Make mine bourbon."Holly told her, "There
isn't
any." Whereupon the Air Force colonel suggested he run
out for a bottle.
"Oh, I declare, don't let's have a f-f-fuss. I'm happy with ammonia. Holly, honey," she said, slightly shoving her, "don't you bother about me. I can introduce myself." She
stooped toward O.J. Berman, who, like many short men in the presence of tallwomen, had an aspiring mist in his eye. "I'm Mag W-w-wildwood, from Wild-w-w-wood,Arkansas. That's hill country."
It seemed a dance, Berman performing some fancy footwork to prevent his rivals cutting in. He lost her to a quadrille of partners who gobbled up her stammered jokeslike popcorn tossed to pigeons. It was a comprehensible success. She was a triumphover ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it containsparadox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of plain good taste andscientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd madethem ornamental by admitting them boldly. Heels that emphasized her height, so steepher ankles trembled; a flat tight bodice that indicated she could go to a beach in bathingtrunks; hair that was pulled straight back, accentuating the spareness, the starvation ofher fashion-model face. Even the stutter, certainly genuine but still a bit laid on, hadbeen turned to advantage. It was the master stroke, that stutter; for it contrived to makeher banalities sound somehow original, and secondly, despite her tallness, herassurance, it served to inspire in male listeners a protective feeling. To illustrate:Berman had to be pounded on the back because she said, "Who can tell me w-w-where is the j-j-john?"; then, completing the cycle, he offered an arm to guide herhimself.
"That," said Holly, "won't be necessary. She's been here before. She knows where it is." She was emptying ashtrays, and after Mag Wildwood had left the room, sheemptied another, then said, sighed rather: "It's really very sad." She paused longenough to calculate the number of inquiring expressions; it was sufficient. "And somysterious. You'd think it would show more. But heaven knows, she
looks
healthy. So,
well,
clean
. That's the extraordinary part. Wouldn't you," she asked with concern, but of
no one in particular, "wouldn't you say she
looked
clean?"
Someone coughed, several swallowed. A Naval officer, who had been holding Mag Wildwood's drink, put it down.
"But then," said Holly, "I hear so many of these Southern girls have the same trouble." She shuddered delicately, and went to the kitchen for more ice.
Mag Wildwood couldn't understand it, the abrupt absence of warmth on her return; the conversations she began behaved like green logs, they fumed but would not fire.More unforgivably, people were leaving without taking her telephone number. The AirForce colonel decamped while her back was turned, and this was the straw too much:he'd asked her to dinner. Suddenly she was blind. And since gin to artifice bears thesame relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled. She took it outon everyone. She called her hostess a Hollywood degenerate. She invited a man in hisfifties to fight. She told Berman, Hitler was right. She exhilarated Rusty Trawler by stiff-arming him into a corner. "You know what's going to happen to you?" she said, with nohint of a stutter. "I'm going to march you over to the zoo and feed you to the yak." He
looked altogether willing, but she disappointed him by sliding to the floor, where she sathumming.
"You're a bore. Get up from there," Holly said, stretching on a pair of gloves. The remnants of the party were waiting at the door, and when the bore didn't budge Hollycast me an apologetic glance. "Be an angel, would you, Fred? Put her in a taxi. Shelives at the Winslow."
"Don't. Live Barbizon. Regent 4-5700. Ask for Mag Wildwood.""You
are
an angel, Fred."
They were gone. The prospect of steering an Amazon into a taxi obliterated whatever resentment I felt. But she solved the problem herself. Rising on her ownsteam, she stared down at me with a lurching loftiness. She said, "Let's go Stork. Catchlucky balloon," and fell full-length like an axed oak. My first thought was to run for adoctor. But examination proved her pulse fine and her breathing regular. She wassimply asleep. After finding a pillow for her head, I left her to enjoy it.
The following afternoon I collided with Holly on the stairs. "
You
" she said, hurrying
past with a package from the druggist. "There she is, on the verge of pneumonia. Ahang-over out to here. And the mean reds on top of it." I gathered from this that MagWildwood was still in the apartment, but she gave me no chance to explore hersurprising sympathy. Over the weekend, mystery deepened. First, there was the Latinwho came to my door: mistakenly, for he was inquiring after Miss Wildwood. It took awhile to correct his error, our accents seemed mutually incoherent, but by the time wehad I was charmed. He'd been put together with care, his brown head and bullfighter'sfigure had an exactness, a perfection, like an apple, an orange, something nature hasmade just right. Added to this, as decoration, were an English suit and a brisk cologneand, what is still more unlatin, a bashful manner. The second event of the day involvedhim again. It was toward evening, and I saw him on my way out to dinner. He wasarriving in a taxi; the driver helped him totter into the house with a load of suitcases.That gave me something to chew on: by Sunday my jaws were quite tired.
Then the picture became both darker and clearer.Sunday was an Indian summer day, the sun was strong, my window was open, and I heard voices on the fire escape. Holly and Mag were sprawled there on a blanket, thecat between them. Their hair, newly washed, hung lankly. They were busy, Hollyvarnishing her toenails, Mag knitting on a sweater. Mag was speaking.
"If you ask me, I think you're l-l-lucky. At least there's one thing you can say for Rusty. He's an American."
"Bully for him."" Sugar
. There's a war on."
"And when it's over, you've seen the last of me, boy.""I don't feel that way. I'm p-p-proud of my country. The men in my family were great
soldiers.
There's
a^
statue
of
Papadaddy
Wildwood
smack
in
the
center
of
Wildwood."
"Fred's a soldier," said Holly. "But I doubt if he'll ever be a statue. Could be. They say the more stupid you are the braver. He's pretty stupid."
"Fred's that boy upstairs? I didn't realize he was a soldier. But he
does
look stupid."
"Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid. Anyhow, he's a differentFred. Fred's my brother."
"You call your own f-f-flesh and b-b-blood stupid?""If he is he is.""Well, it's poor taste to say so. A boy that's fighting for you and me and all of us.""What is this: a bond rally?""I just want you to know where I stand. I appreciate a joke, but underneath I'm a s-s- serious person. Proud to be an American. That's why I'm sorry about José." She putdown her knitting needles. "You
do
think he's terribly good-looking, don't you?" Holly
said Hmn, and swiped the cat's whiskers with her lacquer brush. "If only I could getused to the idea of m-m-marrying a Brazilian. And
being
a B-b-brazilian myself. It's
such a canyon to cross. Six thousand miles, and not knowing the language -- "
"Go to Berlitz.""Why on earth would they be teaching P-p-portu-guese? It isn't as though anyone spoke it. No, my only chance is to try and make José forget politics and become anAmerican. It's such a useless thing for a man to want to be: the p-p-president of
Brazil
She sighed and picked up her knitting. "I must be madly in love. You saw us together.Do you think I'm madly in love?"
"Well. Does he bite?"Mag dropped a stitch. "Bite?""You. In bed.""Why, no.
Should
he?" Then she added, censoriously: "But he does laugh."
"Good. That's the right spirit. I like a man who sees the humor; most of them, they're all pant and puff."
Mag withdrew her complaint; she accepted the comment as flattery reflecting on herself. "Yes. I suppose."
"Okay. He doesn't bite. He laughs. What else?"Mag counted up her dropped stitch and began again, knit, purl, purl."I said -- ""I heard you. And it isn't that I don't want to tell you. But it's so difficult to remember. I don't d-d-dwell on these things. The way you seem to. They go out of my head like adream. I'm sure that's the n-n-normal attitude."
"It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural." Holly paused in the process of reddening the rest of the cat's whiskers. "Listen. If you can't remember, try leaving the
tragedy out of
your
childhood I didn't feel I should compete."
She hopped off the railing. "Anyway, it reminds me: I ought to send Fred some peanut butter." The rest of the afternoon we were east and west worming out ofreluctant grocers cans of peanut butter, a wartime scarcity; dark came before we'drounded up a half-dozen jars, the last at a delicatessen on Third Avenue. It was nearthe antique shop with the palace of a bird cage in its window, so I took her there to seeit, and she enjoyed the point, its fantasy: "But still, it's a cage."
Passing a Woolworth's, she gripped my arm: "Let's steal something," she said, pulling me into the store, where at once there seemed a pressure of eyes, as thoughwe were already under suspicion. "Come on. Don't be chicken." She scouted a counterpiled with paper pumpkins and Halloween masks. The saleslady was occupied with agroup of nuns who were trying on masks. Holly picked up a mask and slipped it overher face; she chose another and put it on mine; then she took my hand and we walkedaway. It was as simple as that. Outside, we ran a few blocks, I think to make it moredramatic; but also because, as I'd discovered, successful theft exhilarates. I wonderedif she'd often stolen. "I used to," she said. "I mean I had to. If I wanted anything. But Istill do it every now and then, sort of to keep my hand in." We wore the masks all theway home.
I have a memory of spending many hither and yonning days with Holly; and it's true, we did at odd moments see a great deal of each other; but on the whole, the memory isfalse. Because toward the end of the month I found a job: what is there to add? Theless the better, except to say it was necessary and lasted from nine to five. Whichmade our hours, Holly's and mine, extremely different. Unless it was Thursday, herSing Sing day, or unless she'd gone horseback riding in the park, as she didoccasionally, Holly was hardly up when I came home. Sometimes, stopping there, Ishared her wake-up coffee while she dressed for the evening. She was forever on herway out, not always with Rusty Trawler, but usually, and usually, too, they were joinedby Mag Wildwood and the handsome Brazilian, whose name was José Ybarra-Jaegar:his mother was German. As a quartet, they struck an unmusical note, primarily the faultof Ybarra-Jaegar, who seemed as out of place in their company as a violin in a jazzband. He was intelligent, he was presentable, he appeared to have a serious link withhis work, which was obscurely governmental, vaguely important, and took him toWashington several days a week. How, then, could he survive night after night in LaRue, El Morocco, listening to the Wildwood ch-ch-chatter and staring into Rusty's rawbaby-buttocks face? Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable ofplacing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore allAmericans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companionsappeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character. That wouldexplain much; Holly's determination explains the rest.
Late one afternoon, while waiting for a Fifth Avenue bus, I noticed a taxi stop across the street to let out a girl who ran up the steps of the Forty-second Street publiclibrary. She was through the doors before I recognized her, which was pardonable, forHolly and libraries were not an easy association to make. I let curiosity guide mebetween the lions, debating on the way whether I should admit following her or pretendcoincidence. In the end I did neither, but concealed myself some tables away from herin the general reading room, where she sat behind her dark glasses and a fortress ofliterature she'd gathered at the desk. She sped from one book to the next, intermittentlylingering on a page, always with a frown, as if it were printed upside down. She had apencil poised above paper -- nothing seemed to catch her fancy, still now and then, asthough for the hell of it, she made laborious scribblings. Watching her, I remembered agirl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair andgreasy spectacles, her stained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picketlines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage.Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head theyacquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them togetherran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even ourbodies undergo a complete overhaul -- desirable or not, it is a natural thing that weshould change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what MildredGrossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change becausethey'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack ofproportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsidedromantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menufor its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never bedifferent. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step thattook small notice of those cliffs at the left. Such profound observations made me forgetwhere I was; I came to, startled to find myself in the gloom of the library, and surprisedall over again to see Holly there. It was after seven, she was freshening her lipstick andperking up her appearance from what she deemed correct for a library to what, byadding a bit of scarf, some earrings, she considered suitable for the Colony. Whenshe'd left, I wandered over to the table where her books remained; they were what Ihad wanted to see.
South by Thunderbird. Byways of Brazil. The Political Mind of Latin
America
. And so forth. On Christmas Eve she and Mag gave a party. Holly asked me to come early and help trim the tree. I'm still not sure how they maneuvered that tree into the apartment.The top branches were crushed against the ceiling, the lower ones spread wall-to-wall;altogether it was not unlike the yuletide giant we see in Rockefeller Plaza. Moreover, itwould have taken a Rockefeller to decorate it, for it soaked up baubles and tinsel likemelting snow. Holly suggested she run out to Woolworth's and steal some balloons;she did: and they turned the tree into a fairly good show. We made a toast to our work,
and Holly said: "Look in the bedroom. There's a present for you."
I had one for her, too: a small package in my pocket that felt even smaller when I saw, square on the bed and wrapped with a red ribbon, the beautiful bird cage. "But,Holly! It's dreadful!"
"I couldn't agree more; but I thought you wanted it.""The money! Three hundred and fifty dollars!"She shrugged. "A few extra trips to the powder room. Promise me, though. Promise you'll never put a living thing in it."
I started to kiss her, but she held out her hand "Gimme," she said, tapping the bulge in my pocket.
"I'm afraid it isn't much," and it wasn't: a St. Christopher's medal. But at least it came from Tiffany's. Holly was not a girl who could keep anything, and surely by nowshe has lost that medal, left it in a suitcase or some hotel drawer. But the bird cage isstill mine. I've lugged it to New Orleans, Nantucket, all over Europe, Morocco, the WestIndies. Yet I seldom remember that it was Holly who gave it to me, because at onepoint I chose to forget: we had a big falling-out, and among the objects rotating in theeye of our hurricane were the bird cage and O.J. Berman and my story, a copy of whichI'd given Holly when it appeared in the university review.
Sometime in February, Holly had gone on a winter trip with Rusty, Mag and José Ybarra-Jaegar. Our altercation happened soon after she returned. She was brown asiodine, her hair was sun-bleached to a ghost-color, she'd had a wonderful time: "Well,first of all we were in Key West, and Rusty got mad at some sailors, or vice versa, anyway
he'll have to wear a spine brace the rest of his life. Dearest Mag ended up in
the hospital, too. First-degree sunburn. Disgusting: all blisters and citronella. Wecouldn't stand the smell of her. So José and I left them in the hospital and went toHavana. He says wait till I see Rio; but as far as I'm concerned Havana can take mymoney right now. We had an irresistible guide, most of him Negro and the rest of himChinese, and while I don't go much for one or the other, the combination was fairlyriveting: so I let him play kneesie under the table, because frankly I didn't find him at allbanal; but then one night he took us to a blue movie, and what do you suppose? There he
was
on
the screen. Of course when we got back to Key West, Mag was positive I'd
spent the whole time sleeping with José. So was Rusty: but he doesn't care about that,he simply wants to hear the details. Actually, things were pretty tense until I had aheart-to-heart with Mag."
We were in the front room, where, though it was now nearly March, the enormous Christmas tree, turned brown and scentless, its balloons shriveled as an old cow'sdugs, still occupied most of the space. A recognizable piece of furniture had beenadded to the room: an army cot; and Holly, trying to preserve her tropic look, wassprawled on it under a sun lamp.
"And you convinced her?"
"That I hadn't slept with José? God, yes. I simply told -- but you know: made it sound like an
ag
onized confession -- simply told her I was a dyke."
"She couldn't have believed that.""The hell she didn't. Why do you think she went out and bought this army cot? Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department. Be a darling, darling,rub some oil on my back." While I was performing this service, she said: "O.J. Berman'sin town, and listen, I gave him your story in the magazine. He was quite impressed. Hethinks maybe you're worth helping. But he says you're on the wrong track. Negroes andchildren: who cares?"
"Not Mr. Berman, I gather.""Well, I agree with him. I read that story twice. Brats and niggers. Trembling leaves. Description
. It doesn't
mean
anything."
My hand, smoothing oil on her skin, seemed to have a temper of its own: it yearned to raise itself and come down on her buttocks. "Give me an example," I said quietly. "Ofsomething that means something. In your opinion."
" Wuthering Heights
," she said, without hesitation.
The urge in my hand was growing beyond control. "But that's unreasonable. You're talking about a work of genius."
"It was, wasn't it?
My wild sweet Cathy
. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times."
I said, "Oh" with recognizable relief, "oh" with a shameful, rising inflection, "the movie
Her muscles hardened, the touch of her was like stone warmed by the sun. "Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to presenta little proof before you take the privilege."
"I don't compare myself to you. Or, Berman. Therefore I can't feel superior. We want different things."
"Don't you want to make money?""I haven't planned that far.""That's how your stories sound. As though you'd written them without knowing the end. Well, I'll tell you: I you'd better make money. You have an expensive imagination.Not many people are going to buy you bird cages."
"Sorry.""You will be if you hit me. You wanted to a minute ago: I could feel it in your hand; and you want to now."
I did, terribly; my hand, my heart was shaking as I recapped the bottle of oil. "Oh no, I wouldn't regret that. I'm only sorry you wasted your money on me: Rusty Trawler istoo hard a way of earning it."
She sat up on the army cot, her face, her naked breasts coldly blue in the sun-lamp light. "It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I'll give youtwo."
she ran off like she done." He sipped his cold coffee, and glanced at me with asearching earnestness. "Now, son, do you doubt me? Do you believe what I'm sayingis so?"
I did. It was too implausible not to be fact; moreover, it dovetailed with O.J. Berman's description of the Holly he'd first encountered in California: "You don't knowwhether she's a hillbilly or an Okie or what." Berman couldn't be blamed for notguessing that she was a child-wife from Tulip, Texas.
"Plain broke our hearts when she ran off like she done," the horse doctor repeated. "She had no cause. All the housework was done by her daughters. Lulamae could justtake it easy: fuss in front of mirrors and wash her hair. Our own cows, our own garden,chickens, pigs: son, that woman got positively fat. While her brother growed into agiant. Which is a sight different from how they come to us. 'Twas Nellie, my oldest girl,'twas Nellie brought 'em into the house. She come to me one morning, and said: 'Papa,I got two wild yunguns locked in the kitchen. I caught 'em outside stealing milk andturkey eggs.' That was Lulamae and Fred. Well, you never saw a more pitifulsomething. Ribs sticking out everywhere, legs so puny they can't hardly stand, teethwobbling so bad they can't chew mush. Story was: their mother died of the TB, andtheir papa done the same -- and all the churren, a whole raft of 'em, they been sent offto live with different mean people. Now Lulamae and her brother, them two been livingwith some mean, no-count people a hundred miles east of Tulip. She had good causeto run off from that house. She didn't have none to leave mine. Twas her home." Heleaned his elbows on the counter and, pressing his closed eyes with his fingertips,sighed. "She plumped out to be a real pretty woman. Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird.With something smart to say on every subject: better than the radio. First thing youknow, I'm out picking flowers. I tamed her a crow and taught it to say her name. Ishowed her how to play the guitar. Just to look at her made the tears spring to myeyes. The night I proposed, I cried like a baby. She said: 'What you want to cry for,Doc? 'Course we'll be married. I've never been married before.' Well, I had to laugh,hug and squeeze her:
never been married before!
" He chuckled, chewed on his
toothpick a moment. "Don't tell me that woman wasn't happy!" he said, challengingly."We all doted on her. She didn't have to lift a finger, 'cept to eat a piece of pie. 'Cept tocomb her hair and send away for all the magazines. We must've had a hunnerd dollars'worth of magazines come into that house. Ask me, that's what done it. Looking atshow-off pictures. Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road.Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and comehome. One day she just kept on." He put his hands over his eyes again; his breathingmade a ragged noise. "The crow I give her went wild and flew away. All summer youcould hear him. In the yard. In the garden. In the woods. All summer that damned birdwas calling: Lulamae, Lulamae."
He stayed hunched over and silent, as though listening to the long-ago summer
sound. I carried our checks to the cashier. While I was paying, he joined me. We lefttogether and walked over to Park Avenue. It was a cool, blowy evening; swankyawnings flapped in the breeze. The quietness between us continued until I said: "Butwhat about her brother? He didn't leave?"
"No, sir," he said, clearing his throat. "Fred was with us right till they took him in the Army. A fine boy. Fine with horses. He didn't know what got into Lulamae, how comeshe left her brother and husband and churren. After he was in the Army, though, Fredstarted hearing from her. The other day he wrote me her address. So I come to get her.I know he's sorry for what she done. I know she wants to go home." He seemed to beasking me to agree with him. I told him that I thought he'd find Holly, or Lulamae,somewhat changed. "Listen, son," he said, as we reached the steps of the brownstone,"I advised you I need a friend. Because I don't want to surprise her. Scare her none.That's why I've held off. Be my friend: let her know I'm here."
The notion of introducing Mrs. Golightly to her husband had its satisfying aspects; and, glancing up at her lighted windows, I hoped her friends were there, for theprospect of watching the Texan shake hands with Mag and Rusty and José was moresatisfying still. But Doc Golightly's proud earnest eyes and sweat-stained hat made meashamed of such anticipations. He followed me into the house and prepared to wait atthe bottom of the stairs. "Do I look nice?" he whispered, brushing his sleeves,tightening the knot of his tie.
Holly was alone. She answered the door at once; in fact, she was on her way out -- white satin dancing pumps and quantities of perfume announced gala intentions. "Well,idiot," she said, and playfully slapped me with her purse. "I'm in too much of a hurry tomake up now. We'll smoke the pipe tomorrow, okay?"
"Sure, Lulamae. If you're still around tomorrow."She took off her dark glasses and squinted at me. It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and gray and green like broken bits of sparkle. "
He
told you that," she said in a small, shivering voice.
"Oh, please.
Where
is he?" She ran past me into the hall. "Fred!" she called down
the stairs. "Fred! Where are you, darling?"
I could hear Doc Golightly's footsteps climbing the stairs. His head appeared above the banisters, and Holly backed away from him, not as though she were frightened, butas though she were retreating into a shell of disappointment. Then he was standing infront of her, hangdog and shy. "Gosh, Lulamae," he began, and hesitated, for Holly wasgazing at him vacantly, as though she couldn't place him. "Gee, honey," he said, "don'tthey feed you up here? You're so skinny. Like when I first saw you. All wild around theeye."
Holly touched his face; her fingers tested the reality of his chin, his beard stubble. "Hello, Doc," she said gently, and kissed him on the cheek. "Hello, Doc," she repeatedhappily, as he lifted her off her feet in a rib-crushing grip. Whoops of relieved laughter
shook him. "Gosh, Lulamae. Kingdom come."
Neither of them noticed me when I squeezed past them and went up to my room. Nor did they seem aware of Madame Sapphia Spanella, who opened her door andyelled: "Shut up! It's a disgrace. Do your whoring elsewhere."
" Divorce
him? Of course I never divorced him. I was only fourteen, for God's sake. It
couldn't have been
legal
." Holly tapped an empty martini glass. "Two more, my darling
Mr. Bell."
Joe Bell, in whose bar we were sitting, accepted the order reluctantly. "You're rockin' the boat kinda early," he complained, crunching on a Tums. It was not yet noon,according to the black mahogany clock behind the bar, and he'd already served usthree rounds.
"But it's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays. Besides, I haven't been to bed yet," she told him, and confided to me: "Not to sleep." She blushed, and glancedaway guiltily. For the first time since I'd known her, she seemed to feel a need to justifyherself: "Well, I had to. Doc really loves me, you know. And I love him. He may havelooked old and tacky to you. But you don't know the sweetness of him, the confidencehe can give to birds and brats and fragile things like that. Anyone who ever gave youconfidence, you owe them a lot. I've always remembered Doc in my prayers. Pleasestop smirking!" she demanded, stabbing out a cigarette. "I
do
say my prayers."
"I'm not smirking. I'm smiling. You're the most amazing person.""I suppose I am," she said, and her face, wan, rather bruised-looking in the morning light, brightened; she smoothed her tousled hair, and the colors of it glimmered like ashampoo advertisement. "I must look fierce. But who wouldn't? We spent the rest of thenight roaming around in a bus station. Right up till the last minute Doc thought I wasgoing to go with him. Even though I kept telling him: But, Doc, I'm not fourteen anymore, and I'm not Lulamae. But the terrible part is (and I realized it while we werestanding there) I am. I'm still stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch.Only now I call it having the mean reds."
Joe Bell disdainfully settled the fresh martinis in front of us."Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the moreyou do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or flyinto a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you letyourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."
"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me."Moderately," Holly confessed. "But Doc knew what I meant. I explained it to him very carefully, and it was something he could understand. We shook hands and held onto each other and he wished me luck." She glanced at the clock. "He must be in the
Blue Mountains by now."
"What's she talkin' about?" Joe Bell asked me.Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the skythan live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goesand things disappear."
TRAWLER MARRIES FOURTH. I was on a subway somewhere in Brooklyn when I saw that headline. The paper that bannered it belonged to another passenger. The onlypart of the text that I could see read:
Rutherfurd "Rusty" Trawler, the millionaire playboy
often accused of pro-Nazi sympathies, eloped to Greenwich yesterday with a beautiful
- Not that I wanted to read any more. Holly had married him: well, well. I wished I wereunder the wheels of the train. But I'd been wishing that before I spotted the headline.For a headful of reasons. I hadn't seen Holly, not really, since our drunken Sunday atJoe Bell's bar. The intervening weeks had given me my own case of the mean reds.First off, I'd been fired from my job: deservedly, and for an amusing misdemeanor toocomplicated to recount here. Also, my draft board was displaying an uncomfortableinterest; and, having so recently escaped the regimentation of a small town, the idea ofentering another form of disciplined life made me desperate. Between the uncertaintyof my draft status and a lack of specific experience, I couldn't seem to find another job.That was what I was doing on a subway in Brooklyn: returning from a discouraginginterview with an editor of the now defunct newspaper,
PM
. All this, combined with the
city heat of the summer, had reduced me to a state of nervous inertia. So I more thanhalf meant it when I wished I were under the wheels of the train. The headline madethe desire quite positive. If Holly could marry that "absurd foetus," then the army ofwrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me. Or, and the question isapparent, was my outrage a little the result of being in love with Holly myself? A little.For I was in love with her. Just as I'd once been in love with my mother's elderlycolored cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole familynamed McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too.
When I reached my station I bought a paper; and, reading the tail-end of that sentence, discovered that Rusty's bride was:
a beautiful cover girl from the Arkansas
hills, Miss Margaret Thatcher Fitzhue Wildwood
. Mag! My legs went so limp with relief I
took a taxi the rest of the way home.
Madame Sapphia Spanella met me in the hall, wild-eyed and wringing her hands. "Run," she said. "Bring the police. She is killing somebody! Somebody is killing her!"
It sounded like it. As though tigers were loose in Holly's apartment. A riot of crashing glass, of rippings and callings and overturned furniture. But there were noquarreling voices inside the uproar, which made it seem unnatural. "Run," shriekedMadame Spanella, pushing me. "Tell the police murder!"
poured
into
avocado
shells)
Nero-ish
novelties
(roasted
pheasant
stuffed
with
pomegranates and persimmons) and other dubious innovations (chicken and saffronrice served with a chocolate sauce: "An East Indian classic,
my
dear.") Wartime sugar
and cream rationing restricted her imagination when it came to sweets -- nevertheless,she once managed something called Tobacco Tapioca: best not describe it.
Nor describe her attempts to master Portuguese, an ordeal as tedious to me as it was to her, for whenever I visited her an album of Linguaphone records never ceasedrotating on the phonograph. Now, too, she rarely spoke a sentence that did not begin,"After we're married -- " or "When we move to Rio -- " Yet José had never suggestedmarriage. She admitted it. "But, after all, he
knows
I'm preggers. Well, I am, darling. Six
weeks gone. I don't see why
that
should surprise you. It didn't me. Not
un peu
bit. I'm
delighted. I want to have at least nine. I'm sure some of them will be rather dark -- Joséhas a touch of
le nègre
, I suppose you guessed that? Which is fine by me: what could
be prettier than a quite coony baby with bright green beautiful eyes? I wish, pleasedon't laugh -- but I wish I'd been a virgin for him, for José. Not that I've warmed themultitudes some people say: I don't blame the bastards for saying it, I've always thrownout such a jazzy line. Really, though, I toted up the other night, and I've only had elevenlovers -- not counting anything that happened before I was thirteen because, after all,that just
doesn't
count. Eleven. Does that make me a whore? Look at Mag Wildwood.
Or Honey Tucker. Or Rose Ellen Ward. They've had the old clap-yo'-hands so manytimes it amounts to applause. Of course I haven't anything
against
whores. Except this:
some of them may have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts. I mean,you can't bang the guy and cash his checks and at least not
try
to believe you love him.
I never have. Even Benny Shacklett and all those rodents. I sort of hypnotized myselfinto thinking their sheer rattiness had a certain allure. Actually, except for Doc, if youwant to count Doc, José is my first non-rat romance. Oh, he's not my idea of theabsolute finito. He tells little lies and he worries what people
think
and he takes about
fifty baths a day: men ought to smell somewhat. He's too prim, too cautious to be myguy ideal; he always turns his back to get undressed and he makes too much noisewhen he eats and I don't like to see him run because there's something funny-lookingabout him when he runs. If I were free to choose from everybody alive, just snap myfingers and say come here you, I wouldn't pick José. Nehru, he's nearer the mark.Wendell Wilkie. I'd settle for Garbo any day. Why not? A person ought to be able tomarry men or women or -- listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch upwith Man o' War, I'd respect your feeling. No, I'm serious. Love should be allowed. I'mall for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is. Because I
do
love José -- I'd
stop smoking if he asked me to. He's
friendly
, he can laugh me out of the mean reds,
only I don't have them much any more, except sometimes, and even then they're not sohideola that I gulp Seconal or have to haul myself to Tiffany's: I take his suit to thecleaner, or stuff some mushrooms, and I feel fine, just great. Another thing, I've thrown
away my horoscopes. I must have spent a dollar on every goddamn star in thegoddamn planetarium. It's a bore, but the answer, is good things only happen to you ifyou're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not law-type honest -- I'd rob agrave, I'd steal two-bits off a dead man's eyes if I thought it would contribute to theday's enjoyment -- but unto-thyself-type honest. Be anything but a coward, a pretender,an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn'tbeing pious. Just practical. Cancer
may
cool you, but the other's sure to. Oh, screw it,
cookie -- hand me my guitar, and I'll sing you a
fada
in
the
most perfect Portuguese."
Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reachedthat sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words:an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasingabout that produce a friendship's more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramaticmoments. Frequently, when
he
was out of town (I'd developed hostile attitudes toward
him
, and seldom used his name) we spent entire evenings together during which we exchanged less than a hundred words; once, we walked all the way to Chinatown, atea chow-mein supper, bought some paper lanterns and stole a box of joss sticks, thenmoseyed across the Brooklyn Bridge, and on the bridge, as we watched seaward-moving ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline, she said: "Years from now,years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my nine Brazilian brats.Because yes, they
must
see this, these lights, the river -- I love New York, even though
it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something,anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it." And I said: "Do shut up," for I feltinfuriatingly left out -- a tugboat in drydock while she, glittery voyager of securedestination, steamed down the harbor with whistles whistling and confetti in the air. Sothe days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: untila day unlike any other I've lived.
It happened to fall on the 30th of September, my birthday, a fact which had no effect on events, except that, expecting some form of monetary remembrance from my family,I was eager for the postman's morning visit. Indeed, I went downstairs and waited forhim. If I had not been loitering in the vestibule, then Holly would not have asked me togo horseback riding; and would not, consequently, have had the opportunity to save mylife.
"Come on," she said, when she found me awaiting the postman. "Let's walk a couple of horses around the park." She was wearing a windbreaker and a pair of bluejeans and tennis shoes; she slapped her stomach, drawing attention to its flatness:"Don't think I'm out to lose the heir. But there's a horse, my darling old Mabel Minerva --I can't go without saying good-bye to Mabel Minerva."
"Good-bye?"
"A week from Saturday. José bought the tickets." In rather a trance, I let her lead me down to the street. "We change planes in Miami. Then over the sea. Over theAndes. Taxi!"
Over the Andes. As we rode in a cab across Central Park it seemed to me as though I, too, were flying, desolately floating over snow-peaked and perilous territory.
"But you can't. After all, what about. Well, what about. Well, you can't
really
run off
and leave everybody."
"I don't think anyone will miss me. I have no friends.""I will. Miss you. So will Joe Bell. And oh -- millions. Like Sally. Poor Mr. Tomato.""I loved old Sally," she said, and sighed. "You know I haven't been to see him in a month? When I told him I was going away, he was an angel.
Actually
" -- she frowned --
"he seemed
delighted
that I was leaving the country. He said it was all for the best.
Because sooner or later there might be trouble. If they found out I wasn't his real niece.That fat lawyer, O'Shaughnessy, O'Shaughnessy sent me five hundred dollars. In cash.A wedding present from Sally."
I wanted to be unkind. "You can expect a present from me, too. When, and if, the wedding happens."
She laughed. "He'll marry me, all right. In church. And with his family there. That's why we're waiting till we get to Rio."
"Does he know you're married already?""What's the matter with you? Are you trying to ruin the day? It's a beautiful day: leave it alone!"
"But it's perfectly possible -- ""It
isn't
possible. I've told you, that wasn't legal. It
couldn't
be." She rubbed her
nose, and glanced at me sideways. "Mention that to a living soul, darling. I'll hang youby your toes and dress you for a hog."
The stables -- I believe they have been replaced by television studios -- were on West Sixty-sixth street Holly selected for me an old sway-back black and white mare:"Don't worry, she's safer than a cradle." Which, in my case, was a necessaryguarantee, for ten-cent pony rides at childhood carnivals were the limit of myequestrian experience. Holly helped hoist me into the saddle, then mounted her ownhorse, a silvery animal that took the lead as we jogged across the traffic of Central ParkWest and entered a riding path dappled with leaves denuding breezes danced about.
"See?" she shouted. "It's great!" And suddenly it was. Suddenly, watching the tangled colors of Holly's hair flash in the red-yellow leaf light, I loved her enough toforget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thoughthappy was going to happen. Very gently the horses began to trot, waves of windsplashed us, spanked our faces, we plunged in and out of sun and shadow pools, andjoy, a glad-to-be-alive exhilaration, jolted through me like a jigger of nitrogen. That wasone minute; the next introduced farce in grim disguise.
For all at once, like savage members of a jungle ambush, a band of Negro boys leapt out of the shrubbery along the path. Hooting, cursing, they launched rocks andthrashed at the horse's rumps with switches.
Mine, the black and white mare, rose on her hind legs, whinnied, teetered like a tightrope artist, then blue-streaked down the path, bouncing my feet out of the stirrupsand leaving me scarcely attached. Her hooves made the gravel stones spit sparks. Thesky careened. Trees, a lake with little-boy sailboats, statues went by licketysplit.Nursemaids rushed to rescue their charges from our awesome approach; men, bumsand others, yelled: "Pull in the reins!" and "Whoa, boy, whoa!" and "Jump!" It was onlylater that I remembered these voices; at the time I was simply conscious of Holly, thecowboy-sound of her racing behind me, never quite catching up, and over and overcalling
encouragements.
Onward:
across
the
park
and
out
into
Fifth
Avenue:
stampeding against the noonday traffic, taxis, buses that screechingly swerved. Pastthe Duke mansion, the Frick Museum, past the Pierre and the Plaza. But Holly gainedground; moreover, a mounted policeman had joined the chase: flanking my runawaymare, one on either side, their horses performed a pincer movement that brought her toa steamy halt. It was then, at last, that I fell off her back. Fell off and picked myself upand stood there, not altogether certain where I was. A crowd gathered. The policemanhuffed and wrote in a book: presently he was most sympathetic, grinned and said hewould arrange for our horses to be returned to their stable.
Holly put us in a taxi. "Darling. How do you feel?""Fine.""But you haven't
any
pulse," she said, feeling my wrist.
"Then I must be dead.""No, idiot. This is serious. Look at me."The trouble was, I couldn't see her; rather, I saw several Holly's, a trio of sweaty faces so white with concern that I was both touched and embarrassed. "Honestly. Idon't feel anything. Except ashamed."
"Please. Are you sure? Tell me the truth. You might have been killed.""But I wasn't. And thank you. For saving my life. You're wonderful. Unique. I love you."
"Damn fool." She kissed me on the cheek. Then there were four of her, and I fainted dead away.
That evening, photographs of Holly were frontpaged by the late edition of the Journal-American
and by the early editions of both the
Daily News
and the
Daily Mirror
The publicity had nothing to do with runaway horses. It concerned quite another matter,as
the headlines
revealed: PLAYGIRL
ARRESTED
IN
NARCOTICS
SCANDAL
( Journal-American
), ARREST DOPE-SMUGGLING ACTRESS (
Daily News
), DRUG
RING EXPOSED, GLAMOUR GIRL HELD (
Daily Mirror
