[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

All wild around the eye."
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 repeated happily, 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 and yelled: "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
www.franklang.ru
31
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY S
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY S
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 us three 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 glanced away guiltily. For the first time
since I'd known her, she seemed to feel a need to justify herself: "Well, I had to. Doc really loves me,
you know. And I love him. He may have looked old and tacky to you. But you don't know the
sweetness of him, the confidence he can give to birds and brats and fragile things like that. Anyone
who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot. I've always remembered Doc in my prayers. Please
stop 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 a shampoo advertisement. "I must
look fierce. But who wouldn't? We spent the rest of the night roaming around in a busstation. Right up
till the last minute Doc thought I was going with him. Even though I kept telling him: But, Doc, I'm
not fourteen any more, and I'm not Lulamae. But the terrible part is (and I realized it while we were
standing there) I am. I'm still stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch. Only now I call it
having the mean reds."
20 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 more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're
strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how
you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself 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 on to 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 sky than live there. Such an empty
place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and 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 only part of the text that I
32
T R U M A N C A P O T E
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 were under 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 at Joe
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 too complicated to recount here. Also, my
draft board was displaying an uncomfortable interest; and, having so recently escaped the
regimentation of a small town, the idea of entering another form of disciplined life made me desperate.
Between the uncertainty of 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 discouraging
interview 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 than half meant it when I wished
I were under the wheels of the train. The headline made the desire quite positive. If Holly could marry
that "absurd foetus," then the army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me.
Or, and the question is apparent, 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 elderly colored cook
and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named McKendrick. That
category of love generated jealousy, too.
When I reached my station I bought a paper; and, reading the tail-end of that sentence, discovered that
20 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 fallings and overturned furniture. But there were no quarreling voices inside the uproar, which
made it seem unnatural. "Run," shrieked Madame Spanella, pushing me. "Tell the police murder!"
I ran; but only upstairs to Holly's door. Pounding on it had one result: the racket subsided. Stopped
altogether. But pleadings to let me in went unanswered, and my efforts to break down the door merely
culminated in a bruised shoulder. Then below I heard Madame Spanella commanding some newcomer
to go for the police. "Shut up," she was told, "and get out of my way."
It was José Ybarra-Jaegar. Looking not at all the smart Brazilian diplomat; but sweaty and frightened.
He ordered me out of his way, too. And, using his own key, opened the door. "In here, Dr. Goldman,"
he said, beckoning to a man accompanying him.
Since no one prevented me, I followed them into the apartment, which was tremendously wrecked. At
last the Christmas tree had been dismantled, very literally: its brown dry branches sprawled in a welter [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]