In today's encore excerpt -- from A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. Seven-year-old
Truman Capote, abandoned by his divorced parents, is taken in by
depression-poor cousins in the rural South. One of these cousins, a
distant, elderly cousin, becomes his closest friend and only refuge --
but she is only in his life for two more short years. As Christmas
approaches, they make fruitcakes as presents for people they barely
know:
"Imagine
a morning in late November. A coming-of-winter morning more than twenty
years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country
town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big
round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of
it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
 |
| Young Truman Capote Sook, 1930's |
"A
woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is
wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico
dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long
youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is
remarkable -- not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun
and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are
sherry-colored and timid. 'Oh my,' she exclaims, her breath smoking the
windowpane, 'it's fruitcake weather!'
"The
person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is
sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived
together -- well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the
house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently
make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are
each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was
formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she
was still a child. She is still a child. ...
"The
black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted
pumpkin. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and
sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting,
nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out
to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. In four days our work is done.
Thirty-one
cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on window sills and shelves.
cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on window sills and shelves.
"Friends.
Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share are intended
for persons we've met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who've
struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs.
J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last
winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year.
Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o'clock bus from Mobile, who
exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh.
Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke
down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on
the porch (young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture, the only one we've
ever had taken). Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except
strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us
our truest friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of
thank-you's on White House stationery, time-to-time communications from
California and Borneo, the knife grinder's penny post cards, make us
feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a
sky that stops. ...
"[And then when
Christmas morning finally comes, while the rest of the house still
sleeps, a voice:] 'Buddy, are you awake?' It is my friend, calling from
her room, which is next to mine; and an instant later she is sitting on
my bed holding a candle. 'Well, I can't sleep a hoot,' she declares. 'My
mind's jumping like a jack rabbit. Buddy, do you think Mrs. Roosevelt
will serve our cake at dinner?' We huddle in the bed, and she squeezes
my hand I-love-you."
A Christmas Memory: One Christmas, and The Thanksgiving Visitor (Modern Library)
Author: Truman Capote
Publisher: The Modern Library
"A Christmas Memory" copyright 1956 by Truman Capote
Pages 3-4, 14-15, 24
No comments:
Post a Comment