Трумэн Капоте - Other Voices, Other Rooms

What was it like almost never to shut your eyes, always to be forever reflecting the same ceiling, light, faces, furniture, dark? But if the eyes could not escape you, neither could you avoid them; they seemed indeed sometime to permeate the room, their damp greyness covering all like mist; and if those eyes were to make tears they would not be normal tears, but something grey, perhaps green, a color at any rate, and solid, like ice.

Downstairs in the parlor was a collection of old books, and exploring there Joel had come upon a volume of Scottish legends. One of these concerned a man who compounded a magic potion unwisely enabling him to read the thoughts of other men and see deep into their souls; the evil he saw, and the shock of it, turned his eyes into open sores: thus he remained the rest of his life. It impressed Joel to the extent that he was half-convinced Mr Sansom's eyes knew exactly what went on inside his head, and he attempted, for this reason, to keep his thoughts channeled in impersonal directions."… mix sugar, flour, salt and add egg yolks. Stir constantly while pouring on scalded milk… " Every once in a while he was tantalized by a sense of guilt: he ought to feel more for Mr Sansom than he did, he ought to try and love him. If only he'd never seen Mr Sansom! Then he could have gone on picturing him as looking this and that wonderful way, as talking in a kind strong voice, as being really his father. Certainly this Mr Sansom was not his father. This Mr Sansom was nobody but a pair of crazy eyes."… turn into baked pieshell. Cover with… it says meringay or something like that… and bake. Makes nine-inch pie." He put down the magazine, a journal for females to which Amy subscribed, and began straightening Mr Sansom's pillows. Mr Sansom's head lolled back and forth, as if saying no no no; actually, and his voice sounded prickly as though a handful of pins were lodged in his throat, he said, "Boy kind kind boy kind," over and over, "ball kind ball," he said, dropping one of his red tennis balls, and, as Joel retrieved it, his set smile became more glassy; it ached on his grey skeleton face. Then all at once a whistle broke through the shut windows. Joel turned to listen. Three short blasts and a boot-owl wail. He went to the window. It was Idabel; she was in the garden below, and Henry was with her. The window was stuck, so he signaled to her, but she could not see him, and he hurried to the door. "Bad," said Mr Sansom, and let go every tennis ball in the bed, "boy bad bad!"

Detouring into his room long enough to strap on his sword, he ran downstairs, outside and into the garden. For the first time since he'd known her Joel felt Idabel was glad to see him: a look of serious relief cleared her face, and for a moment he thought she might embrace him: her arms lifted as if to do so, then instead she stooped and hugged Henry, squeezed his neck until the old hound whined. "Is something wrong?" he said, for she had not spoken, nor, in a sense, taken notice of him, not enough, that is, even to mention his sword, and when she said, "We were scared you weren't home," all the rough spirit seemed to have drained from her voice. Joel felt stronger than she, and sure of himself as he'd never been with that other Idabel, the tomboy. He squatted down beside her there in the shade of the house where tulip stalks leaned around, and elephant leaves, streaked with silver snail tracks, hung above their heads like parasols. She was pale beneath her freckles, and a ridge of fingernail-scratch stood out across her cheek. "How'd you get that?" he said.

Her lips whitened, she spit the answer: "Florabel. That damned bastard."

"A girl can't be a bastard," he said.

"Oh, she's a bastard all right. But I didn't mean her." Idabel pulled the hound onto her lap; sleepily submissive, he lay there allowing her to pick fleas off his belly. "I meant that old bastard daddy of mine. We had us a knock-down drag-out fight, him and me and Florabel. On account of he tried to shoot Henry here; Florabel put him up to it… says Henry's got a mortal disease, which is a low-down lie from start to finish. I figure I broke her nose and some teeth, too; leastwise, she was bleeding like a pig when me and Henry took off. We been walking around in the dark all night." Suddenly she laughed in her woolly familiar way. "And up around sunrise, know who we saw? Zoo Fever. She couldn't hardly breathe, she was carrying so much junk: golly, we were right sorry to hear about Jesus. It's funny for that old man to die and nobody hear a word. But like I told you, who knows what goes on at the Landing?"

Joel thought: who knows what goes on anywhere? Except Mr Sansom. He knew everything; in some trick way his eyes traveled the whole world over: they this very instant were watching him, of that he had no doubt. And it was probable, too, that, if he had a mind, he could reveal to Randolph Pepe Alvarez's whereabouts.

"Don't you fret none, Henry," said Idabel, popping a flea. "They'll never lay a hand on you."

"But what are you going to do?" Joel asked. "You've got to go home sometime."

She rubbed her nose, and considered him with eyes exaggeratedly wide and appealing: if it had been anyone but Idabel, Joel would've thought she was making up to him. "Maybe," she said, "and maybe not; that's what I came to see you for." Abruptly businesslike, she shoved the dog off her lap, and took a hearty comradegrip on Joel's shoulders: "How would you like to run away?" But before he could say what he'd like she hurried on: "We could go to town tonight when it's dark. The travelin-show's in town, and there'll be a big crowd. I do want to see the travelin-show one more time; they've got a ferris wheel this year somebody said, and…"

"But where would we go?" he said.

Idabel's mouth opened, closed. Apparently she hadn't given this much thought, and with the wide world to choose from, all she could find to say was: "Outside; we'll just walk around outside till we come on a nice place."

"We could go to California and pick grapes," he suggested. "Out West you don't have to be but twelve years old to get married."

"I don't want to get married," said Idabel, coloring. "Who the hell said I wanted to get married? Now you listen, boy: you behave decent, you behave like we're brothers, or don't you behave at all. Anyway, we don't want to do no sissy thing like pick grapes. I thought maybe we could join the navy; else we could teach Henry tricks and get in the circus: say, couldn't you learn magic tricks?"

Which reminded him: he'd never gone after the charm Little Sunshine had promised; certainly, if he were running off with Idabel, they would need this magic, and so he asked if she knew the way to the Cloud Hotel. "Kind of," she said, "down through the woods and the sweetgum hollow and then across the creek where the mill is… oh, it's a long way. Why'd we want to go anyhow?" But of course he could not say, for Little Sunshine had warned him never to mention the charm. "I've got important business with the man there," he said, and then, wanting a little to frighten her: "Otherwise something terrible will happen to us."

They both jumped. "Don't hide, I know you're out there, I heard you." It was Amy, and she was calling from a window directly above: she could not see them, though, for the elephant leaves were a camouflage. "The idea, leaving Mr Sansom in this fix, are you completely out of your mind?" They crawled from under the leaves, crept along the side of the house, then raced for the road, the woods. "I know you're there, Joel Knox, come up this instant, sir!"

Deep in the hollow, dark syrup crusted the bark of vine-roped sweetgums: like pale apple leaves green witch butterflies sank and rose there and there; a breezy lane of trumpet lilies (Saints and Heroes, these alone, or so old folks said, could hear their mythical flourish) beckoned like hands lace-gloved and ghostly. Idabel kept waving her arms, for the mosquitoes were fierce: everywhere, like scraps of a huge shattered mirror, mosquito pools of marsh water gleamed and broke in Henry's jogging path.