Capote (82 page)

That, in any event, was the story Joanne told the police and reporters. But that, as she later confided, was not what happened.

What happened was that when she came to wake him that Saturday morning, probably around 7:30, he looked so pale and exhausted that she felt his pulse, which was fluttery. She thought that breakfast might pick him up, but he prevented her from leaving, grabbing her hand and pulling her down beside him on his bed. “No,” he said, “stay here.”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No, I’m not,” he answered. “But I soon will be.”

“Truman, I think I want to call the paramedics,” she said, starting to rise. Once again he held her down, and for the next three and possibly four hours he talked and talked, until he could talk no longer.

The autopsy, which was performed by the Los Angeles County coroner, could find no “clear mechanism of death,” as doctors like to phrase it. “It has been determined that he died as the result of liver disease which was complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication” was all the coroner’s office could say. But in fact he had shown no symptoms of serious liver disease. His liver had been tested by Southampton Hospital just a few weeks earlier, and the worst that could be said about it was that it was precirrhotic—that it showed signs, in other words, of the cirrhosis that might come. The doctors at the coroner’s office seemed puzzled.

What, then, killed him? Since there was no alcohol in his blood—for once, he had not been drinking—the most likely culprit was those beautiful little pills he loved to cuddle. In the hours and days before his death he had consumed great quantities of drugs: Valium, Dilantin, codeine, Tylenol and two or three different barbiturates. The Valium alone, about forty milligrams, was enough to put a person who was not accustomed to it, as Truman was, into such a stupor that a shout in the ear would not have awakened him. A healthy person might have survived such an assault on the system. An unhealthy person, particularly one with the slight liver problem Truman had, might not have, and there is every possibility that he took a fatal overdose. The only outstanding question can never be answered. Was it a deliberate or an accidental overdose?

What probably happened, in any event, was that, as a result of a drug overload, he suffered a cardiac-rhythm disorder, a disruption of the normal electrical signals to the heart. Joanne’s readings of his pulse support such a conclusion. A disorder of that kind, which is common in alcoholics, would not show up in an autopsy. It can last for hours, during which time the victim can talk, and talk lucidly, as Joanne said that Truman did. It can also be interrupted if the victim receives medical attention. If the paramedics had been called, Truman’s life probably could have been saved. But that, clearly, he did not want, and perhaps it is not important to ask whether he had tried to commit suicide: even if he had, he had been given a reprieve, a second chance. But given a choice between life and death, he chose death.

When Truman was a child of five or six in Monroeville, someone gave him a miniature airplane that he could pedal around the yard like a tricycle. It was a vivid green, with a bright red propeller, and one day Truman told his envious friends that he was going to fly, that he was going to take off down that dusty street in front of Jennie’s house, rise above the trees beyond, and soar across the oceans to China, that serene and mysterious land that he often dreamed about. He had convinced everyone, including himself, and furiously he pedaled, faster and faster… But he went nowhere at all. Now, sitting in his bedroom in Joanne’s house, knowing that something was terribly wrong with him, he was to have his wish.

“Truman, I think you’re in a little trouble,” Joanne said once more. “Let me call the doctor. We can get you to the hospital.”

“No,” he replied. “I don’t want to go through that again. No more hospitals. My dear, I’m so very tired. If you care about me, don’t do anything. Just let me go. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve decided to go to China, where there are no phones and there is no mail service.” He continued to talk, about his mother mostly, but also about his writing and
Answered Prayers.
Like leaves falling gently from a tree, he had promised its ending would be, and that is how his own last hours ended, as his life slowly drifted away. As his pulse grew weaker, his conversation was reduced to phrases. “Beautiful Babe” was one. “Mama, Mama” was another. Finally: “It’s me, it’s Buddy”—Buddy was Sook’s nickname for him. “I’m cold,” he said at last. Sometime before noon his breathing stopped, and Joanne called the paramedics, who pronounced him dead at 12:21
P.M.

And so, moment by moment, he had returned to the beginning.

If he had known how long
In Cold Blood
would take—and what it would take out of him—he would never had stopped in Kansas, Truman Capote later wrote. He would instead have driven straight through—“like a bat out of hell.” Midway through writing his biography, I sometimes said much the same. How much more serene my life would have been, I thought, had I said hello and good-bye to him in the same breath. When I began, I believed I would devote two years to Truman’s story, three at most; I actually spent more than thirteen. I envisioned a relatively short book; without notes and index, it is 547 pages. I thought writing Truman’s biography would be something of a lark, in short. It was, in fact, one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. And one of the most exhilarating.

One of my predictions did come true. Many of our interviews took place in some very pleasant spots, often over lunch or dinner at one or another of Truman’s favorite Manhattan restaurants. Sometimes lunch faded into cocktails, then into dinner. One winter day I arrived for lunch and did not leave—he begged me to stay—until the restaurant closed nearly twelve hours later. Every time I got up to go Truman would grab my arm, pleading with me not to leave.

By coincidence, Truman and I both had country houses, not more than five minutes apart, on eastern Long Island, and we were thus also able to talk under shady trees, on cool porches and in and out of swimming pools. It was while he was floating on a raft that Truman gave me a rundown, complete with verbal footnotes, of the real-life models for his characters in “La Cote Basque,” the story that made him a pariah to most of his rich and social friends.

“But Truman, they’re not going to like this,” I warned him, a conversation I repeat in my book.

“Nah, they’re too dumb,” he said. “They won’t know who they are.”

I was right about the reaction of his friends, though I was unprepared for the speed and the remarkable venom with which they turned on him. Some, in fact, had told me, just a week or so before the story appeared, how much they loved and admired him. But if I was right about their angry response, I was wrong about nearly everything else. For what I had not realized—what Truman himself did not know—was that, around the time I started work, he was beginning the long and dramatic decline that ended only with his death. And I became a part of that never-ending drama. As a writer, I had always kept myself in the background. Now I was pulled on stage to become one of the dramatis personae, a participant in the turbulent life of which I was writing. It was as if I were painting a portrait and suddenly saw myself peering out from the background—and wondering, to judge from the perplexed look on my face, how I had got myself into such a predicament.

In the early seventies, I had done a series of magazine profiles of famous writers and poets. I had written about Gore Vidal for
The Atlantic
and about Truman, Allen Ginsberg, P.G. Wodehouse, and Vladimir Nabokov for
Esquire.
It was a stellar list, but it was the Truman profile that caught the eye of the publisher, who asked me to expand it into a biography. I called Truman to see if he would cooperate, and, after a pause of no more than thirty seconds, he said yes, no strings attached. He promised never to ask to read what I had written, and he never did. What more could a biographer want?

Though we became close friends—it was impossible to know Truman and remain aloof—neither of us forgot our different and occasionally antagonistic roles. He was the subject who sometimes exaggerated. I was the prying biographer who wanted the facts. Our relationship, as a result, was not always smooth. He was annoyed when I seemed to doubt some of his stories, for example, and, as the months turned to years, he became exasperated that the writing was taking so long.

I was a “hammock biographer,” he told a friend. I turned this way in my hammock, he said, then that way. But I didn’t put much down on paper. How could I tell him that he had changed the story on me? That the Truman about whom I had begun writing—the ebullient Truman who was on top of the world—no longer existed? That a new, uncertain and, yes, even tragic Truman had taken his place? And that I could not bring down the curtain until, one way or another, the drama ended?

That ending, which surprised no one who knew him well, came on the morning of August 25, 1984, in Los Angeles, one of his least favorite cities. I finished my book a little more than three years later, and it was published in June 1988. Much has been written about Truman since then. I myself added to the list by editing a book of his letters.
Too Brief a Treat
I titled it, borrowing a phrase he used himself in describing the letters of his first editor, Robert Linscott. Truman has also been the subject of television documentaries and a successful Broadway play,
Tru
, in which I am an unseen character—Truman is supposed to be speaking into a tape recorder for my benefit.

There have also been two movies about his
In Cold Blood
years. One,
Capote
, is very good; the other,
Infamous
, is very bad. I confess a prejudice in favor of
Capote
, which was adapted from my biography. But most moviegoers, I believe, agreed with me, and the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, Best Director (Bennett Miller), Best Adapted Screenplay (Dan Futterman) and Best Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hoffman went on to win an Oscar for a performance of uncanny sensitivity and accuracy. Watching him on screen, I frequently thought I was watching Truman himself. Yet despite all the attention Truman has received since my book was published—the articles, the television shows, the plays, and the movies—I can’t think anything of importance I would want to add or subtract.

Many of those who have prominent roles in my biography have followed Truman to the grave. William Paley. Alvin and Marie Dewey. Loel and Gloria Guinness. C. Z. Guest. John Malcolm Brinnin. Andy Warhol. Joe Fox. Leo Lerman. Christopher Isherwood. Mary Louise Aswell. Richard Brooks. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Oona Chaplin. Carol Matthau. Pamela Harriman. John Huston. Slim Keith. Irving Lazar. Doris Lilly. Andrew Lyndon. Norman Mailer. Harold Arlen. Peg O’Shea. Saint Subber. Oliver Smith. And, most important of all, Jack Dunphy, who had been Truman’s companion, lover, supporter, and scold for more than thirty-five years.

In his final years Truman had been a source of constant anxiety to Jack, and, for Jack, Truman’s death was a kind of release. He moved from the apartment they had shared near the United Nations, with its battalion of uniformed doormen, into a walk-up in Greenwich Village. Obligated to no one but himself, he did just what he liked, and, perhaps for the first time, he had the means to do it. Truman’s will gave him a substantial annuity, and that, combined with the income from his own savings, allowed him to live very comfortably. Besides Switzerland, where he had long spent his winters, he now ventured to other locales as well. Every time I talked to him, it seemed, he had just returned from a trip: Dublin, Chicago, Boston, the West—I couldn’t keep track. Jack seemed happier than I had ever known him.

After Jack’s own death, other provisions of Truman’s will went into effect, with income from his estate going to scholarships for aspiring writers and to valuable prizes for outstanding literary critics. Truman’s decision to leave money to young writers came as no surprise to me: he always went out of his way to help others entering the field. But the generous prizes for literary critics, probably the largest such awards in the world, puzzled me. Never really accepted by the literary establishment, Truman shared my own dim view of most contemporary critics, and he said so many times, in pungent language I could scarcely imitate.

The puzzle was solved, at least partly, when I saw that Newton Arvin’s name was also attached to the awards. Several decades after their romance, Truman still revered the memory of Arvin, who, in his mind, was the ideal critic—a man of learning, judgment, and an understanding of the creative struggle. Unlike many critics who followed him, Arvin was also an excellent stylist, a master of clear yet elegant prose.

Besides paying tribute to Arvin’s virtues and the happy memory of their months together, Truman also had another motive, I suspect. At the time he made his will, Truman was probably angry at Jack—the two were often at odds in those last years. What better revenge could Truman have had than for Jack to know that Capote and Arvin, not Capote and Dunphy, would be so boldly—and so permanently—entwined?

Truman’s death was followed by a funeral in Los Angeles and by a crowded memorial in New York’s Shubert Theater. But his ashes, housed in a heavy bronze box, sat lonesomely and rather uncomfortably, I imagined, on a bookshelf in Jack’s apartment. After Jack died, they came to me, in my capacity as Jack’s executor, and I decided to find them a permanent and more suitable home. And what was more suitable, I thought, than Sagaponack, the place Truman and Jack loved more than any other?

Jack had left their Long Island property to The Nature Conservancy, an organization devoted to protecting nature and its beauty, and I suggested that it dedicate a preserve in their memory. So it was that on October 1, 1994, the only rainy Saturday in an otherwise golden autumn, forty or fifty of Jack’s and Truman’s friends gathered at a Conservancy sanctuary, Crooked Pond, a couple of miles from where they had lived. Surrounded by thick woods, Crooked Pond is a spot so still and private that it seems almost incongruous in the increasingly crowded Hamptons. Sometime around noon I opened the bronze box containing Truman’s ashes while Jack’s nephew opened a cardboard box holding Jack’s. We then sprinkled their ashes into the water, letting them fall and mingle together as if they were one.