Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood – notes, quotes and CDF echoes

Like CDF, Truman Capote’s ‘novel’ published in 1965 is a retelling / chronicling of a murder, subtitled a ‘true account’.  There are numerous perspectives on a gruesome event which reflect how the community reacted to the actions of the two killers.  There is no ‘honour’ in Perry and Dick’s near ‘perfect’ murders but Capote generates sufficient empathy, curiosity and need for understanding to make the tale compelling.  The book is full of virtuoso writing too with some ideas/descriptions that chime with Marquez’s account of thhe Gentile murder in CDF:

‘Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose, winter’s rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep slaughtering snows, the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheatstalks bristle, blaze….(22)

‘But neither Dick’s physique nor the inky gallery adorning it made as remarkable an impression as his face, which seemed composed of mismatching parts.  It was as though his head had been halved like an apple, then put together fractionally off centre…’ (42)

‘Don’t ever try to get away from here.  We’ll hogtie you.’  (47) Re CDF: Margot’s testimony that had she known of the threat to Santiago Nasar, that she would have hogtied him back to her house.

‘Mercifully a bullet kills its victim.  This other bacteria (unreasonable anger, frustration and resentment) permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn an twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate…’  Friend Willie-Jay’s prison sermon letter to paroled Perry (55)

Eight non-stop passenger trains (none stop other than the odd freight) hurry through Holcomb every twenty-four hours.  Of these, two pick up and deposit mail – an operation that as the person in charge of it fervently explains, has its tricky side. ‘Yessir, you’ve got to keep on your toes.  Them trains come through here, sometimes they’re going a hundred miles an hour.  The breeze alone, why it’s enough to knock you down.  And when those mail sacks come flying out – sakes alive.  It’s like playing tackly on a football team: Wham! Wham! WHAM! (77)

Mother Truitt (the mail messenger for Holcomb) – ‘A stocky weathered widow who wears babushka bandannas and cowboy boots (‘Most comfortable things you can put on your feet, soft as loon feather’) (77)

Daughter Myrtle Clare – ex-nightclub proprietor, now local postmistress – ‘a gaunt trouser wearing, woollen shirted, cowboy-booted, ginger-coloured, gingery-tempered woman of unrevealed age. (78)

By the end of chapter 1 we know who’s been killed and who’s done it…’A few miles north (of Olathe) in the pleasant kitchen of a modest farmhouse, Dick was consuming a Sunday dinner.  The others at the table – his mother, his father, his younger brother – were not conscious of anything uncommon in his manner…When the meal was over, the three male members of the family settled in the parlour to watch a televised basketball game.  The broadcast had only begun when the father was startled to hear Dick snoring; as he remarked to the younger boy, he never thought he’d see the day when Dick would rather sleep than watch basketball.  But of course he did not understand how very tired Dick was, did not know that his dozing son had, among other things, driven over eight hundred miles in the past twenty-four hours…’  (‘among other things’ – killing four innocent people!)

Perry’s sense of FATE:  ‘Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won’t.  Or will – depending.  As long as you live there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do?  You can’t stop living.’ (100)

Perry’s Dream – Since I was a kid, i’ve had this same dream.  Where I’m in Africa.  A jungle.  I’m moving through the trees towards a tree standing all alone.  Jesus it smells bad that tree; it kind of makes me sick, the way it stinks.  Only its beautiful to look at – it has blue leaves and diamonds hanging everywhere.  Diamonds like oranges.  That’s why I’m there – to pick myself a bushel of diamonds.  But I know the minute I reach up, a snake is gonna fall on me.  A snake that guards the tree.  This fat sonofabitch living in the branches living in the branches…I go to pick one, I have the diamond in my hand, I’m pulling at it when the snake lands on top of me.  We wrestle around, but he’s a slippery sonofabitch and I can’t get hold, he’s crushing me, you can hear my legs cracking.  Now comes the part which makes me sweat even to think about.  See he starts to swallow me.  Feet first.  Like going down in quick-sand…then the parrot appeared, taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower [and] gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to ‘paradise’ (101)  Thus the snake, the custodian of the diamond bearing tree, never finished devouring him but was itself devoured.’

On the run in Mexico – ‘The car was moving.  A hundred feet ahead, a dog trotted along the side of the road.  Dick swerved towards it. It was an old half-dead mongrel, brittle boned and mangy, and the impact, as it met the car, was little more that what a bird might make.   But Dick was satisfied, ‘Boy…We sure splattered him…’ (120)

Perry’s things – books, notebooks – ‘What is life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night.  It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset…’ (153)

Perry worries that Dick has been caught and will confess – ‘But no, he was imagining too much.  Dick would never do that – ’spill his guts’.  (Re CDF – guts throughout)

Dick and Perry have breakfast in the same place as the KBI detectives (of all the bars in all the towns…)

Perry goaded by Agent Dewey who recounts Dick’s confession and his estimation of P as a ‘natural born killer’ – Perry responds with his own confession. (234)

Waiting for trial – ‘The topmost branches of a snow laden elm brushed against the window of the ladies’ cell.  Squirrels lived in the tree and after weeks of tempting them with leftover breakfast scraps, Perry lured one off a branch on to the window sill and through the bars.  It was a male squirrel with auburn fur.  He named it Red, and Red soon settled down, apparently content to share his friend’s captivity.  Perry taught him several tricks: to play with a paper ball, to beg, to perch on Perry’s shoulder.  (235) (Like the parrot!)

Perry’s mental state – ‘…Dr Satten’s contention [was] that when Smith attacked Mr Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness, for it was not entirely a flesh and blood man he ’suddenly discovered’ himself destroying.’ (302)

Closing speeches – Pros – ‘There is only one way to assure that these men will never again roam the towns and cities of this land.  We request the maximum penalty – death…’ (303)

Def – ‘It is a relic of barbarism.  The law tells us that the taking of a human life is wrong, then goes ahead and sets the example.  Which is almost as wicked as the crime it punished.  The state has no right to inflict it.  It isn’t effective.  It doesn’t deter crime, but merely cheapens human life and gives rise to more murders…’

Judge – What are you going to do with these men that bind a man hand and foot and cut his throat and blow out his brains?  Give them the minimum penalty?  Yes and that’s only one of four counts.  What about Kenyon Clutter, a young boy with his whole life before him, tied helplessly in sight of his father’s death struggle.  Or young Nancy Clutter, hearing the gunshots and knowing her time was next.  Nancy begging for her life: ‘Don’t.  Oh please don’t.  Please.  Please”  What agony!  What unspeakable torture!  And there remains the mother, bound and gagged and having to listen until at last the killers, these defendants before you, entered her room, focused a flashlight in her eyes, and let the blast of a shotgun end the existence of an entire house-hold…’(305)

Perry’s death – ‘Steps noose, mask, but before the mask was adjusted, the prisoner spat his chewing gum into the chaplain’s outstretched palm.  Dewey (Kansas Detective) shut his eyes; he kept them shut until he heard the thud-snap that announces a rope-broken neck…Smith, though he was the true murderer aroused another response [in Dewey], for Perry possessed a quality, the aura of an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded, that the detective could not disregard.  He remembered his first meeting with Perry in the interrogation room at Police HQ in Las Vegas – the dwarfish man seated in the metal chair, his small booted feet not quite brushing the floor.  And when Dewey now opened his eyes, that is what he saw:  the same childish feet, tilted, dangling…’ (341)

GGM’s compulsion to write the story of CG’s murder…

‘…not a day went by that I was not hounded by the desire to write the story. …I knew the historic interview of Ernest Hemingway by George Plimpton in the Paris Review regarding the process of transforming a character from real life into a character in a novel.  Hemingway said: “If I explained how that is sometimes done, it would be a handbook for libel lawyers.”  But after that providential morning in Algiers, my situation was just the opposite.  I had no desire to continue living in peace if I did not write the story of the death of Cayetano….’ L2TTTp382-4

Cayetano and Santiago

Cayetano Gentile’s murder is the source for Santiago Nasar’s:

‘…Cayetano Gentile, our friend in Sucre, a soon to be doctor, an organiser of dances, and a lover by trade.  The immediate version was that he had been knifed by two brothers of the young teacher at the school in Chaparral: we had seen him ride with her on his horse.  In the course of the day, from one telegram to the next, I learned the complete story…Two of the teacher’s brothers had pursued Cayetano when he tried to take refuge in his house, but Dona Julieta had hurried to lock the street door because she believed that her son was already in his bedroom.  And so he was the one who could not come in, and they stabbed him to death against the locked door…I was beginning to become resigned, and then, many years later, I waiting for a plane to take off at the airport in Algiers.  The door to the first class lounge opened and an Arab prince came in wearing the immaculate tunic of his lineage, and carrying on his fist a splendid female peregrine falcon that instead of the leather hood of classic falconry wore one of gold encrusted with diamonds.  Of course I thought of Cayetano Gentile, who had learned from his father the fine arts of falconry, at first with local sparrow hawks and then with magnificent examples transplanted from Arabia Felix.  At the moment of his death he had a professional falcon coop on his farm, with two female cousins and a male trained to hunt partridges, and a Scottish Kite skilled in personal defence.  I was beginning to become resigned, and then, many years later, I waiting for a plane to take off at the airport in Algiers.  The door to the first class lounge opened and an Arab prince came in wearing the immaculate tunic of his lineage, and carrying on his fist a splendid female peregrine falcon that instead of the leather hood of classic falconry wore one of gold encrusted with diamonds.  Of course I thought of Cayetano Gentile, who had learned from his father the fine arts of falconry, at first with local sparrow hawks and then with magnificent examples transplanted from Arabia Felix.  At the moment of his death he had a professional falcon coop on his farm, with two female cousins and a male trained to hunt partridges, and a Scottish Kite skilled in personal defence…thirty years after the drama…Julieta Chimento, Cayetano’s mother, …died without ever getting over the loss of her son. p383-4 L2TTT

There are differences of course.  Cayetano was a rich dandy, almost swashbuckling.  The cause of his insult to the teacher’s family was his quite open relationship (in complete contrast to Santiago’s unproven/non-existent relationship with Angela):

‘..The favourite subject of gossip in the town was the supposed relationship between our friend Cayetano Gentile and the schoolteacher in the nearby hamlet of Chaparral, a beautiful girl whose social status was different from his, but who was very serious and came from a respectable family.  It was not surprising:  Cayetano always chased girls, not only in Sucre but also in Cartegena, where he had completed his baccalaureate and begun his study of medicine.  But no one had known of any sweetheart in Sucre or even a favourite at dances.
One night we saw him coming from his farm on his best horse, the schoolteacher in the saddle holding the reins, and he sitting behind, his arms around her waist.  We were surprised not only by the degree of intimacy they had achieved, but by the audacity in entering along the promenade of the main square at the time it was most crowded, and in so evil-minded town.  Cayetano explained to anyone who wished to listen that he had found her at the door of her school waiting for someone kind enough to take her into town at that time of night.  I warned him as a joke that he was going to wake up any day now with a pasquin [scandal sheet] on his door, and he shrugged in a typical gesture of his and cracked his favourite joke.
“They don’t dare to with the rich…”p347 [re CDF p102 – Polo Carillo “He thought that his money made him untouchable.”

Santiago’s richness does not protect him either in spite of what people like Faustino Santos think…

CDF – ‘Santiago was a man for parties…401

Cayetano Gentile’s murder – GGM’s response…

GGM hears of Gentile’s murder while working as a reporter on El Heraldo (in Bogota?).  He knew and liked Cayetano and was shocked by the emblematic circumstances.  But others weren’t.  His editor reflects a ’so what’ acceptance of honour code violence.  GGM however sees, feels and smells both sides of these tragedies.  He reminisces in his autobiography on the affects of violence through Papalelo and Uncle Quinte and two previous acts of violence in Sucre and unlike everyone else he avoids taking sides.  He even admits to feeling his grandfather’s guilt in killing Medardo Pacheco, two generations later; an ironic parallel to Uncle Esteban who even after Papalelo’s death is willing to take on those who had attempted to toss his father into the Cienaga Grande.

‘…I heard from her (Mercedes Bacha) again after a month, on January 22 of the following year, with an unadorned message that she left for me at El Heraldo: “They killed Cayetano.”…My immediate reaction was a reporter’s.  I decided to travel to Sucre to write the story, but at the paper they interpreted this as a sentimental impulse.  And today I understand, because even back then we Colombians killed one another for any reason at all, and at times we invented on, but crimes of passion were reserved as luxuries for the rich in the cities.  It seem to me that the subject was eternal and I began to take statement from witnesses, until my mother discovered my hidden intentions and begged me not to write the article.  At least while Cayetano’s mother Dona Julieta Chimento was alive, the most important of the reasons being that she was my mother’s comadre because she had been god mother at the baptism of Hernando, my brother number eight…My immediate reaction was to sit down to write the report of the crime but I found all kinds of impediments.  What interested me was no longer the crime itself but the literary theme of collective responsibility.  No argument convinced my mother, however, and it seemed a lack of respect to write it without her permission.  But after that not a day went by that I was not hounded by the desire to write the story…My mother remained firm in her determination to prevent this despite every argument, until thirty years after the drama, when she herself called me in Barcelona to give me the sad news that Julieta Chimento, Cayetano’s mother, had died without ever getting over the loss of her son.  But this time, with her strong moral sense, my mother found no reasons to interfere with the article.
“I ask only one thing as a mother,: she said. “Treat Cayetano as if he were a son of mine.”
The story with the title Chronicle of a Death Foretold, was published two years later.  My mother did not read it for reasons that I keep as another of her gems in my personal museum: “Something that turned out so awful in life can’t turn out well in a book.”p382-4

From L2TTT (note storytelling repeats of ‘my immediate reaction’): in CDF ch1 he repeats the opening line – ‘On the day they were going to kill him’, on pages 6 and 1

Sucre as inspiration for CDF’s location.

Sucre is the inspiration for CDF’s setting in the descriptions of the places in the book :

GGM’s Papa moves to Sucre, and the family follow soon after – ‘…an idyllic and prosperous corner that was a night and day’s sail from Barranquilla…He rented a house with a balcony on the main square…The family had to sell what it could, pack up the rest, which was not very much, and take it along on one of the steamboats that made a regular trip along the Magdelena River…’p149 L2TTT [see CDF p9-10 re balcony on main square, from which Santiago's mother sees him killed, Bishop who travels in steamboat.)

Sucre : ‘It must have had some sixteen thousand inhabitants…and they all knew one another, not so much by their names as by their secret lives…The many years the family lived in Sucre there was not a single automobile…’p152 L2TTT [ First automobile in CDF - Bayardo San Roman - symbol of changing methods of transport and the end of cultural isolation?  Angela and Bayardo's reconciliation at the end cements this change?]

Social customs in Sucre: ‘…cattle ranchers and sugar industrialists – lived on the main square, and the poor wherever they could…It was a territory of missions…the parish church on the main square of Sucre was a pocket version of the Cologne cathedral, copied from memory by a Spanish priest doubling as an architect.  The wielding of power was immediate and absolute.  Every night, after the rosary, they rang the bells in the church tower the number of times that corresponded to the moral classification of the film being shown in the nearby theatre, in accordance with the catalogue of the Catholic Office for films…’

GGM’s family house in Sucre_- ‘..A large house full of light, with a terrace for visitors overlooking the river of dark water, and windows opened to the January breezes.  It had six well ventilated bedrooms with a bed for each person – not shared as before – and hooks for hanging hammocks at different levels, even in the hallways.  The courtyard had no wire fence, and it extended all the way to uncut woods with fruit trees in the public domain, and animals belonging to the family and to other people strolled through the bedrooms.  My mother, who missed the courtyards of her childhood in Barrancas and Aracataca, treated the new house like a farm, with uncorralled chickens and ducks and libertine pigs who got into the kitchen to eat the food for lunch.  It was still possible to take advantage of the summers and sleep with open windows, with the asthmatic sound of the chickens on their perches and the odour of ripe custard apples that fell from the trees at dawn with an instantaneous, dense thud.  “They sound like children,” my mother would say.’ P344 L2TTT [see CDF p7 - 'The enormous kitchen, with the whispers from the fire and the hens sleeping on their perches, had a stealthy breathing.']

After the Gentile murder: ‘Sucre, paradise of the easy life and beautiful girls, had succumbed to the seismic onrush of political violence.  The death of Cayetano was no more than a symptom…’p385 L2TTT

Living to Tell the Tale

GGM’s astonishing hypnotic autobiography is…

Violent – GGM’s grandfather Papalelo is nearly tossed overboard into the Cienaga Grande when GGM is five.  Marquez is forced to play Russian Roulette by his lover’s husband (and ‘ducks’ the challenge).  Uncle Quinte (a poor man’s lawyer) shoots an adversary dead in the court house.  During a religious festival Papalelo shoots a man who has insulted him (waylays him in a dead end alley!).  Cayetano Gentile is killed by two brothers in Sucre after GGM has left to work as a reporter on El Heraldo.

…Full of stories – Papalelo falling four metres trying to catch a short sighted parrot that had escaped (LinToC).  Grandmother the dreamreader who doesn’t predict the moment when she strips the bed and sets off the concealed firearm which narrowly misses her head.  Luis Enrique (younger brother) who gambles the week’s food money and wins 3 times the amount! Mercedes Bacha, who GGM has been proposing to since she was thirteen, finally accepts him (on the last page).

…and awash with fabulous poetry:

‘…That night to our good fortune, it was a still water.  From the windows at the prow, where I went for a breath of air a little before dawn, the lights of the fishing boats floated like stars in the water.  There were countless numbers of them, and the invisible fishermen conversed as if they were paying a call, for their voices had a phantasmal resonance within the boundaries of the swamp.  As I leaned on the railing, trying to guess at the outline of the sierra, nostalgia’s first blow caught me by surprise.

‘…A delay in the channels allowed us to see in the full light of day the narrow bar of luminous sand that separates the sea from the swamp, where there were fishing villages with their nets laid out to dry in the sun and thin, grimy children playing soccer with balls made of rags.  It was astounding to see on the streets the number of fishermen whose arms were mutilated because they had not thrown their sticks of dynamite in time.  As the launch passed by, the children began to dive for the coins the passengers tossed to them…’

‘…I recalled with all its visual details that people on the Cienaga launch had tried to throw his father overboard, that he had been lifted onto the shoulders of the crowd and tossed in a blanket like Sancho Panza being tossed by the mule drivers.  I recounted the memory to Uncle Estaban because I thought it was amusing.  But he leaped to his feet, furious …it would never be too late for him and his brothers to punish the affront….‘…I typed only with my index fingers – as I still do- but did not break each paragraph until I was satisfied with it – as I do now – but poured out everything, rough and raw, that was inside me…’

‘…Many of the novels I was reading then, and which I admired interested me only because of their technical lessons.  That is: their secret carpentry….

It weaves stories into the fabric of life GGM has lived and created in this book.

“…the most natural thing is what is astonishing…’