Trilogy (1969)
Truman Capote: Narrated by (segment "A Christmas Memory")
Quotes
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Narrator : This is our last Christmas together. Life separates us. Those Who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home, too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go. And there she remains, puttering around the kitchen. Alone with Queenie. Then alone.
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Narrator : A morning arrives in November, a leafless, birdless coming of winter morning, when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim:...'Oh my, it's fruitcake weather!'...and when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.
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Narrator : To tell the truth, our only really profitable enterprise was the 'fun & freak museum' we conducted in the woodshed two summers ago. The 'fun' was a stereopticon with slide views of Washington and New York, lent us by a relative who had BEEN to those places. The 'freak' was a three-legged biddy chicken hatched by one of our own hens. Everybody hereabouts wanted to see that biddy. We charged grown-ups a nickel, kids two cents, and took in a good twenty dollars before the museum shut down--due to the decease of the main attraction.
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Narrator : In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except the funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry.
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Narrator : Who are our cakes for? 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.
