14097: RE: 14097: Seitz: Re: 14084L Arthur on Truman Capote's short s toryset in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

PLEASE POST ANONYMOUSLY:

I'd like to correct one small error in Sue Seitz's wonderful retelling of
one of the two Broadway productions of Truman Capote's short story, "House
of Flowers."

Ms. Seitz is not correct that Capote "never came to Haiti, but wrote from
his impressions, and artist's mind..." In the late 1960s, perhaps three or
four years after my mother and siblings had left Haiti for New York, my
mother, whose English was still somewhat rudimentary, one afternoon came
home from work, and asked me whether I had ever heard the name "Truman
Capote."

I was startled: where and how could my mother be reading Capote? As it
turned out, she had seen his photograph that morning on some magazine at the
newsstand in the subway, had recognized it, and had stepped closer, seen the
name of the person in the photo and, sure enough, it was the Truman Capote
she knew.

I told her who he was -- famous writer, jet-setter, high society hound, etc.
"And how do you know him, Mom?"

"Well," came the story, "in the late 1940s -- I remember, it was after the
war (WWII), when I was a young nurse, I had developed a nice practice of
home care for the sick, obviously the well-off sick. One day, one of the
doctors who regularly recommended me to patients in need of such care
contacted me. He was following a patient, an American, who was recovering
from an illness and had been recommended by his US physician that he get
lots of sun. The patient had chosen Haiti, in part because his US doctor
knew well the Haitian doctor who had contacted me. A nurse was needed for
the 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. shift, and since I was did not have a husband at
home, he had thought of me. The fee, by the way, would be sizably bigger
than usual, and the job would last several weeks.

So I went with the doctor to the hotel where the patient was staying, and
the three of us agreed on the job. As I left with the doctor, however, he
seemed to sense that I was worried. 'Any problem?' he asked. After
hesitating -- embarrassment of a young woman from 'a nice family'-- I
answered: 'Well, doctor, I'll have to be in his room all night with this
gentleman. You know, he's not bedridden, and, well, ...'

The doctor understood my drift. He smiled, and answered: 'Miss V., I've know
your family all my life, and you since birth. I'd never put you in a
situation like that, in a locked room all night with h a man who might be
tempted to react as you fear. Don't worry at about Mr. Capote, he's made it
very clear to me in the few days that he's been here that he has no interest
at all in women.

The job was great: good money, I got fed every evening, and I slept on the
floor next to Mr. Capote every night for weeks. We parted friends, but until
this morning on the subway platform, he never crossed my mind again."

And that's my mother's Truman Capote story!