The Books: “Music for Chameleons” – ‘Dazzle’ (Truman Capote)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Music for Chameleons – by Truman Capote. Today’s excerpt is from a story called ‘Dazzle’.

A touching short story about a little boy in New Orleans – he lives with relatives – and he is tormented by a secret worry. Eventually it is revealed – he wants to be a girl instead of a boy. But he can’t tell ANYone this secret, it is too horrible, too … weird … he doesn’t know anyone else who has such a problem. He is only 8 years old but he already knows he is beyond the pale.

There is a woman in the Garden District – named Mrs. Ferguson – she is a laundress, but also a fortune teller. Our tortured little narrator is fascinated by Mrs. Ferguson and decides that maybe he could tell HER his horrible secret. But nobody must know that he is even going to speak to her! He has to do it quietly and subversively!

Mrs. Ferguson is a weirdo, frankly – and not a very nice person. She covets a certain dazzling (dazzle dazzle) necklace worn by our narrator’s grandmother. She uses it as a bargaining chip with the little narrator when he asks if he can have a session with her. Basically: sure, come see me – and bring that necklace as payment.

Here’s an excerpt. A lovely sad little story. You really feel for this little boy with the secret.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons – by Truman Capote- ‘Dazzle’.

Now, about this wish of my own, the worry that was with me from first thing in the morning until last thing at night: it wasn’t anything I could just straight out ask her. It required the right time, a carefully prepared moment. She seldom came to our house, but when she did I stayed close by, pretending to watch the delicate movements of her thick ugly fingers as they handled lace-trimmed napkins, but really attempting to catch her eye. We never talked; I was too nervous and she was too stupid. Yes, stupid. It was just something I sensed; powerful witch or not, Mrs. Ferguson was a stupid woman. But now and again our eyes did lock, and dumb as she was, the intensity, the fascination she saw in my gaze told her that I desired to be a client. She probably thought I wanted a bike, or a new air rifle; anyway, she wasn’t about to concern herself with a kid like me. What could I give her? So she would turn her tiny lips down and roll her full-moon eyes elsewhere.

About this time, early December in 1932, my paternal grandmother arrived for a brief visit. New Orleans has cold winters; the chilly humid winds from the river drift deep into your bones. So my grandmother, who was living in Florida, where she taught school, had wisely brought with her a fur coat, one she had borrowed from a friend. It was made of black Persian lamb, the belonging of a rich woman, which my grandmother was not. Widowed young, and left with three sons to raise, she had not had an easy life, but she never complained. She was an admirable woman; she had a lively mind, and a sound, sane one as well. Due to family circumstances, we rarely met, but she wrote often and sent me small gifts. She loved me and I wanted to love her, but until she died, and she lived beyond ninety, I kept my distance, behaved indifferently. She felt it, but she never knew what caused my apparent coldness, nor did anyone else, for the reason was part of an intricate guilt, faceted as the dazzling yellow stone dangling from a slender gold-chain necklace that she often wore. Pearls would have suited her better, but she attached great value to this somewhat theatrical geegaw, which I understood her own grandfather had won in a card game in Colorado.

Of course the necklace wasn’t valuable; as my grandmother always scrupulously explained to anyone who inquired, the stone, which was the size of a cat’s paw, was not a “gem” stone, not a canary diamond, nor even a topaz, but a chunk of rock-crystal deftly faceted and tinted dark yellow. Mrs. Ferguson, however, was unaware of the trinket’s true worth, and when one afternoon, during the course of my grandmother’s stay, the plump youngish witch arrived to stiffen some linen, she seemed spellbound by the brilliant bit of glass swinging from the thin chain around my grandmother’s neck. Her ignorant moon eyes glowed, and that’s a fact: they truly glowed. I now had no difficulty attracting her attention; she studied me with an interest absent heretofore.

As she departed, I followed her into the garden, where there was a century-old wisteria arbor, a mysterious place even in winter when the foliage had shriveled, stripping this leaf-tunnel of its concealing shadows. She walked under it and beckoned to me.

Softly, she said, “You got something on your mind?”

“Yes.”

“Something you want done? A favor?”

I nodded; she nodded, but her eyes shifted nervously; she didn’t want to be seen talking to me.

She said: “My boy will come. He will tell you.”

“When?”

But she said hush, and hurried out of the garden. I watched her waddle off into the dusk. It dried my mouth to think of having all my hopes pinned on this stupid woman. I couldn’t eat supper that night; I didn’t sleep until dawn. Aside from the thing that was worrying me, now I had a whole lot of new worries. If Mrs. Ferguson did what I wanted her to do, then what about my clothes, what about my name, where would I go, who would I be? Holy smoke, it was enough to drive you crazy! Or was I already crazy? That was part of the problem: I must be crazy to want Mrs. Ferguson to do this thing I wanted her to do. That was one reason why I couldn’t tell anybody: they would think I was crazy. Or something worse. I didn’t know what that something worse could be, but instinctively I felt that people saying I was crazy, my family and their friends and the other kids, might be the least of it.