Capote (26 page)

Unlike many in his profession, Denny chose his career. When he was growing up, Jacksonville still considered itself part of the unreconstructed South. His family thought of itself as part of the Southern aristocracy; it was upright, conservative and intolerant of all those who did not accept its ossified codes—a group of outcasts that included Denny, who rebelled and shocked in every way he could. Had he lived in England, he would have been sent off to one of the colonies, some hot place in Africa, and reports of his indiscretions would occasionally have been passed around the dinner table. Not having that option, Denny’s father did the next best thing: he sent him north, asking an uncle who was president of Safeway Stores to give him a job in Washington.

So it was that in 1932 or 1933, when he was only eighteen or nineteen, Denny began his wanderings, leaving Washington after a few months for Manhattan, where he found a job as a stock boy and shared a small apartment with a friend. His extraordinary good looks brought stares wherever he went: nature had “breathed upon him beauty of hair and bloom of youth,” as Virgil said of Aeneas, “and kindled brilliance in his eyes, as an artist’s hand gives style to ivory.” Thin as a hieroglyph, he had dark hair, light brown eyes, and a cleft chin and “was about the most beautiful boy anybody had ever seen,” said Jimmy Daniels, who sang at a Harlem nightclub Denny frequented. “His skin always looked as if it had just been scrubbed; it seemed to have no pores at all, it was so smooth.” Adding his own distinctive colors to the portrait, Glenway Wescott observed that “he was absolutely enchanting and ridiculously good-looking—unattractively good-looking from my point of view. The only thing I liked about him was that he had the most delicious body odor; I once swiped one of his handkerchiefs.”

Such attributes sometimes propelled young men to Hollywood, but Denny, whose announced intention was never to work, did not want to be famous; he wanted to be taken care of in grand style. Knowing that, his roommate asked Wescott, who often browsed in the bookstore where he worked and who seemed to know the ways of the world, to sit down and give Denny advice. Wescott happily agreed, and Denny immediately came to the point. “Now, Glenway,” he said, “you know everything. I want you to tell me: how does one manage to get kept?” Wringing his hands and clicking his tongue at such a naive and blunt question, Wescott told him that such an objective must be approached indirectly, so that the prospective keeper is made to feel like a generous benefactor rather than a customer who is being billed for services rendered. “To begin with,” he said, “you must never use that word—‘kept.’ Think of something you want to do that takes money to learn. Then ask someone for help and guidance. You’ll get much more money that way than by coming at it straight on.”

The first to offer such help was a German baron who took him to Europe, where Denny jumped from one titled bed to another—Prince Paul, later King of Greece, was his highest-ranking conquest—and from there he traveled the world. Writing home to his family, he said that he was engaged in secret missions for an unnamed Daddy Warbucks, some great financier with global interests. “He invented himself,” said one of his friends, John B. L. Goodwin. “If people didn’t know his background, he would make it up.”

His last lover before the war was none other than Peter Watson, whose affections he possessed in a way that Waldemar was not able to do. Watson, it was said, could not be in the same room with Denny without getting an erection. To save that porcelain skin from being damaged by one of Hitler’s blockbusters, in 1940 Watson sent him back to America. It was then that he met Isherwood in Los Angeles. “His handsome profile was bitterly sharp, like a knife edge,” wrote Isherwood of his Denny character in
Down There on a Visit.
“And goodness, underneath the looks and the charm and the drawl, how sour he was!” More than sour, Denny appeared to live at the bottom of a well of cynicism so deep that to him the sun was like a star at the ragged edge of the universe, which even the largest and most powerful telescopes must squint to see. “He thought that the world was made up of whores,” said his friend Bill Harris. “To be a successful whore was all, he said. Though he didn’t brag, he felt he had done pretty well at it.”

His fondness for pubescent boys was doubtless what prompted him to extend an invitation to the boyish-looking author on the dust jacket of
Other Voices.
Deeply addicted to opium by the time Truman paid his respects, Denny lived in a state of near somnolence. He sometimes slept most of the day and left his apartment on the fashionable Rue du Bac only at night. A maid kept order and walked Trotsky, the huge mutt he had found in California. Though Watson, who had a horror of drugs, had given up on him as a lover, he was still fond enough to send him money and pay his rent. Aware of how powerful Denny’s grasp could be, Waldemar warned Truman to keep his distance. Denny, he said, was like the feeble old man who asked Sindbad for a lift in
The Arabian Nights.
Feeling sorry for him, Sindbad took him on his back; but once he was on, the old man was on to stay and Sindbad could not get him off.

Truman nodded but did not listen. How could he pass up an opportunity to meet Denham Fouts? Fascinated by Denny, he spent hours lying beside him in Denny’s darkened bedroom, talking to him, reading to him, and listening to his stories. Sex was not considered; drugs had destroyed Denny’s libido. Otherwise, Denny showed no ill effects from his years of drugs and debauchery; he looked much younger than his actual age of thirty-four and retained still the well-scrubbed glow of youth. “Denny radiated a quality that was the exact opposite of what he was,” said Truman, “extraordinary health, youth, and unspoiled innocence. Whatever he had done the night before, or the day before, or the week before, he always looked as if he had just awakened on the freshest and most beautiful morning in the world. To watch him walk into a room was an experience. He was beyond being good-looking: he was the single most charming-looking person I’ve ever seen.” Oscar Wilde had written his biography before Denny was born: Denny was Dorian Gray.

Truman was scared by his addiction to drugs, however, something he had never witnessed before, and he soon tired of Denny’s voracious, childlike demand for attention. “Even when he was perfectly well, Denny would often be propped up in bed, like a little boy who’s sick and waiting for friends to come and visit him,” said Bill Harris. “He wanted to be taken care of forever.” Taking care of him was a chore Truman did not want to assume. “Denny had real magic and I adored him. But I was frightened of him and the drug scene. I was young, and I didn’t plan to get involved in any of that. I wanted to get him off drugs, and he also wanted to get out of the life he had been living all those years. He loved the West and he had a fantasy about buying a gasoline station in Arizona, the sort of place that has a sign saying, ‘Last Chance for Gas for Fifty Miles.’ I was going to write, and he was going to run it and be cured of all the things that were wrong with him. I very foolishly let him go on about it because I knew that none of it was ever going to happen.”

Even Denny could not have taken that fantasy seriously: the Best-Kept Boy in the World becoming a grizzled old gas jockey on Route 66, while his younger lover wrote best-sellers next to the Coke machine in the dusty back room. But he seemed to be sincere in his desire to be cured, and Truman helped him pack for a Swiss drug clinic. But a drug addict’s or an alcoholic’s zeal for salvation does not usually last long, as Truman should have known from living with his mother. “Our disturbing friend just called,” he wrote Waldemar. “The Switzerland deal seems to be off. It makes me feel like a miserable heel, but what can I do now but wash my hands of the whole affair?” Wash his hands he did, soon leaving Paris for Italy.

The saga of Denham Fouts did not, in any event, have long to run. He eventually did go to the Swiss clinic, but the cure did not work. Forced out of his apartment on the Rue du Bac, he moved to a pension in Rome, where he was looked after by a devoted young Englishman, who was as captivated by him as Truman had been. “You can sit here as long as you don’t start moralizing,” Denny told John Goodwin, who visited him in his new quarters. “I’m sick of moralizations. Just let me go my own way.” His own way was a fatal heart attack in 1949, when he was thirty-five; his body was buried in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery. “I can’t say what made Denny click,” said Goodwin. “I can only say what his effect was on other people. He had great, great charm, and you always had the feeling that potentially he was something much more than he was.”

L
ONDON
Truman did not like, then or ever. Paris he loved that golden summer but never again. With Venice, however, which was next on his itinerary, he had a lasting romance, happily returning many times, in all seasons and all weathers. He arrived from Paris on July 4, checked into the Albergo Pilsen, and that evening, walking through St. Mark’s Square, as all tourists do, encountered another young American writer, Donald Windham. They had seen each other at Leo’s parties but never talked. Coming together in a strange city, they discovered that they had much in common, including friends like Tennessee. Donald, a fellow Southerner, a Georgian, had just turned twenty-eight and was trying to complete his first novel; Truman, after his six eventful weeks in London and Paris, was hoping to settle down at last and finish a short story, “Children on Their Birthdays.” Their schedules thus matched exactly, and they became traveling companions; they stayed indoors during the mornings, and occasionally the afternoons as well, and met in the evening for drinks and dinner.

When he did go out to see the sights, Truman, of course, was not interested in the churches and palazzos, the Titians and Tintorettos in the Accademia. His tourist attractions tended to be places, usually restaurants and bars, where he was made to feel at home. Once he had found such a place, he could rarely be persuaded to go anywhere else. In Venice that spot was Harry’s Bar, and he had dinner there nearly every night. “For him Venice was Harry’s Bar,” declared Donald. Once, Donald prevailed upon him to forsake Harry’s for a night and try a small outdoor cafe” near St. Mark’s Square. Truman reluctantly agreed and ordered his customary martini. He sipped it and, with an I-told-you-so smile, handed it across the table. Donald tasted it and was forced to admit that it was indeed peculiar. “Ask the bartender what goes into a martini,” Truman said. The answer—one-third gin, one-third vermouth, one-third cognac, and a twist of lemon peel—was convincing evidence that in Venice there was only one place to dine, and Donald never again suggested an alternative to the reliable Harry’s.

Much as he enjoyed it, Truman soon realized that Venice, with its constant noise and activity, did not provide the atmosphere he needed to write, and he persuaded Donald to go with him to Sirmione, a lake resort he had heard about, midway between Venice and Milan. Their departure was delayed, however, by more noise and activity than either of them could have anticipated. On July 14, as they were preparing to leave, Palmiro Togliatti, Italy’s Communist leader, was shot outside the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, and Italy’s millions of Communists reacted with rage. Within hours workers were in the streets of all the major cities; the Communist labor unions ordered a general strike, and the government called out the army to preserve order. In Venice, panicky shop owners dropped iron shutters over their windows and doors, restaurants closed, and foreigners, especially Americans, were urged to remain inside their hotels. A measure of quiet returned after two days—Togliatti did not die of his wounds—and, crowding onto a bus, Truman and Donald finally made their way to a calm and peaceful Sirmione.

“An enchanted, infinitesimal village on the tip of a peninsula jutting into Lago di Garda, bluest, saddest, most silent, most beautiful of Italian lakes,” Truman wrote of Sirmione. And at that time, before the tourist invasions, enchanted it was, with fewer than two dozen other outsiders sharing its charms. He and Donald chose to stay in the cheaper of the two hotels—five dollars a day, including all meals—and have dinner in the more expensive. (Expensive was not very expensive in the Italy of 1948; the excellent martinis at Harry’s Bar, for instance, had cost just twenty-five cents.)

As a place to work, Sirmione was all that they had hoped it would be, and they remained until July 30, when Donald resumed his travels in Italy and Truman returned to Paris before heading back to America. “Peaches precious,” he wrote Donald from the Pont Royal Hotel. “We shoulda stood in Sirmione! It is frightful hot here, and a ghost town to boot, except for millions of Americans: the worst variety, natch. And I can’t begin to tell you what my trip here was like: Not only did I fail to have a wagon-lit, but I didn’t even have a seat until we were in Switzerland… yep, stood up all the way in the worst heat ever. Anyway, Ten [Tennessee] is here, having failed to show up in London for his opening [
The Glass Menagerie
], and we went out dancing last night. The play got rather bad reviews, and he seems to be upset about it, though I can’t imagine why. Good God, who cares what anyone in England thinks?”

He had ample opportunity to console Tennessee, and on Saturday, August 7, they both sailed home on the
Queen Mary.
Truman had been away only three months, but his brief exposure to Europe affected him profoundly; the extraordinary people he had met there took up permanent residence in his memory, and some of them, like Natalie Barney and Denham Fouts, eventually became characters in his fiction. “It was right that I had gone to Europe,” he wrote, “if only because I could look again with wonder. Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it. Going to Europe was like that. It was a bridge of childhood, one that led over the seas and through the forests straight into my imagination’s earliest landscapes.”