Yellow Avenging Angel in an Annihilating Sky
About 95 pages into In Cold Blood, Capote quotes Andy Erhart as saying, in reference to Herb Clutter, "Everything Herb had, he earned-with the help of God. He was a modest man but a proud man, as he had a right to be. He raised a fine family. He made something of his life." But here as elsewhere Capote dips omnisciently into the character's thoughts, continuing, "But that life, and what he'd made of it-how could it happen, Erhart wondered as he watched the bonfire catch. How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this-smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?"
Capote extends this omniscient POV to include the characters' dreams, as when, while discussing the murders at a Kansas City diner, Perry tells Dick, "Since I was a kid, I've had this same dream." He explains that in the dream he is attempting to pick diamonds from a sort of diamond tree in Africa, but knows that, the instant he attempts to take a diamond, a snake that guards the tree will descend upon him. Writes Capote from Perry's POV, "What it comes down to is I want the diamonds more than I'm afraid of the snake. So 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 a hold, he's crushing me, you can hear my legs cracking...he starts to swallow me. Feet first. Like going down in quicksand." The conversation is interrupted, of course, by 'Normal Dick,' who only dreams of "blonde chicken." Perry ends the conversation abruptly, saying, "Never mind. It's not important."
But it was! Writes Capote, and it clearly is, says the reader. Thus, because it would be out of character for Perry to further explain the dream to Dick, Capote simply replaces Dick with Willie-Jay, who was, "of course...different-delicate-minded, 'a saint.'" Again, Capote solves the problem by working omnisciently, but also nonlinearly, continuing the story as it was told to Willie-Jay, the story of "the towering bird, the yellow 'sort of parrot'...which had first flown into his [Perry's] dreams when he was seven years old, a hated, hating half-breed child living in a California orphanage run by nuns [whom he will later call "Black Widows"]-shrouded disciplinarians who whipped him for wetting his bed." Capote writes elsewhere-through the prism of various characters-of the murders being a kind of "psychological accident," or "force of nature."
This may be why Capote quotes Perry directly rather than paraphrasing him when he writes, "She woke me up. She had a flashlight, and she hit me with it. Hit me and hit me. And when the flashlight broke, she went on hitting me in the dark." Capote then returns to paraphrasing, writing, "that the parrot appeared, arrived while he slept, [emphasis added] a bird 'taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower,' a warrior-angel who blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they 'pleaded for mercy,' then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to 'paradise.'"
Capote then elaborates on the alternating personages and threats "from which the bird delivered him...but the parrot remained, a hovering avenger. Thus, the snake, that custodian of the diamond-bearing tree, never finished devouring him but was itself always devoured." But what Perry feels after being saved by the parrot is perhaps best summed up later, after Perry, Dick, the German and some other have returned from saltwater fishing, whereupon an old man takes a picture of Perry "posed beside his catch"-an enormous sailfish. Writes Capote: "Technically, the old man's work turned out badly...Still, they were remarkable photographs, and what made them so was Perry's expression, his look of unflawed fulfillment, of beatitude, as though at last, and as in one of his dreams, a tall yellow bird had hauled him to heaven."
Later, Capote uses a technique not so much epistolary (ala the letter, "A History of My Boy's Life," written to the Kansas State Parole Board by Perry's father) as omniscient, for the meat here is in Perry's interpretation and emotional reaction to the letter, not the letter itself, which, as we suspect and will be confirmed later, tells us far more about the father than it does Perry. Capote then quotes Perry directly: "Only Dad wouldn't help me. Told me to be good and hugged me and went away. It was not long afterward my mother put me to stay in a Catholic orphanage. The one where the Black Widows were always at me. Hitting me. Because of wetting the bed."
Perry goes on to describe being transferred to a place still worse, a Salvation Army children's shelter, where he is punished-again, for wetting the bed-by a nurse who will later be fired. Capote quotes Perry directly: "Oh, Jesus, was she an Evil Bastard! Incarnate. What she used to do, she'd fill a tub with ice-cold water, put me in it, and hold me under till I was blue. Nearly drowned. But she got found out, the bitch. Because I caught pneumonia...I was in the hospital two months. It was while I was sick that Dad came back. When I got well, he took me away."
Another technique Capote uses throughout the book is the use of - for lack of a better term- call forwards, imagery and other sensory data comparable to single, brief shots in a motion picture; images which do not "call-back" but point forward; that is, images which may only be understood in retrospect. Some of the most important of these occur on page 130, when Capote describes why, shortly after the murders, Perry cannot stop thinking about what they have done, though he certainly tries. Writes Capote: "But he could not always stop himself. Spells of helplessness occurred, moments when he 'remembered things'-blue light exploding in a black room, the glass eyes of a big toy bear-and when voices, a particular few words, started nagging his mind: 'Oh, no! Oh, please! No! No! No! No! Don't! Oh, please don't, please!' And certain sounds returned-a silver dollar rolling across the floor, boot steps on hardwood stairs, and the sounds of breathing, the gasps, the hysterical inhalations of a man with a severed wind-pipe."
It's really no surprise, then, when, at the top of page 271, as Perry is confessing in the police sedan, Capote quotes him, "And then, says Dick, after we've found the safe, we'll cut their throats. Can't shoot them, he says-that would make too much noise." Capote inserts an action here for dramatic effect: "Perry frowns, rubs his knees with his manacled hands. 'Let me think a minute. Because along in here things begin to get a little complicated." And it is here that Capote quotes Perry describing the silver dollar, how he dropped it and how it rolled across the floor [glinting, perhaps, like a diamond], and how disgusted he was with himself to be fumbling for it. Quotes Capote, "It made me sick. I was just disgusted. Dick, and all his talk about a rich man's safe, and here I am crawling on my belly to steal a child's silver dollar. One dollar. And I'm crawling on my belly for it."
Through Perry's dialogue we learn that Dick, who had of course intended on raping Nancy, had also, before being interrupted by Perry, told her things, "And, wow, did he toss her a tearjerker-said he'd been raised an orphan in an orphanage...and his only relative was a sister who lived with men without marrying them. All the time we were talking, we could hear the lunatic roaming around below, looking for the safe...Tapping the walls. Tap tap tap. Like some nutty woodpecker."
What Capote appears to be doing here is to give us a glimpse into the sub, sub-basement of Perry's psyche; there is something going on in there that Perry is clearly not aware of. Maybe it's the silver dollar, shiny as a diamond. Maybe it's the fact that Dick has perverted Perry's own "virtue" (in defending Nancy) with the most obscene language possible-by aping, however unconsciously, and creating a mockery of, Perry's actual life. It is, of course, impossible to say. Nonetheless-the buzz saw has started turning, warming up. Bubbles in blood. Tap tap tap. Like some nutty woodpecker.
Capote uses the character of Duntz to establish that, just prior to the murders, the house became shrouded in blackness. Capote quotes Duntz: "The way I calculate it, when you turned off the upstairs light, that left the house completely dark." Again Capote quotes Perry directly: "Did. And we never used the lights again. Except the flashlight."
And it is in a house shrouded in blackness, dark as a Catholic orphanage, silent as a Salvation Army children's shelter, that the murders unfold. Capote quotes Perry: "'All right, Dick. Here goes.' But I didn't mean it. I meant to call his bluff, make him argue me out of it, make him admit he was a phony and a coward. See, it was something between me and Dick. I knelt down beside Mr. Clutter, and the pain of kneeling-I thought of that goddamn dollar. Silver dollar. The shame. Disgust...But I didn't realize what I'd done till I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water [emphasis added]. I handed the knife to Dick. I said, 'Finish him. You'll feel better.' Dick tried-or pretended to. But the man had the strength of ten men-he was half out of his ropes, his hands were free...I told Dick to hold the flashlight, focus it. Then I aimed the gun. The room just exploded. Went blue. Jesus..."
Later Capote narrates, "Throughout his life-as a child, poor and meanly treated, as a foot-loose youth, as an imprisoned man-the yellow bird, huge and parrot-faced, had soared across Perry's dreams, an avenging angel who savaged his enemies or, as now, rescued him in moments of mortal danger: 'She lifted me, I could have been light as a mouse, we went up, up, I could see the Square below, men running, yelling, the sheriff shooting at us, everybody sore as hell because I was free, I was flying, I was better than any of them.'"