Free Answered Prayers by Truman Capote Page B

murderers on his trail. I’m liable to die very suddenly. And if I do, it won’t be a natural death. They’ll try to make it look like heart failure. Or an accident. But promise me you won’t believe that. Promise me you’ll write a letter to the
Times
and tell them it was murder.”
    With drunks and madmen, always be logical. “But if you think you’re in danger, why don’t you call the cops?”
    He said: “I’m no squealer”; then he added: “I’m a dying man, anyway. Dying of cancer.”
    “What kind of cancer is it?”
    “Blood. Throat. Lungs. Tongue. Stomach. Brain. Asshole.” Alcoholics really despise the taste of alcohol; he shivered as he bolted half the Scotch in his glass. “It all started seven years agowhen the critics turned on me. Every writer has his tricks, and sooner or later the critics catch them. That’s all right; they love you as long as they’ve got you identified. My mistake was I got sick of my old tricks and learned some new ones. Critics won’t put up with that; they hate versatility—they don’t like to see a writer grow or change in any way. So that’s when the cancer came. When the critics started saying the old tricks were ‘the stuff of pure poetic power’ and the new tricks were ‘shabby pretensions.’ Six failures in a row, four on Broadway and two off. They’re killing me out of envy and ignorance. And without shame or remorse. What do they care that cancer’s eating my brain!” Then, quite complacently, he said: “You don’t believe me, do you?”
    “I can’t believe in seven years of galloping cancer. That’s impossible.”
    “I’m a dying man. But you don’t believe it. You don’t believe I have cancer at all. You think it’s all a problem for the shrinker.” No, what I thought was: here’s a dumpy little guy with a dramatic mind who, like one of his own adrift heroines, seeks attention and sympathy by serving up half-believed lies to total strangers. Strangers because he has no friends, and he has no friends because the only people he pities are his own characters and himself—everyone else is an audience. “But for your information, I’ve been to a shrink. I spent sixty bucks an hour five days a week for two years. All the bastard did was interfere in my personal affairs.”
    “Isn’t that what they’re paid to do? Interfere in one’s personal affairs?”
    “Don’t get smart with me, old buddy. This is no joke. Dr. Kewie ruined my life. He convinced me I wasn’t a queer and that I didn’t love Fred. He told me I was finished as a writer unless I got rid of Fred. But the truth was Fred was the onlygood thing in my life. Maybe I didn’t love
him
. But he loved
me
. He held my life together. He wasn’t the phony Kewie said he was. Kewie said: Fred doesn’t love you, he loves your money. The one who loves money is Kewie. Well, I wouldn’t leave Fred, so Kewie calls him secretly and tells him I’m going to die of drink if he doesn’t clear out. Fred packs and disappears, and I can’t understand it until Dr. Kewie, very proud of himself, confesses what he’s done. And I told him: You see, Fred believed you and because he loved me so much he sacrificed himself. But I was wrong about that. Because when we found Fred, and I hired Pinkertons who found him in Puerto Rico, Fred said all he wanted to do was bust me in the nose. He thought
I
was the one who had put Kewie up to calling him, that it was all a plot on my part. Still, we made up. A lot of good it did. Fred was operated on at Memorial Hospital June seventeenth, and he died the fourth of July. He was only thirty-six years old. But he wasn’t pretending; he really had cancer. And that’s what comes of shrinkers interfering in your private life. Look at the mess! Imagine having to hire whores to walk Bill.”
    “I’m not a whore.” Though I don’t know why I bothered protesting: I am a whore and always have been.
    He grunted sarcastically; like all maudlin men, he was