Capote’s “harp” in brief
Colleen Fenwick orphaned at eleven years – first his mother died, and a few days later and his father died in a car crash; It was taken to him by unmarried cousins of father Viren and Dolly Talbo. Virena is the richest woman in town: she owns a pharmacy, a ready-made dress shop, a gas station, a grocery store; making all this good, she by no means became an easygoing person.
Dolly is quiet and inconspicuous; although she is older, it seems that she too is adopted by Virena – just like Colleen. Still in the house lives the cook Katherine Creek, a black woman who pretends to be an Indian woman – she grew up with her sisters, their father took her to serve as a girl. Dolly, Colleen and Catherine are friends, despite the age difference. Virena is ashamed of her family – they do not have guests, but in the town they gossip that Dolly Talbot has not enough cogs and that she is Vyrenin’s cross. Dolly is really unsociable, but wise in everything about
After passing the field, overgrown with Indian grass, which by autumn turns purple and so tight that its rustling and ringing are like harp sounds, they went out to the edge of a forest where a double-barreled platan grows, in which the boards are lined, so that the tree house turned out. The outgrowths on its crust are like steps, and the rails are served with wild grapes, entangled trunks. They hid the provisions in the tree, they parted in different directions, and filling up the sacks, they climbed into the plane tree, they ate with chicken, jam and cake, they guessed in colors, and it seemed to them that they were floating through the day on a raft in the branches of a tree, merging with this tree in one, like the foliage glistening in the sun, like the kozodos that live in it.
Somehow they calculated
Collin was sixteen years old when, one day, Virena returned from another trip to Chicago with a certain Dr. Maurice Ritz – bow ties, suits of screaming flowers, blue lips, glaring eyes. Shame and disgrace, they said in the town that Virena had contacted this Jew from Chicago, besides, she was twenty years younger than her. On Sunday, the doctor was invited to dinner. Dolly wanted to sit in the kitchen, but Virena did not allow, and although Dolly broke the crystal vase, dropping it into a sauce that spattered the guest, Virena insisted that this dinner was arranged in her honor. Dr. Ritz pulled out a pack of typographically printed stickers “The potion of an old gypsy expels a dropsy,” and Virena said she bought an abandoned cannery on the outskirts of the town, ordered equipment and hired the most valuable specialist, Maurice Ritz, for the industrial production of Dolly’s drug. But Dolly flatly refuses to open the recipe, showing an uncharacteristic firmness. “This is the only thing I have,” she says. In the evening, the sisters quarrel: Virena says that she worked all her life like a bullock and everything in this house belongs to her; Dolly rustles back in response that she and Katherine have tried all their lives to make this house warm and cozy for her and believed that there was a place for them here, and if they did not, they would leave tomorrow. “Where will you go!” – Virena threw, but Collin, who eavesdrops in the attic, already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had. But Dolly flatly refuses to open the recipe, showing an uncharacteristic firmness. “This is the only thing I have,” she says. In the evening, the sisters quarrel: Virena says that she worked all her life like a bullock and everything in this house belongs to her; Dolly rustles back in response that she and Katherine have tried all their lives to make this house warm and cozy for her and believed that there was a place for them here, and if they did not, they would leave tomorrow. “Where will you go!” – Virena threw, but Collin, who eavesdrops in the attic, already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had. But Dolly flatly refuses to open the recipe, showing an uncharacteristic firmness. “This is the only thing I have,” she says. In the evening, the sisters quarrel: Virena says that she worked all her life like a bullock and everything in this house belongs to her; Dolly rustles back in response that she and Katherine have tried all their lives to make this house warm and cozy for her and believed that there was a place for them here, and if they did not, they would leave tomorrow. “Where will you go!” – Virena threw, but Collin, who eavesdrops in the attic, already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had. that she worked all her life like a bullock and everything in this house belongs to her; Dolly rustles back in response that she and Katherine have tried all their lives to make this house warm and cozy for her and believed that there was a place for them here, and if they did not, they would leave tomorrow. “Where will you go!” – Virena threw, but Collin, who eavesdrops in the attic, already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had. that she worked all her life like a bullock and everything in this house belongs to her; Dolly rustles back in response that she and Katherine have tried all their lives to make this house warm and cozy for her and believed that there was a place for them here, and if they did not, they would leave tomorrow. “Where will you go!” – Virena threw, but Collin, who eavesdrops in the attic, already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had. already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had. already guessed where. At night Dolly, Katherine and Colleen go into the woods, into the house on the tree, taking a warm blanket, a bag of provisions and forty-seven dollars-all that they had.
The first to discover them is Riley Henderson, who hunts in the forest for protein. At fifteen, he was left without parents with two younger sisters in charge: his father, a missionary, was killed in China, and his mother was in a madhouse. Uncle-guardian tried to pocket his mother’s legacy. The rally has exposed him and since then he has become his own master: he bought a car, drove around the neighborhood with all the whores of the town and brought up his sisters in severity. Riley is also an outsider in the town, and he liked it on the tree.
Virena, finding a note in the morning Dolly, announces a search. She managed to send out many telegrams with their signs when it becomes known that they are very close. A whole delegation of town officials comes to the tree: the sheriff, the pastor with his wife; they are accompanied by an old judge Kul; on behalf of the Wyren they demand the return of the fugitives, threatening to use force. Judge Kul unexpectedly turns out to be an ally of those who are on the tree – he explains that no one violated the law. After a quick brawl, the high delegation withdrew, and the old judge remained on the tree.
Judge Kull was at seventy; he graduated from Harvard, twice visited Europe, had a wife from Kentucky, always dressed well and wore a flower in his buttonhole. For all this in the town he was not liked. After the death of his wife, he remained out of work: his two sons and their wives shared the house equally, saying that the old man lives for a month in each family. No wonder the house on the tree seemed cozy to him…
In the evening Rally came back with apologies that he involuntarily betrayed the fugitives, with provisions and with the news: the sheriff persuaded Viren to allow him to sign an arrest warrant for the abduction of her property, and he intends to arrest the judge for violation of public order.
In the morning the sheriff took Katherine to prison; Collin managed to escape, and Dolly and the judge were rescued, climbing even higher on the tree. The fugitives easily got away because the sheriff was informed of the robbery of the Viren by Dr. Ritz: he cleaned the safe of her office, took away 12,700 dollars, appropriated money for the purchase of equipment and disappeared. From such a blow of fate, Virena seriously fell ill,
On Saturday, a van arrived in the town, decorated with a self-made shield with the inscription: “Give the baby Homer to lasso your soul for our Lord,” and in the van – Sister Aida with fifteen children born to different men. The prayer meeting of the renovationists was to the liking of the townspeople, the donations turned out to be generous enough to provoke the furious envy of Pastor Baster, who, having lied to Virene, that Aid’s sister allegedly calls Dolly Talbot a bogeyman and a non-believer, made her call the sheriff and order the Renovationists to leave town. The sheriff obeyed, and the Monk Buster forcibly took away all the money he had collected from the children. Aida wants to find Dolly, so she “settled this case,” because they were left without money, without food and without gasoline.
Learning about this, Dolly is horrified that her name is torn from children by a piece of her mouth, sent to meet her and leads to the tree the whole crowd. Children are fed, Dolly gives Aide his forty-seven dollars and a gold watch for the judge, but they are sent to Wirena, the pastor, the sheriff and his assistants with rifles. The boys, climbing the trees, greet the intruders with a hail of rocks and the noise of rattles and whistles; firing at random, one of the assistant sheriff shoots Riley. A thunderstorm begins.
On this tragic background there is an explanation of Dolly and Virena. Virena, seeing the new Dolly, Dolly, who made a proposal to Judge Kul and who throws her in the face that it is generally a little honor in the name of Talbo, if, under cover of them, steal children and throw old women in jail, breaks and grows old before our eyes; Virena begs her sister to return home, not to leave her alone in the house, where everything is created and lived Dolly.
The fugitives returned, but for a long time their life was divided into before and after the three autumn days spent on the tree. The judge left his sons’ house and settled in the boarding house. Virena and Colleen caught cold in the rain, Dolly nursed them until she herself crawled with creeping pneumonia. Not fully recovered, she enthusiastically creates for Collina a fancy dress for the party on All Saints’ Day and, painting it, dies from a blow. A year later, Colleen leaves the town where he grew up; at parting their feet lead him to the tree; frozen in the field of Indian grass, he remembers how Dolly said: “The harp is ringing grass, it collects all our stories, day and night she tells them, this harp, sounding on different voices…”
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