Three Score & Ten

I went into the hall and leaned over the banister, just enough to see without being seen. She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag colours of her boy’s hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blond and yellow, caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening of her cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

‘It happened before I was born,’ said Idabel, as if this explained everything. She turned off the path into an area deep with last winter’s leaves: a skunk skittered in the distance, and Henry boomed forward. ‘This Toby, you see, she was a nigger baby, and her mama worked for old Mrs Skully like Zoo does now. She was Jesus Fever’s wife, and Toby was their baby. Old Mrs Skully had a big fine Persian cat, and one day when Toby was asleep the cat sneaked in and put its mouth against Toby’s mouth and sucked away all her breath.’

Joel said he didn’t believe it; but if it was true, it was certainly the most horrible tale he’d ever heard. ‘I didn’t know Jesus Fever had ever been married.’

‘There’s lots you don’t know. All kinds of strange things…mostly they happened before we were born: that makes them seem more real.’

Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only. Now at thirteen Joel was nearer a knowledge of death than in any year to come: a flower was blooming inside him, and soon, when all tight leaves unfurled, when the noon of youth burned whitest, he would turn and look, as others had, for the opening of another door…

 Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms