Home for Dead Cats

THE MUSES ARE HEARD (182 pp.)--Truman Capofe--Random House ($3).

The five-verst shelf of books on Russia --hortatory, minatory or merely muddled, whether by Webb-footed economists, panting pilgrims, puffing pundits or Red-eyed viragoes--must surely comprise some of the most glum and gullible guff in the history of letters. A rare creature, exotic as a hummingbird in the tundras, has just been sighted in this dreary literary region. Truman Capote, previously noted for his ability in tatting webs of lacy sensibility, has written a wise and witty report on Russia.

When the touring all-Negro Porgy and Bess company went behind the Iron Curtain last year (TIME, Jan. 9), footloose Author Capote (novels, stories, plays, movies) decided to try his hand at something new, tagged along with the troupe. The reasons why the Soviet Ministry of Culture gave permission for the Porgy tour are obscure, but Capote's own shrewd guess is that the opera's message about people being happy though they have "plenty of nothin'" conforms to the Kremlin notion of the American Negroes as "poverty-pinched and segregated in the ghetto of Catfish Row." With the keen ear of a private eye for the giveaway phrase, Author Capote recorded the adventures of the Porgy company from the time they entrained in East Berlin to the premiere in Leningrad two nights and a day later. The result is an hilarious tour de farce, a knockabout comedy in which real bones are broken.

Old Squareville. Between black American and Red Russian there was no meeting of minds. The Americans were represented mainly by the Porgy players, who had been given by American history a faculty for looking at social institutions with a wary eye. The Russians were represented by 1984 men, whom history had given nothing but a theory of history. Jive and Marxism simply do not dig each other. It is Capote's achievement that the pseudo-sophistication of jive comes through as a kind of innocence, while the smug smog of Marxism is shown for what it is--a grey disease of the mind.

The non-digging between hosts and visitors began at East Berlin Station, where the Russian train officer asked a Negro actor if he was German. "I'd make a funny-looking German," said the Porgy man. But the Russians were unconvinced. "Man," said the actor, "let's settle this misery." But the misery was never settled.

The 94 members of the Porgy troupe hoped for caviar and good company. They were provided with yoghurt, raspberry pop and the supervision of goodwill-goons from the Soviet Ministry of Culture. The Russians were strong on culture, and they stopped, as nye kulturnyi, a game of tonk (a variation of rummy) that had been going more or less continuously since the company played Buenos Aires. "Old Squareville!" said an embittered American. "Home for dead cats."

Deadest and most pathetic of all cats was an interpreter in the Culture Ministry who sought out Capote as a fellow artist. "I have my own telephone," boasted the artist. "Among your writers, the powerful one is A. J. Cronin. But Sholikov is more powerful, yes?" The scene in which the Russian is afraid--and afraid to admit he is afraid--to accept a few paperback books from a brother artist is a merciless ly cut cameo of intellectual life in Russia.

At the Leningrad station the Porgy company filed through a welcoming committee of "giant men and shabby ladies" like a flock of gaudy parakeets uncaged into a grey wilderness. Earl Bruce Jackson (who plays Sportin' Life in the opera) had holes cut in his gloves so that all could see his rings, and he waved regally. He also kept brooding about the brown tails, with champagne satin lapels, that he hoped to wear for his planned Moscow wedding (to a cast member) and thus get into Leonard Lyons' column.

History Fenced In. Such gaily innocent concerns appear in grim contrast to the Russian backdrop. There are pitiable and grotesque vignettes of life in the home of the revolution--a man brutally beaten beside a cathedral and left helpless and ignored in the snow, female bouncers in a beer cellar, rapacious black-marketeers.

In the end, despite their professional sophistication, the Porgy people were impressed by the cultural hullabaloo stirred up by their visit. "Yep," said one, "we got history fenced in."

Capote's record will be a delight to all who like to see heavy political objects fly through the air at the whim of an expert in verbal judo.* Once described by a friend--famed Photographer Cecil Beaton --as a "pocket Hercules," Capote has performed a notable labor.

*Gill-sized Author Capote--5 ft. 4 in., 122 Ibs. --is an accomplished judo artist, is proud of his ability to outwrestle Screen Tough Guy Humphrey Bogart.

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