Breakfast at Tiffany 39 S Level 3 PDF

PENGUIN ACTIVE READING
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote
lil
L:I
Ll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Truman Capote
Level 3
Retold by Karen Holmes

Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter
P e a r s o n E d u c a tio n L im it e d
E d in b u rg h G ate, H arlo w ,
Essex C M 2 0 2 JE , E n g lan d
a n d A sso cia ted C o m p a n ie s th ro u g h o u t th e w o rld .
ISB N : 9 7 8 -1 -4 0 8 2 -3 2 0 1 -9
T h is e d itio n first p u b lish e d b y P earson E d u ca tio n L td 2 01 0
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
T ex t c o p y rig h t © P earson E d u catio n Ltd 2 0 1 0
Illu s tra tio n s by S te p h a n ie Von R e isw itz a t D eb u t A rt
The m o ral rig h ts o f th e au th o rs h av e been asserted in ac c o rd a n c e

w ith th e C o p y r ig h t D esign s an d P atents A ct 1988
S e t in 11/ 13 p t A . G aram o n d
P rin te d in C h in a
SW TC /02
All rights reserved ; no p a rt o f this p u b lica tio n m ay b e rep rod u ced, sto red in a retriev a l system ,
o r tra n sm itted in a n y fo r m o r b y a n y m eans, electron ic, m ech a n ica l, p hotocop yin g, record in g
o r otherw ise, w ith ou t th e p rio r w ritten perm ission o f th e Publishers.
P u b lish ed by Pearson E d u ca tio n L td in asso ciatio n w ith P e n g u in B ooks Ltd,

b o th co m p a n ie s b e in g su b s id ia rie s of P earson P L ( '
A ck n o w led g em en ts
W e are grateful to the follow ing tor perm ission to reproduce photographs:
(K ey: b -b o tto m ; c-c e n tre ; 1-left; r-rig h t; t-top)
A la m y Im ages: Z ute L igh tfo o t: iv
A ll o th er im a g es © Pearson E d u catio n
E very effort has been m ad e to tra ce th e c o p y rig h t ho ld ers a n d w e a p o lo g ise in ad v an ce

for a n y u n in te n tio n a l o m issio n s. W e w o u ld be p leased to in sert th e ap p ro p riate
a ck n o w le d g e m e n t in a n y su b seq u en t ed itio n of th is p u b lic a tio n .
For a co m p lete lis t o f th e title s a v a ila b le in th e P en g u in A ctiv e R e a d in g series please

w rite to y o u r lo ca l P earson L o n g m a n office or to: P en g u in R ead ers M a r k e tin g
D e p a rtm e n t, Pearson E d u ca tio n , E d in b u rg h G ate, H arlo w , Essex C M 2 0 2 JE , E n g lan d .
C ontents
Activities 1 iv
Chapter 1 W hat Happened to Holly Golightly? 1
Chapter 2 A Late-Night Visitor 7

Activities 2 14
Chapter 3 A Party at Holly’s Apartment 16
Chapter 4 A Conversation about Men 24

Activities 3 30
Chapter 5 A Gift from Tiffany’s 32
Chapter 6 A Visitor from Holly’s Past 37

Activities 4 42
Chapter 7 A Death in the Family 44
Chapter 8 The End of the Summer 48

Activities 5 52
Chapter 9 Holly Becomes Famous 54
Chapter 10 The End of Holly’s Dreams? 58

Activities 6 62
Chapter 11 Holly Leaves New York 64
Chapter 12 Where is Holly Now? 70

Talk about it 72
Write about it 73
Project: Holly’s Return 74
EQ What's the book about?
1 Read about the story on the back of the book and look at the picture on the
front cover. Then discuss these questions. W hat do you think?
a Where and when does this story happen?
b Who is Holly Golightly?
c W ill this be a happy or a sad story? Give reasons for your answer.
2 Describe this photo. W hat do you think is inside the building? What
kind of person goes there? Find Tiffany & Co. on the Internet and check
your answers.
m What happens first?

Look at the title of Chapter 1 and the words in italics.Then look at the
pictures in Chapter 1 and discuss these questions. W hat do you think?
1 On which page can you see the writer of this story?
2 Who is the other person in the picture?
3 On which page can you see Holly Golightly?
4 How did she and the storyteller meet?
5 Where is Holly now?
6 How does the storyteller feel about her?
7 Who is the speaker of the words in italics on page 1?

iv
CHAPTER 1
W hat Happened to Holly Golightly?

“I like to walk. I ’v e w alked these streets f o r ten or tw elve years.
I look f o r h er a ll the tim e a n d I n ever see her. ”
sometimes visit places where I lived in the past— the houses and their
I neighborhoods. I like to see them again. There’s a brown stone house in the
East Seventies* where, during the early years of the wart, I had my first New
York apartment. It was one room, crowded with an old red sofa and red chairs.
The walls were dark and dirty from old cigarette smoke. The single window
looked out onto a fire escape, a stairway that went down to the street. It wasn’t a
big place but it made me happy. It was my first home, and my books were there,
and a box of pencils. Everything that a writer needed, I thought.
I didn’t write about Holly Golightly in those days. I’m only writing about
her now because of a conversation that I had with Joe Bell.
Holly Golightly was another tenant in the old brown stone house, in the
apartment below mine. Joe Bell had a bar around the corner; he’s still there.
Both Holly and I went there six or seven times every day, not for a drink—not
always— but to make telephone calls. During the war few people had a private
telephone. Joe Bell took messages for us. Holly got a lot of messages.
Of course, this was a long time ago. I didn’t see Joe Bell for years, not until
last week. We weren’t close friends but we were both friends of Holly Golightly.
It isn’t easy to like Joe. He isn’t married and he has a bad stomach. He’s hard
to talk to, except about his own interests. Holly is one of his interests; the others
are dogs, a radio program that he’s listened to every week for fifteen years, and
musical theater.
Late last Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang and I heard Joe Bell’s voice.
I knew he was calling about Holly He just said, “Can you come over here? It’s
important.” There was excitement in his voice.
I took a taxi through the October rain and on the way I thought about
Holly. Was she there? Was she in Joe’s bar?
But there was no one in the bar except Joe. His place is very quiet. It doesn’t
have bright lights or a television.
“I want your opinion about something,” he said. “Something very strange
has happened.”
* The East Seventies: an area of New York City

t th e w a r: W orld W ar 2 (1939-45). The A m ericans joined th e w ar in 1941.
tenant /'tenant/ (n) som eone w ho regularly pays m oney to th e ow ner fo r a house or room
1
B re a k fa st at T if f a n y ’s
“Have you heard from Holly?”

Joe is a small man with a fine head of thick, white hair. His face is always a
little red: now it went even redder. “I didn’t hear from her. Not exactly. That’s
why I want your opinion. I’ll pour you a drink.”
As I was drinking, he said, "Do you remember Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi? A man
from Japan?”
I remembered Mr. Yunioshi perfectly. He takes photos for one of the picture
magazines. He lived in an apartment on the top floor of the old house at the
same time as Holly and I.
“He came here last night. I haven’t seen him for more than two years. And
where was he for those two years?”
2
C h a p te r 1 —W h a t H a p p e n e d to H o lly G o lig h tly ?
“Africa.”
Joe looked at me, surprised. “How do you know?”
“I read it in a magazine.”
Joe gave me an envelope. In the envelope were three photos of a tall African
man wearing a cotton skirt. There was a strange, wood carving of a girl’s head
in his hands. Her hair was very short. Her smooth, wooden eyes were too large
and her mouth was too big. Was it a carving of Holly Golightly?
“W hat do you think of that?” Joe asked.
“It looks like her.”
“Listen, boy, it is her. Mr. Yunioshi knew her immediately.”
“He saw her? In Africa?”
“No, just the carving. But it’s the same thing. Look.” Joe turned over one of
the photos. On the back was written: Wood carving, Tococul, Christmas
Day, 1956.
This was the story. On Christmas Day, Mr. Yunioshi walked through
Tococul with his camera. It was a small place, just a few houses. He was leaving
when he saw the African.
The African was sitting outside a house, carving a piece of wood. Mr.
Yunioshi liked his work.
carving /'karvig/ (n) a shape in wood or stone th a t is made w ith special tools
3
“Show me more of your carvings,” he said. Then he saw the girl’s head.
“I want to buy this,” Mr. Yunioshi said to the African.
“No,” the African replied.
Mr. Yunioshi offered him a pound of salt and ten dollars, then offered him a
watch, two pounds of salt, and twenty dollars. The African refused to sell. But
for the watch and the salt he agreed to talk about the carving.
‘“Three white people rode here on horses in the spring. A young woman and
two men. The men were sick, and for many weeks they slept in a small house far
from here. The girl liked me and she slept with me.’”
“I don’t believe that part of the story,” Joe Bell said. “I don’t think she slept
with him.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then nothing,” Joe said. “She rode away with the two men. Mr. Yunioshi
asked about her up and down the country. But nobody saw her.”
I wasn’t happy with his story. “Mr. Yunioshi’s story doesn’t tell us anything,”
I said.
“It’s the only real news that we’ve had about her for years,” Joe said. “I hope
she’s rich. If she’s traveling in Africa, she’s OK.”
“She’s probably not in Africa,” I said. But I could imagine her there. It was a
place that she would like. I looked at the photos again.
“If you know so much, where is she?” Joe asked.
“Dead. Or in a hospital for crazy people. Or married. I think she’s married.
She’s living quietly, here in New York.”
Joe thought for a minute. “No,” he said. “I like to walk. I’ve walked these
streets for ten or twelve years. I look for her all the time and I never see her ...
Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No. But I didn’t know you loved her.”
M y words hurt Joe and I felt bad. He picked up the photos and put them
back into the envelope. I looked at my watch. I wanted to leave.
“Wait,” Joe said. “Of course I loved her. But I didn’t want to touch her. I’m
almost sixty-seven and I still think about sex. But I didn’t want to sleep with
Holly. You can love someone but not want them in that way. You stay strangers,
strangers who are friends.”
Two men came into the bar. It was time to leave. Joe followed me to the door.
“Do you believe it?” he asked.
“That you didn’t want to touch her?”
“About Africa.”
For a minute I couldn’t remember the story, just the thought of her on the
horse. “She’s gone,” I said.
4
C h a p te r 1 - W h a t H a p p e n e d to H o lly G o lig h tly ?
“Yes,” he said, opening the door. “She’s gone.”

Outside, the rain stopped, so I walked around the corner and along the
street. I went past the old apartment building. The building stands next to a
church in the middle of the block. It’s smarter now, with a black painted door
and new windows.
I went up the steps and looked at the mailboxes. I knew none of the names,
except Mrs. Sapphia Spanella’s. She still lived there.
One of these mailboxes first introduced me to Holly Golightly.
♦
A week after I moved into the apartment, I noticed a card next to the mailbox
for Apartment 2. It was smartly printed, but there was a strange message on
it. It said: Miss H oliday Golightly, and, below that, in the corner, Traveling. I
thought about it a lot: Miss H oliday Golightly, Traveling.
One night, long after midnight, I woke up. Mr. Yunioshi was calling down
the stairs. He lived on the top floor, and his voice sounded through the house.
“Miss Golightly!” he shouted, angrily.
I heard a voice from the bottom of the stairs. It was young, amused, and
silly. “Oh, darling, I am sorry. I lost my key.”
“You cannot ring my bell every night. Please get another key.”
“But I lose them all.”
darling /'darliij/ (n) a nam e fo r som eone you love. Holly calls everyone "d a rlin g ."
bell /bel/ (n) som ething th a t makes a ringing sound. You press a d o o rb e ll w hen you w an t to
call som eone to th e door.
5
“I work. I have to sleep,” Mr. Yunioshi shouted. “But you are always ringing
my bell ...”
“Oh, d o n ’t be angry, you dea r little man. I won’t do it again.” Her voice
was coming nearer because she was climbing the stairs. “Promise you won’t be
angry. Then you can take those photos that we talked about.”
I left my bed and opened the door a little.
“When?” Mr. Yunioshi asked. His voice was excited now.
The girl laughed. “One day,” she answered. The words were unclear. She
was drunk.
“Any time,” Mr. Yunioshi said, and closed his door.
I went out into the hall and looked down. She was on the stairs. I could see
her but she couldn’t see me. Her short hair shone in the light, yellow and brown.
It was a warm evening, almost summer, and she wore a light black dress and
black shoes. She was thin but healthy-looking. Her mouth was large and a pair
of dark glasses covered her eyes. She wasn’t a child— but she wasn’t a woman,
either. I learned later that it was two months before her nineteenth birthday.
She wasn’t alone. There was a man behind her. He was short and fat,
wearing a suit. His hand was on her back, holding her with his fat fingers. That
made me uncomfortable— it just looked strange.
When they reached her door, she looked in her purse for her key. Now he
was kissing the back of her neck. She found the key, opened the door, and
turned to him.
“Thank you for bringing me home, darling. That was kind.”
“Hey, baby!” he said. She was closing the door in his face.
“Yes, Harry?”
“Harry was the other guy. I’m Sid. Sid Arbuck. You like me.”
“I love you, Mr. Arbuck. But good night, Mr. Arbuck.” She shut the door.
“Hey, baby, let me in. You like me. I paid the check for five people, y o u r
friends! So you like me, right? You like me, baby.”
He knocked on the door quietly, then more loudly. Then he stepped back.
Did he plan to break down the door? But he ran down the stairs, hitting the
wall angrily with his hand. When he reached the bottom, the girl opened her
apartment door.
“Oh, Mr. Arbuck ...”
He turned back to her, a happy smile on his face.
“The next time a girl asks for some money for the bathroom, darling, d o n ’t
give her twenty-five cents!” She wasn’t joking.
hall /hoi/ (n) th e area in a house inside the fro n t door, w ith doors to oth er rooms
6
CHAPTER 2
A Late-Night Visitor
H er large eyes w ere blue, green , a n d brow n. They w ere happy, fr ien d ly eyes.
“D oyou think I ’m very bad? Or crazy?”she asked.
S he didn’t ring Mr. Yunioshi’s bell again. In the following days, she rang
mine, sometimes at two in the morning, or three, or four o’clock. I always
knew that it was her. I didn’t have many friends, and no visitors at that time
of night.
The first time the bell rang, I was scared. Was someone bringing bad news?
Then Miss Golightly shouted up the stairs, “Sorry, darling— I forgot my key.”
We never met. I saw her on the stairs and in the street but she didn’t see me.
She always wore dark glasses and she was always well dressed. Maybe she was an
actress, but she stayed out so late. Did she have time to work?
Sometimes I saw her outside our neighborhood. Once she was in an
expensive restaurant, sitting with four men. She looked very bored. Another
night, in the middle of summer, I was so hot that I left my room. I walked
down to Fifty-first Street. There was a store there that I liked, with an old bird
cage in the window. It was a beautiful bird cage, but it cost three hundred and
fifty dollars. As I went home, I saw a crowd of taxi-drivers outside a bar. They
were watching a group of Australian soldiers. The Australians were singing and
dancing in the street with a girl. It was Miss Golightly.
Miss Golightly never seemed to notice me but I learned a lot about her. I
looked in the trash can outside her door. She liked magazines and cigarettes, she
didn’t eat much food, and she colored her hair. She received a lot of letters from
soldiers that she cut into small pieces. Sometimes I read them. R em em ber and
miss y o u and p lea se w rite were words that were written on many of the pieces of
paper. And lonely and love.
She had a cat and she played the guitar. On sunny days, she washed her hair
and sat on the fire escape with the cat. When I heard her guitar, I went to my
window. She played well, and sometimes sang, too. “I d o n ’t w an t to sleep, I d o n ’t
w an t to die. I ju s t w an t to travel through the sky.” That was her favorite song.
I didn’t speak to her until September. One evening I went to a movie, then
came home and went to bed. I read my book but I felt uncomfortable. Was
someone watching me?
Then I heard a knock at the window. I opened it.
“W hat do you want?” I asked Miss Golightly.
cage /k e id y (n) a place w here birds or anim als are kept. Thin pieces o f m etal or w ood stop
them escaping.
guitar /gi'tar/ (n) a piece of musical equipm ent. Eric Clapton, fo r exam ple, plays th e guitar.
7
“There’s a terrible man in my apartment,” she said. She stepped off the fire
escape into the room. “He’s very kind when he’s not drunk. But now ... I hate
men who bite.” She pulled her gray dress off her shoulder and showed me the
bite. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry. But I climbed out of the window. He thinks
I’m in the bathroom. He’ll get tired soon and fall asleep. It was icy on the fire
escape and you looked so warm. I saw you and thought about my brother, Fred.
Four of us slept in the bed at home, and he kept me warm on cold nights. Can I
call you Fred?”
She was in the room now, looking at me. She wasn’t wearing dark glasses,
and her large eyes were blue, green, and brown. They were happy, friendly eyes.
C h a p te r 2 —A L a te -N ig h t V isito r
“Do you think I’m very bad? Or crazy?” she asked.

“No,” I said.
“Yes, you do. Everybody thinks I’m bad. It’s OK. Men like crazy, bad
women. They think we’re interesting.”
She sat down on one of the old red chairs and looked around the room.
“This place is terrible. How can you live here?”
“I like it,” I said. I wasn’t pleased because I was proud of my room.
“I couldn’t live here. W hat do you do here all day?”
I pointed at a table covered in books and paper. “I write.”
“Aren’t writers usually old? Is Hemingway* old?”
“I think he’s about forty.”
“That’s not old. A man doesn’t excite me until he’s forty-two. I taught
myself to like older men. I’ve never slept with a writer. No, wait. Do you know
Benny Shacklett?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s strange. He’s written a lot of things for the radio. Are you a real
writer? Does anyone buy your work?”
“No, not yet.”
“I’m going to help you,” she said. “I know lots of people and they know other
people. I’ll help you because of my brother Fred. But you’re smaller than him.
I last saw him when I was fourteen years old. That’s when I left home. He was
already six foot two inches tall. My other brothers were small but Fred ate a lot.
Poor Fred— he was very nice, but he was a slow thinker. He’s a soldier now. I
hope they give him plenty of food. Talking of food, I’m very hungry.”
I pointed at some apples. Then I said, “You were very young when you left
home. W hy did you leave?”
She looked at me but she didn’t reply. I realized later that she didn’t like
questions about her past. She bit the apple, and said, “Tell me about your stories.”
“That’s not easy. Maybe I’ll read one to you one day.”
“Pour me a drink, darling. Then you can read me a story.”
All writers want to read their work to someone. I poured her a drink and sat
opposite her. Then I began to read.
The story was about two women, schoolteachers, who live together in a
house. One of the women decides to marry. The other woman writes terrible
things about her to other people in unsigned notes, and her future husband
walks away from the marriage.
As I read, I looked at Holly. She didn’t seem interested. She was playing with
her cigarettes. She looked at her hands. W hat was she thinking about?
* H em ing w ay: Ernest Hem ingway, a fam ous Am erican w riter

B re a k fa st a t T if f a n y ’s
“Is that the end?." she asked, when I finished. “Of course, I like lesbians. I’m
not scared of them. But I’m bored with stories about them. Your story is about
lesbians, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. It was a mistake to read the story. I didn’t want to have to
explain it, too. She was stupid. A silly girl.
“Do you know any nice lesbians?” she asked. “I need someone to live with
me. Lesbians are good home-makers. They love to do all the work around the
house. I lived with a woman in Hollywood who acted in movies. She was better
than a man in the house. People think I’m a lesbian, too. Of course I am, a
little. Everyone is. But that’s not a problem. Men like lesbians. The actress in
Hollywood was married twice. Usually lesbians only marry once, to get a man’s
name. They want to be Mrs. because it sounds better than Miss.”
Suddenly she stopped talking and opened her eyes very wide. Then she said,
“That’s not true!” She was looking at the clock on the table. “Is it really four-
thirty?” she said.
Outside the window, it was already morning.
“W hat is today?” she asked.
lesbian /'lezbian/ (n) a w om an w ho has sexual feeling s fo r oth er wom en
10
“Thursday.”
“Thursday." She stood up. “Oh, no.” She sat down again. “That’s terrible.”
I was very tired. I sat on the bed and closed my eyes. “W hat’s wrong with
Thursdays?” I asked.
“Nothing, but I must catch the eight forty-five train. They’re very careful
about visiting hours. If you arrive at ten o’clock, you can spend an hour with the
men before lunch. The poor men—they eat lunch at eleven! You can go at two
but he likes a morning visit. I must stay awake. There isn’t time to sleep. I want
to be awake and healthy. A girl can’t go to Sing Sing* looking terrible.”
“No,” I said. I wasn’t angry now because she interested me again.
“All the visitors dress well, and the women wear their prettiest clothes. Even
the old women and the poor women look nice. I love the kids that come with
the wives. You don’t want to see kids there, but it isn’t sad. They have clean hair
and shiny shoes, and it’s like a party in the visitors’ room. In the movies prison
is terrible, but Sing Sing is OK. There’s a table between you and the prisoners.
The kids stand on it and their fathers can hold them. The kids are always so
happy to be there. It’s different later when I see them on the train. They sit very
quietly, looking at the river.”
She looked at me. “I’m keeping you awake,” she said. “Go to sleep.”
“I’m interested.”
“I know you are. But I mustn’t tell you about Sally.” She was quiet for a
minute. Then she said, “But it is funny. You can write about it in a story if you
use different names.”
She took another apple. “Listen, Fred,” she said. “Promise me you’ll keep this
story secret.”
I promised.
“You probably know his name. He’s often in the newspapers,” she said.
“His name is Sally Tomato, and he’s a darling old man. He’s very serious
about religion. Of course he was never my lover. I didn’t know him until he
was already in prison. But I love him now. I see him every Thursday. He pays
me but I like to see him. This apple is bad,” she said. She threw it out of the
window. “I did see Sally sometimes in the past because he went to Joe Bell’s
bar, the one around the corner. He never talked to anybody but he was looking
at me. Then he went to prison for five years. Joe Bell showed me his photo
in the newspaper. Then I received a message from a lawyer. It said: ‘Call me
immediately. I have good news for you. ”
“You thought that somebody wanted to give you a million dollars?”
* Sing Sing: a prison 50 kilom eters north o f New York City, fo r people w h o have done
serious crim es
11
“No. I thought that somebody probably wanted money from me. But I went to
see the lawyer. He says he’s a lawyer. He doesn’t have an office— just a telephone
answering service. He always wants to meet in a cafe. He’s fat—he can eat ten
hamburgers in one meal. He offered me a hundred dollars a week to make a
lonely old man happy. 'You’ve got the wrong Miss Golightly,’ I told him. ‘I don’t
sell myself to old men.’ And a hundred dollars isn’t a lot of money. Men give me
fifty dollars when I go to the ladies’ bathroom. And I always ask for money for
a taxi, too— that’s another fifty dollars. ‘But the man is Sally Tomato,’ he said.
‘Old Sally has liked you for a long time. Be kind and visit him once a week.’
W hat a romantic idea! So I agreed.”
“It’s a strange story,” I said.
She smiled. “Do you think it’s untrue?”
“Complete strangers can’t visit prisoners.”
“They don’t know I’m a stranger. They think I’m his niece.”
“And he gives you a hundred dollars for an hour’s conversation?”
“He doesn’t. The lawyer, Mr. O’Shaughnessy, mails it to me after I leave the
weather report from Sally on his answering service.”
niece /ms/ (n) the daughter of your sister or brother
12
“You’re going to get into a lot of trouble,” I said.

I switched off the light. We didn’t need it now because it was morning. Birds
were singing on the fire escape.
“Why?” she said seriously.
“You’re n ot his niece. And what’s this weather report?”
She gave a tired smile. “It’s nothing. Sally tells me what to say. ‘There are
strong winds in Cuba’ or ‘It’s snowing in Palermo’. Don’t worry, darling,” she
said to me. “I can look after myself.”
She moved to the bed and pulled the bed covers over my shoulders. Then
she lay down next to me. “Is this OK?” she asked. “I only want to rest for a few
minutes. Don’t say another word. Go to sleep. ’
I didn’t sleep. It was six o’clock when she put her hand softly on my arm.
“Poor Fred,” she said softly. She wasn’t talking to me. “Where are you, Fred? I
know it’s cold. There’s snow in the wind.” She rested her head on my shoulder.
Her face was warm and wet.
“W hy are you crying?” I asked.
She moved away from me and sat up. “Oh,” she said angrily. She ran toward
the window and the fire escape. “I hate people who ask a lot of questions.”
13
Activities 2
Were you right?

Think back to Activity 1.2 on page iv. Then choose the right words to complete
these sentences.
misses apartm ents news loved

bar tenants building messages
Many years ago, the storyteller and Holly Golightly were

1...........................................in the same 2.......................................... in
New York. Joe Bell had a 3. around the corner from their
4......................................... and he took telephone 5.........................................
for them. Holly left the area, but now there is possible 6.......................................
of her. Joe says that he 7.........................................her. It is clear that, years later,
the storyteller 8.......................................... her very much, too.
What more did you learn?

Match the words below with a picture of the speaker. Write the letters A-D.
Then discuss why these words are important to the story.
1 "Something very strange has happened.”

2 “Three white people rode here on horses in the spring.”
3 “I didn't know you loved her.”
4 □ “ I am sorry. I lost my key."
14
Language in use
He agreed to talk about the carving.
Read the sentences in the box.
In which sentence is there a reason Holly and I went there to make
for an action? Complete these telephone calls.
sentences with the right reasons.
1 Holly often rang the doorbell... a to escape from the heat.
2 The writer left his apartment one nigh t... b to earn some money.
3 He looked in Holly's trash can ... c to wake other tenants.
4 One night, Holly climbed through d to give to his lawyer.

his w in d o w ...
e to escape from a drunken man.
5 She visited Sing Sin g...
f to learn more about her.
6 Sally Tomato gave her messages ...
What happens next?

Discuss the pictures in Chapters 3 and 4. What is happening in each picture?
Describe the new people in the pictures on pages 17, 22, and 24. Who are they,
do you think? W hat kind of people are they? Write notes below.
K/o+es
1 (page 17)
2 (page 22)
3 (page 24)
15
CHAPTER 3
A Party at Holly’s Apartment

“I ’ll wake up on e f i n e m orn in g a n d have breakfast a t T iffany’s.
B ut I ’ll always be Holly Golightly. ”
he next day was Friday. I came home and found a large box of expensive
T food outside my door. Below it was a card: Miss H oliday Golightly,
Traveling. Written on the back was: Thank you , da rlin g Fred. Please fo r g iv e last
night. You w ere very kind. I w o n ’t wake y o u again— Holly.
I replied, Please do, and left my note at her door with some flowers. But she
was serious. I didn’t see her or hear from her. She had a new key for the front
door. She didn’t ring my bell and I missed her.
After a few days, I felt angry. I was lonely but I didn’t want to see any of my
old friends. They seemed so uninteresting now. By Wednesday I couldn’t work.
I was thinking about Holly, Sing Sing, and Sally Tomato all the time. I was
thinking about a world where men gave women fifty dollars for the bathroom.
That night, I left a message in her mailbox: Tomorrow is Thursday. The next
morning, there was a second note from her: Thank y o u f o r tellin g me. Can you
com e f o r a drink tonight a t six o ’c lock?
I waited until ten minutes past six, and then I waited another five minutes.
A strange man opened the door. He smelled of cigarettes and soap. He was
very small and he had a big head. There was no kindness in his eyes. Hair grew
out of his ears and from his nose, and he had a gray beard.
“The kid’s in the shower,” he said. He pointed his cigarette toward the sound
of water in another room.
We were standing because there were no seats in the room. Suitcases and
unpacked boxes were the only furniture. The boxes were used as tables. On one
table there were drinks, and on another table were a telephone, Holly’s red cat,
and some yellow roses. There were bookshelves on one wall, with a few books. I
liked the room immediately. It had a careless look.
“Did she invite you?” the man asked. He looked at me carefully. “A lot
of people come here when they’re not invited. Have you known the kid for a
long time?”
'No,” I said. “I live upstairs.”
M y answer pleased him. “Is your apartment the same as this one?”
“It’s much smaller.”
“This place is a mess,” he said. “Sometimes she has plenty of money but she
still lives in a mess. So, what do you think? Is she or isn’t she?”
“Isn’t she what?’
16
C h a p te r 3 - A P a rty a t H o lly ’s A p a rtm e n t
17
“A fake.”
“I don’t think she is.”
“You’re wrong. She is a fake. But you’re also right. She isn’t a fake because
she’s a real fake. She believes all these things she believes. You can’t change
her. I’ve tried, the great Benny Polan tried. Benny wanted to marry her but she
refused. Benny spent thousands of dollars sending her to head-doctors. There
was one famous doctor, he only speaks German. He couldn’t change her. But
I like the kid. Not everybody likes her, but I do. I really like her because I’m
romantic. Only romantic people understand her. But I’ll tell you something.
You can do everything for her and she’ll give you nothing. One day she’ll kill
herself. Lots of girls kill themselves when they’re not even crazy. And she is crazy!”
“But she’s young,” I said. “She has a future.”
“You’re wrong again. A year or two ago, in California, things were different.
People were interested in her and she was near success. But if you walk out, you
can’t walk back. Holly wasn’t famous, not before The Story o f Dr. Wassell. Then
she had a future. I know. I’m the guy who was helping her.” He pointed his
cigarette at himself. “O.J. Berman.”
I didn’t know his name. I smiled politely but I’d never heard of O.J. Berman,
Hollywood actors’ agent.
“I saw her first. She was living with a guy who rode in horse races. ‘I’ll tell
the police if you don’t leave her,’ I told him. She was only fifteen years old. She
was wearing thick glasses but she had a lot of style. She just arrived in town,
came from nowhere. We gave her French lessons to make her speak better.
People were interested in her, important people. Then Benny Polan, a good guy,
wanted to marry her. W hat more can an agent ask for? Then The Story o f Dr.
Wassell. Did you see that movie? They wanted to give her a part as one of Dr.
Wassell’s nurses. Then I got the phone call.” He held his hand to his ear. ‘“This
is Holly,’ she said. ‘I’m in New York.’ ‘W hy are you in New York?’ I asked. ‘It’s
Sunday and you have an interview for the movie tomorrow.’ She said, ‘I’m in
New York because I’ve never been to New York before.’ ‘Get on a plane and
come back here,’ I told her. But she didn’t want the movie. ‘W hat do you want?’
I asked her. She said, ‘When I find out, I’ll tell you.’ You see? She’s crazy.”
The red cat jumped off its box and walked up to him. He kicked it away
with the toe of his shoe.
“Is this what she wants?” he said. “A lot of people that aren’t invited? Living
off money that men give her? Maybe she’ll marry Rusty Trawler.”
fake /feik/ (n) a copy o f som ething. Crim inals som etimes m ake fake w o rks of a rt and sell
them as real ones.
agent /'eic^ant/ (n) som eone w ho acts fo r ano ther person or com pany in business
18
C h a p te r 3 —A P a rty a t H o lly ’s A p a rtm e n t
“Sorry, I don’t know him.”

“If you don’t know Rusty Trawler, you don’t know much about the kid.”
He smiled. The smile made his face kinder. “I want to start again with
Holly. As I told you,” he said, “I really like the kid.”
“W hat are you saying about me, O.J.?” Holly came into the room with a
towel around her. Her feet were wet.
a '-r 'i > jj
1 hat you re crazy.
“Fred knows that already. Light me a cigarette, darling,” she said. She pulled
off her shower hat and shook her hair. “Not you, O.J. You make the end wet.”
She picked up the cat and put him on her shoulder.
“O.J. says bad things about me,” she told me. I lit a cigarette and she took it.
“But he does know a lot of famous people’s phone numbers. W hat’s David O.
Selznick’s* number, O.J.? I want you to call him. Tell him about Fred. He’s very
smart and he writes wonderful stories. Don’t be shy, Fred. O.J., darling, how
will you make Fred rich?”
“I’ll talk to Fred about that.”
“Remember,” she said, “I’m his agent. I’ll call you to fasten my dress. And if
anybody knocks at the door, let them in.” Then she left us.
Many people knocked at the door. In the next fifteen minutes, a group of
men filled the apartment. Some were soldiers. Most were too old to fight. They
weren’t friends. Each man was surprised when he saw the others. Were these all
the men that she met in bars? But they soon started talking.
I stood alone by the bookshelves and looked at Holly’s friends. One man
was middle-aged but he had the face of a child. It was round and fat, and there
were no lines around his eyes and mouth. He was at the center of the crowd. He
poured drinks and introduced people. It was Holly’s apartment, but his party.
Maybe he was in love with her. But he didn’t mind about the other men. He
wasn’t angry when she touched a soldier’s arm.
The man’s name was Rutherford (“Rusty”) Trawler. When both his parents
died in 1908, he was five years old. He immediately became a millionaire and
his name was often in the newspapers. After four marriages and divorces, he
was now an unmarried man again.
I read about him in a book on Holly’s shelf. It was full of pieces cut from
Sunday newspapers about Holly and Rusty. Holly walked up to me while I was
reading one of them. It said: Miss H oliday Golightly, o f the Boston Golightlys,
makes every day a holiday f o r m illionaire Rusty Trawler.
* David O. Selznick: a fam ous movie m aker. One of his movies w as Gone w ith th e W ind.
millionaire ^milys'ner/ (n) a rich person w ho has more than a m illion dollars
divorce /da'vars/ (n/v) th e ending of a m arriage, by law
19
I said, “W hat was this week’s weather report?”

She smiled but she wasn’t amused. “Forget about Sally Tomato,” she said.
“Do you like O.J.? Fie can help you, Fred.”
“You didn’t like his help,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“The Story o f Dr. Wassell. ”
“Is he still talking about that movie?” She smiled across the room at Berman.
“But he’s right, I was a bad girl. I was playing at being an actress. I didn’t
want to be a movie star— it’s too difficult. I’m too intelligent and I like myself
too much. Movie stars don’t like themselves. But one day I want to be rich
and famous—that’s part of my plan. I’ll wake up one fine morning and have
breakfast at Tiffany’s*. But I’ll always be Holly Golightly. You need a drink,”
she said. “Rusty! W ill you bring my friend a drink?”
She was still holding the cat. “Poor cat without a name,” she said. “I can’t
give him a name because he doesn’t belong to me. We met by the river one day
and he came home with me. But he isn’t mine. I don’t want to own anything
* T iffa n y 's: a fam ous, expensive je w e lry store in New York
20
C h a p te r 3 —A P a rty a t H o lly ’s A p a rtm e n t
until I have the right place. I don’t know where that place is. Tiffany’s maybe.”
She smiled and dropped the cat on the floor. “Jewelry isn’t important to me.
Well, I do like expensive jewelry. But you can’t wear the really expensive stones
until you’re forty. They only look good on old women. But I love Tiffany’s
for another reason. Listen. You know those days when you’re really unhappy
and afraid?”
“Days when you’re sad?”
“No,” she said slowly. “No, you can be sad because you’re getting fat. Or
maybe it’s rained for a long time. But sometimes you feel worse. You’re afraid
and you don’t know why. Something bad is going to happen ... Do you get
that feeling?”
“Quite often.”
“W hat do you do about it?”
“A drink helps.”
“I’ve tried that—and drugs— but they don’t help. Only one thing works
for me. I get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me because it’s so quiet.
Nothing very bad will happen to you there, not with those kind men in their
nice suits, and those wonderful, expensive smells. I want a place where I feel
as good as in Tiffany’s. Then I’ll buy some furniture and give the cat a name.
Maybe after the war, Fred and I— ”
She lifted her dark glasses. “I went to Mexico. It’s a wonderful country for
horses. I saw one house near the ocean. Fred’s good with horses.”
Rusty Trawler brought me a drink. “I’m hungry,” he said. “It’s seven-thirty
and I’m hungry. You know what the doctor says.”
“Yes, Rusty. I know what the doctor says.”
“So let’s stop the party. Let’s go.”
“Be a good boy, Rusty.” She spoke softly, but her voice was angry.
“You don’t love me,” he said.
“Nobody loves a bad boy.”
Fler words seemed to excite him. This was a game that they played. He
continued, “Dojyou love me?”
She touched his hand. “Look after the guests, Rusty. And when I’m ready,
we’ll eat.”
“Chinese food?”
“Maybe. But not too much of it. Remember what the doctor says.”
He returned to the party. There was a happy smile on his face.
“Do you love him?” I asked.
jew elry /'d3ualri/ (n) sm all, often expensive things th at you w ear on your fin g e rs or around
your neck and w rists
21
“You can love anybody if you really try. And he was very unhappy when he
was a child.”
“He is a child. That’s how he acts.”
“He feels safer. He really wants to be a girl but he can’t think like that.
‘Grow up and make a home with a nice, fatherly truck driver,’ I told him. But
he got angry and tried to knife me. He’s OK. He won’t really hurt me.”
“Thank God you’re not going to marry Mr. Trawler.”
“He’s rich. Land in Mexico costs money. Now, let’s find O.J.”
Before we moved, 1 asked her another question. “W hy does it say Traveling
on your card?”
“I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. So I told them to put Traveling. I
didn’t need those cards but I wanted to buy som ething. They’re from Tiffany’s.”
She took my hand. “Come with me. You’re going to make friends with O.J.”
Suddenly the door opened and a young woman hurried in. “H-H-Holly!”
she said. “You are so selfish. You kept all these wonderful men for yourself!”
She was more than six feet tall, taller than most of the men in the room.
Holly said angrily, “W hat are you doing here?”
“N-n-nothing, darling. I was upstairs with Yunioshi. We’re taking photos
22
C h a p te r 3 —A P a r ty a t H o lly ’s A p a rtm e n t
for a Christmas magazine. Are you angry, darling?” She smiled at the men in
the room. “You b-b-boys aren’t angry with me because I’ve come to the party?”
Rusty Trawler laughed quietly. “Do you want a drink?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said.
“There isn’t any,” Holly told her. “It’s finished.”
“Oh, that’s OK. Don’t worry about me, Holly, darling,” she said. “I can
introduce myself.” She looked down at O.J. Berman. “I’m Mag W-w-wildwood,
from Wild-w-w-wood, Arkansas. That’s in the mountains.”
The men moved around her. They liked her silly jokes. She wasn’t beautiful
but she looked interesting. She was very tall and had a flat chest. Her hair was
pulled straight back, making her thin face thinner. Even her unusual speech
made her silly words sound interesting. Men wanted to protect her. Here’s an
example. She said, “Who can tell me w-w-where the b-b-bathroom is?”
Berman ran over to her. He offered his arm to guide her there himself.
“That isn’t necessary,” said Holly. “She’s visited me before. She knows where
the bathroom is.”
After Mag Wildwood left the room, she continued. “It’s really very sad.” She
waited until the men were listening to her. “And so mysterious. She looks healthy.
She looks so clean. That’s the strange thing. Don’t you think she looks clean?”
Someone coughed. An officer was holding Mag Wildwood’s drink. He put
it down.
“But many of these Southern girls have the same trouble,” said Holly. She
shook her head sadly and went to the kitchen for more ice.
When M ag Wildwood returned, she couldn’t understand the change in
the room. Nobody wanted to talk to her. Men were leaving without taking her
telephone number. She became very angry with everyone. She shouted at Holly.
Then she invited a man in his fifties to fight. She pushed Rusty Trawler into a
corner. “Do you know what’s going to happen to you?” she said, and her speech
problem disappeared. “I’m going to feed you to the animals in Central Park.”
He looked excited at the thought, but she suddenly sat down on the floor.
“You’re very boring. Get up from there,” Holly said. The men were waiting
at the door and she was putting on her coat. When Mag Wildwood didn’t
move, Holly looked at me. “Be a darling, Fred. Put her in a taxi. She lives at the
Winslow Hotel.”
Then they were gone. I looked at Mag. She was a big woman, too big to
carry down to a taxi. But she suddenly stood up. She said, “Let’s go to the Stork
Nightclub.” Then she fell down onto the floor. Was she sick? Did she need a
doctor? But she wasn’t sick— she was asleep. I left her to enjoy her rest.
23
CHAPTER
A Conversation about Men

There was a n ew nam e on the ca rd on H olly’s mailbox.
Miss G olightly a n d M iss W ildw ood w ere n ow travelin g together.
he next afternoon I met Holly on the stairs. “You,” she said, hurrying past
T with a package from the drugstore. “You left her there to die from the cold!
And now she’s really unhappy.”
I realized from her words that Mag Wildwood was still in the apartment.
But Holly didn’t stop to talk. Suddenly she was worried about M ag— but the
night before she hated her. I didn’t understand.
During the weekend, there was a bigger mystery. First, a Spanish or Italian
man came to my door and asked for Miss Wildwood. Our conversation was
difficult because he didn’t understand my English. But I liked him. His brown
24
Chapter 4 —A Conversation about Men
face was handsome and he wore an expensive suit.

Toward evening, I saw him again. I was going out to dinner and he was
arriving in a taxi. The driver helped him carry a lot of suitcases into the house.
That gave me something to think about.
Sunday was a warm, late summer day. The sun was strong and my window
was open. I heard voices on the fire escape. Holly and M ag were lying there,
with the cat between them. Mag was making a woollen sweater.
“I think you’re 1-1-lucky,” she said to Holly. “There’s one good thing you can
say about Rusty. He’s an American.”
“W hy is that important?”
“Darling. We’re in the middle of a war.”
“And when it ends, you won’t see me again. I’ll leave the country. I’m going
to travel the world.”
“I don’t feel that w ay I’m p-p-proud of my country. The men in my family
were great soldiers. There’s a big statue of Grandfather Wildwood in the center
of Wildwood.”
“Fred’s a soldier,” said Holly. “But there’ll never be a statue of him. I don’t
think he’s a great soldier. But maybe he is. Brave people are usually stupid and
he’s quite stupid.”
“Is Fred that boy upstairs? Is he a soldier? He does look stupid.”
“He’s not stupid. And he’s a different Fred. Fred’s my brother.”
“You call your own b-b-brother stupid?”
“He is stupid.”
“Don’t say that! That boy is fighting for you and me and all of us.”
“W hat is this: a speech for the government?”
“I want you to understand. I like a joke, but I’m a really s-s-serious person.
I’m proud to be an American. That’s why I’m sorry about Jose. He’s very
handsome, isn’t he?”
Holly agreed and started playing with the cat.
“But I can’t imagine m-m-marrying a Brazilian. And bein g a B-b-brazilian
myself. It’s a long way from here. Six thousand miles, and I don’t know the
language— ”
“Go to a language school.”
“Do they teach P-p-portu-guese? Do people really speak Portuguese? No,
Jose must stop working for the Brazilian government. He must become an
American. W hy does he want to be the p-p-president of Brazil. That’s a crazy
idea.” She was quiet for a minute, then she spoke again. “I’m really in love. You
saw us together. Do you think I’m really in love?”
statue /'staetju/ (n) a large carving made o f w ood , stone, or metal
25
“Does he bite?”
“Bite?”
“Bite you. When you’re in bed.”
“No. Is that important?” Then she continued, “But he does laugh.”
“That’s good. I like a man who laughs in bed. Most of them just make
strange noises. OK. He doesn’t bite in bed but he laughs. And— ?”
Mag didn’t answer.
“I said—
“I heard you. And I want to tell you. But it’s difficult to remember. I d-d-
don’t think about these things much. About sex and men. You do but I don’t.
They go out of my head like a dream. Most people don’t talk about sex, Holly.
I’m a very-very-very ordinary person.”
“It’s natural to think about sex. And to look at men. W hat’s wrong with
looking at a guy’s body? A lot of men are beautiful. Jose is beautiful, but you
don’t even look at him in bed. So you’re not in love with him.”
“L-l-lower your voice.”
26
“You’re not in love with him,” Holly repeated.

“I’m a loving person. I have a loving heart.”
“OK. You have a loving heart. But that doesn’t keep a man warm in bed.”
“Jose isn’t unhappy,” Mag said. “And I am in love with him. I make winter
sweaters and socks for him. I’ve made ten pairs of socks in three months. And
this is the second sweater.”
She put down the sweater. “But why am I doing this? Sweaters in Brazil! I
should make s-s-sun hats.”
Holly lay back. “Surely they have a winter.”
“I know that it rains. Heat. Rain. T-t-t-trees.”
“Heat. Trees. It sounds good to me.”
“Better for you than for me.”
“Yes,” said Holly, sounding sleepy. “Better for me than for you.”
♦
On Monday, when I went down for the morning mail, there was a new name
on the card on Holly’s mailbox. Miss Golightly and Miss Wildwood were now
traveling together.
I wasn’t very interested because there was a letter in my own mailbox. It was
from a small college magazine. They liked one of my stories. They couldn’t pay
me but that wasn’t important. They wanted to print the story. P rin t the story in
a magazine! I was so excited. I wanted to tell someone. Running up the stairs, I
knocked loudly on Holly’s door.
I couldn’t speak when she opened the door. Her eyes were half-closed with
sleep. I gave her the letter and she read it slowly. Then she gave it back to me.
“Don’t let them use your story. Not until they pay for it,” she said.
I looked at her angrily. I didn’t want her opinions. I wanted her to be happy
for me.
She smiled. “Oh, I understand. It’s wonderful. Come in,” she said. “We’ll
make some coffee and have a party. No. I’ll get dressed and take you to lunch.”
Her bedroom was in the same state as the other rooms in the apartment.
There were a lot of boxes and suitcases. All her things were packed. She was
ready to leave. This room did have a piece of furniture, though— a double bed
made of light wood, with a shiny cover.
She left the door of the bathroom open. As she washed, she talked to me.
“You know that Mag Wildwood has moved in? Isn’t that good? She’s not a
lesbian, but she’s stupid. That’s almost as good as a lesbian. A stupid person will
pay for the apartment a n d take my clothes to the cleaner’s.”
She came out of the bathroom. “And she’s quite a successful actress. Isn’t that
great? She’ll be out of the apartment for most of the day. And there won’t be too
27
much trouble with men because she’s getting married. He’s a nice guy, too. But
he’s a little smaller than her— about a foot smaller. Now where— ?”
She was on her knees looking under the bed. She found her shoes, then she
searched for a shirt and a belt. The room was a mess but Holly was perfect.
“Listen,” she said, and put her hand on my face. “I’m happy about the story.
I really am.”
That was a beautiful Monday in October 1943. We started with drinks at
Joe Bell’s bar. When he heard of my good luck, he refused to take our money.
Later, we walked toward Fifth Avenue*, and watched the soldiers. They were
playing music, not for the war but for me.
We ate lunch at the cafe in the park. Then we laughed and ran and sang
along the paths toward the old wooden boathouse. It’s not there now. An old
man was sweeping up trash and putting it on a fire. The smoke made the only
dark cloud in the sky. It was the end of the year but to me this was the start
of something.
I sat with Holly near the boathouse. I thought of the future and spoke of
the past.
“When you were a child, was life good?” Holly asked.
She listened to my stories about my life before New York. Then she told me
about her life but the telling was strange. She didn’t name places or people. “I
had pretty cousins and we had lots of parties,” she said. “We went swimming in
the summer. I was very happy.”
“But you ran away from home when you were fourteen,” I said.
“That’s true. The rest of my story was a lie. But really, darling, your story
was so sad. I didn’t want my story to be sad, too.”
She stood up. “I’ve remembered something. I must send a gift to Fred.”
That afternoon we walked around New York, looking for gifts for Fred. She
wanted food for him. “He’s a big, tall guy and he loves to eat,” she said.
It was dark when we came out of the last grocer’s store. We were near the
store with the bird cage in its window, so I showed it to her. She liked it.
“I t’s beautiful,” she said. “But it is a cage. Nothing can be free inside there.”
We were near a larger store and she took my arm. “Let’s steal something,” she
said, and she pulled me inside.
I was scared because people were watching us. Holly laughed and stole
something small. Then she took my hand and we walked away. It was as simple
as that. Outside, we ran for a few blocks because we were so excited.
“Have you often stolen things?” I asked.
* Fifth Avenue: a fam ous street in New York City
28
“I had to when I was younger,” she said. “I steal sometimes now— it’s good
practice. One day I may need to do it again.”
I have a memory of spending many days like that with Holly. Sometimes
we d id spend a lot of time together but in reality the memory is a lie. Toward
the end of the month, I found a job. It was necessary and I worked from nine
o’clock in the morning to five in the evening.
My hours were very different to Holly’s. When I came home from work,
Holly was getting out of bed, except on Thursday, her Sing Sing day. She also
got up early in the day when she went horse riding.
Sometimes, I stopped at her apartment for a cup of coffee. She was always
going out, usually with Rusty Trawler, Mag Wildwood, and the handsome
Brazilian. His name was Jose Ybarra-Jaegar because his mother was German.
They were a strange group. Ybarra-Jaegar was different to Holly, Rusty, and
Mag. He was intelligent, well-dressed, and serious about his work. He was
something important in the government and went to Washington three or four
days a week. Did he enjoy these nights? Night after night in clubs— La Rue or
El Morocco—listening to Mag t-t-t-talk and looking at Rusty’s baby-face?
He was a foreigner, I thought. He didn’t understand Americans. To him,
we were all the same. He didn’t realize that people were different— some good
and some bad. He thought we were all interesting and fun to be with. And, I
thought. Holly wanted him.
That explains some of what happened next.
29
Activities 3
Were you right?

Look back at your notes in Activity 2.4. Read these descriptions from the
book and write the missing words. Find the descriptions in Chapters 3 and 4
and check your answers.
O.J. Berman: He was very small and he had a big 1...........................................

There was no kindness in his 2....................................... . Hair grew out of his
3.......................................... and from h is 4........................................., and he had a
gray 5...........................................
Mag: She wasn’t beautiful but she looked 6 . She was
very tall and had a ......................................... chest. Her hair was pulled straight
back, making her 8....................................... face thinner. Even her unusual
speech made her 9...........................................words sound interesting.
Jose: He was intelligent, well-dressed, and 10...........................................about
his work. He was something 11......................................... in the government and
went to Washington three or four days a week.

What are these people thinking? Write the letters a-f.
a "He says he's Holly's agent.” d "She's not really in love with Jose.”
b "I don't really want to live in Brazil." e "This guy says he's a writer."
c “ I love him— he's handsome, rich, f "I like these strange people—
and important.” they are interesting and fun.”
30
Language in use
When I came home from work,
Read the sentences in the box. Why is
Holly was getting out of bed.
the past progressive verb form used in
the first sentence and not in the second? I couldn't speak when she
Complete each of these sentences with opened the door.
one past simple and one past progressive
verb form. Choose a verb from each box.
sit live plan meet steal knock

watch sleep talk arrive leave go
1 H o lly in California when she

O.J. Berman.
2 When H o lly ...................................... to New York, Berman

her future.
3 I . to Holly when MagW ildw ood............................................

at the party.
4 Mag on the floor when everyone......................

Holly's apartment.
5 When I ......................................... on the door with my letter, H o lly ..................................
6 People.......................................... when H o lly ...............................................something from

a large store.
What happens next?

Read the titles of Chapters 5 and 6 and the words in italics below them.
Then discuss these questions. What do you think?
1 Who will give Holly a gift from Tiffany's? W hat will it be?
2 W hat will Holly and the storyteller have a serious disagreement about?
3 When and why did Holly change her name?
4 W hy has Holly never talked about her husband?
31
CHAPTER
A Gift from Tiffanys

Holly G olightly was ou t o f m y life. She w asn’t important.
I d id n ’t n eed to speak to h er again.
ate one afternoon, I was waiting for a bus on Fifth Avenue when I saw a
L taxi stop across the street. A girl got out and ran up the steps of the library,
through the doors of the building. Suddenly I realized it was Holly. I was
surprised because the idea of Holly in a library was very strange.
I followed her inside the building. She went into the reading room, where
she sat at a desk in front of a pile of books. She was wearing her dark glasses.
She turned quickly from one book to the next, sometimes reading a page more
carefully. She held a pencil above a piece of paper but didn’t write much. When
she did write, her pencil moved slowly.
I remembered a girl from school, Mildred Grossman. Mildred was a serious
girl with thin, straight hair and dirty glasses. She never dreamed of a more
exciting life. Mildred and Holly were very different but in my mind they were
similar. Most people change every few years; their ideas and even their bodies
change. But these were two people who could never change. For this reason I
looked at Holly Golightly and thought about Mildred Grossman.
32
C h a p te r 5 - A G ift fro m T if f a n y ’s
I imagined them in a restaurant in the future. Mildred will read the menu
carefully. Then she’ll ask the waiter, “Is this food healthy? Is it good for me?”
Holly will want to try everythin g on the menu.
It was after seven o’clock. Holly put on more lipstick and some jewelry. She
was preparing to go to a night club. When she left the library, I walked over to
her table. Her books were there; they were all books about Brazil.
The night before Christmas, Holly and Mag gave a party.
I arrived early. “Look in the bedroom. There’s a gift for you,” Holly said.
I had a gift for her, too. There was a small package in my pocket.
On the bed I saw the beautiful bird cage.
“But, Holly! That’s terrible!” I said.
“I agree. But yo u liked it.”
“The money! It cost three hundred and fifty dollars!”
lipstick /'lip^tik/ (n) som ething th a t changes th e color of your m outh. M any w om en w ear
red lipstick.
33
She laughed. “It cost a few trips to the bathroom. Promise me, though.
Promise you’ll never put a living thing inside it.”
I started to kiss her but she held out her hand. “Give me that,” she said,
touching the package in my pocket.
“It isn’t much,” I said. It was a very small piece of jewelry— but it came
from Tiffany’s.
Holly couldn’t keep anything. I’m sure she has lost that piece of jewelry by
now. She’s probably left it in a suitcase or a hotel closet. But I still have the bird
cage. I’ve carried it to New Orleans, Nantucket, Europe, Morocco, the West
Indies. But I often forget that Holly gave it to me. One day, we had a fight. We
fought about the bird cage, and about O.J. Berman. And we fought about my
story, when it was printed in the college magazine.
♦
In February, Holly went on a winter trip with Rusty, Mag, and Jose Ybarra-
Jaegar. Our fight happened soon after she returned. Her skin was very brown
and her hair was almost white from the sun.
“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she told me. “First we were in Key West,
Florida, and Rusty was angry with some sailors. Or maybe the sailors were
angry with him. He went to hospital and now he’ll have a bad back for the rest
of his life. Dear Mag went to the hospital, too— she was badly burned by the
sun. She looked terrible and the doctors put something on her skin. We hated
the smell of her. So Jose and I left them in the hospital and went to Havana.
Fie says I’ll love Rio more. But Havana is wonderful. Then we went back to
Key West. Mag was sure I was sleeping with Jose. Rusty was, too, but it didn’t
matter to him. Mag was very unfriendly until I had a long talk with her.”
It was March and we were in the living room in Holly’s apartment. There was
a new piece of furniture: a small bed. Holly was lying on it under a sun lamp.
“And she believed you?”
“That I didn’t sleep with Jose? Yes. ‘I’m a lesbian,’ I told her. ‘I don’t sleep
with men.’”
“She didn’t believe that!”
“She did. That’s why she bought this bed. You know me— I can always tell a
good story. Darling, put some oil on my back.”
I put the oil on her skin. Then she said, “O.J. Berman’s in New York. Listen,
I gave him your story in the magazine. He liked it. He wants to help you. But
you’re writing about the wrong subjects. Blacks and children: who’s interested
in them?”
“Mr. Berman isn’t?”
lamp /temp/ (n) som ething th a t produces light from electricity. A sun lam p makes your skin
brow n.
34
C h a p te r 5 —A G ift fro m T if f a n y ’s
“I agree with him. I read that story twice. Kids and Blacks. Lots of
descriptions. The story doesn’t m ean anything.”
I was still putting the oil on her skin. Suddenly I was very angry. I wanted to
hit her. “Give me an example,” I said quietly, “of a story that means something.
In your opinion.”
“W uthering Heights," she said, immediately.
That made me more angry. “You can’t compare my story with W uthering
Heights. That’s one of the greatest books in the world!”
“It is, isn’t it? M y w ild sw eet Cathy. I cried millions of tears. I saw it ten times.”
“Oh,” I said. “The m ovie?
She lifted her head and looked at me. Her eyes were cold and angry. “You
think you’re better than I am,” she said.
“I don’t compare myself to you. Or Berman. So I’m not better than you. But
we want different things.”
“Don’t you want to make money?”
“I don’t think about the future,” I said.
“That’s how your stories sound. You write them without knowing the end.
But I tell you: you need money. You like expensive things. Not many people are
going to buy you bird cages.”
« r
Sorry.»
“You will be sorry if you hit me. You wanted to a minute ago. I felt it in your
hand. You want to hit me now.”
Yes, I did. M y hand and my heart were shaking as I put the top on the bottle
of oil.
“I’m sorry you spent your money on me,” I said. “You worked hard to earn it.”
“W hat do you mean?” she asked, quietly.
“Spending time with Rusty Trawler,” I said. “That’s a hard way to
earn money.”
She sat up on the bed. Her face and her shoulders were blue in the light from
the sun lamp. “It takes about four seconds to walk from here to the door,” she
said. “You have two seconds to get out.”
I went upstairs and picked up the bird cage. I took it down and left it in
front of her door. That, I thought, was the end of that. But the next morning,
when I was going to work, I saw the cage on the sidewalk with the trash.
I picked it up and carried it back to my room. It was too beautiful to throw
away. But Holly Golightly was out of my life. She wasn’t important. I didn’t
need to speak to her again.
And I didn’t speak to her again for a long time. I passed her on the stairs but
I didn’t look at her. If she walked into Joe Bell’s bar, I walked out.
35
One day Mrs. Sapphia Spanella, the tenant on the first floor, sent a letter
to the other tenants. “Miss Golightly must leave this building,” the letter said.
“She has late-night parties and brings strangers into the house. We are not safe
while she is living here. Please sign this letter and I will send it to the owner of
the building.”
I refused to sign but secretly I agreed with Mrs. Spanella. But her letter
failed. In early May, the open-windowed, warm spring nights were noisy with
the sound of parties from Apartment 2.
36
CH APTER I 6
A Visitor from Holly’s Past

“H er nam e isn ’t H olly,” he said. “She was L ulamae Barnes u n til she m a rried me.
I ’m h er husband, D oc Golightly. ”
t wasn’t unusual for strange people to come to Holly’s door. One day late that
I spring, when I walked into the building, I saw a very strange man. He was
looking at her mailbox.
He was about fifty years old, with a tired face and sad gray eyes. He wore
an old gray hat and his cheap summer suit was too big for him. His shoes were
brown and new. He didn’t ring Holly’s doorbell. Slowly, he touched the letters
of her name on her card.
That evening, on my way to supper, I saw the man again. He was standing
across the street, under a tree, looking up at Holly’s windows. W hat did he want?
Was he a detective? Or someone sent by her Sing Sing friend, Sally Tomato?
Suddenly I felt sorry for Holly. We were enemies but I wanted to help her. As
I walked to the corner, the man looked at me. Then he started to follow me. He
was singing quietly— Holly’s song: “I d o n ’t w an t to sleep, I d o n ’t w an t to die.
I ju s t w ant to tra vel through the sky. ”
I waited for a traffic light to change. I looked at him out of the corner of my
eye as he spoke to a dog-owner. “You have a fine animal,” he said. His voice was
low and he came from the hill-country.
The hamburger restaurant was empty but he sat next to me at the bar. He
smelled of cigarettes. He ordered a cup of coffee but didn’t drink it. He looked
at me in the mirror on the wall opposite us.
“Excuse me,” I said. I looked at him in the mirror, too. “W hat do you want?”
The question didn’t make him nervous. “I need a friend,’’ he said.
He pulled an old wallet from his pocket and took out a photo. There were
seven people in the picture, in front of a wooden house. They were all children,
except for the man. He had his arm around the waist of a pretty little girl.
“That’s me,” he said, pointing at himself. “That’s her ...” He pointed at the
girl. “And this one here,” he added, “is her brother, Fred.”
I looked at “her” again. Yes, now I could see that the child was Holly.
“You’re Holly’s fa th er !’
“Her name isn’t Holly,” he said. “She was Lulamae Barnes until she married
me. I’m her husband, D oc Golightly. Call me Doc. I’m a horse doctor. I do some
farming, too, near Tulip, in Texas. W hy are you laughing?”
I wasn’t really laughing. I was nervous. I drank some water and it went down
the wrong way. He hit me on the back. “This isn’t funny. I’m a tired man. I’ve
37
looked for my woman for five years. Then I got Fred’s letter. ‘She’s in New
York,’ he wrote. I bought a bus ticket and came to the city. I want Lulamae at
home, with her husband and her children.”
“Children?”
“Those are her children,” he almost shouted. He pointed at the four other
young faces in the picture— two girls and two boys.
Of course, the man was crazy. “Holly can’t be their mother. Those children
are older and bigger than she is.”
“Listen,” he said calmly. “I’m not saying they’re her natural children. Their
own dear mother, a good woman, died on the fourth of July, 1936. I married
Lulamae in December, 1938, when she was almost fourteen years old. Maybe an
ordinary person of fourteen doesn’t know what she wants. But Lulamae isn’t an
ordinary person. ‘I know what I want,’ she said to me. ‘I want to be your wife
and the mother of your children.’ She broke our hearts when she ran away.”
He drank his cold coffee and looked at me carefully. “Do you believe me?”
Yes, I believed him. His story was so strange, it had to be true. And it was
like O.J. Berman’s description of Holly in her first days in California.
38
C h a p te r 6 —A V isito r fro m H o lly ’s Past
“She broke our hearts when she ran away,” the horse doctor repeated. “She
had no reason to go. Her daughters did all the housework. We had our own
farm, chickens and pigs. She got fat and her brother grew really tall. They didn’t
come to us like that. Nellie, my oldest girl, brought them into the house. She
came to me one morning. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘I’ve locked two wild children in the
kitchen. They were outside stealing m ilk and eggs.’ That was Lulamae and Fred.
They were very thin and their teeth were falling out. Their mother and their
father got sick and died. All the children were sent to live with different people.
Lulamae and her brother lived with some terrible people, a hundred miles east
of Tulip. She had a good reason to run away from their house. But she didn’t
have a reason to leave my house. It was her home.”
He put his hands over his eyes. “She grew into a really pretty woman. She
was fun, too. She talked a lot. She had an opinion about everything. I picked
flowers for her. I found a bird for her and taught it to say her name. I taught
her to play the guitar. One night I asked her to marry me. I was crying. ‘W hy
are you crying, Doc?’ she asked me. ‘O f course I’ll marry you. I’ve never been
married before.’ I had to laugh. I ’ve n ever been m a rried before.”
He laughed quietly. “That woman was happy!” he said. “We all loved
her. She didn’t do anything except eat and wash her hair. And send away for
magazines. We spent a hundred dollars on magazines. That was the problem.
She read those magazines and they gave her dreams about a different life. Then
she started walking down the road from the farm. Every day she walked a little
more. First she walked a mile and came home. Then she went two miles and
came home. One day she didn’t stop walking.”
He put his hands over his eyes again. “The bird went wild and flew away. All
summer you could hear him. In the yard. In the woods. All summer that bird
was calling: ‘Lulamae, Lulamae.’”
Then he stopped talking. I paid our checks and we left the cafe together.
It was a cold, windy evening. We were both quiet. Then I said, “But what
happened to her brother? Didn’t he leave?”
“No, sir,” he said. “Fred stayed with us until he became a soldier. He’s a
good boy, good with horses. He didn’t understand Lulamae. ‘W hy has she left
her brother and husband and children?’ he asked. After he left the farm, he had
some letters from her. He sent me her address. So I’ve come to get her. I know
she’s sorry. I know she wants to go home.”
He wanted me to agree with him.
“I think you’ll find that Holly— or Lulamae—has changed,” I said.
“Listen,” he said, when we reached my apartment building. “I need a friend.
I don’t want to surprise her or scare her. Be my friend. Tell her I’m here.”
39
I liked the idea of introducing Mrs. Golightly to her husband. I looked up

at her lighted windows. I hoped her friends were there. I wanted to see Doc
Golightly shake hands with M ag and Rusty and Jose. But then I looked at Doc
Golightly’s proud, serious eyes and I felt bad.
He followed me into the house and waited at the bottom of the stairs. “Do 1
look nice?” he asked quietly.
Holly was alone. She answered the door immediately. She was ready to go
out. “Hello, you silly man,” she said. She hit my arm playfully with her purse.
“I’m in a hurry so we can’t make friends now. Tomorrow, OK?”
“OK, Lulamae. But will you be here tomorrow?”
She took off her dark glasses and looked closely at me. “He told you that,”
she said in a small, nervous voice. “Oh, please. Where is he?”
She ran past me into the hall. “Fred!” she called down the stairs. “Fred!
Where are you, darling?”
I heard Doc Golightly climbing the stairs. Holly saw him and stopped. She
wasn’t scared but suddenly she was very sad. Then he was standing shyly in
front of her.
“Hello, Lulamae,” he began. “Don’t they feed you up here? You’re so thin—
like when I first saw you.”
Holly touched his face. “Hello, Doc,” she said softly and kissed him. “Hello,
Doc,” she repeated happily. He lifted her off her feet and started to laugh.
Neither of them saw me when I went up to my room. They didn’t seem
to notice Mrs. Sapphia Spanella when she opened her door. “Be quiet!” she
shouted. “Take your men away from this house!”
♦
“D ivorce him? Of course I never divorced him. I was only fourteen!” Holly lifted
her empty glass. “Two more drinks, my darling Mr. Bell.”
We were in Joe Bell’s bar. “It’s early in the day for drinking,” he said. The
clock behind the bar showed that it was not yet noon. We were already on our
fourth drink.
“But it’s Sunday, Mr. Bell. The clocks are slow on Sundays. And I haven’t
been to bed yet,” she told him. “Not to sleep,” she said quietly to me. She went
red and turned away.
For the first time, she seemed to feel a need to explain her actions to me.
“I had to. Doc really loves me, you know. And I love him. He may look old to
you but you don’t know him. He’s a kind man, he loves birds and children. He
gave me a lot. Every night I ask God to watch over him. Stop smiling!” she said
angrily. “I do love him.”
“You’re a very special person,” I said.
40
C h a p te r 6 —A V isito r fro m H o lly ’s Past
“Yes, I am,” she said. Her face, pale in the morning light, brightened. She
smoothed her hair. “I look terrible. We spent the night in a bus station. Doc
wanted me to go with him. I told him, ‘Doc, I’m not fourteen and I’m not
Lulamae.’ But you know what’s sad? I am the same person. I’m still stealing eggs
and running through the trees.”
Joe Bell put the fresh drinks in front of us.
“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,” Holly told him. “That was Doc’s
mistake. He was always bringing home wild things. Once it was a sick bird,
then a wild cat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing.
If you give them your heart, they get stronger. Then one day they are so strong
that they run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the
sky. If you love a wild thing too much, they run away.”
“She’s drunk,” Joe Bell told me.
“A little,” Holly said. “But Doc understood. I explained it to him very
carefully. We shook hands and he held me. He wants me to be happy.”
“W hat’s she talking about?” Joe Bell asked me.
Holly lifted her glass and touched it against mine. “Good luck, Doc. Dearest
Doc— it’s good to look at the sky. But you don’t want to live there. It’s a very
empty place.”
Activities 4
Were you right?

Think back to your discussions in Activity 3.4. Then complete these sentences.
1 The gift w a s ........................................................It was a gift fro m .......................................................
2 The disagreement between the storyteller and Holly was about
3 Holly changed her last name when ....
She changed her first name w h e n ......................................................
4 Holly has probably never talked about her husband because

1 Put these sentences in order. Number them 1-8.
a □ Holly and Jose went to Havana.
b □ Mag and Holly became friends again.
c m Holly visited the library to read about Brazil.
d □ Mag was badly burned by the sun.
e □ Mag and Rusty thought that Holly was Jose's lover.
f □ They all returned to New York.
g □ Holly went on vacation with Rusty, Mag, and Jose.

h □ Rusty fought some sailors and was hurt.
2 Discuss these questions with another student.

a W hat did you learn about Holly in Chapters 5 and 6?
b W hy was she interested in Jose?
c What did Doc think about her?
d W hy was she unhappy when she saw Doc?
e Do you think she is a bad woman? Give reasons for your answer.
42
Language in use You w ill be sorry

Read the sentence in the box. Then complete these if you hit me.
first conditional sentences. Use the verbs in italics.
1 I ................. . .. (not fin d out) that man's name if I
(notspeak) to him.
2 I ................................................................ (talk) to that man if he
(go) into the restaurant.
3 I ................................................................ (believe) Doc's story if he
(show) me a photo of him and Holly.
4 H o lly ................................................................... (be)
happy if s h e ...................................... ......................... (see) Doc again?
5 If D o c ................................................... ........... (find) Holly, he
(take) her home to his farm.
6 If H o lly ................................................ ........... (return) to the farm with Doc, she
(run away) again.
What happens next?

Look at the pictures and discuss these people. Who will:
1 marry Rusty Trawler? 4 make plans to leave New York?
2 send bad news to Holly? 5 have a horse riding accident?
3 move into Holly's apartment?
43
CHAPTER
A Death in the Family

“Run!" shou ted Mrs. Spanella, p u sh in g me. “Tell the p o lice there is a m u rd er!”
I ran, bu t only upstairs to H olly’s door.
USTY TRAWLER MARRIES FIFTH WIFE. I was on a subway

R train when I saw those words in another passenger’s newspaper. I read:
M illionaire R utherford ( “R usty”) Trawler yesterday m a rried a beau tifu l—
I didn’t want to read any more. So Holly was married to him. I wanted to be
under the wheels of the train.
The few weeks after our Sunday at Joe Bell’s bar were difficult. First, I lost
my job because of a silly mistake. I was scared. I didn’t want to leave New York
but could I stay there without work? And there was still a war in Europe. I was
the right age but I really didn’t want to be a soldier.
That day I was on a subway because I was looking for another job. I was
returning from an interview with a newspaper. It was summer and the city was
hot. I felt tired and nervous and unhappy. So yes, part of me already wanted to
be under the wheels of the train. Then I saw the newspaper. Holly was married
to that stupid man. The world was going crazy.
Was I angry because I was in love with Holly? Maybe. I was in love with
her. I loved Holly in the same way that I loved my mother’s old cook, and the
mailman, and the McKendrick family in my home town. She was an important
part of my life. I didn’t want to lose her friendship.
N t M u i i v o ------
HORS E WINS P A i z f
44
C h a p te r 7 —A D e a th in th e F a m ily
When I arrived at the station, I bought a newspaper. I read the end of the
sentence and discovered the name of Rusty’s new wife: ... a b eau tifu l g ir l fro m
the Arkansas hills, Miss M argaret T hatcher Fitzhue W ildwood. Mag! My legs
started to shake and I took a taxi home.
♦
Mrs. Sapphia Spanella met me in the hall. Her eyes were wild. “Run!” she said.
“Bring the police. She is killing somebody! Somebody is killing her!”
There was a lot of noise in Holly’s apartment. Breaking glass, furniture
falling over. But strangely, there were no angry voices.
“Run!” shouted Mrs. Spanella, pushing me. “Tell the police there is a murder!”
I ran, but only upstairs to Holly’s door. I knocked on it loudly and the noise
inside stopped. But she didn’t let me into the apartment. I tried to break down
the door but only hurt my shoulder. Then below me I heard Mrs. Spanella
giving orders to another man. “Get the police!” she said.
“Be quiet,” the man told her. “And move away from me.”
It was Jose Ybarra-Jaegar. He didn’t look like a smart Brazilian government
employee now. He was nervous and scared.
“Move out of my way,” he ordered me. Using his own key, he opened the
door. “Come in here, Dr. Goldman,” he said to the man who was with him.
I followed them into the apartment. It was a terrible mess. The lamps were
broken and there were books and records on the floor. In the middle of the
room, Holly’s cat was calmly drinking milk from a broken bottle.
In the bedroom, I stepped on Holly’s dark glasses. They were lying on the
floor, already broken into two pieces.
Holly lay on the bed. She didn’t move or say anything. The doctor took
her hand. “You’re a tired young lady. Very tired. You want to go to sleep, don’t
you? Sleep.”
Holly touched her face, leaving blood on it from a cut finger. “Sleep,” she
said. Her voice was tired and childish. “I can sleep when he’s there ... I hold
him on cold nights ... I saw a place in Mexico ... With horses. Near the ocean.”
“W ith horses near the ocean,” repeated the doctor softly. He took something
from his black case.
Jose looked at the doctor. “Is she sad?” he asked. “Is she sick only because
she’s sad?”
“That didn’t hurt, did it?” asked the doctor. He touched Holly’s arm with a
small piece of cotton.
She turned to the doctor. “E verything hurts. Where are my glasses?” But she
didn’t need them. Her eyes were already closing.
“She is only sad?” Jose asked again.
45
“Please, sir,” the doctor said angrily. “Leave me alone with the patient.”
Jose went back to the living room. Then he shouted at Mrs. Spanella and
pushed her out of the apartment.
“Don’t touch me! I’ll call the police,” she said.
At first he wanted to throw me out of the apartment, too. Then suddenly he
invited me to have a drink.
“I am worried,” he told me. “The newspaper reporters will write about this.
Breaking up the apartment. Acting like a crazy woman. M y work is important.
I don’t want my name in the newspapers.”
“This is h er apartment. It’s a private place,” I said. “There’s no reason for the
newspapers to write about it.”
“It’s only because she’s sad,” he said. “First she threw her glass, then the
bottle. Those books. A lamp. Then I was scared. I hurried out and brought
the doctor.”
“But why?” I wanted to know. “W hy is she so unhappy about Rusty?”
“Rusty?” he asked.
I was still carrying my newspaper and showed it to him.
“Oh, that.” He smiled. “They’re not important. We laughed at Rusty and
Mag. We weren’t unhappy. It was good for us. We wanted them to run away.
I promise you, we were laughing. Then the sad news came.”
His eyes searched the mess on the floor and he picked up a ball of yellow
paper. “This,” he said.
It was a message from Tulip, Texas; I received a letter about y o u n g Fred. He
was killed w hile he was fig h tin g in Europe. Your husband a n d children are very
sorry. Letter follow s. Love Doc.
Holly only spoke about her brother once after that day. And she stopped
calling me Fred. All through the warm summer months of June and July, she
stayed at home. Her hair darkened and she grew fatter. She became careless
about her clothes. Once, she ran to the food store wearing a raincoat and
nothing under it.
Jose moved into the apartment and his name took the place of Mag
Wildwood’s on the mailbox. Holly was alone for a lot of the time because Jose
stayed in Washington three days a week. When he was away, she didn’t see
anyone. She only left the apartment on Thursdays, when she made her weekly
trip to Sing Sing.
She seemed happier. But she was also acting very strangely.
Suddenly she wanted to make her apartment into a home. She bought
pictures and furniture. She bought a lot of books and records. She bought
a statue of a Chinese cat. Her cat hated the statue and broke it. She bought
46
C h a p te r 7 —A D e a th in th e F a m ily
mixing bowls and cook books and a stove. She spent afternoons in the
small kitchen.
“Jose says that I’m a great cook. I’m smart, aren’t I? A month ago, I couldn’t
boil an egg.”
She still couldn’t boil eggs. Simple dishes— steak, a salad—were too difficult
for her. She fed Jose (and sometimes me) strange soups, meat cooked with fruit,
chicken and rice with chocolate.
“It’s a special meal from eastern India, darling,” she told me.
She started to learn Portuguese. She played the same language records again
and again, until we were both bored.
She started almost every sentence with: “After we’re married ...” Sometimes
she said, “When we move to Rio ...” But Jose never suggested marriage.
“But he will, darling. He knows I’m having a baby. Well, I am, darling.
W hy are you surprised? I’m not surprised, I’m very happy. I want to have nine
children. Some of them will be dark-skinned like Jose. There’s some black
blood in him. But you knew that. That’s OK—a dark-skinned baby with bright
green eyes will be beautiful. I’m sad because he wasn’t my first lover. I haven’t
had a lot of lovers— only eleven. I don’t count the men before I was thirteen.
They weren’t important. People think I’ve had a lot more lovers. Eleven. Does
that make me a prostitute? Think of Mag Wildwood. Or Honey Tucker.
Or Rose Ellen Ward. They’ve had a lot more lovers. Of course, I don’t have a
problem with prostitutes. Some of them can be good friends— but they all tell
lies. Think about it. You have sex with a guy and take his checks. Then you
tell yourself that you love him. I always try to love them a little. Even Benny
Shacklett and all those terrible men. Except for Doc, Jose is my first real love.
Oh, he’s not perfect. He tells lies sometimes. He worries about what people
think. He takes fifty baths a day. He’s too careful to be my perfect guy. He
always turns away from me when he undresses. He makes too much noise when
he eats. But I do love Jose. I’ll stop smoking if he asks me. He’s frien d ly. I laugh
when I’m with him. I don’t get unhappy now, not often. And I’m only a little
unhappy. I’m not so unhappy that I go to Tiffany’s. I take Jose’s suit to the
cleaner’s, or cook him a meal, and I’m fine. And another thing— I don’t worry
about the future. Good things only happen to you if you’re honest. I sometimes
break the law but I’m honest to myself. I don’t tell myself lies. It’s better to have
a terrible painful sickness than a dishonest heart. Oh, forget it! Pass me my
guitar and I’ll sing you a song in my perfect Portuguese.”
prostitute /'prasta^ut/ (n) som eone w ho is paid fo r sex
47
CHAPTER 8
The End of the Summer

Then som ething happened. There was a day that was very different.
It was a day that I w ill alw ays rem em ber. On that day, Holly sa ved m y life.
can’t clearly remember those final weeks of summer and the beginning of
I another winter. We didn’t talk a lot. I understood her and she understood me.
We didn’t need words. We were happy to be together, sometimes in silence.
Often, he was out of town. I didn’t like him, so I didn’t use his name. Then
Holly and I spent evenings together and we didn’t say more than a hundred
words. One night we walked all the way to Chinatown, for Chinese food, then
we went across the Brooklyn Bridge. We looked at the ships moving toward the
ocean. Holly said, “In a few years, one of those ships will bring me back—me
and my nine Brazilian kids. Because they must see this, these lights, the river. I
love New York. But it’s not m y city, I don’t belong here.”
48
C h a p te r 8 - T h e E n d o f th e S u m m e r
And I said, “Please be quiet.” Her words made me unhappy. She was leaving
me. She was a big ship, sailing away to a wonderful new place. I was a little boat
that had to stay here, on dry land next to the river.
I don’t remember those last days clearly. One day followed another and they
were all the same. Then something happened. There was a day that was very
different. It was a day that I will always remember. On that day, Holly saved
my life.
It was the 30th of September, my birthday. I was downstairs in the hall,
waiting for the mailman’s morning visit. I hoped for a gift of some money from
my family.
Because I was in the hall, I saw Holly.
“Darling!” she said. “Get your coat. Let’s ride horses around the park.”
She was wearing a jacket and blue jeans. She pointed at her flat stomach.
“I’m not going to fall and lose the baby. But there’s a special horse, my
darling old Mabel Minerva. I can’t leave New York without saying goodbye
to Mabel Minerva.”
“Goodbye?” I repeated.
“We’re leaving next Saturday. Jose bought the tickets.” I followed her down
to the street. “We change airplanes in Miami. Then we fly over the ocean and
over the Andes. Taxi!”
Over the Andes. We traveled in a taxi across Central Park. I imagined that I
was flying over the lonely, snow-covered, dangerous mountains.
“But you can’t,” I said. “You can’t really run away and leave everybody.”
“I don’t think anyone will miss me. I have no friends.”
“I’ll miss you. Joe Bell will, too. And oh— millions of people. Sally. Poor
Mr. Tomato.” I loved old Sally,” she said sadly. “You know, I haven’t visited
him for a month? It’s strange. He was happy that I was leaving the country.
‘That’s the best thing for you to do,’ he told me. ‘Because sooner or later there
will be trouble. They’ll find out that you’re not my real niece.’ That fat lawyer,
O’Shaughnessy, sent me five hundred dollars. A wedding present from Sally.”
I wanted to be unkind. “I’ll give you a present, too. When the wedding
happens.”
She laughed. “He’ll marry me. In church. And with his family there. That’s
why we’re waiting. We’ll marry in Rio.”
“You’re married already. Does he know?”
“W hat’s your problem? Are you trying to destroy the day? It’s a beautiful
day. Be nice!”
“But it’s possible— ”
“It isn ’t possible. That marriage wasn’t lawful. It cou ldn ’t be.” She looked
49
quickly at me. “If you tell anyone about Doc, darling, I’ll kill you. I’ll hang you
by your toes and cut you open.”
The horses were in a building on West Sixty-sixth Street. They make
television programs there now, I believe. Holly chose an old black and white
horse for me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She’s very safe.” That was good because
I wasn’t a horse rider.
50
C h a p te r 8 - T h e E n d o f th e S u m m e r
Holly helped me climb on the horse. Then she got onto her own horse, a
silver-colored animal. She rode in front of me across Central Park West and
onto a riding path.
“See?” she shouted. “It’s wonderful!”
And suddenly it was wonderful. I watched the red-yellow colors of Holly’s
hair and suddenly I loved her. I stopped thinking about myself. I was happy
because she was happy and excited.
The horses moved a little faster. We rode in and out of the shadows from the
trees and felt the wind on our faces. I was happy to be alive.
A minute later, everything changed.
Suddenly a group of boys jumped out of the trees next to the path. They
shouted and threw stones at the horses.
My black and white horse stood up on her back legs, then started to run very
fast. I couldn’t stop her. I was afraid of falling.
We ran past trees and a lake where small boys were playing with toy boats.
We scared their mothers. The women pulled their children away from the horse.
Men shouted at us. Later, I remembered their voices. But at that time I only
heard Holly. She was racing her horse close behind me.
We rode across the park and out into the busy traffic on Fifth Avenue. But
Holly was getting closer. A policeman on a horse was there, too, and they rode
next to me, one on each side. M y horse began to move more slowly, then finally
stopped. I fell off her back. When I stood up, I was shaking. There was a crowd
of people around me. The policeman wrote something in his notebook but
finally he smiled.
“I’ll take the horses back to the Park,” he said.
Holly found a taxi for us. “Darling. How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
She took my hand. “But you’re very cold.”
“Then I must be dead.”
“Don’t be silly. This is serious. Look at me.”
The problem was that I couldn’t see her. There were three Hollys in front of
me, all with white, worried faces.
“I’m OK. I don’t feel anything, just stupid.”
“Are you sure? You almost died.”
“But I didn’t die,” I said. “And thank you. You saved my life. You’re
wonderful. Special. I love you.”
“You’re crazy.” She kissed me quickly. Then I saw four Hollys, and then
nothing more.
51
Were you right?
Think back to your answers to Activity 4.4. Then put these words in the right
order to make sentences.
1 married Trawler Mag Rusty Wildwood
2 bad Doc sent to news Holly
3 Holly's into Jose apartment moved
4 New to Holly made York plans leave
5 storyteller a accident had riding The

1 Circle the best words to complete these sentences.
a Mag Wildwood was Rusty's fourth /fifth wife,
b Holly was very unhappy because D o c/F re d was dead,
c For some time, she continued to visit Sally on Tuesdays /Thursdays.
d She started preparing to move to Brazil/ Mexico.
e She was carrying Jose s / Doc's child,
f She received a wedding / birthday present from Sally,
g Jose didn't know that Holly was divorced/ married.
h Jose / Holly saved the storyteller's life.
2 How does Holly change after Fred dies? Discuss the "new" Holly
with another student.
52
Language in use '■

He w as killed while he was fighting in
Read the sentences in the box. Then
Europe.
write answers to questions about
these pictures, using past passive Her eyes were covered by her dark
verb forms. glasses.
the storyteller learn about Mag's marriage?
2 W hat happened after Holly's visits to

Tomato ended?
3 Why did Holly think that her first marriage

wasn't lawful?
4 W hat happened to the storyteller?
a What happens next?

Look at the pictures in Chapters 9 and 10. What problems do you think
Holly is going to have? List three. Then compare your list with the lists
of other students.
1
2
3
53
CHAPTER 9
Holly Becomes Famous

T w enty-year-old H olly Golightly, beau tifu l m ovie star, is said
to pla y an im portant p a rt in an in tern ation al drugs gang.
hat evening, there were photos of Holly on the front page of the evening
T newspaper. The next morning, she was on the front pages of two more
newspapers. The stories weren’t about our horse ride.
BEAUTIFUL GIRL ARRESTED FOR DRUGS CRIME was the main
story in one newspaper. The D aily News printed the best picture. Holly
was at the entrance to the main city police station, between two big, strong
detectives— one male, one female. She was wearing her riding clothes— the
jacket and blue jeans— and her hair was a mess. Her eyes were covered by her
dark glasses, and there was a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.
Below the picture were these words: T w enty-year-old H olly Golightly,
beau tifu l m ovie star, is sa id to p la y an im portant p a rt in an in tern ation al drugs
gang. One o f h er frien d s is drugs king Salvatore “Sally” Tomato. In this picture,
D etectives Patrick C onnor a n d Sheilah Fezzonetti are taking h er into the 67th
S treet p o lice station.
The story continued. There was a photo of a man named Oliver “Father”
O’Shaughnessy. He was trying to hide his face with his hat.
tY -1
e«v/-f'fy4 I
Knunejtr
X r r t .iie .J
4 r ir r \ e.n t \
C f i m in * /
t-W fvitfrtMj-
T*-avjle-r- |
c^ rcsi
•jjaae-S
j tie
/Atew
liVlt,
I
arrest /a'rest/ (v/n) to take som eone to a police station or prison a fte r a crime
54
C h a p te r 9 —H o lly B eco m es F am o us
N ew Yorkers w ere surprised today by the arrest o f b eau tifu l H olly Golightly,
a tw en ty-yea r-old H ollyw ood star. At the sam e time, 2 p.m ., p o lice cau ght
O liver O ’Shaughnessy, 52, o f the H otel Seabord, West 49th Street. P olice have
arrested O ’Shaughnessy m any tim es sin ce 1934, w hen he was fir s t sen t to prison.
G overnm ent law yer Frank L. D onovan says that both G olightly a n d O ’S haughnessy
are im portant p eop le in an in tern ation al drugs gang. The boss o f the g a n g is the
fa m ou s crim in a l Salvatore “Sally” Tomato. He is spendin g f i v e yea rs in S ing Sing fo r
buying the services o f politicians. . .
Miss G olightly was arrested in h er expensive apartm ent a t a g o o d East Side
address. For a fe w m onths she was a close fr ie n d o f m illionaire R utherford Trawler.
The p o lice say that the beautiful actress was carryin g messages betw een Tomato
a n d O ’Shaughnessy ...A p o lice o fficer told us, “She w en t to S ing S ing every week.
Tomato g a v e h er messages a n d she took them back to O ’Shaughnessy. As a result,
Tomato was able to con tinu e organizing drugs gangs in Mexico, Cuba, Sicily,
Tangier, Tehran, a n d Dakar. ”
A large n um ber o f reporters w ere w a itin g a t the East 67th S treet p o lice station.
When O ’Shaughnessy, a large red -h a ired man, arrived, he kicked on e cam eram an
in the stomach. B ut Miss Golightly, b eau tifu l in jea n s a n d a jack et, d id not seem
w orried. “D on’t ask m e w hat this is about, ” she told reporters. Then she sa id in
French, “B ecause I do not know, m y da rlin gs!” She con tin u ed in English, “Yes, I
ha ve visited Sally Tomato. I w en t to see him every week. Is that w ron g? We both
believe in G o d . . . ”
There was more, under a new heading: SAYS SHE USES DRUGS. “D oyou
use drugs?” ou r reporter asked. Miss G olightly smiled. “S om etim es,”she replied.
“T hey’r e b etter f o r yo u than brandy. Cheaper, too. But I like brandy better. No,
Mr. Tomato n ever talked to m e about drugs. It makes m e an gry w hen these peop le
attack him . H e’s a kind o ld man. ”
There is one big mistake in this report. Holly wasn’t arrested in her
“expensive apartment.” She was arrested in my bathroom.
I was lying in a bath full of hot water, still in pain from my horse ride.
Holly, my nurse, was sitting next to the bath. She had a bottle in her hand, of
something to lessen the pain. There was a knock at the front door. The door
wasn’t locked, so Holly called, “Come in.”
Mrs. Sapphia Spanella came in with two detectives. One of them was a lady
with thick yellow hair.
“H ere she is, the woman you want!” shouted Mrs. Spanella. She ran into
the bathroom and pointed her finger, first at Holly, then at me. “Look. W hat a
prostitute she is!”
brandy /'brsendi/ (n) a strong drink
55
The male detective seemed uncomfortable, but the other detective was
clearly enjoying herself. She put a hand on Holly’s shoulder and spoke in a
surprisingly childish voice. “Come with me, sister. You’re going places.”
“Take your dirty hands off me, you ugly old lesbian,” Holly said, in a
calm voice.
This made the female detective angry and she hit Holly hard. Holly dropped
the bottle she was holding. It broke into small pieces on the floor. I jumped out
of the bath and stepped on it. I cut both of my big toes badly. W ith no clothes
on my body and blood on my feet, I followed the action into the hall.
“Don’t forget to feed the cat,” Holly told me, as the detectives pushed her
down the stairs.
Of course, I believed that Mrs. Spanella called the police. It wasn’t the first
time. I didn’t think how serious it was until later.
That evening Joe Bell arrived. He was carrying the newspapers and he was
very unhappy. He walked around the room angrily, while I read the reports.
Then he said, “Do you believe it? Is she part of this business?”
“Yes,” I said.
He looked angrily at me. “That’s a terrible thing to say. You’re her friend!”
“Just a minute,” I said. “I’m not saying that she knew about the drugs gang.
But, she did carry messages— ”
He said, “You’re very calm! She’ll get ten years in prison. More.” He took the
newspaper away from me. “You know her friends. Those rich men. Come down
to the bar and we’ll phone them. Our girl’s going to need expensive lawyers.”
At his bar he put me next to the telephone with a large brandy. But I didn’t
know who to call. Jose was in Washington. I didn’t know how to reach him
there. Rusty Trawler? Not him! Did I know any of her other friends? Maybe she
was right. She didn’t have any real friends.
I put through a call to Crestview 5-6958 in Beverly Hills, O.J. Berman’s
number. A woman answered the phone. “Mr. Berman is busy,” she said. “Sorry,
try later.”
Joe Bell was very angry. “Tell them it’s important— a matter of life or death.
You must ring Rusty Trawler.”
First, I spoke to Mr. Trawler’s secretary. “Mr. and Mrs. Trawler are eating
dinner,” he said. “Can I take a message?”
Joe Bell shouted into the telephone. “This is urgent, mister. Life and death.”
Suddenly I was talking to— listening to—Mag Wildwood.
“Are you crazy?” she shouted. “We have nothing to say to that woman. That
t-t-terrible woman. She was always bad! Drugs and men— that’s all she wanted!
She belongs in prison. And my husband agrees totally.”
56
C h a p te r 9 —H o lly B eco m es F am o us
I put down the phone. Then I remembered old Doc down in Tulip, Texas.
But no— I couldn’t call him. Holly wouldn’t like me to worry him.
I rang California again but the telephone lines were busy. It took a long time
to speak to O.J. Berman.
“Are you calling about the kid?” he asked. “I know about her already. I spoke
to Iggy Fitelstein. Iggy’s the best lawyer in New York. ‘Look after her, Iggy,’ I
said. ‘Send me the bill. But keep my name out of it.’ I want to help the kid. She
helped me in the past. But she’s crazy. It’s not a problem. The police only want
ten thousand dollars, then they’ll send her home. Don’t worry. Iggy will get her
out tonight. She’s probably home already.”
57
CHAPTER 10
The End of H ollys Dreams?

“I have a ticket f o r a seat on an airplane. B ecause y o u ’re m y g o o d frien d ,
y o u can com e to the airport w ith me. You can w ave good b ye to m e.”
ut she wasn’t home. The next morning I went down to feed her cat. She still
B wasn’t there. I didn’t have a key to the apartment, so I used the fire escape.
The cat was in the bedroom and he wasn’t alone. A man was there, standing
over a suitcase.
I stepped through the window. The man had a handsome face and shiny
hair. He was packing Jose’s clothes into the suitcase. I looked at the shoes and
suits that Holly was always cleaning.
“Did Mr. Ybarra-Jaegar send you?” I asked.
“I am his cousin,” he said, nervously. His English wasn’t good.
“Where is Jose?” I asked.
He repeated the question slowly. “Ah, w here is he! He is waiting,” he said.
Then he returned to the suitcase.
So Jose was running away. I wasn’t surprised, or sorry, but I was angry.
The cousin closed the suitcase and gave me a letter. “M y cousin left this for
his friend. Please give it to her.”
On the envelope was written: For Miss H. G olightly
I sat down on Holly’s bed and held Holly’s cat. I felt very, very sad.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll give it to her.
♦
I gave her the letter, though I didn’t want to.
It was two mornings later, and I was sitting by her bed in a hospital room.
The police took her there on the night after her arrest.
When I arrived, I walked quietly toward her. I was carrying a pack of
cigarettes and some flowers. “Well, darling,” she greeted me, “I lost the baby.”
She looked very young. Her pale hair was pushed back from her face, and
her eyes without their dark glasses were clear. Was she really so sick?
Yes, she was. “I almost died,” she said. “The fat woman almost had me.
Have I told you about the fat woman? I didn’t know about her myself until my
brother died. Then I saw her— she was there in the room with me. She was
holding Fred in her arms. She was a terrible, fat old woman in a chair, with
Fred on her knee, and she was laughing! When you die, you meet her. The
fat woman comes and takes you. I saw her and I went crazy. Then I broke up
everything in the apartment. Do you understand?”
Except for O.J. Berman’s lawyer, I was her only visitor. There were three
58
C h a p te r 10 —T h e E n d o f H o lly ’s D ream s?
other patients in her room. They looked at me with interest and spoke quietly
in Italian.
Holly explained. “They think that you’re bad for me, darling. You’re the man
who put me in here.”
“But that’s not true,” I said.
“I can’t tell them that. They don’t speak English. And I don’t want to destroy
their fun.”
Then she asked me about Jose. “Have you seen him, darling?”
When she saw the letter, she gave a little smile. Suddenly she seemed much
older. “Darling,” she said. “Open that cupboard and give me my purse. A girl
can’t read a letter without her lipstick.”
Looking in a small mirror, she painted her face. She colored her eyes and her
mouth, put on her jewelry and her dark glasses. Now she wasn’t a twelve-year-
old child. She was a woman.
She opened the letter and read it quickly. Her small smile grew smaller and
harder. She asked for a cigarette and started to smoke it. “It tastes terrible. But
wonderful.” She threw the letter to me. “You can use this when you write a
romance. Read it to me. I’d like to hear it.”
59
It began: “My dearest little girl—”

Holly stopped me. “W hat do you think of the writing?”
“It’s OK,” I said. “Tight, ordinary, easy to read.”
“That’s him,” she said. “Tight and ordinary. W hat does he say?”
“My dearest little girl, I loved you. But I know you are different to other
women. Now I find that you are too different. Imagine my sadness when I
discovered your secrets in the newspapers. I have important plans for the future.
I cannot marry a woman like you. I feel very sorry for you and I am not angry
with you. I hope you are not angry with me. I must protect my family and my
name. Forget me, beautiful child. I have left New York City and gone home.
But I hope that God is always with you and your child. Jose.”
“W hat do you think?” she asked.
“It seems quite honest. And he sounds sad,” I replied.
“S ad!”
“But you must understand that it’s hard for him— ”
Holly didn’t want to understand anything. But she wasn’t angry. “All right,
he’s not totally bad. He has his reasons to leave. But I did love him.” She started
to cry.
The Italian women looked angrily at me. I was pleased. They thought Holly
loved me. I felt proud.
I offered her another cigarette and she stopped crying. “Thanks, darling.
And thanks for being a bad rider. All that exercise did it. Thanks to you, I’m
not going into a home for single mothers. The food in those places is terrible.
But I’ve scared the police. ‘I lost the baby because your lesbian officer hit me!’ I
told them. They’re going to pay me a lot of money to stay quiet! I’ll make sure
they do.”
She was making jokes. She didn’t want to think about serious matters, about
her arrest and the newspapers. She didn’t understand the reality of her position.
“Holly,” I said, seriously. “This isn’t a joke. We have to make plans.”
“You’re too young to be serious. Too small. My problems are my problems.
You don’t need to think about them.”
“You’re my friend and I’m worried. W hat are you going to do?”
She looked out of the window. “Today’s Wednesday, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ll
sleep until Saturday—get a good sleep. On Saturday morning, I’ll run out to
the bank. Then I’ll go to the apartment and pick up one or two nightdresses.
Then I’ll go to Idlewild Airport. As you know, I have a ticket for a seat on an
airplane. Because you’re my good friend, you can come to the airport with me.
You can wave goodbye to me.”
“Holly. Holly. You can’t do that.”
60
C h a p te r 10 —T h e E nd o f H o lly ’s D ream s?
“W hy not? Please stop disagreeing with me. I’m not running after Jose. Jose
is history, I can’t rem em ber him. But I have a good airplane ticket. I’m not going
to throw it away. It’s already paid for. And I’ve never been to Brazil.”
“You’re crazy! W hat medicine are they giving you in here? Don’t you
understand, you’re a criminal. If you leave the country, they’ll put you in prison.
They’ll throw away the key to the prison door. If you go to Brazil, you can
never come home again.”
“That’s not important. Home is where you’re happy. I’m still looking for
my home.”
“No, Holly, it’s stupid. You’re not a criminal. You haven’t done anything
wrong. The police will understand. You m ust stay here.”
She laughed and blew cigarette smoke in my face. But she was listening to
me. I looked into her eyes. She was thinking about prison rooms, and doors that
closed slowly ...
“No!” she said. She put out her cigarette. “I’m going. Maybe the police won’t
catch me. Don’t tell them anything about me. Don’t be angry with me, darling.”
She put her hand over mine. Suddenly she was speaking seriously. “I talked
to the lawyer. Oh, I didn’t tell him anything about Rio. If I run away, O.J. has
to pay ten thousand dollars. The lawyer doesn’t want to lose O.J.’s money. He’ll
try to stop me. O.J.’s good to me, but I’ve helped him, too, in the past. I helped
him win more than ten thousand dollars in a single game of cards.
“No, this is the real problem: The police want me to speak in court against
Sally. They won’t put me in prison— they can’t prove anything against me. But
I refuse to hurt Sally. I’m not a good person, but I will never help send a friend
to prison. Never. Not even a friend who’s clearly a criminal. Old Sally wasn’t
always totally honest with me, but he’s OK. I’ll d ie before I help the police.”
She looked in her mirror and smoothed her lipstick with her finger. “And
there’s something more. Some places aren’t good for a girl. If I help the police,
I can’t stay here. This neighborhood won’t be good for me. And that’s not good
for a girl who does my kind of work, darling. I don’t want to be poor and sad. I
don’t want to watch Mrs. Rusty Trawler go in and out of Tiffany’s. I can’t
do that.”
A nurse came quietly into the room. It was time for visitors to leave
the hospital.
Holly said one more thing before I left. “Do something for me, darling. Call
one of the newspapers and get a list of the fifty richest men in Brazil. This isn’t
a joke. The fifty richest men— any color, from any family. And look around my
apartment. Find that jewelry you gave me from Tiffany’s. I’ll need it in Brazil.”
61
Activities 6
Were you right?

Look back at your answers to Activity 5.4. Then write notes in answer to these
questions about her first problem.
1 W hy was Holly arrested?.........................................................................................................................
2 What did the police think she was doing?.....................................................................................
3 Who was the gang bo ss?...........................................................................................................................
4 Why was he in prison?...............................................................................................................................
5 Did Holly ever use drugs?.........................................................................................................................
6 Where did the police arrest h e r? ........................................................................................................
7 Who probably called the police?......................................................................................................
8 How did O.J. Berman help h e r? .............................................................................................................

1 Discuss why these are important to the story in Chapter 10.
I L 'i X i c n e i T
U„,
2 Work with another student. Imagine that you are hospital nurses. Holly is
your patient. Talk about her.
You have been her nurse every day since she arrived in the
Student A
hospital. You know about her arrival with the police, her reason
for being there, and her two visitors. You now have a week's
vacation. Tell the new nurse what she wants to know.
Student B You are just starting work as Holly's nurse. You want to know
everything about your patient. Ask questions.
62
Language in use
Don't ask me w hat this is about.
Read the sentences on the right.
Then complete the sentences below with I didn’t know who to call.
one of these words: who, what, where,
when, why, how.
1 Holly didn't like the detective .......... ..............................arrested her.
2 She didn't really understand . her friends were so worried.
3 Joe only thought about he could help her.
4 The storyteller couldn’t find out Jose was.
5 At first, he didn't realize . a stranger was doing in

Holly's apartment.
6 The police had no idea Holly was flying out of New York.
What happens next?

What w ill happen to Holly, the storyteller, and the cat at the end of the story?
What do you think? Check (/ ) the right sentences below.
1 Holly:
a w ill go to Brazil,
b will go to Africa,
c will stay in New York,
d □ will go to prison.
2 The storyteller:
a will leave New York with Holly,
b will stay in the brown stone apartment building,
c will move to a new apartment,
d will leave New York, alone.
3 The cat:
a will stay with Holly,

b w ill live with the storyteller,
c will find a new home,
d w ill die of sadness.
63
CHAPTER 11
Holly Leaves New York

She h eld m y arm very tightly. There w ere tears in h er eyes.
“Oh, h e does b elon g to me. He was m in e,”she said.
he sky was red on Friday night and there was a bad storm. On Saturday
T it was raining heavily. Saturday, the day Holly was leaving New York.
“This weather is only good for fish,” I said to her. “Your airplane can’t
fly today.”
But Holly wasn’t listening to me. She continued to prepare for her trip
to Brazil.
I did most of the work. Holly didn’t want to come to the apartment
building. She was right, too. People were watching the building all the time.
Sometimes one man, sometimes more, stood around on the sidewalk. Maybe
they were police, or reporters; maybe they were just other interested people. It
was impossible to tell.
So Holly left the hospital and went to a bank. Then she went immediately to
Joe Bell’s bar.
Later that day, Joe came to my apartment. “Nobody followed her, she
thinks,” he said. “She wants to meet you at the bar in about half an hour. And
bring some things for her. Her jewelry. Her guitar. Her shoes and her lipsticks.
And a bottle of hundred-year-old brandy. She says you’ll find it under her dirty
clothes. Oh, and the cat. She wants the cat.”
He stopped talking for a minute. Then he said, “But maybe it’s wrong to
help her. She does some crazy things. She’ll get into more trouble. Maybe we
should stop her and tell the police. They’ll keep her here. I’ll go back to the bar
and give her a few drinks. Maybe she’ll decide not to take the flight.”
I ran up and down the fire escape between Holly’s apartment and mine.
It was very windy and my clothes were soon wet from the rain. And the cat
attacked me. He bit me until my hands were covered in blood. He didn’t want
to leave the warm apartment in bad weather.
Quickly, I found the things she wanted. I even found the jewelry from
Tiffany’s. Everything was piled on the floor of my room. Dresses and
underclothes and dancing shoes and pretty things. I felt very sad as I packed
them in Holly’s suitcase. There were too many things for one suitcase, so 1 put
some of her clothes in paper grocery bags.
Then there was the cat. He was still fighting me. I couldn’t carry him and
the suitcase and the bags. Finally, I found an old cloth bag, put him inside, and
tied the top.
64
C h a p te r 11 — H o lly L eaves N e w York
M any years ago, I walked from New Orleans to Nancy’s Landing,

Mississippi, almost five hundred miles. The reason isn’t important. But that
long walk was easier than the short walk to Joe Bell’s bar.
The guitar filled with rain. Rain softened the paper bags, and some of
Holly’s clothes and jewelry fell through them onto the sidewalk. The wind
pushed me, and the cat attacked its bag and screamed at me.
And I was frightened. Now I understood Jose, because I was frightened in
the same way as him. Were people watching me? I was helping someone run
away from the police. I was a criminal, too.
In the bar, Holly said, “You’re late. Did you bring the brandy?”
The cat climbed out of its bag and jumped onto her shoulder. Holly was
laughing, excited. She opened the bottle. “This brandy was for me and Jose.
‘We’ll drink this,’ I told him, ‘every year, on the same day as our wedding.’ But
that’s finished now. Mr. Bell, sir, give me three glasses.”
65
“You only need two,” Joe Bell told her. “I refuse to drink with you. You’re
crazy to leave New York.”
“Please, Mr. Bell,” she said. “A lady doesn’t disappear every day. Have a drink
with her.”
“No,” he replied angrily. “I’m not going to drink with you. This isn’t a party
and I’m not going to help you.”
That was a lie. A few minutes later, a large car and driver stopped outside the
bar. Holly noticed it first. She put down her brandy glass.
“Well, darling,” she said, “is this the judge? Has he come to get me?”
I saw Joe Bell’s red face. Did he really call the police? But Joe said, “It’s
nothing. Just a car that I paid for. It will take you to the airport.”
He turned away from us and started washing some glasses.
“Kind, dear Mr. Bell. Look at me, sir,” Holly said.
66
C h a p te r 11 —H o lly L eaves N ew York
He couldn’t look at her. He pulled some flowers from behind the bar and
pushed them toward her. She didn’t catch them in time and they fell on the floor.
“Goodbye,” he said. He didn’t want to cry in front of her. He ran to the
men’s bathroom and we heard the door lock.
The driver of the car was very calm. In his job, he saw many strange things.
He didn’t say anything about Holly’s suitcase and grocery bags. And his face
didn’t change when, in the back of the car, Holly took off her clothes. She was
still wearing her riding clothes— the jacket and jeans.
“The police came for me so quickly,” she said. “There wasn’t time to change
my clothes.” Quickly, she put on her little black dress.
We didn’t talk after that. Holly was lost in thought and didn’t look at me.
She sang quietly to herself and drank brandy from the bottle. She moved to the
front of her seat so she could look out of the windows. Was she looking for an
address? Or taking a last look at New York? But it was neither of these.
Suddenly she spoke. “Stop here,” she ordered the driver.
He stopped the car by a sidewalk in Spanish Harlem*. It was a strange
neighborhood, colorful but frightening. There were religious pictures next to
photos of movie stars on the walls of buildings. The strong wind moved empty
cans and dirty newspapers up and down the sidewalk. But the rain had stopped
now and the sun was beginning to break through the cloud.
Holly stepped out of the car. She took the cat with her. Holding him in her
arms, she smoothed his head.
“W hat do you think?” she asked. “Is this the right place for you? You’re a
fighter and this is a hard neighborhood. There are plenty of trash cans to look
in. Lots of gangs of wild cats to join. So go!”
She dropped him onto the sidewalk. He didn’t move, but lifted his face to
her and questioned her with his yellow eyes.
“Go!” she shouted, angrily. He came closer to her legs. “Get away from me!”
Then she jumped into the car again and closed the door.
“Go,” she told the driver. “Go. Go.”
“That was terrible!” I said angrily. “You really are unkind.”
We traveled for a block before she replied. “I told you. We met by the river
one day. He doesn’t belong to me. I don’t belong to him. We didn’t make any
promises. We never— ”
She stopped speaking. Her face was very white and unhappy.
The car stopped for a traffic light. She opened the door and ran down the
street, and I ran after her. She was looking for the cat.
* Spanish Harlem : a poor part of New York
67
I Y * t i ►'
68
C h a p te r 11 —H o lly L eaves N e w York
But the cat wasn’t there. There was nobody, nothing on the street except an
old drunk and women with a group of children. As Holly ran up and down the
block, more children came out from doorways. Some ladies looked out of their
windows. Holly was shouting, “You. Cat. Where are you? Here, cat.”
She didn’t stop calling until a boy stopped her. He was holding a dirty old
cat by the back of its neck. “Do you want a nice cat, miss? Give me a dollar for
this one.”
The car was following us. I took Holly’s arm and walked her toward it. At
the door of the car, she stopped. She looked past me, past the boy with his cat.
He was still talking. “H alf a dollar? Twenty cents? It’s not much for this cat.”
She held my arm very tightly. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, he does
belong to me. He was mine,” she said.
Then I made her a promise. “I’ll come back and find your cat. I’ll look after
him, too. I promise.”
She smiled—that sad new smile. “And me?” she asked quietly. “Who will
look after me? I’m very scared, darling. For the first time, I’m really scared. This
will happen again and again. I never know what’s mine. Not until I throw it
away. The fat woman— she’s not important. Unhappiness— that’s nothing. This
is important, though. Not belonging. I’m so very, very scared.”
She stepped in the car, and sat down slowly in the seat.
“Sorry, driver,” she said. “Let’s go.”
69
CHAPTER 12
W here is Holly Now?

He was sittin g in the w in d ow o f a house. The p a in t a rou n d the w in d ow was new.
The room looked w arm a n d com fortable.
OMATO’S GIRL IS MISSING and BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS: KILLED

BY DRUGS GANG? Those were the stories in the newspapers during the
next few weeks. Later, they reported: TOMATO’S GIRL SEEN IN RIO.
The American police didn’t try to bring her back, and soon Holly’s name
disappeared from the newspapers. I saw it only once in a report on Christmas
Day, when Sally Tomato died in Sing Sing. He was an old man with a sick heart
and he died in his bed.
The winter months passed slowly. I didn’t hear anything from Holly. The
owner of the apartment building sold her things— the bed with the shiny white
cover, her pictures, her chairs. She loved those chairs.
A new tenant moved into the apartment. His name was Quaintance Smith
and he had a lot of male visitors. He was as noisy as Holly. I often heard loud
music, and voices, and men shouting. But this time Mrs. Spanella didn’t say
anything.
“He’s a nice young man,” she said to me. “I like him.”
She always smiled when she saw him. She even gave him something for his
eye each time one of his “friends” hit him.
But in the spring I received a card. The message was written in pencil and
signed with a lipstick kiss.
Brazil was terrible, but Buenos Aires is w onderful. I t’s n ot T iffany’s, but alm ost
as good. I ’m spending a ll m y tim e w ith a handsom e Spanish man. Do I love h im ?
I think so. I ’m looking f o r a p la ce to live. (The Spanish m an has a w ife a n d seven
children.) I ’ll sen d m y address w hen I have one. Then she wrote in French:
M uch love.
She never sent the address. Maybe she never had one. I was sad because I
wanted to write to her. I had a lot to tell her. I sold two stories. The Trawlers
were divorcing and fighting about money. I was moving out of the brown stone
apartment building because it was full of memories of Holly.
But most important, I had news about the cat.
I kept my promise and I found him. For weeks after work I walked through
the streets of Spanish Harlem. Many times, I saw a red cat with yellow eyes—
but it wasn’t him. He was gone, lost in New York.
But one day, one cold Sunday afternoon when the winter sun was shining,
I found him.
70
C h a p te r 12 —W h e re is H o lly N ow ?
He was sitting in the window of a house. The paint around the window was
new. The room looked warm and comfortable. There were plants in pots on
each side of him.
He had a name. I was sure that he had a name now. He was in a place where
he belonged.
I hope Holly has found a place where she belongs, too.
71
Talk about it
Talk about it
Work in groups of five.
a Write the numbers of these cards on small pieces of paper and turn the pieces of
paper over. Then choose one. Imagine that you are the person on your card.
the storyteller Joe Bell
Mag Wildwood Jose Ybarra-Jaegar
b It is a week after Holly left New York. You are all meeting in Joe Bell's bar to talk
about her. Discuss these questions:
• What did you like about Holly?
• W hat did you dislike about her?
• Where do you think she is now?
• W ill she have a happy or unhappy life?
Do you want to see her again? Why (not)?
• Was she a good or bad person? Give reasons for your answer.
c W hat will you do if Holly comes back to New York? W ill you see her? W ill you
refuse to see her? Decide, as a group.
Work with the same group of students. Holly is important to the storyteller
and he never forgets her. Tell the other people in your group about somebody
who is important to you. Why w ill you never forget that person?
72
W rite about it
Imagine that you are the storyteller. It is now one year after Holly left New
York. You want to find her. Write an advertisement for a Brazilian newspaper,
asking for information about her.
Describe: Explain:
- what Holly looks like - why you want to find her
- the things that she likes to do - how to reply to you
- the places where she likes to go to
Offer money to anyone who gives you information.
PLEASE HELP ME
FIND THIS WOMAN
73
It is ten years after Holly Golightly left New York. Now she has returned!
You are going to w rite and act a short play about her return. Your play w ill
last for not more than three m inutes. Work in groups of three students.
First, discuss these questions. Make decisions for your play, and w rite notes.
Where was Holly living before she returned to New York?
W hat was she doing there?
Who was she living with?
W hy has she returned?
Who, from her old life, is she going to see?
Has she changed?
There w ill be three people in your play. Holly is one of them . Who are
the other two people? Make notes about each of them . Remember that
everyone in the sto ry is ten years older. How have their lives changed? W hat
are they doing now? Are they rich or poor? Are they happy or sad?
Name:
Person 2
Lifestyle:
Name:
Person 3
Lifestyle:
74
Project The Perfect Lunch
Describe w hat each person w ill w ear in your play. Remember that it is now
the 1950s. Find out from the Internet or from books w hat men and women
in Am erican cities wore at th at tim e.
1 Holly Golightly
Holly will wear
Choose ( / ) a place in New York for your play.
Discuss answ ers to these questions.
a W hat is going to happen in your play? d What will they tell her?
b W hy is Holly going to meet these people? e How will the play end?
c W hat will she tell them?
75
Project The Perfect Lunch
W rite your play, below, and practice it. Then act it for your friends.
Holly’s Return
HOLLY
Truman Capote
American English
Contemporory
It is New York in the l94Os. ln the expensive jewelry
store Tiffany's, Holly Golightly feels calm and safe,
The rest of her life is very different, Every night is party
night in her apartment. Men come and go; everything
is possible, But Holly is searching for her place in the
world, Can any of these men offer her happiness?
Can she ever belong?
Easystarts 200 headwords

Level 1 300 headwords Beginner
Level 2 600 headwords Elementary
Level 4 1700headwords lntermediate
Cover illustration by MICCA / www,dutchuncle.co.uk
iii
rsBN 978-1 -4082-3201 -9
ffi =
www. pengu i n readers.com
tllililffiulililil

Breakfast at Tiffany 39 S Level 3 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Breakfast at Tiffany 39 S Level 3 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Breakfast at Tiffany 39 S Level 3 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What happens first?

What happens first?

PENGUIN ACTIVE READING

Retold by Karen Holmes

T h is e d itio n first p u b lish e d b y P earson E d u ca tio n L td 2 01 0

T ex t c o p y rig h t © P earson E d u catio n Ltd 2 0 1 0

Illu s tra tio n s by S te p h a n ie Von R e isw itz a t D eb u t A rt

The m o ral rig h ts o f th e au th o rs h av e been asserted in ac c o rd a n c e

P u b lish ed by Pearson E d u ca tio n L td in asso ciatio n w ith P e n g u in B ooks Ltd,

(K ey: b -b o tto m ; c-c e n tre ; 1-left; r-rig h t; t-top)

A la m y Im ages: Z ute L igh tfo o t: iv

E very effort has been m ad e to tra ce th e c o p y rig h t ho ld ers a n d w e a p o lo g ise in ad v an ce

For a co m p lete lis t o f th e title s a v a ila b le in th e P en g u in A ctiv e R e a d in g series please

Chapter 1 W hat Happened to Holly Golightly? 1

Chapter 2 A Late-Night Visitor 7

Chapter 3 A Party at Holly’s Apartment 16

Chapter 4 A Conversation about Men 24

Chapter 5 A Gift from Tiffany’s 32

Chapter 6 A Visitor from Holly’s Past 37

Chapter 7 A Death in the Family 44

Chapter 8 The End of the Summer 48

Chapter 9 Holly Becomes Famous 54

Chapter 10 The End of Holly’s Dreams? 58

Chapter 11 Holly Leaves New York 64

Chapter 12 Where is Holly Now? 70

a Where and when does this story happen?

b Who is Holly Golightly?

m What happens first?

1 On which page can you see the writer of this story?

2 Who is the other person in the picture?

3 On which page can you see Holly Golightly?

4 How did she and the storyteller meet?

5 Where is Holly now?

6 How does the storyteller feel about her?

7 Who is the speaker of the words in italics on page 1?

W hat Happened to Holly Golightly?

* The East Seventies: an area of New York City

“Have you heard from Holly?”

“Yes,” he said, opening the door. “She’s gone.”

“Do you think I’m very bad? Or crazy?” she asked.

* H em ing w ay: Ernest Hem ingway, a fam ous Am erican w riter

“You’re going to get into a lot of trouble,” I said.

Were you right?

misses apartm ents news loved

Many years ago, the storyteller and Holly Golightly were

What more did you learn?

1 "Something very strange has happened.”

1 Holly often rang the doorbell... a to escape from the heat.

3 He looked in Holly's trash can ... c to wake other tenants.

4 One night, Holly climbed through d to give to his lawyer.

What happens next?

A Party at Holly’s Apartment

“Sorry, I don’t know him.”

I said, “W hat was this week’s weather report?”

A Conversation about Men

face was handsome and he wore an expensive suit.

statue /'staetju/ (n) a large carving made o f w ood , stone, or metal