The Mortgaged Heart Read online

  I think the cellist moved in about the first of May, because during the winter I don't remember hearing her practice. The sun streamed in on her room in the late afternoon, showing up a collection of what looked to be photographs tacked on the wall. She went out often and sometimes she had a certain man in to see her. Late in the day she would sit facing the court with her cello, her knees spread wide apart to straddle the instrument, her skirts pulled up to the thighs so as not to strain the seams. Her music was raw toned and lazily played. She seemed to go into a sort of coma when she worked and her face took on a cowish look. Nearly always she had stockings drying in the window (I could see them so plainly that I could tell she sometimes only washed the feet to save wear and trouble) and some mornings there was a gimcrack tied on to the cord of the window shade.

  I felt that this man across from me understood the cellist and everyone else on the court as well. I had a feeling that nothing would surprise him and that he understood more than most people. Maybe it was the secretive droop of his eyelids. I'm not sure what it was. I just knew that it was good to watch him and think about him. At night he would come in with a paper sack and carefully take his food out and eat it. Later he would put on his pajamas and do exercises in his room and after that he'd usually just sit, doing nothing, until almost midnight. He was an exquisite housekeeper, his window sill was never cluttered up. He would tend his plants every morning, the sun shining on his healthily pale face. Often he carefully watered them with a rubber bulb that looked like an ear syringe. I could never guess for sure just what his job in the day time was.

  About the end of May there was another change in the court. The young man whose wife was pregnant began to quit going regularly to work. You could tell by their faces he had lost his job. In the morning he would stay at home later than usual, would pour out her milk from the quart bottle they still kept on the window sill and see that she drank the whole amount before it had time to sour. Sometimes at night after everyone else was asleep you could hear the murmuring sound of his talking. Out of a late silence he would say listen here so loud that it was enough to wake all of us, and then his voice would drop and he would start a low, urgent monologue to his wife. She almost never said anything. Her face seemed to get smaller and sometimes she would sit on the bed for hours with her little mouth half open like a dreaming child's.

  The university term ended but I stayed on in the city because I had this five hour job and wanted to attend summer school. Not going to classes I saw even fewer people than before and stayed closet to home. I had plenty of time to realize what it meant when the young man started coming in with a pint of milk instead of a quart, when finally one day the bottle he brought home was only one of the half pint size.

  It is hard to tell how you feel when you watch someone go hungry. You see their room was not more than a few yards from mine and I couldn't quit thinking about them. At first I wouldn't believe what I saw. This is not a tenement house far down on the East side, I would tell myself. We are living in a fairly good, fairly average part of town—in the West eighties. True our court is small, our rooms just big enough for a bed, a dresser and a table, and we are almost as close as tenement people. But from the street these buildings look fine; in both entrances there is a little lobby with something like marble on the floor, an elevator to save us walking up our six or eight or ten flights of stairs. From the street these buildings look almost rich and it is not possible that inside someone could starve. I would say: because their milk is cut down to a fourth of what they used to get and because I don't see him eating (giving her the sandwich he goes out to get each evening at dinner time) that is not a sign they are hungry. Because she just sits like that all day, not taking any interest in anything except the window sills where some of us keep our fruit that is because she is going to have the baby very soon now and is a little unnatural. Because he walks up and down the room and yells at her sometimes, his throat sounding choked up, that is just the ugliness in him.

  After reasoning with myself like this I would always look across at the man with the red hair. It is not easy to explain about this faith I had in him. I don't know what I could have expected him to do, but the feeling was there just the same. I quit reading when I came home and would often just sit watching him for hours. Our eyes would meet and then one of us would look away. You see all of us in the court saw each other sleep and dress and live out our hours away from work, but none of us ever spoke. We were near enough to throw our food into each others' windows, near enough so that a single machine gun could have killed us all together in a flash. And still we acted as strangers.

  After a while the young couple didn't have any sort of milk bottle on their window sill and the man would stay home all day, his eyes looped with brown circles and his mouth a sharp straight line. You could hear him talking in bed every night—beginning with his loud listen here. Out of all the court the cellist was the only one who didn't show in some little gesture that she felt the strain.

  Her room was directly below theirs so she probably had never seen their faces. She practiced less than usual now and went out more. This friend of hers that I mentioned was in her place almost every night. He was dapper like a little cat—small, with a round oily face and large almond shaped eyes. Sometimes the whole court would hear them quarreling and after a while he would usually go out. One night she brought home one of those balloon-men they sell along Broadway—a long balloon for the body and a round small one for the head, painted with a grinning mouth. It was a brilliant green, the crepe paper legs were pink and the big cardboard feet black. She fastened the thing to the cord of the shade where it dangled, turning slowly and shambling its paper legs whenever a breeze came.

  By the end of June I felt I could not have stayed in the court much longer. If it had not been for the man with red hair I would have moved. I would have moved before the night when everything came finally to a show down. I couldn't study, couldn't keep my mind on anything.

  There was one hot night I well remember. The cellist and her friend had their light turned on and so did the young couple. The man across from me sat looking out on the court in his pajamas. He had a bottle by his chair and would draw it up to his mouth occasionally. His feet were propped on the window sill and I could see his bare crooked toes. When he had drunk a good deal he began talking to himself. I couldn't hear the words, they were merged together into one low rising and falling sound. I had a feeling, though, that he might be talking about the people in the court because he would gaze around at all the windows between swallows. It was a queer feeling—like what he was saying might straighten things out for all of us if we could only catch the words. But no matter how hard I listened I couldn't understand any of it. I just looked at his strong throat and at his calm face that even when he was tight did not lose its expression of hidden wisdom. Nothing happened. I never knew what he was saying. There was just that feeling that if his voice had been only a little less low I would have learned so very much.

  It was a week later when this thing happened that brought it all to a finish. It must have been about two o'clock one night when I was waked up by a strange sound. It was dark and all the lights were out. The noise seemed to come from the court and as I listened to it I could hardly keep myself from trembling. It was not loud (I don't sleep very well or otherwise it wouldn't have waked me) but there was something animal-like about it—high and breathless, between a moan and an exclamation. It occurred to me that I had heard such a sound sometime in my life before, but it went too far back for me to remember.

  I went to the window and from there it seemed to be coming from the cellist's room. All the lights were off and it was warm and black and moonless. I was standing there looking out and trying to imagine what was wrong when a shout came from the young couple's apartment that as long as I live I will never be able to forget. It was the young man and between the words there was a choking sound.

  "Shut up! You bitch down there shut up! I can't stand—" />
  Of course I knew then what the sound had been. He left off in the middle of the sentence and the court was quiet as death. There were no shhhs such as usually follow a noise in the night here. A few lights were turned on, but that was all. I stood at the window feeling sick and not able to stop trembling. I looked across at the red headed man's room and in a few minutes he turned on his light. Sleepy eyed, he gazed all around the court. Do something do something, I wanted to call over to him. In a moment he sat down with a pipe in his chair by the window and switched off his light. Even after everybody else seemed to be sleeping again there was still the smell of his tobacco in the hot dark air.

  After that night things began to get like they are now. The young couple moved and their room remained vacant. Neither the man with the red hair nor I stayed inside as much as before. I never saw the cellist's dapper looking friend again and she would practice fiercely, jabbing her bow across the strings. Early in the mornings when she would get the brassiere and stockings she had hung out to dry she would snatch them inside and turn her back to the window. The balloon-man still dangled from her shade cord, turning slowly in the air, grinning and brilliant green.

  And now yesterday the man with the red hair left for good, too. It is late summer, the time people usually move. I watched him pack up all the things he had and tried not to think of never seeing him again. I thought about school starting soon and about a list of books I would make out to read. I watched him like a complete stranger. He seemed happier than he had been in a long time, humming a little tune as he packed, fondling his plants for a while before taking them in from the sill. Just before leaving he stood at the window looking out on the court for the last time. His calm face did not squint in the glare, but his eyelids drooped until they were almost shut and the sun made a haze of light around his bright hair that was almost like a sort of halo.

  Tonight I have thought a long time about this man. Once I started to write my friend back home who has the mechanic's job about him, but I changed my mind. The thing is this—it would be too hard explaining to anybody else, even this friend, just how it was. You see when it comes right down to it there are so many things about him I don't know—his name, his job, even what nationality he is. He never did do anything, and I don't even know just exactly what I expected him to do. About the young couple I don't guess he could have helped it any more than I could. When I think back over the times I have watched him I can't remember a thing unusual that he ever did. When describing him nothing stands out except his hair. Altogether he might seem just like a million other men. But no matter how peculiar it sounds I still have this feeling that there is something in him that could change a lot of situations and straighten them out. And there is one point in a thing like this—as long as I feel this way, in a sense it is true.

  ***

  The following letter, concerning this story and "Sucker," was found among Carson McCullers' correspondence. Maxim Lieber was her literary agent at that time.

  MAXIM LIEBER

  Authors' Representative

  545 Fifth Avenue

  New York City

  MUrray Hill 2-3135—3136

  CABLE: FERENC • NEW YORK

  November 10, 1939

  Mrs. Carson Smith McCullers

  1519 Starke Avenue

  Columbus, Georgia

  DEAR MRS. MCCULLERS:

  I am sorry to say that your manuscripts SUCKER and COURT IN THE WEST EIGHTIES have been rejected by the following magazines respectively; The Virginia Quarterly, The Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Redbook, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, American Mercury, North American Review, Yale Review, Southern Review, Story, and; The Virginia Quarterly, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Coronet, North American Review, The American Mercury, The Yale Review, Story, The Southern Review, Zone, Nutmeg.

  We are returning the two stories herewith.

  Sincerely yours,

  GERALDINE MAVOR

  GM:MW

  POLDI

  WHEN HANS WAS only a block from the hotel a chill rain began to fall, draining the color from the lights that were just being turned on along Broadway. He fastened his pale eyes on the sign reading COLTON ARMS, tucked a sheet of music under his overcoat, and hurried on. By the time he stepped inside the dingily marbled lobby his breath was coming in sharp pants and the sheet of music was crumpled.

  Vaguely he smiled at a face before him. "Third floor—this time."

  You could always tell how the elevator boy felt about the permanent people of the hotel. When those for whom he had the most respect stepped out on their floors he always held the door open for an extra moment in an attitude of unctuousness. Hans had to jump furtively so that the sliding door would not nip his heels.

  Poldi—

  He stood hesitantly in the dim corridor. From the end came the sound of a cello—playing a series of descending phrases that tumbled over each other helter skelter like a handful of marbles dropped downstairs. Stepping down to the room with the music he stood for a moment just outside the door. A wobbly lettered notice was pinned there by a thumbtack.

  Poldi Klein

  Please Do Not Disturb While Practicing

  The first time he had seen that, he recalled, there had been an E before the ING of practicing.

  The heat seemed to be very low; the folds of his coat smelled wet and let out little whiffs of coldness. Crouching over the half warm radiator that stood by the end window did not relieve him.

  Poldi—I've waited for a long time. And many times I've walked outside until you're through and thought about the words I wish to say to you. Gott! How pretty—like a poem or a little song by Schumann. Start like that. Poldi—

  His hand crept along the rusty metal. Warm, she always was. And if he held her it would be so that he would want to bite his tongue in two.

  Hans, you know the others have meant nothing to me. Joseph, Nikolay, Harry—all the fellows I've known. And this Kurt only three times she couldn't that I've talked about this last week—Poof! They all are nothing.

  It came to him that his hands were crushing the music. Glancing down he saw that the brutally colored back sheet was wet and faded, but that the notation inside was undamaged. Cheap stuff. Oh well—

  He walked up and down the hall, rubbing his pimply forehead. The cello whirred upward in an unclear arpeggio. That concert—the Castelnuovo-Tedesco—How long was she going to keep on practicing? Once he paused and stretched out his hand toward the door knob. No, that time he had gone in and she had looked—and looked and told him—

  The music rocked lushly back and forth in his mind. His fingers jerked as he tried to transcribe the orchestral score to the piano. She would be leaning forward now, her hands gliding over the fingerboard.

  The sallow light from the window left most of the corridor dim. With a sudden impulse he knelt down and focussed his eye to the keyhole.

  Only the wall and the corner; she must be by the window. Just the wall with its string of staring photographs-—Casals, Piatigorsky, the fellow she liked best back home, Heifetz—and a couple of valentines and Christmas cards tucked in between. Nearby was the picture called Dawn of the barefooted woman holding up a rose with the dingy pink paper party hat she had gotten last New Year cocked over it.

  The music swelled to a crescendo and ended with a few quick strokes. Ach! The last one a quarter tone off. Poldi—

  He stood up quickly and, before the practicing should continue, knocked on the door.

  "Who is it?"

  "Me—H—Hans."

  "All right. You can come in."

  She sat in the fading light of the court window, her legs sprawled broadly to clench her cello. Expectantly she raised her eyebrows and let her bow droop to the floor.

  His eyes fastened on the trickles of rain on the window glass. "I—I just came in to show you the new popular song we're playing tonight. The one you suggested."

  She tugged at her skirt tha
t had slid up above her stocking rolls and the gesture drew his gaze. The calves of her legs bulged out and there was a short run in one stocking. The pimples on his forehead deepened in color and he stared furtively at the rain again.

  "Did you hear me practicing outside?"

  "Yes."

  "Listen, Hans, did it sound spiritual—did it sing and lift you to a higher plane?"

  Her face was flushed and a drop of perspiration dribbled down the little gully between her breasts before disappearing under the neck of her frock. "Ye-es."

  "I think so. I believe my playing has deepened much in the last month." Her shoulders shrugged expansively. "Life does that to me—it happens every time something like this comes up. Not that it's ever been like this before. It's only after you've suffered that you can play."

  "That's what they claim."

  She stared at him for a moment as though seeking a stronger confirmation, then curved her lips down petulantly. "That wolf, Hans, is driving me crazy. You know that Fauré thing—in E—well it takes in that note over and over and nearly drives me to drink. I get to dreading that E—it stands out something awful."

  "You could have it shifted?"

  "Well—but the next thing I take up would probably be in that key. No, that won't do any good. Besides, it costs something and I'd have to let them have my cello for a few days and what should I use? Just what, I ask you?"

  When he made money she could get—"I don't notice it so much."

  "It's a darn shame, I think. People who play like Hell can have good cellos and I can't even have a decent one. It's not right for me to put up with a wolf like that. It damages my playing—anybody can tell you that. How should I get any tone from that cheese box?"