The Mortgaged Heart Read online

  A phrase from a sonata he was learning weaved itself in and out of his mind. "Poldi—" What was it now? I love you love you.

  "And for what do I bother anyway—this lousy job we have?" With a dramatic gesture she got up and balanced her instrument in the corner of the room. When she switched on the lamp the bright circle of light made shadows follow the curves of her body.

  "Listen, Hans, I'm so restless till I could scream."

  The rain splashed on the window. He rubbed his forehead and watched her walk up and down the room. All at once she caught sight of the run in her stockings and, with a hiss of displeasure, spat on the end of her finger and bent over to transfer the wetness to the bottom of the run.

  "Nobody has such a time with stockings as cellists. And for what? A room in a hotel and five dollars for playing trash three hours every night in the week. A pair of stockings twice every month I have to buy. And if at night I just rinse out the feet the tops run just the same."

  She snatched down a pair of stockings that hung side by side with a brassiere in the window and, after peeling off the old ones, began to pull them on. Her legs were white and traced with dark hairs. There were blue veins near the knees. "Excuse me—you don't mind, do you? You seem to me like my little brother back home. And we'll get fired if I start wearing things like that down to play."

  He stood at the window and looked at the rain blurred wall of the next building. Just opposite him was a milk bottle and a jar of mayonnaise on a window ledge. Below, someone had hung some clothes out to dry and forgotten to take them in; they flapped dismally in the wind and rain. A little brother—Jesus!

  "And dresses," she went on impatiently. "All the time getting split at the seams because of having to stretch your knees out. But at that it's better than it used to be. Did you know me when everybody was wearing those short skirts—and I had such a time being modest when I played and still keeping with the style? Did you know me then?"

  "No," Hans answered. "Two years ago the dresses were about like they are now."

  "Yes, it was two years ago we first met, wasn't it?"

  "You were with Harry after the con—"

  "Listen, Hans." She leaned forward and looked at him urgently. She was so close that her perfume came sharp to his nostrils. "I've just been about crazy all day. It's about him, you know."

  "Wh—Who?"

  "You understand well enough—him—Kurt! How, Hans, he loves me, don't you think so?"

  "Well—but Poldi—how many times have you seen him. You hardly know each other." He turned away from her at the Levin's when she was praising his work and—

  "Oh, what does it matter if I've only been with him three times. I should worry. But the look in his eyes and the way he spoke about my playing. Such a soul he has. It comes out in his music. Have you ever heard the Beethoven funeral march sonata played so well as he did it that night?"

  "It was good—"

  "He told Mrs. Levin my playing had so much temperament."

  He could not look at her; his grey eyes kept their focus on the rain.

  "So gemütlich he is. Ein Edel Mensch! But what can I do? Huh, Hans?"

  "I don't know."

  "Quit looking so pouty. What would you do?"

  He tried to smile. "Have—have you heard from him—he telephoned you or written?"

  "No—but I'm sure it's just his delicateness. He wouldn't want me to feel offended or turn him down."

  "Isn't he engaged to marry Mrs. Levin's daughter next spring?"

  "Yes. But it's a mistake. What would he want with a cow like her?"

  "But Poldi—"

  She smoothed down the back of her hair, holding her arms above her head so that her broad breasts stood out tautly and the muscles of her underarms flexed beneath the thin silk of her dress. "At his concert, you know, I had a feeling he was playing just to me. He looked straight at me every time he bowed. That's the reason he didn't answer my letter—he's so afraid he'll hurt someone and then he can always tell me what he means in his music."

  The adams-apple jutting from Hans' thin neck moved up and down as he swallowed. "You wrote to him?"

  "I had to. An artist cannot subdue the greatest of the things that come to her."

  "What did you say?"

  "I told him how much I love him—that was ten days ago—a week after I saw him first at the Levins'."

  "And you heard nothing?"

  "No. But can't you see how he feels? I knew it would be that way so day before yesterday I wrote another note telling him not to worry—that I would always be the same."

  Hans vaguely traced his hairline with his slender fingers. "But Poldi—there have been so many others—just since I've known you." He got up and put his finger on the photograph next to Casals'.

  The face smiled at him. The lips were thick and topped by a dark moustache. On the neck there was a little round spot. Two years ago she had pointed it out to him so many times, telling him that the hicky where his violin rested used always to be so angry-red. And how she used to stroke it with her finger. How she had called it Fiddler's Ill Luck—and how between them it had gotten down to simply his Zilluck. For several moments he stared at that vague splotch on the picture, wondering if it had been photographed or was simply the smudge from the number of times she had pointed it out to him.

  The eyes stared at him sharp seeing and dark. Hans' knees felt weak; he sat down again.

  "Tell me, Hans, he loves—don't you think so? You think really that he loves me but is only waiting until he feels it's best to reply—you think so?"

  A thin haze seemed to cover everything in the room. "Yes," he said slowly.

  Her expression changed. "Hans!"

  He leaned forward, trembling.

  "You—you look so queer. Your nose is wiggling and your lips shake like you are ready to cry. What—"

  Poldi—

  A sudden laugh broke into her question. "You look like a peculiar little cat my Papa used to have."

  Quickly he moved toward the window so that his face was turned away from her. The rain still slithered down the glass, silvery, half opaque. The lights of the next building were on; they shone softly through the grey twilight. Ach! Hans bit his lips. In one of the windows it looked like—like a woman—Poldi in the arms of a big man with dark hair. And on the window sill looking in, beside the bottle of milk and the mayonnaise jar, was a little yellow cat out in the rain. Slowly Hans' bony knuckles rubbed his eyelids.

  ***

  Sylvia Chatfield Bates' comment, attached to "Poldi" and marked Return for reading next time:

  This is an excellent example of the "picture" story—which means full dramatization of a short time scheme, the picturing of an almost static condition the actual narrative elements of which are in the past or in the future. The situation is rather trite, but not very. You can rescue it from triteness—as Willa Cather did in Lucy Gayheart—by the truth, accuracy and freshness of detail. Many a story sells on its detail; yours, so far as I have seen them, may be that sort. These details are good. Very vivid. Also a special knowledge story has a bid for success, and your special knowledge of music exhibited here sounds authentic. A musician can judge that better than I.

  The average reader will want more than your static picture vividly presented—movement forward, at the very least suggested for the future. But I like this as it is. For what it is it need not be much better done.

  S.C.B.

  BREATH FROM THE SKY

  HER PEAKED, YOUNG FACE stared for a time, unsatisfied, at the softer blue of the sky that fringed the horizon. Then with a quiver of her open mouth she rested her head again on the pillow, tilted the panama hat over her eyes, and lay motionless in the canvas striped chair. Chequered shade patterns jerked over the blanket covering her thin body. Bee drones sounded from the spirea bushes that sprayed out their white blossoms nearby.

  Constance dozed for a moment. She awoke to the smothering smell of hot straw—and Miss Whelan's voice.

  "C
ome on now. Here's your milk."

  Out of her sleepy haze a question came that she had not intended to ask, that she had not even been consciously thinking about: "Where's Mother?"

  Miss Whelan held the glistening bottle in her plump hands. As she poured the milk it frothed white in the sunlight and crystal frost wreathed the glass.

  "Where—?" Constance repeated, letting the word slide out with her shallow release of breath.

  "Out somewhere with the other kids. Mick was raising a fuss about bathing suits this morning. I guess they went to town to buy those."

  Such a loud voice. Loud enough to shatter the fragile sprays of the spirea so that the thousands of tiny blossoms would float down, down, down in a magic kaleidoscope of whiteness. Silent whiteness. Leaving only the stark, prickly twigs for her to see.

  "I bet your mother will be surprised when she finds where you are this morning."

  "No," whispered Constance, without knowing the reason for the denial.

  "I should think she would be. Your first day out and all. I know I didn't think the doctor would let you talk him into coming out. Especially after the time you had last night."

  She stared at the nurse's face, at her white clad bulging body, at her hands serenely folded over her stomach. And then at her face again—so pink and fat that why—why wasn't the weight and the bright color uncomfortable—why didn't it sometimes droop down tiredly toward her chest—?

  Hatred made her lips tremble and her breath come more shallowly, quickly.

  In a moment she said: "If I can go three hundred miles away next week—- all the way to Mountain Heights—I guess it won't hurt to sit in my own side yard for a little while."

  Miss Whelan moved a pudgy hand to brush back the girl's hair from her face. "Now, now," she said placidly. "The air up there'll do the trick. Don't be impatient. After pleurisy—you just have to take it easy and be careful."

  Constance's teeth clamped rigidly. Don't let me cry, she thought. Don't, please, let her look at me ever again when I cry. Don't ever let her look at me or touch me again. Don't, please—Ever again.

  When the nurse had moved off fatly across the lawn and gone back into the house, she forgot about crying. She watched a high breeze make the leaves of the oaks across the street flutter with a silver sheen in the sun. She let the glass of milk rest on her chest, bending her head slightly to sip now and then.

  Out again. Under the blue sky. After breathing the yellow walls of her room for so many weeks in stingy hot breaths. After watching the heavy footboard of her bed, feeling it crush down on her chest. Blue sky. Cool blueness that could be sucked in until she was drenched in its color. She stared upward until a hot wetness welled in her eyes.

  As soon as the car sounded from far off down the street she recognized the chugging of the engine and turned her head toward the strip of road visible from where she lay. The automobile seemed to tilt precariously as it swung into the driveway and jerked to a noisy stop. The glass of one of the rear windows had been cracked and plastered with dingy adhesive tape. Above this hung the head of a police dog, tongue palpitating, head cocked.

  Mick jumped out first with the dog. "Looka there, Mother," she called in a lusty child's voice that rose up almost to a shriek. "She's out."

  Mrs. Lane stepped to the grass and looked at her daughter with a hollow, strained face. She drew deeply at her cigarette that she held in her nervous fingers, blew out airy grey ribbons of smoke that twisted in the sunshine.

  "Well—" Constance prompted flatly.

  "Hello, stranger," Mrs. Lane said with a brittle gaiety. "Who let you out?"

  Mick clung to the straining dog. "See, Mother! King's trying to get to her. He hasn't forgotten Constance. See. He knows her good as anybody—don't you, boyoboyoboy—"

  "Not so loud, Mick. Go lock that dog in the garage."

  Lagging behind her mother and Mick was Howard—a sheepish expression on his pimply, fourteen year old face. "Hello, Sister," he mumbled after a gangling moment. "How do you feel?"

  To look at the three of them, standing there in the shade from the oaks, somehow made her more tired than she had felt since she came out. Especially Mick—trying to straddle King with her muscular little legs, clinging to his flexed body that looked ready any moment to spring out at her.

  "See, Mother! King—"

  Mrs. Lane jerked one shoulder nervously. "Mick—Howard take that animal away this instant—now mind me—and lock him up somewhere." Her slender hands gesture without purpose. "This instant."

  The children looked at Constance with sidelong gazes and moved off across the lawn toward the front porch.

  "Well—" said Mrs. Lane when they were gone. "Did you just pick up and walk out?"

  "The doctor said I could—finally—and he and Miss Whelan got that old rolling chair out from under the house and—helped me."

  The words, so many of them at once, tired her. And when she gave a gentle gasp to catch her breath, the coughing started again. She leaned over the side of the chair, Kleenex in hand, and coughed until the stunted blade of grass on which she had fastened her stare had, like the cracks in the floor beside her bed, sunk ineffaceably into her memory. When she had finished she stuffed the Kleenex into a cardboard box beside the chair and looked at her mother—standing by the spirea bush, back turned, vacantly singeing the blossoms with the tip of her cigarette.

  Constance stared from her mother to the blue sky. She felt that she must say something. "I wish I had a cigarette," she pronounced slowly, timing the syllables to her shallow breath.

  Mrs. Lane turned. Her mouth, twitching slightly at the corners, stretched out in a too bright smile. "Now that would be pretty!" She dropped the cigarette to the grass and ground it out with the toe of her shoe. "I think maybe I'll cut them out for a while myself. My mouth feels all sore and furry—like a mangy little cat."

  Constance laughed weakly. Each laugh was a huge burden that helped to sober her.

  "Mother—"

  "Yes."

  "The doctor wanted to see you this morning. He wants you to call him."

  Mrs. Lane broke off a sprig of the spirea blossoms and crushed it in her fingers. "I'll go in now and talk to him. Where's that Miss Whelan? Does she just set you out on the lawn by yourself when I'm gone—at the mercy of dogs and—"

  "Hush, Mother. She's in the house. It's her afternoon off, you know, today."

  "Is it? Well, it isn't afternoon."

  The whisper slid out easily with her breath. "Mother—"

  "Yes, Constance."

  "Are—are you coming back out?" She looked away as she said it—looked at the sky that was a burning, fevered blue.

  "If you want me to—I'll be out."

  She watched her mother cross the lawn and turn into the gravel path that led to the front door. Her steps were as jerky as those of a little glass puppet. Each bony ankle stiffly pushing past the other, the thin bony arms rigidly swinging, the delicate neck held to one side.

  She looked from the milk to the sky and back again. "Mother," her lips said, but the sound came out only in a tired exhalation.

  The milk was hardly started. Two creamy stains drooped from the rim side by side. Four times, then, she had drunk. Twice on the bright cleanliness, twice with a shiver and eyes shut. Constance turned the glass half an inch and let her lips sink down on an unstained part. The milk crept cool and drowsy down her throat.

  When Mrs. Lane returned she wore her white string garden gloves and carried rusty, clinking shears.

  "Did you phone Doctor Reece?"

  The woman's mouth moved infinitesimally at the corners as though she had just swallowed. "Yes."

  "Well—"

  "He thinks it best—not to put off going too long. This waiting around—The sooner you get settled the better it'll be."

  "When, then?" She felt her pulse quiver at her finger tips like a bee on a flower—vibrate against the cool glass.

  "How does the day after tomorrow strike you?"


  She felt her breath shorten to hot, smothered gasps. She nodded.

  From the house came the sound of Mick's and Howard's voices. They seemed to be arguing about the belts of their bathing suits. Mick's words merged into a scream. And then the sounds hushed.

  That was why she was almost crying. She thought about water, looking down into great jade swirls of it, feeling the coolness of it on her hot limbs, splashing through it with long, effortless strokes. Cool water—the color of the sky.

  "Oh, I do feel so dirty—"

  Mrs. Lane held the shears poised. Her eyebrows quivered upward over the white sprays of blossoms she held. "Dirty?"

  "Yes—yes. I haven't been in a bathtub for—for three months. I'm sick of being just sponged—stingily—"

  Her mother crouched over to pick up a scrap of a candy wrapper from the grass, looked at it stupidly for a moment, and let it drop to the grass again.

  "I want to go swimming—feel all the cool water. It isn't fair—isn't fair that I can't."

  "Hush," said Mrs. Lane with testy sibilance. "Hush, Constance. You don't have to worry over nonsense."

  "And my hair—" She lifted her hand to the oily knot that bumped out from the nape of her neck. "Not washed with water in—months—nasty awful hair that's going to run me wild. I can stand all the pleurisy and drains and t.b. but—"

  Mrs. Lane was holding the flowers so tightly that they curled limply into each other as though ashamed. "Hush," she repeated hollowly. "This isn't necessary."

  The sky burned brightly—blue jet flames. Choking and murderous to air.

  "Maybe if it were just cut off short—"

  The garden shears snipped shut slowly. "Here—if you want me to—I guess I could clip it. Do you really want it short?"

  She turned her head to one side and feebly lifted one hand to tug at the bronze hairpins. "Yes—real short. Cut it all off."

  Dank brown, the heavy hair hung several inches below the pillow. Hesitantly Mrs. Lane bent over and grasped a handful of it. The blades, blinding bright in the sun, began to shear through it slowly.