The Mortgaged Heart (7 page)

***

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

D
EAR
M
RS.
M
C
C
ULLERS:

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,
G
ERALDINE
M
AVOR

GM:MW

W
HEN
H
ANS 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 that 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?"

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.