Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  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 closer 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 other’s 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 t
o 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.

  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 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 impatie
ntly. “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 Levins’ 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?”