THE COLLECTOR
By Sara Goodchild
Once, a boy was born with a heart made of stone. At the birthing, the midwife recoiled from the silent, stone-hearted babe and fled, muttering prayers and counter-curses under her breath, but the new mother gathered him up and kissed his tiny nose and marveled at his strange stone-grey eyes. She sang softly to her little boy:
Never mind
Never mind
If your heart is cold
I’ll give you mine…
She held his hand to her warm heart, and he looked at her unblinkingly with his stone-grey eyes. She named him John.
John, a strange and silent baby, grew to become a strange and silent boy – never laughing, never crying, rarely speaking. He was beautiful, too, with his jet black hair and pale eyes. Despite his beauty, other children would not play with him; they did not like the way he did not talk or run but only stood and stared with those unblinking eyes.
Instead of playing marbles or tag, John collected dead things. Once he carried a decaying mouse on his shoulder for days, stroking its pelt over and over. Once his teacher caught him singing to a half-eaten dove he had hidden in his desk. He kept his best finds under his bed – a kitten, an owl — and his room was filled with the sickly-sweet smell of rot and the insistent buzzing of flies. It was his first collection.
Still John’s mother loved him and never lost faith that his stone heart would grow warm one day. Each night she would sit in her rocking chair by the fire and lift John onto her lap. She would stroke his hair and give him her warm heart to hold, and she would sing:
Never mind
Never mind
If your heart is cold
I’ll give you mine…
And John would curl up against her and stroke her warm heart over and over.
On John’s seventeenth birthday, he sat by his mother’s rocking chair and she caressed his forehead and he held her warm heart. But this time, she did not sing her usual song. Instead she sighed and said, “You are too old now to sit by your mother’s rocking chair. You must go out into the world and find a wife. Maybe a wife’s love can warm your stone heart where your mother’s love could not.”
And she sang a different song:
Never mind
Never mind
Some lass will warm
That heart of thine.
“Give me back my heart, John. You are a man now; it is time for you to go.”
She reached for her heart, but John would not give it up. He clutched it tighter and tighter until his mother gasped in pain.
John only squeezed and twisted all the harder. His mother tried to pull the heart from his fingers, but he yanked it out of her reach and flung it into the fire. It burned up in a trice with a flash of white light. His mother thrust both hands into the fire and sifted frantically through the glowing coals. John could smell her flesh charring like meat left too long on a spit and still she dug through the fire, trying to salvage a fragment of her heart. But it was too late.
She stayed kneeling by the hearth, her ruined hands hanging by her side. Then she went back to her rocking chair and sat down. She folded her blackened hands in her lap and she softly sang as she rocked back and forth:
Never mind…Never mind…Never mind… Never mind…Never mind….
John gathered his things and went out the door without a single look back.
John walked down the road, humming softly to himself. He did not think of his mother but he did think of her heart. His fingers ached for its warmth and softness and he regretted throwing it into the fire. He reached into his pocket and stroked the dead mink he had put in there for company. It was not the same, and he began to wonder where he could find another heart.
After a time the little road he was following reached the main road, and people passed in both directions on foot and on horses. A pair of sturdy farm girls glanced at him sidelong as they trundled past, but they only saw his worn shoes and faded shirt. They giggled and batted their lashes, though, when a finely-dressed man rode past them with a rifle at his back and coins clinking in his purse.
John followed the man until there was nobody else nearby. He ran up to him and stabbed his knife into the man’s leg. The man roared in pain and surprise, and his horse reared and threw him. Before the man knew he was dead, John had cut his throat, dragged him into the bushes, and taken his clothes, money, and horse.
John rode for several days. Girls passing by on the road no longer glanced at him sidelong; instead they smiled at him, they fluttered their lashes, they waved, they giggled, they bit their lips and pinched their cheeks. John sat tall and looked straight ahead.
At the next town, he stopped at the inn. The innkeeper’s daughter who brought him his meat and ale saw his fine clothes and handsome face and smiled. She told him her name was Molly. He said, “Molly,” and reached up and touched her cheek. Molly blushed and went away, but she came back to his table again and again, bringing him bits of pie and fruit to eat with his ale.
That first night, she came to his room and he hummed softly to her and he stroked her hair and she gazed into his stone-grey eyes and felt she would burst with joy that such a beautiful man could love her.
John stayed at the inn for four days and four nights. Each night, Molly came to him in his room. On the second night, to prove her love, she brought him a gift: a gold watch she stole from her father. On the third night, so he would not forget her, she brought him a photograph that a traveling man had once taken of her. And on the fourth night, she offered John her heart.
He took it from her and though it was not his mother’s heart it was warm and soft and he stroked it over and over and sang softly to it: never mind… never mind…. Molly watched his grey eyes gleam in the candlelight.
“And you, John?” she whispered, “Do I also have your heart?”
John smiled, and his smile was a baring of teeth with no warmth in it. He brought out his own heart and showed it to her, and Molly saw that it was made of stone.
“You will never love me! Give me back my heart!” Molly cried, and she flew at him. But he tied her up and gagged her and left, with her heart tucked safely in his pocket along with her photograph.
When the innkeeper found his daughter in the morning, bound and naked, he flogged her for her lewdness. But she did not make a sound, and her dulled eyes did not show that she felt any pain. She never spoke again.
At the next town, John sold the gold watch and bought a box camera and a folding stand. The old man in the chemists’ shop showed him how to use strange-smelling liquids to coax black and white ghosts from shiny paper. Then John set out again, and girl after girl fell under the spell of the strange and beautiful young photographer. Farm girls, mayor’s wives, rich widows, all who gazed into his stone-grey eyes as they sat for their portraits, loved him.
In the end, each one gave him her heart. He kept his collection in a sack. He took the hearts out when he was alone and lined them up in rows along with the photographs of their owners – beautiful in black and white, frozen in time. He picked up the hearts one by one and held them and stroked them and hummed to himself.
After many months his sack of hearts was full and his pockets clinked with gold from their owners. He left a trail behind him of blank-eyed, silent women. With their money, he bought a fine house on a hill.
One day a girl named Mary came to his house to ask for work. She blushed as the handsome man who opened the door started a little, and then looked her up and down. “You remind me of someone,” he said, in a whisper-soft voice. And he sang something very quietly under his breath. Then he was silent and Mary wondered if she should go.
“I am alone here,” he said, finally. “You can stay and clean and cook.” She nodded, her heart melting at the sadness she was certain she heard in his voice.
Mary stayed and swept and dusted and cooked and polished. John went out with his camera for weeks at a time. Always when he returned, he went straight to a room at the top of the stairs and shut himself inside for hours. Mary wondered what was inside that room, but the door was always locked.
One night, when Mary was alone in the house, she could not sleep. She wandered the halls and the stairways aimlessly. Stuffed and mounted creatures – foxes, falcons – watched her with glassy eyes as she went.
She stopped before the locked door at the top of the stairs. She stood there a long time. Then she took out her hairpin and shook out her hair. She picked the lock and went inside.
The room had no window. Even in the dim light of her lamp, she could see the room was impeccably clean. He must clean it himself, she thought. The room contained a small chair and a table on which stood basins and several bottles filled with liquid. Black and white photographs hung from a line above the table.
So this was his darkroom. But it seemed more than that. Along the walls were cases made of glass and wood. Molly went into the room a little further and gasped when she saw what the cases held.
In each case was a row of hearts. Pinned above each heart was a photograph of a woman. Terrified but fascinated, she went from case to case. The hearts were as different as snowflakes but one thing was the same – on each heart spread patches of rot like dark flowers or burnt lace.
All those deceived hearts. All those girls who had loved him.
In the center of the last case she looked at, there was a drawing of a heart in charcoal. She could not take her eyes off it.
She never heard the front door open, and she heard John’s footsteps too late. His hand fell heavily on her shoulder. “I’ve never asked you your name,” he whispered in her ear.
“I’m Mary,” she said, still staring at the charcoal heart, not daring to move.
“Mary,” he said, and turned her around. He raised her chin with his finger and she looked into his stone-grey eyes. He sang softly: never mind… never mind….
She knew then that she would not run from the house. She would not rouse the town. She would never avenge the owners of those sad, blackening hearts.
And she knew, finally, that he would not ask for her heart, but that she would give it to him anyway.