The Watchwoman

The Watchwoman

by Harry Buschman

“She’s going to fall out of that window and break her neck one of these days,” Mrs. Price whispered as she and Mrs. Girardi walked by number 44 St. John’s Place.

“It would teach her a lesson,” Mrs. Girardi agreed.

Their interest was focussed on the powerful figure of Mrs. Musselman, her folded arms planted firmly on the second floor window sill of 44 St. John’s Place ... her unblinking eyes followed them as the two women walked by.

At seven thirty every weekday morning Mr. Cellini, the grocer, and Mr. Kraus, the butcher said the same thing to each other as they waited for her to appear in the window across the street. “I often think,” said Mr. Kraus, “she could write a history of St. John’s Place – can you imagine the things she’s seen?”

“The ups and the downs,” suggested Mr. Cellini.

“What kind of ups could she see here?” said Mr. Kraus.

And now, today on the first anniversary of her death, a dull Friday morning in late summer with the promise of rain in the air, Mr. Kraus arrived at the door of his butcher shop at seven am. He fished in his pocket for the key, humming a tune from Schumann’s “Kinderscenen.” His daughter played it for him on the piano last night and he couldn’t get the music out of his head. She would play the entire piece at the school concert next month. Imagine! Just the way Bauer and Hoffmann did! His own Lily. Lily Kraus – not bad for a butcher’s daughter. How much is it going to cost to send her to Julliard? Ach, yes! Many, many pork roasts ... many barrels of sauerkraut! He swung the door wide and inhaled deeply. There was only the smell of fresh meat, sawdust and the briny scent of sauerkraut, no hint of spoilage – no patter of mouse feet could be heard. It was a good start for the day.

He opened the door of the walk-in refrigerator and pulled the light chain. “Speaking of pork roasts! There are 15 of them. If I drop the price a nickel a pound I can probably get rid of them by Saturday.” If he waited until Monday they’d be gamey and then he wouldn’t be able to sell them at all. “Okay, dots dot.” He decided. He started to sharpen his knives on the wood block still humming the music of Robert Schumann. He saw the awning rolling down in front of Cellini’s grocery next door and decided to go out and pass the time of day.

Cellini was stacking eggplant. He was almost finished with an impressive four-sided pyramid, nearly large enough to bury the body of an Egyptian Pharaoh.

“Good morning Cellini. Mrs. Musselman would have wanted the one on the bottom.”

“She couldn’t have it.”

At the mention of her name they both looked across the street. From a habit of long standing they almost expected to see Mrs. Musselman at her window. Of course she was not there, she hadn’t been there for a year now. The second floor window sill of number 44 was now occupied by a white cat.

“It’s hard to get used to,” Kraus said, rubbing his chin philosophically. “It’s nearly eight o’clock in the morning. I can’t get it out of my head – she was always there by eight o’clock.”

“So, she’s not there.” Cellini, the grocer topped out his pyramid of eggplant. “I can’t stand here all day, Kraus. I got tomatoes inside.”

The pressure of making a living can be an overwhelming consideration. In the end it is our eggplants, our tomatoes and our pork roasts that must take precedence over our interest in a neighbor’s passing. Besides, Mrs. Musselman’s passing was as bizarre as it was tragic. There are people, even today along St. John’s Place who, after a year, still shake their heads and smile a little when the event is discussed.

Mr. and Mrs. Musselman lived in the middle apartment of a block of five story tenements facing St. John’s Place in Brooklyn. Their flat was on the second floor and from their parlor windows facing the street they had a commanding, yet intimate view of all that happened outside – similar to having a box at the opera. Mr. Musselman was not a curious man but Mrs. Musselman was at the window day and night.

She was a woman of considerable bulk, twice the size of her husband. She had jet black hair, tied back tightly and held in place with pins and a variety of combs. The tightness of her hair seemed to stretch her eyes wide and flare her nostrils. Her face resembled a hood ornament on an expensive automobile. She wore a black dress laced with tiny black glass beads and coming apart at the seams. It had been a dress worn to attend a funeral for a forgotten relative. Over the dress she wore a tan cardigan sweater buttoned at the neck with the topmost button.

She spent long days with her meaty arms cradled on a pillow placed on the sill of her parlor window. Perched there, she would watch the children play stickball in the street, keep close watch on Cellini’s grocery store, the German butcher and St. John’s Saloon on the corner. Her stony faced vigilance may well have contributed to the good behavior of everyone in the neighborhood.

On rainy days Mrs. Musselman would shut her window and stand behind it, hands on hips. She would position herself between the window curtain and the glass looking somewhat like a draped figure on a Greek vase. She was a steadying influence on the passing parade of neighbors making their way along St. John’s Place.

She kept the window surgically clean and ladies in the neighborhood often said it was probably the only clean thing in her flat. “What can you expect,” Mrs. Price said to Mrs. Girardi. “How can she have time to do any housework? She’s at the window all day.” Both ladies wondered if she took the time to cook for Mr. Musselman. “From the looks of him I doubt if he’s had a decent supper in years,” Mrs. Girardi sniffed.

To be sure, Mr. Musselman was a tragic figure of a man, a model of the hen-pecked husband. He appeared promptly at the stoop of 44 St. John’s Place at 5:30 every weekday evening. He would pause a moment and glance up at the parlor window of the second story straight into the eyes of Mrs. Musselman staring down at him. For some deep and private reason he would sigh deeply and mount the stairs slowly, one by one. He was a hollow chested man, gray-haired and subject to head colds.

The private life of the Musselman’s was a mystery to everyone; there were no sounds of violence or reproach from their apartment – no cries of anguish or regret. Many people had the impression they were unaware of each other, like life-time prisoners in a cell. They contributed very little to the tenement’s trash barrel, and most of the ladies were sure Mr. Musselman lived on a diet of leftovers, while Mrs. Musselman ate her main meal at lunch time. In the evening after dinner Mrs. Musselman would appear at the window again and keep watch on the night life of St. John’s Place – such as it was. Their radio could be heard filtering through the walls that separated them from the Swenson family next door. No voices could be heard, just the radio. Mrs. Swenson was unable to hear any conversation, even though she held a glass tumbler to her ear in contact with the wall.

In time Mr. Musselman died of natural causes. It was sudden however, and no one could really tell if it was due to poor nutrition, the lack of love, or an absence of the desire to live any longer. No one knew he died but Mrs. Musselman. It was only by chance that Mrs. Girardi, while on her way to Cellini’s grocery store, noticed the City Coroner for the Borough of Brooklyn arrive with his black wagon from the morgue. That was the end of it. Funerals were optional in those days and Mrs. Musselman chose not to have one.

Mrs. Price and Mrs. Girardi dropped in to pay their respects the following week. They were admitted but were not offered a cup of tea. It was a quiet call, and with no mutual interests there was little conversation. When they got out in the street again they looked back and saw Mrs. Musselman watching them from her parlor window on the second floor.

“What will she do without Mr. Musselman?” Mrs. Girardi asked.

“The same thing she did with him.” Mrs. Price sniffed.

That was exactly what she did. If anything, her vigilance increased, sometimes with a plate balanced on the window sill beside her, she would eat as life passed by outside.

She knew the price of every vegetable at Cellini’s grocery, and the price of pork at Kraus’s butcher shop. She could tell you who was and who was not in the St. John’s Saloon at any hour of the day. She would focus sharply on the swinging doors of the saloon and identify the men who left unsteadily. She could tell you the names of every man, young and old, who stood waiting for the saloon to open at the close of the eleven o’clock Mass on Sunday.

The little Italian man we called ‘The Troubadour’ would often come by with his accordion and see Mrs. Musselman looking at him from her window. He would surprise her while her attention was fixed elsewhere and suddenly burst into song. Without a word of warning his sharp acidic tenor would ring out ... “che gelida manina,” but before he could get any further Mrs. Musselman would fling him a dime. He would stoop to pick it up and when he straightened up to finish the aria, she would be gone and the curtain would be drawn.

It was next to impossible to divert her attention from the panorama that passed under her window. Possibly her curiosity for the life of the street was caused by the lack of life in her own second floor apartment, both before and after Mr. Musselman. None of her neighbors could say. All they knew of her was her face in the window, as unblinking as any of the faces of the presidents on the mountainside in South Dakota.

Last year it was Mr. Kraus, the butcher who said goodnight to Mrs. Musselman at seven p.m. when he locked his door that fateful evening. It had been a good day for pork, not so hot for beef and about what could be expected for chickens. However, his mood was buoyant. He would have a beer when he got home, sit and watch his wife in the kitchen and listen to his daughter, Lily, play Robert Schumann on the piano. He tried to whistle the tune she played last night, but he could not. It was not the kind of music a man could whistle. In this mellow mood he glanced up at Mrs. Musselman’s window across the street.

She seemed to have fallen asleep at her post, and he said goodnight loudly enough to wake her. He continued walking home confidant that she would rouse herself and call it a day. He forgot about her completely when he got home. Supper was on the stove, his wife was busy in the kitchen and Lily was playing the music of Robert Schumann.

The night passed. He slept well and rose in the morning thinking of marking down the beef briskets in the hope they might sell better today than they did yesterday. His mind was intent on this problem as he passed Mrs. Musselman, still asleep in the second floor window of number 44.

He stopped abruptly. There was a pigeon perched on her head and pecking at her ear. A chill chased down the center of his back and lodged itself in his spine. There was a long string of spittle hanging from her lower lip reaching all the way down to the top of the first floor window.

Under his breath he called, “Mrs. Musselman ... are you all right, Mrs. Musselman?” He knew she was dead before he called to her, but he could think of nothing more appropriate to say. It was simply a final word before opening the door of his butcher shop and picking up the phone to call the police.

Mrs. Musselman was most certainly dead. The sash weight cord had broken inside the window frame. The heavy window slammed down on the back of her head knocking her senseless and pinning her to the sill. Its continued pressure on her head and neck strangled her while she lay unconscious. This was the Police Department’s explanation of the tragic accident, and whether it was accurate or not no one questioned it.

There were no relatives. None came forward and none could be found. She was buried in the city cemetery as close to her husband as space permitted – not next to him of course – but close. There was no funeral, she was not a church goer. In spite of that, Mrs. Girardi lit a candle for her soul, and Mrs. Price recited a Kaddish.

The suddenness of it was shocking to the people of St. John’s Place, and getting used to it took a week or more. At the end of the second week a city truck arrived and stripped the apartment of furniture. Two days later an Irish family moved in – a husband, a wife, two small sons and a white cat. Except for the cat, none of them seemed to be interested in the view from the second floor window.

After a week the people passing by number 44 got used to it. This was the city after all, and other things took precedence; the Catholic Church on the corner diagonally across from the saloon; the Jewish hospital with the ambulance sirens day and night, etc. There were street confrontations, arguments, accidents and daily stickball games until dark. The memory of Mrs. Musselman in the window grew dimmer and dimmer until it blinked out.

Only Mr. Cellini in his grocery and Mr. Kraus in his butcher shop recalled the anniversary. Her window had been directly across the street from them, and in their rare moments of idleness they would come to their front door and look out to see her looking at them. Even today Mr. Kraus, looking at the white cat in the window, said to Mr. Cellini ...

“Hard to get used to,” he rubbed his chin philosophically and sighed, “I can’t get it out of my head -- she should be there.”

“So, she’s not there.” Cellini stood there polishing his apples, “I can’t stand here all day, Kraus. I got tomatoes inside.”