Heartsong (34 page)

Ironically it was Madeleine who made him feel most at home during his Sunday visits, as she set food before him or darned his socks or prepared a packet of sweets for him. Charging Elk realized that the two of them had become friends at long last. Once he brought her an embroidered shawl in a box tied with a satin ribbon. When she opened it and held up the shawl to admire the embroidery, he saw that her eyes glistened with pleasure. And when she stood and kissed him on both cheeks, he thought happily that although it had taken a long time to reach this point, he did not know of a better woman in Marseille. He was surprised to think this.

But all in all, this was not a happy period in Charging Elk s life. He was not happy with his job—shoveling coal all day, day after day, had become a dreaded chore. He hated to come home covered with coal dust and smelling of oil and lye. He had not made another friend at the soap factory since Louis Granat of the Hautes-Alpes had been sent away to cut soap bars. In spite of René s constant reminder that he was fortunate to work for such a man as Monsieur Deferre, he wished desperately for another job. But how would he find one?

And Charging Elk was discouraged with the amount of money he was managing to save. He had only 140 francs tucked away in the bottom of his duffel bag and he had figured out, with Mathias's help, that it would take him at least another two years, more likely three, to save the money necessary for the trip home. He had begun to have serious misgivings about ever seeing his country and his people again.

More than anything, though, he was tired of living alone in the one room, of eating the tough chickens from the rôtisserie or the
rough country pâté and the goat cheese on baguette. Once a week he ate at the North African restaurant around the corner, always the couscous and flatbread. He was even tired of that. But most of all, he hated the early, cold nights when he would sit and smoke and wait until it was time to turn off the oil lamp and crawl into bed. The only satisfaction he got during this period was when his mind began to drift into sleep. Often, he would see the clean morning sun as it cleared the distant craggy hills of the badlands, or he would see a golden eagle circling above the plain, its cries so sharp and haunting he would sit up and listen—only to hear a cat fight or footsteps echoing on the cobblestones. He enjoyed these memories, the immediacy of them, but they only led to a more desperate loneliness.

One chilly Saturday evening in early December, the Moon of the Popping Trees, Charging Elk decided that he had had enough of his stark life in the little room and thought a walk down to the Old Port would cheer him. He had already washed himself at the bathhouse, but now he clicked open his push-button pocket knife and cleaned his fingernails, which were always black from the coal grime. He put on a clean shirt and tied his poet's tie loosely around his neck. Then he slapped some scent he had bought during his dandy days on his face and took five, then ten francs from the purse at the bottom of the duffel bag. He put on his good shoes, his long coat, and his hat. He glanced at himself in the mirror above the washstand and almost liked the dark, chiseled face, which was no longer the face of youth, and the hair, which hung shiny and black down past his shoulders.

Night came early now and the wide stone steps that led down from Le Panier were already glistening beneath the gas lamps. They felt greasy beneath the slick soles of his shoes as he took them two at a time. But he was becoming more and more excited as he thought of a Saturday night away from his room, out among people again, the smells of roasting chestnuts and brazier fires filling his
nostrils, the sounds of people laughing and chattering. It was near the time of Noël and the Old Port would be lit up, strings of electric lights draped from mast to mast of some of the larger ships, garlands of evergreens and fruit decorating the shopfronts. The cold would keep down the stench that usually came from the sewage of the port.

Charging Elk stopped suddenly at the base of the steps, a short block from the Quai du Port. A dark thought had intruded on his growing excitement, one that filled him with a familiar dread. This was almost exactly the time of year he had gone to the sickhouse four winters ago, the time he had almost gone away from this life, the time the show and his companions did go away and left him here to die. He remembered the moaning men in their beds, the cold night streets when he was on the run, the emptiness of the Gare du Prado, the touch of the gendarme—
“Pardon, monsieur
.” And he remembered lying in the stone room singing his death song.

Charging Elk, since moving out of the Soulas home, had lived mostly with the isolation of his own thoughts, his memories, good and bad. He did not have the luxury of intrusions into his life, of children like Mathias and Chloé making demands on him, of a woman like Madeleine making jokes of his ambitions as she did with René, of René himself constantly talking even when he'd like to be quiet. He did not haggle with the fishmonger or the green-grocer; nor did he exchange jokes and jibes with the other men at work. He listened but he didn't talk, couldn't talk like ordinary men. He had no real language to share with these
wasichus
. So he carried the freight of his thoughts and memories around with him and sometimes welcomed them and sometimes hated their insistence.

Now he tried to tell this latest thought to go away, to leave him to enjoy this evening, but as he tried to roll a cigarette he found that his fingers were trembling. In disgust, he threw down the paper
and tobacco. It was no use to go out this night. No matter where he went his thoughts would go with him. But just as he gathered himself to climb the stairs, he heard a whining sound behind him, like one of the cats of Le Panier. He grew even more disgusted, but when he turned to shoo it away, he saw a thin figure dressed in dirty heaps of cloth. Even the feet were wrapped in damp cloth. The figure was bent to the side, as though it were deformed, but when Charging Elk looked, he saw that a smaller figure was riding almost upright on its hip. The figure yowled again and stuck out its small, clawlike hand.

As though a great wave of cold air rose up from the cobblestones of the narrow street, Charging Elk felt his back twitch uncontrollably, almost violently. He had not felt such cold since he had escaped from the sickhouse. But now he saw that the figure was a young woman, her dark face shiny with grime. Her upturned palm was pale and delicate and the baby on her hip was no larger than the dead baby Jesus he had found in the alley.

His first inclination was to run, to bound up the stairs as quickly as he had descended. He felt vaguely ashamed of his fear of this woman and her child, but he couldn't help but feel that her sudden appearance was a bad sign, that she possessed some of the
siyoko
's power, had perhaps even been sent by the bespectacled one to harm him. He knew about gypsies. He had seen the women begging around the Old Port—some were old and bent over on their canes and moved as though their legs were made of stone; others were young, like this one, usually with a child. The men could take one's purse and disappear before the victim knew it was gone. Once Charging Elk had heard a man shout and saw a gendarme chase a gypsy through a crowd on the Canebiere. The gypsy dodged and wove his way through the people as dexterously as a big cat. Then he suddenly vanished, as though he became the very air that the people breathed.

Charging Elk had been astonished at such an act, but he shouldn't have been. René had told him that the gypsies contained
l'esprit malfaisant
. They could see deep into a man's spirit, they could tell his future and put a curse on him. Charging Elk and René had passed a fortune-teller's room every dark morning on their way to bid for fish and René always crossed himself in the way that made these Frenchmen
wakan
.

Now Charging Elk dared to look into the wraith's eyes, and they were dark and large, like the musky pools the beavers made in Paha Sapa. The small claw was raised before her, almost touching his coat. He glanced at the child but its eyes were closed, as though they were sealed shut with a line of white paste. The face was nothing more than a skull with dark skin, an old man's face.

Again Charging Elk felt ashamed of himself, but this time for fearing the frail woman and child. He dug into his pocket and then pressed the first coin he found into the woman's hand. In the same gesture, he gently curled her small birdfingers over the coin, a one-franc piece. It was too much to give to a beggar, but he was now almost grateful for the simple human contact on that dark street.
“Vous voilà, madame
,
pour votre bébé Jésus.”

The woman hung her head and backed away, wailing as though her heart would break, and Charging Elk recognized the sound. He had heard the Oglala women wail that way when they lost a husband or child. His own mother had wailed when his brother and then his sister died of the coughing sickness. But he was surprised that the woman had reacted that way to his generosity. Perhaps he shouldn't have touched her.

Nevertheless, Charging Elk felt his spirits rise as he watched the young woman hobble away into the darkness. In some way, he felt that he had passed a test, that he was once again free to become the man of the streets again—perhaps even become a whole man finally—for the first time in a long, long while.

B
ut when Charging Elk entered Rue Sainte he began to have second thoughts. The street was crowded with men, mostly sailors enjoying their Saturday night on the town. The two shabby bars were full of laughing, shouting men in short wool coats, some with caps with the little pompom on top. Glasses of beer in various stages of fullness rested on the bar or swung in slow movements between bar and mouth. There were other men too in their long coats and derbies or top hats, drinking wine and watching the sailors.

Charging Elk had been so sure of himself as he walked alongside the Opera House only two short blocks from this scene. But now he thought of the incident in the Brasserie Cherbourg, the hostile sailors, the jeering women, and he became a little afraid. René had told him several times to stay away from the American bars. It was not unusual for men to fall in with the wrong crowd or the wrong woman or even to be killed in these places. Marseille was full of bad men from all the lands of the world, men who were not civilized like the French and who would slit your throat if you looked at them in the wrong way. René had slid his finger across his own throat when he said this, and Charging Elk had recognized the gesture immediately And so he had stayed away from the places where these bad men congregated. Until now.

But the men were so involved with their drunken behavior, even those on the street who brushed by him, that the young Indian was beginning to feel invisible again. And his confidence began to grow. Still, he wished he had brought his walking stick with the heavy silver duck's head.

He walked deliberately down the middle of Rue Sainte, away from the two rowdy bars, until he came to the fancy whorehouse. He wove his way through a crowd of men, stepped up on the narrow stone walkway and looked into the window.

The room looked just as he had memorized it the past several weeks in his own shabby little flat—the warm painted walls, the bright chandeliers, the mirror over the elegant wooden bar, the plush red divans. And just as he had envisioned over and over in the same length of time, he saw the girl with the blue robe. She was sitting on one of the couches, looking down into a tall glass of amber water that she held on her lap. She was wearing the same black velvet headband, and dark curls partially hid her face. Her legs were crossed, the robe falling away from one white thigh just visible above her stocking.

She was not alone. This night, the room was filled with men in long coats and ties, some of them in the black evening clothes that rich men wore. Charging Elk had seen men like these escorting their ladies into the Opera House or sitting with others in some of the fancier restaurants in the Carré Thiars just off the Old Port. Nowhere could he see any sailors or any of the rough men that seemed to patronize the other establishments on Rue Sainte.

Several young women sat with the men, in groups or singly, much livelier now than that night a few weeks ago. One of the women had short straw-colored hair and wore a gown the color of a summer peach. She was surrounded by five or six of the men, all leaning forward, all bathed in the glow of her light laughter. She held a cigarette in a holder before her face and sipped from a small flat glass. Charging Elk thought she had some kind of power to make these fancy men pay so much attention to her. Perhaps it was her hair. He had not seen such yellow hair in Marseille.

The girl in the blue gown was sitting with a young man who seemed to be talking into her ear. He was facing her on the divan but she was looking into her drink. Once he put his hand on her crossed leg, running his finger from her knee to the top of the stocking. But she pushed his hand away and turned away toward the front of the room. She seemed to be looking right at Charging Elk,
but he knew she couldn't see him through the curtain. He didn't move as he might have that other evening. Perhaps it was the noise and movement on the street that made him bold, invisible to the girl and to the crush of men behind him.