Heartsong (49 page)

René and Madeleine got off the omnibus a block from the Palais de Justice. They stood for a moment, watching the lumbering wagon turn into Cours Pierre Puget. A worker in a blue peasant's uniform was washing windows on the shady side of the street. He had a wet rag tied around his neck and he worked fast. The windows dried almost immediately in the close heat. But René envied him—a simple man performing a simple task. He would probably grumble to his wife tonight about his menial lot in life, but right now it didn't seem so bad. He took Madeleine's elbow and urged her toward their destination. Both of them were tight-lipped and awkward, as though they were the accused and were showing up for their own trial.

Between the Palais de Justice and another building, René could see, on the high hill, Notre Dame de la Garde and the golden Virgin surmounting the steeple, and he remembered having prayed just last night, as he did every night, to the Virgin for succor for his young friend. But he had no sign that she heard him. Now he
couldn't look at her, for she cast a dazzling light beneath the late-morning sun.

René showed the letter of summons to a young man behind a desk in the tall, gloomy foyer of the Palais de Justice. He gave them directions and they ascended a wide staircase and walked to the end of a windowless hall, their footsteps echoing sharply on the marble floor. Another young man, this one in the dark tunic and blue trousers with the red stripe of the gendarmes, looked over the letter, then glanced pointedly at each of them before leading them into courtroom B.

René was surprised that they were in a long balcony that arched around the large courtroom. There were three rows of benches, each stepped down to the railing. And he was surprised that the benches were nearly filled. He had never been in a courtroom and at first he thought these must be the officials. But there were so many of them. How would justice ever get done?

The floor below was nearly deserted by comparison. A few men in black robes sat at each of several dark wooden tables, chatting among themselves. On one side, sitting in two rows in a box, were a group of men, all staring straight ahead, as though they were waiting for a theatrical performance to begin, but their faces were as grim as infantrymen waiting for the order to charge into the teeth of the Huns.

The gendarme brought them to a special roped-off section of the balcony. He unfastened a brass hook from a stanchion and said, “Here we are.” René almost bowed to the young gendarme, as though he were a monsignor or a
grand bourgeois
. “Thank you,” he whispered as he sat hesitantly on the hard bench. He could not remember being this intimidated ever before. He pulled his handkerchief from a pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead and upper lip. He glanced back toward the door they had come in, which was now closed. And he felt trapped in the large, airless room.

He suddenly felt Madeleine's hand on his own. “Are you all right, René?”

“Its just a little warm. That's all.”

“But your hand is trembling.”

“I didn't realize it would be this big. And the people . . .” Just then he spotted a small oval platform, like a pulpit, just below them. It had a picket balustrade around it and a single chair in the middle. René suddenly forgot his discomfort and gazed lovingly at the man sitting on the chair. “Madeleine,” he whispered, as though in a daze, and she looked at him, then followed his eyes to the man in the chair.

“Good Lord,” she said. “He is so young still.”

They sat in silence for a moment, looking at the long, dark hair, the deep copper face, the narrow eyes, and the shadowy cheeks beneath the ridge of bone. They were no more than seven meters away from Charging Elk.

“He looks so handsome,” Madeleine said.

René leaned forward over the balcony rail and whispered as loudly as he dared, “Charging Elk. Sssst. My friend.”

Charging Elk glanced around him but he didn't look up.

“Sssst. Here, my friend.”

But a gendarme suddenly appeared from beneath the bacony and René ducked back.

Just then a man beside a door in the front of the room announced that the people should all rise, and the murmuring and shifting ceased as the people obeyed. They watched in silence as three older men in red robes, white bibs, and caps of office filed up to the ornate bench beneath the seal of the French Republic. Each carried a portfolio, and as they settled into the tall red velvet chairs, the one in the center turned in one direction, then the other. The other magistrates nodded, and the one in the middle, a spare man with spectacles and a blunt white beard, announced that the Cour
d'Assises de la République was now in session. He cautioned the spectators to refrain from disruptive behavior. He urged both the
procureur générai
and the advocate for the accused to be “to the point.” He pointed out that he himself would ask questions not only of the accused, but of his advocate and of the
procureur général
.He also addressed the jury, cautioning them to use good judgment, to refrain from speaking of the proceedings outside the courtroom, and to remember that they were to make their decision of guilt or innocence based solely on the evidence they were to hear. Then he nodded to the
procureur
, who was conferring with one of his associates. The
procureur
, a tall, ruddy man with white muttonchops and a prominent stomach that caused his robe to stick out over the tips of his glossy shoes, stood, and with a slight bow to the magistrates, commenced his opening argument.

René and Madeleine were tight-lipped but spellbound by the
procureur général's
oratory as he accused Charging Elk of the most heinous crime he had come across in his nineteen years of public service. He pounded the railing in front of the jurors and pointed at the accused and said he was not only an illegal immigrant but a savage who could never comprehend the necessary rules and obligations of a civilized society. He cited poets and painters, composers and sculptors, politicians and priests, the great chefs of France, one of whom had been brutally, coldheartedly murdered by a villain who would not know a leg of mutton from a
noisette de veau
. “Why,” the prosecutor sputtered, “he lives in Le Panier, that notorious district of cutpurses and murderers and drug-runners. He is not a simple vagabond or a poor child of nature, as some would have us believe. He is a part of that den of iniquity, that black wound in the breast of decent Marseille society. If I were ten years younger, I would go up there and clean it out myself. You can mark my words.”

Even though they had been forewarned by Charging Elk's advocate,
René was startled by the exaggerations and outright lies and Madeleine was outraged. She gripped his knee harder and harder and puffed and snorted. René glanced around and he noticed that some in the balcony were looking at them. He squeezed his wife's hand and attempted a comforting smile, but she would not look at him.

Charging Elk either did not understand what the prosecutor was saying about him or chose to accept the outrageous accusations as part of this strange proceeding. He sat calmly but alertly his legs crossed, his long, brown hands nestled in his lap. Réne had seen this pose hundreds of times, when he dragged Charging Elk to a café to drink anisette with his friends, or when one of the children, when they were younger, told him about the days adventures. Even if he didn't understand the words, the expression of friendly alertness never left his face.

That was the Charging Elk that René knew, the Charging Elk who had eventually won over Madeleine with his patience and goodwill, so that now she was seething with every word the unlucky prosecutor uttered.

“Can't they stop his filthy lies?” she suddenly whispered in a fierce voice that carried far enough to make René cast a nervous glance toward the chief magistrate.

“It is his job, my dear wife,” he whispered, without looking at her. “This is the way they do it. Next it will be Charging Elk's advocate's turn to defend him. When he interviewed me, he said not to worry. It is the prosecutor's job to make our friend look bad. It's the way things are done.”

“But it's not fair to have to listen to all these lies. What if the magistrates believe him?”

“They take it all with a grain of salt. They are experienced men, men of honor.” René glanced over at the two rows of men in the oblong box. They are the ones we have to worry about, he thought.
The advocate had said that the jurors held Charging Elk's fate in their hands. They might be honorable men but they were not experienced. Even now, they sat expressionless, but with eyes and ears wide open to the prosecutor and his venomous accusations. René remembered the dazzling gold virgin atop Notre Dame de la Garde and said a small, halting prayer to her. He was beginning to have that hopeless feeling again.

“He looks like a boiled pig,” said Madeleine, thrusting her chin toward the prosecutor.

Charging Elk sat on the plain wooden chair in the prisoner's dock, looking at his brown shoes, which were now scuffed and dull. He was wearing his dark suit, the one the tailor had made for him in a happier time. The man who was on his side and who would speak up for him had sent it to the cleaners and had gotten him a couple of clean shirts and a tie. He said Charging Elk had to look like a respectable gentleman. But Charging Elk was disappointed in the scuffed brown shoes. He had been only too happy to dress up after the many sleeps in the gray prisoner's clothes. And when he pointed out to the man who would speak for him the sad state of the brown shoes, the man said not to worry, nobody would see them. But Charging Elk could see them and he was disappointed.

He sat on a level between the balcony and the floor where all the important ones sat and sometimes stood. All were silent except for the man who accused him of many bad things. His advocate had said that the other man was his enemy and would try to convince the jury and the magistrates that Charging Elk was a bad man. And although Charging Elk could make out only a little of what the accusing one said, he knew that he was in trouble. He understood the words “savage” and “murderer” and “evil heart.” He could see that the men in the box were listening with big ears.

Charging Elk had heard somebody whisper his name, but when he looked around he saw only strangers. Some of them had been
looking at him, especially those in the balcony as though he were some sort of wild animal on display, like the big cats and wolves in the Wild West show. For the first time in a long time, he was annoyed by this prurience and wanted to show them his teeth, but the one who spoke for him had told him it was important to act the gentleman. So he ignored them and focused his attention on the bad-mouthed one and the jurymen who watched him. And his heart grew heavy to think that these people did not understand the ways of the
siyokos
and the necessity to kill them.

He understood from his advocate that the situation did not look good, that perhaps the most the advocate could do would be to save him from the guillotine. Even that would be a great triumph. But if he could show that Charging Elk had been a good citizen up to this event, perhaps the court would show mercy. He wanted the names of all the people who knew Charging Elk, every one of them, friend or enemy; he would sort them out. And so Charging Elk gave him the names of all who had been friendly toward him—the Soulas family, Brown Suit, Yellow Breast, his bosses at the soap factory, Monsieur Billedoux and Madame Braque, the little fat man at Le Salon, Olivier. Then, after a few moments of thought, he included Marie.

But the advocate had said she was already coming to the stand “in another capacity.” Charging Elk had not understood this language and was pleased that he would be able to see her again, even if only from a distance. In fact, the thought that he would be able to look at her and that she might look at him was what had sustained him the past three weeks. He had been questioned repeatedly the previous two and a half weeks by the special magistrate, who seemed to want him to say that he had killed the good chef with a cold heart, as a country butcher cuts the neck of a lamb and throws it into the brambles to bleed out. And he wouldn't listen to the simple explanation that Charging Elk did it for
all of the people, including the special magistrate. It was his obligation.

Now Charging Elk glanced around the courtroom, the prosecutor's words just a meaningless recitation in his ears. It occurred to him that Marie might be here now—perhaps in the balcony, perhaps seated at one of the tables beneath the balcony. There were a few women there, but none of them was Marie. Of course he couldn't see into the balcony just over his head, but he imagined that she might be there. And it occurred to him that he had never seen her in going-out clothes, and the idea of her in a long, perhaps satiny dress and a beautiful hat made of feathers excited him almost visibly. He leaned forward to get a better look at the tables beneath the balcony, but they were filled with men, all of them writing in little notebooks. But there at the front right-hand corner of the long table in the middle sat Yellow Breast, head down, pencil moving furiously across and down the page.

Charging Elk had seen him only once more after that initial meeting. He brought cigarettes, candy, and greetings from Réne and Madeleine. He also brought a copy of the article he had written about Charging Elk. He had been excited about the reaction the article had brought, but when Charging Elk simply looked at it, he paused. “You can't read,” he said. Then he told Charging Elk what it said, leaving out some parts that he thought might upset the
indien
. He said that many people were angry that an innocent savage could be seduced by a voracious predator like Breteuil. They were even angrier that the justice system could not see that the crime had actually been committed by the perverted chef. Many of the comments on the street included the declaration “I would have done the same thing myself.”

But that had been four or five weeks ago and Charging Elk had heard nothing since; nor had he seen Yellow Breast again until now. He had begun to think that the journalist had forgotten all about
him—after all, Marseille was a big town and there were many things for a journalist to write about. So when Yellow Breast, during a pause while the prosecutor drank a glass of water, glanced up and winked, the
indien
smiled. He had not seen a friendly face other than Yellow Breast's since before the incident in Le Salon. He was suddenly filled with hope that Yellow Breast could make these citizens see the truth of what he had done.