Heartsong (51 page)

“Forgive me, your honors,” the advocate said with a slight bow and a slight smile. “Just one more question, if it pleases the court.” He left his desk and walked toward the witness stand, removing his spectacles along the way. He glanced up at the magistrates, as if expecting them to stop him from invading this neutral space. Finally, he stopped little more than a meter from the witness stand and folded his arms. He turned slowly, deliberately, three-quarters of a turn to his left, until he was looking toward the prisoner's dock. “Take a good look, Mademoiselle Colet. That is the man accused of the murder of Monsieur Armand Breteuil. Even now, he understands imperfectly the nature of these proceedings. See how he looks at you? I would wager all of my meager salary that he is remembering the many Saturday nights he came to see you, exclusively you, because he found in you someone he could trust—and yes, in his own way, love.” He turned back and looked into her eyes. “Can you find it in your heart to say that this man is guilty of
anything more than defending himself from an assault on his dignity and pride? Can you say you feel nothing for this man? Surely you must regret your complicity in the wicked act perpetrated by the pervert Breteuil—”

“I object! This is beyond the bounds of propriety! For shame!”

But before the chief magistrate could admonish him, the advocate held up his hands and said, “I am finished with this witness. Thank you.”

R
ené was surprisingly cheerful on the witness stand. After being scolded for waving at Charging Elk, he told of a normal, happy family, an honest family, and how the defendant had fit right in, had in fact become a second son to the little fishmonger. He worked hard in the fish stall, he only took a little wine with his meals, and he taught Réne s daughter how to draw a horse. In turn, his daughter and son gave the defendant lessons in proper French, not Provençal, as the government so ordered. Even after Charging Elk left the Soulases' home, he came every Sunday and every holiday to dinner. He was a very generous man who brought them all presents. And as anyone could see, he had become a proper gentleman. “But you should have seen him as I first saw him in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show—a whooping, naked savage who scared the children half to death.” René laughed and lifted his arm toward Charging Elk, but remembered the scolding and snatched it back. “Forgive me, your graces,” he said.

Some in the balcony laughed, and the advocate sat down, satisfied with the personable little fishmonger's portrayal of his client s character. The prosecutor then stood and blotted his forehead with a handkerchief. He smiled at René, a broad smile, as though he shared in the good humor that had broken the monotonous tension of the courtroom.

“You make me wish I had seen this Wild West show, monsieur. It would surely be preferable to sitting in a stuffy courtroom, bent on a sad duty.” The prosecutor wiped his upper lip with the handkerchief. His ruddy face had become splotchy in the heat. “And let me add that I respect your noble profession. To offer our citizens the fruits of the sea—I'm sure at very little profit to yourself—is certainly a high calling.”

“Thank you, your honor.”

The prosecutor laughed. “You give me too much authority, monsieur. I am a simple prosecutor, not worthy of such an appellation.” He glanced up at the magistrates, one of whom was actually smiling. “I appreciate your honesty in describing your family life. It is rare these days that such a generous family exists, what with all the trouble with the immigrants and socialists. To take in a total stranger—especially a savage given to war whoops and nakedness—is truly commendable.”

“Thank you.”

“You say that the defendant lived with you for two years—two idyllic years, if I understand correctly.”

“Yes.”

“And he was happy with your little family, he ate madame s excellent cooking, he played with the children, he enjoyed working in the fish stall and taking a little wine with his meals ...”

“Oh yes. He was quite happy in our home. He never took too much wine.”

“Then why do you suppose this happy—savage—insisted on moving out after only two years?”

René thought a moment. He didn't want to say the wrong thing.

“To a neighborhood that can only be termed a hellhole of North Africans and Turks, of thieves and cutthroats? To a shabby, dingy one-room flat in the worst neighborhood in all of Marseille?”

“I ask myself that, monsieur! I say, Why Le Panier? But
Charging Elk—he is very happy here. He says the people remind him of his own.”

“Ah! He finds the true Frenchmen, the God-fearing natives of this soil, not to his liking?” The prosecutor had directed his question to the jury. There was not a dark face among them.

The hawk-faced advocate objected, and the chief magistrate agreed that the question was inflammatory. The prosecutor explained that he was merely trying to establish a pattern of behavior that began when the defendant left a fine French family and went to live in an area of the city where the morals of the inhabitants left much to be desired. The magistrate relented but warned the prosecutor to establish his pattern a little more objectively.

The solicitor thanked the court and went on. “Monsieur Soulas, you say the defendant—after he moved out—came to your house every Sunday to enjoy a pleasant dinner and a romp with the children. Is that correct?”

“Yes, of course. Although the children were a little too old to romp with. You understand how it is with children. They grow up.” René laughed, but it was a tentative laugh. “He especially enjoyed my dear wife's dinners—he always ate two helpings of everything—and we would have a nice talk and often a stroll.”

“Never missed a Sunday?”

René again thought for a moment. He didn't want to answer. He was under oath to God, an oath he took very seriously.

“Isn't it true that he stopped coming to Sunday dinner some two months before the incident he is being tried for?”

“Because of his job. To work in a soap factory is very taxing. Often he was too tired.”

“I understand, monsieur. So he quit coming to Sunday dinner because his job made him tired.”

“Yes.”

“But not too tired to satisfy himself with the young prostitute
every Saturday night. Doesn't that strike you as an insult to your hospitality, Monsieur Soulas?”

René looked up to the balcony. He could just see Madeleine s shoulders and head above the balustrade. She sat rigidly with little expression, and René realized then that their lives would not be the same again. They would never again be so trusting.

“He is a man,” he said glumly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

M
artin St-Cyr's column
,
“La Vie de Marseille,” normally came
out twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Fridays, but since the trial began it had appeared every day, under such headings as “A Strange Justice,” “The Forgotten Flag,” and “Innocent in the Dock?” He railed against a justice system that seemed to have been imported from Paris and had little to do with the values and traditions of the Marseillais. He wrote of the shameless trampling of the
tricolore
that had been proudly raised over the Bastille by bloody but unbowed peasants and workers. He accused politicians of failing in their duty to protect the citizenry by appointing to office mediocre men whose sole attribute was slavery to a corrupt system.

But he was at his most deadly in portraying Charging Elk as a victim of not only the district court but of the American and French governments. He noted that the only American to testify was an obscure solicitor who toiled in the bowels of the consulate and seemed
not to have seen the light of day around the Old Port. He professed to know nothing of the Charging Elk affair, except that the American government was investigating. Meanwhile, the only official who knew anything about the affair, former vice-consul Franklin Bell, had been sent packing to America, far beyond the reach of the court.

As for the French government, it had become so enmeshed in its medieval bureaucracy that it had done absolutely nothing to help the poor savage find his way home four long years ago. This was a crime that needn't have been committed; indeed, should never have occurred in anyone's wildest imaginings. The savage, Charging Elk, should long have been back in America “riding gaily across the plains of his beloved Dakota, hunting and fishing with his comrades, or perhaps married to a comely squaw and settled into a productive life of raising papooses and corn. Who is to blame for the murder of Breteuil, the master planner of his own fate? And who is to blame for the inevitable execution of the savage? Consider, citizens of Marseille! Raise your voices!”

C
harging Elk sat in the black police wagon, which was carrying him back to the jail in the Préfecture, and listened to the voices in the street. He had made this journey for three weeks now and it always depressed him. He would have to give up his suit for the gray prisoner's uniform. He would be locked away in the small cell with the high window. And he would be fed the sour soup with the stringy green things and the dry bread which disintegrated into hard crumbs when he bit into it.

He knew the end was near. He could hear it in the voices in the courtroom; he could tell by the harshness in the red-robed judge's voice as he constantly interrupted Charging Elk's advocate to scold him for one thing or another. During a break, his advocate climbed
the small curving stairs to the prisoner's dock to ask Charging Elk if he could think of anything to say that might be of help. He had a right to speak and would be asked to speak shortly. The advocate's narrow face gleamed with a pasty glaze of sweat, and his eyes were hollow with frustration. Charging Elk could almost see through the skin to the bony structure of the advocate's skull, and it disconcerted him. He felt as though he were looking into the face of his own impending death. He answered in a voice that was at once calm and unfamiliar. “I would like to say something to the big men,” he said, gesturing with his head to the front of the courtroom.

That had been the day before, but so far he hadn't been asked to speak. Now he leaned forward and looked out one of the windows. There was one on each side of the wagon and they were barely twenty centimeters square. The first week of the trial, he had looked forward to the ride through the streets of Marseille. He saw familiar buildings, a few men and women in the streets, shop windows full of suits and dresses and cooking pans and maritime equipment, dogs, wagons and carriages, horses of all types, from smart matched sets of blacks or whites to lumbering beasts who pulled their burdens with their heads down and eyes closed. At first, these sights had excited him, but now he mostly dozed in the hot, nearly airless confinement of the rolling box.

Perhaps it was the voices that had entered his consciousness—he had almost never heard voices before, certainly none this loud and insistent—but he leaned forward to look out the window. And he saw several people lining the street. Some were well dressed but most seemed to be workers and even immigrants in shirtsleeves and suspenders, the women in shabby dresses and soiled aprons. Many of them carried umbrellas against the burning sun; most wore hats or bonnets; some were bareheaded. The voices seemed to be shouting the same thing, a kind of angry chant that he couldn't make out. But he almost grasped what was happening. He had seen demonstrations
several times before, and he thought the police wagon had been caught in the middle of a protest against higher taxes or low wages or some new restriction. But then he saw a placard raised above the heads of a knot of protesters, and his jaw dropped. He kneeled on the bench to get a better look, and there it was—his name, just as Mathias had taught him to draw it: CHARGING ELK LIBRE! He crossed the short distance to the other window, grazing his head on the low ceiling, but he didn't notice. There were even more people on this side of the street, as it was in the shade. And he saw more placards, some with his name, others with other words that he did not know.