Heartsong

by James Welch

  But St-Cyr had never been a socialist, activities aside. He told his friends he was going to law school to further the goals of democratic socialism—the movement could always use good, committed lawyers—but he still believed in many of the bourgeois values—his own father was a capitalist, a silk merchant in Lyon, and had provided his family a very good life.

  So what was St-Cyr doing, sitting in a small drab café on a Wednesday morning in Marseille, sipping café au lait and eating a brioche? He couldn’t really answer that. Odile had, in fact, become a missionary and was now in Algiers, emptying bedpans in a charity hospital. At the end of one year, she would decide whether to continue her work or come back and marry St-Cyr. But lately he had wondered at the idea of marriage, of committing oneself to another for an eternity on earth. And there was the subject of sex. Although they had their romantic moments—picnics along the Promenade de la Corniche, day trips to the Camargue to see the flamingoes and the agile black bulls that were the stars of Provençal bullfights, overnight to Avignon to tour the Palais des Papes, evenings at the opera or the theater—sex had refused to rear its head, at least for Odile. No matter how much or how fast St-Cyr talked about the joys of the subject, she had remained inviolate. Saving it for their wedding day. Forcing him to frequent the prostitutes on Rue Sainte. In fact, he had visited his favorite whore just the night before, a heavy dark girl named Fortune, who invariably smelled of cigarettes and cassis.

  Odile the good versus Fortune the bad—what a contrast, thought St-Cyr, the one tall and fair and clean-edged, slim as a boy, except for the swell of hip and breast, a virgin; the other dark, built low to the ground, musky in her ample nakedness, a whore.

  St-Cyr sighed and drank off the last of the café au lait. He had become concerned lately that perhaps he preferred the prostitutes. One didn’t have to spend eternity with them, and they were always waiting in the Rue Sainte for the next visit. St-Cyr pulled out his gold watch, a graduation gift from his father, and popped it open: eight-thirty. Time to make his rounds. He lit another cigarette, stood up, and dropped a few sous on the metal table. He stood for a moment outside, looking out from under the awning at the putty-gray clouds above the buildings. At least the mistral had blown itself out overnight, after three days of whining. St-Cyr did hate Marseille in the winter, maybe in any season. He flipped his cigarette into the gutter, then he walked across the rain-slick street to the Préfecture.

  “Bonjour, Sergeant Borely. Lovely to see you, as usual. Lovely day, is it not? And what have you got for me this exquisite day?”

  Borely looked down at the young reporter. He was seated on a platform behind a tall counter, and even as short as he was, he was a head taller than his guests. The arrangement was meant to be intimidating, and it worked, except with this scamp.

  “Ah, bonjour, St-Cyr. It is a cold, wet morning, as usual. And I have nothing of interest.” Borely looked down at the log book. “Two wife-beatings, a stabbing, the usual vagabonds, and a cut-purse a citizen brought in after beating him up. His face looks like an aubergine, but he will live to atone for his sins.”

  St-Cyr took down the superficial particulars of each case as the sergeant recited them: both wife-beatings were fueled by alcohol, as was the stabbing. A Levantine tannery worker, drunk on absinthe, had slashed an Algerian sailor in the face, nearly severing the tip of the nose—the only angle there was that the Algerian was also drunk, a rarity among the North Africans, most of whom were Muslims. The cutpurse entry would be good—the citizens of Marseille were always pleased with vigilante justice. St-Cyr was just about to close his little bound notebook. Not a very good haul, but Tuesdays, even Tuesday nights around the seaport, were pretty quiet. “Anything else, sergeant—anything at all? S’il vous plaît?”

  Borely looked down at the young police reporter. There was something about him he didn’t like. St-Cyr had been on the beat for almost two years now, and in that time he had done nothing to offend Borely. He was unfailingly polite, filled with the joie de vivre, and quite bright, and he always got his facts right—something that had never concerned St-Cyr’s predecessor. Yet there was an air of privilege about the reporter that annoyed Borely—even the way he dressed. Today, in the middle of winter, he was wearing a yellow tattersall waistcoat and a scarlet poet’s tie, and a ridiculous wide-brimmed hat that would have embarrassed an Italian. True, he was a handsome devil, with his sparse but trim goatee and small white teeth, and his slim, foppish frame. But it was more at the manners, the politeness, that Borely took offense. They bespoke of good breeding, of—what else?—a life of privilege with that faint tinge of contempt for authority.

  Borely himself barely had two sous to rub together, what with a wife and six children, and his consumptive mother who lived with them in a too-small flat behind Cours St-Louis. The plumbing was always broken and the small street was full of garbage from the open-air market. And now the neighbor was threatening to call the police because her cat was missing and she was sure Borely’s oldest boy had thrown it out the hallway window. Imagine that. Calling the gardiens on their own sergeant. Borely shook his head at the thought.

  “Well, thanks for the information, sergeant.” St-Cyr seemed to interpret this gesture as a negative. He had put his notepad in his pocket and was screwing the cap on his fountain pen.

  Borely watched him with a sigh that was almost affectionate. He did like the young man, in spite of, or perhaps because of, those attributes that annoyed him. And as a police reporter he made far less than even Borely. But perhaps he needed something to do more than he needed money. “We still have the Peau-Rouge,” he said.

  St-Cyr had started to leave, but now he turned back, his face blank with confusion.

  “The Peau-Rouge. We arrested him Christmas Eve, or rather, early Christmas morning.” Borely smiled. “Of course! You were off for a few days, weren’t you?” While I have been pulling double shifts throughout this season of the nativity, he thought.

  “Yes, I went to spend Christmas with my family. In Lyon.” The words were almost abstract, uttered without inflection, as St-Cyr uncapped his pen. “What about this Peau-Rouge? What is he in for?”

  “Nothing to get your hopes up about, St-Cyr. Vagabondage. And he left hospital without permission.”

  Now St-Cyr was thoroughly confused. “But how does a Peau-Rouge . . .” He stopped himself. The Wild West show. Of course. But how . . . ?

  “He was with Buffalo Bill. According to the American vice-consul, and to the records of Hopital de la Conception, he contracted the influenza, and he suffered broken ribs in a fall from his horse. He was hospitalized with these afflictions.” Borely stopped himself to watch a young secretary cross the room to the captain’s office. She wore a long-sleeved white blouse with ruffled shoulders and a long, slim black skirt that just brushed the tops of her narrow-toed shoes. Her black hair was done up in a bun with Chinese sticks shot through it. But it was the front of the blouse that caught Borely’s eye.

  “The Peau-Rouge is here, now? In the jail?”

  “He has a court appearance next week, or possibly the week after that. With all these holiday revelers, the courts are much backed up, I think.” Borely pursed his lips in a gesture of disdain. “This is not the holy season anymore, Monsieur St-Cyr. It is a season to get drunk and beat your wife or stab a North African, do you not agree?”

  “Yes, of course.” But St-Cyr had been writing with careless haste: Peau-Rouge. Vagabondage. Leaving hospital—Conception—without permission. Christmas Eve. Crossed out. Christmas morning. “And does this American Indian have a name?”

  Borely pretended to study the logbook, but he was looking right at the name. He was enjoying the suspense of the moment, but he was also a little intimidated by the American language. He didn’t want to butcher the word in front of this young man of privilege, so he ended up spelling it out.

  “Charging Elk,” said St-Cyr, who had studied the English language in Grenoble. His father had said English was becoming more an
d more the lingua franca of commerce, especially the American tongue. St-Cyr had no intention of becoming a capitalist like his father, but he did learn the language to please him. “Does he speak English?”

  “According to the vice-consul, he does not. He does not speak English or French. In fact, he has not spoken a word since his arrival. Perhaps the man is a mute.”

  St-Cyr tapped his pen against his teeth. This was a story! An American Indian all by himself in Marseille without the ability to communicate with anyone. It didn’t seem possible that it could just fall into the lap of Martin St-Cyr. “You mean, Sergeant Borely, that the Wild West show just left town without him? He’s stranded here?”

  “Absolutely. The vice-consul says the show is in Rome, even as we speak. He wanted to send this, this Charging Elk to Rome by ship, but of course that is impossible until the legal matters are settled. You understand, monsieur, that we can’t just turn him loose at the whim of the vice-consul.”

  But St-Cyr was writing again and didn’t respond. Finally, he looked up at Borely with a thoughtful smile that showed his small, even teeth. “Would it be possible to have a look at this indien, Sergeant Borely? I would like to write a small story about him, nothing much. I think my editor would find it of some small interest.” He laughed what he hoped was a charming laugh. “I will make sure I spell your name right—in the first paragraph.” St-Cyr didn’t really have much hope that the sergeant would allow such an unusual request from a lowly police reporter. Or that his editor, whom he only knew by sight, would allow much more than a few factual words. More likely he would send a feature reporter to write the story.

  But Borely actually seemed to be considering. St-Cyr didn’t think Borely was a vain man, but the thought of seeing one’s name in print can be enticing. The desk sergeant was in control of his own little world here in the Préfecture, but when he went home in the evening to his flat, to his civilian clothes and squabbling brats, he was as anonymous as the dock worker who lived above him.

  Borely called out to two policemen who were standing in the hallway that led to offices and interrogation rooms. They had been chatting quietly, but at the sound of Borely’s voice, they both came at a fast clip, their shoes clicking smartly against the marble floor.

  “You, Dugommier, take Monsieur St-Cyr down to the cells. Tell the jailer that the monsieur wishes to see the Peau-Rouge.” He turned to the reporter. “This is very irregular, St-Cyr—but you are a police reporter and it is incumbent upon me to offer the cooperation of the department. I could do nothing less.”

  “Merci beaucoup, sergent. My newspaper always appreciates the cooperation of the Marseille Police Department.” St-Cyr fought back an impulse to laugh at Borely’s puffed-up language. “And may I have your Christian name, sergeant—for the story?”

  St-Cyr thought that Ambrose was not a name he would have associated with Borely, as he followed the policeman down the narrow, winding stairs to the depths of the Préfecture. Francis or Jerome, perhaps even Michel. Not Ambrose. Patron saint of—what? Desk sergeants?

  The basement smelled of cooking, of rancid oil, onions, and cabbage, with a strong hint of disinfectant. The combination was not agreeable to St-Cyr’s nose, and he felt the brioche and the sweet café au lait move in his stomach. He began to wonder, as he looked at the dark, sweating walls of the low, narrow corridor, if this was such a good idea after all. The place was medieval, right out of the Spanish Inquisition. He imagined torture devices in special rooms inhabited by men in brown hooded robes. Again, he felt a surge in his stomach as a wave of claustrophobia hit him.

  But the corridor opened out into a larger hallway, and a man sat behind a desk beneath a tall skylight. He was wearing a collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His tunic was draped over the chair.

  “Monsieur is here to see the Peau-Rouge. It is cleared with Sergeant Borely.”

  The man behind the desk was obese, a condition not at all usual with the Marseillais. He had a periodical spread open before him. St-Cyr could see an illustration of a young woman in a corset and black stockings that came to just above her knees. A fringed mantle was draped across her lap.

  “And what is monsieur’s capacity?” The man carefully folded the periodical and pushed it to the side of the desk. It was clear that he was in charge here and took his orders from a higher authority than Borely.

  “I am a reporter with Le Petit MarseiLlaid. I cover the activities of the police department. Today I have been sent to interview the Peau-Rouge—with the kind consent of Sergeant Borely and, of course, yourself.” St-Cyr didn’t find it necessary to tell the truth, to explain that he had heard of Charging Elk just moments before.

  But the fat man had quit listening to St-Cyr. He lumbered to his feet, pulling his suspender straps over his shoulders with a satisfying snap for each, all the time grumbling to the other policeman about the lack of communication between those lilywhites upstairs and the poor bastards who had to work in such a shithole as this.

  He shrugged into his tunic, which he did not bother to button, then opened a small cabinet on the wall behind the desk. He continued his diatribe against those upstairs as he lifted a heavy ring of keys from a metal hook. “Insufferable bastards,” he grumbled as he walked across the hall to an iron door. He fitted one of the keys into the lock, then pushed the door inward. The groan of the iron hinges made the hair stand up on the back of St-Cyr’s neck.

  The jailer told the other policeman to wait outside, then slammed the door shut behind himself and St-Cyr. The corridor before them was even dimmer than the one that had brought St-Cyr to the jailer’s desk. There were no windows, no outside light, just the occasional lightbulb in a wire cage hanging from the high ceiling. St-Cyr was almost surprised to see that the jail had electricity. He had half expected to see gaslights, perhaps even torches flickering on the walls.

  One side of the corridor was a stone wall; the other side, another stone wall interrupted by metal doors with no windows. St-Cyr had not been down here before and now he wished he hadn’t been so eager to come. He pulled his coat tighter to afford some protection from the damp chill. He thought, This is right out of the Inquisition. He had always had a touch of claustrophobia—since that day as a child when he and his class at the lycee had toured an ancient dungeon and had to walk single-file through the narrow passageways and the small winding marble stairs that were lit only by small slits in the stone walls. Now he felt the familiar panic and he made himself look at the jailer’s broad back.

  “These are the doors to the cells, then, monsieur?”

  “Oui, oui,” said the jailer.

  “And is there a prisoner behind every one?”

  “Oui, oui. Some. Not all.”

  St-Cyr was annoyed by the man’s abruptness but he knew that the jailer was equally annoyed by his presence. He obviously didn’t approve of civilians in his fiefdom. The man was practically subhuman, a grouser and a bully, just the type that St-Cyr might have imagined working in such misery. Still, he couldn’t help but be somewhat comforted by the broad back before him.

  St-Cyr was trying to imagine what this American Indian would look like—would he be dressed in feathers and fur, in war paint? Would he have a fierce scowl? More important, would he be dangerous, a wild savage from the American frontier? St-Cyr had not gone to the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill. He really had no interest in the wild west or the cowboys and Indians—at least up to a half hour ago. When he was a boy, his playmates would often play Indians and soldiers, enacting the violent scenes they had culled from the pages of illustrated adventure books. St-Cyr was more inclined to collect insects. He had had a large butterfly collection from his family’s August vacations to their chateau in Perigord.

  The jailer grunted something and stopped and rattled his keys. St-Cyr had been so deep in thought he almost ran into the broad back, but now he pulled back in fear of this damp, cold, dimly lit place and its Gothic keeper. What in the name of God was he doing here? He was only a police r
eporter who went around the city to the various precincts to gather small facts about mostly small crimes. As he watched the jailer insert a key in one of the iron doors, he had the irrational fear that this whole business was a trap, that he was going to be locked up, that he would never see the light of day again.

  The jailer swung the door open, then stepped inside. St-Cyr was surprised to see a shaft of light from the open doorway; still, he held back, just ducking his head around the corner to look inside.

  The light came from a small window in the opposite wall up near the ceiling. The window was covered with woven iron, but it was high enough that a man could not reach it, even standing on a chair. St-Cyr edged forward until he was standing in the doorway, ready to bolt back the way they came at the slightest movement.

  But the scene was almost tranquil—the shaft of light, the jailer standing quietly on one side of the room, his tunic now buttoned against the chill, and a figure on a bed that was suspended from the wall. It was a close room, perhaps two meters by three meters, but its height gave the claustrophobic St-Cyr great relief after the perilous journey down the low, narrow corridor. Out of nervous habit, he slid his notebook out of his coat pocket.