Heartsong

by James Welch

  It had been three sleeps since the man with the cigarettes had entered his room to look at him. The man had called him by his name and had worn a yellow vest that reminded Charging Elk of the yellowbreasts that called so sweetly on summer mornings at the Stronghold. Those mornings when he and Strikes Plenty had lounged about their cooking fire, drinking coffee and talking of women and game and good times seemed so long ago, although less than a winter had passed. Charging Elk continued staring at the window and thought that it was good that Strikes Plenty—and his parents—could not see him now.

  For two days, Charging Elk had lain on the sleeping platform and sung his death song. It was a powerful song and it took him away to his own country. He did not feel the cold or see the close stone walls. He did not notice when one of the wasichus brought him soup or emptied his slop bucket. Once, one of the helpers, the fat one, grabbed him by his coat and pulled him to his feet and screamed and made threatening signs with his fists. Charging Elk had sung on, scarcely noticing the hatred in the small pale eyes. But this day, the third sleep, his song was weak and he was afraid it was losing its power. He no longer felt his nagi lifting inside of him, hovering, waiting to be freed for the long journey home.

  Then, around midday, something happened that caused him to quit his death song entirely. One of the helpers entered his room, carrying a small platform and a tray. He smiled and talked soothingly, pointing to the window, then to the shaft of light on the opposite wall. He pointed to the tray and rubbed his belly, and Charging Elk followed the man’s finger and he saw real food. A cooked bird and several small potatoes, accompanied by a large chunk of bread and a piece of chocolate. He saw the usual mug of pale tea, but he also saw a small bottle of what looked to be mni wakan. It had no paper with the French writing stuck on it, but he could see the dark juice through the deep green of the bottle. A clean squat glass stood beside the bottle. The helper noticed that he was looking at the wine. He pointed to the bottle and put his thumb against his lower lip, tilting his head backward. Then he left, laughing.

  Charging Elk had not eaten anything solid for several days. He had drunk the liquid from the soup and swallowed the tea because he was always thirsty, but he was anxious to be dead and away from this stone room, this foreign land. It had been easy to quit eating the things that floated in the soup and the sour bread, but the sight and smell of real food made him almost grateful that he had not gone away. As hungry as he was, he didn’t know if he could eat anymore. His stomach felt small and dry inside him, like a leather pouch that was drawn tight.

  Charging Elk looked at the bird for a long time before he found the strength to swing his legs over the edge of the platform and stand up. His sudden dizziness, almost a blackness before his eyes, made him think briefly of the sickhouse and the first time he had tried to get up from the white man’s bed. His ribs no longer hurt, but he felt just as weak. He stood for a moment, waiting for his sight to come back; then he reached down and touched the bird gingerly, almost a caress. It had been roasted and its smell filled the small room. He pulled a piece of skin from the carcass and tasted it. He thought it might be a wasichu trick, that it might be poisoned or diseased. But the skin tasted good. It was greasy and he realized that he had not had any real grease for a long time.

  He picked up the plate and sat down on his sleeping platform. He had had chicken meat several times when the show was in Paris and he didn’t particularly like it. It did not have the strength of the red meat of buffalo or elk. But now he ate all the skin off the chicken, licking the grease from his fingers. Then he pulled a leg off and ate the tough meat from it.

  After he finished the chicken, he popped the small potatoes, one by one, into his mouth, mashing them with one or two bites, then swallowing them. He chewed the dark bread, which had become dry in the cold of the stone room. The mug of tea was barely warm and he drank it down in two gulps, all the time eyeing the bottle of wine.

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the blue packet of cigarettes and the matches Yellow Breast had given him. There was one cigarette left. He studied its almost perfect shape—the roundness, the cut-off ends. He and the other Indian performers rolled their own tobacco and they never attained such perfection as this one. He put it to his lips and struck a match. The thought of making prayers, of performing the yuwipi’s ceremony with the tobacco, did not occur to him. And for the first time in several sleeps he felt warm and satisfied with this life and did not wish to end it. He did not know what would become of him, but for the moment he was at peace and didn’t care about tomorrow.

  Charging Elk leaned back against the stone wall and watched the smoke curl up into the shaft of light toward the window. He saw Yellow Breast’s eyes in the smoke and he saw that the eyes were troubled, almost frightened, with what he saw in Charging Elk’s face. He had given Charging Elk this tobacco to make prayers with; and now he had given him a meal of real food and a bottle of mni wakan. Charging Elk would drink it after he finished his smoke because he knew that Wakan Tanka had sent Yellow Breast to help him. Charging Elk smiled. The Great Mystery had almost taken him away after testing him most severely. He had made him sing his death song in an effort to be rid of this life. But now, He wanted Charging Elk to live, to continue to breathe the air of this strange country among these strange people. Just a short time ago, this thought would have caused Charging Elk great heartsickness; now he was content to smoke the cigarette and think of his life as here and now—no matter what, he would survive. And when the time came, he would go home to his people. Wakan Tanka would see to that.

  Madame Soulas sat beside her husband in Captain Drossard’s large office in the Préfecture. The captain was speaking of the poor fishing this winter—nothing but rouget and hareng for sale and those at outlandish prices. The coquillages were poor and tasteless, and what few crevettes there were cost an arm and a leg. The captain was sure that the fishmongers were taking much too big a cut—they seemed to think that they had not only caught the fish themselves but had created them out of clear blue water. Next, it would be loaves of bread from the sky.

  Madame Soulas listened to her husband, René, protest. He was not only a fishmonger, he was an official in the Association. He had been hearing complaints all winter long, both from the fishermen and from the customers, for it had been a poor season and the prices reflected that. Only this morning, a group of men who fished out of Vallon des Auffes had threatened to sell their catch elsewhere if the Association wouldn’t give them a fair price. They would spend the rest of the winter in Toulon or Nice. They heard the fishermen there got what they deserved.

  Madame Soulas listened to her husband try to explain that if they set the prices too low, the fishmongers would be out of fish in an hour and out of business in two. But the captain would have none of it. He was sure the Association needed a thorough investigation, it was the scandal of Marseille.

  Madame Soulas let her mind wander, until the argument became so much buzzing in her thoughts. She was still opposed to the matter at hand, but René had insisted it was their duty as Christians: “Dear Madeleine, did not Christ die on the cross for us? Are we to leave him there, weeping in despair, crying out for his Father? Did he die for nothing?” And when she protested that they already had two young mouths to feed and scarcely enough room to turn around in, he dismissed her with one of his usual pieties: “If we are true Christians, we will not mind a little sacrifice. Did not Christ call on us to help our less fortunate brothers? Is it not God’s will? Besides, it is only for a day or two.”

  It was difficult to argue with René, not just because of his pieties, but also because of his genuinely pious nature. It was this quality that had attracted Madeleine in the first place. They had met at a retreat for young people in the Ardèche, sponsored by the parish of St-Laurent. Madeleine had been fifteen and René sixteen. Madeleine went to a convent school in another part of the city and so she had only seen René at church and in his father’s fish stall. As the fates woul
d have it, she fell out of a tree at the rustic retreat, injuring her shoulder and tearing her skirt on a broken-off branch. The sight of her white underthings caused much giggling, among boys and girls alike. But as she lay on the ground, trying to gather her senses, she heard a loud, scolding voice and thought it might be the young priest who supervised their recreation. But when she looked up, a short, square boy with thick hair and a stubby nose was squatting down beside her. There was something quite serious in the boy’s appearance, a lack of expression, and she recognized him as the fishmonger’s son.

  That had been twenty-one years ago. It had been five years from that moment until they were married. In fact, they never spoke another word to each other for two years after the incident. Madeleine learned, after they were married, that René had sought out the older priest for advice on entering seminary that very week. Father Daudet was encouraging and gave René special religious instructions for the next two years while he finished lycée. But the week before René was to enter the seminary, his father was killed by an insane sailor while he was at the quai, bidding on fish.

  Madeleine had accompanied her parents to the funeral, and they sat only two rows behind the bereaved family. She was surprised that while the others gave in to their grief, René had sat quite erect, clear-eyed, seemingly emotionless.

  And the next day, she saw him again, at the fish stall this time, working alongside some of the other fishmongers, who had volunteered to man the stall while the family recovered. He never missed a day after that.

  Madeleine had been puzzled then, and slightly angered, by the boy’s lack of feelings for his own father. Could this be the same boy who had been so solicitous of her injury and her dignity? It was only after they were married that he revealed his one overriding principle in life—everything that happened was God’s will, good or bad. But even in the bad, there was good, for it was God’s will, and was not God good? Did He not do things for the betterment of mankind even though they seemed bad, often tragic? Madeleine tried to understand this mishmash of simple reasoning, but in the end she could not. She considered herself a devout Catholic—she and René took the children to mass every Sunday and every holy day—but she could not bring herself to feel that all the tragic things that went on around her were good simply because they were God’s will. She often thought that René had the temperament of a priest—grave but not undone by bad things. Perhaps even uplifted by tragedy.

  So she sat in the captain’s office, waiting, rueing the day that she and René had followed Father Daudet and the other parishioners down to the Préfecture to protest the imprisonment of the Peau-Rouge. She had felt quite virtuous in offering up her prayers for the well-being of the savage. As Father Daudet had said, he was one of God’s humblest creatures. And René was right, of course—it was their Christian duty to offer shelter to a fellow human being. She didn’t object to that. They had, after all, housed an engineering student from Montpellier for nine months, and while he had paid a small amount for rent and a little for food, they hadn’t gotten rich—nor had they expected to. And there was the little nurse from Apt before that.

  But this was a savage! Surely God didn’t intend for Christians and savages to live together! Madame Soulas shook her head and looked at her husband, who was patiently explaining how the mistral and the tramontane were keeping the fishermen from going out as often as they normally did. The captain was snorting in disgust. One would think that René had committed a crime against the state, instead of being guilty merely of foolishness in this foolish endeavor.

  And yet, here it was—the moment at hand. They had already been to the Palais de Justice and signed the temporary custody papers. The tribunal had questioned them—or rather, René extensively. Could they provide the savage with creature comforts? Were they prepared for such a person in their house-hold? How would the children adjust to such an exotic creature? How did they think a savage would respond to living in a civilized neighborhood? Finally, the président du tribunal had turned to Madame Soulas and said, “And you, madame, are you prepar-ed for—how shall I say it—for whatever unusual needs this savage might require?” She remembered the look on René’s face—the smile that was somewhere between Christian joy and pure apprehension—but he needn’t have worried. She was his wife. Now she wondered what would have happened if she had said no. She was quite sure the tribunal, given the severity of the questions, would have turned them down. But René—what would it have done to him, and to them? She couldn’t understand why he would want to bring this indien into their home. But he was almost uncharacteristically insistent, as though his own family were not enough for him. Sometimes his piety was a burden.

  For the fiftieth time in the past three days, Madame Soulas asked herself, Why us? She understood that there were other families, not to mention relief agencies and church organizations, that would have been only too happy to take in the savage. Just the day before, two nuns from the Vieille Charité had appeared at their doorstep. The older one was severe and erect in her habit and the younger one wore thick wire-rimmed glasses that made her eyes too big for her face. Both were quite reasonable in their request that the Soulases give up their claim to the Peau-Rouge. They were equipped to deal with vagabonds and orphans, it was their calling to care for indigents. When René scoffed at the notion, the nuns became more insistent and threatened to talk with Father Daudet about the moral fitness of the Soulases. And that enraged Madeleine as much as it did René, and it was she who escorted the nuns out the door. In spite of Captain Drossard’s questioning the honesty of the Association des Poissonniers, René was the most moral man she knew. He never put his thumb on the scale or failed to put his tithe in the collection plate. And besides, it was Father Daudet who had recommended to the tribunal that the indien be placed in their care! Those were the final words hurled by Madeleine at the retreating nuns.

  Later, when she had calmed down, Madeleine found herself wishing that things had turned out a bit differently. Perhaps if René had seen the nuns’ point that they were in a better position to help the savage, it all would have worked out for the best. Their life would be normal, the children wouldn’t be threatened, and the savage would have the best of care. And besides, he had been arrested for loitering. Didn’t that make him a vagabond and therefore eligible for care at the Vieille Charité?

  Madame Soulas sighed. The solution to this problem had been at hand just yesterday, but René had offended the nuns. He was a good man, but sometimes she wished he had a little more sense. What a mess we are in, she thought.

  All of this because they had gone to the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill one Sunday afternoon. René had sat on the edge of his seat during the whole of the performance. He had clapped and cheered at the big carriage and the pursuing Indians. He had let out a howl of delight when the Indians rode among the running bison. And he had actually made savage whoops when the Peaux-Rouges had killed the brave soldiers. Madame Soulas had been horrified at his behavior until she noticed many of the other spectators doing the same thing!

  But Madame Soulas was more concerned about the children. Many of the acts had frightened them. Chloé had wept when the bison pounded by, shaking the long portable bleachers, followed by the half-naked, flinty-eyed savages. She had hid her face in Madeleine’s skirt at the sound of the guns and the cries of the soldiers as they fell. Mathias had tried to act brave, as thirteen-year-olds will, but she had noticed how he flinched back when the action got too close or too noisy. The Americans seemed to think that violence was just a way of life. The announcer had said as much. But it was not the French way.

  Madame Soulas was astounded all over again as she thought that one of the Peaux-Rouges who had chased the bison and killed the soldiers was actually coming to live with them. What could René have been thinking? What about our poor children? Poor Chloé was only nine ! And Mathias was impressionable to a fault. To have a savage sit down at their table, to sleep in their home, it was too much. And what of the neighbors? Did
they deserve to have a savage frightening their children half to death? And Mademoiselle Laboussier—would she ever come again to give Chloé her piano lessons?

  Madame Soulas found herself caught between the states of high anxiety and sullen misery when she heard the sounds of several footsteps outside the captain’s office. She suddenly felt her heart pound and flutter and skip all at once as she prepared for her first sight of the Peau-Rouge.

  But only one person entered the room, a tall man in a brown suit with long bushy sideburns and a neatly trimmed mustache which curved down around the corners of his mouth. His thick sandy hair was rumpled, but he had the air of someone important. He strode to the captain’s desk, took the official’s hand, and pumped it a little too vigorously. Madame Soulas noticed that his ears were small and close to his head. Beneath the hair, his face was quite delicate with hardly a line on it. He seemed very young to carry such authority. As she listened to the two men exchange greetings, she noticed that the man’s French was quite simple and quite bad. There was something of the north in his accent, a smooth clipped accent, but the words were not smooth. It was clear that French was not his natural tongue.

  The captain introduced him as the American vice-consul Franklin Bell to Monsieur and Madame Soulas, and the vice-consul insisted on shaking hands with both of them. He was the first American she had seen outside of a few sailors carousing around the Old Port, and of course Buffalo Bill and his cowboys. Americans never came to her neighborhood and she seldom left it. “Enchanté, madame,” he said, as she looked into his blue eyes and thought they were the color of the ceiling of Notre Dame de la Garde, a pale but lovely blue that seemed impossible. Madame Soulas felt a tingle in her cheeks as he bowed over her hand.