Heartsong

by James Welch

  The girls giggled at his strange, throaty speech, then thanked him and walked off, their cheeks full of the soft candies.

  René Soulas stood outside his doorway and watched the cab come up the narrow street. He had been to the épicerie on the corner to pick up a tin of olive oil and a small jar of capers for Madeleine. He often ran errands for her, because he was always restless and curious to see what was going on in the street. Now, several boys who had been playing soccer stopped their game to let the cab pass. Not many cabs came up their working-class street and so they looked inside with great curiosity, but the horse clip-clopped on past them with scarcely a notice.

  It was a warm, breezy day in early May and the daffodils were about done in René s garden behind his flat. He was thinking about the tiny green clusters of buds on his geraniums when the cab slowed, then stopped at the curb directly in front of him. The door opened and Monsieur Bell descended with a hearty greeting.

  Bonjour, Monsieur Soulas! Ça va?”

  “Très bien, Monsieur Bell. And you? But what brings you to my house? You have news, I think.”

  The two men shook hands, and René watched as the American handed a franc note up to the driver. The driver touched his hat, his narrow face impassive, then drove off.

  “Please—come in. I’m afraid Charging Elk isn’t here. He is off walking, as he does every afternoon.” René stood aside and let Bell pass through the doorway into an anteroom filled with coats and hats on wooden pegs. “Please continue’ But René was filled with apprehension at the vice-consul’s visit. It could only mean that he had come to take Charging Elk away.

  Bell walked into the living room. Although he had visited the Soulases’ home four or five times since the day he had delivered Charging Elk, he was always impressed by the room and its furnishings. Bell had been on his own so long that he always felt a little uneasy in a French family home. The smells—of cooking, of tobacco, of the horsehair in the chairs and sofas—always reminded him of the home he had left in Philadelphia and had returned to on only a few occasions. Of course, he did have holidays, but they weren’t nearly long enough to justify the long steamship crossing, and the thought of the journey home exhausted him. But every time he received a letter from his mother, he felt that old guilt that had been visiting him for over twelve years. He hadn’t actually left Marseille since he got here, except for a couple of tours of Provence, principally Avignon and Orange, and a journey to the Costa del Sol in Spain, where he thought he might find romance, and one hurried but long train and boat trip to London for a special training session in international law.

  “Perhaps you would rather sit in the garden. It is very nice this time of year. It will be too hot soon, but now it is nice. Perhaps you would like some tea—or coffee?”

  René led the way to a tall iron-framed glass door off the dining room. Bell followed, trying to fix the smell that emanated from the kitchen. It was citrus, he decided, as he stepped down into the garden. A clean smell, a spring smell so welcome after a winter of closed-up, unpleasantly stuffy buildings.

  “Here we are,” said René with a sweep of his arm.

  The garden was small, perhaps eight by six meters, surrounded by a knee-high stucco wall with an extended brick cap. The ground was packed earth with a tall plane tree near the far wall, just beginning to leaf out. A row of lavender plants with their narrow sage-colored leaves softened the rough stucco wall. But it was the several geraniums in pots atop the wall that defined the garden and provided the color—green now, but soon to be the bright reds and pinks that Bell associated with the Mediterranean. He wondered idly, as he took in the neat garden, what the people of the Midi would do without their geraniums.

  “C’est parfait, monsieur! A place to spend your evenings after a hard day of selling fish.” Bell hadn’t come for small talk, but there were certain niceties to be observed. He had seen how Atkinson could actually make tough Marseillais businessmen blush at his solicitude. Beyond the geraniums he could see the inner courtyards of the surrounding buildings that fronted on the busy streets. All had pots of geraniums waiting to burst into color. “I take it you are the gardener.”

  René waved his hand in dismissal. “It is nothing. A few flowers for the wife, a place for the children to read.” But he was intensely proud of his handiwork.

  Bell pulled out one of the chairs from a plain wooden table—“May I?”—and sat down.

  “Of course, monsieur. Perhaps you would like a glass of wine?”

  “Please don’t go to any trouble.”

  “It is no trouble at all. It will be an honor.” René excused himself and hurried back inside. He walked quickly to the stairs and called up, “Madeleine, come, it is Monsieur Bell, the American.” But he heard nothing, no sound of a chair scraping, no footsteps. He called again, and again nothing.

  That woman, he thought. How can she be gone at a time like this? He needed her support to perhaps convince the American that Charging Elk was very happy with them. And it was true. Madeleine had made her peace with the indien when she saw that the children had taken to him immediately. It had taken her a month or two, she was a judgmental woman, but now she wanted him to stay. They hadn’t talked specifically about the long term, but he was almost certain about that.

  René hurried into the kitchen and found a bottle of Armagnac that he had been saving for a rare occasion. He had had it for two years, as such occasions rarely visited his house. He laughed at himself as he found two brandy glasses. Charging Elk was certainly a rare occasion—the rarest. But René hadn’t thought to give him a drink of the liquor, partly because Monsieur Bell had told him not to, but also because Charging Elk was a simple soul—tobacco, sweets, a glass of wine with his meals, that was all he needed. And when he didn’t have those, he went without. One could almost forget that he had been a celebrity with Buffalo Bill.

  As he carried the bottle and glasses and a small bowl of almonds out to the garden, René looked around his flat; at the dining-room table where Charging Elk watched the children do their school-work and drawings; at the parlor where they all listened to Chloé play the piano; at the kitchen itself, where just last night Madeleine had prepared a lamb shoulder and a lovely dessert to celebrate Chloé’s twelfth birthday. Charging Elk had given her a small ceramic figurine of a chinois with a bright red robe and a cone-shaped hat. René didn’t know how he knew to give her a gift, but it was the hit of the evening.

  He will be missed, thought René. The house will have an empty place in its heart. But as he set the tray on the table, he said, “Voilà! I hope you like Armagnac, Monsieur Bell. It is all I could find.”

  “It will do very nicely, Monsieur Soulas.” Bell watched the small man pour a generous amount of the brandy into two snifters. He noticed that the bottle had no label. “And how is the fish-selling business? Okay? Not so good? I seem to see more fish in the markets these days.”

  “Still not perfect, but getting better by the day I have been in this business since I was a child helping my father, and I have not seen such a bad winter. Wind, wind, wind. Rough seas, lots of storms. Its a wonder more fishermen were not killed.” René handed a glass to Bell. “I know of seven boats that were lost between here and Toulon this winter, three in one storm—all hands lost, no trace. There will be more ex-votos in Notre Dame de la Garde than one would like.”

  “It is a tragedy, certainly. You can be sure my government mourns the loss of these brave souls. Á votre santé.”

  René lifted his glass, but the words of the vice-consul struck him as odd—and a little annoying. What did it matter to the widows and children, the mothers and fathers of the fishermen that the Americans mourned their loss? The Americans would go about their business while the widows would grieve for the rest of their lives. René himself made it a point not to get too close to the fishermen, although he would see the same lot of them every morning or every other morning. Theirs was a dangerous occupation. Over the years, he had come to the Quai des Belges too m
any times to discover that one of the regular boats was missing—usually one of the small skiffs that fished the reefs for bass and hogfish. René shivered slightly as he imagined the water filling boots and lungs, the slow sinking to the bottom of the quiet sea, the white blind eyes, the raging winds and tumultuous waves above. The rare nightmares he had usually centered on such images.

  “Well, monsieur, I’m afraid I don’t bring good news for you.”

  René blinked rapidly to rid himself of the images. Then it is bad news, he thought. He was almost glad he had expected it. Even though Madeleine and the children weren’t around, he felt fortified by his fatalistic expectations. “And so you have come to take away our guest.”

  “Yes, exactly so. We will not burden you any longer. You can’t imagine the gratitude of the consul general for your kindness these past few months. He asks me to offer you a modest compensation for your and madame s unconditional generosity in taking care of Charging Elk. We understand he was quite happy here.”

  “Then he is to go back to America, to be with his own people.” René tried to imagine how it would be for Charging Elk to be reunited with his tribe, with his parents. Did he have brothers or sisters? Grandparents? René was saddened to think he knew so little of Charging Elk’s past life. But he was so close to learning of it. Mathias had been teaching the young indien many words of French, and it seemed only a matter of time before Charging Elk would be able to open up his world to them. What a great deal he could say to them!

  “It’s still a bit sticky,” the vice-consul was saying. “There has been a preposterous amount of bureaucratic folderol—insanity, I should say, if you promise not to repeat it—regarding the repatriation of Charging Elk. I won’t bore you with all the ins and outs, but it seems your government considers him as dead as yesterday’s news. It’s beyond belief, Monsieur Soulas.”

  René was still stuck on the word “folderol,” a word he had not heard before, and so it took a few seconds for the latter part of the vice-consul’s sentence to reach his consciousness. Now he looked up at the American and said slowly, “Dead?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Something of a foul-up, I would say. There was another Peau-Rouge in hospital at the time Charging Elk was admitted. This other indien, a man named Featherman, died of consumation just about the time Charging Elk came to live with you.” Bell shook his head, his lips stretched beneath the mustache into more of a grimace than a smile. “It’s a pity, really. This Featherman could speak my language. It would have been so much easier if he had lived.”

  “But I don’t understand this—what has the death of this Featherman got to do with Charging Elk? He is alive—he goes to work each day, he plays with my children, he eats at my table ...”

  “Well, you see, this is the foul-up—excuse me, complication—I lapse into anglais—the doctor who signed the death certificate used the wrong name. Since both indiens were in the hospital together and Charging Elk escaped, I suppose he had no record of Charging Elk’s being discharged. So when an indien died, he must have assumed it was Charging Elk, who as far as he was concerned had remained in the hospital until he died.”

  René sat in stunned silence, watching his hand twirl the snifter on the tabletop. He understood only about half of what the vice-consul had said, but he knew that somehow someone or everyone thought that Charging Elk was dead. He looked up at Bell. “But don’t they read the newspapers? Was it not Charging Elk who was being held at the Préfecture? I saw his name in Le Petit Marseillais myself.” Or did I? René thought. It seemed so long ago that he and Madeleine had joined Father Daudet and the other parishioners on the steps of the Préfecture. What was it—January? And now it is May. Four months.

  René felt a small flash of guilt run through him as he thought of the happiness he had felt in those four months. And further—of the hope he had felt in the past couple of months that somehow Charging Elk would be forgotten by the Americans, that he would remain with the family, perhaps forever. But the guilt René really felt was that he didn’t want Charging Elk to go home, even though he knew that the indiens family must be heartsick over their lost son or brother.

  René forced himself out of these thoughts, but not before he resolved to confess his selfishness to the priest this very Sunday.

  “Yes, of course I presented those newspaper articles to the officials at the Mairie and the Hôpital de la Conception. But you see, I’m the one who identified Charging Elk when he was being held in the Préfecture—and before that, in the hospital—and now these bureaucrats say I must have been mistaken.” Bell let out a puff of exasperation, followed by a quick swallow of the brandy. “Here’s the—what, kicker, joker—I don’t know what you say in French—now they say there was no indien at the Préfecture on Christmas Eve. Can you imagine that? Chief Vaugirard—your chief of police—has no recollection of Charging Elk’s ever being there! As far as your government is concerned, there is no Charging Elk.”

  René thought for a moment. He looked at his geraniums and imagined that he saw little slits of red in the green buds. He glanced up at the clear blue sky above the rooftops across the inner courtyard of the buildings. The clusters of orange chimney pots were lovely against the bright blue. He imagined them filled with geraniums, all of the chimney pots filled with geraniums—all over Marseille. He looked at Bell, a thought growing in his mind. “Then who is living in my house?”

  Bell laughed, and it was his genuinely hearty laugh. “No one, Monsieur Soulas, absolutely no one. Forget the big fellow who plays with your children, who eats at your table—he is nonexistent, a ghost you might say.”

  René waited politely for the American to finish his bout of perverse humor. Then he said, “And what about this Featherman? Is he nonexistent too? Is he too a ghost?”

  Again Bell laughed. “Most certainly, monsieur! He is a real ghost—buried in Cimetière St-Pierre on the seventh of January, the day after Charging Elk came to live with you.”

  “I must plead my ignorance, Monsieur Bell. If this Featherman died in January, wouldn’t the officials know it was him and not Charging Elk? I don’t understand how such a catastrophe could take place. It seems quite simple even to me, poor fishmonger that I am.”

  Bell looked at the little Frenchman for a moment, a measuring gaze as he tried to decide how much he should tell him. He probably should tell him nothing, since he would have Charging Elk out of the Soulases’ lives forever in a day or two. But the fishmonger had been so good about everything, so patient, he deserved an explanation.

  “I won’t mince words with you, my friend. My government suspects that the authorities here are covering up a monumental mistake, that they mistook Charging Elk for Featherman. The acte de décès that was filed in the archives in the name of Charging Elk should have been that of Featherman. The doctor who signed the certificate made a mistake. Simple as that.”

  “But now they could correct it, yes?”

  “In a way they have—just a little over a month after Featherman died, his death certificate quietly showed up in the records. So he is on record now. Trouble is, so is Charging Elk. According to your government, both are now dead. And as far as they are concerned, that is the end of the matter. I suppose you could say they corrected it in a way that would allow them to save face. We know that they engaged in this deception but we are powerless to prove it.” Bell leaned forward, his eyes firmly on René. “Unfortunately, we still have a very real indien on our hands.”

  “Again, monsieur, forgive my ignorance, but couldn’t you just take Charging Elk to the proper bureaucrats and show him to them? Surely they would know that he is a Peau-Rouge and that he was a member of the Buffalo Bill show. How many indiens could there be in Marseille and how else could they have gotten here?”

  Bell sighed. He was beginning to like the fishmonger more and more. For the first time since he had come to Marseille, he felt he was making a real human contact with a Frenchman, that they had something in common besides selfish interests. H
e reached for the bottle of brandy. “Do you mind?”

  “No, no, please, Monsieur Bell. Forgive me.”

  Bell poured them both a healthy splash of the amber liquid. Then he sat back and again measured the Frenchman with a long gaze. Something was happening here. Bell was getting a feeling that things might work out—if he judged this man right. “Two things about that worry me.” Bell had unconsciously thrown off the mantle of the company man, the pretext that anyone in the consulate cared about the Indian but himself. “One, I’m quite sure they would refuse to acknowledge that the man standing before them was Charging Elk, or even an indien. And two, I’m afraid that if by chance they did acknowledge him, they might just throw him back in jail. So, you see, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Bell wondered if he had phrased the last part right, or if it even made any sense in French.

  But René had been doing some thinking even as he listened to the American. “So what will become of Charging Elk?”

  “Well, at this point I am trying to make arrangements with our embassy in Paris. I would like to see them make an international fuss about this. As you see, we seem to get nowhere on the local level.” Bell finished his brandy in one swallow. “But the important thing right now is to resituate Charging Elk. We have imposed on you and your family far too long already, for which we will remain in your debt long after this is over.”

  “But where would you put him?”

  “We have made arrangements for a small room not too far from us. Now that the weather has warmed up, he can do odd jobs on the consulate grounds. I’m confident we can clear up this matter in a few weeks. Then we can send the poor devil home—or at least to rejoin the Wild West show, which is now in Germany or Austria.” Bell stood up and took a last look at the geraniums on the stucco wall. The Armagnac had given him a slight headache. Without looking at René, he said, “God, what a mess we bureaucrats can create.”