Heartsong

by James Welch

  René had heard the distance in his voice and he felt a little sorry for the man, who clearly had a good heart. “If you please, Monsieur Bell, my family would be only too happy if you let him remain with us until it is time for him to leave Marseille.”

  Bell turned, his eyes suddenly bright in the casting shadows of late afternoon. “Are you certain you want him?”

  “Of course! It is no problem. My children are quite fond of him, and even now, my wife is knitting him a sweater for next winter. He works with me and my helper at the stall. He walks in the afternoon. He is used to this life we lead, that he leads. To put him in a room by himself—he might as well be in the jail.” René’s voice had begun to rise in alarm at the thought of Charging Elk living alone. How would he eat? What would he do alone at night? The man needed a family. “We take good care of him,” he said, and he was surprised at the tone of defiance in his own voice.

  Bell continued to look at the small man without speaking. He seemed to be weighing the Frenchman’s sincerity, but gradually his lips broadened into a smile. “I was hoping you would say that,” he said. “Yes, he is clearly better off here with you.” But the smile tightened a little too much and the brow furrowed over the clear blue eyes. “But I feel I must warn you, I really don’t know how long this business will take—a couple of weeks, maybe more. There is the matter of proving he exists, getting him papers—he has no birth certificate, no passport. I just don’t know.”

  This time René smiled. “Time is of no importance, monsieur. I know how these bureaucrats are. You must take your time and do it correctly. He will be at home with my family.” He thought he heard movement in the kitchen and wondered if Madeleine had been home all the while, listening. She had come to accept Charging Elk, but he didn’t know how much longer her goodwill would last. He had lied about the sweater. “We are the only family he has at the moment,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too presumptuous. “Relieve your mind, Monsieur Bell.” René poured another splash of Armagnac into their glasses. “Rest assured.”

  But Bell was looking off toward the neat row of potted geraniums on the low garden wall. He had a sinking feeling that they would be in bloom before Charging Elk went home. If he ever did.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was late August in Marseille and the heat pressing down on the port city seemed to force the air out of its citizens. The morning markets stayed busy but by eleven o’clock the streets were empty, save for the stray delivery wagon or plodding omnibus. Even the horses seemed lost and unseeing in the dazzling heat waves of the high Mediterranean sun. The workers putting up the new apartment building on Rue de la République slowed to a crawl by three in the afternoon. The men hauling dusty sacks of cement on their backs, the hodcarriers pushing their heavy wheelbarrows, the masons wrestling the blocks of stone into place—all seemed to be moving in slow motion, as though they were wading neck-deep through the murky waters of the Old Port. With rags tied around their heads, with their skimpy undershirts, chalky blue shorts, and dusty sandals, they looked like dark, weary children.

  Charging Elk watched them from the top of the omnibus and noticed how they all worked with their backs bowed beneath the glaring sun, scarcely acknowledging each other, except to give or take an instruction, or share a cigarette in a slim cast of shadow. Work was the way of this town. Everybody worked, most hidden in their shops or the factories and plants, others—the shipbuilders and dockworkers, the street sweepers and deliverymen—out in the open, even when it was so hot that a man could feel the heat of the cobblestones through his shoes, as though a constant fire burned beneath the city. That August of 1893, one of the hottest months anyone could remember, the days were filled with an almost desperate desire to stay alive—and in fact many old people did not survive. The fine black funerary carriages were supplemented by plain carts and wagons, carrying more and more caskets out to Cimetière St-Pierre. At night the people took what small relief the darkness and breeze could offer. They strolled slowly, almost hesitantly, along the Canebière or sat, exhausted from the day s heat, in their own courtyards with citron candles burning to repel the small mean mosquitoes, or in the outdoor cafés around town. Many of them came to the cafés and restaurants around the Old Port to sit and drink citron pressé or anisette and watch the strollers and the quiet, looming ships. This had become Charging Elk s routine for the past four months.

  Now the sun on the top of his head made him dull, almost sleepy. He had been watching the workers for some time now, ever since he had moved from the Soulas home into his own flat in Le Panier, near the Old Port. He had been working at a soap factory on the northern outskirts of the town for eight months. When he went to work at five in the morning the apartment building would be deserted. When he came back at three in the afternoon the workers would be crawling over the rubble of stones on the sidewalk, hauling the sacks of cement from wagons on heavy cloths draped over their bent backs. From day to day it was hard to tell that they were building anything, but in the four months Charging Elk had lived alone, he had seen two floors go up, and now they were making the stone stand up for the third.

  Just the week before, Charging Elk had calculated that he had been in France for four years—more than three and a half of those years in Marseille. Of course, it wasn’t the first time he had made such a calculation. Mathias had taught him how to read the numbers on the heavy round watch the family gave him one Christmas. Then he had learned to read the calendar, to learn the days, the weeks, the months—and the years. He was surprised at the speed with which the seasons passed—first it was hot, just like now, then cool, then cold, and cool again, and finally hot. He still watched the moons carefully and he kept a crude winter count on a small pad of paper that he had bought on Cours Belsunce, each page representing one moon—the Moon of the Black Fish, the month he had discovered that fish had spirits; the Moon of the Long Walk, when he had walked clear to the Plage Prado and back one Sunday, the Moon of the Home Look, when he had climbed the dry hill to Notre Dame de la Garde, the high church, and looked out over the longest view he had seen in this country. Even though the landscape included blue sea and many buildings, it made him as homesick as he had ever been. The scabby limestone hills to the north reminded him of the badlands and the Stronghold. He drew a picture of himself on High Runner, standing on a square butte. With Mathias’s help, he backdated his winter count, starting with the moon he had left his parents standing on the train platform in Gordon, Nebraska.

  Charging Elk stood and clumped wearily down the small circular stairs at the rear of the omnibus. Place de la République was just ahead and the horses were slowing. As he swung down off the platform, he tried to understand what these last years meant to him, but he was too tired and hot to think of anything more than the many steps he would have to climb to reach the high Panier neighborhood. A woman looked up at him for an instant before she clutched the handrail to step up into the bus. Charging Elk barely noticed anymore the startled looks as people took in his size and appearance.

  He crossed the almost deserted place to the steps at the base of Le Panier. He smelled of lye, and of fat and coconut oil, acrid and sweet at the same time, and his face and neck were oily with coal dust mixed with his sweat. He was anxious to get out of his work clothes and wash himself, then nap until it was time to think of his dinner. His small flat—only one room but with two windows and an alcove containing a too-short, too-narrow bed—was adequate, even comfortable, for the most part. He had an oil lamp and an oil burner to cook on. But when it came time to eat, he often wished he were still living with the Soulas family. Now the only meal he took with them was the Sunday midday meal. There was always plenty to eat, plenty of fish, sometimes meat, with potatoes and tomatoes and olive oil, washed down with the mni sha and gassy water. He enjoyed the meals, even the fish now, but mostly he enjoyed the company. Although he could speak a little French, there was nobody other than the Soulas family who really understood him. Mathias and Chloe especially under
stood him because they had taught him the tongue. But he had no friend like Strikes Plenty and he had no woman who might learn to listen for the words beneath his thick accent. So he occasionally spoke sparingly and haltingly to the charcutier and the boulanger in his neighborhood, to the old waiter at a small cafe called Le Royal down at the Old Port. He worked alongside a young Frenchman, maintaining the fires under the great vats of oil and fat, and they talked a little, as much as Charging Elk could understand and make himself understood. They ate their lunches together in the shade of the loading dock, in the open air. Even the stagnant air of summer seemed like a blessed relief from the fires. The man’s name was Louis Granat and he came from a village in the great mountains known as the Hautes-Alpes, somewhere to the north and east. He had come to Marseille to become a sailor and journey off to see the world, but he had fallen in love with a laundress and taken a job at the factory to be close to her. Louis Granat drew a figure of soft curves in the close air of the loading dock, said “Mai d’amour,” then kissed his fingers. Two weeks later, Charging Elk learned the laundress had left his friend—Granat had put his hand over his heart and bent his head in sorrow. Just as Charging Elk was beginning to feel sorry for the pitiful young man, Granat had raised his head and grinned. He put his lips together and made a farting sound. “Fini,” he said, grinning. “C’est dommage.”

  Charging Elk was glad his young friend had recovered so quickly from the heartbreak, but he began to be troubled about his own life. He had never fallen in love with a woman; had never felt all of the emotions pantomimed by his friend. He and Strikes Plenty had talked about having women of their own many times, but neither had had one. Now, he wondered if something was wrong with him, if he would ever have a woman to love, to have children with. And he began to see the impossibility of his life here in this city in France. How could he meet a woman who would be happy with him? Even Marie-Claire from the market seemed unattainable, although he knew that she was not considered attractive by the Frenchmen. None of them flirted with her, as Charging Elk had seen them do with other young women. Yet, Charging Elk used to watch longingly as she and an elderly couple who would appear almost silently at the end of the market packed up the cheeses to go home. Then he thought of something else that further depressed him—in spite of the show Indians’ crude jokes about attractive women, in spite of the admiring glances they got from women, in spite of their proud vanity, none of them had come close to touching one of the Frenchwomen, not even Featherman, who had hoped to settle down with one and become a Frenchman.

  So Charging Elk became almost resigned to a life without the love of a woman. He fell into a routine of working six days a week and of eating his Sunday meal with the Soulas family. Most evenings he would walk down the long, steep stone steps and from Le Panier to the Old Port to sit at one of the small metal tables outside Le Royal and drink anisette while he watched the young women stroll by arm in arm with each other or with a lucky young man. Once in a while, a gesture or a giggle, a toss of the hair or the wiggle of hips, would fill him with a sudden surge of desire, but when he climbed the steps back up to Le Panier he felt only a quiet, echoing aloneness.

  Charging Elk and Louis Granat remained working friends until one day, just before quitting time, one of the bosses called the young Frenchman aside. Charging Elk watched the exchange out of the corner of his eye, afraid that his friend would be scolded or fired, but he saw the sudden happy grin of a child and he sensed that Louis Granat would not be tending the fires the next morning. A week later, Charging Elk learned that he had been transferred to another part of the factory where the sheets of soap were cut and pressed into bars—one of the better jobs in the factory. And although they saw each other once in a while after that, they were very formal, almost shy, in each other’s presence. The new man was a Turk, who did not talk at all.

  Charging Elk had been on the job for eight months. It had been difficult to leave the fishmonger s world, but he had realized that he was becoming almost a child to the Soulases when he had lived his own youth as a man, independent and free of any authority. René had not said anything for some time after Charging Elk made clear to him that he wanted his own place to live and his own job. In truth, Charging Elk wanted the freedom to look for a woman. Marie-Claire had been a good companion to him in the market. It hadn’t taken him long to get over the facts that her face was pocked with the aftermath of the white scabs and one leg was shorter than the other. He enjoyed watching her banter with the customers, sometimes scolding them, sometimes sharing a big laugh, sometimes doing both at the same time. They gave each other cigarettes and she taught him the names of her cheeses and gave him samples of the big round ones. René had joked that she had her eye on him, but when the market ended, the old couple showed up to help her cart the leftover cheeses away. And Charging Elk was left to wonder where she lived, what her home was like.

  But René, even though he thought the young Indien was ungraciously deserting him after all he had done, one Sunday introduced Charging Elk to a large man who was dressed in a black cutaway and striped pants. His tie was full around his neck and held down with a gold pin. His silver hair was greased and combed back so that it ended in a mass of oily curls at the back of his neck just above his collar and below the brim of the top hat. His mustache curled up away from the corners of his mouth and was pointed on the ends. Charging Elk had not seen such a fine-looking man before in Marseille. The man reminded him of Buffalo Bill when he got all dressed up to meet the big bosses of France.

  Charging Elk had been waiting on the church steps for the Soulas family to finish with their ceremony. He often met them there so that they could walk a little before returning to the flat for Sunday dinner. René had quit encouraging Charging Elk to join them in the holy house, and that was good, although he was often tempted to go in and see what their ceremony was like. But he could not go in, for he feared that Wakan Tanka would abandon him for good. He still believed that the Great Spirit had plans to bring him home when the time came. But time was getting long and he still hadn’t managed to save much money. The little Frenchman paid him just enough to buy tobacco and sweets, with a little left over for an occasional anisette or café. Charging Elk had only twenty-four francs tucked away. He knew it would cost many francs, perhaps a thousand, to board a ship for America. Mathias had told him so.

  So when René had introduced him to the big man who reminded him of Buffalo Bill, Charging Elk had instinctively brightened up. For some reason he knew that the man was strong medicine and that he might help him. He was more important than Brown Suit or Yellow Breast; perhaps even more important than Buffalo Bill.

  Charging Elk started work at the soap factory three sleeps later. René had ridden out to the factory with Charging Elk on an omnibus that morning. He left the fish stall with Madeleine and François, the first morning he hadn’t shown up for work since he was sixteen years old, the day after his father had died. He didn’t like the way things were turning out, but he had had a visitation from the Virgin Mary one evening while he was pruning his geraniums and she had told him, not through words but through her sad smile, that he must free the dark one to cross the waters to his people. She didn’t exactly accuse him of selfishness but he knew what she meant.

  Unfortunately, René could not pay Charging Elk enough to save up for a ticket on the ship, then the train he would have to take across America, and he could not afford to pay for these things himself. But he did sit on the diocese board with Monsieur Deferre, the wealthy soapmaker, who paid decent wages and who took an immediate interest when René suggested that Charging Elk not only was a strong worker but was a Peau-Rouge who had been a member of the Wild West show. And when he met Charging Elk on the steps of Ste-Trinité, he was impressed by the man’s size and color, the dark chestnut face with the cheekbones that almost hid his slanted eyes, the flowing black hair tied with a length of red yarn. He was truly a savage, but one dressed in a rumpled wool suit and a clean white shirt with a po
et’s tie around his neck. Monsieur Deferre, who had started his soap factory from scratch and now employed two hundred men, shook the indiens hand and told him to report for work in three days.

  As Charging Elk began the long climb up the stone stairs from Place de la République, he remembered that meeting with Monsieur Deferre. He had been full of high hopes then—the thought of earning enough money to go home, coupled with the thoughts of living alone and finding a woman, had been almost too much. That night he had fasted and prayed long to Wakan Tanka, thanking him for showing his troubled child the way out of his misfortunes.

  But Charging Elk was disappointed when he walked up to the pay window at the factory after his first full week to learn that he had earned only twenty-four francs. René had said Monsieur Deferre was very big with money and Charging Elk thought he would pay him as much as Buffalo Bill had. Charging Elk was still confused about the value of money, but he knew that the American frogskins were worth more than the francs. The thirty frogskins he earned with the show each moon were worth far more than four weeks’ worth of francs.

  One night Mathias had calculated how long Charging Elk would have to work in order to buy a ticket on a fire boat. He made many money signs on a piece of paper and finally said, “Three years, all told. If you save all your money, which you can’t now.”

  Charging Elk had reached his apartment building in Le Panier. It was on Rue des Cordelles, a narrow street which buzzed with many tongues, mostly North African and Levantine. Children played in the street until late at night, sometimes keeping him awake. But more often than not, he found the laughter, the squeals, the cries, the barking dogs somehow comforting, as though the constant flurry of noise proved that he was not really alone. Now he watched a small group of girls in long dresses and scarves (in spite of the heat) playing a game with a small rubber ball and a pile of pebbles. Le Panier was always more lively than the rest of Marseille. René said the Africans enjoyed life more than most because they were not sensible. Charging Elk noticed that the men argued a lot, throwing their hands about, and the women cried out to their children in scolding voices, but nobody seemed to take offense. He couldn’t tell if that was enjoyment of life or sensible, but they all got along. In some ways, this neighborhood reminded him of the village out at the Stronghold. Even the cooking smells seemed much alike, although the food was different. He had eaten a couple of times in a small dark restaurant around the corner which had a beaded curtain for a front door. He had eaten a dish they called couscous, but he didn’t use his fingers like the others. But as he watched the other diners, he was again reminded of feasts in the village, the intense eating, the laughter, the teasing, even the dogs that lay patiently at their owners’ feet, waiting for the scrap of flatbread or chicken skin. Despite René’s protests, he was glad he had chosen to live in Le Panier. These people were closer to his own than any of the others he had come across since he left Pine Ridge.