Heartsong

by James Welch

  “I said are you a goddamn bloody Indian.”

  This time Charging Elk recognized the word “Indian.” The young man said it the way Brown Suit and other Americans said it.

  In spite of the sailor’s aggressive stance, Charging Elk was for an instant overcome with a desperate hope. “Indian, yes, him,” he said, pointing to himself with his thumb. “Oglala. American. Buffalo Bill.” He searched his mind for more American words but all he could think of was “Broncho Billy,” which he didn’t say.

  The sailor turned to his companions, who were seated at a table just behind Charging Elk and toward the interior of the noisy room. “He is a goddamn ignorant blanket-ass. He admits it. Was I right?”

  “Ask him to give us a war whoop, Teddy,” shouted one of them.

  “Go ahead. Give him a punch. If you’ve got the balls for it,” said another.

  Charging Elk had turned around in his chair and smiled at the men. The idea had come to him that if they were American sailors they would know how to get to America. Perhaps they were on a fire boat that was leaving for America. Perhaps they would help him. It was a desperate hope, he knew, but perhaps they would at least tell him how much it cost to go back to America. “Bonsoir,” he said. “America.”

  But as he looked at their faces and felt the presence of the one standing over him, he began to realize that they were not friendly. Charging Elk was used to a certain amount of hostility—sometimes he noticed it in the eyes of other workers in the soap factory, or in the way he was ignored by some shopkeepers or the way some women gave him a wide berth on Cours Belsunce or La Canebiere—but now he looked up and he saw hatred in the round young face of the sailor. The set of the thin lips and the narrow eyes reminded him of the miners he had encountered in Paha Sapa, those who wanted to kill him and Strikes Plenty. Back then, Charging Elk would have taunted them and laughed at them, while riding for safety. They were rough men with no wives and no families and no home, except for a straight-sided tent with a stovepipe or a shack made of flat wood. They hated the Oglalas and would gladly have killed him if they could have gotten to their rifles in time.

  Charging Elk sat for a moment, looking down at his half-eaten meal, confused. He understood why the wcuicun miners in Paha Sapa hated him, but why would these sailors hate him in Marseille? There were many people of many colors here. Why would they choose him? He had spent the past three winters making himself invisible, yet they knew him right away. He looked up and glanced around for the waiter. The noise in the brasserie was suddenly a crashing hum in his ears and he became tense. Many of the other sailors were now looking at him and the young man standing over him. Some were shouting in his direction. Suddenly, he saw the crowds in the stands at the Wild West show with their big eyes and shouting voices as he rode hard after the buffaloes.

  But this was not a show and these people were not cheering him on. Now the young man was standing sideways, addressing the room. Charging Elk heard the words “goddamn” and “Indian.” He knew “goddamn.” The wasichus said it when they were angry, although it made the show Indians laugh. Featherman would say “goddamn” and everybody would laugh. He would say “shit” and “horse’s ass” and all the Indians would laugh. But the sailors weren’t laughing.

  Charging Elk tried to stand and the young man whirled around and pushed him back down. He felt a sudden flash of anger and he gripped the table to stand, but the anger had taken him by surprise and he was confused. It was the first real anger he had felt since coming to France almost four winters ago. In a way it felt good—he had lived a passive, even submissive life since he left the Stronghold—but it was also confusing. What could he do with his anger here in this room full of wasichus? He had only a knife and he was only one. The anger he had felt subsided as suddenly as it had come, replaced by the beginnings of fear. As he glanced around the room at the white faces, he began to fear for his life. And his nagi.What if they killed him? What would happen to his nagi? It would never find its way home. But he could see no way out. He began to hum, first under his breath, then a faint, thin falsetto, then he began to sing as though he were alone, as though he had staked his sash to the ground and meant to make his final stand; as though he were alone on the plains, surrounded by enemies, suddenly calm and determined, as though he meant to take as many as he could before he was killed. Then he stood.

  The young sailor with the round face and thick forearms had taken a step back and now looked up into Charging Elk s face. The sailors at the surrounding tables now stopped their jibes and laughter and listened in disbelief. The accordion player squeezed his box in a hushed, toneless accompaniment, as though he had forgotten the lively tunes he played every night without end.

  The waiter and another man, dressed in a lumpy white suit, approached Charging Elk cautiously. They each took one of his arms, gently urging him toward the door. They were alert to whatever violence might erupt inside the large man, but they needn’t have worried. Charging Elk was in another country, a quiet country, and he was strong with meat and song. He had remembered that he was a man, and a man who sings his death song in a proper way is a man to be reckoned with.

  Once outside, the man in the lumpy suit spoke to him in a rapid French, at times apologetically, nervously, at other times admonishingly. Charging Elk knew he was telling him not to come back to the brasserie, but he didn’t care. His body felt light, even in the evening heat that had been stored up in the cobblestones during the day, and he felt good, somehow different. He looked toward the juggler with the white-painted face, who was now throwing flaming sticks in the air, and he saw that the juggler was looking at him through the rainbow of fire.

  The Moon of Black Cherries glared above the Old Port as Charging Elk lifted his face and made a prayer.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Charging Elk became a little reckless after that night at the Brasserie Cherbourg. He began to go out more during the work week, staying out later at night, drinking a little more wine at cafés other than Le Royal. In fact, he purposely stayed away from the Royal, not because it was next door to the Brasserie Cherbourg, where the sailors would take over on the weekends, but because he didn’t want the old waiter to see him drinking several glasses of wine rather than his usual one anisette. Although they didn’t talk much, Charging Elk had come to regard the old waiter, with his iron-gray mustache and cratered face, as something of a guardian—like René. He was always polite, he always asked after Charging Elk’s well-being (“How are you this evening?”) and remarked on the heat (“Hot again, I’m afraid” or “We will sleep well tonight”), and that was that. Unlike René, he left Charging Elk alone to enjoy his anisette and his thoughts. But he was never far away, serving nearby customers or standing solemnly at his post beside the inside door.

  The incident at the brasserie was one of the things that Charging Elk thought about. Although he knew he had been lucky, that his death song had thrown the whole crowd off-balance and he had managed to escape before they regained their equilibrium, he also thought that the song had had a magical effect. He hadn’t become invisible as he would have wished, but somehow the song had frozen the sailors, rendering them powerless in their effort to harm him. Charging Elk began to think of the song as a magical weapon, rather than a means to make him strong and brave in the face of certain death. He knew that the purpose of the song had become distorted into a kind of defense mechanism, but he didn’t know why—only that it worked this time. And it hadn’t worked in the iron house. Perhaps he was meant to live, and to live here, at the edge of the great water that stood between him and his home. Perhaps this had become home.

  Consequently he carried himself with a little more assurance; he began to look people in the eye; he took to going to the bathhouse around the corner from his flat; and he ate out almost every night. He felt stronger at work and he worked harder at making himself understood. After the incident, he lost his reluctance to be noticed and began to walk proudly, the way he had when he and the other show Ind
ians went around the big towns to promote the performances. He even replaced his good beret with a felt hat with a floppy brim that he purchased in the very hat shop that he had cringed in front of that rainy night four years ago before the akecita had arrested him. He had enjoyed walking into the shop, then trying on hats while the clerk and the other customers looked on nervously. He had hoped to find a reservation hat with the stiff brim, but now he decided that the floppy brim made him look as dashing as a boulevardier. That same day he bought a black walking stick with a silver duck’s head in a flea market on Rue St-Ferréol—not far from the Préfecture where he had been a prisoner. Thus decked out, he strolled the streets of Marseille in the evening and sat in the cafés at night, doing his best to imitate the slender young men who attracted admiring glances from the young women. And in truth, he did cut an admirable figure, just not the type nice young women would feel comfortable with. They looked at him as a large, possibly dangerous North African or Turk, the kind of brute their mothers—just before they crossed themselves and said a fervent prayer to the Virgin—told them to avoid.

  One night in the middle of October, the Moon When the Wind Shakes Off the Leaves, Charging Elk found himself in a part of town that he was not familiar with. It was not far from the Old Port, only three or four blocks, but it was in a direction that he had not taken before. He recognized the monumental Opera House, but as he ventured into the blocks behind it, he noticed that the gas lamps were farther apart and the streets narrower and darker. He was a little surprised that the streets were still lit by gas lamps, because most of the streets in the Old Port vicinity were now illuminated by the electric lights that glowed white and cold.

  In the dim flicker of a gas lamp he could just make out the street sign at the corner two blocks behind the Opera House—Rue Sainte. He knew these words “Rue” and “Sainte” but had never seen them together before. He stood for a moment, already having decided to turn back to a large outdoor café he liked at the juncture of the Quai des Beiges and the Quai de Rive Neuve. It was always exciting to sit outside La Cigale and watch the other patrons and the strollers, and even though the evenings had turned a little chilly, there were plenty of braziers burning among the tables. After the deadly heat of summer, the Marseillais did not mind a little chill with their wine.

  It was a Sunday night and except for the Old Port, most of the big town was quiet. Rue Sainte was no exception. The street was empty, the doors were dark, and the windows on the upper floors were shuttered. Just as Charging Elk was deciding there was nothing of interest in this neighborhood, he looked up the street toward the east and he saw, in the next block, three or four squares of light that flooded out onto the cobblestones. The warmth of the light intrigued him, so he began to walk in that direction. The breeze that came every night now had suddenly turned into a brisk wind off the sea. Charging Elk held his long coat with the black fur collar closed with one hand while the other held his floppy-brimmed hat tight on his head. He did not like the winters in the port town—the constant winds, the rain that often turned into sleet, the dampness that turned the cobblestones shiny by night and lurked in corners even on sunny days. It was on those sunny winter days that he missed the Stronghold the most. He had not forgotten the grim blizzards, the deep snow that kept the people in their lodges for days on end, but he thought more about the sunny warm days when people would sit outside the lodges and the children would play their winter games. He and Strikes Plenty would often sit with a group of men on canvas tipi liners and smoke and talk about everything under the sun. Or they would ride into the draws and canyons of the badlands in order to give their horses some exercise, with the vague hope of scaring up a couple of rabbits or even a deer. Those days with the sun warm on their backs were always with Charging Elk as he endured the cold and damp of Marseille. He would give everything he had here for just one of those days.

  But now he put the sweet thoughts of home out of his mind as he stopped before the first doorway. It led into a narrow room with a long bar on one side and a few tables and chairs on the other. It was what René called an American bar because people, mostly the rough crowd, came here to drink alcohol. Even now, a couple of men were standing at the bar, drinking beer and smoking. A woman in a tight striped shirt was behind the bar wiping glasses with a towel. Her hair was piled on top of her head but several strands had escaped and hung limply over the nape of her neck and around her ears. Charging Elk studied the woman for a moment, marveling at the striped sailor’s shirt—he had never seen a woman wear anything so bold—then he walked down to the next doorway.

  This place was a replica of the first one, except that there were no customers and the man behind the bar, a short, stout man with small wire glasses, was bent over a newspaper. A cat was perched on the bar beside him. Charging Elk was tempted to go in and have a glass of wine but he didn’t like cats. Le Panier was overrun with cats and they howled and fought almost every night. In the morning when he went to work, they would be crouched in doorways and on window ledges, watching him. He didn’t like the way they watched him.

  He hurried down to a third doorway, which was closed and curtained with an opaque material. A large window beside the door glowed with a gauzy warmth. He had to stand close to see into the interior and he saw a large, cheerful room filled with couches and chairs. Two chandeliers with electric lights lit the orange walls and the red furniture. A small, shiny wooden bar backed up against one wall. Behind the bar, a large mirror reflected the lights of the chandeliers. Shiny glass decanters filled with amber and golden liquors stood in a row before the mirror.

  At first Charging Elk thought he was looking into the main room of a small hotel, but there was no writing on the window, no sign over the doorway. Could it be a home, like the Soulas home? Perhaps a rich man lived here, but why was it open to the street? And why were there no people in the room? He decided that it was a furniture house for rich people, even if it did seem to be in a peculiar location. And he decided that the owner must have forgotten to snuff out the lights and lower the grates when he left.

  Charging Elk started to walk back toward the Old Port, but he stopped and looked back. There was a fourth light back on the corner just beyond the furniture house. It was probably another shabby bar, but his curiosity was piqued, so he walked back and peered into a leaded-glass window that flanked the doorway. It was a bar, dimly lit and smoky, but he was surprised to see that it was not shabby. The bar was of polished dark wood and the chandeliers were made of many-colored glass. The men standing at the bar were dressed in long dark coats and top hats or derbies. Charging Elk watched the men for a moment, then he saw a row of small tables and chairs and more men sitting, leaning close toward each other, talking, laughing, smoking.

  One of the men glanced in his direction, but Charging Elk knew the man could not see him. When the man turned back to his companion, Charging Elk caught the glint of spectacles, and he sucked in his breath. He leaned in closer to the window, his nose almost touching the cold glass and his breath leaving a small frosted circle, and the man lit a thin cigar with a flint lighter. It was him! The pale man who bought fish at the Quai des Beiges. The hey oka, the holy clown, who Charging Elk had thought might help him at one time. Charging Elk stepped back from the window. It was him. But why? Had Wakan Tanka sent Charging Elk on this journey to the dark street to finally meet the hey oka again? Charging Elk had long ago given up the notion that this spectacled one or, for that matter, Yellow Breast was really a hey oka. He had come to believe that they were just men who had come into his life briefly, then vanished. They were no more or less wakan than the dead baby Jesus he had found in the alley.

  But now he began to believe that he had been mistaken, that perhaps they were heyokas after all. There seemed to be nothing holy about them, but that is the way of hey okas. They act crazy, but deep within them they possess much power. They are to be respected but feared.

  Charging Elk was now thoroughly confused. A gust of wind blew the flop
py brim down against his cheek. Should he enter the bar and present himself to this hey oka? Would the spectacled one remember him? After that morning when Charging Elk helped the pale one load his fish into his cart and accepted a cigar in return, René had made him wait with François while René bid for the fish. Furthermore, René had called the heyoka many bad words and made a bad face while doing so.

  While Charging Elk was trying to decide what to do, he heard footsteps, and he turned and saw two men coming up the street. He walked the few steps to the corner and stepped behind the building. He waited for a moment, glancing up and down the cross street. In one direction he could see the scabby hill with its dwarf pines where Notre Dame de la Garde stood as a lighted beacon above the city; in the other he saw the dark, skeletal masts of ships in the Old Port. The sight comforted him. Then he looked into the side window of the bar. He was less than two meters from the pale heyoka.He saw the glint of the spectacles above the laughing mouth, the thin cigar—just like the one he had given Charging Elk that morning—between two slender fingers.

  Charging Elk slipped away quickly, rounding the corner again, intent on walking as fast as he could back to the safety of the Old Port. He didn’t know why but he knew that this street was dica, a bad place, and the one he thought was a heyoka was really a siyoko, an evil spirit. He could feel the evil grip his heart, as surely as if it had come to him in a bad dream, and, in fact, he felt as though he were in the clutches of the pale diyoko now.

  He ducked into another gust of wind and felt the floppy brim flutter and snap against his face. He lifted his eyes just in time to avoid running into the two men he had seen earlier, who were now standing before the door of the furniture house. Just as he stepped wide of them, the door opened and he saw a small fat man in a dark suit and an immaculate white shirt and tie. He saw the smile and heard the words of welcome—“Bonsoir, messieurs. Bienvenu, mes amis”—and then he was beyond the door.