Heartsong

by James Welch

  Breteuil sighed, then smiled at Olivier. “I was noticing one of your girls—a bit chunky, dark hair, a blue wrapper, I think—she was with a man just a moment ago. She reminds me of someone.”

  Olivier looked back—there were at least twenty to thirty men and six or seven of his girls. He had twelve girls in all, and all of them were working on this Saturday night. Suddenly, his eyes brightened. He enjoyed doing favors for Breteuil. “Ah, you mean Marie. Yes. Not very elegant, but healthy. Some men like them that way.”

  “I suppose—I suppose the man she was with is even now enjoying her fruits. Such an unusual creature—not the type one usually finds in your house, Olivier.”

  Olivier laughed, a high pinched giggle that Breteuil knew too well. “He showed up one night some months ago. I don’t know why, but I was taken with him. I thought maybe—but no, he likes his girls, especially Marie. Anyway, he does no harm, so I think why not?”

  “And does he come often?”

  “Every Saturday night. You can mark your calendar by his visits”

  “Does he have a name?” Breteuil was reaching some.

  Olivier glanced at him, eyes suddenly alert and suspicious. Jealous.

  “Just asking. No matter really.” Breteuil turned to the bar and took a sip of champagne. He had dismissed Olivier—or at least had given that impression.

  Olivier hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do. The Spanish boy in the back parlor was one thing, but now—one of his customers? Olivier knew Breteuil and he knew that nothing good could come of such an interest. Still, he said, “His name is François. From the Orient, I think. Did you notice his eyes?”

  Breteuil didn’t respond. He lit one of his thin cigars and watched the smoke curl up and away to join the haze of all the other cigars and cigarettes. But yes, he had noticed the dark man’s eyes. They were the same eyes that had stripped him bare that dark morning four years before on the Quai des Belges.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The leaved were already large and dark green on the heavily pruned plane trees on Cours St-Louis and the evening sky was a warm yellow as the sun set over the rooftops to the west. It was early May and Charging Elk was still full of wonder and hope, as he looked at the green awning over the flower kiosk. But it was the lettering in white that caught his eye and kept it: NAISSANCESMARIAGES FUNÉRAILLES. A woman was arranging a bouquet in a porcelain vase. The flowers came from the immense greenhouses just inland from the Cote d’Azur. They were mostly hothouse carnations this time of year, with a few bunches of irises and roses, even lavender, in cone-shaped containers secured in wire racks. A small white dog, which seemed to belong to the woman, sat for a while, then stood and scratched its belly before walking daintily among the passersby. It was completely at home on the busy thoroughfare.

  Charging Elk was celebrating his new job at the soap factory. He sat at the small metal table in the warm air and watched the dog scatter a flock of pigeons, which flew up, circled, then came down five or six meters behind it. The dog went on to sniff the base of a plane tree before lifting its leg.

  Just five sleeps ago, as Charging Elk was hanging up his coat, his boss had come to him and led him to another part of the factory, a large clean room with plenty of windows. The boss introduced him to another man, but the other man had heard of him. In spite of having the lowliest, dirtiest job in the factory, Charging Elk was well known as the Peau-Rouge from America. Even in a factory as large as Monsieur Deferre’s, word gets around. Some of the men made jokes about him; others made what they thought were war whoops when he was out of hearing range; still others watched him with a wary awe, some with hatred because he was different. And except for Louis Granat, all had given him a wide berth. But they all had heard of him.

  The other man, whose name was Monsieur Billedoux, said, “I hear you are ready to make soap, Charging Elk. We’ll see. But first, this morning, you must watch and help out as I ask. It is hard work, but you’ll find it much cleaner than shoveling coal.” Charging Elk noticed that the man spoke slowly and clearly. He could understand most of the words and all of the gist. He was grateful, as he always was, for this small courtesy.

  And so Charging Elk watched the vat of hot curd tipped out into heavy metal frames, a sea of almond-scented cream. And when it had set, men began to slice it into bars with wires. Other men shaped the settled soap, rounding off the crude corners with curious knives, while others threw the bars onto a moving table. Here the bars passed before two men, who sporadically tossed a flawed bar into a tub at their feet.

  Billedoux led Charging Elk along the table following the progress of the bars, until they came to two other men who stamped the smooth soap on both sides with metal presses. Billedoux snatched one of the bars off the table and held it before Charging Elk. “You see?” he shouted over the patient chug of a steam engine. The lettering on the bar read “PRÉ DE PROVENCE.” Below the writing, Charging Elk saw a perfect flying bird with a flowering twig in its beak. Billedoux turned the bar over. In an oval, letters said “SAVON DE MARSEILLE.” Beneath, in smaller figures, “250 g.” Billedoux dropped the bar into Charging Elk’s hand. “It goes all over the world—even to your country!”

  Charging Elk was startled by the man’s statement. How had he known? He lifted the soap and smelled it. It smelled of almond oil, but to his nose the pleasant odor could not disguise the familiar lye that bubbled in vats above his coal furnaces. Would his own parents use this soap? He couldn’t imagine it. But with the fire boats and the iron road, it was possible. René had said the soap of Marseille was famous the world over. But Pine Ridge was beyond the world of this soap.

  At the end of the moving table, four men were taking the soap and putting them into boxes in neat rows. The boxes rested on a metal cart. They worked quickly but carefully.

  “Come with me.” Monsieur Billedoux was a lean man in his midthirties, with wavy brown hair and neatly trimmed goatee. He looked out of place in the factory, even in his blue smock and shapeless beret. Charging Elk thought he looked more like the gentlemen who came into Le Salon than he did the other workers. Maybe he was a big boss who dressed like a worker. There was something about him, his quick movements, his bright face, that seemed to suggest authority. And yet he was taking the time to explain all the steps in the mysterious process. Even though Charging Elk didn’t understand much of it, he appreciated the fact that he was being talked to.

  He still held the bar of soap as he walked faster than normal to keep up with Billedoux. In one of those quirks of the mind that pop up when one least expects it, he suddenly envied the soap. Perhaps it would cross the big water and end up at Pine Ridge. Perhaps in another moon, or two, his mother would be washing her face with it in the morning. Or his father would scrub his hands after planting potatoes.

  Billedoux led him through a large stone arch into a bright room with wooden floors. Three long rows of tables stood in the center, several women standing around each. Charging Elk was surprised to see the women there, but he had seen them among the men in the mornings when they filed through the factory gates. He hadn’t really thought what their jobs might be. They were just more women who were as unobtainable as the others on the streets of Marseille.

  “This is the packing room. From here the crates go to the loading dock. But watch for a moment.”

  The two men stood at the end of one of the tables and watched the women wrap each bar in tissue, folding it neatly and quickly over each bar, then affixing a moistened seal on each. When they had ten or twelve wrapped, they stacked them neatly in a wooden crate at their feet, each layer cushioned with excelsior. Then they repeated the procedure.

  Charging Elk had never seen such quick, practiced movements. Each of the many folds over the bar was perfect, so that all the edges came together under the seal. He had seen the bars of soap in pharmacies but had not thought of all the effort that went into each from the cutting and shaping to the wrapping. He now realized that he could have been shoveling coal in any fac
tory in Marseille for all he knew about the process of making the smooth bars in their pretty wrappers.

  Billedoux introduced him to Madame Braque, who was in charge of the wrapping room. She was a stout woman in her midforties with dyed red hair pinned up over her ears and a round pleasant face. In her white smock and white shoes, she reminded Charging Elk of the nurses’ helpers who had fed him soup in the sickhouse a lifetime ago.

  “You must do as madame says. For now, she is your boss.”

  And so Charging Elk began his new job. He kept the women supplied with bars of soap from the moving table. He hammered the lids on each crate as they were filled and hauled them out to the loading dock, where a man put a big label on each and told him where to stack them. Sometimes he read the labels, but they meant nothing to him except for one batch: NEW YORK, ÉTAT DE NEW YORK L’ÉTATS-UNIS D’AMÉRIQUE. Charging Elk said to the man, “Amérique. I am from Amérique. Dakota.”

  The man glanced up at him, said something under his breath, then walked away. But Charging Elk didn’t mind. He liked his new job. He was always moving, always carting, carrying, lifting, but when he left the factory at the end of the day, he was not covered with soot and coal dust, he was not drenched in greasy sweat, his hands were relatively clean. He was tired but not bone-weary. And he liked to be in the room where the women worked. They paid little attention to him after the first day, but they were good to look at and be around.

  Charging Elk sipped the milky anisette and wondered about his life now. He couldn’t recall how many times he had assessed his life in the past four years. But it seemed as though his life was changing so much so rapidly. Without knowing quite how, apart from Mathias and Chloé’s early teaching, he had learned enough of the French tongue so that he could take instructions from Madame Braque as readily as anyone in the room. But to have a woman for a boss and to work in a room with women ! It was too much to comprehend. He had never been around women like this. When he started his new job, he had felt vaguely ashamed of himself. Although his job was different from theirs, he was afraid the other men in the factory, especially those who worked along the moving table, would think of his work as women’s work. He had never worked with women, and he had never had a woman boss. All of his bosses—from the Wild West show, to René, to the boss of the furnace room—had been men. All of his fellow performers or workers had been men. And yet, for the first time in his four years in Marseille, he looked forward each morning to going to work.

  Charging Elk watched the little white dog eating a scrap of something from the pavement. The woman, who had been arranging the bouquet, was now pulling the shutters down on her kiosk. He looked up at the awning again. MARIAGES. Somehow, this evening the idea didn’t seem so farfetched to him.

  Marie was speechless when the pale, handsome man sat down beside her. Of course, she had seen him before. Such a man stands out in any crowd. But he always went through the parlor to the lounge in back, to the boys. Through the kitchen gossip, she even knew which boy he liked—the young Spaniard named—Miguel? The boys didn’t live in, so Marie never got to know them, but Miguel stood out for his dark beauty. If Marie had seen him on the street, she might have taken him for an artist or perhaps a musician. He had such a sensitivity. One of the girls said he was the son of a diplomat; another said his father was a nobleman; but Aimée said he was an illegal and if he was ever caught in the house, the whole business would be shut down by the gendarmes and they’d all be standing on street corners.

  Marie did not look at the pale man’s face, but she could smell his cologne, which seemed very complex, like perfume. It made her light-headed; at the same time, it was almost suffocating. She stared at the man’s smooth but strong fingers, which were twined over one knee. The nails glistened in the light from the chandelier, as though they were lacquered.

  The man sat for a moment, taking in the noise and activity of the room. Marie herself tore her eyes away from his fingers and looked off toward the group surrounding the piano player. He was playing a Provençal troubador song about the fighting bulls of the Camargue. It was an old song, one her father had sung to her and her brothers and sisters many times; and now, the three or four men around the piano were singing the familiar lyrics with the same bravado.

  It was eleven o’clock on a Thursday night and not particularly busy. Marie had been upstairs with only two men so far, and until the pale man sat down beside her, she had begun to think that she could have an early evening. She didn’t know if she should feel relieved or worried. She glanced down to the other end of the bar and she saw Olivier standing in his usual spot. He was looking at her, his face blank. Just the fact that he was looking at her surprised her. That his face was stripped of its normal ingratiating smile surprised her even more. And worried her. Had he noticed that she had had only two customers the whole evening?

  In a sudden attack of desperation, she turned toward the pale gentleman and said, “Bonsoir, monsieur.”

  He took a pull on a long, thin cigar he had just lit and puffed the smoke up into the smoggy air. He seemed to be enjoying a leisure moment, and Marie instantly regretted her intrusion. But out of the corner of her eye she saw Olivier still watching her. What was she to do?

  Just then, he turned and fixed her with a smile that made her skin suddenly turn cold. The pale blue eyes were set wide apart, almost too wide apart for the round spectacles. It was as though the eyes and the spectacles didn’t quite match. He had long, blond lashes and perfectly arched eyebrows. His nose was thin but the nostrils flared dramatically. On any other face, this nose would have been an imperfection; even the eyes would have seemed curious. But on this man, these features were sensual. And the smile, the slightly opened lips, the small square teeth, made Marie s heart jump a little more than she would have liked. She had never looked into such a face.

  “Hello, Marie.”

  Marie heard her name escape those lips but it didn’t register just then.

  “I’ve been watching you the past couple of weeks. You interest me.”

  “Me?”

  “You are from country. I can tell. From the Vaucluse?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised not only by this knowledge but by the fact that he knew her name, which had just dawned on her. “Cavaillon.”

  “Ah. And does your father raise the famous melons?”

  “Everything—melons, asparagus, cherries, some apples—but very small.”

  “Vineyards?”

  “No, monsieur. It is just a patch of land.”

  “And how long have you been here—In Marseille?”

  Marie still couldn’t believe that this man was interested in her. He liked the boys. She suddenly became even more shy than normal. And just a little frightened. What did he want?

  “Did you not hear my question?” He held his head higher and his spectacles glinted beneath the chandelier and she couldn’t see the eyes.

  “Three years, monsieur.”

  “And have you always been a whore?”

  Marie had been transfixed by the flaring nostrils, the long upper lip that arched delicately over the small teeth. But his question, the cruelty of it, made her look down quickly at her lap. She saw how square her hands were, how blunt the fingers were, and she felt heavy and awkward in his presence. A small flame kindled inside her—no, she hadn’t always been a whore. She had been to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, she had seen the mysterious water bubble up from the cave, she had been to school for three years, she had played with her sisters, picked melons and cherries, flirted with a boy from the next farm, crushed poppy seeds between her teeth, and dreamed of love, of a husband and children when she grew up, of a simple, happy life. More than anything, even now, she tried to dream of that simple, happy life, but all she got was the familiar dark, deserted streets and nowhere to go.

  “Well?”

  “oui monsieur. But not always.”

  The man laughed—a beautiful high, mirthless laugh, like the chimes that sometimes rang in the wind out
side her room at night, the source of which she could never identify.

  She glanced up at the pale face but the eyes were looking at something beyond her. She instinctively turned her gaze and she saw Olivier standing apart from the bar now, his hands crossed tightly over his belly, a strange, stormy look in his eyes.

  “Well, Marie, shall we go up now—to your room?”

  She suddenly wanted to run away—yes, to her room—to lock the door, to crawl under the covers by herself, to sleep without dreams. She had no idea what this man could want with her, but she had seen, beneath the beauty, the eyes grow cold and the mouth hard. It was as though his sensuality had been frozen into a mask. And yet, the perfume which had now surrounded her and entered her whole body seemed to cause her to lose her senses and she felt a wave of dizziness when she stood.