by James Welch
But even though the siyoko was just one and there were many more out there just beyond the high window, to kill one was worth a hundred acts of counting coup on the enemies. He would die now with honor, even though he was a world away from his people. Wakan Tanka would know. And Charging Elk, in the past two sleeps, had come to his own special knowledge: All of the tests that the Great Mystery had sent his way these past four years had no promise of reward. They were simply tests of his courage and resolution, preparation for this one final test. When he slit the throat of the diyoko, he had, in that instant, fulfilled his time on earth.
Charging Elk sat up and swung his legs over the bed and felt the cool stones with his bare feet. His back was sore and stiff where one of the men who found him lying in the street had kicked him two or three times. He knew there would be ugly bruises there, but he hurt more inside. His piss had been red with blood since then. But it didn’t matter. He would be dead soon. René had once told him that when the guillotine sliced off the head, the body would live for a little while, twitching and jerking. He said one headless man had gotten up and run twenty meters before the legs finally collapsed. He said one head spat out oaths and curses on all who watched and cheered. At the time, Charging Elk had been horrified, but now he smiled. He had killed birds and animals and had watched them twitch in their final moments. It was no cause for alarm. Bird Tail, the old wicasa wakan, had said it was just their spirits leaving their bodies, and if one made the right prayers all would be well. Charging Elk would make his own prayers when the time came. But his prayers would be of thanks for having lived on this earth, not for his nagi’s future.
Charging Elk idly reached for the chain of his pocket watch to look at the time, but when he found nothing, he remembered the jailer had taken it, along with his purse. He couldn’t remember what had happened with his knife. Had he left it in the room? Or had the jailer taken that too?
Suddenly his sense of resigned serenity left him. Marie! It seemed that every few minutes he thought of her, always with that same alarm. Had the élyoko harmed her? Surely she would have been in the room helping Charging Elk if she had still been alive. She had touched his mouth with her own lips just before he went to sleep. He had seen lovers do that on the quais of the Old Port and in the cafés of Cours St-Louis. But had she said words to him? He could almost remember a humming in his ear, but was it from her lips? Charging Elk couldn’t help but fear the worst. In their tenderest of moments, he had fallen into a black sleep and the siyoko must have killed her before performing his vile act on Charging Elk’s cock, a cock meant for Marie alone and certainly forbidden to a man. Charging Elk had to remind himself, even as he thought with shame of the pleasure that had grown in his loins, that the diyoko was not a man but an evil spirit. It had simply taken over the pale, bespectacled one’s body.
Charging Elk was confused in a funny way. He knew he had done a right thing in killing the evil spirit, but he also mourned the death of the woman who was to become his wife and give him children and happiness. Were the two events related? More important, was he to blame? If not for him, the óiyoko would not have come there and Marie would be alive. But he had come only to ask Marie to be his wife.
Charging Elk fell back on the bed. His head had begun to ache. Ever since that night he had been having headaches. Before, he only had headaches when he drank too much of the mnisha. He had slept very little since coming to the stone house, just a couple of lapses of consciousness each night when his mind turned off and his eyes quit seeing. And when he came back, it was as if he had never stopped thinking. He simply carried on with the last thought he could remember.
Now he closed his eyes and felt a warm buzzing in his head. He saw yellow and black fuzzy stripes before his eyes and he watched them in a kind of peaceful surrender. Then they were gone and he was too. He slept long and deeply, and even though he would have welcomed a dream to give him direction, his mind retreated, like a gopher that has seen a hawk, into a deep hole of labyrinthian safety.
First he heard the heavy slide of the metal plate that opened and closed the small window in the door. A few seconds later, he heard the key turn and the door creaked open. He didn’t open his eyes yet. He sniffed, expecting the sour smell of soup.
But the jailer said, “Wake up. You have a visitor.”
Charging Elk sat up on his elbows, expecting to see Brown Suit again, but the man standing just inside the doorway was slender and sleekly dressed in a light creamy suit and straw hat with a wide, sloping brim that covered his head like an umbrella. His eyes were in the shade of the brim, but Charging Elk could see that he was pale and young, in spite of the hair on his chin.
“You have twenty minutes,” said the jailer.
Charging Elk looked at the jailer. This was not the vile fat man of four years ago. He was younger and dark-skinned beneath a full dark beard. Except for the beard he could have been Lakota, but he was probably a Levantine, perhaps a Musulman. This was surprising, because all of the gendarmes and jailers Charging Elk had seen were French.
The pale man said, “Thank you, monsieur,” then pressed a franc note into the mans hand.
Charging Elk watched the jailer ease his way out of the small cell, then close the door behind him. He sat up, on the edge of the bed.
The pale man took the small stool and moved it a little, then sat. If they had been sitting opposite each other their knees would have touched.
“So—Monsieur Charging Elk. How is it going for you? Are they treating you well?”
“Well enough.”
“You look a little better than last time.”
Charging Elk had been staring straight ahead at the stone wall, which had initials and other markings carved into it, but now he glanced at the man.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” The man smiled. “Martin St-Cyr. I visited you some four years ago—in this very jail. You were in a different room, I think.”
Charging Elk’s expression didn’t change but he was trying to remember the man.
“Back then you couldn’t speak our language. Now I hear things are different. You have become a real Frenchman—even to the point of visiting one of our famous houses of pleasure.”
Charging Elk didn’t understand much of what the man said—only something about language and whorehouse. But his mind suddenly flashed on Marie’s bloody room and his stomach grew sour with fear. Was this man an akecita boss who had come to take him to the guillotine already?
But the man reached into his coat pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. He pulled a cigarette out and handed it to Charging Elk. He put another between his lips, then struck a match and lit both, half rising from the stool to light Charging Elk’s. “Forgive me. I think I speak too fast for you. I will try to say things slowly and clearly.”
Charging Elk looked at him with his mouth open and his eyes wide. “Yellow Breast,” he said in Lakota. “It is Yellow Breast, the heyoka.” He had remembered that Yellow Breast had given him a half-empty packet of cigarettes last time. He remembered his little ceremony with the tobacco and his heart suddenly lightened. “You have come to help me,” he said, again in Lakota.
This time it was St-Cyr’s turn to be astonished. He couldn’t believe the sound of the strange, rough language. Not one word made sense. He laughed. “Now you have me confused. Is that your Indian tongue? I was told you speak French.”
“Ah , yes! I speak French. Only not so good.”
St-Cyr threw the cigarettes and matches on the cot beside Charging Elk. “These are for you, my friend.” He pulled out his notebook and said, “We don’t have much time. Could you tell me what happened in the whorehouse?”
Charging Elk drew on the cigarette and looked up at the high mesh window. The word “whorehouse” did not frighten him this time, but he didn’t want to remember.
“Why are you in jail?”
But what if this man had come to save him? Shouldn’t he tell him everything? He would unders
tand why he had done what he had done. “I killed an evil,” he said.
“Why?”
Charging Elk drew on the cigarette and watched the smoke curl up toward the window. He suddenly felt naked in the presence of the pale man, so he shrugged into his shirt, noticing that the stiff collar was missing. He busied himself with the buttons.
“Why did you kill a man in this whorehouse? What was he to you?”
Charging Elk took the cigarette from between his lips and looked at St-Cyr. The man did not look like a gendarme, but he suspected a trick of some sort. But why would this man who had been kind to him before and was kind now seek to deceive him?
St-Cyr seemed to understand the Indian’s reluctance to answer. He also felt uncomfortable for the first time under the frank stare. “Of course! I forgot to tell you—I am a journalist, La Gazette du Midi. Perhaps you know it?” When Charging Elk didn’t answer, he said, slowly and clearly, “I write about injustice. If I am to help you, I must have answers to my questions.”
“You are not gendarme?”
“I swear to the Black Virgin, I am nothing more than a humble reporter who wishes to help you if I can. All right?”
“All right then.” Charging Elk threw his cigarette butt into the slop bucket at the foot of the cot. “That man that I killed was not a man like you and me but a siyoko.”
St-Cyr had begun to write but he abruptly stopped. “Pardon me? A see—a seek . . .”
“Siyoko.”
“Can you spell it?”
“No.”
“But what does it mean?”
“An evilness.”
“Like an evil spirit?”
“Evilness.”
St-Cyr shook his head and wrote “evilness.” Then he said, “And what made you kill him?”
“I killed it because it was evil. One always kills evil.”
St-Cyr tapped his pencil on the pad. He had been told that this Indian spoke French, but nothing he said made sense. It was as if the savage’s brain worked differently from ordinary men’s. He decided to try another tack. “If I am to get you out of jail you must tell me everything—in every detail. Do you understand?”
“Of course. I will tell you everything, yes.”
“Good. Let’s start a little earlier. You were seeing one of the whores, one of the girls. Her name was—” He flipped back in his notebook. “Let’s see. Ah. Marie Colet. Was she your girl?”
“Yes! Marie!” Charging Elk’s heart jumped up, then just as suddenly fell. “But the siyoko killed her.”
“No, no, monsieur. This—this evilness did not kill her. She is very much alive; in fact, she’s here, at the Préfecture. I talked to her less than an hour ago.”
Charging Elk again looked at the journalist, his eyes hardening into narrow slits. Now he knew the man was not to be trusted. “The siyoko killed her,” he said, his voice barely audible in the high-ceilinged room.
St-Cyr had lowered his eyes to his notebook, not daring to look back into the savage’s murderous eyes. He thought he should call to the guard, who he knew was standing just outside the door, listening to every word. His eyes fell upon his notes and he recited: “Dark hair, stout, nineteen years of age. From the country, from the Vaucluse. She’s been at Le Salon for three years.” He sneaked a look up and he noticed that the Indian’s eyes had widened somewhat. “She said you came to her every Saturday night since December or January. She couldn’t be sure.”
“Then she is alive!”
“She said you once gave her a cameo—”
“Wakan Tanka has saved her!” He suddenly closed his eyes and spoke quietly, as though St-Cyr were not there. “Thank you, Tunkashila, thank you for her beating heart and her warm skin and her shining hair. I have walked with you for all the years of my life and now you have given me another gift. You are my good Grandfather who has shown me the red road and now I will die with you in my wanagi forever. Thank you, my Tunkashila, thank you for her beating heart. And thank you for Yellow Breast, whose heart also beats strong for your poor grandson.”
St-Cyr listened to the strange, almost chanting language with fascination. He wished desperately that he could understand what was going on inside the indiens head. He knew that the real story lay somewhere behind that lean, coppery face, those obsidian eyes, those wide, thin lips that mouthed the incomprehensible words. He was barely conscious that he was writing this description down.
“But what is she doing here?”
St-Cyr almost didn’t recognize the crude locution, so engrossed was he in his own ruefulness. He smiled sheepishly, in spite of the circumstance of the stone room and its implications. “They are holding her,” he said.
“But why?”
“They suspect she ...” St-Cyr suddenly stopped. A memory flashed through his head and he saw this same Indian in a cell identical to this one, looking drawn and defeated. He remembered the limp handshake, the dull eyes, the look of death. And now, Charging Elk was almost certain to lose his life. How could he tell him that this girl he cared for—who might have been all he cared for in his circumscribed life—had conspired with Breteuil to drug him so that the invert could perform his infamous act? She had told it all to St-Cyr only an hour ago. She felt very bad about her role and she was frightened and concerned—but really only about herself. What would become of her? She had expressed little concern over what might happen to Charging Elk. At the time, St-Cyr had thought it a natural reaction. Why should she care what happened to a customer? But now, the Indian seemed to think that they were lovers. But that was natural too. It was natural for a man to become infatuated with a particular whore. Oh, my great, pillowy Fortune!
“Times up, monsieur!”
“Only one moment, if you please.” St-Cyr glanced down at his notes. There was hardly anything there. Just a description and a doodle. And a hesitant attempt to spell the strange word. Siyoko, he had called it. Evilness. He closed up the notebook. He had plenty of material from Bell and Marie Colet to write his first column. And he had a pretty good angle on how to portray the Peau-Rouge, one that surprised even him. But he would need much more before the trial began.
“Can I bring you something next time—besides some more cigarettes?”
Charging Elk had been leaning forward, elbows on knees, studying the initials on the wall. “No thank you,” he said.
“Can I contact someone for you—perhaps where you work or where you live?” St-Cyr had been sincere in his offer, but when he saw the look of alarm come into the savage s eyes his journalist s instincts, which had abandoned him twenty minutes ago, suddenly returned. “Surely there is someone who cares about you, who would like to know that you are alive and well. If I could have a name, Charging Elk, perhaps I could reassure this person.”
The jailer entered the small room. “You must leave now, monsieur. It is my neck if you are found here.”
“You must let me help you. A name . . .”
“Come now, monsieur. I have three little mouths to feed.” The jailer grasped St-Cyr by the upper arm and lifted him from the stool.
“René Soulas.”
Both St-Cyr and the jailer froze for an instant, locked in their awkward pose. A smile flickered across Charging Elks face, a twitch of the thin lips, as though he found the moment amusing. But his eyes did not participate in the amusement.
“Where does he live?” St-Cyr had recovered but so had the jailer, who was propelling the journalist out the door.
“11 Rue d’Aubagne. He is my friend. You must tell him not to worry.”
But the door clanged shut, cutting this last sentence off. Charging Elk sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, looking at the initials without seeing them. He hadn’t thought of the Soulas family at all in the past two sleeps. Even when he said René s name, it sounded strange on his tongue. He shook another cigarette out of the packet and looked at it, running his finger over the smooth paper cylinder. He felt his heart falling down. What would Madeleine think? She had thought he had
a real girlfriend, one he might bring to Sunday dinner. Now she would know the truth. He looked toward the door but there was nothing but silence behind it. It was too late to tell Yellow Breast that he had changed his mind, that he mustn’t contact René Soulas. Charging Elk felt a familiar throbbing in his temples. Soon he would have a full-blown headache that would make him lie back on the bed and shut his eyes tight against the brightness of the high window.
He dreaded the inevitable pain just as he dreaded the last few sleeps of his life. He wondered if they would come for him this night, or tomorrow, or the day after that. He didn’t mind dying—and yet he didn’t seek it as he did four years before when he sang his death song for three sleeps straight—but he didn’t like the waiting. If they did come this night he would welcome them. He put the cigarette between his lips and struck a match and a thought occurred to him—Wakan Tanka had sent Yellow Breast to him twice now. Perhaps there was a plan after all. But what could Yellow Breast do? He was no magician who could make Charging Elk invisible or put his head back on his body after the big iron knife fell. And yet he had said he would help. Charging Elk stared at the small yellow flame and dared to hope just a little.
As he sucked in the smoke, Marie entered his mind and he wondered, just before the first hot wire of pain coursed through his brain, why she was still alive, why the élyoko hadn’t killed her. He had meant to ask Yellow Breast but now it was too late. Now he would never know. Somehow he knew that.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The morning of August 16 of 1894 was typical for late summer in Marseille—hot, still, humid, cloudless—and relatively quiet at eleven o’clock after the early-morning markets as the citizens retreated into their homes or factories or stores. A few people sat in front of cafés under umbrellas, drinking small dark cafés or citrons pressés. Occasionally a hansom cab or delivery wagon rattled by, and even more occasionally a nearly empty omnibus made its slow way along La Canebière or Rue de la République, the dark-sweated horses stopping automatically at each corner.