Heartsong

by James Welch

  And so Charging Elk began, “I am Charging Elk, son of Scrub and Doubles Back Woman, grandson of Scabby Bull and Goodkill. I am of the Lakota tribe. I come from America with Buffalo Bill and my Lakota friends. But they are gone now and I am alone. For four years I have lived among you but you do not know me and I do not know you. Even the white birds that fly among your fire boats and fishing boats I do not know. The fish that you bring from the big waters are not tasty to me. Even the meat of your animals is not filling to one who has tasted the flesh of the buffalo. I do not know of this room full of laws or that man”—he pointed to the prosecutor—“who tells you that Charging Elk is a bad man. I see these men in the long box listen to him with big ears and I know they are with him. And yet I have only done what any of my people would do when they come upon a siyoko—” Charging Elk stopped suddenly and ran his hand over his nose and mouth. He hadn’t thought about it before, but now he realized that he did not have the French words to explain about evil. It could only be explained in the Lakota tongue. He stood for a moment, confused, feeling a helplessness that hadn’t visited him for some time. But slowly his thoughts swirled and gathered themselves in his head, as a bird builds a nest out of all those bits of things that lie on the ground and in the trees and are of no use to men. Then, in Lakota, he explained about evil, how the siyokos were there among them even now, how the spirits wandered about searching for an opportunity to perform their evil, how the bespectacled one, Breteuil as he was called, had the misfortune to be susceptible to evil. And yet there he was in Marie’s room that night, with the siyoko within, doing the evils bidding. And so Charging Elk had had to kill him to get rid of the evil.

  Charging Elk kept his eyes on the magistrates as he spoke but he knew, by the silence, that all of the people gathered in the courtroom were listening. Even the dull noise outside the room seemed to have stopped. Many times in the past four years Wakan Tanka had made him invisible to the people in this land, but now he wanted them to see him, to hear him. And in some way, the Great Mystery had opened their ears to his words. And so he thanked Wakan Tanka for giving him the good words that opened the hearts of these people and allowed them to see into his own.

  After he finished speaking, Charging Elk remained standing, hands lightly gripping the railing of the prisoner’s dock, and looked around at all the people in the courtroom—the jurors, the prosecutor and his helpers, his own advocate, the tables of reporters, and the people in the balcony. They were all looking at him, even the reporters, who had written nothing during his speech. But he was especially interested in the balcony. Marie was not there, but he didn’t expect her to be. But René was there, not far from him. If the dock had been a little closer to the balcony, René could have leaned down and shaken his hand.

  The fishmonger had a sad smile on his face, but Charging Elk saw him as he first saw him in the office of the police captain—the slicked-back black hair almost gone on top, the missing lower front teeth, the kind eyes—and he was sorry for the shame he had brought on the home of the family that had cared for him when he probably would have died on his own. He wanted to thank him—and Madeleine. But she wasn’t there. Charging Elk knew that she had little patience for things that went on outside her home, and the many sleeps of the trial had bored even him. Still, he was disappointed that he wouldn’t see her again.

  The chief magistrate finally cleared his throat and all eyes swung from Charging Elk to him. “I hope the jurors understood the accused’s statement better than I did,” he said, and the whole courtroom burst into laughter.

  The next day it rained. Overnight the tramontane had kicked up, blowing in a long, continuous slide of gray clouds from the northwest. It wasn’t a hard rain but it was steady. It rained all day, cooling the pavement and the brick and stone buildings, bringing in a fresh damp smell that made the town seem almost young. Suddenly the streets were filled with people, some with umbrellas, some without. It didn’t seem to matter whether one got wet or not. The people walked with more bounce in their steps and more purpose. They went into shops and came out with their baskets brimming with good cheese, fresh fish, perhaps a new pair of stockings or some colored candles. Some men loitered on corners, smoking and laughing. It was already near the end of August and the rain was the first rain of summer.

  Perhaps the demonstrators had decided to join their more unconcerned fellow citizens in enjoying the coolness that the rain brought, but the turnout at the Palais de Justice was remarkably sparse. Less than fifty people milled about Place Montyon, and they seemed hesitant, rudderless. The only speaker among them was an old man in an oilskin cape and sandals who warned them about the wages of sin and the wrath of God. It was unclear whether he was referring to the particular sins being discussed in the court of law or those vague sins that are committed every day in an offhand way. Finally he demanded a cigarette from one of the demonstrators and ambled off down the street, smoking and growling. And the demonstrators, singly, in pairs, in small knots, began to drift away in all directions. They did not seem particularly angry today, or even reluctant to leave Place Montyon. And why should they? The rain had made Marseille young again.

  The jurors were out for only two hours, and when they filed back into the jury box, their expressions were much as they were on the very first day of the trial—expectant, somber—but now battle-weary. The only difference was that each now had a recognizable face after the long days of trial—and presumably a family, or a lover, or an aging mother, a life that he was anxious to get home to. Many of them had worn the same dark suits since the trial began and were ready to put them away for a long time. Many of their families had suffered financially. All these things may have contributed to the brief deliberation—or they may have found that there was very little to discuss, that in the end the decision was remarkably simple.

  “Will the defendant please rise.” It was not a question. Charging Elk got to his feet and stood tall, hands clasped in front of him. He had been used to hearing small sounds in the room—a chair squeak, a low whisper, a cough or the rattle of paper. Now it was silent. “How finds the jury?”

  The foreman stood, and Charging Elk was surprised to see that he was the youngest of the men. His thin, almost frail body reminded Charging Elk of Mathias. But his voice was strong and clear. “We find the defendant guilty, as charged, of the act of murder, your honor.”

  The abrupt reaction in the balcony made Charging Elk look around. There were whistles of disapproval and loud groans amid a buzz of rapid conversation. Then he heard the familiar sound of the magistrate’s wooden hammer banging on the desk.

  “That will be enough!” he shouted. “We will have order in this court!” When the buzz died away, he said, “Let me remind you, this is a very serious procedure. If I hear another word, I will have the entire balcony cleared. You may mark my words.”

  The chief magistrate stared into the balcony for a full minute until there was again not a sound in the room, except for the scratching of the journalists’ pencils. Satisfied, he turned to the jurors and thanked them for their patience and good judgment. Then he conferred with his fellow magistrates for a moment before speaking again. “After discussing the matter, the court finds that the act was committed with provocation and without premeditation. While murder is never justified in a civilized society, we do believe that the two conditions constitute mitigating circumstances under which the crime was committed.

  “Before passing sentence I feel compelled to point out that the man who now stands convicted of murder is not of a civilized race of people. It is clear that he does not hold the same beliefs and principles that contribute to an orderly, law-abiding society. We may deduce from the gibberish we heard yesterday that passes for language among his people and from the pattern of his behavior leading up to the crime, as the procureur-général so ably laid out, that he simply cannot conform to even the most elementary code of conduct—and therefore will always remain a threat to society.” The chief magistrate paused and
removed his spectacles. His pale eyes searched out the prisoner s dock. “It is the judgment of this court that the convicted felon be removed to a highly secured place of detention where he will spend the rest of his natural life contemplating this most heinous crime.” He put the spectacles on and picked up his portfolio. “This court stands adjouned.”

  St-Cyr sat for a moment and watched Charging Elk stand patiently as the two gendarmes fitted him with handcuffs and ankle bracelets. The heavy chain between them clanked and clattered on the floor with a din of finality that sent shivers up his back. So this is how it ends, he thought. This is the reality—the harsh sound of iron in the sudden serenity of the gloomy wood-paneled room. The room itself seemed cavernous now and almost unbearably empty as the last of the officials and spectators filed out.

  St-Cyr didn’t know how he felt, and that surprised him. He had been ready to rush out with the other journalists to write his column, which was due in the next day’s Gazette, but his legs were curiously weak and he just felt empty of thought or emotion. Should he have felt good? His columns had transformed the trial from a mere scandal into a cause célèbre—all the people in the markets and cafés, on the quais of the Old Port, even in the salons of the haute bourgeoisie, were talking about the case. And he had been able to organize an outcry in the streets, in a somewhat devious but effective manner. And most important of all, Charging Elk had escaped the guillotine, which was a minor miracle—perhaps a major miracle in his case. St-Cyr, in spite of his background as a crime reporter, then a columnist, had attended only one other trial—that of an elderly woman accused of poisoning her husband—but he had been in Marseille long enough to know that a case such as this almost always ended with a severed head. The crimes were harsh in the port city but the punishment was even harsher. But the court had been lenient, perhaps in part because of his columns and the public outcry they engendered. So he should have felt good, if not ecstatic, about Charging Elks fate. But did he?

  St-Cyr heard the scraping of chains on the wooden floor and he looked up and saw the gendarmes leading Charging Elk from the room. Without thinking he called out, “Adieu, mon ami! Bonne chancel” But when the tall Indian hesitated for a moment to look down at him, St-Cyr knew why he didn’t feel good. It was the eyes. The same eyes he had looked into when he first met Charging Elk in the cell of the Prefecture four years before. They had already gone dead.

  St-Cyr sat at the long table until he no longer heard the scrape of the chains. His small triumphs had been as hollow and empty as he now felt. He had betrayed Charging Elk. The court had betrayed Charging Elk. St-Cyr sighed, but it came out more like a rueful gasp. Then he picked up his pencil and wrote: I’m afraid the court had done the poor savage no favor by giving him life in prison over death. I looked into hid eyed ad he wad being led away in chains and I daw a living death. May his God forgive us all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  La Tombe was located in the extreme southwest of France, in the dry hills behind Carcassonne, not far from Montsegur, which the Crusaders of Louis IX laid siege to, capturing the Cathars and burning them alive in a great bonfire. This was in 1244.

  La Tombe itself had been a Crusader fortress. It had long fallen into ruin by 1866. At that time, the French government decided it needed a high-security prison to supplement Devil’s Island, the penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. And so they built the prison on the foundation of the ancient fortress. The walls, made of stone, were three meters thick at the base, tapering to one meter thirty centimeters at the top. The walls ran 300 meters one way and 250 the other. Watchtowers stood at the corners of the walls, each with a small open window that looked down into the caked-earth yard. In the yard itself stood three identical long buildings connected at each end and in the middle by enclosed walkways. Tucked away in the corner by the gate was a smaller building with two white columns supporting a triangular stone pediment, the only architectural feature within the walls that wasn’t built on the square. Outside the walls, terraced vegetable gardens led down the hill to the small village of St-Paul-de-Fenouillet. But the inmates once they entered the prison would never see the gardens or the village again. They would not see anything but the blue sky, the sun, the clouds, and the rare bird.

  La Tombe accepted only the worst criminals in France—serial killers, men who had murdered and dismembered their mistresses, a doctor who had poisoned five wives, a chocolatier who had disemboweled several boys in Nantes, a young vintner who had burned his father-and mother-in-law alive by dousing them in cognac and setting it afire—and of course the usual array of unrepentant cutthroats and thugs who had somehow managed to escape the guillotine. Unlike Devil’s Island, La Tombe held no political prisoners to speak of—just a handful of men who preferred to think of their crimes as a particularly vicious form of anarchy.

  The prison was officially named Samatan Prison but was nicknamed La Tombe for the obvious reason that nobody would leave there alive. Although it had been in existence for only twenty-seven years, by 1894 215 inmates had died within its walls, only forty-eight by natural causes.

  It was to this prison that Charging Elk was bound on the night train from Marseille to Perpignan. He sat in a private compartment along with two guards from the Prefecture de Police and looked out the window into the darkness while the guards played cards. As he watched for occasional lighted farms and villages, he thought of the night train from Lyon or Vienne—he couldn’t remember which—to Marseille. He remembered how Featherman exclaimed each time they saw a village or a chateau in the moonlight, how his own heart had jumped up when he saw a horse that looked like High Runner. And he remembered even further back to when the train pulled out of the station in Gordon, Nebraska. His parents along with the others on the platform had sung their braveheart song to the young Indians. He had sat for a long time with his fathers breastplate on his lap—young, apprehensive, even fearful of what lay ahead. But he had been excited by the prospect of traveling far and seeing much. Although he didn’t know exactly how it would happen, he looked forward to riding a horse, chasing buffalo, pretending to fight the soldiers before a large audience of wasichus. Best of all, he knew that he would return to Pine Ridge in two years with many of the American frogskins in his purse. He could get married and acquire many horses, a thought that had seemed so impossible on those winter nights out at the Stronghold.

  One of guards exclaimed and slapped a handful of cards down. The other groaned. And Charging Elk searched for lights in the pitch-black landscape outside the rumbling wagon as it made its way along the Mediterranean coastline bound for Perpignan and, finally, La Tombe.

  Charging Elk spent his first week in an underground cave secured by iron bars. The cave was one of a series dug out by the Crusaders to store their wine and grains and dried fish. They butchered animals in the caves and hung the carcasses to cure and keep in the cool, dry air. Now the prison utilized the caves as a kind of reception area. All new prisoners had to undergo this trial by claustrophobia and light deprivation. The only lights were gas lamps on the walls of a central corridor. Charging Elk shared his cave with three others, all of whom seemed to choose to suffer in silence. In fact, there was very little in the way of noise down there. He learned to recognize the squeaking wheels of the trolley that brought the soup and bread. He could hear a murmur of voices from the guard’s station at the head of the corridor once in a while.

  One night he heard a roar coming from a cell across the way, followed by a silence. Then another roar, and another; then it was quiet. Charging Elk had gotten up and walked to the bars and looked around. He was almost certain there was some kind of wild beast in one of the caves. But he could see nothing. And he never heard another roar.

  When the week was up, he was led aboveground and across the dazzling yellow earth of the yard to one of the long buildings. Although his eyes were squinted almost shut against the harsh light and he could barely see the back of the guard in front of him, he felt the warm tears leaking down o
nto his cheeks. Then he was in the building and his eyes didn’t hurt so much.

  He was led into a small room, where he was ordered to strip and wash himself. Then he was deloused and given a pair of thin gray trousers and a blouse made of the same material. Both garments had vertical stripes, which had once been black but now were just a darker shade of gray. He was given a folded blanket, a slop bucket, and a battered tin cup. Then he was led through a walkway into another building by the two guards. They climbed a set of iron stairs up to the second level, then walked down a wide corridor flanked by cells on both sides. The cells all had floor-to-ceiling iron bars, unlike his cell back in the Préfecture, so the inmates within could see clearly into the corridor. But there were no windows looking outside.

  Charging Elk was surprised, after the silence of the caves, to hear the inmates talking with each other across the corridor or in their cells. Although he looked straight ahead, he could see out of the corners of his eyes that the cells had two beds and two inmates in each. He wasn’t surprised that the conversations stopped when he walked by. He could feel the eyes of all the men in the cells watching him.

  Finally the lead guard stopped and inserted a key into one of the cells near the end of the corridor. He swung the door open and motioned for Charging Elk to enter. Only when he locked the door behind Charging Elk did he speak: “This is your home now. Keep it clean.” Then he and the other guard walked off.

  “Insufferable bastards.”

  Charging Elk turned just as a clean-shaven man jumped off his sleeping platform and walked up to him with the quick, fluid movement of a dancer or an acrobat. Charging Elk took a step backward, but the man extended his hand.