Heartsong (27 page)

Now he walked into the store and found a young man with garters on the sleeves of his collarless shirt.
“Pardon
,
monsieur.”
He pointed back to the rack. “
Combien?”
Mathias had taught him how to ask for the price of things, but he still didn't know many numbers, so most of the time it was useless to ask. To his surprise, he heard the young man say,
“Trente centimes,”
a figure he knew. The
clerk put the postcard in a thin glassine envelope and Charging Elk walked out of the store, feeling good about his purchase. He would give the picturecard to René and Madeleine.

Charging Elk continued up Cours Belsunce, stopping to watch a man who hid cards and took money from a large knot of watchers. He had seen this kind of gambling in Paris, and Broncho Billy had told him and the others that the man who hid the cards was a cheat and they must never play the game. But some of the Indians did play and lost their money. They thought because they were good at hiding the bones during stick games, they could figure out the cheater s way.

Charging Elk became aware of the furtive glances in his direction and so he moved on. Even in his work clothes, he attracted as much attention as he had when he was on the run from the sick-house. But he was becoming used to it; in fact, he had almost recovered the pride he felt when he and the other show Indians walked down the streets in Paris. He had put on weight, so he felt powerful again. And his hair had grown long, although not as long as before the terrifying cutting. That would take some time, but he felt almost comfortable being himself among these people.

He had been in Marseille for the better part of three moons. It was now the Moon of Snowblind, when the sun shone on the wind-slick snowfields just before thaw in his own country, but here there was nothing but streets and buildings and people—and rain. He knew that soon the first thunderstorm would rumble over the Stronghold and Bird Tail would perform his ceremony to welcome the new growing things. It was an old ceremony and it used to be performed to thank Wakan Tanka for bringing the buffalo back once again. Now, it was only to thank Wakan Tanka for allowing them to live through another winter. Charging Elk suddenly stopped. Would this be the spring that the White Buffalo Cow Woman and the buffalo with the stone eyes led the herds out of the
bowels of Paha Sapa? But what about the
wadicbud?
What about their holes in
maka ina?
Perhaps they would find all the buffalo before they were ready to return. Perhaps they would kill them or make them run deeper into her heart.

Charging Elk felt weak as he made his way to the stone wall of a building. The wall was warm against his back but not warm enough to stop the chill that ran through his own heart. Bird Tail's vision had seemed so true that every time Charging Elk thought of that day he and Strikes Plenty heard the old
pejuta wicasa
tell of it, he felt certain that the Great Spirit would make sure that he got home in time to see it. Now he was not so certain, either about the buffalo or about himself. The thought of his
nagi
hovering aimlessly over this place once again filled him with dread. He closed his eyes and waited for the familiar weakness to pass, which it did more easily these days. Many sleeps he did not think or dream of his home at all, and it surprised him. In the sickhouse and later, on the run, he could think of nothing else. At night he had dreamed of his mother and father, of his life at the Stronghold with Strikes Plenty, of the country that he knew so well and moved so easily in, as though he would be there forever. He had lived then with the terrible constant dread he had just experienced—the dread of not going home, of staying here among these people, of dying here.

But now Charging Elk felt the sun warm his face and he thanked Wakan Tanka for planting the seeds of the plan that had been growing in him every day for the past several sleeps and now seemed so simple: He would work hard for the fishmonger and earn enough money to pay for his trip home. He would wait until he had many francs; then he would find Brown Suit or Yellow Breast or the pale man with the spectacles who bought fish down at the water s edge. One of them would help him find a fire boat that would take him across to America. They were
heyokad
, but Wakan Tanka had sent them to help him.

Charging Elk had closed his eyes to think these comforting thoughts, but now he opened them in a kind of contented excitement. Three small girls stared up at him.

“Bonjour, Charging Elk. ça va?”

It was Chloe and two of her friends. He was surprised to see them out of their neighborhood, even though it was only five or six streets away. Charging Elk himself had come this far only three or four times, on Saturday or Sunday afternoons.

“Bonjour
—
Chloe. Tred bien. Et vous?”
He wanted to ask her how she had found him but he didn't have the words.

Chloé introduced him to her friends, making him say each name. The girls giggled at his pronunciation, but Chloe spoke sharply and the girls stopped and stared shyly at the sidewalk.

Not knowing what else to do, Charging Elk pulled the picture-card from the little sack. He held it before the girls: “Buffalo Bill,” he said. He pointed to Rocky Bear. “Rocky Bear.”

Chloé leaned closer for a better look. “Rocky Bear,” she said. Then she said something to her companions. They looked up at Charging Elk and saw that he was smiling. One of them, a tall girl with long black hair who seemed to be fascinated by his long brown finger, said, “Rocky Bear.”

Charging Elk laughed, then held the picturecard before the third girl. She was shyer than the other two, and he noticed that her upper lip had a red welt that ran up to her nostrils. Finally when she said the name in American, the words came out in a breathy slur. Charging Elk knew from the sound of her voice that she had some sort of affliction. One of his childhood friends, Liver, had no ears and his attempts at words were poor. This girl was not much better.

“Très bien,”
he said, and he touched the small girl on the head. He thought it odd that he could tell that she could not speak the French words very well even though he hardly knew them at all.

He took the girls into a sweets shop and bought them a bag of
nougat to share. He felt a certain amount of pride in making his third transaction of the day. He now knew the price of tobacco and picturecards and two hundred grams of nougat. He turned the girls toward Rue d'Aubagne and their own neighborhood and said,
“A bientôt
,
med amies.”

The girls giggled at his strange, throaty speech, then thanked him and walked off, their cheeks full of the soft candies.

R
ené Soulas stood outside his doorway and watched the cab come up the narrow street. He had been to the
épicerie
on the corner to pick up a tin of olive oil and a small jar of capers for Madeleine. He often ran errands for her, because he was always restless and curious to see what was going on in the street. Now, several boys who had been playing soccer stopped their game to let the cab pass. Not many cabs came up their working-class street and so they looked inside with great curiosity, but the horse clip-clopped on past them with scarcely a notice.

It was a warm, breezy day in early May and the daffodils were about done in René s garden behind his flat. He was thinking about the tiny green clusters of buds on his geraniums when the cab slowed, then stopped at the curb directly in front of him. The door opened and Monsieur Bell descended with a hearty greeting.

Bonjour, Monsieur Soulas! Ça va?”

“Très bien
, Monsieur Bell. And you? But what brings you to my house? You have news, I think.”

The two men shook hands, and René watched as the American handed a franc note up to the driver. The driver touched his hat, his narrow face impassive, then drove off.

“Please—come in. I'm afraid Charging Elk isn't here. He is off walking, as he does every afternoon.” René stood aside and let Bell pass through the doorway into an anteroom filled with coats and
hats on wooden pegs. “Please continue' But René was filled with apprehension at the vice-consul's visit. It could only mean that he had come to take Charging Elk away.

Bell walked into the living room. Although he had visited the Soulases' home four or five times since the day he had delivered Charging Elk, he was always impressed by the room and its furnishings. Bell had been on his own so long that he always felt a little uneasy in a French family home. The smells—of cooking, of tobacco, of the horsehair in the chairs and sofas—always reminded him of the home he had left in Philadelphia and had returned to on only a few occasions. Of course, he did have holidays, but they weren't nearly long enough to justify the long steamship crossing, and the thought of the journey home exhausted him. But every time he received a letter from his mother, he felt that old guilt that had been visiting him for over twelve years. He hadn't actually left Marseille since he got here, except for a couple of tours of Provence, principally Avignon and Orange, and a journey to the Costa del Sol in Spain, where he thought he might find romance, and one hurried but long train and boat trip to London for a special training session in international law.

“Perhaps you would rather sit in the garden. It is very nice this time of year. It will be too hot soon, but now it is nice. Perhaps you would like some tea—or coffee?”

René led the way to a tall iron-framed glass door off the dining room. Bell followed, trying to fix the smell that emanated from the kitchen. It was citrus, he decided, as he stepped down into the garden. A clean smell, a spring smell so welcome after a winter of closed-up, unpleasantly stuffy buildings.

“Here we are,” said René with a sweep of his arm.

The garden was small, perhaps eight by six meters, surrounded by a knee-high stucco wall with an extended brick cap. The ground was packed earth with a tall plane tree near the far wall, just
beginning to leaf out. A row of lavender plants with their narrow sage-colored leaves softened the rough stucco wall. But it was the several geraniums in pots atop the wall that defined the garden and provided the color—green now, but soon to be the bright reds and pinks that Bell associated with the Mediterranean. He wondered idly, as he took in the neat garden, what the people of the Midi would do without their geraniums.

“C'est parfait
,
monsieur!
A place to spend your evenings after a hard day of selling fish.” Bell hadn't come for small talk, but there were certain niceties to be observed. He had seen how Atkinson could actually make tough Marseillais businessmen blush at his solicitude. Beyond the geraniums he could see the inner courtyards of the surrounding buildings that fronted on the busy streets. All had pots of geraniums waiting to burst into color. “I take it you are the gardener.”

René waved his hand in dismissal. “It is nothing. A few flowers for the wife, a place for the children to read.” But he was intensely proud of his handiwork.

Bell pulled out one of the chairs from a plain wooden table—“May I?”—and sat down.

“Of course, monsieur. Perhaps you would like a glass of wine?”

“Please don't go to any trouble.”

“It is no trouble at all. It will be an honor.” René excused himself and hurried back inside. He walked quickly to the stairs and called up, “Madeleine, come, it is Monsieur Bell, the American.” But he heard nothing, no sound of a chair scraping, no footsteps. He called again, and again nothing.

That woman, he thought. How can she be gone at a time like this? He needed her support to perhaps convince the American that Charging Elk was very happy with them. And it was true. Madeleine had made her peace with the
indien
when she saw that
the children had taken to him immediately. It had taken her a month or two, she was a judgmental woman, but now she wanted him to stay. They hadn't talked specifically about the long term, but he was almost certain about that.

René hurried into the kitchen and found a bottle of Armagnac that he had been saving for a rare occasion. He had had it for two years, as such occasions rarely visited his house. He laughed at himself as he found two brandy glasses. Charging Elk was certainly a rare occasion—the rarest. But René hadn't thought to give him a drink of the liquor, partly because Monsieur Bell had told him not to, but also because Charging Elk was a simple soul—tobacco, sweets, a glass of wine with his meals, that was all he needed. And when he didn't have those, he went without. One could almost forget that he had been a celebrity with Buffalo Bill.

As he carried the bottle and glasses and a small bowl of almonds out to the garden, René looked around his flat; at the dining-room table where Charging Elk watched the children do their school-work and drawings; at the parlor where they all listened to Chloé play the piano; at the kitchen itself, where just last night Madeleine had prepared a lamb shoulder and a lovely dessert to celebrate Chloé's twelfth birthday. Charging Elk had given her a small ceramic figurine of a
chinois
with a bright red robe and a cone-shaped hat. René didn't know how he knew to give her a gift, but it was the hit of the evening.