Читать книгу Heartsong - James Welch - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

Martin St-Cyr hated Marseille in the winter and he wondered at the turn of events that had landed him here. He wondered quite often, at least once a week, but he never came up with a satisfactory explanation. The simple explanation was that he had followed a girl here. After their graduation from university in Grenoble in 1886, she had taken a teaching job in a lycée here. Because she was a brave Christian girl with a missionary spirit, she had chosen a school in Le Panier, an old working-class section of Marseille that now attracted immigrants from the Barbary States and the Levant, who worked the worst jobs in the soap and hemp factories, the abattoirs and tanneries.

St-Cyr had graduated with a degree in economics and had been accepted into law school at the Sorbonne for the next semester. But he hadn’t counted on falling in love with Odile despite the fact that his best instincts told him that they were not at all compatible. She was deeply religious and felt compelled to spend at least this part of her life helping the less fortunate. He was not religious at all, in spite of being raised in a Catholic household. His third year in college, he fell in with a group of socialists, many of whom (like him) were more in love with the idea of the working classes than with the actual people who constituted the oppressed. St-Cyr attended the meetings and rallies, passed out leaflets, and played a small part in attempting to organize the meat workers and the draymen in Grenoble. But when the police entered the Place St-André, where the workers and students had gathered to protest the arrest of three leading organizers, two students, and a meatcutter, St-Cyr had ducked into the Palais de Justice, just off the square. From there, he watched the trunchion-swinging gendarmes charge the overpowered, if not undermanned, protest. Much blood was spilled that hot autumn afternoon, and after that, St-Cyr had eased himself to the fringes, then out, of the movement.

But St-Cyr had never been a socialist, activities aside. He told his friends he was going to law school to further the goals of democratic socialism—the movement could always use good, committed lawyers—but he still believed in many of the bourgeois values—his own father was a capitalist, a silk merchant in Lyon, and had provided his family a very good life.

So what was St-Cyr doing, sitting in a small drab café on a Wednesday morning in Marseille, sipping café au lait and eating a brioche? He couldn’t really answer that. Odile had, in fact, become a missionary and was now in Algiers, emptying bedpans in a charity hospital. At the end of one year, she would decide whether to continue her work or come back and marry St-Cyr. But lately he had wondered at the idea of marriage, of committing oneself to another for an eternity on earth. And there was the subject of sex. Although they had their romantic moments—picnics along the Promenade de la Corniche, day trips to the Camargue to see the flamingoes and the agile black bulls that were the stars of Provençal bullfights, overnight to Avignon to tour the Palais des Papes, evenings at the opera or the theater—sex had refused to rear its head, at least for Odile. No matter how much or how fast St-Cyr talked about the joys of the subject, she had remained inviolate. Saving it for their wedding day. Forcing him to frequent the prostitutes on Rue Sainte. In fact, he had visited his favorite whore just the night before, a heavy dark girl named Fortune, who invariably smelled of cigarettes and cassis.

Odile the good versus Fortune the bad—what a contrast, thought St-Cyr, the one tall and fair and clean-edged, slim as a boy, except for the swell of hip and breast, a virgin; the other dark, built low to the ground, musky in her ample nakedness, a whore.

St-Cyr sighed and drank off the last of the café au lait. He had become concerned lately that perhaps he preferred the prostitutes. One didn’t have to spend eternity with them, and they were always waiting in the Rue Sainte for the next visit. St-Cyr pulled out his gold watch, a graduation gift from his father, and popped it open: eight-thirty. Time to make his rounds. He lit another cigarette, stood up, and dropped a few sous on the metal table. He stood for a moment outside, looking out from under the awning at the putty-gray clouds above the buildings. At least the mistral had blown itself out overnight, after three days of whining. St-Cyr did hate Marseille in the winter, maybe in any season. He flipped his cigarette into the gutter, then he walked across the rain-slick street to the Préfecture.

^“Bonjour, Sergeant Borely. Lovely to see you, as usual. Lovely day, is it not? And what have you got for me this exquisite day?”

Borely looked down at the young reporter. He was seated on a platform behind a tall counter, and even as short as he was, he was a head taller than his guests. The arrangement was meant to be intimidating, and it worked, except with this scamp.

“Ah, bonjour, St-Cyr. It is a cold, wet morning, as usual. And I have nothing of interest.” Borely looked down at the log book. “Two wife-beatings, a stabbing, the usual vagabonds, and a cut-purse a citizen brought in after beating him up. His face looks like an aubergine, but he will live to atone for his sins.”

St-Cyr took down the superficial particulars of each case as the sergeant recited them: both wife-beatings were fueled by alcohol, as was the stabbing. A Levantine tannery worker, drunk on absinthe, had slashed an Algerian sailor in the face, nearly severing the tip of the nose—the only angle there was that the Algerian was also drunk, a rarity among the North Africans, most of whom were Muslims. The cutpurse entry would be good—the citizens of Marseille were always pleased with vigilante justice. St-Cyr was just about to close his little bound notebook. Not a very good haul, but Tuesdays, even Tuesday nights around the seaport, were pretty quiet. “Anything else, sergeant—anything at all? S’il vous plaît?”

Borely looked down at the young police reporter. There was something about him he didn’t like. St-Cyr had been on the beat for almost two years now, and in that time he had done nothing to offend Borely. He was unfailingly polite, filled with the joie de vivre, and quite bright, and he always got his facts right—something that had never concerned St-Cyr’s predecessor. Yet there was an air of privilege about the reporter that annoyed Borely—even the way he dressed. Today, in the middle of winter, he was wearing a yellow tattersall waistcoat and a scarlet poet’s tie, and a ridiculous wide-brimmed hat that would have embarrassed an Italian. True, he was a handsome devil, with his sparse but trim goatee and small white teeth, and his slim, foppish frame. But it was more at the manners, the politeness, that Borely took offense. They bespoke of good breeding, of—what else?—a life of privilege with that faint tinge of contempt for authority.

Borely himself barely had two sous to rub together, what with a wife and six children, and his consumptive mother who lived with them in a too-small flat behind Cours St-Louis. The plumbing was always broken and the small street was full of garbage from the open-air market. And now the neighbor was threatening to call the police because her cat was missing and she was sure Borely’s oldest boy had thrown it out the hallway window. Imagine that. Calling the gardiens on their own sergeant. Borely shook his head at the thought.

“Well, thanks for the information, sergeant.” St-Cyr seemed to interpret this gesture as a negative. He had put his notepad in his pocket and was screwing the cap on his fountain pen.

Borely watched him with a sigh that was almost affectionate. He did like the young man, in spite of, or perhaps because of, those attributes that annoyed him. And as a police reporter he made far less than even Borely. But perhaps he needed something to do more than he needed money. “We still have the Peau-Rouge,” he said.

St-Cyr had started to leave, but now he turned back, his face blank with confusion.

“The Peau-Rouge. We arrested him Christmas Eve, or rather, early Christmas morning.” Borely smiled. “Of course! You were off for a few days, weren’t you?” While I have been pulling double shifts throughout this season of the nativity, he thought.

“Yes, I went to spend Christmas with my family. In Lyon.” The words were almost abstract, uttered without inflection, as St-Cyr uncapped his pen. “What about this Peau-Rouge? What is he in for?”

“Nothing to get your hopes up about, St-Cyr. Vagabondage. And he left hospital without permission.”

Now St-Cyr was thoroughly confused. “But how does a Peau-Rouge . . .” He stopped himself. The Wild West show. Of course. But how . . . ?

“He was with Buffalo Bill. According to the American vice-consul, and to the records of Hopital de la Conception, he contracted the influenza, and he suffered broken ribs in a fall from his horse. He was hospitalized with these afflictions.” Borely stopped himself to watch a young secretary cross the room to the captain’s office. She wore a long-sleeved white blouse with ruffled shoulders and a long, slim black skirt that just brushed the tops of her narrow-toed shoes. Her black hair was done up in a bun with Chinese sticks shot through it. But it was the front of the blouse that caught Borely’s eye.

“The Peau-Rouge is here, now? In the jail?”

“He has a court appearance next week, or possibly the week after that. With all these holiday revelers, the courts are much backed up, I think.” Borely pursed his lips in a gesture of disdain. “This is not the holy season anymore, Monsieur St-Cyr. It is a season to get drunk and beat your wife or stab a North African, do you not agree?”

“Yes, of course.” But St-Cyr had been writing with careless haste: Peau-Rouge. Vagabondage. Leaving hospital—Conception—without permission. Christmas Eve. Crossed out. Christmas morning. “And does this American Indian have a name?”

Borely pretended to study the logbook, but he was looking right at the name. He was enjoying the suspense of the moment, but he was also a little intimidated by the American language. He didn’t want to butcher the word in front of this young man of privilege, so he ended up spelling it out.

“Charging Elk,” said St-Cyr, who had studied the English language in Grenoble. His father had said English was becoming more and more the lingua franca of commerce, especially the American tongue. St-Cyr had no intention of becoming a capitalist like his father, but he did learn the language to please him. “Does he speak English?”

“According to the vice-consul, he does not. He does not speak English or French. In fact, he has not spoken a word since his arrival. Perhaps the man is a mute.”

St-Cyr tapped his pen against his teeth. This was a story! An American Indian all by himself in Marseille without the ability to communicate with anyone. It didn’t seem possible that it could just fall into the lap of Martin St-Cyr. “You mean, Sergeant Borely, that the Wild West show just left town without him? He’s stranded here?”

“Absolutely. The vice-consul says the show is in Rome, even as we speak. He wanted to send this, this Charging Elk to Rome by ship, but of course that is impossible until the legal matters are settled. You understand, monsieur, that we can’t just turn him loose at the whim of the vice-consul.”

But St-Cyr was writing again and didn’t respond. Finally, he looked up at Borely with a thoughtful smile that showed his small, even teeth. “Would it be possible to have a look at this indien, Sergeant Borely? I would like to write a small story about him, nothing much. I think my editor would find it of some small interest.” He laughed what he hoped was a charming laugh. “I will make sure I spell your name right—in the first paragraph.” St-Cyr didn’t really have much hope that the sergeant would allow such an unusual request from a lowly police reporter. Or that his editor, whom he only knew by sight, would allow much more than a few factual words. More likely he would send a feature reporter to write the story.

But Borely actually seemed to be considering. St-Cyr didn’t think Borely was a vain man, but the thought of seeing one’s name in print can be enticing. The desk sergeant was in control of his own little world here in the Préfecture, but when he went home in the evening to his flat, to his civilian clothes and squabbling brats, he was as anonymous as the dock worker who lived above him.

Borely called out to two policemen who were standing in the hallway that led to offices and interrogation rooms. They had been chatting quietly, but at the sound of Borely’s voice, they both came at a fast clip, their shoes clicking smartly against the marble floor.

“You, Dugommier, take Monsieur St-Cyr down to the cells. Tell the jailer that the monsieur wishes to see the Peau-Rouge.” He turned to the reporter. “This is very irregular, St-Cyr—but you are a police reporter and it is incumbent upon me to offer the cooperation of the department. I could do nothing less.”

“Merci beaucoup, sergent. My newspaper always appreciates the cooperation of the Marseille Police Department.” St-Cyr fought back an impulse to laugh at Borely’s puffed-up language. “And may I have your Christian name, sergeant—for the story?”

St-Cyr thought that Ambrose was not a name he would have associated with Borely, as he followed the policeman down the narrow, winding stairs to the depths of the Préfecture. Francis or Jerome, perhaps even Michel. Not Ambrose. Patron saint of—what? Desk sergeants?

The basement smelled of cooking, of rancid oil, onions, and cabbage, with a strong hint of disinfectant. The combination was not agreeable to St-Cyr’s nose, and he felt the brioche and the sweet café au lait move in his stomach. He began to wonder, as he looked at the dark, sweating walls of the low, narrow corridor, if this was such a good idea after all. The place was medieval, right out of the Spanish Inquisition. He imagined torture devices in special rooms inhabited by men in brown hooded robes. Again, he felt a surge in his stomach as a wave of claustrophobia hit him.

But the corridor opened out into a larger hallway, and a man sat behind a desk beneath a tall skylight. He was wearing a collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His tunic was draped over the chair.

“Monsieur is here to see the Peau-Rouge. It is cleared with Sergeant Borely.”

The man behind the desk was obese, a condition not at all usual with the Marseillais. He had a periodical spread open before him. St-Cyr could see an illustration of a young woman in a corset and black stockings that came to just above her knees. A fringed mantle was draped across her lap.

“And what is monsieur’s capacity?” The man carefully folded the periodical and pushed it to the side of the desk. It was clear that he was in charge here and took his orders from a higher authority than Borely.

“I am a reporter with Le Petit MarseiLlaid. I cover the activities of the police department. Today I have been sent to interview the Peau-Rouge—with the kind consent of Sergeant Borely and, of course, yourself.” St-Cyr didn’t find it necessary to tell the truth, to explain that he had heard of Charging Elk just moments before.

But the fat man had quit listening to St-Cyr. He lumbered to his feet, pulling his suspender straps over his shoulders with a satisfying snap for each, all the time grumbling to the other policeman about the lack of communication between those lilywhites upstairs and the poor bastards who had to work in such a shithole as this.

He shrugged into his tunic, which he did not bother to button, then opened a small cabinet on the wall behind the desk. He continued his diatribe against those upstairs as he lifted a heavy ring of keys from a metal hook. “Insufferable bastards,” he grumbled as he walked across the hall to an iron door. He fitted one of the keys into the lock, then pushed the door inward. The groan of the iron hinges made the hair stand up on the back of St-Cyr’s neck.

The jailer told the other policeman to wait outside, then slammed the door shut behind himself and St-Cyr. The corridor before them was even dimmer than the one that had brought St-Cyr to the jailer’s desk. There were no windows, no outside light, just the occasional lightbulb in a wire cage hanging from the high ceiling. St-Cyr was almost surprised to see that the jail had electricity. He had half expected to see gaslights, perhaps even torches flickering on the walls.

One side of the corridor was a stone wall; the other side, another stone wall interrupted by metal doors with no windows. St-Cyr had not been down here before and now he wished he hadn’t been so eager to come. He pulled his coat tighter to afford some protection from the damp chill. He thought, This is right out of the Inquisition. He had always had a touch of claustrophobia—since that day as a child when he and his class at the lycee had toured an ancient dungeon and had to walk single-file through the narrow passageways and the small winding marble stairs that were lit only by small slits in the stone walls. Now he felt the familiar panic and he made himself look at the jailer’s broad back.

“These are the doors to the cells, then, monsieur?”

“Oui, oui,” said the jailer.

“And is there a prisoner behind every one?”

“Oui, oui. Some. Not all.”

St-Cyr was annoyed by the man’s abruptness but he knew that the jailer was equally annoyed by his presence. He obviously didn’t approve of civilians in his fiefdom. The man was practically subhuman, a grouser and a bully, just the type that St-Cyr might have imagined working in such misery. Still, he couldn’t help but be somewhat comforted by the broad back before him.

St-Cyr was trying to imagine what this American Indian would look like—would he be dressed in feathers and fur, in war paint? Would he have a fierce scowl? More important, would he be dangerous, a wild savage from the American frontier? St-Cyr had not gone to the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill. He really had no interest in the wild west or the cowboys and Indians—at least up to a half hour ago. When he was a boy, his playmates would often play Indians and soldiers, enacting the violent scenes they had culled from the pages of illustrated adventure books. St-Cyr was more inclined to collect insects. He had had a large butterfly collection from his family’s August vacations to their chateau in Perigord.

The jailer grunted something and stopped and rattled his keys. St-Cyr had been so deep in thought he almost ran into the broad back, but now he pulled back in fear of this damp, cold, dimly lit place and its Gothic keeper. What in the name of God was he doing here? He was only a police reporter who went around the city to the various precincts to gather small facts about mostly small crimes. As he watched the jailer insert a key in one of the iron doors, he had the irrational fear that this whole business was a trap, that he was going to be locked up, that he would never see the light of day again.

The jailer swung the door open, then stepped inside. St-Cyr was surprised to see a shaft of light from the open doorway; still, he held back, just ducking his head around the corner to look inside.

The light came from a small window in the opposite wall up near the ceiling. The window was covered with woven iron, but it was high enough that a man could not reach it, even standing on a chair. St-Cyr edged forward until he was standing in the doorway, ready to bolt back the way they came at the slightest movement.

But the scene was almost tranquil—the shaft of light, the jailer standing quietly on one side of the room, his tunic now buttoned against the chill, and a figure on a bed that was suspended from the wall. It was a close room, perhaps two meters by three meters, but its height gave the claustrophobic St-Cyr great relief after the perilous journey down the low, narrow corridor. Out of nervous habit, he slid his notebook out of his coat pocket.

“Here is your Peau-Rouge, monsieur,” the jailer said, his voice rough-edged but almost hushed.

The first thing St-Cyr noticed was the long, dark hair. It was parted in the middle and fell past the man’s shoulders, almost to the small of his back. Even St-Cyr’s whore, Fortune, did not have hair so long.

“Charging Elk?” said St-Cyr.

The Indian turned to the sound of his name, but he did not look directly at St-Cyr. He seemed to be looking at the door behind the reporter. His eyes were dark and there were shadows beneath his cheekbones. His mouth was closed tightly, like a seam in a burnished leather glove.

At first, St-Cyr was glad that the Indian did not look threatening—in fact, he did not look capable of violence at all. In his black coat, buttoned to the neck, and short pants and slippers, he looked almost pitifully thin. His bare ankles seemed especially vulnerable. The more St-Cyr studied him, the more concerned he became.

“Does he eat?” he said.

“Like a bird,” the jailer said. “He eats his soup and drinks his tea—that’s about it. He leaves all the vegetables in his soup bowl. He has no taste for bread. I think the Peau-Rouge does not eat like real men.”

“I think he’s starving, monsieur. Look at him. Perhaps you are not feeding him the right food.”

The jailer, who had been almost civil since entering the cell, now rattled his keys against his leg and blew an abrupt puff of air, obviously angry. “We do not operate a restaurant here, monsieur. We are poor jailers. We do not sit behind fancy desks upstairs and decide whether we will have bouillabaisse or couscous for lunch. Perhaps gigue de chevreuil for dinner. No, we do not operate like that. This one will eat what the others eat—or he will go hungry.”

St-Cyr now looked at Charging Elk. “Do you understand English?” he said in English.

Charging Elk almost responded to the word “English.” But he remembered Brown Suit, the American, and his inability to communicate with him, and he remained silent.

“How can I help you, Charging Elk? Would you like something different to eat? Eat?” St-Cyr tried to will the Indian to understand with loud, correct pronunciation, but the Indian just stared at the door behind the reporter.

St-Cyr could feel the jailer’s impatience, and he knew that his time was just about up. But he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to make the Indian understand that somehow he would help him. And this was surprising to St-Cyr. He was not a cold man—he helped beggars with a sou every now and then; he gave his landlady a tin of very expensive foie gras for Christmas; he brought the old man who lived across the hall from him and was dying of consumption packets of pastilles and reports of new remedies that he read about in his newspaper. Still, he let little in the way of universal human suffering affect him.

But Martin St-Cyr was almost desperate to help Charging Elk. It was plain that the man was dying. He could be dead in hours or days and nothing would be known of him. The brutish jailer and his comrades would dump the body in a cart and wheel it out to Cimetière St-Pierre, where it would be buried in the indigents’ section without a cross or a name.

St-Cyr tried to identify what it was about the Indian that affected him so. Surely some of the other cells were filled with men in equally desperate circumstances. His own countrymen who were being held in such squalid conditions, possibly starving too. Even now, he could smell a damp, ashy odor that spoke of illness, even death.

Perhaps it was that the Indian could not speak any language but his own, and his countrymen were thousands of miles away on the other side of the earth, that made St-Cyr desperate to do something that would help the Indian survive, until at least his court date. But, as Borely had said, the courts were backed up, and the Indian didn’t look like he would last another day.

“Perhaps, monsieur, if I left a little money, you could see that the Peau-Rouge gets something substantial to eat? Perhaps some sausage and cheese and peasant bread?” St-Cyr dug in his pocket and found several francs.

“We do not dispense special privileges here, monsieur. He eats what everyone else eats.”

But St-Cyr was prepared for this response. He opened his wallet and pulled out a twenty-franc bill. “A little something for your time, monsieur,” he said, offering the bill.

The jailer glanced quickly, instinctively, toward the door; then he stuffed the bill and the coins into his tunic pocket. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Soon?”

“Oui, oui, monsieur. Soon.”

St-Cyr didn’t trust him, but there was nothing he could do about that. But there was something he could try to do about the Indian. About Charging Elk. He made himself think the man’s name. He made himself look into Charging Elk’s face. He was a man, a human being, and he would likely die if St-Cyr didn’t do something.

But for the moment, he could only drop his packet of Gauloises and a box of matches on the bed beside Charging Elk’s brown hand. “For you,” he said in English. “Don’t worry. I will help you out of this wretched place. Don’t worry, Monsieur Charging Elk.”

Charging Elk listened to the key turn in the lock and heard the bolt thrust home with a thin echo. Then it was quiet. He drew his feet up onto the bed and watched the newly disturbed dust motes circle and float in the shaft of light.

He had no idea how long he had been in the stone room of the iron house. In spite of the cold he had slept much of the time, and he had dreamed of home. In his dreams he saw the golden eagles soaring over the Stronghold; he heard the bark and howl of coyotes in the night; he smelled the sage in the spring wind, and the crisp chunks of venison cooked over an autumn fire; he cupped his hands in the clear stream of Paha Sapa and felt the cold water take his breath away as he splashed his sweaty face. He dreamed of home, and so he slept much. He saw his mother picking berries in the Bighorns and his father cleaning his many-shots gun in the lodge on the Greasy Grass. His brother and sister played games with rag balls and slim bones in the evening quiet of the big camp. And he and Strikes Plenty caught the winged hoppers they threw into the water for the slippery swimmers.

Sometimes the dreams ended in the blackness of night; sometimes in the light of the high window. Sometimes they ended happily; other times with images of soldiers attacking the big camp on the Greasy Grass, or with the people descending into the valley of the Fort Robinson, with its many soldiers and the big flag of America.

Once he dreamed of Crazy Horse, and the great warrior chief told him that one day he would go to that land where the sun rises, across a big water, where the favored wasichus came from. Crazy Horse had told him that he could not accompany Charging Elk because he would be killed soon by his own people. Charging Elk had reached out for the wichasa yatapika’s arm, but it was not there. Crazy Horse had become a cloud in the sky above the badlands.

Some of the dreams disturbed Charging Elk; others comforted him. But all were welcome, for Charging Elk knew he was very close to joining his ancestors. And that is why he sang his death song all day and dreamed of home all night. And each night he prayed to Wakan Tanka that this would be the night that he would finally make the journey across the big water. He even prayed to badger to give him strength for the journey, but he was sure that his power was gone, that his animal helper would not hear him in a faraway iron house.

His hand brushed the packet of cigarettes as he smoothed his coat tighter against his knees. He picked it up and looked at it. The pale blue of the packet reminded him of clear skies over Paha Sapa and he thought of the sacred beings that roamed there and he remembered the ceremonies of the old pejuta wicasa out at the Stronghold, which always began with a smoke.

Charging Elk held one of the smoke-sticks and pointed it to the sky and to the earth and to the four directions, offering prayers for each. He prayed to the sacred beings and the ancestors, just as the holy man had done. He offered prayers to the four-leggeds and the wings of the air; then he prayed long and fervently to Wakan Tanka, vowing to serve him always in the real world behind this one. He lit the cigarette and smoked it halfway down, then smudged it out in his palm. He rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger until the remaining tobacco shreds fell into his hand. Then he put them in the pocket of his coat so that he would have something to offer badger when he returned home.

Charging Elk lay down on the iron bed. He wasn’t cold anymore and he felt at peace with all his being and with the world around him. He stared up at the high ceiling and he heard himself singing. It was a powerful song, and he thanked badger for giving it to him. He closed his eyes, singing.