Heartsong (33 page)

This place was a replica of the first one, except that there were no customers and the man behind the bar, a short, stout man with small wire glasses, was bent over a newspaper. A cat was perched on the bar beside him. Charging Elk was tempted to go in and have a glass of wine but he didn't like cats. Le Panier was overrun with cats and they howled and fought almost every night. In the morning when he went to work, they would be crouched in doorways and on window ledges, watching him. He didn't like the way they watched him.

He hurried down to a third doorway, which was closed and curtained with an opaque material. A large window beside the door glowed with a gauzy warmth. He had to stand close to see into the interior and he saw a large, cheerful room filled with couches and chairs. Two chandeliers with electric lights lit the orange walls and the red furniture. A small, shiny wooden bar backed up against one wall. Behind the bar, a large mirror reflected the lights of the chandeliers. Shiny glass decanters filled with amber and golden liquors stood in a row before the mirror.

At first Charging Elk thought he was looking into the main room of a small hotel, but there was no writing on the window, no sign over the doorway. Could it be a home, like the Soulas home? Perhaps a rich man lived here, but why was it open to the street? And why were there no people in the room? He decided that it was a furniture house for rich people, even if it did seem to be in a peculiar
location. And he decided that the owner must have forgotten to snuff out the lights and lower the grates when he left.

Charging Elk started to walk back toward the Old Port, but he stopped and looked back. There was a fourth light back on the corner just beyond the furniture house. It was probably another shabby bar, but his curiosity was piqued, so he walked back and peered into a leaded-glass window that flanked the doorway. It was a bar, dimly lit and smoky, but he was surprised to see that it was not shabby. The bar was of polished dark wood and the chandeliers were made of many-colored glass. The men standing at the bar were dressed in long dark coats and top hats or derbies. Charging Elk watched the men for a moment, then he saw a row of small tables and chairs and more men sitting, leaning close toward each other, talking, laughing, smoking.

One of the men glanced in his direction, but Charging Elk knew the man could not see him. When the man turned back to his companion, Charging Elk caught the glint of spectacles, and he sucked in his breath. He leaned in closer to the window, his nose almost touching the cold glass and his breath leaving a small frosted circle, and the man lit a thin cigar with a flint lighter. It
was
him! The pale man who bought fish at the Quai des Beiges. The
hey oka
, the holy clown, who Charging Elk had thought might help him at one time. Charging Elk stepped back from the window. It was him. But why? Had Wakan Tanka sent Charging Elk on this journey to the dark street to finally meet the
hey oka
again? Charging Elk had long ago given up the notion that this spectacled one or, for that matter, Yellow Breast was really a
hey oka
. He had come to believe that they were just men who had come into his life briefly, then vanished. They were no more or less
wakan
than the dead baby Jesus he had found in the alley.

But now he began to believe that he had been mistaken, that perhaps they were
heyokas
after all. There seemed to be nothing holy
about them, but that is the way of
hey okas
. They act crazy, but deep within them they possess much power. They are to be respected but feared.

Charging Elk was now thoroughly confused. A gust of wind blew the floppy brim down against his cheek. Should he enter the bar and present himself to this
hey oka?
Would the spectacled one remember him? After that morning when Charging Elk helped the pale one load his fish into his cart and accepted a cigar in return, René had made him wait with François while René bid for the fish. Furthermore, René had called the
heyoka
many bad words and made a bad face while doing so.

While Charging Elk was trying to decide what to do, he heard footsteps, and he turned and saw two men coming up the street. He walked the few steps to the corner and stepped behind the building. He waited for a moment, glancing up and down the cross street. In one direction he could see the scabby hill with its dwarf pines where Notre Dame de la Garde stood as a lighted beacon above the city; in the other he saw the dark, skeletal masts of ships in the Old Port. The sight comforted him. Then he looked into the side window of the bar. He was less than two meters from the pale
heyoka
.He saw the glint of the spectacles above the laughing mouth, the thin cigar—just like the one he had given Charging Elk that morning—between two slender fingers.

Charging Elk slipped away quickly, rounding the corner again, intent on walking as fast as he could back to the safety of the Old Port. He didn't know why but he knew that this street was
dica
, a bad place, and the one he thought was a
heyoka
was really a
siyoko
, an evil spirit. He could feel the evil grip his heart, as surely as if it had come to him in a bad dream, and, in fact, he felt as though he were in the clutches of the pale
diyoko
now.

He ducked into another gust of wind and felt the floppy brim flutter and snap against his face. He lifted his eyes just in time to
avoid running into the two men he had seen earlier, who were now standing before the door of the furniture house. Just as he stepped wide of them, the door opened and he saw a small fat man in a dark suit and an immaculate white shirt and tie. He saw the smile and heard the words of welcome—
“Bonsoir, messieurs. Bienvenu, mes amis
”—and then he was beyond the door.

Near the entrance to the first bar he had encountered on the street, he slowed, then stopped to look back. The street was empty. He looked into the bar and saw the same two drinkers and the woman with the loose hair. She was eating something with her fingers.

Charging Elk stood for a moment. He wanted a drink of the
mni sha
, but he was undecided whether to stop here or continue on to the Old Port. The more he attempted to decide, the more he knew that he should go back to his flat in Le Panier. The evening had become strange, as though the treacherous
siyoko
had called him to this street and now would wish to do him great harm, perhaps to steal his
nagi
. What loss could be greater?

But even as Charging Elk thought these thoughts, he was walking slowly, carefully, back to the furniture house, only now he knew that it was not a furniture house, but something that was open to the street. Perhaps the
siyoko
lived there and made it attractive to entice men like himself to enter.

Now he was at the window with the gauzy curtain. He glanced up and down the street, but all he saw was the yellow lights of the doorways. Inside, he saw the two men. They were sitting on a divan, drinking amber drinks in round glasses. One of them was smoking a cigarette and talking to the round man, who stood before them with his hands clasped before his belly. He seemed to be the owner of this house. He turned to the back of the room and clapped his hands two or three times. Charging Elk could hear the faint, hollow claps above the wind and he ducked back away from the
glow. When he looked again, he saw a curtain part and five women emerged and walked single-file into the room. They were dressed in long, shimmery robes and they walked slowly, cheerlessly, as though they were on their way to the iron house. Then they stopped and the round man, twirling his hand, had them turn around, and around again. One of the young men on the divan stood and walked around the women. The other sat back among the plush red cushions with his legs crossed, blowing smoke into the air. He seemed uninterested in the young women.

But Charging Elk was very interested in the women. He knew what he was seeing now. In Paris, some of the
wadkhus
who worked with the Wild West show went to places like this. Broncho Billy had told the Indians to stay away from the loose women of Paris. But most of these women stood out on the street or in doorways and called to the Indians when they walked by. Some of the Indians went with these women to their rooms, in spite of Broncho Billy's warnings about disease, even robbery by the rough “hombres” these women consorted with. Buffalo Bill himself had made a speech when they got to Paris about the evils of life in the city. He told the story of one Indian, a Shyela, who had gone with one of these “whores” in the Grandmother's big town of London and when he came back, he was all skin and bones with sores all over him. They buried him a few days later in the Grandmother's country. By then his arms and legs had melted from his body.

Now Charging Elk was seeing the very whores that infected men with such horrible diseases. But they looked nice in their robes. They looked like the young women that he longed for day after day and dreamed about at night. Even as he thought this, one of the women opened her robe and twirled around. She was wearing only a white shift and black stockings and lace-up shoes. As she twirled in his direction, he could see the bulge of her breasts above the lace top of the shift and the flesh of her thighs above the rolled
stockings. His mouth went dry and his cock stiffened almost in the same instant. She was not much more than a girl, but her figure was stout and her face pretty beneath a shock of dark curls that cascaded down over the collar of the light blue robe. She wore a velvet band around her head and her lips were painted a deep red. Charging Elk thought he had never seen such a wondrous sight as this nearly naked girl with the big thighs. He had seen pictures of completely naked white women in Paris—you could buy them in kiosks. Featherman had quite a collection of them and would let you look at them at night for a few centimes. The young Indians marveled at the pale amplitude of these women as they passed the pictures around.

Charging Elk was embarrassed by his stiff cock and again looked up and down the street but it was still deserted. When he looked back, two of the girls had sat down beside the men while the other three, including the desirable one, were filing back to a curtained doorway. They walked with that same slow, almost defeated gait they had displayed earlier. He watched until the light blue gown disappeared behind the curtain.

Charging Elk was saddened that the girl had gone away. He had desired her so fiercely he could almost taste her creamy flesh as one tastes a
glace a la vanille
on a hot August day. He had an overwhelming need to taste her and fuck her. Without thinking, he looked down at his crotch, but his erection was hidden by the thick wool coat. Fuck. In spite of his almost keening need, he stifled a breath of laughter. “Fuck” was one of the words he had learned in Paris. Many of the young Indians, whether they were playing cards or waiting on their ponies to enter the arena for the show, talked about fucking. It was all bravado, of course. When they were around the white women, they were reserved and even a little fearful.

Charging Elk thought of the young white woman in Paris, the
one named Sandrine. He knew now that she was a holy person and the card she had given him was a picture of Jesus, the savior of the
wasichus
. He had saved them by telling them to worship his father, who was named God Almighty and who Sees Twice had said was even stronger than Wakan Tanka. Although he hadn't believed Sees Twice then, now he wasn't so sure. After all, the
wasicuns
ruled the world.

Sandrine. He tried to picture her in his
cante ista
that day on the edge of the little lake in her simple dress and white bonnet, but all he saw was the stern gray dress and the hat with the sleeping duck. For a long time he thought he would never forget her, but he now realized with some shame that he hadn't thought about her for more moons than he could count. Now he closed his eyes and he saw the stout young woman in the blue gown, her swelling breasts and white, chunky thighs, the velvet band around her hair, and his desire became fierce again.

D
uring the next several weeks, Charging Elk made a point of staying away from Rue Sainte. In fact, he seldom left his room after work, except to buy food and bathe at the bathhouse around the corner. He still took his Sunday meals with the Soulas family and he enjoyed his conversations with Mathias and Chloé, but they were growing up and had many interests that did not include him. He knew he was being foolish, but it hurt him to listen to Chloé go on about her friends in the church group or Mathias talking about a train trip with his classmates to see the wild bulls of the Camargue. He listened politely and understood most of their talk but he could see the shine in their eyes as they told of their new adventures and he knew that they no longer considered him a big part of their lives.

After dinner, he and René would walk on Cours Belsunce, stopping
for an anisette along the way in René s favorite café. Here the little fishmonger would exchange insults and laugh with his friends while Charging Elk sat and smoked, waiting for an opportunity to escape.