Heartsong (39 page)

M
arie Colet sat on the edge of the bed and loosened the laces on her shoes. François would be the fifth man she had been with that night and there would probably be five or seven or eight more after him, including one or two who liked to top off an evening s drinking with a good screw. She hated that part. They would either slobber all over her or become frustrated and abusive when they
couldn't perform. When the girls complained to Olivier and suggested that he throw these drunkards out, he would become furious and say that they came from the best families, what would become of his business without them, and the girls were free to walk Rue Sainte with the other common whores anytime. Gérard would help them pack up and escort them out the door. Goodbye. Good riddance.

Marie placed the shoes side by side between the dresser and the armoire and laid her stockings on top of them. She glanced over at François, who was hanging his damp pants on the hall tree. His square shoulders and long, sinewy arms sent just the smallest tremor of fear through her body. He was sober and polite, even shy, but so big! He didn't wear long underwear like most of the men, just a pair of briefs that covered his loins and nothing else. His dark skin made the white briefs almost luminescent in the dim light. Marie hesitated for just a second; then she pulled the shift over the top of her head, hoping that he wouldn't notice the fading bruise on her right breast, where only last week one of the drunkards had bitten down until she cried out.

She sat on the edge of the bed and waited for him, and when he turned he had something in his hand. He walked over to her, his penis only partially erect, a far cry from that first night. She looked at the brown velvet box in his hand, then up into his eyes, her own eyes questioning.

“For you, mademoiselle.” Smiling, he added: “For your beauty.”

Marie took the box and opened the hinged lid. There, on the satin lining, lay a cameo, white against a pale blue background. She lifted it from the box by the slightly darker ribbon and studied the profile of an elegant woman. Then she looked up at François again.

“But I can't accept this, monsieur. It is much too beautiful.” She cradled the cameo in her palm, running her thumb over the raised profile. How could he know that she had always wanted one?
“Perhaps you had better give it to your wife.” She almost added, with the slightest bitterness, “not your whore.”

The man, François, laughed, a rumbling laugh from deep in his chest. Then he sat on the edge of the bed beside her and took the cameo, and she turned her back to him. The small piece of jewelry was cold against her skin as he tied the ribbon snugly around her neck. Then she turned toward him. “It is for a beautiful woman, I think,” she said, not looking into his eyes.

“Look at yourself,” he said, indicating the mirror above the dresser.

She stood and walked the couple of steps to the mirror. He followed her and stood behind her. The red-beaded lamp cast just enough light to illuminate the cameo and the blue ribbon that circled her neck. He watched her touch the cameo with tentative fingers. Then he looked down at her breasts, and the large dark nipples aroused him immediately. But he didn't touch her yet. There would be time for that. For now, he was content to look into the mirror at her dark eyes, which glistened with a kind of awed radiance.

Charging Elk had never felt such pride in all his life.

A
t three in the morning, Marie returned to her room for good. There was nobody downstairs, except for Olivier and Gérard and a couple of girls. The street outside was empty and dark, but the rain had let up and a few high, white stars glittered over the town.

Normally, Marie felt exhausted and sad at this time of night. Normally, she would collapse in the bed, not bothering to wash herself or change the bedding. She would be mildly depressed that her room was so small and airless. And she would envy Aimée her corner room with the large window that overlooked the small courtyard behind the building. And as she drifted off, she would see
the endless white bodies of men and the stiff cocks they were so proud of.

But tonight Marie was not exhausted and her nose was offended by the smell of sex. After her first few weeks in the whorehouse, she had become used to the odor and thought nothing of it. It became as much a part of her ambience as the lavender body lotion or the smell of cigars and spirits. Now, she hated this part of her life, which had in fact become her whole life and which seemed to consist of nothing more than sitting in the parlor, engaging in the forced cheerfulness of sex talk, then taking a heavy breather to her room and steeling herself for yet another joyless encounter.

Marie lay on her bed in a flannel nightgown, a chenille robe, and wool slippers, necessities against the late-night chill, her head resting on a pillow propped against the wall. The small brown box lay on her stomach. She didn't want to open it just yet. Instead, she closed her eyes and saw herself standing before the mirror, admiring the cameo but stealing a glance at the dark, wild face behind her. The face seemed to float in the mirror, somewhere above her head, and the eyes were not so savage and the lips were parted in a real smile.

Marie stroked the velvet box and tried to understand her feelings for François. At the age of nineteen, she was too cynical to believe in love—at least as far as she was concerned. Laurence, who was sixteen, seemed to fall in love every night. Sometimes Marie let the young girl sleep with her and she would prattle on about one man or another who had promised to make her his own girl. It was true Laurence was cute and she had a ripe body for one of her age, but she would learn that the promises were empty and that working girls, even the beautiful Aimée, never left the houses until they became too old and lost their looks and their firmness. Then they became servants or took in washing (if they were lucky enough to find a place to live) or even beggars. Although Marie was young
yet, she had been having dreams in which she found herself wandering in the streets of a town she almost recognized. She had nothing but the clothes on her back, and children teased her. The dream always ended with her standing on a dark street corner not knowing which direction to take. All four directions looked exactly the same—empty and bleak and familiar. And when she sat up, panicked by the darkness, not knowing where she was for an instant, she wanted to cry out for someone, anyone, to comfort her. But the only comfort she could find in her situation was that she could probably be a whore for at least ten more years. She would have a place and a job for at least that long. And her immediate future didn't look so bad after all.

But now she had been touched by the tall dark man, and in more ways than one. He was certainly a gentle giant, a welcome relief from her usual rutting customers, who seemed to think that smothering her would be a fine idea. He was quite shy and had been almost delicate in their coupling, his weight barely there, his smooth chest just brushing against her nipples. And although she didn't come this time—she was too preoccupied with the cameo tight and cool against her throat—she did feel a kind of tingling disappointment when he lifted himself off her. That surprised her more than the fact that he had made her come last time. She had seldom felt anything with a man, much less disappointment when he left her. That the man was a strange, dark foreigner confused her. She had always considered herself lucky that she worked in a house that did not allow foreigners, especially the dark ones. And now—what?

She sighed. Now nothing, she thought, and she was relieved to have regained her senses. He was a customer and nothing more. He had given her a present, he had fucked her, and now he was gone, probably home to his wife, feeling a little guilty but smug that he had gotten some fucking on the side. Marie knew that some men needed whores, and that was what she was there for. Their wives
were too proper to allow their men to sweat and rut all over them. This one was just a bit more considerate.

Marie stood and shook off the robe, which she draped over the headboard. Then she knelt before the dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer. This was where she kept her small things—her mending kit, a stack of letters from her parents that had been written by a schoolmaster and that she couldn't read, a beaded purse that had belonged to her
g rand-maman
, three small
santons
that she put on her dresser during the season, and her Bible with the white cover. She decided that she would not look at the cameo tonight. As she placed the velvet box in the drawer, she remembered that he had asked her name and she had told him. “Marie,” he had said. Then he said it again, and yet again, as though to memorize it. She had never heard her name so reverently pronounced.

And she further remembered, as he stood in the doorway, about to leave, she had said, “François,” and when he turned, she had said, “Thank you, François.” That was another first. She had never thanked one of her customers for anything. Even when they left a tip on the dresser, she had preferred a demure silence.

Marie had tried to be cynical about François, but now she knew that he was a man who excited her in a puzzling way. As she turned out the light and crawled into bed, curling herself into a ball against the cold sheets, she wondered what his home was like, what it would be like to be there, perhaps to wake up in the morning next to him. She knew, in spite of her cynical ruminations, that he wasn't married. But what would it be like—to wake up next to him?

She closed her eyes and thought about the beautiful cameo. It was the first true gift she had received from a man that had no strings attached. But what did he want?

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

C
harging Elk had been seeing Marie once a week for the past three
months. Now as he sat on the bench before the open window, buffing the brown shoes, which had never been the same since he had walked through the downpour, the leather stiffer, the toes slightly curled, he wished things were a little different. For one thing, he lived from payday to payday now, without a thought of saving any money. He bought wine, he ate out more often, he took his shirts to the laundry to be cleaned and pressed each week, he bought a few gifts for Marie, although none as expensive as the cameo. Consequently, he had nothing in the purse in the duffel bag. He hadn't even seen the purse for two months. As for his hope that one day he would get home to his land and his people, it became more and more a distant dream. He thought of his parents often enough, his mother beading or standing at her iron stove, his father sunning himself with the other men or perhaps riding High Runner for the pleasure of it; he thought of Strikes Plenty, now planting potatoes
and surrounded by his own children—it was almost more than he could imagine, his
kola
married to a woman of his own kind, living in his own country, watching the same sun rise every day, the familiar animals, the distant but loyal Paha Sapa. He thought of these things and his people, but always the dream he had had would creep into his pleasant reverie and fill him with a cold fear.

Charging Elk knew that the dream should have made him anxious, even desperate, to go home. He should have wanted more than anything to see if the dream had been true. If it was true, it would be a catastrophe beyond belief.
You are my only son
.But whose voice? Bird Tails? His fathers? Lately, since he had dreamed one time of Crazy Horse, he had begun to believe that the war chief had contacted him from the real world. Charging Elk's own father, Scrub, had said Crazy Horse had lived in the world of dreams and vision even when he was alive. Perhaps the wind that held him back was from the real world. It would not let him join his people, his ancestors.
You are my only son
. Even now the voice and the wind sent chills through his body, as though to warn him away from his degraded life.

But Charging Elk always had an antidote to this fearful dream. He would force himself to think of Marie. He still knew almost nothing about her, only that she had worked in the whorehouse for three years and that she came from a village outside of Marseille. But he knew her body and he knew her eyes—the way they would light up when he walked into the whorehouse or brought her a gift, then go dark when she sat with him in the large parlor, watching the crowd of men surrounding the girls or singing around the piano. He knew she didn't like to be with them, even if it was her job. Charging Elk always left Le Salon after their time together, because he didn't want to see her misery. But as he walked back to Le Panier, he felt a burning frustration that became a confused anger by the time he reached his flat.