Heartsong by James Welch

Author:James Welch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

But when Charging Elk entered Rue Sainte he began to have second thoughts. The street was crowded with men, mostly sailors enjoying their Saturday night on the town. The two shabby bars were full of laughing, shouting men in short wool coats, some with caps with the little pompom on top. Glasses of beer in various stages of fullness rested on the bar or swung in slow movements between bar and mouth. There were other men too in their long coats and derbies or top hats, drinking wine and watching the sailors.

Charging Elk had been so sure of himself as he walked alongside the Opera House only two short blocks from this scene. But now he thought of the incident in the Brasserie Cherbourg, the hostile sailors, the jeering women, and he became a little afraid. René had told him several times to stay away from the American bars. It was not unusual for men to fall in with the wrong crowd or the wrong woman or even to be killed in these places. Marseille was full of bad men from all the lands of the world, men who were not civilized like the French and who would slit your throat if you looked at them in the wrong way. René had slid his finger across his own throat when he said this, and Charging Elk had recognized the gesture immediately And so he had stayed away from the places where these bad men congregated. Until now.

But the men were so involved with their drunken behavior, even those on the street who brushed by him, that the young Indian was beginning to feel invisible again. And his confidence began to grow. Still, he wished he had brought his walking stick with the heavy silver duck’s head.

He walked deliberately down the middle of Rue Sainte, away from the two rowdy bars, until he came to the fancy whorehouse. He wove his way through a crowd of men, stepped up on the narrow stone walkway and looked into the window.

The room looked just as he had memorized it the past several weeks in his own shabby little flat—the warm painted walls, the bright chandeliers, the mirror over the elegant wooden bar, the plush red divans. And just as he had envisioned over and over in the same length of time, he saw the girl with the blue robe. She was sitting on one of the couches, looking down into a tall glass of amber water that she held on her lap. She was wearing the same black velvet headband, and dark curls partially hid her face. Her legs were crossed, the robe falling away from one white thigh just visible above her stocking.

She was not alone. This night, the room was filled with men in long coats and ties, some of them in the black evening clothes that rich men wore. Charging Elk had seen men like these escorting their ladies into the Opera House or sitting with others in some of the fancier restaurants in the Carré Thiars just off the Old Port.

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