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Marseille was a large city and it smelled of the sea, of salt and winter, of smoke and food, from the chestnuts roasting on braziers on street corners to the golden pommes frites in the brasseries to the thick honey sweets in the tea shops. The big street Charging Elk walked along was noisy with carts and wagons and carriages and omnibuses, all pulled by horses or oxen, or in the case of the carts, pushed or pulled by men in blue coats and pants. Men and women walked on the sides of the street, the men carrying big baskets on their shoulders, the women smaller baskets on their heads. The broad walkways on either side of the street were filled with people who seemed to come from everywhere there was an opening. They appeared, moved, and disappeared. Others appeared. Some walked purposefully, others idled along, while still others stopped to look into the windows of the stores. Some of them were well-off, the men with their dark suits and topcoats and top hats, the women wearing the big-butt black dresses, mantles, and hats with feathers and black spiderwebs that partially hid their faces. They carried umbrellas to shield themselves from rain and sun. Others of the pedestrians were poor, dressed in rough coats and flat caps, in long simple dresses with shawls and plain bonnets. Children were dragged along by mothers or rode in their fathers’ arms.
Charging Elk saw a group of people standing before a big window. They were talking and gesturing and pointing at various groups of small figures. Some of them were animals—cattle, sheep, and pigs. Charging Elk remembered the family that raised pigs along the road to Wounded Knee. He remembered it because he had never smelled such a sharp, sour odor. It seemed to ride with him for many miles afterward.
Other figures in the window were of men and women and children, dressed in costumes Charging Elk had never seen before. Some of the figures were light-skinned, others dark-skinned. One of the dark ones had a cloth tied around his head, a blackness over one eye and a knife between his teeth. He had a fierce scowl. The others were either sad or happy or without passion.
In the middle of the window, he saw a group of figures that seemed to be apart from the others and quite a bit larger. Three bearded men in different dress stood or kneeled. One had a tall cloth wrapped around his head. Charging Elk recognized this figure. At the show in Paris, at the foot of the naked iron tree they called the Eiffel Tower, he had seen real men wear these big hats. They came from even farther to the east where they rode the long-necked, bighumped beasts that he had first seen in a pen at the exhibition. They had looked hot and ugly, but when he touched the chewing muzzle of one, he was surprised how soft and pleasant it felt.
Sees Twice had told him that the Eiffel Tower had been built so the French could honor their five generations of freedom from cruel kings. All the surrounding buildings and fountains and gardens were part of this honoring ceremony. He said the white men of America had a similar honoring. They had defeated a cruel king many years before. Featherman had wondered aloud if all kings were cruel, but Sees Twice couldn’t answer that. He only knew that the Grandmother England was kind. Maybe only woman kings were good to their people.
Charging Elk almost smiled at this recollection—he had begun to enjoy his memories more than his life. He looked into the window again and he recognized black men with naked chests and big red lips. He had seen black men in Paris and New York but he didn’t think they had red lips. And the sheep. And the small horse with big ears. He had seen these big ears first in the gold camps of Paha Sapa, and later in the Wild West show. They were part of an act that made people laugh.
But his eyes were again drawn to the big figures in the middle of the window. All of the animals and men were looking at a man and woman and baby. The man wore a brown cape and was sitting on a rock. He held his hands out, as though he wanted something from the others. The woman was dressed in a long blue dress and a white cloth that covered her head. She was looking down at the baby with just a hint of a smile. The baby lay on some straw that filled a wooden box. Its hair was yellow like the straw and its naked body was bright pink. Its arms and legs were sticking up and it had no expression on its face.
Charging Elk ate one of the four pieces of bread as he walked along the street. His stomach was constantly growling now as he smelled food everywhere he turned. The longbread filled his stomach but he wanted more than bread. He wanted one of the sticks of meat from the charcuterie. He wanted pejuta sapa and a flaky chocolate bread.
He passed through a narrow street that was lined with outdoor tables. Many people crowded the alley and he found he could move only by slipping through a narrow passage in the center. He was almost glad for the crush of healthy humans after the many days in the sickhouse. He noticed that all the tables were filled with the little figures of animals and various people. He was surprised at how lifelike some of them looked. He was especially struck by a figure of a policeman with its blue high-collared tunic and round flat cap. He stopped to look it over, although he had been avoiding real ones all day. A child next to him was holding one of the yellow-haired, pink babies. This one too had its legs in the air as though it were kicking. The girl, of perhaps four winters, was looking up at her mother with a hopeful smile, but the mother shook her finger and said some words, and the girl put the figure back on the table. Then she looked at Charging Elk, and he saw her mouth go wide open. She looked up into his face, then turned and buried her own face into her mother’s coat.
Charging Elk suddenly remembered how different he was from any of these people and he grew tense. He had earlier let his hair fall free from under the cap, although he kept the cap on his head. He was at least four hands taller than the tallest of them and his wrists stuck out beyond the coat sleeves. He looked down and he saw that his ankles were exposed, his bare feet covered only by the woolly slippers. He noticed how much darker his skin was than the little girls. She had black hair and dark eyes but her face was the color of snow-berries. But Charging Elk was dark even for an Oglala. Many of his friends had teased him about his color when he was a child. He was embarrassed and even ashamed of his darkness, until his mother, Doubles Back Woman, told him it meant that he was the purest of the ikce wiccua, that Wakan Tanka favored him by making him so dark.
He now began to notice the people glancing at him as he squeezed through the crowd. They looked him up and down, starting with his hair, then following his length down to his feet. One old woman, her bent body leaning on a cane, looked up at him with a sideways glare and said something that made the others around her turn from the tables to look at him. He thought how different it was when he and his friends walked the streets of Paris in their fancy clothes and the people looked at them with awe. Although he wanted to get away from these suspicious, even hostile stares as quickly as possible, he walked deliberately with his head high, his eyes level above the heads of the small humans.
Charging Elk finally made it to the street at the end of the alley. It was a small street but not as narrow as the alley. He leaned against a building and breathed sharply. He had been jostled in the ribs and now they ached. His stomach had tightened into a hard knot from lack of real meat. He felt as miserable as he ever had in his life and he saw no end to his misery. He wished with all his being that he could step out of his body, leave the useless husk behind, and fly to the country of his people. He would become his nagi and join the other Oglalas in the real world beyond this one. At that moment, leaning against the building with his eyes closed to shut out the world around him, he would have gladly died, no matter what happened to his spirit.
But when he opened his eyes he was still there. And he was looking at a pine tree in a large shop window across the street. There were things on the tree, ribbons of red that wound around the branches, white sticks that stood straight up from the needles, and little figures and shiny round balls that hung from the prickly twigs.
Charging Elk almost grunted in his sudden recognition that it was still the Moon of the Popping Trees, the same hanhepi wi, night-sun, that had shone on them the night the Buffalo Bill show had come to this town from Paris on the iron road. He remembered that this town was called Marseille and it was on the same big water that they
