Nancy Huston - Black Dance

“Come off it.”

“Yes. Himself.”

“Where?”

“At Jacob’s.”

“We’ll take you with us. Oh, for the luva Christ, the kid’s be-shat himself. We’ll take you with us anyway, you pile of stinking shite. If you’re lying, you’re dead. You know that, eh?”

“I’m not lying, so help me. .”

Simultaneously shoved forward and firmly held from behind, he stumbles off and we follow the clumsy group into the dark.

• • • • •

Awinita, May 1951

“I DUNNO WHY I like you so goddamn much, Mister Cleaning-Fluid.”

“Must be ‘cause I’m cute.”

“Not ‘cause you’re rich, anyhow.”

They laugh. They finished making love a few minutes ago and Declan is still inside of Awinita, body spooned against her back, arm draped round her enormous tummy.

“Maybe I make you happy in bed,” he whispers.

“Hmm. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“That’s not where it goes, Nita.”

They laugh. Neighborhood sounds come sifting through the open window: traffic, the yells of construction workers, the clatter of dishes from a nearby restaurant kitchen, even a couple of gulls screaming overhead. The clock on the bedside table shows eleven. Declan arrived at the end of Awinita’s shift at five or six A.M. and they’ve spent what they call the night together.

“Sure you never get me mixed up with one of your johns?” “How could I? You ain’t paid me since de first time we came up here. I buy your drinks now.”

They laugh and cuddle.

“Seriously. You can tell the difference?”

“Yeah. Never saw a guy had such a big. . head o’ red hair.”

They laugh. His right hand gently brushes her neck, her face. Stopping it with her own hand, she takes his fingers into her mouth.

“And from behind?”

“Hmm?”

“When I’m behind you, you can’t see my hair. . Then what’s the diff?”

Silence.

“Hey, Nita? Tell me. Me or a john: same diff?”

Long silence. Finally: “Johns don’t bring me flowers.”

On the Formica table in the background, we notice a single wilted rose in a too-large chipped blue vase.

“Dey don’t hold me tight when we dance. And dey don’t ask so many questions.”

“That why you love me?”

“I say I love you?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, den shut up.”

They laugh. Declan gets out of bed and, pulling a flask of whisky from the inside pocket of his leather jacket (draped over a chair), takes a couple of serious swigs. Lights a cigarette, moves to the window and stands there smoking, naked. We’re in Awinita’s eyes, looking at his body. .

(Okay, Milo, I’ll keep it simple. We won’t make a lingering inventory of Declan’s physical beauty, moving slowly from the nape of his neck where his red-blond hair curls and furls, down the curve of his lower back over his buttocks and thighs. . It’d be easy to fall in love with your father at age twenty-four, but all right, we’ll leave the spectators free to notice his charms or not, as they see fit. .)

“What do the johns talk to you about?” asks Declan, smoking, his tone curious rather than aggressive.

“Whatever.”

“No, really.”

“Why?”

“Just. . you know. . to know what kinda stuff you go through here.”

In black and white in Awinita’s mind, a chaotic cascade of stills. Men in blurry close-up, contorted and sweating, shouting into the void; other men sitting on the edge of the bed talking to her, at her, in urgent self-absorption; still others drawing snapshots from their wallets to show her their houses, horses, cars, kids and wives. FADE TO SHADOW: and, in the shadow, imperceptible shift to animated images. .

A woman’s hand grasps a dark purple snake that writhes and twists, struggling to get away. She maintains her grip and finally it goes limp; the snake’s head drops and its forked tongue hangs out.

“Lotta dem boast,” she sums up. “Dey wanna be admired.”

“Do they ask you your name?”

“Sure. Some o’ dem ask it tree, four times.”

“Do they come back? The same ones?”

“Happens.”

“And you don’t get attached to them?”

“Happens.”

“But differently from me?”

“Everybody different.”

“Nita!”

He laughs, she doesn’t.

“You got Indian clients?”

“Indians are broke, Mister Cleaning-Fluid.”

“So’m I.”

“Well, maybe you part Indian! Now shut up and lemme get some sleep.”

“Naw, don’t go back to sleep, Nita. . Let’s go down to the river.”

CUT. Quick shot of Awinita in the tiny bathroom, tipping pills into her hand and gulping them down with tap water.

On Saint Helen’s Island, passersby gape at the two of them walking hand in hand: the small, conspicuously pregnant Indian girl with bleached-blond hair and the gangly, flame-headed youth in cowboy boots. Declan takes her to a spot he knows, a tiny cove amidst rocks, its water a still pool. Beyond, the rushing river. Sitting on the minute, pebbly idea of a beach, her bulk between his skinny bent legs, his arms protectively circling her belly; they stare out at the water, boats and birds. Declan takes a swig of whisky.

“I love it here.”

“Yeah, ‘sokay.”

“Want some?”

“Tanks. .”

“I really only feel at home in nature, you know? I’m a country boy at heart.”

“So what ya doin’ in de city?”

“No jobs in the country.”

“You got a job now?”

“Nah. Prefer to live offa you.”

He laughs, she doesn’t.

“Awinita. .”

“Yeah.”

“Since. . I mean, since you’re planning to give the kid up for adoption anyhow. . why don’t we. . like, go someplace together? I mean. . why don’t we just leave Montreal and go live out in the forest someplace, make a life for ourselves? Awinita, come away with me! We’re both young, we can start over.”

“Start what over?”

“Whatever! We could buy a stand of maple trees and learn how to make maple syrup. .”

“Buy it how?”

“You ain’t got any savings?”

She says nothing. We remember the tin-roofed shack, the packed dirt floor, the weeping family.

“Your dad didn’t leave you any money when he died?”

Again she says nothing.

In front of them, an Indian man of forty or forty-five, his body transparent, is bent over the water’s edge. He’s holding something in his hands, but we can’t see what. Suddenly he smashes it on a rock and tosses the pieces into the air. They fall — heavily at first, like gold nuggets, then gently, like raindrops. The drops disturb the still pool. The man gradually dissolves.

“ Your dad’s de one who got money,” she says at last.

“Only hitch is, he disowned me.”

“How come?”

“Third jail sentence, he got fed up. I disappoint him, Nita. Seems like none of his sons turned out the way he hoped. He wanted us all to go to university. Workin’ on the land is beneath us, he says. Back in Ireland he was a lawyer, his dad was a judge, his friends were a buncha famous writers. .”

“So how come he left?”

“Somethin’ happened during the First World War, I don’t know what. Maybe he refused to be drafted by the British, somethin’ like that.”

“Dey drafted Indians from here, too,” Awinita murmurs, but Declan doesn’t hear her.

“He came to Canada, found himself a nice plump Québécoise to marry. Then she started churning out babies and he worked his ass off on her father’s land. If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times: twenty years of backbreaking labor in Pierre-Joseph Chabot’s foresting industry. . all the while clutching at his dream of getting a novel published. After a long day’s work on the property, he’d sit up reading and writing in his library late into the night. When his folks died, he had eighteen boxes of books shipped over from Dublin. And that still wasn’t enough. Every time he went to Montreal or Ottawa he’d come home with a fresh armload of books. Plays, poetry, first editions. . But Neil, darling, what good will all these books do us? I remember my mother saying. We can’t feed our children with poetry! Truth is my mom was slightly pissed off ‘cause she’d grown up in the sticks and wanted out of them. Ran away to Montreal at age eighteen to become an actress, landed up waiting tables instead, in a coffee shop on Notre-Dame. That’s where they met. So she was none too thrilled when he insisted they head back to the sticks. She figured if she had to wade through cow and baby dung from morning to night, least he could do was shut up about Shakespeare. He used to corral all his sons into his study every Sunday morning, read out loud to us in English from these ancient books, stuff about Greek wars, British kings, whatever. I learned to hate that library of his. The girls meanwhile, being francophones, would be off at Mass with our mom. . She died giving birth to her thirteenth baby and, being the oldest girl, Marie-Thérèse took over. She raised us with an iron hand, that’s for sure, but she couldn’t change our father’s ways.”