Nancy Huston - Black Dance

“Yes, sir,” repeats Daisy. And she beats a retreat with a false obsequiousness that verges on insolence, moving backward, curtsying and waving her feather duster, finally pulling the door to behind her.

“How dare she ?” fumes Neil, swerving angrily back to the blank page on the table in front of him.

He scrawls a sentence on it, and we hear him think it as he writes: There were numerous truths of the Easter Rising, depending upon one’s vantage point. He crosses out one’s vantage point and writes, instead, who and where one was . Crosses out was and replaces it with happened to be . Crosses out everything, crumples the page and tosses it into the wastebasket.

No, no, no, no, we hear him say to himself. Though a thousand things were indeed occurring simultaneously in different parts of the city, we have no choice but to recount them successively. No blah blah, no holding forth. We must be in the action. In, for instance, the body of the young Sinn Féiner shot to death by the sniper on the roof of Trinity College. No, that’s no good. . He died on Tuesday; his chapter would be far too short. Well, how about a seagull, then, watching events unfold from above? No, ridiculous. Gulls cannot fathom human behavior, let alone human speech. Thom, I want to do this for you. You lost your life and I did not, so it’s serious now. I need to do it. All right, let’s just start somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t matter where; we can correct it later.

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, his sister pops her head through the door.

“So you’re staying at home again today, are you?”

Neil doesn’t deign to turn toward her.

“You’re not going out to look for work today then, Neil?”

“I am working, Dorothy.”

“Are you, then? Sure and it looks like hard labor you’re doing, too! And a great lot of money I’m sure it will bring in to help with the family finances, justifying the lengthy and expensive education you were given. Don’t wear yourself out too much, now, will you? When your fingers tire of holding the pen, be sure to take a nice long bath to relax them.”

“Dorothy, have I not ordered you on several occasions to refrain from bursting into my room without knocking?”

“Oh, sorry. Simply wanted to wish you a good day, brother. You’ve grown more and more irritable since you decided art was your true calling in life — d’you know that, Neil Kerrigan?”

“Might I prevail upon you to leave my room at once?”

“I liked you little enough as a lawyer, but as a novelist you’re insufferable. Ta, then. I hope you’ll at least make yourself useful by helping Daisy peel the potatoes for our supper!”

And, with a peal of laughter as intolerably bright as the sunlight, Dorothy vanishes.

His nerves at snapping point, Neil grips his pen tightly and we hear his inner voice. .

The question is not only how to be in different places at the same time, but how to be in the same place at different times. The place, assuredly, is Dublin City. But we cannot talk about the Easter Rising of 1916 if we do not understand the strikes of 1913–1914. . the rise and fall of Parnell in the 1890s. . or the six-hundred-year history of the British occupation. And we must go not only backward but forward in time as well. Show how the people of Dublin, though not supportive of the rebellion during Easter Week itself, gradually came to espouse the rebels’ cause as, day after day, early in May, their leaders were cruelly and systematically executed by British firing squads. Pearse, Plunkett, MacDonagh, Connolly. . sixteen in all, including the one whom I personally denounced, Major John MacBride. A swaggerer to the end: boasting that he’d faced British fire before, he met his death without the customary blindfold. And then I was denounced. By whom? Must have been that blond kid in the bushes. To whom? I’m still not sure — both ways? To the government and the rebels? A two-way traitor, I became. Traitor to my class — the bar defrocked me. Traitor to my cause — the Sinn Féin cast me out. But it’s not my own tale I want to tell, it’s the tale of my city. The upheaval of Easter 1916 left dear dark Dublin ruined and ravished but renewed. Ripe for revolution.

Neil’s knuckles are white from squeezing the pen too tightly.

Three loud, swift knocks at the door.

“What now? Who is it?” he shouts, leaping to his feet.

“Your mother,” comes the icy answer.

Yanking the door open, he sees fear in his mother’s eyes and realizes he must be a sight: hair on end, rumpled shirttails, wrinkled trousers, suspenders awry; he hasn’t slept a wink.

“Your father would like to have a word with you,” says Mrs. Kerrigan stiffly, advancing not so much as the pointed toe of her pink velvet mule beyond his threshhold.

CUT to Judge Kerrigan’s den, replete with all the symbols of virile wealth and power: leather-bound books serried on bookshelves, framed diplomas, green lampshades, polished oak desk, gilt leather blotters and paperweights. . you get the picture. The man’s success is ostentatious not to say ferocious, and any one of our potential spectators could probably write the ensuing dialogue as well as we can, Milo.

“You wished to see me, Father?”

“I did.”

“Well, here I am.”

“I’ve been thinking about your future, Neil. Things cannot go on like this. It’s been eighteen months since we learned of your involvement with the rabble rebels, a year since the bar defrocked you. .”

“My dream, as you know, Father, is not to be refrocked. Not as long as every court of law in Dublin is run by the occupying forces.”

The judge’s voice booms out, covering his son’s.

“Neil, I’m convinced it is not completely hopeless. There might be a way for you to regain access to your profession.”

Neil waits, and knows he won’t have long to wait. Turning his back on his son, Judge Kerrigan moves to the window and lights his pipe.

“You must volunteer to join the army.”

“Impossible.”

“I’ve made preliminary inquiries at the Castle. Because of their respect for me, two or three individuals are willing to put in a good word for you. You could start out directly with officer rank.”

“Despite my besmirching of the family name ?”

“Yes, that could be overlooked. Give it some thought. I advise you to seize the opportunity. It is unlikely that a second chance for saving your reputation will come along.”

“Father, I am twenty-five years old. You are aware of both my political convictions and my artistic aspirations, and yet you find it natural to ask me to betray both, simply for the sake of restoring the name Kerrigan to its virginal purity. .”

“You will not address your father in such terms, young man. I am not a blank page to be sullied by the smutty mutterings of scribblers such as yourself and Jimmy Joyce. Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist , indeed! How gumptious can you get?”

“It’s the other way around, Father. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

“Traitors, the lot of you! Your country is in need? Joyce runs off to hide in Switzerland, and you can think of nothing better to do than take up with a crowd of rag-a-tag outlaws! Well, now that your mates have all been shot, why don’t you go help the Bolsheviks who are currently laying waste to Russia? Perhaps they have a better chance of winning!”

“I’m a writer , Father.”

“Neil, I am most weary of awaiting evidence of that claim’s validity.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that unless you either accept the generous offer I’ve just made you or give me some tangible proof that you’ve become a respectable member of the Irish literary establishment, you will no longer be welcome in my household. Writers are known to enjoy starving in miserable garrets at the outset of their careers, are they not? Find yourself a miserable garret in which to starve. Kindly remove your belongings from the premises by next Sunday.”