Nancy Huston - Black Dance

Marie-Thérèse standing over Milo as he does his homework at the kitchen table and drilling him relentlessly, forcing him to take dictation. She has become his dictator.

Milo walking Edith home. When they reach her place, she leads him by the hand back to the woodshed and smilingly pushes him against the wall there. Then she presses up against him and glues her lips to his. Feeling what this does to him, his hands rise to her breasts of their own accord. He kneads them slowly and thoroughly, in a dizzy daze. Edith makes not the slightest move to stop him.

Marie-Thérèse shouts at him, testing his knowledge of French and berating him for every mistake he makes.

Edith puts her hands on either side of his face and shows him what a French kiss is. Pulls his head down and strokes his hair as he kisses her large, soft breasts through her thick sweater, first the left one, then the right.

Marie-Thérèse clobbers him over the head with the telephone.

Up in the hayloft with Edith’s picture, Milo pants and swoons in silence, coming divinely in the straw as the cows low quietly beneath him.

Walking home from school, Milo nearly gets hit by a car because he didn’t hear it coming. He lies awake at night with his hand over his left ear, testing — no, he can hear nothing in that ear.

SOUND IN: MILO and his aunt in the doctor’s office after his ear examination.

“This will help some,” says the doctor as he hands Marie-Thérèse a prescription, “but he’ll never fully recover his hearing in that ear. Make sure he avoids ear infections like the plague, or it’ll be total deafness.”

Marie-Thérèse is fairly bursting with pride: Milo has just skipped another grade at school.

“See? You’re top of the class! We’ll show them, won’t we, you and I?”

“I want a dog,” says Milo in a low voice.

“What?”

“I want a dog,” he says more clearly, staring out the window.

“You want a dog! Okay, listen. If you’re still top of the class on your next report card, if you get an average of more than ninety-five percent, I’ll buy you a pedigree dog. Is that a deal?”

CUT to a pet shop in a nearby town: Milo and his aunt choosing a dog together. Marie-Thérèse’s face glows with pride. She’s beginning to think her dreams for the boy’s future might actually come true.

“Whichever one you want, Milo. Choose whichever one you want.”

“Look. .”

Soft, fuzzy, furry, head like a bear’s head. Long, thick tail that drags or wags.

“Is that the one you like?”

“Yeah. You see? It’s mine. It recognizes me.”

Marie-Thérèse motions to the saleslady.

“What kind is this?”

“It’s a mongrel. Half German shepherd, half coyote. Not expensive; I can let you have it for ten bucks.”

“It costs what it costs. I made a promise and I intend to keep it!”

“Your little boy sure looks happy, anyway.”

Marie-Thérèse doesn’t correct the saleslady.

As they drive back to the house together, Milo ecstatic in the backseat with the dog, Marie-Thérèse glances at him in the rearview mirror and says,

“You’re more of a son to me than my sons are anyhow. What’re you gonna call it?”

“Oscar.”

“What?”

“Oscar.”

“Ridiculous. Oscar’s no name for a dog! Well, whatever. It’s up to you.”

“That’s right.”

Neil understands better.

“Oscar. . because he’s half Wilde?”

“Yeah,” says Milo.

“. . Like you?”

“Maybe. Only my wild half isn’t de one people tink it is.” Neil chuckles.

“You know, you’re right.”

A KALEIDOSCOPE OF scenes from the next few months: Oscar running after Milo when he leaves for school at seven in the morning, running to meet him when he returns at four. . following Milo as he gallops through the forest on horseback. . swimming with him in the nearby Lac des Piles. . waiting between his feet at mealtimes, swallowing the tidbits Milo slips him under the table — soundlessly, as both know it’s forbidden (one day Oscar forgets and his tail thumps the floor). . sleeping at the foot of his young master’s bed, front paws crossed, protecting Milo from the monsters in his room and in his dreams.

The kaleidoscope slows down, then zeroes in on. . boy and dog staring into each other’s eyes. We circle the pair. A lingeringly beautiful shot.

EARLY OF a summer evening. Milo sits on the porch next to Marie-Thérèse, helping her shell peas. They’re alone in the house. Suddenly she turns to him and says, so softly that he’s disconcerted:

“You know where the hunchback lives, Milo? About halfway into town. . You go past his house on your way to school.”

(Okay, Astuto, we can try to write this episode if you insist. . but I warn you, there’s a better than even chance we’ll need to excise it later. .)

“Yeah, I know it.”

“Could you deliver a message to him?”

“To the hunchback?”

“Yeah, look. I’ve got the envelope all ready. Just give him this and wait for his answer. And on your way home, here, take this. Buy yourself some bubble gum at the grocery store; you know, the kind with Beatles cards in it. But it’s just between the two of us, all right? I don’t want you blabbing about it.”

We follow Milo from a distance as, Oscar at his side, he jogs through the endless summer dusk, his red T-shirt a dancing splotch of color in the gathering shadows. Now twelve, his shoulders have broadened and his chest is growing muscular. . but still he is light on his feet, alert and supple. In his mind he replaces Marie-Thérèse’s droning, dictating voice with his mother’s soft, hoarse voice from long ago. You gonna have to resist, little one, she says. Be strong, be tough, don’t forget me . Other snippets of wisdom gleaned over the years he repeats to himself in her voice. Fear noting, son. You got de right to walk on dis eart’, just like de animals. Trust de animals — dey’ll never betray you — but beware of humans. Don worry’bout God or de Devil or what happen after deat’. Heaven and Hell are man-made and here on eart’. What will be will be. Respect nature. Respect your body, it’s a part of nature. Respect de ground you walk on. De sacred isn’t above you or below you, it’s inside of you and all around you. You’re a part of it, son. Praying’s a waste of time. Everyting you do, good or bad, is a prayer, so don’t let dem make you pray. When dey tell you to pray. . dream, little one. Dream. He goes up the porch steps and knocks on the door. On the mailbox is the name Bernstein . .

(No offense, Milo, but I’m afraid the spectators will simply refuse to believe that your aunt’s lover, out in the sticks of rural Quebec in the early 1960s, was not only a hunchback but a Jew. Yeah, I know it’s true, but that’s not enough of a reason. Sometimes reality just isn’t plausible. .)

The man who comes to the door is in his midfifties and crowlike: black-haired, black-garbed, beady-eyed, hunchbacked, hook-nosed, yellow-toothed. He must be rather sweaty, too, for Milo wipes his hand discreetly on the seat of his shorts after their handshake. Mr. Bernstein motions to the boy to sit down as he reads Marie-Thérèse’s letter, then brings him a glass of water to drink while he writes an answer. Milo is simultaneously curious and indifferent, attentive and uninvolved. (Your life philosophy was now firmly in place: you want to know, but. . whatever.)

Love letter in hand, he trots home in the dark with Oscar, stopping off at the general store to purchase, not a packet of bubble gum with Beatles cards in it, but a pack of cigarettes. He lights up as he walks. Practices being nonchalant about smoking.

Marie-Thérèse grabs him by the shoulders and sniffs at his breath. “Is that cigarette smoke? Don’t tell me you’ve started smoking. .”