Nancy Huston - Black Dance

Neil weeps hot tears inside.

The waitress comes up to him and, his head being bowed, the first thing he sees of her is an immaculate white apron on a black uniform. Adopting his point of view, we notice as he does that her curves (as men used to say) are in all the right places, but that she has buttoned her blouse awry. This reminds him of Yeats’s cardigan, which again makes him feel a piercing nostalgia for Ireland.

“ Qu’est-ce que j’vous sers? ” 2

He doesn’t understand.

“What?

“ Qué c’est que vous allez prendre? ” 3

He utters the first French word that comes back to him from the Shakespearean dialogue read the previous day.

“Menton.”

“ Quoi?” The girl wrinkles her nose and giggles. “ Un menton?” 4

“ Coude , ventures Neil. I’m trying to learn French.”

“ Eh bien, avec ces mots-là, ça fonctionnerait mieux dans un cours de danse que dans un restaurant. Voulez un café?” 5

He decides to exploit his weakness rather than conceal it.

“Coffee?”

“ Café .”

“ Ca-fay .”

“ Avec du lait?”

“ Dou-lay .”

“ Oui, m’sieu‘ .”

“ Oui, m’-siou‘ .”

She smiles at him.

“Buttons,” he says.

“Butter? Du beurre?”

“No. .”

Gently, gesturing, smiling, he demonstrates on his own shirt that her blouse has a buttoning problem. The girl glances down then up, and laughs out loud.

“Oh, dear, I got my buttons mixed up again, I don’t believe it! Thanks for telling me. .”

CUT to Mount Royal Park on a sunny day. Several months must have elapsed, because the snow has melted and the trees are in full blossom. Sitting on a bench, Neil and the young waitress pursue their mutual exploration. Though Neil’s French has improved, his accent is still god-awful.

“I’ll be a great writer. . You’ll see, Marie-Jeanne. Before my thirtieth. . uh. . day of birth. . I’ll publish a great novel.”

“Will you write a show for me?”

“What? A shoe?”

“A show, not a shoe! A show I can star in!”

“Yes. You’re my star, that’s for sure!”

CUT to Saint Helen’s Island in the summertime. The two of them walking there.

“Nowadays there are more English than French in Montreal. . but in the olden days it was a French city. It was founded by a Frenchman, three hundred years ago: Samuel de Champlain, his name was. And he named this place Saint Helen’s Island after his wife, Hélène Boullé. Just think, she was only twelve when they got married!”

“And you. . seventeen when you marry me. Lucky I said yes, you’re already getting old.”

“Hey, wait a minute! I haven’t said yes yet!. . I think Champlain married Hélène Boullé for sa dot .”

“ Sa dot? What’s dat?”

“The money a family gives their daughter at her marriage.”

“Ah, okay, dowry. I see. So what about you? What’s your dowry?”

“Well, tell you the truth. . I spoke to my father about it. . and he offered to buy up a plot of land next door. . and give it to me as a wedding present. . But that’s not what I want, Neil. I want to be an actress! My career’s just getting off the ground!”

“You can’t live forever in those Homes for the Protection of Young Women run by nuns! And if we try to consummate our marriage in the home of Judge McGuire, it’ll make a big scandal. . We have to look the truth in the face, my love. I’ve been unable to find work as a lawyer in Montreal, and it’s beneath me to do menial labor. . I’m a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, after all! I’d rather chop down trees. I’m sure it would give me good ideas for a novel. If it’s good enough for Tolstoy, it’s good enough for me.”

“Who’s Tolstoy?”

“Uh. . never mind. Let’s accept your father’s offer. Let’s go live out at your place, at least at first. . We could try it just for a year, and then see. .”

“Yeah, only my daddy doesn’t yet know what kind of a man he’s making his offer to! A damned Englishman!”

“I’m not English, I’m Irish; it’s not the same thing! We hate those damn Brits, too! Besides, they’re Protestant and I’m Catholic. .”

“You told me you didn’t go to church.”

“To marry you, I’d go all the way to Hell! Don’t worry, I still know how to sing Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus, miserere nobis. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis. How do you like that? And I even have a French name! Don’t you like the sound of Marie-Jeanne Noirlac?”

“Yeah. .”

“And don’t you like me?”

“Yeah. .” “All right, then. . So shall I pop the question to your da?”

“But you don’t know the first thing about forestry!”

“Now, Marie-Jeanne! I know enough! Where do you think the paper comes from, on which I shall write my books?”

Sound track: organ music. The final shot of this sequence will be a long, sweeping panorama of the Mauricie region around 1920. We’ll need a helicopter. Starting high in the sky — endless forests of pine, maple, birch and oak, but mostly pine — we’ll go swinging slowly down into a lumber camp. All the noise absent: saws, axes, crashing trees, shouting men, crackling branches, rushing river. . The organ music will give us a bit of distance from the macho thrill of the thing. A sort of permanent Boy Scout camp, if you will: logging is dangerous, exhausting labor that requires not only youth and strength but exceptional physical coordination. After watching the lumberjacks for a while, we move to the drivers, leaping with picks and hooks to guide the logs downstream. Close-up on their legs as they leap and slip from log to log, doing footwork that makes Fred Astaire look as if he’s standing still.

Down, down, down the Saint-Maurice River to the pulp-and-paper mills at Trois-Rivières, past that to the village we already know from forty years later, the little church in which Milo and Normand will be punished for drawing dirty pictures. . Moving slowly across the threshold of the church, we peek inside and see that it is packed, for Marie-Jeanne’s father, Pierre-Joseph Chabot, is a landowner known and respected by all. Turning, we see Marie-Jeanne herself — lovely, a white veil floating over her dark hair, cheeks pink and eyes bright with excitement. Arm in arm, she and her father hover in the entrance, Neil just behind them, waiting for the priest’s cue. At the last possible minute before the ceremony begins, Neil notices Marie-Jeanne has again buttoned her dress awry. And so, whereas the organ and congregation have already launched into the hymn that will bring them forward to the altar to pronounce their vows, he swiftly undoes the seventeen buttons in the back of his bride-to-be’s white dress and even more swiftly does them up again. Her father’s eyebrows rise but Marie-Jeanne smiles and blushes, bubbling over with love for her Irishman. She has obstinately preserved her virginity, and the prospect of its imminent loss is making her head spin. The three of them march down the aisle.

Dressed to the hilt, Marie-Jeanne’s brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins entirely fill the first two rows of pews. Neil has been adopted by this family, and before long he will be engulfed by it.

Never, ever, will they release their grip on him.

• • • • •

Awinita, August 1951

WE COULD START off with a close-up of Declan’s face. Before a word is uttered, his expression will say all. It’s the expression of an irresponsible young man whose girlfriend has just told him she is pregnant.

The camera retreats and we discover we’re again on Saint Helen’s Island. Declan and Awinita are sitting at a remove from each other, staring out over the water in different directions.