Nancy Huston - Black Dance

And indeed, one day. . there she was.

A dream scene. The young woman has her back to him when, approaching shore, he first catches sight of her. Her skin is tan, her hair blond and wavy to mid-back, and she is clad in a mere idea of a white bikini. Arriving in shallow water, Milo takes great splashing steps to conceal the rise of desire between his legs. Hearing the swoosh of water, the young woman turns and appraises him with a smile. She doesn’t flinch or blush or flee. At fifteen he is fully formed, and what she sees coming toward her is not a tall, skinny, gangly teenager but a solid, sturdy, brown young man, water running down his chest and thighs as he advances, rilling over his shoulders from his black-auburn hair (long and thick in summertime).

“That was quite a swim,” she says when he’s within hearing range. “I’m Kim.”

At once, to Milo’s ears, Kim is the sexiest name in the world. Its resonance vibrates with crème and chrème 6and whim and brim and sperm , all the way to his balls.

“I’m Milo,” he says.

And the dream continues, the dream continues, Kim takes his hand and leads him across the patio and into the elegant green-gabled cottage. By the time his eyes grow accustomed to the penumbra, the two of them have already floated through the kitchen into the bedroom, the young woman is already helping him remove his trunks and guiding him onto the bed and taking his astoundingly outstanding member in her hands. . Close-up on the boy’s expression, surprise then deeper delight as a woman’s mouth voyages him toward a new universe of pleasure, and when, not much later, his virginity gets lost in a rush of joy manyfold richer than anything he’d concocted with the help of Sophia Loren or Edith or the cows, Kim kisses him tenderly on the lips.

“Thank you, baby,” she says breathily. “You’re as marvelous as you look. . I needed that. You wanna meet my husband?”

Ever willing to deal with what life chooses to dish up to him, be it rape at the hands of a lumberjack cousin or enchantment in the arms of a blond model, Milo slips his swimming trunks back on and pads after her. Dyson’s office is next to the bedroom and the man has been there all along in a big leather working chair, reading a magazine and puffing on a cigar. Kim makes the introductions with graceful arm movements.

“Sherman, Milo. Milo, Sherman.”

“You speak English?” Dyson asks as he shakes hands with the strapping boy, and then, when Milo nods, “Know anything about gardening?”

“I know vegetables better dan flowers, but I learn quick.”

“He learns quick,” Kim confirms, repressing a giggle.

“Okay, you’re hired.”

CUT to a series of scenes from the remainder of that unforgettable summer of 1967 in which, day after day, Milo acquires the basics of horticulture and eroticism in languorous alternation: we see him trimming hedges, sculpting rosebushes, mowing the lawn, adding fertilizer to flower beds, and learning all about patience and perseverance in his amorous acrobatics with the older woman. Kim teaches him that there are heavens beyond the first, and that even the seventh is not the last. .

(I must say I’m profoundly grateful to Kim Dyson. Sexually speaking, your kindergarten was pretty atrocious but your grade school was top-notch. Few men are so lucky as to have had a kind, skillful, affectionate professor to initiate them into the subtleties of physical love. After a few weeks, the professorship turned into a tandem: Sherman joined the two of you in bed. And your luck back then, Astuto darling, has been mine these three decades. .)

Marie-Thérèse is incensed at what she divines is going on across the lake. . but every time she opens her mouth to light into him about it, Régis stares her down and she clamps it shut again, for Milo is suddenly making a significant contribution to the household finances.

Having few outlets for her fraught feelings toward her nephew, Marie-Thérèse goes back to ( bong ) hitting him over the head with the ( bong, bong ) telephone receiver. He lets it happen. He doesn’t much care. The world is rife with dangers. There are aunts who wield telephones, bears whose powerful arms and chests can crush the air from your lungs, snakes whose venom can stop your heart, wolves whose teeth can tear you limb from limb. You need to know about the world’s dangers and protect yourself. Milo covers his ears to prevent Marie-Thérèse from doing further damage to his hearing.

One day, though, her words pierce through the cotton fleece of fog in his brain and hit him in the heart:

“You ungrateful brat! You evil seed, you good-for-nothing! I wish I’d never agreed to take you in! You love the gutter, it’s in your blood, your grandfather should have left you there.” (Bong!) “I was going to have a house built next door just for you, a nice place you could live in when you grow up. But if you wanna fritter your time away, all right, fine, no point my breaking my back to make something out of you! Go join your slut of a mother and your delinquent of a father on Saint Catherine Street! That’s where they made you! Go ahead, go back where you belong, no skin off my back!” (Bong!)

He carefully stores in his memory the words Saint Catherine Street .

Just before summer’s end, Marie-Thérèse hits upon the only punishment that can really get to him: she has found him another boarding school.

“A real Catholic school, this time,” she declares.

“You mean,” says Neil “. . with morning and evening prayer, catechism and confession, the whole kit and kaboodle?”

“Yes, of course! The kid needs to be taken into hand. He’s the only one in his class not to have been confirmed yet. We have to straighten him up. .”

On the eve of Milo’s departure, Neil summons him to his study.

“It hurts me, my boy, to think of you struggling with the selfsame soul fetters as I did at your age. . But no matter what they do to you, don’t go to confession. Tell those meddling priests that what goes on in your body and soul is none of their flaming business! Here, put these in your suitcase. These three small volumes will stand you in better stead than a thousand prying priests.”

The books are Homer’s Odyssey , Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

THE ENSUING YEAR can be compressed into a single minute: We see Milo attending catechism classes. . using a photo of Kim — and memories, ah memories — for his solitary pleasure. . hiding Homer’s Odyssey behind his geography book when he’s under supervision in the study hall. . especially playing hockey. Reviving skating reflexes learned years ago with the Manders family, he throws himself into the game with a vengeance, passing the puck, swerving on the ice, moving strong and low and fast, skating backward, forward and sideways, scoring point after point. . but eschewing rowdy displays of comradeship, never letting the other players, with their enormous gloves, thickly padded knees, shoulders and groins, bobbing helmets and clacking sticks, throng round to hug and pat and jostle him when he scores, preferring always, when not on the ice, to wait alone in the rafters reading Don Quixote . . We see him in church, with Othello hidden inside his hymnbook. . using a photo of Jane Fonda in Barbarella . . kneeling at the altar to take communion with twenty other boys. . striking up a conversation with a boy he sees reading Aeschylus and Euripides in the library — a shy, overweight, devout, bespectacled, pimpled adolescent whose nickname is Timide. Kneeing the testicles of a tall, blond, snotty student named Augustin, for having teased Timide. . sitting across from Timide during meals in the large dining hall and making him explode with laughter, scattering crumbs in all directions. . teaching Timide to smoke without coughing and to fend off the insinuating words and fingers of the priests. . Stealing extra food from the kitchen so that he and Timide can snack in the dorm at midnight. . descending deep into himself so as not to feel the pain when caught and whipped by one of the sisters. . gluing samples of leaves and flowers into his botany album, labeling them carefully and showing them to Timide. . stealing wine from the chalice in church and sharing it with Timide. . being dragged to a confessions box on a Friday morning. .