Nancy Huston - Black Dance

Tolstoy in no way jeopardized his literary greatness by cutting wood with his muzhiks, because he did so on his own property, in the country and the language of his birth. He was not hampered and handicapped at every step by foreignness, but remained master of the situation. The violent changes inflicted by exile plunge you back into the immaturity and dependency of childhood. They turn you into a mumbling, stumbling, stuttering nincompoop, incapable of running your own life. Bad enough for the common mortal, this state of affairs is disastrous for the writer. In the space of a mere few days — the time it takes to travel from the Old Country to the New — he very literally loses the ground beneath his feet. His pen’s feverish activity is turned to ice by a series of paralyzing questions (I can correct these metaphors later): Who are my readers? Who are my characters? What is my subject?

Since crossing the Atlantic, I’ve met precious few people who ever heard of the Liffey, the Easter Rising, Padraic Pearse or Major John MacBride; French Canadians care not one whit about the Irish rebels, Sinn Féin, or the act recently passed by British Parliament allowing Protestant Unionists in the North to retain control of the six counties of Ulster. My country is splitting in two, Good Lord, and so is my head. . Mrs. McGuire told me that here in Montreal in 1916, only a couple of months after the Easter Rising, there was an anticonscription demonstration at the Place des Armes. The French Canadians didn’t want to be enrolled in English Canada’s war — which is to say England’s war — any more than the Irish did. Mrs. McGuire can see the analogy because, like me, she has a foot on either side of the ocean. But if my future reading public is made up exclusively of Irish-born residents of Quebec, what stories can I, should I, must I tell? I’m losing my stories! They’re dying on my lips!

Just as Neil tearfully scribbles in his notebook They’re dying on my lips! we hear a blood-curdling female scream. The camera rushes back to film him as he leaps to his feet and bolts from the woodshed, letting pencil and notebook tumble to the floor.

CUT to the bedroom in which Marie-Jeanne has just given birth to their first son. The mother is still flat on her back, but the child has already vanished. Several devout, efficient females — her mother, a couple of older sisters or cousins (he can never keep them straight), a nurse and a young midwife named Marie-Louise — rush to and fro, taking care of everything in French.

Neil has become a stranger in his own home. No, it is not even his own home. He has become a stranger, period.

“Is it a boy?” he asks timidly from the doorway, not quite daring to cross into the room.

“Yes, sir,” says Marie-Louise as she strides down the hallway, arms piled high with bloody sheets. “Yes, it’s a little boy. Mrs. Noirlac wants to name it Pierre-Joseph, after her father.”

Neil winces.

CUT to that evening: At last the little family is alone together. The baby sucks fiercely at Marie-Jeanne’s breast, and her face is suffused with light.

“All men are Joseph,” says Neil.

“What, darling?” says Marie-Jeanne. “What are you mumbling in your beard?”

“All men are Joseph,” he repeats. “Every childbirth is a Nativity, know what I mean? It’s between mother and child. I sit here looking at the two of you, and you shine so brightly it makes my eyes hurt. Joseph is irrelevant. It’s obvious he can’t be the father.”

“Neil!” says Marie-Jeanne with a laugh like the soft jingling of sleigh bells. “Don’t tell me you think I cheated on you!”

“No, but our baby’s the child of God. It’s a miracle, every childbirth is a miracle. Joseph has nothing to do with it and he knows it. He sits there in the stable, feeling silly and out of place. . Uh. . anything I can do to make you more comfortable, dear? Want me to smooth out the hay under your rear end?”

“What are you trying to tell me, sweet Neil?”

“Nothing, just that. .”

Moving over to the window, Neil stares out into the gathering dark.

“All I’m trying to say is that. . I’m somebody, too.”

“What do you mean? Of course you’re somebody!”

“I mean, I make an effort, I do my best to adapt, to learn everything there is to learn about maple trees, spruce trees, moose and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. . but I, too, come from somewhere, for the love of God! I, too, have a past, a history. . I don’t want for my whole life to be drowned here erased and replaced by yours. . So all I’m asking is that you take one little step toward my own history.”

“What kind of step? Oh! Did you hear that? He burped!”

“Leave me the boys.”

“Sorry?”

“We’ll divide the children up between us. You’ll take the girls, choose their names, talk to them in French, bring them up to be nice little Catholic women from Quebec. . and I’ll take the boys: Irish names, English language and a lay education.”

Marie-Jeanne looks at her son, her husband, her son. She loves Neil with all her heart, but dreads her father’s ire.

“Otherwise,” says Neil, raising his voice, “if everything I’ve ever been and done gets wiped out, I don’t know how I can ever be a man in this household, much less a writer. Please understand me, Marie-Jeanne: I can’t create works literature if I feel I have no heir, no hope of passing on my lore and learning.”

Marie-Jeanne is still hesitant. Neil tries another tack.

“Besides, the sad truth of the matter is that anglophones earn a better living in Quebec than francophones. They’re the ones who run businesses, they’re taking over the pulp-and-paper industry. . The future is anglophone. If you want our sons to make something of themselves. .”

“Well, okay,” says Marie-Jeanne with a sigh. “I have to admit I can see your point.”

“So this one won’t be named Pierre-Joseph, okay? He’ll be named Thom.”

“. . All right.”

CUT to a close-up of a tiny coffin being lowered into a tiny grave. Drawing back, we see a few dozen members of the Chabot family gathered in the town churchyard, their faces glistening with tears. Neil hugs Marie-Jeanne to his side. The camera moves back in to read the words engraved on the tombstone: THOM NOIRLAC. 3 SEPTEMBRE 1920–17 SEPTEMBRE 1920.

• • • • •

Awinita, September 1951

TOTAL DARKNESS. BLACK screen. It’s four A.M. in the cruddy bedroom above the bar. Declan’s speech is distinctly slurred (so to speak).

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. . I promise you, Nita. Sumpin’ll turn up.”

“You already said dat.”

“I know, but this time I mean it. Soon’s our baby’s born, I’ll clean up my act.”

“Dat’s a whole six months from now, Deck.”

“Yeah, but jobs are always scarce in September. My chances’ll be better in the spring.”

“Why’s dat?”

“I heard tell.”

“Where’d you hear tell? In jail?”

He hits her. We don’t see the blow, only hear it, and Awinita’s yelp of indignation.

“Hey! Shit, Deck!”

“Don’t talk down to me, Nita. With seven sisters, I had enough o’ women talkin’ down to me since I was born.”

“Yeah? Well, I had enough o’ guys hittin’ me.”

“That’s not what they do to you. They screw you. Every Tom, Dick, ‘n’ Harry’s got the right to screw you. I’m the only who has to ask permission.”

“Least it makes you special. . You oughta be grateful to ‘em for screwing me. It’s deir money you live off.”

“Oh, thank you, Tom! Thank you, Dick! Thank you, Harry! Specially Dick. Thank you for fuckin’ my wife, you great big Dick!”