Nancy Huston - Black Dance

LIGHTS (Awinita has just turned on the bedside lamp).

“I not your wife, little boy.”

We’re in her eyes, in her body, when Declan’s fist makes contact with her jaw. The blow sends us careening backward to stare at a corner of the phony oakwood headboard.

“Fuck, man. Ya broke my fuckin’ jaw.”

“Did I?”

Declan is sincerely shocked.

“I tink so, asshole. . You’re destroyin’ your only source of income, you know dat? Who gonna come upstairs wit a girl got a twisty purple face?”

Declan breaks down. Blubbering drunkly, he kneels at the side of the bed and covers his face with his hands.

“I’m so sorry, Nita. I’m. . so. . sorry! Can you ever forgive me? I’m so, so sorry I hit you, Nita, you’re pregnant with my baby. . I’ll never lay a finger on you again, I swear it. I solemnly swear I’ll never lay a finger on you again. Oh, Nita, can you ever forgive me?”

His shoulders heave, and tears come trickling through his fingers. We put a hand on his head and, sobbing, he buries his face between our dark breasts.

“I’m out of sorts ‘cause I went home over the weekend. . hitchhiked all the way there. . Thought everybody’d be glad to see me. . but they didn’t give a fuck. . Didn’t pay me any attention. . I’m used to Marie-Thérèse being nasty, but this time it was especially. . my da. He lit into me, called me weak and spineless. . Said I had no gumption, no political convictions, nothin’. Said I was wasting my days on earth. How can a da talk that way to his son, Nita? I’ll never talk that way to my son, I can tell you that. . He called me spineless , Nita! My own da called me spineless !”

Gradually his sobs space themselves out and, with his head still weighing heavily on our chest, he begins to snore.

An X-ray image of Awinita’s spine, perfectly straight and normal. But suddenly her vertebrae turn into red balloons. They swell and expand until they literally become her, and the rest of her body is awkwardly curled up inside the colored, bobbing balls.

Awinita’s apartment on a Friday morning; Liz is staring at her.

“. . You pregnant again, Nita?”

“. .”

“Hey, Nita, don’t tell me you’re pregnant again. Don’t tell me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Sweetheart, that’s bad news. You know that?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to give you the address of somebody who. .”

“Nah, it’s a’right. . I like de guy.”

“You’re not supporting him, I hope.”

“Nah. . Well, a bit. Just till he finds work. I don’t give him much.”

“Listen, Nita. If I were you, I’d get rid of that baby before it’s too late. Your credit’s running out. If you’re not careful, you’re gonna find yourself in the street. And a pregnant Indian whore in the street, I don’t need to tell you that spells trouble. Sweetheart, you wanna get married, settle down and have seventeen kids like those rabbity French Canadians, go right ahead! It’s no skin off my back, just so long as you pay me back what you owe me. I got plenty of hot young babes just itchin’ to take your place. You met Alison yet, by the way?”

“Who’s Alison?”

“Moved into your room yesterday. She’ll be sleepin’ in Cheryl’s bed, seein’ as how Cheryl found herself a cushier job out at Trois-Rivières.”

“I tought dat was just a weekend gig.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t do part-time, Nita. You’re either with me or you’re without me. Is that clear?”

“Sure.”

“Then toe the line, I’m warning you.”

CUT to the girls’ bedroom.

Alison is a thin, fragile-looking Haitian girl, clearly a novice. Lorraine and Deena giggle as they teach her the ropes.

“It’s nothin’, man,” says Lorraine. “Don’t worry. I mean, what’s a dick, right? To them it may be the be-all and end-all, but to you? Nothin’ at all!”

“Yeah,” Deena chimes in. “Dicks come and go, you know what I mean?”

The two of them cackle wildly.

“Dat ain’t true,” says Awinita from where she’s standing in the doorway.

“Huh?” says Deena.

Awinita looks at them impassively, not moving. Speaks simply.

“I tought it was notin’,” she says, “but it ain’t. You take deir dick, deir pain comes along wid it. Dey leave de pain behind. Dey go off, and de pain stays behind wit you.”

FADE TO GRAY.

Amidst moving shadows, a monster shakes in evil, soundless laughter. Other shapes surge and swarm before our eyes, shivering darkly. There is a shooting star.

Maybe that shooting star is you, Milo darling? Maybe it’s your soul suddenly entering your body? Awinita has just passed the critical three-month point of her pregnancy.

• • • • •

6. cream. . chrism

Powerful nostalgia or lack. The term is virtually untranslatable.

Milo, 1970–75

WE NEED to think about what we want to keep in and keep out from now on, Milo, baby. As it stands, we’ve got something like, uh, ballpark estimate. . seven hours of film. Sure, there are a coupla precedents in the history of the medium — sublime trilogies such as Satyajit Ray’s Apu or Fritz Lang’s Doctor Mabuse . . But still, we have to be careful. Wouldn’t want the audience’s attention to wander, now, would we? Especially in this next sequence, which deals with the most chaotic period in your whole life. .

MAYBE START OFF with news footage from the spring of 1970, during which the Front de Liberation du Québec sets off one bomb after another, killing six people and inflicting considerable material damage on symbols of English domination in the province. Windsor Station in Montreal (through which Neil dragged little Milo the day they first met), monument to Queen Victoria, Dominion Bank, Queen’s Printing Press, Loyola College, private mailboxes in the cushy Anglo suburb of Westmount, Bank of Nova Scotia, Royal Air Force. . Milo can be seen gleaning these events, sometimes on TV as he chats and laughs with prostitutes in sleazy bars, more often over the transistor that keeps him company as he shoots up in the men’s room of the Voyageur bus station, wanders through the dark back streets of Old Montreal, and sleeps out under bridges.

A summer’s night. High on heroin, Milo sinks onto his back in the grass, looks up at the night sky and sees a shooting star. (Right, Milo, you’re the shooting star. Yeah, I get the joke, you’re the star of the film and you’re shooting up. Great, very good, very funny.) Segue from the shooting star into the whiteness of his heroin heaven at age eighteen. Not a bland, colorless, boring white — no, a divine, milky, creamy white; a frothy, nourishing, tepid white, sweet as fresh cow’s milk — not buttery, not fatty and stomach-turning, no, the milk and honey of the River Jordan! The drug picks him up in its soft white arms and gives him the sublime, melting, liquid sensation of being held and rocked and soothed and sung to, comforted and cuddled and kissed forever and ever, amen.

Yes, Astuto, I know how much you loved heroin.

One day in May, the whiteness in Milo’s brain turns into that of a flock of Canadian geese that fills the entire sky. Pan to the young man staring up at them. Clinging to his arm is a pert and pretty, dark-haired girl by the name of Viviane, also looking up. Their mouths are open in amazement. Milo recites a few lines from “The Wild Swans at Coole.”

De trees are in deir autumn beauty,

De woodland paths are dry,

Under de October twilight de water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon de brimming water among de stones