Nancy Huston - Black Dance

Our motionless face in the mirror gradually turns into a black mask with huge eyeholes and a grinning, gaping mouth hole.

CUT to later that morning, a coffee shop a couple of doors down Saint Catherine Street. Sitting in front of a cup of untouched coffee, Awinita stares at a fleck of gold in the Formica table. Declan squeezes both her hands in his.

“Jesus Christ, Nita. Holy Moses. Oh, shit. Deena’s dead? Holy shit, I can’t believe it. Baby, we gotta get you outta that dump. And I mean now , before you have our child. We just can’t take the risk, Nita. Deena strangled, Jesus, I can’t believe it. Dja know her family?”

“How could I? I’m Cree, she Mohawk. Our reserves are days apart.”

“Okay, okay! Don’t look at me like I’m an idiot! I got enough women in my life look at me that way. . You listening to me, Nita?”

“. . Yeah.”

Declan checks to make sure no waitresses are in sight before releasing her hands and taking a swig from the flask in his jacket pocket.

“Well, you better be listening. Once we’re married, I want this talkin’ back to stop, that clear?”

Silence.

“You should get off the game, Nita, find some other line o’ work. I mean, look what happened to poor Deena, Jesus.”

Close-up on our limp, still hands and, next to them, the gold fleck in the Formica table. Hold this image for a few long seconds.

CUT to the cruddy little bedroom above the bar, that same evening. After setting ten dollars on the table under the window, our new client starts to undress. He’s a tall, flint-haired, business-suited anglophone in his midfifties. Gold watch, gold tiepin (the kind of elegance you and I, Milo, have always heartily despised).

“My name’s Don,” he announces, approaching us with a bobbing erection. “What’s yours, my lovely?”

CUT to a few minutes later: the man’s face in the throes of orgasm.

Silence.

Still later, lying next to us in bed, Don strokes our large round tummy.

“So has this baby got a dad, Nita?”

“Not mucha one.”

“When are you due?”

“Coupla monts, I tink.”

“Pregnancy going all right?”

“Wha? Yeah, sure. No problem.”

“What will you do with the child once it’s born? Will you raise it yourself?”

“Nah. . I give it up for adoption.”

“And then?”

“Den what?”

“Yes, then what?”

“. .”

“What will you do next, my lovely?”

“Keep on workin’, I guess.”

“Wouldn’t you like to earn more money than you do here?”

“Sure.”

“Wouldn’t you like to buy yourself some pretty clothes? Be able to go to the hairdresser’s every now and then?”

“. .”

“Look at me, Nita.”

We look into his eyes.

“Can you kiss me, Nita?”

“Nah. . I don’t do kisses.”

“Look at me, sweetheart. Can you kiss me on the lips? Can you?”

Very slowly, we move toward the well-shaven face of the gray-haired asshole stranger of a white American businessman. Extreme close-up on the crow’s feet at the corner of his left eye.

“Ah. . that was marvelous. Know what I think, Nita? I think you should be working in a classier place than this one. Don’t you agree?. . Do you trust me, Nita? Just say the word and I’ll give you a room of your own in my penthouse. You’ll earn much better money and be able to buy everything your heart desires.”

Awinita reaches out her hands to herself in a gesture of complete trust .

“Tell me, my lovely, will you come to me as soon as you’ve had your baby?”

“Okay.”

“Oh, Nita! You make me so happy! Give me another kiss, my darling, to seal the agreement between us.”

Giving in to the fatigue, the heroin, the hope, and the sense of being a little girl again, we sink into the man’s arms and allow him to smother our face, neck, swollen breasts and stomach with kisses.

Trees, waving conspiratorially. Each leaf clear-cut and brightly beautiful. The form of a face appears in their midst. At first it frowns. Then it smiles.

“Yes,” we say. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Get me out of here, Don. Yes.”

How you doing, Astuto? The machine grinds on to the best of its ability, zingzing kerplunk . Cogs spin and whir, the projector projects, the connector connects, generations criss and cross, and we begin to sense that before long the whole kit and caboodle will be over. I’ve always been impressed by the fact that human beings are hardwired to respond emotionally to stories. Unless you bore them stiff with stuff like Last Year at Marienbad , they’ll start feeling moved about two-thirds of the way through any book or movie. We’re well past the two-thirds point now; I’d say we’re at about nine-tenths.

Hey, babe. We’ve been working all night. Look! Sky’s changing from dark gray to light gray. What else is new? It’s November in the city of Montreal. Sun’s coming up. So to speak. Sun’s not moving; Earth is moving. Before you know it, the nurses will be barging in with breakfast. Jesus, Milo, you must be starving! Me? No, no, I don’t get hungry. Except for sex, of course. Here. . gimme a kiss. . Oh, as Don would say. . that was marvelous!

Astuto, I’m very tired all of a sudden. Think I’ll lie down myself, if you don’t mind. Nah, no need to move over, I don’t take up any room. . just need to rest for a while.

• • • • •

Literally, false animal. Synonymous with cunning or crafty — always a compliment for a capoeirista.

Milo, 1990–2005

EUGÉNIO BECAME YOUR son, Astuto. I mean, what could be more logical than for an Irish-Quebecker-Cree bastard like yourself to have an Afro-Caribbean son? He was your child even if you couldn’t adopt him legally, and you took far better care of him than you did of yourself.

Your inquiries had brought you precious little information about his mother. However, the thumbnail sketch reluctantly provided by the police — teenager, prostitute, dead — was more than enough. You loved the boy with a vengeance. Sought and found pretexts to travel to Brazil as often as possible, accepting any and every job that could take you there, including scripting tourist trash on the beaches of Arraial d’Ajuda or Porto Seguro. The rest of the time you learned Portuguese, kept up with Eugénio’s school reports, sent money to his foster mother, and regularly requested photos of the child in exchange.

Strange as it may seem, Eugénio sewed your ragtag life together. You’d soon be fifty, Milo, darling. Your wild and gorgeous energy had begun to wane, but you could feel it rising in your son. What your muscles lost, his gained. And your black holes were fewer and farther between, because the thought of Eugénio kept you going.

Flash scenes from those years: Milo and Eugénio, both wearing white pants, walking and talking together in the favela of Saens Peña. Laughing. Practicing capoeira together at the Senzala Academy. Classes were held way up at the top of the small and shabby Olympico Club in Copacabana, with its rehearsal room built around the naked rock of a tiny mountain. The boy’s eyes shine as he watches his Canadian protector kick-spin and feint.

For me, those were the halcyon years. Our film Science and Sorcery won a prize, and my career skyrocketed — suddenly I was being solicited and feted left and right. I admit I enjoyed that brief stint as a celebrity; never would this misfit Jewish kid from Buenos Aires have imagined he’d one day be jetting business class from Sundance to Berlin and from Venice to Locarno, drinking champagne, smoking Cuban cigars and watching his bank account grow fat. Though our paths crossed less often, whenever we did meet our love was there at once, as rich as on day one. We still fucked like gods (not Yahweh, not Allah, not Our Father Almighty — God forbid! — but the horniest pagan deities of ancient Greece).