Nancy Huston - Black Dance

“Please don’t talk to my husband in that tone of voice,” says Marie-Thérèse. “The difference is that the Indians didn’t do any work on the land! We took wild forestland and tamed it by the sweat of our brow, and we’re not gonna let a bunch of damned Englishmen come and steal the fruits of our hard labor!”

“Be careful, Marie-Thérèse,” says Marie-Jeanne. “When you say damned Englishmen, you’re also talking about your own brothers. Don’t forget that! Who knows? Maybe someday they’ll be head of the Hudson’s Bay Company!”

“My brothers, run an enterprise? With the education our father gave them? Don’t make me laugh!. . They’re fully qualified for. . nothing at all! And I mean nothing! Even here on the property they never lift a finger to help. I don’t know what they’ll be when they grow up, Mommy, but they won’t be big bosses, that’s for sure. You can burn me at the stake if I’m wrong.”

“Yeah, let’s burn her at the stake!” says Declan. “That used to be a witch’s test: if you’re a witch you won’t burn. Come on, tie yourself to the stake, you ol’ witch, you got nothin’ to fear!”

“Declan, that’s enough out of you,” says Marie-Jeanne. “I’ll ask you not to open your mouth between now and the end of the meal.”

“If I can’t open my mouth I can’t eat,” Declan says, shoving back his chair. “You guys have spoiled my appetite with all your quarreling. I’m sick of this family.”

“Why don’t you run away?” suggests an older brother.

“Best idea I heard in weeks.”

“Mommy! Mommy!” a younger sister pipes up. “Declan’s gonna run away from home!”

Régis gets to his feet, raises his wineglass, and loudly recites the opening paragraph of Father Savard’s novel: “ Having drawn a map of the new continent, from Gaspé to Montreal and from Saint-Jean-d’Iberville to Ungava, we declared: here, everything we have brought with us . .”

Rising in turn, Neil drowns out his son-in-law’s schoolboy recitation with his Irish roar, booming out a verse from “The Tower”:

I leave both faith and pride

To young upstanding men

Climbing up the mountain-side,

That under bursting dawn

They may drop a fly. .

Under pressure to prove to his young wife that her father’s virility won’t cause his own to falter, Régis raises his voice. Unfortunately, it gets higher instead of louder, and he succeeds only in squeaking: “. . our religion, our language, our virtues and even our defects will henceforth be considered sacred and intangible, and must remain so to the end of time.”

Simultaneously, Neil concludes:

“Being of that metal made

Till it was broken by

This sedentary trade.

. . Broken!” he adds. “D’ye hear that, all of ye? The sedentary trade of poetry can break the metal of which young men are made. Smash it to pieces !”

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” pleads one of the younger girls, trying to fix the fiasco.

At this Marie-Jeanne, both arms clutched round her belly, collapses sobbing on the table.

CUT to the smoldering embers of the fire. The house is still; everyone has gone off to bed except Neil and Régis, the two men whose wives are expecting babies. If only subliminally, both are aware that this fact was not for nothing in the flare-up between them over dinner. Another bottle has been found, and they are well into it. Throughout the following dialogue, the camera will stay on the fire grate.

“Félix-Antoine Savard does have a certain flair, I grant you that,” says Neil, puffing on his pipe.

“It sound quite nice,” reciprocates Régis, “zis poem de. . comment. . how you say his name ees? Keats?”

“No, not Keats. Keats is a British poet. Yeats, William Butler Yeats. An Irishman. The greatest poet since Shakespeare. He died last year. It kills me that he died.”

“I’m sorry. He was your friend?”

“Yes. Yes, he was my friend. . in another life. He’s the one who told me to come to Canada.”

“Really. To break metal with poetry, zat is quite strong.”

“He desperately wanted to believe that because he felt his poetic gift waning as he aged and it scared him horribly. Not only his gift but. . the rest as well. The other kinds of. . potency.”

“Wid women?”

“Yes, with women. He’d always felt that physical love and poetic inspiration were connected in him. To lose one was to lose the other. .”

“Estonishing!”

Neil begins to laugh:

“In 1933, a few years after he wrote that poem, he underwent an operation at the hands of a famous London specialist.”

Trying to repress a giggle, Régis winds up snorting.

“No! Operate on. . down dere?”

“A surgeon by the name of Haire, himself a homosexual, incidentally, who offered men what he called the Steinach rejuvenation operation, to restore all their powers.”

Now very drunk, the two men sit there laughing helplessly together.

“And did it work?” pants Régis.

“Halfway,” answers Neil when he can speak. “Yes, he was delighted with the result for half of his problems, and claimed he’d been given a second puberty.”

“Which half?” shrieks Régis.

“Well,” says Neil, struggling to sober up and speak his answer straight, “in the five years that remained to him to live, he managed to. . write a few more good poems!”

The fire’s last ember fades and dies.

BLACKOUT.

• • • • •

Awinita, March 1952

WELL, ASTUTO, WE’VE got a fair amount of whittling down to do, but on the whole I’m proud of us. The Noirlac-Schwarz team is still going strong. Structure’s there, solid, I can feel it. Just one more little piece to fit into the puzzle.

Yeah, sure, I told you we’d change the name. No problem. Maybe we could use your real name. Your Cree name, which no one in the world would recognize. Has it come back to you in the meantime?. .

IN HER RARE moments of lucidity between fixes, Awinita plans her getaway down to the last detail. She’ll pay Liz back what she owes her. Overall, the woman has been kind to her, and Awinita is loath to give whites the least justification for bad-mouthing Indians.

In the cruddy little bedroom above the bar, Don hands her an advance of two hundred dollars and flashes his white-toothed smile at her.

“Don’t spend it all in one place! You’ll see, baby. You’ll be dealing with important people from now on. Wealthy businessmen, members of Parliament, police chiefs and the like. No more of this riffraff you’ve been putting up with. You’re of age, aren’t you, Nita? Tell me the truth. How old are you?”

“Soon twenny.”

“Ouch! Nineteen going on twenty-one, eh?”

“But I los’ my papers.”

“Well, that’s no sweat, we’ll make you new ones. We should change your name, too, while we’re at it. Find you a nice, sexy, new one. Nita’s a bit too. . neat , know what I mean? How ‘bout. . er. . Zsa Zsa, like Zsa Zsa Gabor? Zsa Zsa! You like that?”

“Okay wit me.”

“Kiss me, gorgeous. Ahhhh. . with a new hairdo, a bit of lipstick, a slinky gold lamé dress and spike-heeled sandals, you’ll knock ‘em out, believe you me!”

“Need some time to get back into shape, after de baby.”

“Sure you’ll need time. ‘Course you’ll need time. Er. . how long do you think? Coupla days?”

“Coupla weeks, more like it.”

“Ha! Acting the princess already, are we? Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Main thing is to have your suitcase all ready and packed when you leave for the hospital, so my chauffeur can pick you up when you’re done. An express delivery, let’s hope! You started packing yet?”