Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

I refuse to answer.

“I suppose you justified yourself by the argument of necessity. You had to do it. And I sympathize, Harry.” He touches my arm in his best bedside manner. “Because I happen to believe that true morality consists in recognizing necessity and then summoning up the courage to act in accordance with it. Which you did – after a fashion. But where we seem to part ways is that I believe this morality is only truly honourable when we follow it to its logical conclusion, and let it be our guide in the large questions as well as the petty ones.”

“Large questions? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Was it something I said about the Jews that got you up on your high horse, Harry? Fitz tells me you’re romantically involved with a Jewess – Rachel Gold I think he said her name is. Now I have no objections to such alliances when they are purely physical ones. Surrender your body to a woman if you must, but remember to keep your independence and integrity intact. I suspect this woman has been a bad influence on you. The Jews are a sentimental and emotional people, Harry. We need only look at the pictures they make to confirm it. Which is why they are so dangerous. The morality of necessity – of survival – has no room for sentimentality. The Bolsheviks are not sentimental. The Fascists are not sentimental. The Americans who made this country were not sentimental. Far from it. Do you need proof? While I was researching our picture I made a point of reading the diaries and journals of early traders and settlers. One entry in particular made a great impression on me. It was simply two lines written on September 30, 1869. ‘Dug potatoes this morning. Shot an Indian.’ That was all. It was not accompanied by any tortured self-examination of conscience. Because the diarist knew his enemy would not have indulged in anything of the kind if he had killed him. The Indian, we might say, was a Bolshevik in a loincloth. Kill or be killed. They both understood compromise between them was impossible.”

“Perhaps it was not up to the Indian to compromise. Ever consider that?”

“What would you advocate, Harry? Offering your throat to the knife because you might be wrong? History deals us our hand and we must play it. We do not choose our enemies. Circumstances choose them for us. I see the enemies who threaten my country. But I refuse to offer my throat to them.” He tips forward in his chair, one hand resting on the bed. “I am not preaching anything new, Harry. I am only saying what Christ and Abraham Lincoln said before me, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ That is a fact.”

“What are we talking about? Immigrants?”

“In part.”

“Immigrants like Fitz. Paddies and bog-trotters.”

“Fuck you,” says Fitz from the doorway.

“Harry, you answer clear thinking with half-baked cleverness. Don’t you believe Fitz is capable of writing, ‘Dug potatoes this morning. Shot an Indian’?”

The shooting of the picture has obviously taken a toll on Chance; the once plump face has been brought to the brink of haggardness, and the eyes – the eyes are pleading with me.

“The house must stand. Lincoln fought a war to keep it standing, pitted blood brother against blood brother. And then Mr. Griffith made a picture, made The Birth of a Nation , and reconciled the blood of North and South in the chalice of art. Now it is necessary to go one step further. If Griffith wrote history in lightning, the time has now come to rewrite history in lightning. Yes, rewrite the history of the foreigner, erase completely those sentimental flowers of memory and light their minds with the glory of American lightning.”

“You mean your lightning.”

“Of course, my lightning. And yours too. That is the last thing I came to tell you. You are to have a writing credit for the picture.”

“Fuck your writing credit. Keep my name off the picture.”

Chance falls back in the chair. He smiles to himself, to the wall, to Fitz. “Harry,” he says, “you can’t deny your responsibility, pretend you had no hand in this. Even Judas played a part in Christ’s teaching. Have you forgotten our conversations? I cannot emphasize enough how important they were to me. To speak to someone with the intelligence to understand what I was saying, someone who could grasp my ideas in a way that Fitz could not – that gave me the faith and heart to continue. And then the way you played McAdoo, discreetly, delicately, so he hardly realized the hook was in his mouth – well, Fitz couldn’t have done it and neither could I. I have no doubt that I have you to thank for McAdoo.” He pauses for a moment, head tilted back, weighing what he is about to say. “Earlier, when I said I had never needed you – I confess that perhaps that was not quite the whole truth. Honesty forces me to concede that. But when you said you didn’t have the talent to write my scenario, you were right. I didn’t know that you were right; I only felt betrayed. But your betrayal gave me the resolve to finish what you had started. Put another way: Could Christ have endured the cross without Judas’ face hung in the sky before him? And yet I am able to forgive you your treachery, to acknowledge your help and your assistance.” He looks directly at me, expecting thanks for his forgiveness. When it doesn’t come, his bright blue eyes cloud with obscure emotion, or perhaps it is only a haze of fatigue. “You may wash your hands of me, Harry, but not your part in my picture. That is for the record.” He gets to his feet. I sense his reluctance to leave, to finish with me despite his exhaustion. He does not want to let me go. But in the end all he has to say is, “I will see that you are provided with a ticket for premiere night. All of Hollywood will be there. I intend to see to that.” He moves toward Fitz and the door.

“All of Hollywood but me!” I shout at his back. “I don’t want your ticket!”

He stops, turns back toward the bed. One hand fumbles in the air, trying to summon the words. “But of course you want it,” he says at last, mildly. “Because you will want to see what you have done.”

Then the two of them are gone.

Outside it was full dark. They sat in Farwell’s trading room in the wan radiance of a single kerosene lamp turned low and smoking on the counter, shadows towering on the log walls whenever one of them got up and helped himself to the bottle of red eye resting on a hogshead. Now and then a trickle of dirt sifted down and sprinkled the floor whenever Frenchie Devereux shifted position on the sod roof up above where he sat sentinel. Four more men were posted at each corner of the stockade.

Farwell sat perched on a sack of flour, doleful head in his hands. Hardwick had made it plain to him that tomorrow the wolfers were pulling out. Farwell knew if he elected to stay behind he would be killed by the Indians for his part in this day’s doings. Moses Solomon was abandoning his post, too. His relations with the Assiniboine had never been good, and his position was every bit as precarious as his competitor’s. Some white man was going to have to pay for the thirty-odd corpses the coyotes were picking over. The two traders planned to haul what goods they could back to Fort Benton in Red River carts, burn the posts and any remaining supplies to keep them out of the hands of the Indians. Hardwick’s nasty temper had put paid to a winter’s work.

The Englishman’s boy sat on the floor beside the Eagle’s body, which was shrouded in a buffalo robe lashed tight with rawhide thongs. Across the room, crazy Scotty was squeezed in a corner, peering terrified over the top of his writing book. The rest of the men diced on a blanket on the floor, sniggering like schoolboys at the sounds coming from the back room while Hardwick cracked wise. “Lord, listen to that old steam locomotive chug. Maybe you ought to go in there and throw a little coal in his boiler, Harper, so’s he can finally get where he’s going.”