Black Dance (16 page)

“A Molson would be lovely, thanks. And if the young lady doesn’t mind, bring her another glass of whatever she’s drinking. I need help to celebrate.”

“Do you mind, miss?” Irwin asks Awinita, as if he hadn’t seen her several hundred times before.

When she turns to Neil, some part of Awinita’s brain probably registers the fact that his eyes are the same shade of green as Declan’s. But the heroin muddles her thinking, and besides, she’s had johns with eyes of every color in the rainbow, even a couple without eyes.

“Tank you, sir,” she says. “What you celebratin’?”

“The Virgin Mary just went hydroelectric!” Neil proclaims in a loud voice, raising his glass to all and sundry.

“Somebody turn her on?” Awinita asks.

Neil shouts with laughter. At sixty, having chosen, like Yeats, to spend the final years of his life as a Mad Old Man, he no longer cares what people think of him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our dear premier, Maurice Duplessis, made a big speech today (I’m sure you all heard it on CBC) to inaugurate a new hydroelectric installation at Beauharnois. Isn’t that fantastic? Come on, sing along with Duplessis, everyone, and raise your glasses to Hydro-Québec!!”

“You got a problem with Duplessis, Irishman?” says one of the tipsier customers, lurching up to Neil.

“Not at all, except that he also made a big speech out at Notre-Dame-du-Cap the other day (I’m sure you all heard it on CBC) officially dedicating our Belle Province de Québec to the Virgin Mary. Everyone who was anyone was there!
Le clergé, les grands journaux, tout le monde
. And he made sure we found out that just a stone’s throw upriver, at Le Paradis des Sports hotel on Lac des Piles, his old pal Georges Cossette would be allowed to sell
liquor without a license . . . except during Sunday Mass, of course, ha-ha-ha!”

“I know dat place,” murmurs Awinita. “Not far from Grand-Mère, right? I got a friend who work up dere.”

“That’s right. Everybody hear that? The young lady has friends who work at Le Paradis des Sports. I’m certain they’re on excellent terms with Georges Cossette, Maurice Duplessis, and other gentlemen of the same circles. And I’m certain that with a little extra persuasion, they will also be on good terms with the American jazzmen who come to play in that prestigious establishment. Isn’t that fantastic?”

“Fuck off, you bloody Mick!” the drunken customer blares. “Go home and screw those druids of yours if you’re not happy here! Duplessis is a good man!”

“He’s a man of my bleedin’ age!” roars Neil, his green eyes ablaze, his salt-and-pepper beard abristle. “And having lived in the province of Quebec for thirty-three years now, I have the right to say what I think of Maurice Duplessis, for the luva Christ! I think Maurice Duplessis is one arsehole of an opportunist, who sings the praises of the Good Virgin when he needs to wangle votes from the populace, and of Hydro-Québec when he needs to attract investment from the Brits! That’s what I think! It’s a free country!”

“Free, my ass,” says Awinita.

But no one hears her because Neil and the drunken customer have come to blows and the others are shouting and taking sides and Irwin is busy shooing the whole testosterone-drenched free-for-all out of the bar and onto the sidewalk, and this scene will hopefully give our spectators some badly needed comic relief.

CUT to a Friday morning scene in the kitchen with Liz.

“It just doesn’t tally, Nita.”

“. . .”

“Who do you think you’re fooling? Irwin’s at the bar every night, he keeps track of the number of guys each girl goes up with. His count for you this week is twenty-nine, yours is seventeen, so I wanna know what happened to the other twelve. What happened to the other twelve, Nita? You keep this up, sweetheart, and you’re out of here. Now tell me the truth. Where’s your money going?”

“Just . . .”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Nita. You supporting a boyfriend, a habit, or both?”

Awinita doesn’t avert her gaze. Her face is impassive.

“Been doin’ a bit o’ H.”

Liz’s expression alters.

“Oh, no. Oh, no. That’s a lousy idea, sweetheart. Poppers are one thing, okay. Long as you don’t overdo it, they help get you through your working night. But H . . . Nah, I’ve lost too many girls to H, honey . . . I don’t want you on that shit. It’s death, man. How long you been shootin’ up?”

“Not long.”

“Okay, listen. I’ll give you one chance, not two. I’ll pay for you to get cleaned up. As I’ve told you before, this is not a charity operation; I’m doin’ it as a favor to myself. I’ve invested good money in you, and I don’t wanna lose my investment. That clear?”

CUT to a room in a private medical clinic. Awinita, trembling and trickling sweat, stands at a window that gives onto a white wall. We grip the windowsill, then our stomach . . .

The camera, which is our gaze, explores the room, watches objects writhe with a furtive life of their own, receives reality as sheer horror. The window is light, then dark, then light, then dark. Awinita’s withdrawal lasts twenty-nine days and twenty-nine nights . . .

(Sound track: to be dealt with later. Yeah, Milo, I agree—it should be rough but not redundant, not jejunely illustrative of the
pain your mother is enduring. Maybe just slip an MP3 into the vortex of a garbage incinerator—something like that?)

Calmer now, we are lying on the bed, on top of the bedspread, staring up at the ceiling.

A jack-in-the-box suddenly springs out of a colored block and starts bouncing gaily around. The floor of the room is dotted with other blocks, no doubt containing other jack-in-the-boxes. It runs slam-bang into a closed door, topples backward in a somersault, and finds itself right-side up again, joyous and unscathed. Just then the door opens and the Bad Giant appears. He raises his huge, hairy foot and brings it down on the jack-in-the-box, crushing it . . . but the spring is strong and it bounces up again, knocking the Bad Giant flat on his back.

Awinita sits up in bed and rings for the nurse.

“I’m clean,” she tells her.

•    •    •    •    •

2. —What c’n I get ya?

3. —Can I take your order?

4. —
What?
. . . A chin?

5. —Well, with those words you’d be better at the tailor’s than in a coffee shop. Wanna coffee?

VII

MALANDRO

Delinquent, bandit, bad boy. In the early twentieth century, the
malandro
was an individual whose way of life was based entirely on improvisation.

Milo, 1967–70

UPON RETURNING TO
the farm after Oscar’s death, Milo goes into a black hole and stays there. Weeks, months maybe—he loses track of time. Goes through chores and homework, robotlike. No one can reach him.

Neil is worried—
Won’t you come up and read with me, Milo?
—no, he will not, not yet. He needs to swathe his being in protective robes of silence and shadow, plunge into somber splendor, the closets of his early childhood, the blackout screen at the end of TV movies, and also, when summer finally rolls around again, the deepest, darkest water at the center of Lac des Piles . . .

(I’m seeing more and more clearly that what you love when you love somebody are that person’s loves. Loving you, Milo, means loving your love for Oscar. Neil. Lac des Piles . . . )

On the far side of the lake is an
Anne of Green Gables
sort of house—Milo has swum across to it several times. A cushy green-and-white summer cottage with a glassed-in porch, property of a wealthy gay movie producer by the name of Sherman Dyson. As wealthy gay movie producers were an exotic species in rural Quebec
back in the mid-1960s (and who could have guessed that you yourself would one day fall in love with just such a creature?), every aspect of Dyson’s identity was an inexhaustible source of gossip in the area. His wealth aroused people’s envy, his homosexuality their sarcasm, his profession their reverence . . . and no one knew what to make of the fact that, the previous spring, he’d gotten married. The bride was rumored to be a good deal younger than he, and a model, and a looker, so it may not be far-fetched to suggest that Milo’s powerful crawl- and breast-strokes across Lac des Piles, that summer after Oscar’s death, took him with perhaps unwonted frequency in the direction of this particular summer cottage.

And indeed, one day . . . there she was.

A dream scene. The young woman has her back to him when, approaching shore, he first catches sight of her. Her skin is tan, her hair blond and wavy to mid-back, and she is clad in a mere idea of a white bikini. Arriving in shallow water, Milo takes great splashing steps to conceal the rise of desire between his legs. Hearing the swoosh of water, the young woman turns and appraises him with a smile. She doesn’t flinch or blush or flee. At fifteen he is fully formed, and what she sees coming toward her is not a tall, skinny, gangly teenager but a solid, sturdy, brown young man, water running down his chest and thighs as he advances, rilling over his shoulders from his black-auburn hair (long and thick in summertime).

“That was quite a swim,” she says when he’s within hearing range. “I’m Kim.”

At once, to Milo’s ears,
Kim
is the sexiest name in the world. Its resonance vibrates with
crème
and
chrème
⁶
and
whim
and
brim
and
sperm
, all the way to his balls.

“I’m Milo,” he says.

And the dream continues, the dream continues, Kim takes his hand and leads him across the patio and into the elegant green-gabled cottage. By the time his eyes grow accustomed to the penumbra, the two of them have already floated through the kitchen into the bedroom, the young woman is already helping him remove his trunks and guiding him onto the bed and taking his astoundingly outstanding member in her hands . . . Close-up on the boy’s expression, surprise then deeper delight as a woman’s mouth voyages him toward a new universe of pleasure, and when, not much later, his virginity gets lost in a rush of joy manyfold richer than anything he’d concocted with the help of Sophia Loren or Edith or the cows, Kim kisses him tenderly on the lips.

“Thank you, baby,” she says breathily. “You’re as marvelous as you look . . . I needed that. You wanna meet my husband?”

Ever willing to deal with what life chooses to dish up to him, be it rape at the hands of a lumberjack cousin or enchantment in the arms of a blond model, Milo slips his swimming trunks back on and pads after her. Dyson’s office is next to the bedroom and the man has been there all along in a big leather working chair, reading a magazine and puffing on a cigar. Kim makes the introductions with graceful arm movements.

“Sherman, Milo. Milo, Sherman.”

“You speak English?” Dyson asks as he shakes hands with the strapping boy, and then, when Milo nods, “Know anything about gardening?”

“I know vegetables better dan flowers, but I learn quick.”

“He learns quick,” Kim confirms, repressing a giggle.

“Okay, you’re hired.”

CUT to a series of scenes from the remainder of that unforgettable summer of 1967 in which, day after day, Milo acquires the
basics of horticulture and eroticism in languorous alternation: we see him trimming hedges, sculpting rosebushes, mowing the lawn, adding fertilizer to flower beds, and learning all about patience and perseverance in his amorous acrobatics with the older woman. Kim teaches him that there are heavens beyond the first, and that even the seventh is not the last . . .

(I must say I’m profoundly grateful to Kim Dyson. Sexually speaking, your kindergarten was pretty atrocious but your grade school was top-notch. Few men are so lucky as to have had a kind, skillful, affectionate professor to initiate them into the subtleties of physical love. After a few weeks, the professorship turned into a tandem: Sherman joined the two of you in bed. And your luck back then, Astuto darling, has been mine these three decades . . .)

Marie-Thérèse is incensed at what she divines is going on across the lake . . . but every time she opens her mouth to light into him about it, Régis stares her down and she clamps it shut again, for Milo is suddenly making a significant contribution to the household finances.

Having few outlets for her fraught feelings toward her nephew, Marie-Thérèse goes back to (
bong
) hitting him over the head with the (
bong, bong
) telephone receiver. He lets it happen. He doesn’t much care. The world is rife with dangers. There are aunts who wield telephones, bears whose powerful arms and chests can crush the air from your lungs, snakes whose venom can stop your heart, wolves whose teeth can tear you limb from limb. You need to know about the world’s dangers and protect yourself. Milo covers his ears to prevent Marie-Thérèse from doing further damage to his hearing.

One day, though, her words pierce through the cotton fleece of fog in his brain and hit him in the heart:

“You ungrateful brat! You evil seed, you good-for-nothing! I wish I’d never agreed to take you in! You love the gutter, it’s in your
blood, your grandfather should have left you there.”
(Bong!)
“I was going to have a house built next door just for you, a nice place you could live in when you grow up. But if you wanna fritter your time away, all right, fine, no point my breaking my back to make something out of you! Go join your slut of a mother and your delinquent of a father on Saint Catherine Street! That’s where they made you! Go ahead, go back where you belong, no skin off my back!”
(Bong!)

He carefully stores in his memory the words
Saint Catherine Street
.

Just before summer’s end, Marie-Thérèse hits upon the only punishment that can really get to him: she has found him another boarding school.

“A real Catholic school, this time,” she declares.

“You mean,” says Neil “. . . with morning and evening prayer, catechism and confession, the whole kit and kaboodle?”

“Yes, of course! The kid needs to be taken into hand. He’s the only one in his class not to have been confirmed yet. We have to straighten him up . . .”

On the eve of Milo’s departure, Neil summons him to his study.

“It hurts me, my boy, to think of you struggling with the selfsame soul fetters as I did at your age . . . But no matter what they do to you, don’t go to confession. Tell those meddling priests that what goes on in your body and soul is none of their flaming business! Here, put these in your suitcase. These three small volumes will stand you in better stead than a thousand prying priests.”

The books are Homer’s
Odyssey
, Shakespeare’s
Tragedies
and Cervantes’s
Don Quixote.

THE ENSUING YEAR
can be compressed into a single minute: We see Milo attending catechism classes . . . using a photo of Kim—and memories, ah memories—for his solitary pleasure . . .
hiding Homer’s
Odyssey
behind his geography book when he’s under supervision in the study hall . . . especially playing hockey. Reviving skating reflexes learned years ago with the Manders family, he throws himself into the game with a vengeance, passing the puck, swerving on the ice, moving strong and low and fast, skating backward, forward and sideways, scoring point after point . . . but eschewing rowdy displays of comradeship, never letting the other players, with their enormous gloves, thickly padded knees, shoulders and groins, bobbing helmets and clacking sticks, throng round to hug and pat and jostle him when he scores, preferring always, when not on the ice, to wait alone in the rafters reading
Don Quixote
. . . We see him in church, with
Othello
hidden inside his hymnbook . . . using a photo of Jane Fonda in
Barbarella
. . . kneeling at the altar to take communion with twenty other boys . . . striking up a conversation with a boy he sees reading Aeschylus and Euripides in the library—a shy, overweight, devout, bespectacled, pimpled adolescent whose nickname is Timide. Kneeing the testicles of a tall, blond, snotty student named Augustin, for having teased Timide . . . sitting across from Timide during meals in the large dining hall and making him explode with laughter, scattering crumbs in all directions . . . teaching Timide to smoke without coughing and to fend off the insinuating words and fingers of the priests . . . Stealing extra food from the kitchen so that he and Timide can snack in the dorm at midnight . . . descending deep into himself so as not to feel the pain when caught and whipped by one of the sisters . . . gluing samples of leaves and flowers into his botany album, labeling them carefully and showing them to Timide . . . stealing wine from the chalice in church and sharing it with Timide . . . being dragged to a confessions box on a Friday morning . . .

Here we can zoom in on his dialogue with the priest.

“What did you do, son?”

“None of your business.”

“This is serious, Milo. I’m asking you if you’ve sinned in thought, word, or deed.”

“And I’m telling you to mind your own business. No way I’ll ever tell you what goes on inside my head.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way to a man of God, Milo.”

“I didn’t ask to talk to you.”

“You’re under our authority here; you can’t do just anything you please.”

“Neither can you!”

“If you go on talking that way, my son, I’ll have no choice but to punish you, you realize that?”

“I’m not your son, for Chrissake!”

“And on top of it all you take the name of Our Lord in vain!”

Milo detests priests and finds it hard to tell them apart. They all seem to wear the same glasses, have the same phony smile, the same cruelty masquerading as virtue . . . Preferring brutality to hypocrisy, he’d rather deal with his cousins any day.

The holy sisters drag him out of bed before dawn and force him to wax the hallway or sprinkle the skating rink for two hours. But he sleeps little anyway, and would rather wax a floor or sprinkle a skating rink than have nightmares. He finds the work soothing, does it carefully and well. Loves being alone. The sisters yank him away from early Mass and send him down to the kitchen to make toast for 150 breakfasts . . . But he can dream while making toast—far better than in church, where organ music, incense smoke and priestly prattle clog his senses within minutes.

Throughout the long winter months he deals patiently with his fate. But as April begins to wane, as the snows melt and the river ice breaks up and the sluices open and the juices run, an atavistic
urge rewakens in his veins . . . and, suddenly, no. No. None of this. He must be gone.

In the dorm one night at half past twelve, he sneaks over to Timide’s bed.

“You awake?”

In his upper bunk, the fat boy flops over and struggles to focus.

“Here. Put on your glasses, we’re hightailing it out of here. Just you and me, okay?”

“Where to?”

“Montreal. Get dressed.”

“Montreal! You must be nuts! It’s a hundred miles away!”

“Take your blanket and stuff a few clothes in your knapsack. I’ll wait for you in the hall. It’s the perfect night, there’s a full moon. Everyone’s asleep . . .”

“Everyone but the wolves.”

“You and I are the wolves now. Come on, Timide, get your ass in gear!”

As Timide reluctantly descends from his bunk, Milo notices Augustin, the tall blond snotty boy, archest of his archenemies, feigning sleep in the bunk below. Has he overheard their plans?

Hiking Timide’s pudgy, clumsy, terrified body over the high wall of the institution is no mean feat, but Milo is all-powerful tonight.
Free! Free!
his mother’s voice sings softly in his brain.
Ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA . . .
By one in the morning they’re on the road: full moon, springtime, owl calls, river thundering down below, good graveled road underfoot.
Ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA . . .
Milo’s knapsack is packed tight with food stolen from the kitchen and his heart is high with hope.

Timide’s step, however, is less buoyant.

“What are we gonna do in Montreal?”

“Find my mom.”

“I thought you were an orphan!”

“No, my parents are alive, I just haven’t met them yet. But I know where my mom lives, on Saint Catherine Street. We’ll surprise her. You’ll see, she’ll be thrilled! And then she’ll help us out . . . But first we’ll stop off at the house of a girl I know.”