by Nancy Huston
“Oh, dear, I got my buttons mixed up again, I don’t believe it! Thanks for telling me . . .”
CUT to Mount Royal Park on a sunny day. Several months must have elapsed, because the snow has melted and the trees are in full blossom. Sitting on a bench, Neil and the young waitress pursue their mutual exploration. Though Neil’s French has improved, his accent is still god-awful.
“I’ll be a great writer . . . You’ll see, Marie-Jeanne. Before my thirtieth . . . uh . . . day of birth . . . I’ll publish a great novel.”
“Will you write a show for me?”
“What? A shoe?”
“A show, not a shoe! A show I can star in!”
“Yes. You’re my star, that’s for sure!”
CUT to Saint Helen’s Island in the summertime. The two of them walking there.
“Nowadays there are more English than French in Montreal . . . but in the olden days it was a French city. It was founded by a Frenchman, three hundred years ago: Samuel de Champlain, his name was. And he named this place Saint Helen’s Island after his wife, Hélène Boullé. Just think, she was only twelve when they got married!”
“And you . . . seventeen when you marry me. Lucky I said yes, you’re already getting old.”
“Hey, wait a minute! I haven’t said yes yet! . . . I think Champlain married Hélène Boullé for sa dot.”
“Sa dot? What’s dat?”
“The money a family gives their daughter at her marriage.”
“Ah, okay, dowry. I see. So what about you? What’s your dowry?”
“Well, tell you the truth . . . I spoke to my father about it . . . and he offered to buy up a plot of land next door . . . and give it to me as a wedding present . . . But that’s not what I want, Neil. I want to be an actress! My career’s just getting off the ground!”
“You can’t live forever in those Homes for the Protection of Young Women run by nuns! And if we try to consummate our marriage in the home of Judge McGuire, it’ll make a big scandal . . . We have to look the truth in the face, my love. I’ve been unable to find work as a lawyer in Montreal, and it’s beneath me to do menial labor . . . I’m a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, after all! I’d rather chop down trees. I’m sure it would give me good ideas for a novel. If it’s good enough for Tolstoy, it’s good enough for me.”
“Who’s Tolstoy?”
“Uh . . . never mind. Let’s accept your father’s offer. Let’s go live out at your place, at least at first . . . We could try it just for a year, and then see . . .”
“Yeah, only my daddy doesn’t yet know what kind of a man he’s making his offer to! A damned Englishman!”
“I’m not English, I’m Irish; it’s not the same thing! We hate those damn Brits, too! Besides, they’re Protestant and I’m Catholic . . .”
“You told me you didn’t go to church.”
“To marry you, I’d go all the way to Hell! Don’t worry, I still know how to sing Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus, miserere nobis. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis. How do you like that? And I even have a French name! Don’t you like the sound of Marie-Jeanne Noirlac?”
“Yeah . . .”
“And don’t you like me?”
“Yeah . . .” “All right, then . . . So shall I pop the question to your da?”
“But you don’t know the first thing about forestry!”
“Now, Marie-Jeanne! I know enough! Where do you think the paper comes from, on which I shall write my books?”
Sound track: organ music. The final shot of this sequence will be a long, sweeping panorama of the Mauricie region around 1920. We’ll need a helicopter. Starting high in the sky—endless forests of pine, maple, birch and oak, but mostly pine—we’ll go swinging slowly down into a lumber camp. All the noise absent: saws, axes, crashing trees, shouting men, crackling branches, rushing river . . . The organ music will give us a bit of distance from the macho thrill of the thing. A sort of permanent Boy Scout camp, if you will: logging is dangerous, exhausting labor that requires not only youth and strength but exceptional physical coordination. After watching the lumberjacks for a while, we move to the drivers, leaping with picks and hooks to guide the logs downstream. Close-up on their legs as they leap and slip from log to log, doing footwork that makes Fred Astaire look as if he’s standing still.
Down, down, down the Saint-Maurice River to the pulp-and-paper mills at Trois-Rivières, past that to the village we already know from forty years later, the little church in which Milo and Normand will be punished for drawing dirty pictures . . . Moving slowly across the threshold of the church, we peek inside and see that it is packed, for Marie-Jeanne’s father, Pierre-Joseph Chabot, is a landowner known and respected by all. Turning, we see Marie-Jeanne herself—lovely, a white veil floating over her dark hair, cheeks pink and eyes bright with excitement. Arm in arm, she and her father hover in the entrance, Neil just behind them, waiting for the priest’s cue. At the last possible minute before the ceremony begins, Neil notices Marie-Jeanne has again buttoned her dress awry. And so, whereas the organ and congregation have already launched into the hymn that will bring them forward to the altar to pronounce their vows, he swiftly undoes the seventeen buttons in the back of his bride-to-be’s white dress and even more swiftly does them up again. Her father’s eyebrows rise but Marie-Jeanne smiles and blushes, bubbling over with love for her Irishman. She has obstinately preserved her virginity, and the prospect of its imminent loss is making her head spin. The three of them march down the aisle.
Dressed to the hilt, Marie-Jeanne’s brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins entirely fill the first two rows of pews. Neil has been adopted by this family, and before long he will be engulfed by it.
Never, ever, will they release their grip on him.
• • • • •
Awinita, August 1951
WE COULD START off with a close-up of Declan’s face. Before a word is uttered, his expression will say all. It’s the expression of an irresponsible young man whose girlfriend has just told him she is pregnant.
The camera retreats and we discover we’re again on Saint Helen’s Island. Declan and Awinita are sitting at a remove from each other, staring out over the water in different directions.
“You’re puttin’ me on.”
“. . .”
“You just had a baby. Even my mom had a few months’ breathin’ space between kids. You can’t get pregnant again right off the bat.”
“I didn’ give suck.”
“Wha?”
“Can’t get knocked up again if you nurse de baby.”
“So anyhow. So okay. So why you tellin’ me?”
“It’s your kid.”
“Ha. Fat chance.”
“Listen, Mister Cleaning-Fluid. You and me had plans, remember? Even dough I learned ages ago you should never believe a guy wid a hard-on, I let you talk to me ‘bout love and livin’ in the woods and stuff. You ask me what’s de difference tween you and a john? Answer: no john ever got into my body widout a safe on.”
Declan runs his hands through his red hair a couple of times. Glances up at the seagulls, perhaps envying them their freedom. Takes a swig from his whisky flask. Finally mutters:
“My kid . . .”
“Simple as dat.”
“We gonna have a kid together, Nita?”
“I gonna have one, dat for damn sure.”
“Well, let’s get married, then . . . eh? Listen. Come up to the farm and meet my family.”
Close-up on Declan as he briefly imagines bringing a pregnant Indian woman home with him. We see the scene in distorted color in his mind: Neil raising his eyebrows, turning to him and whispering, Does she even know how to read?; Marie-Thérèse frowning and pursing her lips; the little boys, Jean-Joseph and François-Joseph, snickering and pointing at his fiancée’s parti-colored hair.
“Naw, forget about that,” he says. “Jus’ les get married.”
He’s beginning to slur his words.
“Sure, Deck. I’ll marry
you . . . minute you get a job.”
“I’m lookin’, I’m lookin’ . . . It’s not easy to find work, specially now I got a police record.”
“You know . . .” says Awinita, “once dere was an Attikamak chief who said he’d give his daughter only to de best hunter of de clan. De girl, she was in love wit a strong young brave named Yanuchich. He had a good reputation as a hunter, but her fader want to make sure. He tell Yanuchich he can marry his daughter only if he bring back a hundred hides. So de brave, he go off into de forest . . .”
Long silence. A cargo ship glides down the river in front of them, and a moment later wavelets lap at their feet.
“Yeah?” says Declan, bored, taking another swallow of his cheap bourbon. “Then what happened?”
“Nuttin’.”
“What do you mean, nothin’? Somethin’ always happens in stories.”
“Not dis time. The girl wait. She wait and she wait, and she wait and she wait, and Yanuchich never come back.”
“That’s it?”
“Dat’s it. She wait so long she get old, and turn to stone, and she still waitin’ today. Dey say you can see her stone head out near Shawinigan. Dat how the town of Grand-Mère got it name.”
“Aw, who gives a shit. That’s a boring story, Nita.”
“Yeah. I don’t like dat story, either, Mister Cleaning-Fluid. Just to let you know, I’m not gonna wait till I get old.”
“Okay, I got the message. Listen, I’m lookin’ for a job, okay? I’ll find one, don’t you worry. There’s so many strikes these days . . . Maybe I could check out Imperial Tobacco.”
“Strikebreaker not reg’lar work, Deck. An’ meanwhile . . .”
“Okay, don’t rub it in. Meanwhile I’m still living offa you. But somethin’ll turn up, I promise you . . . Now that I’m gonna be a dad, I’ll clean up my act and start earning good money.”
With Doris Day’s “Shanghai” on the sound track, CUT to the visiting room at Bordeaux Jail a week later: Awinita and Declan talking to each other under a glass partition.
Same music (a big hit this summer; the radio plays it constantly). Awinita shooting up in the tiny bathroom next to the cruddy bedroom above the bar. When she emerges, swaying slightly, a client is sitting on the bed waiting for her. In his mid-seventies, with scant white hair, a heavy paunch, and trembly flesh on his jowls and arms, he’s already naked except for his glasses, watch and socks. Awinita glances at the Formica table—the money is there.
Hands shaking, the man takes off his watch and glasses and sets them on the bedside table. Keeps his socks on. Lies down and holds his arms out to us. We move toward him, melting, partly because his myopic blue gaze seems kind, but mostly because of the drug rush in our blood.
“What’s your name, honey?”
“Nita.”
“Hey. I’m Cal. How old are you, Nita?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Really? You look about fourteen! Must be because I’m so very old . . . Let me tell you a secret, Nita. Are you listening? Nobody can believe they’re really old the way their grandparents used to be old when they were young. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Deep down, you feel young your whole life long.”
“What can I do for you, Cal, baby?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. Don’t know when I last managed to get it up. Just come here, that’s it . . . just let me look at you . . . Just let me touch you, honey . . . oh, you’re so lovely . . . So beautiful. So beautiful. So beautiful. So beautiful. So beautiful. Oh . . . that is amazing . . . Oh my God . . . Oh . . . Oh . . . Oh …”
In shades of gray and black, swirls of paint coalesce into patterns, slide out of them again, and finally crystallize into the black remains of a fire: charred, smoking ruins with the harsh taste of death. But then . . . unexpectedly . . . time passes backward over the scene. The burned beams and boards become whole again, climb onto each other, fit together and slowly form the little shack in which Awinita grew up. Moving around the shack, we come upon . . . Awinita herself, age eleven, sitting on the front steps and watching the sun rise.
“Oh my God!” gasps the old man, who has just come in her hands. “Oh, I don’t believe it. That was astounding, Nita. Thank you so much . . . You’re a lovely, lovely girl.”
Awinita doesn’t answer. Engrossed in her vision, she lies on her side and stares out the window.
“Thank you, Nita,” the white-haired john says, picking up one of her limp hands and covering it with kisses. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” A while later he puts his clothes back on, adds an extra bill to the one that’s already on the Formica table, and leaves the room . . .
(Don’t cry, Milo. Yeah, I know you never cry, but don’t cry anyway. Let’s try to think of a funny scene that might have happened as, curled up in your junkie mother’s womb, you evolved from junkie embryo to junkie fetus . . .)
That extra bill came in handy—Awinita’s hair is blond again.
Neil Kerrigan walks into the bar and glances around. He catches sight of Awinita’s blondness. Magnetized by it, he comes to sit next to her at the bar.
You’re right, it wouldn’t be funny for Neil to be one of Awinita’s clients that summer. Not totally improbable—the erotic life of sixty-year-old widows in rural Quebec can’t have been terribly exciting, and on some of his day trips into the city to visit bookstores and stock up on rare editions, Neil might well have stopped off in the red-light district for a bit of pleasure. So, not impossible, but not funny, given that Awinita is currently pregnant with his grandson. Too kinky for our film.
“What can I get you?” the barman asks him.
“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?”
“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?”