Black Dance

by Nancy Huston

  “Not very hard. She kicked me yesterday.”

  “That’s too long ago. You can’t pinch her today because she kicked you yesterday; otherwise it’s civil war.”

  “What’s civil war, Daddy?”

  “Well, you know, back in Ireland . . .”

  “Oh, no! Not Ireland again!”

  “Boo, boo . . . not Ireland again!”

  “Anyway, you’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full.”

  “Marie-Thérèse, it’s not your job to correct your father’s table manners.”

  “Why should grown-ups be allowed and not children?”

  “Because that’s the way it is. I count on you to set a good example!”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Goody-goody.”

  “Now, William . . .”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t insult your older sister.”

  “It’s not an insult, it’s the truth.”

  “Well, as your namesake Willie Yeats told me long ago, you’ve got to be careful of the time you choose for truth-telling.”

  “Oh, no, not Willie Yeats again! Mommy, I’m tired of Daddy’s old stories about Willie Yeats!”

  Seeing red, Neil gets to his feet.

  “Oh, yeah? Well . . . if I can no longer talk to me own feckin’ family about me own feckin’ friends . . .”

  And with a great roar of virile rage he overturns the dinner table, sending children squealing like piglets and scattering in all directions. Suddenly a different scream arcs high above the general clamor—Marie-Jeanne’s water has just broken. Close-up on her face, contorted in panic . . . and on Neil’s, scowling with shame.

  CUT to exterior night, at the icy heart of darkness, two or three in the morning. Marie-Louise, visibly older than when we last saw her, comes out the front door. Neil staggers a bit, exhausted from pacing up and down in front of the house. Bangs his pipe against the porch steps to empty it, then scuffs out the embers in the dirt.

  “Well?” he asks the midwife.

  “He’s got nice red hair.”

  “Ah! A boy!”

  “Yes. Gonna make another Anglo outta him?”

  “And that’s not all! That’s not all! I plan to make this one my heir.”

  “Oh, really? I thought the house and grounds still belonged to your brothers-in-law.”

  “No, Marie-Louise, I mean a spiritual heir. That boy in there will inherit my books. He’ll inherit my ideas. He’ll inherit my dreams.”

  “And have you found a name for this heir of yours?”

  “Declan.”

  “Funny name.”

  “It means full of goodness.”

  “Okay, well anyway, in the meantime you can go make his acquaintance.”

  And Marie-Louise—white-haired, white-uniformed, white-capped—moves off into the shadows of the night.

  • • • • •

  Awinita, January 1952

  NOW SIX MONTHS pregnant with Declan’s baby and pumping heroin daily through the bloodstream she shares with it, Awinita hovers and wavers downstairs in the wake of a client. (As always, we are in her body.) The latter—a short, fat, balding sexagenarian who might be a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman on the verge of retirement—does not turn to thank us or wish us a good day but walks straight through the bar and out into the dawn, his step springy with Good riddance (though one would be hard put to say whether the phrase applied to his sperm or to the woman he’s just paid to help relieve him of it).

  We hike ourselves up onto a stool and more or less collapse onto the bar, head slumped on folded arms, vaguely expecting Irwin the barman to bring us a coffee as he sometimes does when we’ve been up all night. Today, however, Irwin doesn’t bring coffee. He brings news.

  Close-up on his belt buckle as it moves toward us along the bar and comes to a halt a few inches from our nose.

  “Deena got hers.”

  We sit up straight. As in the first scene, we see our face in the mirror behind the bar. Surrounded by blond-and-black hair, its features are frozen; no question marks light up our eyes.

  “I just told Liz and she’s mad as hell. Serves the little bitch right, though. You girls know you’re not s’posed to see your johns on the side. You know it. It’s for your own sake, Jesus Christ. But she couldn’t resist the idea of makin’ some extra dough, so she followed this guy up to his place. After rapin’ her with a broken bottle or somethin’, he strangled her and tossed her out the window. Strokaluck, the cop who found her (he’s a regular here), came and told me, quiet-like, while she was bein’ hauled off to the morgue. Native Female, Unidentified we decided to call her. I can’t believe you guys. You, too, Nita. I know you been forkin’ out to that Irish lush o’ yours. Those guys can be dangerous, man. That’s what I’m here for, to protect you, not just to spy on you or take my cut . . . You’re not careful, you’ll end up like Deena, a naked corpse in the gutter.”

  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.

  • • • • •

  X

  BICHO FALSO

  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).

  Slow down the flashing. Halt in the year 2005.

  A SCENE WITH Milo and Paul in the shower together (sorry, I can’t resist doing this just once). Paul, having been wined and dined at a dozen film festivals in the past year, may perhaps have acquired a tiny bit of a potbelly, but we don’t need to insist on that. After three decades of loving, their bodies are still in full trust and lust. They soap each other’s cock and crack, kiss beneath the hot sprinkle, mix saliva and water on their lips and tongues, turn to massage each other’s shoulders and lower back.

  “Been too long since we worked together, baby,” murmurs Paul.

  As they fuck, the camera will take an acute interest in patterns of steam and droplets on the shower stall’s glass wall.

  “I got an idea,” says Milo a few moments later, turning off the taps. “We should do a film about capoeira in de favelas. Eugénio could star in it; he’s almost fifteen now, you know. De kid’s incredible.”

  “Nah . . . Capoeira’s everywhere these days. Video games, cartoons, you name it. Even Catwoman does capoeira, for Christ’s sake! You know? I mean, it’s a complete cliché.”

  The two men towel each other down in the spacious marble bathroom of Paul’s hotel suite. (We don’t need to know what city the hotel is in. Could be Miami, L.A . . .)

  “No, not dat,” says Milo. “A political document, you know? Capoeiristas used to be black kids who picked fights. It was always about delinquency and disorder, rebellion and resistance. De film could start out wit de black slaves in Brazil, how dey revived de music from all over de African continent and mixed it up wit Indian rhydms. For dem de dance was a weapon, man, for dem it was a language. Dose slaveowners scattered families and mixed different tribes togeder to keep people from talkin’ to each oder, but deir bodies still could talk. Deir bodies still could understand each oder.”

  “Like ours.”

  “Eugénio could be de young hero. He’s taller dan me now! You wouldn’t recognize him, man!”

  “Actually, Milo, it’s not unusual for children to grow between the ages of four and fourteen. And, uh . . . I hate to point out the obvious, but height is not my sole criterion for hiring actors.”

  “Okay, I know you tink I’m biased cause I’m his godfader . . . but come see for yourself, it’ll take you tree seconds to see I’m right. He’s got his green belt already, he’s a phenomenon! I swear he could do it. If you’re not sure, do a screen test. We’d write de script togeder. Tree monts workin’ on location in Rio. Hey, man, it’d be a ball.”

  “Three months? Sure, I think I can easily fit that into the spring of . . . say, 2020.”

  Having donned identical beige bathrobes, the two men are now seated at a low glass table in the suite’s drawing room, sipping Irish whisky neat.

  “Do a screen test,” Milo insists. “You can find time for dat, can’t you, you stingy Jew?”

  I shouldn’t have laughed, shouldn’t have listened to you, should never have gone back to Rio with you, Astuto. Big mistake.

  CUT to the practice room at Copa’s Olympico Club. We’ll set up the
camera in the same corner as the musicians. Toque is established. Roda forms. Gingas get going. Under the direction of their mestre, dark-skinned teenagers in white pants go through a formal series of kicks, twists, leaps and swivels, jiving constantly to the rhythm, constantly to the song, their left arms regularly moving up to protect their faces. Eugénio stands out among them; so swift and supple that he seems weightless. Paul and Milo watch from the far end of the room, Milo taking notes, Paul doing nothing, stunned by the kid’s grace.

  CUT to early the next morning: Eugénio performing alone on the beach at Copacabana, Paul recording his spectacular whirls and leaps and somersaults in the air. (I like the fact that we’re ending the film as we began it—with a man cutting capers at water’s edge.) Close-up on Milo’s face as he plays atabaque to accompany his son. For the first time since he was a baby in the hospital half a century ago, his eyes are moist with tears.

  A studio in Gloria. Paul simultaneously shooting Eugénio and giving him instructions that Milo, when necessary, translates into Portuguese: Terrific . . . Could you just, like, walk across the room? Good, great . . . Now, turn around . . . Smile at someone beyond my left shoulder . . . Yes. Terrific smile, thank you . . . Now if I give you something to read for a sound test—anything at all, here, take this newspaper—would you mind reading me the beginning of an article, any article? Do you understand? Can you ask him to read something for us, Milo?

  Eugénio kept glancing over at you uncertainly, and because you kept warmly nodding your encouragement, he continued to obey me despite his growing discomfort. I was uncomfortable, too. I don’t know why I didn’t listen to my instinct and put an end to the situation as soon as I grasped its overtones (i.e., within about two minutes), but I didn’t. For your sake, Milo, both Eugénio and I forced ourselves to go on with the screen test, which therefore lasted the usual three-quarters of an hour.

  Eugénio obeyed, but I could tell that he hated taking orders from a well-dressed, balding (and, okay, slightly potbellied) white man. The scene must have reminded him of etchings on the theme of slavery from his history books at school. You, the boy adored—no problem there. He’d known you forever, your skin was brownish if not black, and like him you’d grown up poor. Moreover, you were an authority not only on capoeira, but on every other important subject under the sun . . . Rap! Crack! Soccer!