Since crossing the Atlantic, I’ve met precious few people who ever heard of the Liffey, the Easter Rising, Padraic Pearse or Major John MacBride; French Canadians care not one whit about the Irish rebels, Sinn Féin, or the act recently passed by British Parliament allowing Protestant Unionists in the North to retain control of the six counties of Ulster. My country is splitting in two, Good Lord, and so is my head . . . Mrs. McGuire told me that here in Montreal in 1916, only a couple of months after the Easter Rising, there was an anticonscription demonstration at the Place des Armes. The French Canadians didn’t want to be enrolled in English Canada’s war—which is to say England’s war—any more than the Irish did. Mrs. McGuire can see the analogy because, like me, she has a foot on either side of the ocean. But if my future reading public is made up exclusively of Irish-born residents of Quebec, what stories can I, should I, must I tell? I’m losing my stories! They’re dying on my lips!
Just as Neil tearfully scribbles in his notebook They’re dying on my lips! we hear a blood-curdling female scream. The camera rushes back to film him as he leaps to his feet and bolts from the woodshed, letting pencil and notebook tumble to the floor.
CUT to the bedroom in which Marie-Jeanne has just given birth to their first son. The mother is still flat on her back, but the child has already vanished. Several devout, efficient females—her mother, a couple of older sisters or cousins (he can never keep them straight), a nurse and a young midwife named Marie-Louise—rush to and fro, taking care of everything in French.
Neil has become a stranger in his own home. No, it is not even his own home. He has become a stranger, period.
“Is it a boy?” he asks timidly from the doorway, not quite daring to cross into the room.
“Yes, sir,” says Marie-Louise as she strides down the hallway, arms piled high with bloody sheets. “Yes, it’s a little boy. Mrs. Noirlac wants to name it Pierre-Joseph, after her father.”
Neil winces.
CUT to that evening: At last the little family is alone together. The baby sucks fiercely at Marie-Jeanne’s breast, and her face is suffused with light.
“All men are Joseph,” says Neil.
“What, darling?” says Marie-Jeanne. “What are you mumbling in your beard?”
“All men are Joseph,” he repeats. “Every childbirth is a Nativity, know what I mean? It’s between mother and child. I sit here looking at the two of you, and you shine so brightly it makes my eyes hurt. Joseph is irrelevant. It’s obvious he can’t be the father.”
“Neil!” says Marie-Jeanne with a laugh like the soft jingling of sleigh bells. “Don’t tell me you think I cheated on you!”
“No, but our baby’s the child of God. It’s a miracle, every childbirth is a miracle. Joseph has nothing to do with it and he knows it. He sits there in the stable, feeling silly and out of place . . . Uh . . . anything I can do to make you more comfortable, dear? Want me to smooth out the hay under your rear end?”
“What are you trying to tell me, sweet Neil?”
“Nothing, just that . . .”
Moving over to the window, Neil stares out into the gathering dark.
“All I’m trying to say is that . . . I’m somebody, too.”
“What do you mean? Of course you’re somebody!”
“I mean, I make an effort, I do my best to adapt, to learn everything there is to learn about maple trees, spruce trees, moose and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham . . . but I, too, come from somewhere, for the love of God! I, too, have a past, a history . . . I don’t want for my whole life to be drowned here erased and replaced by yours . . . So all I’m asking is that you take one little step toward my own history.”
“What kind of step? Oh! Did you hear that? He burped!”
“Leave me the boys.”
“Sorry?”
“We’ll divide the children up between us. You’ll take the girls, choose their names, talk to them in French, bring them up to be nice little Catholic women from Quebec . . . and I’ll take the boys: Irish names, English language and a lay education.”
Marie-Jeanne looks at her son, her husband, her son. She loves Neil with all her heart, but dreads her father’s ire.
“Otherwise,” says Neil, raising his voice, “if everything I’ve ever been and done gets wiped out, I don’t know how I can ever be a man in this household, much less a writer. Please understand me, Marie-Jeanne: I can’t create works literature if I feel I have no heir, no hope of passing on my lore and learning.”
Marie-Jeanne is still hesitant. Neil tries another tack.
“Besides, the sad truth of the matter is that anglophones earn a better living in Quebec than francophones. They’re the ones who run businesses, they’re taking over the pulp-and-paper industry . . . The future is anglophone. If you want our sons to make something of themselves . . .”
“Well, okay,” says Marie-Jeanne with a sigh. “I have to admit I can see your point.”
“So this one won’t be named Pierre-Joseph, okay? He’ll be named Thom.”
“. . . All right.”
CUT to a close-up of a tiny coffin being lowered into a tiny grave. Drawing back, we see a few dozen members of the Chabot family gathered in the town churchyard, their faces glistening with tears. Neil hugs Marie-Jeanne to his side. The camera moves back in to read the words engraved on the tombstone: THOM NOIRLAC. 3 SEPTEMBRE 1920–17 SEPTEMBRE 1920.
• • • • •
Awinita, September 1951
TOTAL DARKNESS. BLACK screen. It’s four A.M. in the cruddy bedroom above the bar. Declan’s speech is distinctly slurred (so to speak).
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I promise you, Nita. Sumpin’ll turn up.”
“You already said dat.”
“I know, but this time I mean it. Soon’s our baby’s born, I’ll clean up my act.”
“Dat’s a whole six months from now, Deck.”
“Yeah, but jobs are always scarce in September. My chances’ll be better in the spring.”
“Why’s dat?”
“I heard tell.”
“Where’d you hear tell? In jail?”
He hits her. We don’t see the blow, only hear it, and Awinita’s yelp of indignation.
“Hey! Shit, Deck!”
“Don’t talk down to me, Nita. With seven sisters, I had enough o’ women talkin’ down to me since I was born.”
“Yeah? Well, I had enough o’ guys hittin’ me.”
“That’s not what they do to you. They screw you. Every Tom, Dick, ‘n’ Harry’s got the right to screw you. I’m the only who has to ask permission.”
“Least it makes you special . . . You oughta be grateful to ‘em for screwing me. It’s deir money you live off.”
“Oh, thank you, Tom! Thank you, Dick! Thank you, Harry! Specially Dick. Thank you for fuckin’ my wife, you great big Dick!”
LIGHTS (Awinita has just turned on the bedside lamp).
“I not your wife, little boy.”
We’re in her eyes, in her body, when Declan’s fist makes contact with her jaw. The blow sends us careening backward to stare at a corner of the phony oakwood headboard.
“Fuck, man. Ya broke my fuckin’ jaw.”
“Did I?”
Declan is sincerely shocked.
“I tink so, asshole . . . You’re destroyin’ your only source of income, you know dat? Who gonna come upstairs wit a girl got a twisty purple face?”
Declan breaks down. Blubbering drunkly, he kneels at the side of the bed and covers his face with his hands.
“I’m so sorry, Nita. I’m . . . so . . . sorry! Can you ever forgive me? I’m so, so sorry I hit you, Nita, you’re pregnant with my baby . . . I’ll never lay a finger on you again, I swear it. I solemnly swear I’ll never lay a finger on you again. Oh, Nita, can you ever forgive me?”
His shoulders heave, and tears come trickling through his fingers. We put a hand on his head and, sobbing, he buries his face between our dark breasts.
“I’m out of so
rts ‘cause I went home over the weekend . . . hitchhiked all the way there . . . Thought everybody’d be glad to see me . . . but they didn’t give a fuck . . . Didn’t pay me any attention . . . I’m used to Marie-Thérèse being nasty, but this time it was especially . . . my da. He lit into me, called me weak and spineless . . . Said I had no gumption, no political convictions, nothin’. Said I was wasting my days on earth. How can a da talk that way to his son, Nita? I’ll never talk that way to my son, I can tell you that . . . He called me spineless, Nita! My own da called me spineless!”
Gradually his sobs space themselves out and, with his head still weighing heavily on our chest, he begins to snore.
An X-ray image of Awinita’s spine, perfectly straight and normal. But suddenly her vertebrae turn into red balloons. They swell and expand until they literally become her, and the rest of her body is awkwardly curled up inside the colored, bobbing balls.
Awinita’s apartment on a Friday morning; Liz is staring at her.
“. . . You pregnant again, Nita?”
“. . .”
“Hey, Nita, don’t tell me you’re pregnant again. Don’t tell me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Sweetheart, that’s bad news. You know that?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to give you the address of somebody who . . .”
“Nah, it’s a’right . . . I like de guy.”
“You’re not supporting him, I hope.”
“Nah . . . Well, a bit. Just till he finds work. I don’t give him much.”
“Listen, Nita. If I were you, I’d get rid of that baby before it’s too late. Your credit’s running out. If you’re not careful, you’re gonna find yourself in the street. And a pregnant Indian whore in the street, I don’t need to tell you that spells trouble. Sweetheart, you wanna get married, settle down and have seventeen kids like those rabbity French Canadians, go right ahead! It’s no skin off my back, just so long as you pay me back what you owe me. I got plenty of hot young babes just itchin’ to take your place. You met Alison yet, by the way?”
“Who’s Alison?”
“Moved into your room yesterday. She’ll be sleepin’ in Cheryl’s bed, seein’ as how Cheryl found herself a cushier job out at Trois-Rivières.”
“I tought dat was just a weekend gig.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t do part-time, Nita. You’re either with me or you’re without me. Is that clear?”
“Sure.”
“Then toe the line, I’m warning you.”
CUT to the girls’ bedroom.
Alison is a thin, fragile-looking Haitian girl, clearly a novice. Lorraine and Deena giggle as they teach her the ropes.
“It’s nothin’, man,” says Lorraine. “Don’t worry. I mean, what’s a dick, right? To them it may be the be-all and end-all, but to you? Nothin’ at all!”
“Yeah,” Deena chimes in. “Dicks come and go, you know what I mean?”
The two of them cackle wildly.
“Dat ain’t true,” says Awinita from where she’s standing in the doorway.
“Huh?” says Deena.
Awinita looks at them impassively, not moving. Speaks simply.
“I tought it was notin’,” she says, “but it ain’t. You take deir dick, deir pain comes along wid it. Dey leave de pain behind. Dey go off, and de pain stays behind wit you.”
FADE TO GRAY.
Amidst moving shadows, a monster shakes in evil, soundless laughter. Other shapes surge and swarm before our eyes, shivering darkly. There is a shooting star.
Maybe that shooting star is you, Milo darling? Maybe it’s your soul suddenly entering your body? Awinita has just passed the critical three-month point of her pregnancy.
• • • • •
6. cream . . . chrism
VIII
SAUDADE
Powerful nostalgia or lack. The term is virtually untranslatable.
Milo, 1970–75
WE NEED to think about what we want to keep in and keep out from now on, Milo, baby. As it stands, we’ve got something like, uh, ballpark estimate . . . seven hours of film. Sure, there are a coupla precedents in the history of the medium—sublime trilogies such as Satyajit Ray’s Apu or Fritz Lang’s Doctor Mabuse . . . But still, we have to be careful. Wouldn’t want the audience’s attention to wander, now, would we? Especially in this next sequence, which deals with the most chaotic period in your whole life . . .
MAYBE START OFF with news footage from the spring of 1970, during which the Front de Liberation du Québec sets off one bomb after another, killing six people and inflicting considerable material damage on symbols of English domination in the province. Windsor Station in Montreal (through which Neil dragged little Milo the day they first met), monument to Queen Victoria, Dominion Bank, Queen’s Printing Press, Loyola College, private mailboxes in the cushy Anglo suburb of Westmount, Bank of Nova Scotia, Royal Air Force . . . Milo can be seen gleaning these events, sometimes on TV as he chats and laughs with prostitutes in sleazy bars, more often over the transistor that keeps him company as he shoots up in the men’s room of the Voyageur bus station, wanders through the dark back streets of Old Montreal, and sleeps out under bridges.
A summer’s night. High on heroin, Milo sinks onto his back in the grass, looks up at the night sky and sees a shooting star. (Right, Milo, you’re the shooting star. Yeah, I get the joke, you’re the star of the film and you’re shooting up. Great, very good, very funny.) Segue from the shooting star into the whiteness of his heroin heaven at age eighteen. Not a bland, colorless, boring white—no, a divine, milky, creamy white; a frothy, nourishing, tepid white, sweet as fresh cow’s milk—not buttery, not fatty and stomach-turning, no, the milk and honey of the River Jordan! The drug picks him up in its soft white arms and gives him the sublime, melting, liquid sensation of being held and rocked and soothed and sung to, comforted and cuddled and kissed forever and ever, amen.
Yes, Astuto, I know how much you loved heroin.
One day in May, the whiteness in Milo’s brain turns into that of a flock of Canadian geese that fills the entire sky. Pan to the young man staring up at them. Clinging to his arm is a pert and pretty, dark-haired girl by the name of Viviane, also looking up. Their mouths are open in amazement. Milo recites a few lines from “The Wild Swans at Coole.”
De trees are in deir autumn beauty,
De woodland paths are dry,
Under de October twilight de water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon de brimming water among de stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
Viviane looks at him adoringly.
“Sounds beautiful!” she says. “Who’s it by?”
“Yeats.”
“Never heard of him.”
“A great Irish poet from the beginning of the century. Good friend of my grandfather’s.”
“Boy, that grandfather of yours sure made a big impression on you. You talk about him all the time. You gonna introduce me to your folks one of these days?”
“Absolutely.”
Milo grins broadly . . . and, to keep her from asking more questions, plants a fierce kiss on her mouth. Just then, in a deafening beating of wings, the wild geese alight in the field next to them and the couple bursts apart. It’s as if they had caused the event—as if a thousand large white birds had landed just to watch them kiss. They contemplate this living, threshing sea of whiteness at close range.
CUT to a red Chevy convertible, Viviane at the wheel, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, speeding through the state of Nevada. As the sun beats down on his face, Milo leans back in the passenger seat with his feet on the dashboard.
CUT to the two of them making torrid love in a small hotel room in Reno, Viviane on top.
CUT to a private home in L.A., a couple of deck chairs by a swimming pool. Dressed in a skimpy bikini, Viviane is sipping a gin and tonic through a straw and letting a tall, dark, handsome stranger talk her up. Milo and their host are playing che
ss at a table under a pergola a few yards away. From time to time, Milo glances over to check out the scene next to the swimming pool, and the host watches him watching. When Viviane and the stranger rise and glide toward the house hand in hand, Milo moves his queen.
“Well, well,” the host says. “I wonder where that lovely girlfriend of yours has wandered off to.”
“Checkmate,” says Milo.
CUT to Milo running alone on the beach as the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean. A long, searingly beautiful shot.
He and Viviane hug each other good-bye. She puts her suitcase into the trunk of a white Chrysler convertible and the handsome stranger drives her away.
Milo and his host at midnight, next to a campfire on the beach. After dropping a couple of tabs of psilocybin, they make sublime love in the sand. The camera politely turns upward to film more shooting stars overhead, but we gather from the sound track that Milo’s sex pushing warmly into him is making the host so happy that he weeps. Milo shouts when he comes—a gorgeous shout.
(Important decision that summer: you take advantage of the hospitality and kindness of this wealthy Californian to shake your drug habit. Even in the ideal conditions your host provides for you, your withdrawal—like your mother’s twenty years earlier—lasts a full month and is undiluted hell . . . but you wade through it, Astuto wonder, and come out on the other side. I love you for that, though I admit I haven’t got the slightest idea how to film it.)
At summer’s end, Milo drives Viviane’s red car back east through Canada. Stops in Saskatchewan to pick up a female hitchhiker with carrot-colored hair. The girl is wearing blue jean cutoffs, a bright pink shirt knotted above her midriff, dirty old sandals and a black Stetson, pulled down past her eyebrows so the wind won’t blow it off. Milo chats with her as country-western music blares from the radio (Patsy Cline? yeah, let’s say Patsy Cline). The girl laughs a lot, crinkling her eyes at his jokes. Her name is Roxanne. Milo and Roxanne make love in a cheap motel room. Close-up on the bedside table: we recognize a packet of birth control pills. Times have changed.