Authors: Nancy Huston
Marie-Jeanne’s voice comes lilting up the stairs: “Neil! Are you coming down, my love? It’s going on five o’clock, Christmas dinner is almost ready and you haven’t yet chopped the firewood!”
CUT to Neil entering the woodshed in which he used to experience excruciating literary frustration, before he was given a room of his own in which to experience it. He chops. And chops. And chops. He now has the chopping-wood part of being Tolstoy down to a fine art.
CUT to the Noirlac dining room, early evening. Fire crackling in the fireplace, candlesticks, mistletoe, etc. Assembled around the table is the family
au complet
: children of all ages (we won’t waste time giving them names the spectators would instantly forget) and four adults (including young Régis, who has brought a bottle of wine to celebrate their pregnancy announcement), to say nothing of the two
new
humans in the making, as yet invisible . . . To contemplate the amount of life he has engendered even as he was busy writing no books makes Neil faintly nauseated. (And he can’t even blame the former for the latter, Tolstoy having fathered thirteen children.)
When all are silent, Marie-Jeanne lights the central candle of the Advent wreath.
“It’s your turn to say grace, Neil, darling.”
“
God is good and God is great, grub is ready, time we ate
. . . Sorry, just joking. We are gathered together this evening to . . . to celebrate . . . the birth of . . . of . . .”
The image of yet
another
baby coming into the world, even if it is the Son of God, all but makes him gag.
“Santa Claus,” pipes up Declan, already a mischief-maker at twelve.
“Declan!” says Marie-Thérèse. “Hold your tongue, that’s blasphemy! You’ll go straight to Hell!”
“Go on, darling . . .” Marie-Jeanne urges Neil.
“I’d like for everyone to close their eyes, and observe one minute of silence for the European continent, again in the throes of a terrible war.”
“Bang, bang!” says a younger boy.
“
Boom!”
says an older one.
“It’s not the right moment, Neil,” Marie-Jeanne admonishes him gently. “Please. Christmas dinner with your children is not a good time to talk about war.”
Neil raises his voice: “You’re right, Marie-Jeanne. There are plenty of other things I could talk about. Like how come
Finnegans Wake
is deemed a masterpiece whereas my own opus of mixed languages, written twenty-five years earlier, bit the dust. Or how come the Unionists won by an overwhelming majority in Ulster, obliterating all hope of a merger between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. Or how come . . .”
“Amen,” says Marie-Jeanne, cutting him off.
Echoed by Marie-Thérèse and Régis in quick succession, her
Amen
goes hop-skipping around the table until all mouths have
uttered it, either in French or in English, except for the very smallest mouth, which has learned no language yet.
“Would you like to cut the turkey?” says Marie-Jeanne, holding her annoyance in.
And the dinner commences as best it can. Bowls of vegetables circulate, but Christmas cheer does not.
CUT to an hour or so later. Close-up on the nearly empty bottle of wine. Only the two men have been drinking, and, neither being accustomed to alcohol, both are feeling its effects: Régis is more outspoken than usual and Neil has grown downright boorish.
“If we’re not careful, the foreigners will take over all our land, and I mean all of it! You’re a big reader, Mr. Noirlac, but I bet you haven’t read
Menaud Maître-Draveur
, by Félix-Antoine Savard? That’s exactly what’s gonna happen around here! Those Englishmen, they do as they please! They decide what they want and they take what they want and they do exactly what they want!”
“That’s right,” mutters Neil. “The Brits are foreigners here, whereas the French go
way
back, don’t they? There was
no one
here before they came, was there? Yes, I skimmed through that racist, colonialist, repetitive piece of shite by Savard, and could not help remarking that the word
Indian
was mentioned nowhere in it, not even once . . . whereas the word
Quebec
is itself an Indian word! Oh, Régis, I’m so tired of this cant! I’ve been through it before! Pearse and Connolly were using the self-same patriotic drivel back in 1914, before you were so much as a glimmer in your daddy’s eye!
Hey, we stole this land first!
: a one-sentence summary of the French Canadian nationalist movement. Same thing in Ireland, go back far enough.”
“Please don’t talk to my husband in that tone of voice,” says Marie-Thérèse. “The difference is that the Indians didn’t do any
work
on the land! We took wild forestland and tamed it by the sweat
of our brow, and we’re not gonna let a bunch of damned Englishmen come and steal the fruits of our hard labor!”
“Be careful, Marie-Thérèse,” says Marie-Jeanne. “When you say damned Englishmen, you’re also talking about your own brothers. Don’t forget that! Who knows? Maybe someday they’ll be head of the Hudson’s Bay Company!”
“My brothers, run an enterprise? With the education our father gave them? Don’t make me laugh! . . . They’re fully qualified for . . . nothing at all! And I mean nothing! Even here on the property they never lift a finger to help. I don’t know what they’ll be when they grow up, Mommy, but they won’t be big bosses, that’s for sure. You can burn me at the stake if I’m wrong.”
“Yeah, let’s burn her at the stake!” says Declan. “That used to be a witch’s test: if you’re a witch you won’t burn. Come on, tie yourself to the stake, you ol’ witch, you got nothin’ to fear!”
“Declan, that’s enough out of you,” says Marie-Jeanne. “I’ll ask you not to open your mouth between now and the end of the meal.”
“If I can’t open my mouth I can’t eat,” Declan says, shoving back his chair. “You guys have spoiled my appetite with all your quarreling. I’m sick of this family.”
“Why don’t you run away?” suggests an older brother.
“Best idea I heard in weeks.”
“Mommy! Mommy!” a younger sister pipes up. “Declan’s gonna run away from home!”
Régis gets to his feet, raises his wineglass, and loudly recites the opening paragraph of Father Savard’s novel: “
Having drawn a map of the new continent, from Gaspé to Montreal and from Saint-Jean-d’Iberville to Ungava, we declared: here, everything we have brought with us
. . .”
Rising in turn, Neil drowns out his son-in-law’s schoolboy recitation with his Irish roar, booming out a verse from “The Tower”:
I leave both faith and pride
To young upstanding men
Climbing up the mountain-side,
That under bursting dawn
They may drop a fly . . .
Under pressure to prove to his young wife that her father’s virility won’t cause his own to falter, Régis raises his voice. Unfortunately, it gets higher instead of louder, and he succeeds only in squeaking: “. . .
our religion, our language, our virtues and even our defects will henceforth be considered sacred and intangible, and must remain so to the end of time.”
Simultaneously, Neil concludes:
“Being of that metal made
Till it was broken by
This sedentary trade.
. . . Broken!” he adds. “D’ye hear that, all of ye? The sedentary trade of poetry can
break
the metal of which young men are made. Smash it to
pieces
!”
“Merry Christmas, everybody!” pleads one of the younger girls, trying to fix the fiasco.
At this Marie-Jeanne, both arms clutched round her belly, collapses sobbing on the table.
CUT to the smoldering embers of the fire. The house is still; everyone has gone off to bed except Neil and Régis, the two men whose wives are expecting babies. If only subliminally, both are aware that this fact was not for nothing in the flare-up between them over dinner. Another bottle has been found, and they are well
into it. Throughout the following dialogue, the camera will stay on the fire grate.
“Félix-Antoine Savard does have a certain flair, I grant you that,” says Neil, puffing on his pipe.
“It sound quite nice,” reciprocates Régis, “zis poem de . . .
comment . . .
how you say his name ees? Keats?”
“No, not Keats. Keats is a British poet. Yeats, William Butler Yeats. An Irishman. The greatest poet since Shakespeare. He died last year. It kills me that he died.”
“I’m sorry. He was your friend?”
“Yes. Yes, he was my friend . . . in another life. He’s the one who told me to come to Canada.”
“Really. To break metal with poetry, zat is quite strong.”
“He desperately wanted to believe that because he felt his poetic gift waning as he aged and it scared him horribly. Not only his gift but . . . the rest as well. The other kinds of . . . potency.”
“Wid women?”
“Yes, with women. He’d always felt that physical love and poetic inspiration were connected in him. To lose one was to lose the other . . .”
“Estonishing!”
Neil begins to laugh:
“In 1933, a few years after he wrote that poem, he underwent an operation at the hands of a famous London specialist.”
Trying to repress a giggle, Régis winds up snorting.
“No! Operate on . . . down dere?”
“A surgeon by the name of Haire, himself a homosexual, incidentally, who offered men what he called the Steinach rejuvenation operation, to restore all their powers.”
Now very drunk, the two men sit there laughing helplessly together.
“And did it work?” pants Régis.
“Halfway,” answers Neil when he can speak. “Yes, he was delighted with the result for half of his problems, and claimed he’d been given a second puberty.”
“Which half?” shrieks Régis.
“Well,” says Neil, struggling to sober up and speak his answer straight, “in the five years that remained to him to live, he managed to . . . write a few more good poems!”
The fire’s last ember fades and dies.
BLACKOUT.
• • • • •
Awinita, March 1952
WELL, ASTUTO, WE’VE
got a fair amount of whittling down to do, but on the whole I’m proud of us. The Noirlac-Schwarz team is still going strong. Structure’s there, solid, I can feel it. Just one more little piece to fit into the puzzle.
Yeah, sure, I told you we’d change the name. No problem. Maybe we could use your real name. Your Cree name, which no one in the world would recognize. Has it come back to you in the meantime? . . .
IN HER RARE
moments of lucidity between fixes, Awinita plans her getaway down to the last detail. She’ll pay Liz back what she owes her. Overall, the woman has been kind to her, and Awinita is loath to give whites the least justification for bad-mouthing Indians.
In the cruddy little bedroom above the bar, Don hands her an advance of two hundred dollars and flashes his white-toothed smile at her.
“Don’t spend it all in one place! You’ll see, baby. You’ll be dealing with important people from now on. Wealthy businessmen, members of Parliament, police chiefs and the like. No more of this riffraff you’ve been putting up with. You’re of age, aren’t you, Nita? Tell me the truth. How old are you?”
“Soon twenny.”
“Ouch! Nineteen going on twenty-one, eh?”
“But I los’ my papers.”
“Well, that’s no sweat, we’ll make you new ones. We should change your name, too, while we’re at it. Find you a nice, sexy, new one. Nita’s a bit too . . .
neat
, know what I mean? How ‘bout . . . er . . . Zsa Zsa, like Zsa Zsa Gabor? Zsa Zsa! You like that?”
“Okay wit me.”
“Kiss me, gorgeous. Ahhhh . . . with a new hairdo, a bit of lipstick, a slinky gold lamé dress and spike-heeled sandals, you’ll knock ‘em out, believe you me!”
“Need some time to get back into shape, after de baby.”
“Sure you’ll need time. ‘Course you’ll need time. Er . . . how long do you think? Coupla days?”
“Coupla weeks, more like it.”
“Ha! Acting the princess already, are we? Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Main thing is to have your suitcase all ready and packed when you leave for the hospital, so my chauffeur can pick you up when you’re done. An express delivery, let’s hope! You started packing yet?”
“Yeah. Got a bag ready. Not much stuff.”
“Good. Best to forget your old life anyhow, start the new one from scratch. From now on, you’re twenty-one and your name is Zsa Zsa. Right, Zsa Zsa?”
“I guess.”
Don undoes his belt buckle. “Okay, glad we see eye to eye on that. Now, let me give you another little course of instruction in what men like most.
Little rippling colored curves, the petals of a pink flower. Mouths opening and closing, either in pain or exhaustion. Eyes blinking very rapidly. This up-and-down motion throughout, this vacillation . . .
Weighed down by our enormous stomach, we walk slowly up Saint Laurent Boulevard from Saint Catherine Street. About halfway home, we turn into a little five-and-ten. Using one of the crisp new twenty-dollar bills we just received from Don, we purchase a dozen small bottles of nail polish in different hues.
CUT to the sleazy apartment on the Plateau Mont-Royal: the other girls crow with delight as Awinita distributes her tiny gifts.
“Just sumpin’ to remember me by.”
“Wow!” Xandra, the new girl, kisses her. “You’re the one who’s getting married, baby!
We
should be giving
you
presents!”
“Thanks, Nita.” Lorraine grins at her. “You know where to reach me if you need me, eh?”
Alison, the young Haitian girl, weighing twenty pounds less than when we last saw her and sporting purple rings beneath her eyes, weaves her cokey way down the corridor, brandishing her new bottle of nail polish and singing a Creole lullaby.
Liz, again in her yellow pantsuit, takes the envelope of money from our hands and slips it into her belt. Then, stubbing out her cigarette, she comes around the table to give us a hug.