They’ve just been grabbed from behind by a group of British soldiers. Their weapons are torn away from them. Starting out of sleep, the blond adolescent freezes in fear and glues his stomach to the ground. As one soldier holds each of the cousins, bending his right arm forcibly at the elbow and twisting it up behind his back, another rummages through their pockets and under their clothes. Incongruously, Neil’s brain flashes to that dreadful moment in the Talbot Street brothel when he’d lost sight of his own hands. The blond kid watches from his hidden vantage point as Thom puts up a struggle, swearing at the soldiers and taunting them with Joycean rhyme and humor, calling them twitbrits and clitwits. The man holding him shoots him at point-blank and he collapses on the sidewalk, his corpse partly on Neil’s feet.
Stop sound track. White silence in Neil’s brain. Face white, too.
The muzzle of a gun in his back, too.
“What’s your name, you little bugger?”
He stutters his name in a white whisper and adds: “I’m a lawyer and my father’s a magistrate, you can’t. .”
“Feck the law,” the soldier interrupts him. “You’re next on the sidewalk unless you give us a good reason not to put you there. Where are your leaders, baby boy? Where are your feckin’ leaders, you little knock-kneed patriot? Give us the names and whereabouts of your leaders. A nice, big name to make us happy.”
Numbness and strangeness. Paralysis of Neil Kerrigan’s facial muscles. Sense of unreality, of theater. Time slows, seems to stop. Neil stares stupidly into the face of the soldier shouting at him, a man his age. Sees his fear. Shares the man’s fear and tension, his rage at being tense and fearful. Weirdly, it’s as if this British soldier were his cousin — as if, at the instant of his death, Thom’s soul had slithered up into the enemy’s body and were now staring out at him through the enemy’s eyes and trying to warn him: Careful, Neil. Take it easy, man. Careful, now. Everything’s critical here.
The name slips out: “MacBride.”
Synapses are exploding like slow fireworks in his brain. Mac-Bride out of the way. . Maud Gonne would be free. . I’d be doing Yeats a favor. . eliminating the last impediment to their marriage. . He’d be grateful. . and want to do me a favor in turn. . help me find a publisher for my novel. .
“What?”
“Major John MacBride,” Neil repeats, his voice white.
The blond kid in the bushes is still there. Listening. Quaking with fear and listening.
“Come off it.”
“Yes. Himself.”
“Where?”
“At Jacob’s.”
“We’ll take you with us. Oh, for the luva Christ, the kid’s be-shat himself. We’ll take you with us anyway, you pile of stinking shite. If you’re lying, you’re dead. You know that, eh?”
“I’m not lying, so help me. .”
Simultaneously shoved forward and firmly held from behind, he stumbles off and we follow the clumsy group into the dark.
• • • • •
Awinita, May 1951
“I DUNNO WHY I like you so goddamn much, Mister Cleaning-Fluid.”
“Must be ‘cause I’m cute.”
“Not ‘cause you’re rich, anyhow.”
They laugh. They finished making love a few minutes ago and Declan is still inside of Awinita, body spooned against her back, arm draped round her enormous tummy.
“Maybe I make you happy in bed,” he whispers.
“Hmm. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“That’s not where it goes, Nita.”
They laugh. Neighborhood sounds come sifting through the open window: traffic, the yells of construction workers, the clatter of dishes from a nearby restaurant kitchen, even a couple of gulls screaming overhead. The clock on the bedside table shows eleven. Declan arrived at the end of Awinita’s shift at five or six A.M. and they’ve spent what they call the night together.
“Sure you never get me mixed up with one of your johns?” “How could I? You ain’t paid me since de first time we came up here. I buy your drinks now.”
They laugh and cuddle.
“Seriously. You can tell the difference?”
“Yeah. Never saw a guy had such a big. . head o’ red hair.”
They laugh. His right hand gently brushes her neck, her face. Stopping it with her own hand, she takes his fingers into her mouth.
“And from behind?”
“Hmm?”
“When I’m behind you, you can’t see my hair. . Then what’s the diff?”
Silence.
“Hey, Nita? Tell me. Me or a john: same diff?”
Long silence. Finally: “Johns don’t bring me flowers.”
On the Formica table in the background, we notice a single wilted rose in a too-large chipped blue vase.
“Dey don’t hold me tight when we dance. And dey don’t ask so many questions.”
“That why you love me?”
“I say I love you?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay, den shut up.”
They laugh. Declan gets out of bed and, pulling a flask of whisky from the inside pocket of his leather jacket (draped over a chair), takes a couple of serious swigs. Lights a cigarette, moves to the window and stands there smoking, naked. We’re in Awinita’s eyes, looking at his body. .
(Okay, Milo, I’ll keep it simple. We won’t make a lingering inventory of Declan’s physical beauty, moving slowly from the nape of his neck where his red-blond hair curls and furls, down the curve of his lower back over his buttocks and thighs. . It’d be easy to fall in love with your father at age twenty-four, but all right, we’ll leave the spectators free to notice his charms or not, as they see fit. .)
“What do the johns talk to you about?” asks Declan, smoking, his tone curious rather than aggressive.
“Whatever.”
“No, really.”
“Why?”
“Just. . you know. . to know what kinda stuff you go through here.”
In black and white in Awinita’s mind, a chaotic cascade of stills. Men in blurry close-up, contorted and sweating, shouting into the void; other men sitting on the edge of the bed talking to her, at her, in urgent self-absorption; still others drawing snapshots from their wallets to show her their houses, horses, cars, kids and wives. FADE TO SHADOW: and, in the shadow, imperceptible shift to animated images. .
A woman’s hand grasps a dark purple snake that writhes and twists, struggling to get away. She maintains her grip and finally it goes limp; the snake’s head drops and its forked tongue hangs out.
“Lotta dem boast,” she sums up. “Dey wanna be admired.”
“Do they ask you your name?”
“Sure. Some o’ dem ask it tree, four times.”
“Do they come back? The same ones?”
“Happens.”
“And you don’t get attached to them?”
“Happens.”
“But differently from me?”
“Everybody different.”
“Nita!”
He laughs, she doesn’t.
“You got Indian clients?”
“Indians are broke, Mister Cleaning-Fluid.”
“So’m I.”
“Well, maybe you part Indian! Now shut up and lemme get some sleep.”
“Naw, don’t go back to sleep, Nita. . Let’s go down to the river.”
CUT. Quick shot of Awinita in the tiny bathroom, tipping pills into her hand and gulping them down with tap water.
On Saint Helen’s Island, passersby gape at the two of them walking hand in hand: the small, conspicuously pregnant Indian girl with bleached-blond hair and the gangly, flame-headed youth in cowboy boots. Declan takes her to a spot he knows, a tiny cove amidst rocks, its water a still pool. Beyond, the rushing river. Sitting on the minute, pebbly idea of a beach, her bulk between his skinny bent legs, his arms protectively circling her belly; they stare out at the water, boats and birds. Declan takes a swig of whisky.