Footsteps fading. Lights switched off.
In the half-darkness, the infant drifts into a brief sleep — then starts awake and clutches out wildly for contact. There is none. It’s just spent nine months surrounded by total touch, liquid warmth, gentle rocking rhythm and suddenly — nothing. Dry air, echoing void. Heels clacking in the distance. The baby squirms and flails, wrings its hands, grabs at its face and at the air around it. Its diminutive arms and legs wave in the empty cosmos. Its high-pitched crying wakes other babies, who also start to cry. Neon lights flick on. Footsteps move in. Voices whisper annoyance: It’s that Indian whoreson. Arms reach down, flip the baby onto its stomach. Tone of reprimand and threat. Footsteps fade. Lights flick off. Other cries fade.
Smothering, its nose and mouth jammed against the sheet, the child twists its head and gasps for air. Yelps. Wrinkles its forehead. .
(Hmm. Excuse me, Milo, but. . think we’ll be able to find an actor for this role? Won’t we get sued for cruelty to dumb animals? Maybe we should do these images numerically, you know? Cost a fortune, but. . yeah, sure, sure, we need them, we absolutely need them. Okay. We’ll see. .)
Here we could accelerate to give the impression of endless repetition. Empty ceiling. Empty air. Darkness. A huge, fearful darkness. Other babies crying. Rustling sounds and footsteps in the dark. Lights flicking on, off. Neon flickering. A woman’s claw-like hands snatching up the screaming, blue-faced baby, holding it high in the air and shaking it, then dropping it in its cot—thawump. Petrified with fear, it stops screaming. Footsteps move off.
Fade to a different quality of darkness — one that indicates time passing, a page being turned. A few months later. . same white ceiling, same thrum and hum of French voices, but: exit the regulation hospital linen. The baby is being trussed and trundled, wrapped sausage-like in the cruddy blue blanket it first arrived in. New faces, not as blurry as the old ones — the boy’s eyes are beginning to focus. Voices, not only in French now but also in German (even scrambled, the difference between the two languages is clear). Strong lights, long hallways. Shoulder camera to convey the jerks and jolts — he’s being carried out of the hospital. Wham. Dazzling sunlight smack in the face. Whoosh. Blue skies, fresh air, high green waving branches. Slam of car door. Moved, held, jostled, slam slam, revving of motor.
Everything is a shock to Milo’s system after six months in the humdrum hospital routine, but he no longer cries. Already he has learned that crying serves no purpose, learned to block out, black out, sink deep within himself, into the dark cave of silence that will be his refuge all his life long. From within his silence, beneath the impenetrable banter of his new German foster parents, we can hear the drumbeat of his mother’s heart, his mother’s people. Ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA. . Milo’s throbbing silence will be the background music for the entire film.
MILO IS TWO. These scenes will be shot from the vantage point of a two-year-old, amidst the feet and legs of giants. German is now more or less right-side up.
Lying flat on the kitchen floor, the little boy plays with a couple of potatoes that are fancy racing cars. Propels himself forward on his tummy with low vrooming noises. Is suddenly grabbed by the arm—What are you doing? Milo! What are you doing? — yanked up off the floor and into the air.
An angry woman has again taken hold of his entire being with one hand. Her other hand swats at his shirt and pants to dust him off, batting his penis on the way down. Still he doesn’t cry, but his pedaling legs strike the woman’s thigh — she cries out and releases him. He falls in a heap on the floor.
Milo is locked into a little closet under the staircase, in total blackness. We’re in there with him — listening. Straining with all our might to hear sounds on the far side of the door. Hearing only our own breathing. We breathe in unevenly. Hold back our sobs. However long this lasts, it’s an eternity.
Daily life in this household — quick flashes, not all bad: little Milo being spoon-fed. . sung to in German at bedtime. . dressed by his foster mother in a navy-blue snowsuit, boots, scarf and mittens, and taken out by his foster father to horse around in the snow. . trying to pet the neighbor’s cute little cocker spaniel through the slats of the fence between their yards and being reprimanded by his foster mother No! No, Milo! Dogs are too dirty!. .
He’s sitting alone on the pot, doing nothing. His foster mother checks, rechecks, finally gives up and roughly pulls up his pants. Later, furious to see he’s shat himself, she disgustedly shakes out his underpants above the toilet, all the while berating him in German. Then she pins a diaper back onto his bottom, too tightly — the toddler’s frown reflects his shame and discomfort — and shoves him back into the closet. Turn of the lock, clack. The blackness. Little Milo breathes in and out; a faint whine of fear is now audible in his breathing. His heart beats; time beats.
Suddenly the door swings open and Milo’s world is flooded with light.
Who is this woman? Blond and young and beautiful, she drops to her knees so that her face is on a level with his, laughing in her low voice: What ya doin’ in de dark, little one?
Question of your life, Milo. What ya doin’ in de dark?
The kneeling woman holds her arms out to Milo as no one ever has. Tentatively he moves forward and is grasped and gently clasped to her welcoming flesh. She presses his face to her neck, not too tightly. Dizzy, he breathes in the commingling of perfume and sweat beneath her blouse. At last she draws back, smiles at the stunned child and murmurs, Come wit me? Come wit your mom?
Taking him by the hand, she leads him out of the closet, down the hallway, out the front door and down the steps. .
Here we’ll need music, Astuto, for it’s a June day of insane felicity. The two of them go to a fair and ride on a merry-go-round together, laugh and lick ice cream cones as their horses go up, go down, yes, the laughter, the splendid music and the woman’s flashing smile, her arms that lift him to set him on the high horse, the licking, the laughing, the going round, her dark eyes so tender gazing at him, her arms that lift him down to set him on the ground, in fact it was probably then that she bought him the ice cream cone, for he would have needed both hands to hang on to the pole, his impressions are all mixed in child chronology, the woman waving good-bye to him, sunlight dancing on his mother’s blond hair, how could he know its real color was black, how could a three-year-old ever imagine that the most beautiful woman in the world would damage her own hair to make it blond? Be good now, son, be strong, little one. You’re gonna have to be strong, you know that? A resistant—whispering into his ear the Cree name that means resistant. . Dat’s your real name, she said, and repeated it. Don’t forget it. It’ll help you. Opening the closet door. . Come wit me, come wit your mom! What ya doin’ in de dark, little one? Shutting the closet door. .
Then sccccrrrratch—BLACKOUT.
• • • • •
Neil, May 1914
A MEETING OF the Irish Volunteers, somewhere in Dublin. Men’s voices speaking in loud tones of urgency and anger. In the audience, Neil Kerrigan, at twenty-two, seems a different man. His features are graver, and he listens with all his might as gaunt, earnest poet and school director Padraic Pearse takes the floor.