Finally, he turns and heads back down the hill. Watching, we sense an invisible rope stretched taut between the nearly quadragenarian gringo screenwriter and the tiny, dark-skinned, scarcely breathing bitty baby in the gutter.
CUT to Paul Schwarz, his new suit now clammy and wrinkled — isn’t it infuriating how linen wrinkles? — and Milo Noirlac — as above, minus the Stetson — toiling back up the Saens Peña hill in the swift tropical sunset. Having smoked too many Cuban cigars today, Paul is panting.
“He won’t be there anymore, Milo.”
“Yes, he will.”
“You’ll see. Your hat’s already been sold to tourists in Santa Teresa, and the kid has either been scooped up by the garbage trucks or devoured by a stray dog. He won’t be there.”
“Yes, he will.”
“You’re completely meshuga, Astuto. What was it, seven hours ago?”
“Yeah.”
“He won’t be there.”
“Yes, he will.”
“Jesus Christ. So what’ll you do if he is, adopt him?”
“Find him a home.”
“What’s with the Good Samaritan shtick all of a sudden?”
CUT to the gutter across from the bright green church. The Stetson hasn’t budged. The two men rush over to it. .
WHAT DO YOU think, Astuto? Okay, I know you never think much of our first drafts, but still. . Do you like the idea of starting off with the day you found Eugénio? Are you having fun, at least? Aw, don’t go to sleep yet — we’re just getting into it. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead. Come on, keep talkin’, you indolent Quebecker. You know how films work: for the first ten minutes, the audience is infinitely tolerant and will accept whatever you choose to flash at them, but after that you’d better start making sense. Okay, so let’s take advantage of that precious tolerance window to teach them the ropes of this film. The first two minutes are already in place. Stay with me. Hang in there, baby.
• • • • •
Neil, April 1910
IN VOICE-OVER, WE can hear the muddled mutterings of a gangly, well-dressed eighteen-year-old after his first night on the town.
Fog along the deep, dark Liffey this morning, or mist shall we call it, no, for soft not sticky in the air, feathery and floating, yes, but still, still, a bit thick and wet like sweat only coolish. It’s six A.M., the haze is glazing and the eastern sky faintly tainting with the palest of lights and we’re on our way home, jolly gentlemen, after one stupendous night with the bawds. Gulls wheeling overhead — have they any choice but to wheel? Must pen a poem about gulls and girls, directly after my morning nap. Yes, I’ve just done something that would shock my mother and annoy even my da, for everyone knows that a young man who plans to embark upon a career in the law should keep his personal reputation pristine — I’ve just wanked a wench, that’s what I’ve just gone and done. What think you of that, Judge and Missus Kerrigan? Trussed up her petticoats and spun her round and lodged myself firmly between those alabaster thighs, then wanked her and spanked her. Strumpets don’t mind a thump on the rump every now and then, ‘tis all part of the fun. Must pen that poem the minute I get home.
Thus dithering and blathering, Neil Kerrigan stumbles from bridge to bridge, utterly delighted with himself.
Yes, at last I know what the jokes were all about, the innuendos, the suggestive raising of eyebrows and wiggling of hips, the priest’s insistent prying during confession on the first Friday of each month — did you do this, did you do that, tell me how exactly, when, where and how many times — and often as I confessed his voice would change, his breathing grow labored, and I would wonder what was transpiring beneath his soutane. Yes, at last I know the convulsive shudder of one’s being that comes in a woman’s arms, as more powerful than self-pleasure as a bomb than a firecracker. Am I right, Willie Yeats? Sing to me!
O love is the crooked thing
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon. .
Sure and learning’s a fine thing, Father Wolf, he goes on. Singing in a bleeding choir as well. Yes, I know I used to be a good little altar boy with a fluty clear wavering voice that sang God’s praises each Sunday morn, I know you believe the cant you pump into your flock about sin and sorrow, brimstone and hellfire, temptation and self-control, I’m not contesting your sincerity — but still, a man worth his oats deserves a bit of a rut on the weekend. Ha-ha! At last I’ve seen for myself the Monto brothels Cousin Thom told me about years ago, having himself heard of them from his raving classmate Jimmy Joyce. The madams, the girls one can pick and choose, the things one can say and do to them behind closed doors. . No, you must be shaggin’ us, said his comrades at University College, can one really? Precocious, cocky and unfazeable, Joyce was the most fascinating young prick Thom had ever met. The image of everything I longed to be and wasn’t — yet. Rumor had it he’d already signed a publisher’s contract for a book of tales about Dublin, and Thom and I wondered if tales like this would figure in it — tales about the underworld of the overworld, the dark side of the bright side, the hell side of the heaven side. Had Jimmy dared express himself in public as he did in private, holding forth about his priapic performances with the Monto Messalinas in a mind-boggling mix of English, Gaelic and Latin?. .
(Nice work, Milo! And then, through a series of ephemeral flashbacks, we’ll discover the dissonance between the way Neil is describing the night’s events to himself and the way they actually unfolded. .)
Masses of girls and women roving the streets, standing or sitting on the front steps of houses — smoking and joking and yawning and scratching themselves, beckoning and clucking at the men who amble past. Puddles of piss and beer and rainwater on the ground. Neil follows Thom and the others into one of the Georgian houses.
Here we could use a close-up of his legs, his fine leather shoes, going up the steps in slow motion. Yes, we hear him mutter to himself, one actually can do this. One’s brain can order one’s legs to mount a staircase to a brothel and the legs will obey. .
The Trinity boys cluster in the tacky foyer with limp lace curtains at the windows — but only at the edges of the windows — leaving the main pane brazenly naked. Should I be seen, Good Lord, should I be seen! Should my father drive down Talbot Street in his carriage! Or Father Wolf, the roly-poly preacher who christened me at age six weeks and has kept tabs on me ever since!
As if in a bad dream, Neil watches his friends select the pretty girls in swift succession and vanish, so that within thirty seconds he finds himself alone with the one remaining harlot — an old woman! Forty if she’s a day, grinning up at him with tobacco-stained teeth, then grabbing his hand and pulling him after her down the hallway. He winces at the sight of her lumpy rump jouncing beneath her brightpink satin housecoat, gags at the thick mix of strangers’ body emanations in the bedroom she draws him into. .
“Tanks, luv.”
Having divested him of half a pound, the woman slides her hand into his breeches and pulls at his member with ghastly efficient know-how, then hikes up her petticoats and turns her back on him. Poor he, meanwhile — heart thumping in temples, eyes starting from head, sweat tingling on forehead, breath speeding malgré lui — loses sight of his own hands amidst the woman’s flouncy mess of petticoats. He moans. Good Lord, where are my hands? And is she not diseased, will she not have warts and sores, will I not die, ta, ta-da DA, will I not die, ta, ta-da DA, will I not die — this in the capoeira rhythm as he pushes, a die with every push—yes, for certain I will DIE.