by Bruce Duffy
And so on the train two days later, after passing through Paris, when Mme. Rimbaud and her two daughters saw the great spires rising over the fields and trees, truly, as they gazed upon that massif of time-begrimed stone, for the first time in months Mme. Rimbaud felt unburdened, certain, even vindicated. Later, entering the church, the three women anointed themselves with holy water, then humbly entered the towering nave, frankly frightened at first even to look up, as if they might see the face of God.
Vast-echoing Goliath. Smelling of snuffed tapers and old hopes, the great cathedral was a hollowed-out man-made cave of light, a veritable mountain of gray limestone laboriously sawed into pieces, then reassembled into arches and domes and tall shields of stained glass, intricate jewels of red and clear and of a blue found, in all the world, only here. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Long dresses gliding over the massive, foot-polished stones, through forests of columns, the three Rimbaud women thrilled to feel so small, to be specks! To add their voices to this ceaseless, surflike echolalia of voices—lives flying up to God!
No longer were the Rimbaud women oddball hermits, not now. By trains and omnibuses, by wagons and on foot, pilgrims by the dozens—whole legions of the faithful, rich and poor alike—kept arriving, and in every nook, there were confessions, and in the side chapels, there were Masses for the dead, and everywhere it seemed there were votive candles to light, holy flames of blue and red, touched to life with slender tapers. Look, there were saints’ statues to kiss and, they heard, remnants of the Holy Cross. Imagine, tiny splinters of the actual Cross! But happiest of all, for Mme. Rimbaud, there was Mary’s tunic, which had protected the Virgin, she was convinced, from the prowling hands of her husband, Joseph. Who, even if he was the good simpleton carpenter they claimed, was nonetheless a man. So it seemed to Mme. Rimbaud.
Still, she could go only so long distracting herself with such thoughts, numbing herself with these prayers that God would not answer, waiting in vain for the soft, warm rain of fresh belief. Any belief that could defy a word like consumption. Ach, these lying doctors, these useless priests.
Belief, failed belief, this was what crushed Mme. Rimbaud—belief, betrayal, and now her anger, that after all her offices and prayers and good works, that even so, her baby would be taken from her, just as her son, once her hope, was surely bound for hell. Failure then. She was an utter failure, she knew this now. Failure was her prayer. She was a failure as a mother, a failure as a wife, and a failure as a woman. I am a failure, a failure, a failure. But lo, as she shuddered and wept into her folded hands, down it fell finally, a single feather of mercy, twirling down from the stars, whitely down a million miles from the kingdom of heaven. And when she actually looked up, for the first time in months, she felt hopeful, even forgiven, light, almost happy, as she stuffed money into all the sick and poor boxes. And so one after another, as to a bath, she and the girls, they all went to confession. But once inside the confessional the size of a coffin, once shut up in that airless abattoir of sin, stinking with sweat and fear—zip, the black screen opened before Mme. Rimbaud’s frozen eyes. Exposed, she shrank in fear, desperate to ask the priest, this candlelit silhouette, the terrible question that now weighed on her.
“Father, I made my confession yesterday. I talked about my poor daughter who is sick—don’t ask, please. But you see today—today, Father, I come to you about my son, my youngest son, because perhaps he’s the problem. I mean, if he’s the reason this awful thing has happened to my daughter.” She paused a moment, licking her lips. “I know this sounds crazy, Father … but I came to ask … well, how would one know if one’s own child is demonically possessed?”
The shadow flickered; she could almost see his eyes, two somber ovals, like bloody tears, in the darkness. “Madame,” replied the priest, “you mean, then, that your son spits, fights, raves, curses God?”
Garlic—she could smell him, his breath, his armpits, his maleness. “Father, he fights me. And he hates God, hates him. Yes, even at fifteen he refused to go with us to church. It was then that he started writing on the walls, the village walls. Writing things, Father, vile things, even on the walls of the church, slanders against God. And now, Father, he runs away to Paris, living … with a man. Openly, do you hear me? An older man—in unspeakable sin, if you can understand me.”
The darkness ruminated. “And where is his father?”
“Oh, his father, he is away, away with the army in Africa.” Although a hysteric and a chronic exaggerator, Mme. Rimbaud was not a liar. And yet an irresistible fancy bloomed in her mind. “Because you see, Capitain Rimbaud, my good husband, defending our colonies against the Mussulmans, against fanatics—well, at such distance he is powerless to help us. Oh, he tries. He sends us letters, money. It wounds him to his heart. But he is a patriot, Father, so he is away, always away. In Africa, as I say. Algeria, I think. Someplace like that.”
Would the priest not catch her in this awful lie? For after all, closeted with God, as he was, wouldn’t the priest just … know? Finally, after a long pause, the priest said carefully, “Yes, children do terrible things, ridiculous things. But possession is exceedingly rare. Rather, Madame, I think you need to pray with me today. Persévérez dans la foi, this is what you need, my child. More faith is what is needed here.”
“La foi?” She hissed through the jewel-like perforations of the screen. She was outraged! The presumption, that he could be so deaf and so disparaging of her sex—a woman starved and he tells her, in effect, to eat faith. “But, Father, I have broken my knees for God; I have given Him my last heave. How can you tell me this, that I, of all people—that I need faith! Yes, and a pair of angel’s wings, too! Father whatever-your-name-is, come now, do you think that a woman would ever just sit in there, as you do now? That a woman would just sit there on her little throne and tell a mother such utter nonsense? You who have never been a parent! You, on your high horse! Why, a woman would make a better priest any day.”
Here they were at Saturday vespers, and within two minutes, God’s own emissary was rapping on the confessional, his mouth hard against the screen, hissing, “Madame, mind your tongue. And listen to you, speaking heresy, suggesting that women should be priests, while here you bitterly complain of your son’s heresy. And in Chartres, Madame! Of all places! To pick a fight with me? Ah well, Madame whatever-your-name-is, I think the bad apple does not fall far from the tree, eh? Ehhhh?”
She slapped the confessional. The maternal rebel ran outside, Eve expelled without Adam into the evening light, out into the courtyard. There she was, in the strange shadows of the dragonlike flying buttresses, looking at her almost murderous hands, then at the barn swallows twittering, sweeping the skies for mosquitoes—mere birds! Les hirondelles sont hautes—the swallows are so high—good weather, never better … such small, such stupid things. The ants and beetles beneath her feet, even that dog loping down the drive, all living when here her own flesh was dying, dying! Then she heard footsteps. It was Vitalie, doomed and now right behind her, skinny as a stray.
“Maman, are you all right?”
“Leave me, please.” And looking up, she said audibly to God, to the Deaf One in the sky, arrogant man, “Do you see? Do you see this? Must my children chase me? Must everyone ask of me everything?”
“Maman,” cried the girl, frightened. “Maman, what is the matter?”
But her mother charged off, weeping. And damned beyond even anger, Mme. Rimbaud was what she never was—beaten and now ashamed.
But then that night, in all the annals of faith, truly, an amazing thing occurred. In those days, there were no hotels, so they slept in a lady’s house, a very nice lady and, one might have thought, the last decent woman left in all the world. This was Mme. Isambert, an elderly widow of noble mien serving in the rectory. Here clearly was a woman who had suffered—as on the Cross—the seasick pounding of the marital bed, the drun
ken, often disappearing husband, and the ungrateful children. And so, late into the night, in hushed whispers, Mme. Isambert talked to Mme. Rimbaud, as women do, about this death of which she had spoken to no one except the priest. The good lady listened, and to Mme. Rimbaud’s amazement, she actually heard herself talking, openly talking, woman to woman, even about her deepest shame—her youngest son.
“I fear I have raised the devil. Do you think I exaggerate? We live in shame. Even in Paris he is infamous, living like a wild animal. Worse.” Grief, she muzzled it like a sneeze, pinching her lips.
“But Madame Rimbaud,” whispered Mme. Isambert, “you cannot let him sap all your energy, your peace—not now. Madame, God’s arms are but weeks away from holding your daughter. You can’t help your son now—no. All your energy, your womanly self-control, your love, all this must go to your daughter. To her, and her only.”
Ravaging day! In the snake pit of Charleville, it would have been inconceivable for Mme. Rimbaud to quietly receive or accept such sensible advice, to hear the gentle voice of reason, leading her like a horse from the burning barn of her life. Mme. Isambert asked her, “Do you remember the story of the daughter of Jairus? The daughter whom Jesus raised from the dead? Just so in unblemished white garments he will raise your own daughter. Do not give up. As for your troubled son, he is but what? Twenty? Twenty-one? Yes, he may seem to have no heart, a dead heart. Yes, he is selfish—as all boys are at that age. And yes, you must be realistic, of course, but you also must be hopeful and of good cheer—he cannot remain so forever, and time is on your side. Not until thirty are men truly lost.”
Lost! Was over never over? she thought, swollen-eyed. Was enough never enough? And just as his job was to foul up, it was hers to clean up after him. Perfect, she thought, they were complete.
7 Abandon Ship
“Monsieur, wake up, the men are here for you! Everybody! Do you not hear me? Crowds.”
Downstairs, a door slams. Then Rimbaud hears the slap of sandals, swift, light feet coming up the stairs. And here he is, a young black man in white robes—blinding in the early sun. In the red sun, even the twizzly filaments of his young beard ignite. It is his servant, Djami, late, when he is virtually never late. So begins Rimbaud’s final day in Harar. Behind the sun, behind schedule—behind. Rimbaud shoots up.
“Good God, it is half past six! What are you up to? Why are you so late?”
“My child, Monsieur. He is sick. Fever—very sick.”
“Sick,” repeats Rimbaud, for it is obvious that Djami, who never lies, is lying. And here it comes, what they have been arguing over, bitterly, for the past two days.
“Monsieur,” says Djami, leaning down, “today no good. No good today. No go. Too dangerous. The frangi, he will be killed. This is what they whisper, Monsieur. This is what the people say.”
“Nonsense, there is no bad or good or better day. Now, up. Help me up.”
“But, Monsieur,” says Djami, gesticulating, “don’t you hear? Crowds, I tell you. The camel men and gunmen. All arguing, because they can smell the money. Bad day, bad day. I swear to you, before this day is over, somebody will be shot.”
“Djami, listen to me,” says Rimbaud in that ever-calm, hypnotizing, implicitly threatening way that, unfortunately, the white traveler soon picks up in such places. “Have you loaded Desta? Inside the warehouse? As I instructed? Out of sight? Did you?”
Sure-footed Desta. Right now she is the richest camel in East Africa, saddled with the bulk of Rimbaud’s gold hoard: primitively cast gold bars, Maria Theresa doubloons, and small tapering ingots crudely struck, like glowing nails.
“And you loaded her,” hectors Rimbaud, “you alone?” Tone, here it is all in the tone. Here a man survives through tone, which is to say, in an endless play, he acts.
“Yes,” says Djami, emphasis added. “As I told you. Only me, as you said.”
Rimbaud has trained Djami to issue quick, precise reports, and the young man is now multilingual, whip smart, albeit with strange translational notes. And now, to Rimbaud’s infinite pride, Djami at twenty is a man, married, with a beautiful wife and a son of almost one year. And to those who will wonder (thinking perhaps of Lord Byron’s lewd romps with dark pony-haired boys in Albania and Greece), without being naïve, the answer is no. Oh, in Rimbaud’s early, strangely public sexual life, when as part of his poetic program to reach the Unknown he was undergoing a “rational derangement of all the senses,” yes, of course. This is not to say he would never again do such a thing—of course he could, why not? But here? Never, and the reason is as much a fundamental shift in Rimbaud’s psyche as it is purely a matter of survival. In Abyssinia, if one were discovered, there could be howling mobs, even stoning in the heat of the moment. But perhaps more to the point, sexually he is a chameleon, an opportunist, and this is not the time nor the place. Different man, different situation.
Djami hauls him up by the shoulders.
“I am up.” Shoving down his arms. “Easy. God.”
An orphan, Djami—his mother dead in childbirth, his father of some fever, and his siblings scattered fish in a general sea of catastrophe. Six years ago, when Rimbaud found him, Djami had been a street urchin running with a pack of boys, dusty-haired “nothing boys” one step removed from the equally ownerless dogs. But this boy, Rimbaud saw, this one was different: impertinent, as all street boys are, but genuinely observant, almost prescient, with a rare zeal for detail. Devoted and, better yet, discreet. Trustworthy, too. Like a barnacle, the boy attached himself to Rimbaud, and he was quick to read once Rimbaud taught him, and then with a pleasure and a degree of patience that surprised him in a street boy. Caught right on, just as he did when Rimbaud trained him to load camels and read ledgers, to use mental arithmetic and value goods—above all, to ferret out the truth in this land of grinning, stalling liars. Moreover, in a land where the whole idea was to drag things out—negotiations, payments, and, above all, leaving—Rimbaud had taught his protégé to get to the bloody point.
“No,” insists Rimbaud, hobbling, as Djami nudges the brass chamber pot into place. “Later. Later, do you hear me? I need to bloody leave.”
“No,” insists Djami, waving his supple index finger as they do. “Do you want the people to see you in this way? On your last day? Do you?”
God watched. This is how Rimbaud thinks of the native men, as moral creatures and especially when it comes to their natural functions. Hot shame. The way the dark men will summarily lift their robes, then squat, without a thought, to urinate in the streets. Beneath the all-seeing gaze of Allah, the Muslim men are forever purifying themselves, horrified to dribble so much as a drop on their faultless robes. Any stain. Squatting, they will take little flecks of mud or rock like burning coals and daub these chalky fragments on their members, blot it up, even a drip, while floating above, like a vast and milky eye in the rising wind, Allah, the all-seeing, Allah hovers like those great-winged birds the kites. And so five times a day they pray. Why, once under threat of attack, Rimbaud’s Abyssinian party dropped their guns and readied their prayer carpets. “Do you want to pray or die?” asked Rimbaud. The men stared at the frangi in incomprehension. Pray, but of course.
Dribble tinkles brass. “Lovely,” mumbles Rimbaud, as hot droplets spatter his bare toes and Djami’s, too. “What a memory, huh?”
“No shame, Monsieur, never with me.”
Rimbaud half grins. “Allah won’t mind today? You’re sure?”
This coaxes a smile from Djami. “Not today. Rabbina yusahhil, May the Lord make things easy.”
Yet the truth is, Djami is furiously angry, shamed and humiliated at Rimbaud’s iron refusal to take him with the caravan. Angry that this man, like a father to him, should leave him “soiled like a woman.”
“Soiled,” his exact word, and it carries a history.
Six months before, Rimbaud had done essentially the same to the young Harari woman who—to his way of thinking, anyhow—had gotten him into this mess. Woman, con
cubine, intended wife, the girl, named Tigist, is now seventeen, perhaps eighteen as best they can calculate such things here—in any case, far too old to marry. Besides, Tigist’s most precious commodity as a young woman, her virginity, this has been stolen by him. Even as he tossed her away.
Beautiful, too. The Spice Woman, this Tigist, she is the girl—truly, a flower sprung in the mud. And if you are a man, you can bet she knows that you know how beautiful she is. For from all across Africa, from thousands of miles away, men come to Harar to see such girls as Tigist. Of girls like Tigist songs are written. Around braziers—sparks whisking up into the night—the laughing caravan men, rolling on their haunches, mold their hands to suggest her volumes and movements, the gripping, man-stripping wriggle, when the Harari girl climbs you, oh boy, like a monkey on a tree.
Blended from Arabs and Negroes, and Turks, French, Italians, English, and Greeks, these Harari girls, they are born of everyone and everyplace, with smooth, tea-colored skin, thin noses, and clear, shining eyes—eyes of a pale brown, almost blue. Between, actually. The color between.
