Disaster Was My God

by Bruce Duffy

  “I was working.”

  As always when Michel became particularly excited or exasperated, a snail trail of spittle issued down one side of his mouth. Working his lips: “But Rimbaud, to never go home? In ten whole years?”

  “Of course not. Do you think I was on holiday? I was far away, weeks away. I had a business to run.”

  “But didn’t the other fellows go home? And didn’t you miss her?”

  “Miss whom?”

  “Your mother.”

  Rimbaud slapped the armrests. “Excuse me, excuse me! Face me around.”

  Michel stepped in front of him. “Look, I won’t tell nobody.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “About your mother. How you feel about her. I won’t.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Take me back now. Inside—please.”

  Upset, Michel turned the wheelchair around. Then started pushing, hard. Too hard. Hitting a rut, the chair gave a jolt. Fire shot down Rimbaud’s leg. But when he grabbed the pain, he found himself holding only air. Empty air from the part now separated from him, the ghost.

  “Owwwww! Shit, watch it!”

  His bulbous knee, he could feel it, a fireball of pain, clenched in his hands. Paralyzed, he could feel every gram of it. Pure absence, pure pain.

  “That’s the phantom pain,” said Michel. “Leg’s gone, but it still pains you. Right? We call it the Phantom.”

  Beauty, safety, and happiness—why, thought Rimbaud, why would life show him these things, these now useless things, at the curtain? When again, without warning, Rimbaud burst into tears.

  Doubled over, helplessly weeping, Rimbaud sat with his Phantom and this baffling, fervent young man who had so upset him. And all by merely asking him if he liked his mother.

  51 Chilly Companions

  Meantime, on a train not fifty kilometers away, Rimbaud’s mother and sister were, in their separate ways, experiencing very different reactions to the hot, flagrant beauty of the French Mediterranean.

  Having attained that august and self-sufficient age where she never again needed to see anything, Mme. Rimbaud, needless to say, was repelled by this lazy, olive oily, obviously degraded region, filled, as she saw it, with philandering Italians, siestaing Spaniards, whoring sailors, and similar grinning scoundrels. Adding to her pique was the crowded train that compelled her to be disagreeably close to her daughter, why, almost knee to knee. Indeed, with virtually every seat taken, mother and daughter were forced into a grouping of four seats, two seats facing forward, two facing back. Which made it complicated, for of course Mme. Rimbaud did not want to sit side by side with her daughter. Nor, heaven forbid, did she want to sit directly across from Isabelle’s hunted, prowling stare. No, no, as Madame directed Isabelle with a flick of her nail, they would sit diagonally, like strangers. And so the old woman faced back, ever back, staring at the boiling smoke from the locomotive, fleeing like the past, while Isabelle faced forward, thrilled by this sunny, gigantically new cosmorama, in furious sweep, rushing toward her starving eyes. Red terracotta. Climbing vines. Running children. Blowing wash. Pleasure—she could smell it, hot and vivid, looking at that, then that, then that. Anything so as not to think of that frightening word amputation.

  But this was just the start of Isabelle’s life awakening. For after some hours, as the train pulled around the mountain, for the first time in her life she saw it in the distance—the sea, the blue, the blinking, the effervescent sea! Her gloves pressed the glass. Before the water’s vast expanse, she all but bounced in her seat. The sea, the sea, the sea!

  “Good grief, have some dignity,” scolded the old woman. “Can you not contain yourself?”

  Isabelle reddened. As did the two gentlemen nearby who ducked into their celluloid collars, embarrassed to see a grown woman treated like a child by the old scold. And why? For expressing happiness? For socially isolated Isabelle, this was a slap awake, seeing in their reactions not only how brittle and daft her mother could be but how, day after day, like a fool, she took it.

  And Isabelle saw something else that day. As they drew closer to the hospital, Isabelle could see in her mother’s eyes a terror that she had not seen in twenty years, not since the war of 1871, when in their spiked helmets the Germans had swept down, brown locusts trampling to dust the rye fields of Roche. Look at her, thought Isabelle. An old woman paralyzed—paralyzed as only the proud can be—before the skidding, brakeless train of ruin.

  Ridiculous girl!

  After this cuffing, the old woman could see her daughter angling for sympathy, doing her “hurt lip,” as she called it. Oh, go on with you, she thought, disturbing people with your childish antics!

  But it wasn’t just Isabelle, it was the whole exercise, summoned against her will to see her son. Her selfish son. In trouble, of course, for what else would bring him home! His way, it was always his way, or no way. And imagine if I were in trouble, thought the old women. Would he lift a finger? Obviously not.

  So you see? Do you see what I must carry?

  I do, I do.

  So replied Mme. Rimbaud’s lady companion, the ghostly but, to the Madame, quite corporeal lady who prayed with her so valiantly, under the worst conditions. An unfailing lady. A lady who could pray through fogs, rugged as a statue and clear as a beacon. Never tiring or despairing, she understood, this indomitable woman, the inexplicable durations of God’s silences, the long seasick periods—even these fleeting glimpses of the mere possibility of rescue. In any case, admitted Mme. Rimbaud to her cherished companion—let us call her Mme. Shade. Well, confiding to that revered personage of sterling reputation and unfailing good sense, Mme. Rimbaud felt terribly guilty to say this, but the truth was it was quite useless, this pilgrimage to Marseille to see her son. Oh, granted, these charlatan doctors, wanting to prolong Arthur’s life and run up their bills, they claimed to know that his life was not under threat, but she knew. She knew with utter certainty that her son would die. But the shame of her knowing this, his own mother. Even to her it felt traitorous, as if she were betting on the worst.

  Stalwart Mme. Shade. So bleakly reassuring.

  Now, now, my good Madame, you cannot be blamed for what you know. Rather, blame them, the men, for being so blind.

  But dear friend, replied Mme. Rimbaud, you know how it works. Trapped with all I know and see, soon enough I know something that, believe me, I do not want to know. But if I tell these ignoramuses what I know—spit it out—then they, the blind, think I am being morbid. Negative. Me! When I know!

  And so, as Mme. Rimbaud explained for the hundredth time how, when a grown-up child dies, the poor old mother, if she is unlucky enough to be kicking and still has all her marbles—well, she cleans up everything. The whole mess. Especially with these thumb-sucking males. Grown babies. Babies with teeth, every last one of them.

  Wahh! cries the eminent doctor.

  Wahh! Wahh! cries the powerful general.

  Wahh! Wahh! WAHH! cries even the pope.

  Dear one, Mme. Rimbaud explained to Mme. Shade, I don’t care what the age—twenty, fifty, or eighty—if he’s a male, either he’s seeking tit or he’s whining about it, greedy as a day-old calf. And of course the less milk the poor old mother has to give, the more these blabberpusses want.

  A wolf’s appetite, I quite agree.

  Exhausting, groaned Mme. Rimbaud. And my son is now years thirsty!

  Oh! My poor dear!

  Look at her scowling, thought Isabelle, sneering even at the sea. And then it tumbled out, an anger buried some seventeen years, clear back to Isabelle’s fourteenth summer.

  It was then that her mother announced, quite shockingly, that she would be journeying to London. You heard me, London, she said. Probably for three weeks, to rescue Arthur, she said—never you mind why. Then scarcely had the girls absorbed this thrilling news than their mother made a still more shocking announcement:

  “Now listen to me. We cannot all afford to go, and I cannot stand all the nonsense. So, Vitalie, as
the eldest, you will go. And you, Isabelle,” she sighed, “you, dear, will remain at home.”

  Isabelle’s howls were immediate.

  “Stop it!” cried the mother, covering her ears. “There, do you see? Do you not see how disgracefully you are behaving? How immature you are? You only prove my point!”

  “Mother,” she sobbed, “I’m fourteen and she’s only three years older. What’s three years?”

  “And, Mother,” offered Vitalie, “this way I’ll have company.”

  “N-n-no!” sputtered the mother, “absolutely not! I will not have the two of you around my neck! Not when I have your crazy brother to contend with.”

  Apparently, Verlaine was the source of this particular problem. Still tortured about his marriage (and as usual in need of funds), the lachrymose, grandiose Verlaine had decided, yet again, to return to Paris—to duty, wife, and son.

  Jobless, without funds, and on the verge of being evicted, Arthur, meanwhile, was sending daily, ever more desperate letters pitched to excite his mother’s already simmering anxieties. Feeling tough (and really wanting to brain him), Mme. Rimbaud would think, Let him sink! Let him have his full comeuppance! But then, with a chill, she would think: But what if he does something desperate—even fatal? Good heavens, Mme. Rimbaud would think, if only one knew with children that it all would turn out in the end, then one would not worry so. Trouble was, with Arthur one was never sure.

  Fortunately, this once, Mme. Rimbaud was not alone, for surrounding the two poet reprobates there were four women, all now in regular correspondence with one other. This female quorum consisted of Verlaine’s mother, Mme. Verlaine; the mother-in-law, Mme. Mauté; Verlaine’s wife, Mathilde; and, of course, Mme. Rimbaud herself. And so, almost weekly, letters flew back and forth, filled with the latest rumors or outrage. For let us be honest here. It is immensely reassuring when demonstrably cuckoo people behave badly; why, it’s as if they’re supporting the whole moral order. Moreover, Mme. Rimbaud (secretly) found it quite flattering to have, as confidantes, three ladies of another class—indeed, women whose missives arrived in thick, weighty envelopes fastened with bright sealing wax, into which the sender had pressed with her initials, incised with the almost molar-like indenture of her family crest. The news, though, was always sordid. So flagrant were Rimbaud and Verlaine that in Paris myths were springing up. For example, how Verlaine’s wife had seen them together at the opera, where, even over the coloratura and the orchestra, she was heard to scream:

  “Look at them both, covered with blood and semen!”

  Indeed, by that point even the city’s most notorious voluptuaries, sodomites, and demimondaines had been outdone, utterly outclassed by the filthy, now full-grown bruiser, leading the red-bearded sot who followed him as if he were a conquering angel. For, after all, in Paris one could lead the “irregular” life, that is, so long as one took some basic precautions. A fictitious mistress, a few cheap pieties, a transparent lie and a wink—a fig leaf was more than enough. But to be odiously, crudely obvious—to cram it down society’s throat, as they were—this was madness.

  Of many outrages, we shall omit the merely crude, obnoxious, idiotic, sacrilegious, or scatological—all but two of the more troubling and revealing. For example, the night at a table of poets when Rimbaud proposed an experiment. “Put out your arm.” So he said to Verlaine, who no sooner extended his arm than Rimbaud pulled a knife from under the table and stabbed him deeply in the wrist. The wound, though, was the least of it. What none would ever forget was how Rimbaud watched with a malignant smile, much as a boy might stick a frog, just to see it twitch. Verlaine howled. He looked at his love in rage and horror, at which point the kid just … laughed.

  Not long after this, and not even particularly drunk, the young man of science repeated this vicious experiment on another apparent ectoplasm, the photographer of poets Etienne Carjat, the same who had famously photographed Baudelaire. This time, the self-styled surgeon of the soul was mobbed, punched, throttled, then dragged out into the alleyway. Yet even as they beat him bloody, Rimbaud laughed and jeered them. Poets! Did these pansies not understand the pain required? The willed defilement? The viciousness and sorcery involved?

  Of course they didn’t. And not merely for want of talent or commitment. Let’s face it: beguiling as Rimbaud’s myths might have been as poems or boasts, no adult in his right mind, not even Verlaine, would have been fool enough to act them out. The willfulness, recklessness, and literal-mindedness required—the sheer negativity—this called for the dope of all dopes, l’adolescent je-m’en-foutiste, the hooligan adolescent.

  Well, if at this time Mme. Rimbaud did not know the full and lurid particulars about le jeune Arthur, she certainly knew the gist. And without going into the unsavory details for her two young daughters, she knew a life lesson when she saw one. And so, just before embarking for Britain, Mme. Rimbaud told her daughters just enough, but of course not nearly enough, to pitch them into a state of boiling anxiety.

  “Now he wants my help,” cackled the mother, vindicated that all Arthur’s chickens had come home to roost. “Oh yes, when his belly is empty, then he sees. And why? Because we, the women, we have cut off their money!”

  “But, Mother,” begged Isabelle, trying to pump her for more, “how serious is it?”

  “Desperate, eh? Desperate enough that your lazy, useless brother who has never in his life lifted one finger—that now he wants to work!”

  How serious? So serious that, late that night, after checking on the girls in bed, Mme. Rimbaud lit the oil lantern, then got her shovel. As for the girls, having only feigned sleep, they snuck to the window—aghast, to see their mother pacing. Arms outstretched, she looked as if she were doing a queer dance, veering back and forth across the lawn, when she pounced. The spot. She started shoveling, then dropped the shovel, fell to her knees. Reaching down the hole, rocking and grunting, at last she wrenched it free. A bottle. One of her tallow-smoked money bottles. Cradling it tenderly in her arms, she glanced about suspiciously, then carried it into the house.

  Isabelle had another surprise the day before her mother and Vitalie departed for London.

  As it would be their last day together for several weeks, Mme. Rimbaud told Isabelle that she wanted her, and only her, to accompany her to church. Time alone together, thought the girl. But on the way, inexplicably, Mme. Rimbaud turned the carriage into the stone courtyard of the strangely dairylike nunnery. Looking up, Isabelle counted a dozen windows, each shuttered and bolted. All that was missing was the hay and the milk-cans.

  “Stay here. I’ll be only a minute.”

  The mother got out. Righted her skirt and centered her hat. Then went down the long stone path and knocked, bold soul, on the burly oaken door. The vault of darkness opened. Were they expecting her? Two large, rosy-cheeked nuns came out, smiled, surely thrilled to feel the sun’s benediction, then followed Mme. Rimbaud down the ivied path, past the gazeless eyes of the alabaster Virgin. Wait, thought Isabelle, balling her hand between her legs as the two dark figures approached. What do they want with me? In the sun, the nuns’ white cowls looked, in their recesses, like enormous white calla lilies with faces squeezed inside them.

  “And how are you this fine day, my child?” asked the plumper of the two, smiling, as she patted Isabelle on the shoulder. “I am Sister Geneviève, and this is Sister Thérèse. Sister, say good morning to our young friend—”

  “Good morning, dear.”

  And like that, they had her, screeching and writhing and kicking.

  “I hate you!” screamed the girl to her mother.

  Honestly, the mother was shocked by the extremity of Isabelle’s reaction.

  “Stop it!” she cried. “Stop your kicking! And where else would you, a girl your age, stay? What, with some relative? The run-amuck sons? The drunken husband? Ungrateful child! I am protecting you.”

  “Protecting me? You lied! Lied, lied, lied!”

  “There, do you see?” cried the
mother, holding her palms up to the sky like the stigmata. “Do you see how you are behaving? This is exactly why I cannot take you!”

  Vespers and vile food. Dark, unventilated rooms partitioned into stalls, heavily saturated with the musk of cooped-up, pent-up females. And sticky hot slaps when Isabelle Rimbaud got fresh or refused to comply. The Donkey Girl. So Christ’s thirty-seven brides christened their stubborn guest.

  Meanwhile, as described in her dreary, long, homesick letters, Vitalie saw Paris and London and the Ostend-Dover ferry, saw for the first time, as her brother had seen, the blue, the harrowed sea. In the massiveness of London, the world’s largest city, she also saw the future, well into the next century: horse carts and omnibuses and railways that arched, on crystalline bridges of cast iron, over the prismatic London smog.

  On Regent Street, with utter shock, she and her mother absorbed their first black people. They ate ices and watched street acrobats. They saw Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Hyde Park, and the Tower of London, then proceeded on to the British Museum, where virtually every day her brother spent hours, such that his English, albeit accented, was almost perfect. Still, Vitalie had no idea her brother was a writer, or anything, really, except a very brilliant problem. She would never have dreamt he was writing poems in prose, revolutionary poems, some inspired by the dreamscapes of London:

  Grey crystal skies. A strange pattern of bridges, some straight, some arched, others going down at oblique angles to the first, and these shapes repeating themselves in other lighted circuits of the canal, but all of them so long and light that the banks, heavy with domes, are lowered and shrunken. Some of these bridges are still covered with hovels …

  A white ray, falling from the top of the sky, blots out this comedy.

  They went to the English seaside, saw the zoos, palaces, and museums, and ate warm taffy—in short, did almost everything that a young girl could ever hope to do. And in her homesickness, Vitalie Rimbaud hated almost every minute of it. Hated it.