Disaster Was My God

by Bruce Duffy

  The old hen was resourceful, however, instructing the cook to bring her son his breakfast and lunch. As for the old woman, she was in luck—she had an eviction to oversee. The usual scene, things heaped on the curb, clothes blowing down the road, women weeping—a terrible thing, tragic, they would be in her prayers. And so with the courts on her right shoulder and the gendarme on her left, clopping down the road in her gig, the old woman returned to Roche, ringing like a bell with her own righteousness. It was near four. Surely, Isabelle was home, thought Mme. Rimbaud as she pulled up, calling to her two flunkies to attend to her old dapple-gray mare, the elegant Countess. Approaching the house, stealthily, she pulled off her big straw sunhat, bent down, then listened at the front door. But when she eased the door open—too late. Arthur wheeled in. Good heavens. Freshly shaved and dressed, too. The old woman felt a chill.

  “Good evening, Mother.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you startled me. Yes, good evening.” Brusquely, she turned, affecting to be busy. “Now where was I?”

  “Mother, wait!” He was smiling. Had he been drinking? she wondered. “Mother,” he said energetically, “I have something very good to tell you.” He waited. “Something wonderful in fact.”

  Wonderful? “My son,” she sighed, as to a child, for sitting in his wheelchair, know it or not, he had been deeply demoted in her eyes, reduced to boy height, “please, I have had a long day and still have things to do. Many things.”

  “Mother,” he said, blinking with surprise. She merely looked back at him, unmoved. “Mother,” he said, trying to be patient, but now with perceptible heat, “please, you always have things to do. This is important.”

  She spun around. “Listen, Monsieur on Holiday, with your sister to wait on you hand and foot while she dumps the whole farm on me.” She looked at him almost for permission, a casus belli, what with him mooning at her, in that man-expecting way, waiting to be fed. “Well, that’s right, you’ve got her, don’t you? You’ve got your little sister to grovel before you, the great poet, but oh no, that’s still not enough for you, is it? Oh, no, being you, back from your big safari, you expect two women to wait on you, eh? Good grief, what do you suppose I do here all day? Fluff pillows?”

  “But, Mother,… listen.” He paused a beat, thinking, Don’t antagonize her, let her settle down. “Because you see, Mother,” he said more softly, “in fact, I don’t want you to work so hard. For I was calculating”—he smiled again—“well, that with all your money and property, and now with my money, you needn’t work so hard. Or at all.” Earnestly nodding, he rolled forward in his wheelchair. “I’m back now.” He hesitated. “I’m your son, and I am home now.” The old woman was now staring at him, so shocked, he thought, that now he could say it. The unsayable. The unprecedented. “Mother, I know we’ve had our differences over the years, but I’m your son, and—and I love you.”

  Love—that was the trigger.

  “Love,” she sneered. “Oh, of course, now that you’re flat on your back, here you roll in like the Savior, eh? You, who never lifted one finger! Home at last to take care of the poor simpleminded old lady. Run the old lady, run everything! Eh? Is that it?”

  He was dumbfounded. “Mother, I just said I love you. Did I not just say that—”

  She cut him off.

  “You always running away—love! You who never loved me, or your sisters, or God, or anyone—love. Love—you who couldn’t stand it here. Love—you who could never stop running, you were just so filled with love!”

  He was dizzy, his ears were ringing. “Mother,” he gasped, playing his last card, “why are you doing this to me? What did I do? Didn’t you just hear me say that I want to care for you? Didn’t I just say that? Then why are you doing this, you always talking about Saint Paul, charity? Is this Christian, what you’re doing?”

  “Christian!” she roared. That was the word. “You dare to talk to me about being Christian! What, life chops you down to size and now you find religion, eh? Christian! You who did evil things. Vile things—Christian! Ruining the good name Rimbaud …”

  The rest was so natural it was instantaneous. Out it all spewed. Pure venom. And all from the same son who, only moments before, had declared his love.

  “Hateful, money-grubbing, wretched old woman! Dumped by your husband—you, with your cold, dead heart. Why did I try? Why was I so blind! So stupid? God! So stupid to come home when I could have just died in the bloody road! Died the failure you always wanted me to be. Good lord, you old crown of thorns, what a wife you must have been! Of course I ran away. Goddamned right I ran away. Just like my father ran away! Just like you drove my brother away.”

  “Get out!”

  In rage, she took a step forward, pressing her face into his. Oh, it felt so satisfying, so righteous, to stare down upon him, crippled and defeated. “Look at you, down there,” she jeered, just as if she had clubbed him. Beaten him down, like a man. Flattened him with her two fists. “Take care of me! Helpless, useless parasite! Right now I wish I could wheel you out where you belong—out in the road!”

  55 Love’s Paws

  Of course, there was no taking back the vile things the mother and son had said to each other, and, as with most family battles, the galling thing was, most of it was true, or true enough. Words were clubs, and they were Rimbauds, stubborn as fieldstones.

  “But what happened?” cried Isabelle. “What was said?” Looking at one, then the other, Isabelle knew the moment she entered the room that something awful had happened. “You two. Like snakes coiled together. What? What on earth happened?”

  “What happened is what happened,” said Rimbaud, staring in one direction.

  “What was bound to happen,” muttered the old woman, staring in the other.

  At this, the old woman turned her back on both her children, then walked dazed down the hallway to her room. But when the door shut, face clenched, she seized her pillow and crawled like a dying animal into her prayer corner. Pushing her face into the stale old feathers, she started screaming at the man who had deserted her long before her son had—

  God.

  “You! Why? Why did you make me, me? To bear males! Say something for once. Why,” she wept, “why does anybody even have children? Why, when either they die or beat you down and suck you dry?”

  Just say you’re sorry, advised Mme. Shade. Cool dell, everything she was not, Mme. Shade swept over the old woman as she crouched there, heartsick and panting. He’s going to die, she said. It won’t be long. Do you want him to die cursed by you? Cursed for all eternity? Dear woman, kind woman, you’re the mother. Go to him.

  “Never,” she replied to her ghostly confessor. “Let Isabelle fawn over him, blasphemer! He can contemplate the back of my head!”

  Two hours later, the mother was fine and everything was perfectly lovely. Having joined her son in a fit of rage, the mother was now stirring a cup of tea, not hurt at all, eager to present a picture of rosy, finely balanced calm. “Daughter,” she said, almost pleasantly, “don’t be surprised at what happens next. Hear me. I do not imagine your brother will be here for long. No, no. Not long.”

  And the wounded son? He was now submerged in his room, from which, every other minute or so, the Abyssinian harp sent out exploratory notes:

  Drereeeeeeee-eeeennnnnnnnnn.

  Weirr​rrree​eeeee​eeeee​e.

  Rooow​wwwww​wwwww​wwww-errrrrr.

  He plucked. He waited, trying to calm down, to steel his rage not so much at her as at himself. Rage that he had been such a dupe, such a fool. Shame that he had imagined, actually imagined, that the old hag could ever change. And worse, here when he was trapped! No legs to take him away—no legs!

  That night, Rimbaud had a dream of which the seed was an actual memory of his time in Egypt. The year was 1878, before Abyssinia. Then twenty-four, he was living in Cairo, a labor foreman overseeing a gang of misfit nationals, Poles, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks. This particular day, however, was not a workday, but s
till, as always, he awoke at 4:00 a.m.—awoke to the chant of the muezzin calling the men to prayers, Ashhadu an la ilaha illallah … Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah.

  When a voice told Rimbaud: It’s time.

  No more delaying, he thought, as he picked up the condemned—a notebook. It was a baggy volume stuffed with poems, drafts, notes, ideas. Foul nest. Old poems and new poems, they had been written in fits when he had slipped from his vow to abandon poetry. No more. Today all would go to the fire. Every word.

  Downstairs, the dirt streets were filled with the sound of slapping sandals as sleepy men, men by the dozens, hurried to prayers. Chameleon that he was, he routinely passed for an Egyptian, dressed in sandals, kufi, and the long shirt, the galabiyya. Outside the mosque, in sandals and dirty feet, he even sat like an Arab, squatting on his haunches, holding in his arms, in an almost pregnant way, the fat manuscript. One hour later the doors opened. It was then, speaking in almost perfect Arabic, that he hired two men and three camels. The sun was rising like a hammer. They could lose no time. Grinding its big teeth, his camel bawled as they hauled it down on knobby forelegs. Then, his right leg locked around the saddle, up Rimbaud rose, ten feet high. Hut, hut, hut. Giving the beast the stick, he followed his two guides into the red desert dawn, into the rays and mist that stretched across the eastern sky, the doomed manuscript stuffed in the saddlebags. It’s time.

  Solar deluge. Slouching and sliding, pitching and swaying, dazed in the dry, fiery wind, Rimbaud drifted he had no idea how far. Then he heard shouts. A brown hand was tapping his leg. The camel collapsed on its calloused elbows. Craning up dizzily, he saw her gazing down upon him—a rodent before her coiled haunches and clenched stone paws. It’s time.

  It was midday, almost black it was so bright, and in the distance the pyramids loomed like shark’s teeth. Hermaphrodite with the crumbling nose and suspect smile. Around the triangular face was an aurora, a brilliant cogitating mist, and as Rimbaud stared, panting, she-he stared back, crouched, if not camped over her great balls, which burned unseen, inextinguishable, like two suns. But then in the dream, the Sphinx’s aspect altered. It was la Bouche d’ombre, he realized. La Daromphe. It was his mother demanding:

  Who is the Son of No One?

  I am the Son of No One.

  And who never fails to fail, Son of No One?

  I do, Mother.

  Do what?

  I never fail to fail. I live to fail, and I am nothing.

  But what actually happened that day when Rimbaud took his forbidden pages to the Great Sphinx? What happened when he took out the notebook, ripped it up, splattered it with kerosene, then dropped the match? Greasy flames licked up. Grimly, he stood back.

  “No!” cried the eldest guide, an old man.

  Almost certainly the man could not read. Yet there he was falling down in the sand, lest the foreigner defile paper, any paper with words written upon it. Words on paper, in Egypt this was a thing sacred, like the Koran. Or, for all the man knew, perhaps it was the Koran. On his knees, the guide was singeing his fingers, picking out the black bits. In horror, he looked back at Rimbaud.

  “What you do? What?”

  “Mine,” he motioned. “It is mine. Let it go.”

  “Bad thing, bad thing. Why you do this thing?” Squinting, the old man waved away the smoke. “Very bad, like killing child.”

  But, squinting, Rimbaud only splattered down more pages. Dead thoughts. Lying thoughts. Burn, demons. Words, useless words carbonized beneath the unceasing gaze of the Sphinx.

  56 Poppy Tea

  It’s hard enough to face a death and death’s fears, let alone death’s demotion and defeat. Isolated and secretive, the three Rimbauds expressed these fears in different ways.

  Mme. Rimbaud, of course, assumed the worst. And yet, deep down, she felt about her son the same public shame and wish for secrecy that she had during his poet days. Hence her fear of having certain things—never mind what things—“get out,” inviting vulgar inquiry and further tarnishing the name Rimbaud.

  As for Isabelle, having found her calling, she could not imagine her brother doing such a thing as dying, especially now, when they were just getting reacquainted. Why, even to think such a thing seemed to her disloyal, gloomy—unsisterly.

  But, of the three, it was Rimbaud himself who was the most curious. In Harar, after all, death was the face one saw everywhere. And yet once home he could not see, or let himself see, the now obvious fact that he was dying. And quickly, too.

  As for the mother, even estranged from her son, she could not fail to monitor his decline or to marvel at how her two children could be so utterly oblivious to reality.

  But why don’t you just tell them? said Mme. Shade.

  They’ll only blame me for being pessimistic. My fault. As if I had wished it.

  Then call a doctor. That way he can tell them the truth.

  And so the next day a local physician, Dr. Colin, paid a visit. A humble, agreeable country doctor of fifty, Dr. Colin had heavy-lidded eyes and a well-tended paunch that strained the buttons of his fraying vest, from which he fished a clam-sized silver pocket watch. Popping the protective silver cover, he looked at the dial, took the patient’s pulse, then did some obligatory prodding and ahhhing and such. Theater, purely. It was obvious the man was dying. But as Isabelle hovered and looked on, the question was, Did they know? Could they not know?

  “And what does your mother think?” asked the doctor. Odd, he thought, that Veuve Rimbaud was not present.

  Isabelle blinked. “My brother, you should know, is entirely in my care. Not my mother’s. Mine.”

  “Well, then, if I may inquire, Mademoiselle,” said Dr. Colin, now thoroughly mystified. “Well, what do you think?”

  She blinked. “About what?”

  “Well … about your brother’s condition.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, my dear, quite simply, how do you think he is doing?”

  “He has pain, he needs something for pain.” She sat there very blank and straight. What was he getting at?

  Hopeless. Dr. Colin then turned to the patient.

  “And you, Monsieur Rimbaud, have you been walking on your crutches?”

  “No.” Rimbaud betrayed a look of irritation. “Quite unnecessary.”

  “Unnecessary, Monsieur?”

  “I have a new wooden leg waiting for me in Marseille. I won’t need crutches.”

  “Ah,” said the doctor agreeably. Why even go into it? The fellow wasn’t his patient, and he didn’t need the old woman complaining. Or suing him. And so with a smile, as he left, mild Dr. Colin offered a do-no-harm prescription:

  “Poppy tea. An old wives’ remedy. Try it, Monsieur. One pinch of seeds in a cup of hot water. I promise you will feel much, much better.”

  Dr. Colin was quite correct about the dreamy properties of the poppy seeds steeped in boiling water. The broth was thin and bitter but when mixed with a quantity of honey, once Rimbaud gulped it down, the effects were not long in coming. Like slow rings in a pool, his eyes dilated; his face relaxed, and, to Isabelle’s shock, her taciturn brother turned talkative, even loquacious.

  He talked about the orphanage in Abyssinia and how the little children sang for him because he had given the orphanage money—in truth, very little money and more as a kind of political favor. But still …

  He talked, too, about the wonderful priests there, Father Abou and the sagacious Monsignor Morélou. “Your confessors?” asked Isabelle hungrily. Not quite. These were worldly men with powerful trade and tribal connections who expected, whatever else, to see their hands greased. In Abyssinia the Lord took His cut, too.

  Under the influence of the freeing poppies, Rimbaud likewise talked without exaggeration and with evident emotion about how he had saved Djami from a beggar’s fate. About how much he missed him and what a fool he had been not to take him to France. He talked, too, about the terrible famines and how he had helped feed the people—true, to av
oid being looted and burned out, and yet, he thought to himself, were people not saved, well, a few? Indeed, he talked about a subject that Isabelle immediately resolved to forget: Tigist, about whom he spoke at length, often extravagantly, telling of his love for the girl and his valiant attempts to keep her—that is, until her troublesome family sent armed men to take her back. Clearly, the poppies were not a truth serum.

  Wonderful stories. And in the hands of his future hagiographer, they would be that much more ennobling. Proof, for example, against the liars and sensationalists claiming that her brother was debauched and an atheist, when in fact he had been a sort of mercantile missionary much beloved by the little noir children. Who would flock around him, children by the dozens, much as the birds did around Saint Francis of Assisi.

  “And why did you stop writing?” she asked one day, when he was particularly woozy and talkative.

  This woke him up. “I did not stop anything.” His irritation was immediate. “Writing stopped me.”

  “Because you found it evil, yes?”

  “Evil?”

  “Yes, evil.”

  “Isabelle, dear sister. Sophistry, truly. Useless, certainly. But I would not dignify it with the word evil.”

  “Unchristian, then.”

  “What are you doing?” he demanded suddenly. “And what does Christianity have to do with it? Are you writing down all this nonsense?”

  “For myself. For the family,” she protested. But he had heard enough.

  “No more poppy tea,” he said the next day when she brought him a cup.

  “But, Arthur, your pain.”

  “I’ll manage. Now enough. I am talking too much.”

  57 Final Flight