Disaster Was My God (13 page)

“Oh please,” the once-poet protested. “Every French boy
writes
. Let us not waste our time with seventeen’s frothings.”

“Slops,” “frothings,” “inanities”—Rimbaud utterly rejected his literary leftovers, even as Bardey pressed his Paris bookseller to locate all writings existent. As a lover of Coleridge, Byron, Wilde, Hopkins, Poe, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Tennyson, and, provisionally, even the shocking and shamelessly great Whitman, Bardey nevertheless despaired, where Rimbaud was concerned, of finding any known path in. And yet, he had one word for Rimbaud’s poems:
undismissable
.

What
did he drink? Why? How then did he become a sign for an inn? An inn! Before Rimbaud, poems rhymed, certainly had a certain number of syllables and stresses and caesuras and such, but essentially they were versified prose. They didn’t mystify or take wild leaps, they were not obscurantic, they did not thumb their noses at the reader.

“Oh, I don’t know that I understand it,” lamented Bardey to the chaps, “and I would be hard pressed—save for Baudelaire—to say where on earth it came from. Much less where it fits. Which leaves me with my original word—
undismissable
. Unexplainable. Ranting and obscure in parts. Even nonsensical at points. Throw in jejune, too. Yet, through it all—and I shall say it again—powerfully, inexplicably
undismissable.
”

“Ah,” said one of the wits, “and what do you think dismissed Frère Jacques to this hellhole?”

“I told you,” groused another. “Rumor has it he killed someone.”

“Come now. People think we’ve
all
bloody killed someone.”

“Or we’re all brokenhearted. Jilted.” This got a small laugh.

“All right,” said the heavy one, Mercer, to Bardey. “We’re thickheaded. So read the bloody thing again. Not that one with ‘bad sign on the inn’ or whatever the hell it was. I mean the other one. You know, the one with the ABCs.”

“Very well,” said Bardey, who then intoned:

“E!” cried one. “As in
E
-nough. If he hates his own bloody work, why’s it our job to bother with it?”

“But,” remonstrated Mr. Bardey, who in his mild way could get heated about such matters, “the trouble is, it is
not
nonsensical. Fantastical and willful, yes. But—”

“—Give me Tennyson,” chuffed Mr. Beet, blowing smoke from a well-chewed cheroot. “
Theirs is not to make reply, theirs is not to reason why, theirs is but to do or die
. I love tub-thumping, bleedingly obvious stuff like that.”

Of course it turned fractious. Exegesis—Jesus! Here Bardey found no known landmarks and indeed no compass whatsoever, or not according to the known knowns of other great poems. Which, however obscure at points, were—as Bardey reminded them again and again—poems that could be
gotten
, unpacked, and readily puzzled out.

Well, for a gadfly and puzzler like Bardey, this was torture, having in their midst a literary man who sat quite mute on the topic—quite willfully so, as if he had been taken prisoner. It was impolite, it was boorish, not to mention unwise to stiff one’s employer. Indeed, it matched Rimbaud’s equally stubborn refusal to play chess, cribbage, poker, charades—games of any kind. Still, Mr. Bardey tried.

“You know, Rimbaud,” he ventured one day, “I’ve always said that poems are like oysters to be winched open and drunk for their liquor. So different from novels, I think. Novels are more brute force. More excavatory. Well, don’t you think?” With some impatience he waited, then added heatedly, “Well, might you at least bloody agree with
that
?”

“Bardey”—and Rimbaud sighed one of his long sighs, as if the world would then bore and frustrate him out of existence—“as I have told you,
I
do not
think
. Yes, I
wrote
them, I suppose, but so what? I cannot help them now. They are like children, or rather, estranged children, and I
think that is quite enough. Today I do not write poetry. Nor do I read poetry. Or novels. Any of that creative nonsense. And, if you will kindly indulge me, I do not discuss poetry, something, incidentally, that I almost never did.” The poet sat with his thoughts, then allowed, “In any case, I don’t think any artist can rightfully
explain
what he did. And anyhow—well, so what?”

“But, Rimbaud,” begged Bardey, “at least be so good as to talk to me about
past
poetry,
other
poets, or poetry in general. I’ve no one here with whom I can discuss such matters. Oh, when I took you on, I knew, of course, that you are well educated and even classically trained, much as you have sought to disguise it. But I had no idea you were literary, or thoroughly literary, or not to such a degree.” Winching open an oyster, indeed. Again Bardey waited—to no avail—then exploded, “Oh, come on now! It’s as if some famous singer arrived here, then refused to sing.”

Rimbaud just sat there.

“Very well, then,” thundered Bardey. “But answer me this. Why, in your ‘Vowels’—so why should the letter
U
be green? Why not black? Or blue? Or red?”

“What!” said Rimbaud indignantly, in mock alarm. “Do you mean to tell me that
U
is
not
green?”

A
nd famous, too, said Bardey. Well, growing fame. This brought howls of disbelief from Rimbaud’s colleagues. Famous? This mercantile monk yanking recalcitrant camels and counting rank hides? Famous? This tightwad sweating every sou?

And hardheaded? God! Even before this discovery, Bardey had repeatedly come to Rimbaud’s rescue—why, even as recently as last week, when, as a mercy, Bardey had bought him out. Good terms, too. Scrupulous to a fault, Bardey. Extraordinary man, really. And only now, as Rimbaud glimpsed Bardey across the street waving to him—only now in his tardy way did he see it!

“Ah, me,” said Bardey almost fondly as he waved, “I mean, gentlemen, how very fortunate we are, unlike our departing friend, to have no
definable
talent
. No defining passion. No real vocation in life.” For such an indefatigably cheerful man, Bardey loved twilights.

Let’s see. Besides Digby, there is Tucker, the erstwhile telegrapher. There is Buckey, whose fiancée fobbed him off. And Duchamp and Ancelli, the Italian, most amusing chap. He and his brother Marcello—Marcello the Unlucky—who had been stabbed and later shot, then poisoned unsuccessfully by a disgruntled servant. Eleven in all. And, with the exception of Bardey, they all showed too clearly what results when bachelor oddballs are left, by the fairer sex, to roam unshorn, unwashed, and sartorially unsupervised.

“Well, gents,” said Tucker, unlimbering himself to squirt the wall. “I shall say this for our poet. He could step in shit. In
that
, none was his equal.”

“God, could he! The girl! Or Menelik, ready to boil him in oil!”

This was Menelik the warrior king, a sort of modernizing Yahweh buying Gatling guns and steam trains while smiting villages and armies with the rifles Rimbaud smuggled and finagled for him—despite rather pro forma European efforts to eradicate slavery and pacify the place. How naïve, thought Rimbaud. Pick your chaos. Someone had to establish order here, and it might as well be Menelik. For a born cynic, Rimbaud was nothing if not swaddled in naïve hope.

“Well,” said Mercer, who, rumor had it, was about to be cashiered, “my personal favorite was when Rimbaud publicly slapped the camel man. Never forget how Rimbaud stood there, actually
indignant
, when the mob came for him. Wronged, you know—misunderstood. As if he was upholding justice.”

“There it is,” intoned Bardey, nodding soberly, ever the apologist for his unfortunate protégé. “He was too mentally … astringent. Too … aesthetic. As I told him so many times,
of course
these people shilly-shally.
Of course
they pilfer, and so would you, were you in their shoes. But no! He held them to a
standard
. Had these high moral … 
theories
. ‘Come now,’ I told him once, ‘no need for a scalpel where a butter knife will do.’ ”

But before they can more fully dissect this, Digby blurts out:

“Lord, look who’s coming. It’s Friar Hopeless!”

“Late to the dance, as usual.”

“Shoeless.”

“Still clueless.”

It’s a white man in his thirties. Pulling on his shirt and stamping into his shoes, he is being followed by an imposing, exasperated woman pulling by the wrists two distraught children. White children. Almost unheard of here.

“Daddy,”
cries the girl, “Daddy, wait for Mummy!”

“Come
on,
” trumpets the man. Dropping his knapsack, the man ties one boot, leaves the other untied, then starts off again, bellowing, “Mr. Rimbaud! Monsieur
Rimbaud
!”

Forget it. Rimbaud can’t hear him. Blocked by the crowd, Rimbaud is still oblivious to this family of four chasing after him. As for Bardey and the chaps, Digby raises an invisible glass.

“Gentlemen, a toast!”

“Here, here!”

“To the
poet
! Who didn’t
know it
!”

10
Old Maid

Mme. Rimbaud meantime is hardly alone in chafing at the prospect of Arthur’s impending return. With every passing day, Isabelle feels a similar anxiety tinged with resentment that she should be stuck with her mother in this mooing, feeding, forever-needing
manure
factory near the Belgian border. And not just stuck but hopelessly unmarried when here her female contemporaries have long moved on.

It is an old and humiliating story, and yet in Isabelle there burns the hope, albeit languishing, that if she is freed from the queen’s clutches—freed to live somewhere, perhaps to work in town—that some good man, even a considerably older one, will find her. This remains Isabelle Rimbaud’s survivor’s creed.
I will be found
.

And yet this trap in which she finds herself, it is not just her
mother’s doing. In Isabelle’s mind, her undoing is very much Arthur’s doing as well.

For after all, if Arthur returns, he will return with money and then, having money, likely he will marry. As any man can, especially if he has money. But will he marry and leave? Guiltily, Isabelle worries about this, for if he leaves she will be trapped at Roche as before. What most upsets her, though, is that her mother, the traitor, claims to have a wife all picked out for Arthur. A wife! Like a suit of clothes. It’s all set, Mme. Rimbaud claims, even as she refuses to divulge the name of the lucky lady.

“But, Maman,” says Isabelle, doing her best to sound calm and reasonable, even as inwardly she trembles with rage, “why won’t you tell me her name?”

“Don’t worry,” snaps the mother, who now hears herself being called a liar, “I have someone. All picked out, too. Don’t you worry on that account—oh, I have the girl.
If
indeed that is what he wants—never mind the leg.” The mother nods. “And
that
, daughter, is all you need to know.”

“Girl, you say?”

“Woman. A
wo
man. And none of your tricks! You heard me. I refuse to discuss it.”

“But Maman, honestly, who on earth would I tell? The cows?”

“Does the priest share the secrets of your confession? Does the doctor tell the town your troubles? Eh?”

At this, the mother looks immensely vindicated, the poaching cat padding off with a mouse. As for Isabelle, now spinning around, her eyes blurt up, Why? Why not me? Because I’m an old maid?

There in the hallway, by the front door, hangs a dull, time-spotted old mirror. Round like a face and hung with old hats, it seems to Isabelle like a little old lady friend, a wise, sweet old lady veined with age and slowly losing her silver, bit by bit, like sand sifting through an hourglass. And so, every morning before Mass, once Isabelle shucks her heavy India rubber boots and cleans herself up—in those precious seconds before the mother’s hammerlike heels hit the stairs—Isabelle consults
her lady friend, the mirror. Who now is asking Isabelle what she feels—really feels—since the day before, and the day before that.