Disaster Was My God (35 page)

“See here,” said Monsieur, raising the wicker. “See what I have brought back.”

“What’s
that
?” the boy asked, coolly peering in. Come on, what was this compared with birthing calves and the slaughtering knife?

“
That,
” replied M. Mauté, “is a
roe
deer,
mon ami
. A nice buck, as you can see. Taken at a hundred and fifty meters.” With a faint smile, he waited for this to sink in.

“But, Monsieur, it is so tiny.”

The older man reddened. “Mere
size
, Monsieur, is not the point. This is the male of the species. Ghost of the mountains. Legendarily difficult to stalk.”

“But a runt, correct?”

“A
large
specimen. For this species, large. Very large, I assure you.” That did it.

“I
understand,
” said Monsieur, leaning back on his gleaming boots, that the floorboard might creak beneath his now coiled bulk, “I understand you have been here for”—he cleared his throat—“for some days. Well, at 14 rue Nicolet, in this establishment, young Monsieur, we
bathe
. Yes, we have soap. Hot water, too.”

Who was this old clown next to his dear mother,
la Bouche d’Ombre
—the Mouth of Darkness? Let him rant, thought the kid. Verlaine, however, was unnerved. Having grown up essentially fatherless, he was deeply intimidated by aggressive men.

“And,” hectored on M. Mauté, “I am further given to understand that in this house,
my
house, certain valuable articles have gone
missing.
”

“Father,” blurted Verlaine finally, screwing up his courage, “I am quite sure that Monsieur Rimbaud, that he—”

“Allow me to finish!” thundered M. Mauté. “And further, my young Monsieur, I will assume, so long as you are here, and now that I am back …”

Stupid old prick, thought the kid. This will be fun.

38
Why?

For all Rimbaud’s skill in evading his own mind, there was no evading Mrs. MacDonald’s mind or her odd pull over him. But just what was that pull, exactly? Even in the space of many accelerated days in the desert, their relationship, such as it was, was difficult to characterize. Husband and wife? Mother and son? Caretaker and patient? Conscience and amnesia?

Ambos, pressing like a stone on his chest, had yet to be asked or answered, and so the tension between the two was building as they made their final camp, four kilometers, six at most, from Zeila, their destination on the Gulf of Aden, near the mouth of the Red Sea. Close, one knew, owing to the overabundance of flies and the beggars.

Sprawled against the chest, shotgun across his lap, Rimbaud closely monitored Mrs. MacDonald, even as she stoutly ignored him, chin drawn into her neck. Gone was the prim hair. Crusted in dust, it was now tied like so many sticks in a length of raw cotton.
How native
, he wanted to say, to get a rise out of her. But, wisely, he kept this observation to himself.

Then he must have dozed, for suddenly here she was before him
—his
mother. Above him
, there she was, the Mouth of Darkness in her long skirt with two rough boots peeping out. He bolted up.

“Easy,” she said. “It’s only I.”

It was of course Mrs. MacDonald. Returned with the children from their ablutions at the river, she was now as he first remembered her, and this made him extraordinarily happy, uncharacteristically so, to see her again in fresh white shirt, her last, and her hair composed as before, drawn up smartly with the hatpin and primly English straw hat. Appraising his clearly deteriorating condition, she regarded him.

“Look at you, cooked red. Will you never wear your hat?” Picking up the hat, she placed it on his head—pushed it down, then adjusted it, as if for a child.

“Enough.”

“Drink.”

“I did.”

“More.”

“I’m fine.”

“Drink.”

He drank. He knew it was coming, the interrogation, the accusation—something. But then the girl, whatever her name was, was crying again. Your fault, said Mrs. MacDonald’s eyes. And, once more, in a small wind—the wind such as a departing woman makes—she left him, rather upset, on his back. Put back into boy purgatory.

Several hours later, when he reawakened, he saw a blood red sky. Groggy, he sat up, then saw before him seven pairs of sandals neatly lined up in the sand—fourteen sandals and, before them, the fourteen bare feet of seven Muslim gunmen. Mud-red men in the red red sun. Prostrate men rising suddenly, then bowing east toward the jagged red mountains, smoldering in the distance like enormous scaly crocodiles. Tides of darkness, cloud tails, the first sharp stars. Abruptly, once again the seven men rose, then flattened themselves, then rose again, their hands open like cups. It was a scene he had witnessed a thousand times, but now it gored him, he of no faith or tribe. Truly,
kaffir
, an unbeliever—a nothing wandering a world of darkness and whirlwinds.

Ordinary pain, physical pain, this was to be expected, but here was a pain he had never let himself feel before—regret. Never, when he had feet. Not when he could leave, change the scene, slip the noose, the curse of being him, losing himself in the next day or the next town. Gone—beyond forgiveness. Cold—beyond clinging. Free—beyond freedom. But what now, with his leg crushed in the jaws of this trap? Who was he? What?
Lord God, Allah, wind in the sky, tell me what to do. Just tell me, make me yours
.

“Why don’t you give me that now?”

It was Mrs. MacDonald, reaching for his shotgun. Surrender the gun.

“Come, come, dearie. We are now out of imminent danger. Let it go.”

“No.” He held it fast.

“Ah,” she said blithely, “are we going to be like that?”

She took a rag and a small bowl of water—warm, greasy water from the fatty goat skins. Bad boy. Dirty boy. Washing him, the rag was rough and she was rough. Water dribbled down his neck, then, rather embarrassingly, down his trousers, as if he’d wet himself. Embarrassed. Afraid his men might see.

“Enough, you’re getting me wet.”

She plopped the rag in the bowl and took a steaming cup from one of the bearers—sweet tea with just-stripped camel’s milk, mother’s milk, buttery thick.
Drink
. So he drank. Drained it, then had another cup, delicious. Again, Mrs. MacDonald called the men, who now rather miraculously more or less did as she said—motioned—in a voice that was clipped and punctiliously polite. A small candle lantern was brought, lit. It was now just the two of them, two faces in a yellowy globe of light.

“So why?” she asked brightly, now that the tea had revived him. “Really, now you must tell me. Why, ever, did you write poems, Mr. Rimbaud? A man such as yourself.”

He stared at her in disbelief.

“
Poems
, Mr. Rimbaud,” she said, undeterred. “Now, now, don’t be coy, Monsieur. Surely you can tell me. Purely
entre nous.
”

Entre nous
, between us. This appealed to his vanity, that they should be, somehow, intimates connected. And, to his very enormous relief, Ambos was not the subject of inquiry. Mrs. MacDonald’s mode was one of challenge, true. But it also was seductive, blackly jocular, almost cynical, thereby raising the conversation—in one balletic leap—to another plane. Metaphorical. Symbolical. Fantastical. Indeed, in its horror, it was almost abstract. Mrs. MacDonald simply had never met such a person, a capitalist, an arguable murderer, and a cynic, why, at this rate perhaps even a secret slave trader, in a poet’s body. She was quite rapt with curiosity, as if she were inquiring of a lion why he ate meat.

“Come now, just tell me,” she coaxed. “Just
me
. Why on earth did you once write poems? And then just
stop
, as you did. Honestly, Monsieur. How could you do
that
and now
this
?”

This, too, appealed to him, for in his inward way he took perverse pride in how he had reinvented his life, or lives, rather. “Well,” he replied rather grandly, if evasively, “I didn’t write
those
sort of poems.”

“
Antecedent
, Mr. Rimbaud,” she chided schoolmarmishly. “Poems of what sort?”

“Oh”—and he groaned—“those English things of fifty years ago. Gloomy thoughts, like your English drizzle. Wordsworth in the Highlands. Shelley on the beach. Coleridge dreaming his opium dreams. Oh, ‘Ozymandias’—fine. Keats—sublime, I suppose. In any case, Madame, I didn’t do any of
that
. It was
France
, and there was other rubbish at the time. French rubbish.”

“So,” she said, “what, then,
did
you write, Mr. Rimbaud?”

“No recollection—
rien
. Why does a jug pour out its water?” Briefly, he mounted a smile at this aperçu. Then he turned scolding. “Well, if it was Bardey who told you about this—any of them—well, they told you I do not discuss it. At all.
Any
of it.”

“But I am told that people quite
love
your poetry,” she persisted, with a tone now of flagrant flattery. “Positively revere it—well, in Paris they do. I am told that they think it, and you, a great discovery. Hugely important. Genius. Even classic, dare I say.”

At this he grew agitated.

“I do not think of it—ever. What do I care
who
might like my little monsters? These things, these mere artifacts, these youthful slops, they are not
me. My
poems. This makes no sense to me. Rimbaud who? Not me. I do not
own
them. There is no ‘author,’ so called. Ridiculous. Pure egotism. Self-delusion.”

“Ah,” she said, bringing him up short, “and do you then renounce the money, too? You certainly seem to fancy that—money.”

“Money,” he said with a shrug, “there is no money in poetry—none. And I did not publish them. That was my good friend—of once—the poet Verlaine. Genius, a
poète de musique
but a drunk and a bum. So like a fool I let Verlaine have my scribblings. It is my fault, my weakness that I did not burn them. Burn them and be done with it, as I should have.”

“Then you disown them?”

“No,” he caviled, “because I never
owned
them to begin with. He, who, it, whoever
—it
merely
wrote
them, and I gave the little bastards away. There,” he said firmly, “Enough—”

“Fine,” she said briskly. “Another topic then—that terrible scene we passed just today in the desert? Who sold the necessary cartridges? I wonder. Who sold the guns? Hmm, Mr. Rimbaud? Any idea? Or are you, once more, not the author?”

“Yes,” he sighed, “I sell guns. Cookware. Oil. Trinkets. All honorable products.” He glared in the direction of her husband. “Some of us, not yet saints, we must make a living.”

“Or a killing.”

“Do you dare accuse me?” He hauled himself more erect. “Others, several, not just Rimbaud, sell the guns.
And
medicines with which fools poison themselves.
And
knives with which the clumsy cut themselves. I merely
sell
the guns, I do not
aim
the guns.”

“Slaves?”

“Never,” he glared, “never slaves, ever. Not in any transaction, and not easy when they are still traded like currency. But I refused—consistently. There I drew the line.”

“How very principled of you,” she trilled, still not convinced.

“Madame,” and he fixed her in his eyes in that scary way he had, “it
is very much a principle. Here where there is no line, one learns very quickly, believe me, that a line is needed.”

“Well,” she replied, smarting at his bluff male certainty. “So, guns then, Mr. Rimbaud. So like your poems. Acts of God. Accidents for which you, being you, are to be held blameless. Heavens no!
You
are not their author. You, pure as the snow. Certainly not—
you
did not force them to buy your wares. Do I not detect a theme, Mr. Rimbaud?”

Down came his arms; up came the venom.

“And who saved you and your children with all your English high-mindedness? I did.
And
my money.
And
my guns. But of course, you are Christians. Birds of the air. People of the spirit. So, let others feed you, and pay for you, and kill for you, while you do your high-minded leeching. Am I not getting
warm
, Madame? No?”

Imperiously, she rose, smoothing her dirty dress. Rose because she could, then regarded him with a cold stare, a man sitting helpless in the red dirt, in the bits.

“I thought, Mr. Rimbaud, that I might try—try—to get you to see some truth. A glimmer, perhaps. But clearly I was bound to fail. Good night.”

But as she turned, he desperately grabbed the hem of her dress. Tugged it uselessly. Once, like a bellrope, then dropped it, staring into his shadow—spent.

“Wait,” he said, too ashamed to look up. “I am sorry to say such dreadful things to you. Terrible things. I am very, very sorry. Now please, send your husband over. Only him. And I promise it will be a good thing. A very good thing.”

39
The Nasty Fellows