Disaster Was My God (37 page)

“It is not,” replied the boy coldly, “my job to explain.”

“But,” said the elder poet, swiping his long, slick mustache, “but, Monsieur Rimbaud, surely as poets, it
is
our job to explain, to be clear.”

“No,” said the boy testily, “but you see, when I read
your
writings—many of you—you labor to explain. To merely be
clear
, as if a poem were, what, a
newspaper
? Read once, then used to wipe your—”

It was, in short, an incendiary debut, as the young honoree not only bit the hand, but even managed, on the way out, to pinch a hat and a pair of gloves.

40
Poison Ink

Two days later, the child was born—at home, of course—after twenty-seven and one-quarter hours of labor, a marathon in which, naturally, the men of 14 rue Nicolet had gone almost entirely missing. Moreover, the child, a boy, now had a name—Georges—although for Verlaine at that moment it might as well have been named Nobody.

Being a Mauté, the scion, in a way horrifying to their hardscrabble guest, had his own infant principality comfortably separate from his parents, a place with embroidered ruffles over the ruffles and—to disguise the legs of his crib, which Mme. M thought unsightly—even Bo Peep pantaloons. The child also had many long, equally ruffled silken gowns, each with a starched bonnet that, once tied, make him look like an enormous squalling flower. For like his papa, baby Georges was a voracious swiller of fluids, occupying not only Mother but an equally depleted, red-faced wet nurse who had recently delivered her sixth. Suffice to say, amid the continuing siege, young Mathilde was not the same pliant naïf she had been ten days before, not now, saddled as she was with
three
children—baby Georges, his papa, and now this versifying urchin from the sticks.

Three a.m. Drunk again.

After another bad night, Georges was sleeping in the crook of her left arm when the door burst open and his papa—paralyzed—collapsed into bed, very nearly crushing the child. Mathilde bolted up. Georges
was bawling and his father was snoring, reeking of the tavern and—good heavens!—the horse dung thickly mired on his boots.

“Get
up!
” she cried, shaking him. “Paul! You almost hurt the baby—wake up.” Furious, she gave him the elbow. “There’s a
child
in this room, do you hear me?
Your
child!”

“Shut it,” he muttered. “Little shit.”

“Miserable baby!” She shoved him again. “You, who cannot even bear to look at your son?” Then again—hard, in the ribs.

“Bitch!”
He stormed up. His eyes looked like small coins. Dazedly, he whipped around. “Whore! You whore!”

“Indolent lout!” she retorted. “I, whose family
supports
you, and to do what? To guzzle and root about and write nothing! Ah, but you have
your
son now, don’t you? Your rude and filthy son, Rimbaud—”

Rimbaud, this was what set him off. “Whore! Rimbaud is twenty of you.”

“And leads you around by the nose! Like a fool!
You
, who won’t so much as look at your own son, let alone pick him up.”

“What?” he roared. “Up? Pick him up, you say?” Colicky baby Georges—normally with his nurse so Mother could sleep—he was in their room, bundled in his blanket. When, before she could even react, her husband lurched up and grabbed the infant, hypnotized with rage, swaying drunk.

“Paul, put him down!”

“Down?” he mocked. “Down, do you say?”

Beneath Verlaine’s blank gaze, the squalling infant might have been a rump of beef in soggy butcher’s paper. There was no hesitation. He flung the infant against the wall, then watched, in numb horror, as he hit the floor.

“Monster!”

Hysterical, Mathilde swept the child up, then jammed herself in the corner, the baby balled in her arms. There was no time to scream. With that frightening alacrity of drunks, Verlaine, insensible only moments before, was just inches from her face, head swaying like a snake.

“Bloody fucking bitch!” He grabbed her by the throat. “Dare you!
About”—he lost his page—
“Dare you!”
He raised his fist. “Rimbaud! Eh?
Ehhhhhh—?
”

Dazed-eyed. Spittle-lipped. Lower teeth jutting. With each curse the cords of his throat trembled, as slowly he seized her by the mouth, twisted her lips to a beak, then uttered low as an oath, “God
damn
you, f-f-pharafites.”

Double man. Double sex and double mind. Off he went, through the door like a sleepwalker. No horror, no memory; it sloughed off him like water. Dark, he stalked down the hall. Darker, he flowed down the stairs. Then, darker than darkness, he plunged into night and started swimming, bleeding like poison ink into the gaslit fog.

41
Abandoned

Trembling under the gaslights moments later, Mathilde was peering into Georges’s eyes, gently palpating his plush arms and fat little legs. No squalling. No expression of pain. Thank God! It was all the flounces and swaddling that had saved him, she thought. It was the rug upon which he had landed—a miracle.
Now what?
Ring for the maids? Call for her parents?
No, not now, not now
. Clutching his blubbery baby warmth, she wept her way into sleep. Then later, when Georges woke her up crying—hungry, thank God—in her nightgown, as Mathilde crept down the hall to wake the nurse, once again in horror she thought, What now,
what?

Shame and fear. Like acid, they were burning through her. Her parents downstairs, both sound sleepers, clearly they had not heard anything, nor had the maids. If only they had heard! she thought. If only she did not have to tell them, for how could she tell them—anyone—about a thing so horrifying, so heartless and insane? And especially coming from her, a newlywed? Impossible—the presumption of innocence always resided with the husband, always, and especially in her case, owing to her youth. People will think it is I who am crazy, she thought, for what sane person could imagine such a thing, a man throwing his own child, a
helpless infant, against the wall, then choking and threatening his wife? People would think, What did she do—or not do—to make her husband so angry? The whispering, the rumors—no, she decided with a shudder, not even to the priest in confession, not even if she died of this secret, could she divulge a thing so shameful. And at bottom, it was her fault, she thought:
her
failure for not controlling him, for being too consumed with the baby. Too young. Too stupid to have married him. Too trapped and powerless. Too weak.

Hide
, her soul told her,
quick in the closet
, in the darkness where no one could hear her. Baby Georges by then had been put down, milk-drunk, lips twitching, with his drowsy nurse, pendulous in her wet nightshirt. Creeping down the hall, Mathilde returned alone to their room, opened the closet door, then closed it behind her—pure darkness, blessed oblivion.
Let go
, said the voice, and she did, tumbling back into the hangers and crumpling clothes, into the smell of sweat and old perfume. Then, stuffing her mouth with a ready sleeve, she let loose, choking and wheezing and screaming, until, like a broken doll, she just lay there, trembling, thinking, What now? What now?
What?

T
here was one witness, however. Down the hall, Rimbaud heard the ruckus and he recognized his name, and although he winced at points—and of course never dreamed the full extent of it—the cold truth was, for him, these were the sounds of home. His lullaby. Soothing in a perverse way.

Night brawls. Shouting matches. And after the kid’s father left, there was the late-night spectacle of a woman man-dumped and God-banished, storming through the house. Find the guilty. Find that one pin out of place that wrecked everything. Explained everything. It was the sound of a screech owl. It was cats fighting. It was shame given lungs, a woman howling in the darkness, like a dog chained to an iron stake.

On a more practical level, however, Rimbaud felt the keen satisfaction of exercising his impossibly high ideals, in this case, by rescuing a fellow poet from the lie of bourgeois domesticity: the wife and son, the
stupid in-laws, and now the brat. Enough lies. It would never last. Why, just the thought of Verlaine as a father—mad. Even in the space of several weeks, Rimbaud held no illusions about Verlaine’s character.

Besides, he thought, the brat had his stupid grandfather and a houseful of women to adore him: toys, clothes, nannies—so much it was ridiculous. So why get the kid’s hopes up, thought Rimbaud. Honestly, he thought he was doing the kid a favor.

A
s for Verlaine, there was that special, spectral terror of the morning after—of knowing, for a fact, that something horrible had occurred, even as the Green Lady assured him to the contrary.

What if the police are after me?

Ridiculous. Were that true, you would be in jail
.

Which proves it! The child fell.

Fell. But she picked him up and he’s fine—fine
.

Fell, there’s the story.

And that’s all you need to say
.

Picture him, wrapped in a blanket in the back of a laundry while some fellow cleaned that pelt he called a suit and a bootblack scraped the ordure off his boots. He drank two pitchers of water. He wolfed down four eggs, runny eggs, with ham and black coffee. Then it was off to the Turkish bath. There for an hour, he boiled himself, then doused himself in rosewater. And so at 3:00 p.m.—sharp—there he was, the
paterfamilias
, bathed and brushed, blue-eyed and trembling sober. Wobbly-kneed, he stood before the great oaken door of 14 rue Nicolet—Judgment Day.

He
knocked
, that was the giveaway. Silently, the maids let him in, coldly, then disappeared. Even Mme. Mauté had been warned away, her daughter having assured her—without specifics—that her tolerance was at an end. And so it began, when Mathilde recoiled from her husband’s teary, ill-advised embrace.

“Do not dare touch me.”

“But, please, I know I—”

“Just sit! Sit, animal. Sit with yourself. Sit with the truth and do not speak.”

And what could he say when, pulling down her collar, Mathilde showed him the necklace of fingerprints around her throat? How to respond when she not only told him but showed him how he had nearly killed his son?
Who?
he almost wanted to ask with husbandly indignation, now confronted by his own hideous double, this spawn with whom he swam through chill green seas of alcohol. And, all too predictably, of course Verlaine broke down, falling to his knees, pounding the floor—the usual histrionics.

“If I had any courage, any decency, any … I simply would kill myself.
Kill myself.
”

“Oh,
stop
it.
Up!
Follow me.”

Panic—her parents?

“No,” she replied, happy to see him sweat, “the nursery.”

“But he’s napping.”

“Come, coward. You will now apologize to your son.”

Feel something
, he thought, for there, on his back, stupendously alive and just waking up, was his child,
his own child
. Tiny balled fingers. Hair wet with sweat. Ruddy red eyelids. What do I feel?
What?

“Paul,” she snapped.
“Pick him up.”

Parisian fathers did not, as a rule, pick up their issue at this unsavory age
—non
. The child well might have been a kicking hare with long, sharp claws. Verlaine fumbled. Drew in his neck, lifted him unsteadily, then, in terror, looked at his wife for further instruction.

“Now,” she said, “look at your son and hear me. I know too well you will beat me again—I know this. But if you
ever again
touch this child, and if my father does not first shoot you, then I swear to you, Paul Verlaine, I shall leave you. Before God I swear it. Even if I am excommunicated, I will divorce you. And after what I tell the courts, never again will you see us.
Ever
. Do you understand?”

“I know, I know.” Bitterly, he wept, but Mathilde wanted none of it. One last matter remained—Rimbaud.

“Tomorrow he is out, do you hear me?
Out.
”