Disaster Was My God (39 page)

Putting things right before he left Africa—this was Rimbaud’s aim when he asked Mrs. MacDonald to kindly summon her husband.

Hearing that Rimbaud wanted to see him, Mr. MacDonald scooped up his Bible, assuming that
it was time
, that at last Rimbaud was ready to receive the spirit. How very surprised Mr. MacDonald was, then, to discover that it was he who was to receive. As Rimbaud explained, it was his intention to give Mr. MacDonald the very generous sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, funds sufficient, he calculated, not only to cover the family’s passage home but to carry them until Mr. MacDonald found suitable employ.

Mr. MacDonald’s eyes welled over with gratitude. For much as he glossed over it and trusted to God’s providence, well, the truth was that Mr. MacDonald, now stammering and quaking, had been wracked over money and the blind way in which he had brought his family to grief. As for Rimbaud, naturally he was discomfited to be faced with such undisguised and, above all,
joyous
emotion. So, to distract the poor fellow, Mr. MacDonald’s unlikely benefactor asked him what kind of employment he might seek. A parsonage, perhaps?

At this Mr. MacDonald’s face colored. Forthrightly, he admitted that he was not qualified or educated nor, frankly, of the class for a position so exalted. Rather, it was his hope to become an omnibus driver, a horse-drawn omnibus such as you saw around Piccadilly and London’s wider thoroughfares.

Here Mr. MacDonald brightened, for evidently he had given the matter considerable thought. His wife, on the other hand, thought the job very lowly—she wanted him to seek a civil service post, but he stubbornly disagreed; in his view driving would mean heavenly freedom. Obliged to wear a uniform with a hat and a badge, he would not have to even
think
in a worldly way of what to wear, or even much about where to go or stop, as the horses knew the route. Two blinkered Clydesdales. A rolling ministry, you might say. Holding the reins, he could pray and perhaps even
reach
certain unfortunate individuals, such as often rode the trams, young men in despair and unwed girls in a family way. Horses, he noticed, have a calming effect on people. Moreover, as the driver keeps his eyes on the road and not the passengers, people are relieved to unburden themselves on the driver. Any willing set of ears.

Indeed, it was curious, the calming, almost hypnotic effect that Mr. MacDonald had upon Rimbaud just then—the way he made him, however briefly, a better, more balanced spirit. Listening to MacDonald, Rimbaud was like a child being read a bedtime story. Not only was he less arrogant and exacting, but he was more patient and deferential, to the point that he wondered if there might be individuals, perhaps not overly
bright
individuals, around whom brilliant, difficult people might
become
better
people. Rimbaud actually wondered about this in a fugitive kind of way.

Still, Rimbaud was not entirely without ulterior motives in making this extraordinary gesture. He now not only completely trusted Mr. MacDonald but had high human regard for him, no small thing. He also believed almost superstitiously that the man, even in his very confoundedness, was lucky—God lucky. In any event, as he presently explained, once they reached the sea, he needed his help, first in finding a ship bound for France, then in getting his gold properly accounted for and locked up in the ship’s safe.

Mr. MacDonald then seized his opportunity:

“Mr. Rimbaud, we know each other now, don’t we—a bit? So I thought—well, I hoped—that I might repay you, sir. By
praying
with you, sir.”

Rimbaud nodded; he did not disagree that his soul—if that was quite the word—was in disrepair. Indeed for some time he sat there almost spellbound, as if something, some small but critical piece, might shift in him. But finally, wearily, he shook his head. “I am sorry.” He kept shaking his head. “Someday, perhaps. But not now. Not yet …”

T
he next day, at long last, they reached the sea.

Sand! Cool air! Gushing waves! Squealing, the children shucked shoes and chased the waves, blue boils cascading down, surging, foaming, and sucking at their toes.

Sea and mist—solar explosions—wind. The boy jumped in, submerged, then shot up, shaking his hair like a dog. Youth—undefeated. Under a tentlike shawl, Rimbaud took in this boundless energy, his eyes creased in the sun. Water slopped about his shockingly pale feet and ankles. Even the sun had changed. Ages were falling. Barriers were vanishing. Things, surprising things, momentous things were taking on meanings of which he did not yet know the meaning, even as he sat poised like a tongue awaiting Holy Communion.

And look at him. For the first time in days, he was not holding the shotgun, vengefully choking it like an old grievance. Soaking his bum leg in the salty, slow-slopping waves, watching the boy, Rimbaud felt himself falling back like those waves, back beyond childhood to a forgotten innocence.

Thus, almost unseen, Rimbaud began another distinct phase of his return.

T
ime to strike the circus. The animals were sold and the caravan disbanded, the porters and camel drivers and gunmen no sooner paid than they scattered like thieves, taking with them the last vestige of his power and authority.

Mr. MacDonald, meanwhile, had handily proved his extraordinary luck, talking the very reluctant Captain Williams into giving Rimbaud a berth on the
Maidenfair
, an old hauler with rust spewing down her sides, bound the next day for Marseille. It was Mr. MacDonald who, for the better part of four hours, sat captive at the captain’s cigarette-burned table watching the rotund and bearded Mr. Roy, the ship’s purser, as he carefully weighed, and counted up, Rimbaud’s fortune. A handsome sum, too—40,000 French francs, not to mention Rimbaud’s ownership position in several trading enterprises and what his mother had squirreled away on his behalf. Amazing, actually. And yet when Mr. MacDonald presented Rimbaud with the signed chit on the ship’s crude stationery—when at last his money was safe—Rimbaud, to Mr. MacDonald’s surprise, was not cheered in the least. On the contrary. He was crestfallen.

“But look at all you’ve gained,” encouraged Mr. MacDonald as Rimbaud stared at his winnings. Ten years. All on one miserable scrap of paper.

Rimbaud shook his head. “I cannot. I think only how much more I would have—thousands more had I not been cheated and stolen blind. Tens of thousands.”

“But you knew that, surely,” protested Mr. MacDonald. “I remember on my first day Mr. Bardey told me that losses were to be expected. Cost of doing business.”

“Yes,” admitted Rimbaud finally. “But still, it is a wicked place with wicked people.”

“Well, I don’t know about
wicked,
” said Mr. MacDonald circumspectly. “Honestly, sir, you should count your good fortune. Rich, or almost rich, is still rich in my book, sir. And lucky is still lucky.”

“I am not
rich,
” insisted Rimbaud. “Or lucky.”

T
he next day, April 19, 1891, Rimbaud’s steamer left Abyssinia, and in their gratitude the MacDonalds, all four of them, came to see him off.

Rocking in an ignominious oxcart, Rimbaud was ported to the quay, where the
Maidenfair
stood like a ruined fortress, with her rusting riveted sides, foul black smokestack, and a plough-like bow. Above, the small crew was making ready to cast off. Black smoke boiled out of the stack, and below, pistons throbbing, her laboring old steam engines could be not so much heard as felt deep in the pit of his stomach, churning like his dread. Dread of good-byes, dread of France, and now a dread of home masked by an overweening hope. Once so ruthless, the caravan leader felt a new and almost childish fear—that of being
left
. Imagine that, the deserter being deserted.

Leaning over the rail, the mate called down, “Time to make ready, sir.”

When, down the narrow gangplank—too narrow for him—came two men with a man-overboard seat, a girdle of grommets and leather secured by a big iron snap. Another indignity, as they threaded his legs through the two holes, then cinched it around his crotch—snug. Like a diaper, as Rimbaud thought,
This is how it will be
.

As for Mrs. MacDonald, at that moment she, too, felt trapped. No false sentiment. Having made it abundantly clear how she felt about their host and his ostrichlike unwillingness to admit even the stupefyingly
obvious—well, she was not about to engage in the humbug of exchanging addresses and the like. Any of that.

And yet, as often is the case with an almost certainly dying person, there was, between Rimbaud and his guests, the mutual and politely hushed-up pretense that no one was dying, that good-bye was not good-bye and that, in the end, surely everything would come out fine for the ex–caravan boss. Why do cats crawl off to die, huddled in the dark, deep in the cupboard or under the stairs? It is much the same with human souls. They hide. They hold off the shame that, in dying, they will be relegated to the shadows, as second-class citizens. So it is that the living and the dying so often pretend; they pretend about what, really, is an open secret, as obvious as it is finally invisible and unbridgeable.

Death notwithstanding, Mrs. MacDonald did not want to appear arrogant or ungrateful to their benefactor. Nor was she in any position to indulge in the bluff theatrics of refusal. And yet, as she told her husband (who seemed to believe that some miracle, some change of heart, had in fact occurred), Rimbaud’s money was bad money, blood money—a stain. Don’t be naïve, she told him. Rimbaud was merely assuaging his own guilt. Buying them off.

And so in those final seconds on the quay, at last Mrs. MacDonald sighed, then offered perhaps the one true thing she could say.

“Well, I warn you I shall find your writings.”

Awkwardly, she brightened. Weakening, through force of habit, she leaned in as if she might embrace him, then thought better of it. Instead, he got a brisk pat.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

Then at a signal from the mate above, strenuously, hand over hand, the three stevedores started pulling the rope. Grinning, the children let out gasps, as up the exile rose in his man-overboard harness, up into the
sky. Home to his benighted France—to hearth and house, kith and kin. The returning exile’s reverie was a brief one, however. For, looking down, Rimbaud saw the girl,
whatshername
, peering up. Nasty little brat. There she was, sniggering and exuberantly holding her nose, thrilled to be rid of him. Exit Mr. Flambo.

Book Three
  
The Demon of Hope

I WILL COME HOME WITH LIMBS OF IRON AND

DARK SKIN AND A FURIOUS LOOK.…

WOMEN TAKE CARE OF THESE FEROCIOUS INVALIDS
,

BACK FROM THE TORRID COUNTRIES
.

—ARTHUR RIMBAUD,
A SEASON IN HELL
, 1873

45
Weather Warning

“Isabelle!”

In her black Sunday tweeds, the old mother was calling up the stairs, waving a telegram from Africa. “Isabelle get down here! I have the most awful news.”

Outside, the deliveryman could be seen, the same who had ridden on urgent status five kilometers on horseback, only to be brusquely dismissed by Madame with no tip, no thanks, no nothing. New to Madame’s munificence, the messenger’s oaths against the house could be heard as he stumbled back across the lawn, then dizzily grabbed the reins. Once more, Mme. Rimbaud called up the stairs:

“Issssss-a-belle.”

Tromp, tromp—t-t-tromp. With that final bump, Mme. Rimbaud’s understudy hit the landing, prematurely draped in a black shawl. Dark hair pulled tight in a black chignon, Isabelle Rimbaud stared in cold dread at her mother. “What, Maman? Is Arthur dead?
Is he?
”

“No, he is not
dead,
” retorted the old woman, even as she stood on one foot, then the other. “Don’t you understand, he
left—
”

“Left?”