Disaster Was My God (52 page)

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

Two weeks passed, then a third, by which point Rimbaud was like a flower blooming in reverse. His arm spavined and his hand twisted like a withered leaf. Even the tingles went numb, until one morning, with a start, he told Isabelle:

“I want to return to Marseille. Tomorrow, and no arguing.”

So they left the next morning, and as the carriage was being made ready, Mme. Rimbaud, in her guilt and paralysis, announced the incredible:

“I told them to hitch up Countess”—this was her own mare, the dappled silver. So the old mother said to the cobwebs, as her son, who might have been a chair, stared with great fixity out the window, then said to the door:

“It’s time to go.”

“We have time,” said Isabelle. “Come, come, you two. Surely you have things to say to each other.”

“Everything has been said,” replied the mother, fixing on a lint speck on the sideboard.

“Indeed so,” said the son to the wall clock. “Time to go.”

Certainly this would be the last time, in life, that mother and son would see each other. Nothing had been said, of course, but it was clear she would not be going to Marseille for the end. And yet, as the mother and son stood at that precipice, the strangest thing was how, latent in their pride and hatred, there was love of a kind, a duality trapped in time, frozen for all eternity, like two bees in a lump of amber.

“
Au revoir, mon enfant.
”

“Au revoir, Maman.”

“Monsieur Rimbaud,” said one of the hands as they wheeled him outside. With his hat the man gestured to the clouds, darkening rather ominously. “You’re sure, Monsieur?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said irritably. Humped over in his chair, he might have been a doubled-over rug. “Isabelle,
come on.
”

Isabelle shook the reins. Recalcitrant horse. Barely had Isabelle coaxed Countess out into the road than the old beast, missing the Madame, stopped dead, her ears twitching. Isabelle shook the reins. She tried sweet, then stern. All her life she’d struggled with horses.

“Isabelle,” fumed Rimbaud. “Don’t tickle her. Give her some whip!”

The Voncq station was only some five kilometers away, not far, but it started to rain and blow, then thunder. There came a sharp crack. The sky went white. Spooked, the old horse reared, then backed up.

“Give her the whip,” said Rimbaud.

“She’s too frightened. We should wait.”

“Then give
me
the whip!”

Water was pouring off the gig’s black bonnet, spewing down his back. It was a ghost Rimbaud saw, that of his old self, the caravan boss, the sea captain of the desert. He took the whip in his one, not very good, arm. He whipped at the old horse—he tried and tried—but the whip end didn’t crack. Rather, it danced like a fly, until he collapsed in a ball of shivering, wet exhaustion. How they got to the station he had no idea. The next thing he knew, he felt wriggling hands,
people’s hands
, lifting him down. Bloody hopeless. The train was long gone.

“No!” he said, shaking, when Isabelle proposed hiring a horse ambulance to take them home. “I am
not
going back.
Ever
, do you hear me? Not even if we stay here all night.”

“A
rthur, look, look,” said Isabelle pointing out the train window.

The next day, nearing sunset, there it lay in the distance, under a mist of violet smoke. Paris, world metropolis, gleaming like a mass of old treasure—steeples, bridges, cupolas of gold. Not for Rimbaud, however. For him now Paris was like poetry, a thing now vacant of interest and void of memories. The dying man never even bothered to look.

V
agabond hope. At last in Marseille, Rimbaud was reunited with young Michel, with the hollow cheeks, thin, stubbly beard, and brush of dark
hair. Staring in that telltale way, on the verge of tears, Rimbaud gripped Michel’s palsied hand as the young man stared back, shocked at how swiftly his patient had deteriorated. Moments later, Dr. Delpech arrived. No quips this time. Leaning down, the doctor felt Rimbaud’s paralyzed side and blooming, malignant bones.

“What,” asked Rimbaud, trying to be jocular, “no joke for me?”

“Oh, Monsieur Rimbaud,” sighed the doctor, “the joke is on me, I’m afraid.”

Stepping back, much like Dr. Colin before him, Dr. Delpech searched the patient’s eyes, then the sister’s. Did they not know? Was it possible? Clearly, they did not, and could not. Even now, they were waiting, as if for news of some patent cure. Some revolutionary treatment.

“Monsieur Rimbaud, Mademoiselle,” ventured Dr. Delpech, “I was wrong in my diagnosis, very, very wrong, and I am most sorry to have to tell you this—”

“What?” cried Isabelle
“What?”

Already she was weeping, arms draped around her brother’s neck. As for him, the Great Criminal, the One Accused, he didn’t feel frightened. He just felt angry. Embarrassed. Furious at himself for having been so desperate and stupid—so blind, swallowing the greasy elixir of hope.

“I only hope it is soon.”

But this, of course, was not Rimbaud’s final word on the matter. Later, when he was calmer, Isabelle wheeled him around the gravel path in his wheelchair. Otherworldly, the twisted, almost tonsorial cypresses, the pale blue air, and, beyond, the blue, blue sea. In the sun, fat bees bobbed over trumpets of pink and red hibiscus. The rubber tires crackled in the cinders, and the dying man watched how his long, maundering shadow saturated, with his own life seepage, the gravel and blades of grass. In shock. Rimbaud looked back at his sister, so healthy, so beautiful, so alive. Then said not so much in anger or envy as in utter wonderment:

“And now I shall go down under the ground, while you will walk in the sun.”

58
Last Rites

With any long death, there is the long and really long version. Or, in this case, the serviceably short version, for the end was not long.

Within a few weeks, as death pressed in, Rimbaud was not only snowbound with his malady but besieged with God and priests and Isabelle. This was the even more pious Isabelle preparing her brother for heaven. In this respect, her mother had made a deep imprint.

“Arthur,” she said for the hundredth time, “you cannot die out of grace! Quit being so pigheaded! You must reconcile with God, you must. Do you want to perish in hell? That thought is unbearable to me. Terrifying, for then I shall never
see
you!”

“And what has my life stood for?” he replied. “Freedom, not fear and muttering superstition. What, crawling back to God? No! For the last time, no!”

“Arthur, stop it, you’re being hateful,
hateful.
” Isabelle had toughened up these last weeks. “Do you want to die like this? Like
her
? Stubborn and mean and vengeful? Is this what you want?”

Entreaties went only so far, however. Two priests formed the second wave—eminent priests, too, the Canon Chaulier and Abbé Suche. Isabelle told them about her brother’s wicked and colorful past, his stubbornness and fame. The priests listened with deep attention. Pastorally speaking, the poet was quite a catch.

“Let the Inquisition begin,” said Rimbaud weakly when the two priests entered in their ankle-length black cassocks and white collars. This was Isabelle’s cue to leave—God’s dragoons had arrived. Canon Chaulier, in particular, a man of sixty, bald, with tufted gray sideburns, the canon was not one for small talk.

“Monsieur Rimbaud,” he said, “you know, of course, of Pascal’s wager.”

The patient rolled his eyes.

“Yes, yes,” hastened the canon, “of course you do, but please bear with me. To refresh your memory, Pascal says that God’s existence
cannot be proven through reason. Perhaps. But the smart gambler would wager that God
does
exist. For after all, if the gambler bets wrong and there is no God, well, so what? But if his bet proves correct and he stays true, he avoids hell and gains the fruits of heaven. So tell me, then. What do you have to lose by embracing God? By confessing and taking Holy Communion? What?”

“I’ve always disliked that argument,” interjected the abbé, seeing too clearly that this particular appeal was not getting through. The abbé was a harder and more common man of peasant stock, broad-backed, with a pinched face and strong hands. “Canon, excuse me, but the idea of God and dice—well, clever certainly. But I’ve always found it a bit distasteful.”

“A trifle old-fashioned,” added Rimbaud, grateful for an ally.

But then the abbé seized the moment—got down close to the patient. “You see, Monsieur, in my way of thinking, and from how your sister describes it, it is really very simple in your case. Your life, your sins, your state of mind, if I were a betting man, I would wager that all your difficulties stem from one thing. Ah,” he said, catching Rimbaud’s now worried eye, “and what is that one thing, you ask? You, Monsieur, you are
arrogant
. Towering in your arrogance. Everybody sees it. Forgive me, but you
reek
of arrogance. Why, I saw it just now. The moment I laid eyes on you. And, believe me, Monsieur, not because I am so very perceptive.”

Rimbaud seemed utterly shocked at this accusation. “At one time,” he admitted, “once, yes, when I was very young, but not now. Not as I am today. Not really.”

“At one time!” mocked the priest, now almost nose to nose. “Please, do not insult me or your own intelligence. You are arrogant, still arrogant. Filled with arrogance. Ruled and blinded by arrogance. Just look at yourself. You are being arrogant right now. And for what? You, of all people, have nothing to be arrogant about—not now. Money, earthly attainments—meaningless now. Your body—already leaving you. As for your intelligence—no longer of value, an impediment, in fact.
Leave
all
that, I say. Arrogance is not strength. Arrogance is just another mask for fear, a form of it. No, your arrogance cannot help you. Face it. You are going to die imminently, and I say to you, I ask of you like a brother”—his voice fell to a whisper—“put
it down
. Your arrogance is poison. Drain the pus from your soul. Let it out. Your arrogance is a mask. Tear it off. Look at you. Here you are in God’s pantry, in a room filled with good things to eat, yet here you are, in your shameful arrogance, your ridiculous pride,
starving
yourself.”

It was too much. In misery, Rimbaud turned his head away. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, now playing the invalid card. “I’m very—sorry. Tomorrow, perhaps. Too—too tired now. Please. Too tired …”

H
e fell asleep, the dying man, then sank swiftly, fathoms and fathoms, into the bent land of dreams. Primordial dreams. Child dreams, before poetry and all the disappointments and manic departures of his life. Before childhood died and the sun, too. Before Abyssinia further blackened his heart. In his dream now he is shin level with life, a small child just opening life’s bright, wide door.