Disaster Was My God

by Bruce Duffy

  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 …”

  The 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.

  Time 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.”

  The 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?”

  “Left—Left Harar.”

  Now Isabelle was really confused. “But, Mother, you said you had awful news.”

  “Well,” hemmed the old woman, now caught, “I meant that—that this means it’s bad. Here, read it. From Monsieur Bardey. Arthur’s employer. Oh dear, surely you remember his name. Here—”

  A. RIMBAUD LEFT HARAR 10 MAY. MARSEILLE THEN HOME. STABLE BUT REQUIRES URGENT MEDICAL ATTENTION. EXPECT IN 21-35 DAYS. REGARDS, A. BARDEY, PROP., A. BARDEY, LTD.

  Isabelle folded the telegram, then stood there, nervously smoothing the fold, trying to guess the true source of her mother’s distress. Because to Isabelle, as with so many things, this seemed some kind of diabolical test. “Well,” she ventured at last, “Monsieur Bardey says Arthur is stable. That’s promising, don’t you think?”

  The mother glared.

  “What, so your brother simply arrives here expecting to be taken care of?” Mme. Rimbaud teased her handkerchief from her sleeve, loudly blew her nose, then stuffed it back, one white puff peeping out, like the head of a doll. “I have,” she sighed, “I have a farm to run and animals that require my attention. I have my appointments and church and tenants and bills to pay—duties, do you hear me? I cannot, and I will not, be lying about, waiting for your brother to waltz in here like some kind of hero.”

  Coldly, Isabelle drew the shawl around her. “Well, Maman, whatever else, he will not be waltzing.”

  “None of your cheek, young lady!”—by now the young lady was well on her way to middle age—“I need and I deserve from your brother a when.”

  So saying, Mme. Rimbaud veered around, wavered momentarily, as if she’d lost her place, then bore through the back door, down the lichen-veined stone steps, into the downy-bottomed apple blossoms tossing in the wind. It was a small apple orchard, ringed with cherry, peach, and pear. White-blooming, sun-glowing, mad with bees, it was a landscape in which the old woman now stood off angle, like a misplaced chess piece, black dress, black cuffs, black shoes. Of course, she thought to herself, of course he would return in the spring, in her time, when everything was bawling, bubbling, popping, and germinating. Spring, time to erupt. Time to open the hive with her swarms of moneymaking schemes! And Arthur thought he was clever, selling his guns to the noirs!

  Hence Mme. Rimbaud’s busy scheme to bleed the railroad for a right-of-way. Hence fifteen, then twenty more cows—then twenty-five. Hence nine, then thirteen apartments, dumps with rents to be collected and people to be evicted, a terrible business, to be sure—but lucrative. Then her neighbor, M. Viderequin, upon whose property she had long had an eye, he passed away and not two days after the funeral the old hawk had snapped up the place—fifteen hectares, meaning yet more beasts and equipment to procure, and three more dolts to supervise. And the old wife to be moved into one of the hovels. Did it never end?

  It was her time. Now that she was old, with almost no need of sleep or even of food, Madame Rimbaud’s ambition and energy were at their zenith, and the irony was, never had she had less need of money, which she would stuff in black-smoked, tallow-sealed jars—paper currency, gold coins, and deeds, even small diamonds, buried in the thick of night as tenderly as her own offspring.

  You’ve done it, old girl! she would think, gloating as she drove her black buggy through the pillow-fluffer neighborhoods on the surpassing heights of rue La Tour. House cats! Let them sneer from their high brick manses, with their arrogant eaves and iron gates—parasites. And then with a shiver, Mme. Rimbaud would conjure that dangerous word rich, thinking how they would die if they knew how much she, a peasant, had salted away. Heh.

  For as she drifted through the orchard, blowing and foaming, absurd or not, it was Mme. Rimbaud’s great fear that Arthur, the copycat, having suckered the noirs with his guns—well, that through some cruel trick of fate, he might arrive home wealthier than she was. Idée inconcevable!

  Oh, don’t be foolish, she told herself, he can’t be that rich. But why, then, was she plucking her fingers as if she’d just pulled them from a hot stove? Look to the east. Trees on fire. Look to the west. Locusts massing. South—ugly storms. North—fright and confusion.

  Then she heard them, men’s voices and a cow bawling. Trouble by the barn.

  Feelers twitching, she walked around the side of the house. Mon Dieu, it was Paul, Pierre, and Jean, Sunday drunk and all hard at work—stud work, just the sport for three womenless meatheads with nowhere to go. For there, tied to a post, Mme. Rimbaud saw a large black-spotted cow. And, opposite, there stood the thick-necked M. Jacques, the bull, his long, thick spigot bounding at the ready.

  “It is Sunday!” she cried, pulling up her skirt as she gamboled down the steps. “What do you think you are doing?”

  Deaf to her entreaties, Paul and Pierre were waving their hands, trying to quell the throbbing, bobbing Jacques. As for the third, Jean, brave soul, he was on his knees greasing him up. It up, for blood-bowed and grievously nobbed on the end, it was fully the length and girth of a pump handle. Then, as if this weren’t bad enough, squinting, Mme. Rimbaud descried—by a white spot the size of a small coin—that they had the wrong lady. Alors, it was not Claudette but her twin sister, Marie. No! Eighteen months to calve and milk, then four months off to “freshen up”—this was the rule. Alas, no bovine holiday for Marie.

  “Idiots, you’ve got the wrong cow!” cried the proprietress of Roche, now stoutly marching down the hill, blowing her red nose. “Are you all blind? You have Marie, not Claudette! Marie!”

  Too late. With a bound, the brute was upon her, bucking and clambering up, even as Jean, the greaser, bent it, then, with a furious wiggle, angled it in. Behold the stupendous Lord Jacques, stamping on his great hams, his great horned head craning over the hapless Marie.

  “Did you not hear me?” cried Mme. Rimbaud, lifting her dress over the turd-thick mud. “Imbéciles! That’s Marie, Marie, Mar-IE!”

  “Oh, no, no, Madame,” insisted Paul, mustache chuffing, “do you not see the little spot? There, do you see?”

  “That is not the spot. It is not that large.”

  “Like a coin,” said Pierre, now squinting. “It is the size of a louis.”

  “Good Madame,” intervened the suave Jean, the greaser. “As Madame can surely see,” he sniggered, “the matter is moot. Monsieur Jacques est préoccupé.”

  “Odious man,” said she, “what would you know of being occupied? Now out—out of my way.” She seized the muck rake, then flipped it handle end, like a truncheon.

  “Madame, please!” cried the men, trying to stop her, even as M. Jacques poured on the coal, whop, whop, whop.

  But, crouching low, Roche’s proprietress gave Lord J. the bum handle. Bull’s-eye. M. Jacques bucked. He bellowed and stamped, but so vast was his tumescence, and so compliant was Marie, that it was quite hopeless. Mme. Rimbaud cast down the rake.

  “Drunken louts!”

  Oh, her swallowing children. Oh, her vanished son. This crushing place. And, like a ton of turgid, unyielding beef, it all fell on her. Always her.

  That night Isabelle had a mortifying epiphany. It happened, as so many things happened, at supper, which tonight, cook being off, was a
cacasse à cul nu—literally, nude ass casserole, an Ardennes specialty. Earth-tasting potatoes, quartered, shallots, lard, butter, a bit of hand-sifted flour, and a good fist of thyme, bay leaves, parsley—all this was set to simmer. And after precisely an hour, when the old woman raised the heavy iron lid, face and nostrils enveloped in a bloom of fragrant steam—behold, God’s bounty. Pleasure itself, as if she were inhaling a cloud. But then as the two women were eating, the mother put her foot in it.

  “Well, he has no head for business,” she was saying. Meaning Arthur, of course. “Same thing when he was a writer. And of course, he failed at that, too.”

  Writer? Isabelle stopped cold. Was the old woman losing her marbles?

  “Mother,” she said carefully, “what do you mean Arthur was a writer? Are you referring to old school exercises or something?”

  “Daughter.” The mother rolled her eyes, delighted. “Good grief, where have you been for the past thirty years? Come now, you know Arthur is—was—a writer. Poet, whatever. I know you know this.”

  Incredible. Isabelle’s eyes filled with tears. Lied to again by the entire universe.

  “Know what, Mother? What do I know? Not one thing, and you never told me—ever! Or Vitalie. You or Arthur. So why, Mother, why did you never tell me he was a writer? To torture me? Ridicule me? Was that the idea?”

  “Well,” the mother evaded. “He was not a writer—or writer-writer. He was a poet.”

  “Stop it! As if this makes any difference. You lied! A sin of omission.”

  “Dear me,” said the mother, confronted by this gush of blame, which she could only treat as a joke, “Lied how? Anyone in Charleville could have told you your brother was a writer. Poet, self-styled. Drivel, of course, but he wrote—”