Disaster Was My God (49 page)

“
Done?
You better cough up that money, woman. Think I’m
done
?”

In his hand, he now had his eldest brother, Bertrand, the size of a pig’s knuckle, easily the most brilliant of the four—could have been a Pasteur. “Christ,” said his little brother, “I need a goddamn drink!” And twisting off the lid, held forth the vile tankard—a brotherly toast!

“Money! Or down he goes! Wee Bertrand! Like an escargot!”

“B
ut just how strong was his hold on you?” asked Champsaur.

“All but irresistible,” replied Verlaine. “And his youth was certainly a large part of it. Consider. He arrives during a time, frankly, of mediocrity with a style and a vision unlike any other. He belongs to no school. He is not another
arriviste
. No compromises. No emotional entanglements or obligations to his elders. And he had no respect, no fear—none. Compare him with Baudelaire in that regard. Renegade though he was, at least in print, Baudelaire at bottom was a thoroughly craven
Christian;
in no way was he ready, as Rimbaud was, for hell and damnation.”

“But why did you stay?” asked Champsaur. “I mean why, when virtually everybody else fled. Why you?”

“Because I loved him. I was not competitive; I knew from the start that I was not of his order. Nor were they, any of them, and they all knew it. That was why they hated and feared him. Well,” he sighed, taking a long swallow, “among other reasons.”

“And you say you were not writing?” asked Champsaur.

“That was my other shame. Rimbaud so shocked me—his work so shocked me—that for months, artistically speaking, I was dazed. Had no idea who I was. None.”

“And when did that change?”

Verlaine never hesitated. “Belgium. When Rimbaud ordered me to Belgium.”

“
Ordered
you?”

“Ordered me. To the front, as it were. Just as if I were a soldier. My wife, Mathilde, was sick, you see. Very sick. So with all good intentions, I went to the druggist to get my wife some medicine. But when I turn the corner, whom do I see but Rimbaud! Who says to me, ‘Come on, we’re leaving for Belgium.’ Just like that. ‘But my wife is ill,’ I told him. ‘I need to bring her medicine.’ ‘Screw your wife,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of hearing you whine about her. Your kid, too. Now, come on,
right now.
’ ‘But I don’t have a ticket,’ I said. ‘I
am
your ticket,’ he said. And, Monsieur, with just the clothes on my back, I left.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“But,
cher maître,
” challenged Champsaur, “your duty to your wife! Your son.”

“ ‘Pick,’ said Rimbaud. ‘Them or me.’ No doubt this sounds shameful, crazy, morally destitute, and I won’t deny it. But honestly, at the time it seemed a higher duty. And had I stayed, I would have missed out on my Belgium poems. My very best. Immortality itself.”

“But,
cher maître,
” protested Champsaur, clearly horrified, “more important than your
wife
? Your
child
?”

No answer. That was his answer.

V
erlaine then described the journey, the train to Charleville, then the wagon that took them by night, through the thick fog, to the Belgian border. Verlaine was a Parisian, a poodle—never had he even
been
in the woods, let alone at night, crossing penniless into another country. And
why? For what? he thought, fuming that Rimbaud could not bed down in a nice, dry,
charming
barn—oh no, he had to pick a damp, smelly barn packed with steaming, stinking cows. Sucking eggs. Drinking from streams. Wiping themselves with leaves.

“But where are we going?” Verlaine demanded the second day, almost weeping, he was so wet and wrung out.

“A la chasse des anges.”
Hunting for angels.

“Stop it! This is hopeless! Pointless!”

And it
was
pointless. For Rimbaud, pointlessness was the very point. But then, the third night, for Verlaine, something shifted as a thick fog descended, fog and soft rain that fell like a spider’s web over his hands and shoulders. He thought of a phrase that Rimbaud had said the night before, “Soft rain falling on the town.” Nothing special. No deep import when he first heard it, but now those six words were like a musical phrase, a talisman, a lure. Fog filled Verlaine’s lungs. Wet shoes. Burrs speckling his trousers. Steaming wet and cold, Verlaine was so hungry and miserable—so overpoweringly lonely—that suddenly he understood what Rimbaud had meant by an “objective” poetry. For suddenly Paul Verlaine wasn’t lost
in
the fog, he
was
the fog. Heart beating, he pulled out—like bandages for a wound—a soggy wad of paper and his crumbling pencil. And oddly the fog acted like an eraser, as he realized that the issue wasn’t what to say but rather what
not
to say in the usual way. Extraneous words fell away, and those that remained gleamed, deeply struck like nails:

Falling Tears

Or again, the next day, when he overheard the ownerless wind intimating the soul:

“Hats off!” mused Champsaur. “And the
musique
!”

“Dear, dear,” chided Eugénie, “fawning now, are we?”

“The
point,
” returned Verlaine, “the point is, with my Brussels poems, in these landscapes—thanks to Rimbaud—I came to that place where the artist vanishes. As he himself vanishes in his prose pieces, his
Illuminations.
”

“For which he receives no royalties,” broke in Champsaur.

“Assuming Rimbaud would even
own
the work.”

“Well, he might like the money.”

“The
point,
” said Verlaine testily, “the point is, Rimbaud wanted these poems, his prose poems, to be crazy and innocent, but most of all
innocent, innocent, innocent
—that’s what he said. And invisible. Here
you have no real sense of the author. No, these poems, these dreams, they are entirely anonymous. The leaps of logic. The lack of antecedents. The swirl of imagery and willfully absent transitions. But what I most marvel at is how these poems so stubbornly
resist
meaning, while always presenting new meanings.
Ice
. To me they are like white hard ice—gleaming, pure, and slippery. Here is my favorite. A modern version of Genesis—turned on its head:

“Astonishing,” said Champsaur. “And I agree. Compared with the traditional poem, there is almost nothing to grasp onto. An ice wall.”

“Well, fifteen years ago, Rimbaud’s poet peers, myself included, had even less of an idea how to read, react to, or even follow something like this. It broke all the rules. Prose was the least of it. They had no precedent. Even Baudelaire’s wonderful prose poems—his models, I suppose—even these are really just sketches. Well described and realized, of course, but finally unmysterious. Entirely realistic. They don’t
achieve the level of dream and fracture. They don’t pull you into another reality, as these do.”

“And do you think Rimbaud is still writing?” asked Champsaur suddenly.

Verlaine never hesitated. “No, absolutely not.” He shook his head vehemently. “Oh, I’ve read the speculation, but I assure you, Rimbaud is not writing. Not a word. I would bet money on it.”

“But,
cher maître,
” protested Champsaur, “how can you know this?”

“Because Rimbaud is so inflexible by nature. Hardheaded peasant.
Not
writing is now his vocation, just as writing once was.”

“So you believe he will never return?”

“To France, perhaps. But to poetry, never. I would be shocked.”

“Well,” broke in Eugénie, with a barbed glance at the man who refused to marry her, “if Rimbaud were to return, this one would run off with him.”

“Enough,” said Verlaine.

“Let me further assure
you,
” she insisted, “only men are this way, this stupid, this blind. This is why the male creature needs floozies like me.” She looked directly at Champsaur. “Men want to be thrilled. Do you not agree, Monsieur?”

“I do so very much appreciate your time,
cher maître,
” said Champsaur with a shocked glance at Eugénie, electric, as if she had invisibly goosed him. Uncomfortably, he turned more fully around to face his subject. “And here is my final question,
cher maître
. Why
did
Rimbaud stop writing—in your opinion.”

Verlaine took a drink, then sighed a long sigh at a question that vexed him. “Well, one big reason, perhaps obvious, is he grew up. Think about it. When Rimbaud was a child, or still a young man, he could believe in his dreams, could pretend, could be seduced by his own make-believe. And remember, as Rimbaud saw it, and naïve as this might sound, he had not been sent to earth merely to write poems but to
change
the world—quite literally. He actually thought that, he really did, and for a while I suppose I did, too. But of course, there was no revolution of love. The world didn’t change. Woman was not freed. The
human heart was the same, no better, no worse. Leaving what? For him, meaningless words on a page. Words that died in his mouth. Suicide, in a way.”

“Dear, dear Paul,” purred Eugénie. Clearly irritated, she was like a cat flicking her tail, ready to claw. “Like most men, you always want the
romantic
answer, when a simpler one will do. Admit it. At twenty, great genius that he was, Rimbaud was simply burned out. A dead volcano. Shot his wad.”

“And—and perhaps you are right,” admitted Verlaine touchily. “But the fact remains, the child in him died, and when he did, Rimbaud, in his insane pride—in his rage and his shame—told me he wished he had never given his manuscripts away. Not because he wanted them, but so he could have burned them. Like heretics. Every last word.” Verlaine nodded, as this sank in. “Believe me, I do not romanticize this part.” Verlaine sat there like a piece of bruised fruit, damaged and he knew it. He sat there for some time as lonely people do, then said, “Rimbaud was a man crushed. Abandoned by God. Killed storming the heavenly citadel. Overly romantic?—perhaps. But this, Monsieur, is what I saw, and this is what I believe.”

54
Love Conjugated

“Will you kindly bring your brother here for supper?” cried Mme. Rimbaud to the ceiling. Not
Arthur
, but
your brother
. Forever sixteen.

As one might surmise, with Arthur’s homecoming the old woman’s world was almost cosmically out of whack. It started with Isabelle, the
exalted
Isabelle—the “governess,” her mother now called her—now that she was done with being a dairy maid, factotum, and drudge. In her place, two had to be hired, a barn man and a maid. Or rather, four people, as fast as Mme. Rimbaud dismissed them.

Owing to his infirmity, Arthur was given a large ground-floor room, which, he being Arthur, had to be painted—painted in earthen African tones, then hung, per his orders, with funereal curtains, to better block
the pestilential French light. The “cave,” his mother called it. His pretend Abyssinia, she told Mme. Shade, filled as it was with infernal wall hangings and other tribal savagery. Oh yes, she added, and his Abyssinian harp, another annoyance. It was with this harp that he soothed and distracted himself. Plucking one string, he would wait for as long as a minute, then pluck another, trying to coax, to pinpoint and better
portend
his changing mood.