Old History Old HistoryWorse, it all feels so familiar, bailing him out again. It takes Mme. Rimbaud back to the old days, his poet days, twenty years before, when for months at a time, perhaps forever—perhaps dead this time—he would run away to Paris. Back to the arms of Paul Verlaine, whose teenage wife, saddled with child and social humiliation, began to write to Mme. Rimbaud. Heart-wrenching letters. Scandalous letters, horrors beyond her comprehension. And yet, inevitably, six months or a year later, something would blow up and, like a homing pigeon, back the kid would come to Roche, always back, and then as blindly and arbitrarily as he had left. Often this would mean walking clear from Paris, some two hundred kilometers, traipsing from village to village and farm to farm with no money, no blanket, no kit. Nothing but his pencil and penknife and a soggy wad of paper upon which, toward sundown, a hunched-over boy rocking and murmuring and blowing into his hand wrote:
The Wolf Howled
The wolf howled under the leaves
And spit out the prettiest feathers
Of his meal of fowl:
Like him I consume myself.
Lettuce and fruit
Wait only to be picked;
Let me sleep! Let me boil
On the altars of Solomon.
The froth runs down over the rust,
And mingles with the Kedron.
Well, one may say that poetry is pure thinking, or pure feeling, or memories recollected in tranquillity. But this was not merely thinking, feeling, or memory, much less tranquillity. It was, if anything, the search for invisibility, pure oblivion, as he hurled himself back to the blind fear of home.
Dogs barking. Moon in streams. For days he would barge headlong down deserted roads, resolutely not thinking, a will and a walker, a bum and a stalker, with his big, rough hands, burr-studded coat, and rumpled hat. Raiding fruit trees. Sucking eggs and sleeping in barns—running, walking, jerking off when necessary. Keep going don’t sleep don’t stop. Never stopping until at last his boots reached the roiling, silvery weeds of the river Meuse, dark-braiding, propulsive river, his home river, gleaming like a blade under the moon. The rocks were treacherously slippery and the water, especially in spring, was too fast and deep. Frantically, like a dog on scent, he turned left, then right, then clambered up the bank to the humped stone bridge, where for some time he could be seen, standing in the middle, peering down at the muscular black water, water unending sweeping beneath him, pure blind will, like a sheet of liquid iron.
Then, on the other side, dropping down the culvert, he fell into waist-high wheat, whirring burrs that scraped his coat, first wheat, then hoof-pocked, boot-sucking bottomland, until at last he saw the slate roof of the white house shining in the distance. Roche: wide, well-tended lanes of rye and hay and oats for which he, lord of no account, had never once lifted a finger.
He always came in past midnight, and each time was the same. The kitchen door was unlocked, and no sooner did he lift the latch than a raging, cored-out hunger drove him to the larder, there to wolf down half a ham, stale bread, raw eggs, even her preserves, a whole jar, pawed out as if by a starved bear. When, suddenly, he would wake up sickened, panicked like an overheated child who had spent the day playing, only to realize he had a body.
Not that la vieille rombière was fooled, ever, with her freak ears. At the sound of the floorboards creaking upstairs, groaning with the sodden weight of his ingratitude, one ear would perk up. It was almost reassuring. Exactly like the kid’s father, years ago, when he would stumble home drunk.
The next morning, however, the prodigal was masterful. Near noon, when he tumbled down the stairs, already the tension was such that he’d never left. Arrogant lout. Filling the doorway, he was larger than she remembered, the protuberant planes of his broad blond face now misshapen, as if his bones had outgrown his own skin. And the toll on him. Knuckles cut up. Bruises on his face. Clothes a shambles. Standing back, she realized that she was now frightened of him, much as he, too, was afraid—afraid she might try to strike him, in which case he’d have to break her stupid neck.
“Bien,” she said with a sarcastic tremor, “we are back.”
Icily, awaiting the onslaught, “That’s right, Mother, I’m back.”
“Well, I’m not supporting you. No.”
“God.” In a stagy voice he narrated his saga. “For days he walks home. To her. And yet when she first lays eyes on him, his own mother, what does she do but threaten him. God.”
“You! Don’t you dare turn your back to me, Arthur Rimbaud! Why did you return? Why? Don’t touch that. What? Can I expect the gendarme this time?” Like barks, her questions followed him through the house, “So your pig friend, he threw you out? Eh?”
“I threw myself out.”
“Et voilà!” How she adored being right. “Heh, even he didn’t want you! And with that big brain of yours, what then did you think? That you would roll unannounced into my home? Your big brain, it told you that all this is open to you? Of course. Please, come in with your muddy boots. Please, put up your feet. Eat everything. Do nothing. Watch your mother slave for you, eh?”
Maybe he wanted this inquisition. Needed it. Perhaps in a sense he returned home to feel again, to be slapped awake. The chair honked back. Look. He was a giant, invulnerable; her words, her vituperation, her primitive fear, they slid right off him, like ice off a slate roof. No matter. Clear to his lair at the top of the house, she dogged him, while in the room below, his two sisters huddled in fear, hearing:
“What? You who refuses to work! You, with no prospects! Who just shows up here with your open jaws, uninvited!”
Slam.
Then she was slapping his door, beating it like a man’s chest, her voice magnified by the narrow stairway. Barking, “How dare you? Do you know what Madame Verlaine writes to me, the awful things? Are you insane? I ask myself. Possessed? Do you know what she tells me while you cavort around Paris, you and that devil, stealing the food from her poor child’s mouth! Do you know what the Church says about such—arrangements? That you are now abominable in God’s eyes.”
Vicious little prick. Suddenly, he snatched the door open, so she almost fell in. Then stood over her. “Go on, bloody scream, you old axe—you’re good at that. And what about you? Do you think that you did not drive my father away? That he was not revolted at the sight of you?”
“Me? Your father abandoned you! All of you, with your endless squalling and needing! And you with the devil in his flesh! The devil, do you hear me?”
But this was too powerful, too close. As might have been predicted, the old woman reversed course. Fell to her knees, seized his fingers, hot tears running down her neck, begging, “Pray with me, please. Do you not see what I am doing for you, my child? That I would get down on my knees before you? Before God? Do you not see?”
“Get up!” He starts to drag her, then drops her; it is all he can do not to slug her, clinging to his legs, “Jesus—there’s your man! A bloody corpse.”
At this, again she flips, ripping and scratching at him. “Condemned before God! Does this mean nothing to you? Do you care how your little sister cries, always thinking you are dead? Do you care about the shame you heap down upon us? That the whole town laughs at you—laughs! The great genius. Just like his father, another big talker. And doing what in Paris? Used comme un chiffon, by an older man, un chiffon!”
Or maybe he returned to see how far he had fallen, that he might fall further, faster, more heedlessly. Damned was the plan. The plan was, there was no plan. Publication—but what on earth would that have proved? Or the university—the trough. The law? Even more ridiculous. In his new order, all laws would be abolished. A job? Never. He was a poet. Let the world pay.
Still, to be fair, he was then all of eighteen, a hormone-mad former collégien who, half the time, would give his poems away. Away like cooties, lest these hallucinations perish with him during these frightening periods when his cycloning brain would not desist and sleep refused to come.
Had he merely been consistently sullen and hateful, this would have been one thing for his poor mother, but of course he had no such coherence. Witness his sisters, both famished for him, starved for any male presence, as in their room he played the hero, the long-lost brother and confidant. Listen to them, thought Mme. Rimbaud, laughing and having fun. Never! She did not approve of males, even siblings, being in the rooms of young ladies. To hear their laughter. His casual male duplicity. That behind their doors he could act almost normal, putting on the Arthur Theater, as she called it. How the girls shrieked as he played the part of the train conductor flipping his lid at this kid, this ticket jumper rummaging through his pockets … Ticket, my ticket, wait, wait! I know I have it. Then, grabbing his own belt, theatrically, he hurls himself off the train, rolls across the floor, then comes to rest by their puckered, wide-eyed dolls, before whom he is just a kid laughing hysterically, his big red hands flopping. And from the other side of the room, his two sisters, the canaries in this air shaft, they stare at him in wonder—at his male power to shrug it off and leave without a second thought. To leave. Imagine that!