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Authors: Bruce Duffy
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beneath the chicken house. Hypnotizing Red, Mme. Rimbaud almost hypnotizes herself. Look at her, laughing with a gaggle of children. However briefly, some hidden school-mistress self appears; she experiences actual mirth, even pleasure, to the point that she must wipe her eyes. But of course the Rimbaud children never see this side of their mother, ever.
Once this bit of tomfoolery is over, it’s back to business. She returns to her defeated neighbor crouched in the doorway, elbows squeezed between his knees. “Monsieur, save what you can, while you can,” she says helpfully. “This will be your last chance.”
When the rot is on the wheat and the pox is on the herd, who can argue with this? He can’t. And even then, walking through house and barn, pointing at things, no sooner does she name her price than her captives, almost hypnotized, silently carry them to her gig. Then away, black horses! Away from this contagious house! Spit on a sou. Pull out a hair. Toss it over your left shoulder, snap the reins, and
never
look back.
And so, driving away in her overburdened gig, she would be clucking, thinking what a pity that “pauvre Arthur” in Africa did not have
her
as his partner—someone smart and tough. Heh. She’d make them pay up! Even the fat black king!
But now to have to
wait
upon Arthur’s return from Africa—to be cast as the powerless old woman, this is beyond Christian; it is superhuman, unbearable. And with each week, towering and funneling up, her anger only grows. Indeed, the only thing greater is her dread at his impending return, blackening the skies like the locust clouds over Pharaoh’s Egypt.
5Old History
Worse, 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;
But the spider in the hedge
Eats only violets
.
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,
Once this bit of tomfoolery is over, it’s back to business. She returns to her defeated neighbor crouched in the doorway, elbows squeezed between his knees. “Monsieur, save what you can, while you can,” she says helpfully. “This will be your last chance.”
When the rot is on the wheat and the pox is on the herd, who can argue with this? He can’t. And even then, walking through house and barn, pointing at things, no sooner does she name her price than her captives, almost hypnotized, silently carry them to her gig. Then away, black horses! Away from this contagious house! Spit on a sou. Pull out a hair. Toss it over your left shoulder, snap the reins, and
never
look back.
And so, driving away in her overburdened gig, she would be clucking, thinking what a pity that “pauvre Arthur” in Africa did not have
her
as his partner—someone smart and tough. Heh. She’d make them pay up! Even the fat black king!
But now to have to
wait
upon Arthur’s return from Africa—to be cast as the powerless old woman, this is beyond Christian; it is superhuman, unbearable. And with each week, towering and funneling up, her anger only grows. Indeed, the only thing greater is her dread at his impending return, blackening the skies like the locust clouds over Pharaoh’s Egypt.
5Old History
Worse, 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;
But the spider in the hedge
Eats only violets
.
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,
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