Free Disaster Was My God by Bruce Duffy

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. Thekitchen 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.
    T he 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 wantyou! 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