Free Disaster Was My God by Bruce Duffy Page A

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!

6Pilgrims
    This was 1872, Rimbaud’s eighteenth year, two years into his siege of the Muse. It was then that the first blow fell, at breakfast one morning when Vitalie coughed into her napkin, then shrieked. Blood, it was covered with a bright mist of blood, and when Mme. Rimbaud examined it, although she said nothing, she saw everything. It was Veronica’s veil, perfect in every detail, the bloody visage of Christ who died on Calvary, the hair, the lips, and cored-out eyes of suffering. Hope did not blind her. She had no doubt what was coming.
    There were of course mountain sanitariums and other places for consumptives, well-known places, good places, and certainly Mme. Rimbaud