Thursday, November 10, pont de la Tournelle, Paris

I recall catching glimpses of him, fragments, between the people passing on the sidewalk toward Quai de la Tournelle or, beyond l’Île St-Louis, Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, going about their business, heading home or going for an aperitif after work. It was almost 18h, a mild, pleasing spring evening, the best sort of day and place to be alive — and I watched Rimbaud from the opposite side of the bridge. He was facing l’Île de la Cité, hands, palms down, resting lightly on the warm stone balustrade, gazing out at the water or at Notre Dame or perhaps not consciously looking at anything, adrift in thoughts and images of his own. Spring in Paris has never been a time for dying, yet clearly he was dying, was as good as dead, and he would never again know the pleasures and joys that were going on… After studying him as closely as I could through the traffic and pedestrians, I dashed across the lanes and wove between those moving to-and-fro, and came to rest at the railing a few meters to his right. Where his right leg should have been was an inverted, desiccated palm, its dead and rattling fronds curling up from the sidewalk toward the blue, cloudless sky. The trunk rose, pitted and rotting, into the ragged, all-but-worn trousers, the material snagging here and there on the rings of old growth. He was thin, cadaverous, ghostly, and as he appeared not to notice me, I gazed openly at his famous face, now wasted and gaunt. He still had a shock of tangled, wavy hair, and if he had once been tall, he was now stooped and shrunken and looked like a sick child, save his immense hands, rose-colored and splayed out like duck-feet. He stood crooked, all his weight on his overlarge, club-like left foot. Though still a young man in years, his once boyish, arrogant face was now sallow and deeply lined, and I could tell he was in considerable pain. Now and then, he would waver in his stance, as if swaying in a gentle breeze, and his eyes would flutter, then close tightly as the pain, no doubt, radiated from the grievous, killing wound upwards and across his body. When the pain was at its worst, he would emit a series of low, foamy gasps, waiting for the anguish to pass. He was dying, as good as dead; any passerby who looked his way could see that.

Yet such a day! Not a day for dying. Not a spot, not a city — in spring, no less — for dying. Around us were families and couples, children running and crying out, breaking away from their parents, seeking freedom, and sur les plages de la Seine one could see any number of young lovers holding hands or embracing, trying to force themselves, their skins together so there was no distance, no life between them, just themselves as one, their skins as one, their lives as one, their breath as one — this was love! Spring in Paris has never been a time for dying, yet clearly he was dying, was as good as dead, and he would never again know the pleasures and joys that were going on all around him.

Perhaps his thoughts ran along such lines, but he surprised me. He spoke without looking at me, and though there were people resting up against the railing on either side of us, I knew he was speaking to me. His voice was no more than a whisper:

— Do you see what’s out there?

He nodded in the direction of the boats on the Seine and Notre Dame just beyond, but I knew he was not talking about the river or the cathedral or even about the city.

I nodded back, my own voice little more than a hoarse murmur:

— Yes.

He glanced at me to see if I was telling the truth. I nodded again, looking him in the eye:

— I have seen it these many years.

He looked back along the course of the river:

— My god.

To our left was the Quartier Latin, my part of the city. The Sorbonne a few blocks away, and in-between, the bookstores, cafés, bars, and cheap restaurants that I used to frequent with Jean and our friends — where we would talk about everything: lovers, wine, books, adventures, dreams, and sorrows; the men and women we loved or wished to love, or simply wished to know or be known by; to be known by them. Or just to exist — and whatever might flow from thence!

To our right, l’Hôtel de Ville and the Marais, and further yet, and not unknown to us both, Montmartre. Just ahead, l’ancienne cité, the original city, the medieval city from which the university and the city flowed.

And all around us, life — abundant, exuberant, elegant, bawdy, dizzying life!

Who would think to leave such a place, such a world, such a universe?

We would. We did.

He turned and began to walk away, the ragged palm leaves scraping up against the white stone of the balustrade, the leaves quivering and crackling as he swung his dead palm trunk-leg in a semi-circle around his good leg.

How different he and the saint, yet how much the same. She, a mortifier of the flesh… he, a glorious mortifier of another sort, a glutton for chemicals, shot by his lover, friendless, all but frozen to death in the Alps, half-drowned off Cyprus, slave trader, gunrunner, and finally, perhaps, an ascetic…

There was so much I wanted to ask him, but I let him limp away, and when he passed opposite the sterile, cold lines of the statue of Sainte Geneviève, patron saint of Paris, with its twin, anachronistic flying buttresses, I began to follow.

How different he and the saint, yet how much the same. She, a mortifier of the flesh, starving herself, nearly drowned by her enemies, friend to the abject and forgotten; he, a glorious mortifier of another sort, a glutton for chemicals, shot by his lover, friendless, all but frozen to death in the Alps, half-drowned off Cyprus, slave trader, gunrunner, and finally, perhaps, an ascetic; the pair of them, freaks for extremes, for horizons of pain, pleasure, deprivation — and both, need we say, keenly interested (albeit for different reasons) in virgins.

I stayed half a block behind him as he staggered painfully, slowly, along Quai Saint-Bernard, no one taking any more notice of him than they would any other seeming beggar-apparition, no one stepping out of his way but forcing him to step, as best he could, out of theirs to avoid a painful, crippling collision. When he reached Jardin des Plantes, he wearily slumped onto a bench, the occupants shooting him a miserable look before rising and finding another place to sit unmolested by a threadbare, possibly vile-smelling and nacreous, dying man.

Such, I suppose, is our common humanity.

I stood by a hedge, anxious lest he should crumple to the ground and not rise again.

I could only imagine how raw and bloody the stump where it met the no doubt haphazardly cut and ill-fitting palm trunk.

But he did not die, not then, not at this moment in the city of his ruin and apotheosis, and he gripped the bench-back with his immense, pinkish left hand and pushed himself to his feet.

Staggering once more along the river as it swings gently to the south and east, he carried on past the edge of the gardens, passing Pont d’Austerlitz and quick-walking as best he could across Boulevard de l’Hôpital to the sidewalks in front of Gare d’Austerlitz where, despite his evident trauma and creeping death, he lingered — loitered — conspicuously. Sure enough, within half an hour, two train gendarmes had grabbed him for loitering and shoved him into the back of a wagon for the journey to police headquarters. If he could survive the complementary beating — no doubt they would size-up his condition and rough him up with just a few cuffs and kicks — he would be turned out to the prison yard, and there await transportation to Mazas.

The cunning man.

He was going out of Paris as he had come in.

Did he feel the same in life?

And, if he could last, no doubt he had time for one last defense of his integrity, his virtue, should that be what he sought.

I caught another fragmentary glimpse of him through the transport window as it drove past. He did not turn to look out the milky back portal, but sat, shoulders sagging, head down, chin resting on his thin-ribbed chest, perhaps staring at the floor or his hands folded together in his lap, lost in visions of his own.

I think I know what he wanted to ask me on le pont de la Tournelle:

— Did we have a part in it?

Perhaps I would have replied, after a time:

— I suppose it depends on how you understand things.

He would have waited, choosing silence.

— Did crapping on a table, finger-painting with your own shit, lead — however infinitesimally — to that? The color and guts of a vowel? A narrow skull, pale blue eyes, lank hair, a bestial nature? All part or particle?

I believe, by then, that I might have had his full attention.

Friday, March 2, Harar, Abyssinia

The next time I saw him, it was years earlier. He had, of all things, invited me to tea. Can you imagine! Tea! Did he mean it, could he possibly, actually, mean to give me tea, and to sit, perhaps have a cigarette or two and some quiet conversation in a cool sitting room, shaded from the outside by a giant palm and two mulberries just beyond the French doors leading to a little, enclosed patio?

No leaps, no catapults of the mind? No cursing? No complaining of boredom?

No talk of bowels, vowels, or visions?

Astonishing.

Perhaps, I imagined as I strolled over to his squarish, comfortable home, two dogs, an ostrich, and somebody’s runny-nosed child running around in the front yard, we would discuss the weather or the places we knew in Paris.

Perhaps we would sit in an uncomfortable silence, saying nothing.

In fact, it was a party of sorts. A tea party.

Among the handful of guests were de Gaspary, the French merchant and négrier, or slave trader; Charest, the Belgian coffee merchant; Dejaz, the agent of King Menelik; Lucardio, the Corsican gun runner (what else would a Corsican do?); and the ubiquitous Agib, caravanier and seeker of opportunity and advantage. They spoke six languages at once — French, Flemish, Italian, Arabic, Amharic, Somali — and argued pleasantly over the best trade routes, the worst villages, the depredations of the English, the corruptions and duplicities of the French governor in Obock. They talked about who they knew to be spies for one country or another and good-naturedly (and rightly, I imagine) assumed that they all had been or were or would be again — and disputed the price of coffee, cartridges, olives, and more. They argued over who had knifed so-and-so, or who had ordered it and who had paid for it, or whether so-and-so had really cut himself from ear-to-ear while shaving.

No one laughed too loud.

They seemed, at least on this, my first visit with them, my first tea party, genuinely to like one another and to enjoy their time together.

Our host, for his part, largely sat back, listening, always listening, but rarely adding more than a barbed or gentle word or two here and there. He sipped his tea, and made sure the others were comfortable — asking if anyone would care for another cigarette. He inhabited rather than played at being the attentive, considerate master of modest revels. For his part, he seemed to take pleasure in his guests.

…in contrast to the usual rags he wore on the caravan and trading routes, he was wearing a loose-cut white suit over a white shirt, and he had his hair slicked back, very much the educated, if not quite urbane, European…

As always, he was thin, but in contrast to the usual rags he wore on the caravan and trading routes, he was wearing a loose-cut white suit over a white shirt, and had his hair slicked back, very much the educated, if not quite urbane, European — who could pull off urbane in Harar, who dare try? He kept his face still, and his eyes were shadowed and encircled by heavy, black rings — perhaps he did not sleep well or had recently been ill — but even in their shadows, his eyes seemed to glow — he was thoughtful, always watching and thinking, our host, even if he did not say much.

The tea-drinkers were challenging one another to a bet: what was more likely, war in the north (there was always war in the north, as they well knew) or a beautiful woman stepping through the front door in the next minute? They were quite pleased with themselves and were soon enough swapping stories of the most beautiful women they had ever seen, known, or been with.

Our host looked across at me, lucent-eye’d:

— This shouldn’t take long.

The others, hearing his remark, as he had intended, laughed louder and waved their hands dismissively at him and tried to outdo one another. Within a few minutes, you would have thought they had all slept with Nefertiti and Makeda, the fabled Queen of Sheba and consort to Solomon, and with all (and only) the most beautiful whores from Djibouti to Addis Ababa to Khartoum and back. Officially, of course, none of them had ever visited a whore, since one would not, and since, of course, there were no whores in their fair part of the world.

Like men everywhere, they were never so pleased with themselves than when talking about their cocks and where they had been.

When the others tried to draw him into the round, our patron demurred with a grin:

— Discretion, my friends; there’s a want of discretion in this world.

Oh, yes, oh, yes, they variously cried, to their own delight, there are a lot of wants in this world!

As the conversation spun this way and that, I, too, eventually sat back to observe the proceedings. More, I sat back to observe the youngish woman who now and then brought us more tea, or something stronger if we wished, and more food.

Was she? Were they?

I glanced over at our host, and even as he gazed back at me, I could not judge his expression. Grave, neutral, untelling.

If he were another man, one might know for certain: ba damouss.

Almost all European men in Abyssinia had a mistress or wife of convenience, often set up through an intermediary — a parent or a dealer — who would sell the woman to the man, whereupon she would assume the duties of cook, housekeeper, hostess and what-not. The arrangement, of course, was understood to include more; the arrangement, of course, could be undone with a few thalers and a show of the door by the “husband.”

Almost all European men in Abyssinia had a mistress or wife of convenience, an arrangement often set up through an intermediary…

The woman — her name was Mariam — at least that is what he called her — spoke almost no French. I gathered, afterwards, from our mutual acquaintances, that she was probably Argoban, from somewhere along the Erer Wenz, the river that ran past Harrar to the south. No doubt, the others said, she had a bit of the Portuguese in her, for to them she looked a little European.

Now and then, while the men chattered back and forth, she would stand by him and he would take her hand or she his arm, her other hand resting on his shoulder or touching his hair or the side of his face: if I am any judge, there was feeling between them. She rarely spoke, only bending and whispering to him, then gliding away to take care of this or that request or perceived need.

The home was clean, sparsely furnished in the local style, but homey and easy-feeling, and I had caught a glimpse of books stacked in a small side room. The door was mostly closed, but I had hesitated — I’m nosy, after all — and had spied the business papers atop the orderly desk, the books stacked or crowded onto the one bookshelf that I could see.

All very — civilized.

As if he guessed my thoughts, he smiled at me:

— Simple pleasures.

I nodded:

— Modest. Personal. Low-key. Not wanting in discretion.

— Precisely.

I couldn’t help myself:

— Almost, shall I say, conventional?

He laughed — did he blush? — but made no further reply.

Soon after, the tea party broke up, the men going off to their various schemes, armed with good feelings and new knowledges, and I — well, where? I looked back at the house — after sidestepping the ostrich who seemed intent on murder — but the light was wrong and I could not see through the as if mirror’d windows.