Radiant Days (21 page)

“Arthur Rimbaud.”

“Rimbaud, Rimbaud.” Gill peeled off his coat, revealing a worker’s blue smock riddled with burn holes. “You’re the child poet.”

Arthur frowned. “I’m not—”

Gill clamped a huge hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “No? Well, which is it? Spy or child poet?”

“Poet,” gasped Arthur.

“Excellent!” Gill released him and rubbed his hands gleefully. “Of course we kill poets too. But it takes a bit longer. Why in God’s name did you come see me?”

“I want a job.”

Gill laughed. “So would we all! What, did you arrive by balloon? Because otherwise you might have noticed that everyone in Paris is starving or recently emerged from a basement. Have you heard about our little siege? Our bombardments? Conflagrations, small children blown to bits in their beds, that sort of thing?”

Arthur flushed. “I live near Mézières—we were bombed, too.”

“Oh, poor thing.” Gill rolled his eyes, stifling a yawn. “I forget how sensitive child poets are. You took the train, then?”

“Yes. I arrived this afternoon. I—”

A wave of dizziness struck him, and he flopped back onto the chaise. A moment later he blinked to see Gill’s mustache twitching a few inches from his face.

“You do look sickly, even for a poet.” Gill shook his head. “Have you eaten?”

“Some kids outside tried to sell me a rat for three francs.”

“Three francs! Highway robbery. One shouldn’t pay more than eight centimes for a rat these days. Come on—”

Gill helped him to his feet. “I couldn’t offer you a job if I wanted to. Times are hard for all of us, my friend. Revolution is in the air, and I wasn’t making a joke about spies. Well, I
was
, but—you know. Can’t trust anyone these days. The Prussian soldiers have moved out but everyone’s still in an uproar, and”—his voice dropped as he drew Arthur to the front door—“I will whisper this in your ear, friend, a word to the wise. There are plans afoot to overthrow the city government. A winter under siege,
starving to death and getting bombed by the Prussians … it wears on you.

“And rats aren’t the worst of it. Last month the menu at the Jockey Club featured poodle for a week. But rat isn’t half bad, especially braised, though don’t ever order black rats. Gray rats have a much finer taste. Now …”

Gill opened the front door and with a flourish indicated the street. “The City of Light awaits you. I suggest you go to the Chapeau Noir—that’s just two streets over.”

He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s a Red Club. You’ve heard of them? Where we meet to plan a new government to replace this corrupt one. The proprietor is a friend of mine. I recommend the rabbit
sauté au chasseur
. Here’s ten francs; forget we ever spoke. Be careful of the company you keep, trust no one, take notes. If you are truly a poet, we will meet again, I’m sure. If not…” Gill shrugged. “That is your loss, not mine. Good luck, and remember: when it comes to rats, eight centimes. Not a sou more.”

With a thump, the door closed in Arthur’s face. He blinked, then counted the coins Gill had shoved into his hand. Shivering, he pulled his coat tight and began to walk.

He found the Chapeau Noir, a glass-fronted building that might have been cheerful once upon a time, before the siege. Inside reeked of petrol, though the only illumination came from tallow candles in empty bottles. But the tables were crowded with blue-smocked workmen, drinking and talking animatedly, and bearded student types who wore red caps or crimson sashes.

And there were women, too. Arthur had never seen so many women in a café, tossing back glasses of beer and making more noise than the men. Some had faces brightly rouged, skirts hiked to show a white flash of ankle or the muddy hem of a petticoat. Others wore black
pantalons
and bumblebee-yellow dresses with black hoods, as though they were in costume for a pantomime.

“M’sieur?” A waiter in a long white apron appeared, and showed Arthur to a table.

He took Gill’s advice and ordered rabbit and a glass of beer. The food arrived quickly, a fragrant platter of meat and herbs. It was so good he ordered a second helping and a loaf of bread, also more beer; then sat for a long time sucking the rabbit’s tender bones.

The beer was strong. Only after his fourth glass did he realize that a mere three francs remained of what Gill had given him. He sipped what was left, and devoted himself to eavesdropping. He learned that the bumblebee women called themselves Amazons and were plotting against the National Guard. Armed with hatpins dipped in prussic acid, they would entice soldiers to their death. He also listened, rapt, as a cloaked man spoke in urgent whispers of a revolutionary communal government. Another man, his mustache as impressive as Gill’s, outlined a plan to blow up the city’s monuments.

Arthur considered joining them. But the combination of fatigue, beer, and rabbit
sauté au chasseur
was too much. He pushed himself from the table, walked unsteadily across the smoky room to the door, and staggered outside.

It was close to midnight. A single lamp shed sulfurous light onto the street, and threw into nightmarish relief the outlines of shattered buildings. Arthur stepped behind a pile of rubble and pissed, then headed toward the river, following a canal that emerged from beneath an armory where a handful of sleepy-looking soldiers stood guard. The wind picked up. He could smell the Seine, a stink like a fish market and a latrine.

He staggered along a street that ran roughly parallel to the Canal Saint-Martin. Twice, exhausted, he tripped and almost plummeted into the frigid water. He looked for a place to sleep, somewhere out of the icy wind. But every alley and tunnel he peered into had a tramp or ragged soldier already resting there; or a whore servicing a client; or a half-starved mongrel that growled and stared at him with vulpine eyes.

At last he sighted a barge tied up not far from a narrow bridge. He hurried toward it, shoulders hunched and teeth clenched so they wouldn’t chatter. Back in Charleville, bargemen were usually good for a potato roasted in hot coals and a few swigs of brandy. Occasionally one demanded payment with a kiss or something more, and he’d usually obliged willingly enough.

Here, he saw no sign of a lockhouse, and no evidence of a bargeman; only the long black silhouette of the boat. It rested low in the water, weighted down by a tarpaulin-covered mound sifted with snow. An acrid smell caught in his throat, overpowering the stagnant reek of the canal: coal.

He glanced over his shoulder, quickly hopped on board, and walked the length of the deck, searching for a cabin or alcove
where he could take shelter from the relentless February wind.

But he found nothing save a series of cleats around the barge’s perimeter, where ropes leading from the canvas tarpaulins had been tied off. He yanked aside the edge of one tarpaulin and crawled beneath, coughing as he inhaled coal dust. He curled up beside the heap, and did his best to tug the stiff canvas around him like a blanket. It did nothing to warm him.

Still, he was out of the wind, at least; and after a few minutes of shivering, he fell into a restive sleep.

Paris

FEBRUARY 26, 1871

I WOKE FROM
a dream of a parade: martial music, drums; a trumpet that wavered between a blare and a bleat. My ears ached as though someone had thrust frozen rods into them. I blinked, opened my eyes to darkness fading to gray, and a cold so penetrating I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. Shuddering, I tried to burrow deeper into the bunk.

But the layers of worn sheets and clothing that had pillowed me were gone. I felt only cold wood beneath my hands, and the ceaseless rocking of the boat. Some kind of stiff coverlet had been flung over me: I huddled beneath it, warming my hands beneath my bomber jacket and trying to summon the courage to stand. Finally I pushed aside the coverlet, crawled out, and clambered to my feet.

Thin sunlight blinded me. I shaded my eyes, looking around for Ted; shook my head, thinking,
I’m still asleep
.

Because Ted was gone. So was the bunk where I’d slept, and the little cabin with its swaying kerosene lantern and trash-covered
floor. I was outside, standing on the deck of a much larger boat, surrounded by some kind of cargo covered with dirty gray canvas. A freezing gust buffeted me and I fell back onto the canvas tarp, cried out as the canvas heaved and rippled and someone staggered out from under it. I grabbed a lump of coal, and flung it at the figure in front of me.

“Ow!”
he yelped as it struck his arm, and he began shouting and cursing. His words were gibberish. My head pounded: I had a flash of déjà vu that wasn’t déjà vu but the memory of a slight figure looming in the darkness of the lockhouse, his voice garbled and discordant as a broadcast from the surface of the moon. Abruptly his words shifted, and I could understand him.

“Get away from me!”

My entire body went cold. “Arthur?”

He fell silent, staring at me. After a long moment he croaked, “Merle?”

His voice had changed; everything had changed. I no longer gazed into his eyes but had to look up, into a face thinner than it had been, crowned by an unruly nest of thick dark-blond hair. His coat was the same, but he wore bigger boots, encased in gray mud. His shirt was white, not blue; his overcoat flapped open so I could see the jacket he wore underneath, and dark wool trousers that ended above his ankles. Only the eyes were the same, that unnerving, unwavering gray-blue gaze, icy as the water around us.

“Arthur,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “Arthur,
what did you do
?”

I thought I might be sick.

“Merle.” He reached out to touch my hair, and I saw his hand was trembling. “Are you—are you real?”

“I think so.” I laughed shakily, for the first time turned to glance around. “Are you?”

We were on a barge tied up alongside a narrow walkway, beyond it clouds of thin vaporous haze. As I stared, the haze burned off, revealing shadowy impressions of buildings. Church spires began to appear, faint at first but growing darker and more solid, the boulevards and sidewalks and alleys of a city taking on color and depth, like a painting transferred from gauze to heavy canvas.

But the city wasn’t D.C., or even New York. It wasn’t any city I knew.

Or, rather, it was a city I half recognized, from photographs and movies and paintings in the National Gallery of Art, sepia images or ones that had darkened with age. Yet this place was flooded with color—a blue sky pale as Arthur’s eyes; fluttering scarlet banners trailing from a moss-green lamppost; blackened trees and ivory monuments defaced with mustard-yellow paint. A city crowded with uniformed men, women in long dun-colored skirts and white caps, and darting children in blue smocks or jackets, all of them laughing and whooping as they marched down a broad street. Distant sounds echoed toward us: the clatter of carriage wheels and
clonk
of hooves upon cobblestones; awnings flapping in the wind; the brooding tone of a church bell tolling nine o’clock. No cars; no buses or taxis.
No structure that looked as though it had been built within the last hundred years, or more.

My mouth went dry. “What is this place?”

Arthur looked at me as though I were mad. “Paris.” He wiped a hand black with coal dust on his trousers. “Come on, I want to see what’s happening.”

He climbed over the boat rail and hopped onto the sidewalk, as an afterthought turned and waited for me to do the same.

“What is it?” I asked breathlessly as he took my arm and headed for the marching throng.

“I don’t know. An execution, maybe. Hey—”

He dropped my arm and grabbed a young woman wearing loose pants tucked into high-buttoned boots and a billowing, orange-striped black dress. “What’s going on?”

The girl looked us both up and down, then said, “A unit of the National Guard is marching. Jules Andrieu is supposed to make a speech—stirring up shit, as usual.” She grinned at Arthur. “Hey, weren’t you at the Chapeau Noir last night? I thought so. You better move—don’t want to miss Jules. Just be careful—the police are out in force, they’ll smash your skull open if they have the chance.”

She spun on her heels and hurried toward the crowd, glancing back to see if Arthur followed. He started after her. I had to run to catch up—his long legs seemed to have grown by at least four inches since I’d last seen him. “Who’s Jules?” I gasped.

“Another poet. A radical.”

“Is that who they’re going to execute?”

“God, I hope not.” He glanced back at me, slowing to a trot. “You haven’t changed.”

I shook my head. “It’s only been a few hours—a night, I guess. For me, anyway.”

“That’s stupid—it’s been four months.”

“Have you seen Ted?”

“Who?” he said, distracted. “Look, let’s head over there, that looks like where everyone’s going.”

He began to elbow his way through the crowd. I followed, fighting to get past a knot of women in wooden clogs and mud-stained aprons.

“Wait,” I said desperately. “The key—the fish-bone key. Do you still have it?”

He pursed his lips, then dug into his pocket and held it out. “This?”