Rimbaud III

Fearless and carefree, that was the reputation you gained—a sign of your success, you believed, in disguising your suffering. Indeed, proving your ability to conceal your feelings, demonstrating your independence from your peers, became a source of great satisfaction to you.

O mes petites amoureuses,
Que je vous hais!
Plaquez de fouffes douloureuses
Vos tétons laids!

Rimbaud became your hero. On your wall you pinned Rimbaud et son ombre, the sketch by Cazals: Your resemblance to the poet in this pencil drawing—the carelessly-cropped hair, the finesse of the profile—confirmed your affinity with him.

Fade amas d’étoiles ratées,
Comblez les coins!
— Vous crèverez en Dieu, bâtées
D’ignobles soins!

Next to Cazal’s sketch you pinned Verlaine’s drawing, Rimbaud à Paris: Hand in pocket, hat on head, he stands in profile, smoking his pipe. For you a Gitane would do: Sitting on your bed, you’d blow smoke rings of love to the boy whose poetry so engaged your emotion.

Blancs de lunes particulières
Aux pialats ronds,
Entrechoquez vos genouillères,
Mes laiderons!

But if you were proud of your ability to conceal your feelings, if you took pleasure in your independence from your peers, did you realize that in cutting off your hair you had cut the link between yourself and your body? As that body ripened, your inability to connect to it gave rise to greater and greater anxiety.

Is one ever finished with adolescence, then? … And what about Gudrun’s ingenious transcription of this dangerous passage? Neither Narcissus bedazzled by her new-found sex nor a nymph bent on seduction, she did not recoil before her discoveries nor rush into deploying her powers; no, her rocking before me demanded nothing but recognition. Thus I offered her Rimbaud, an interpretation for her sensations, a fellow adolescent about to walk the world.

We speak of Egon Schiele, dead at twenty-eight. Lilo says she likes the drawings on her wall, but she prefers Egon’s earlier work. I agree that Edith’s too old to be a girl like Rimbaud (my first gift to Lilo) but not Gerti, Wally and the working-class girls.

̶  Yes. It’s pure cinema. It struck a chord in me, as a girl.
̶  And as a boy?
̶  I’m not Rimbaud.

̶  But what if she never decides?

I jump in to answer Brynjar’s question:

̶̶  Then she’ll be an artist, a dancer.
̶  A dancer?
̶  Yes. She’ll run garlands from star to star and she’ll dance.
̶  Sprague, what are you saying?
̶  I’m saying that in the house of the soapmaker, those who don’t fall learn how to dance.

Suspended between delight and unease, Brynjar hestitates. I myself am surprised by my pirouette from the poem to the proverb. Why do I always associate Rimbaud with girls’ becoming? Because of you, of course! Because of your evocation—way back when, in our conversation on the floor—of what this boy has meant to you.

̶̶  Maybe, Sprague. Maybe she’ll become a dancer.
̶  I think she will.