Disaster Was My God: A Novel Of The Outlaw Life Of Arthur Rimbaud

Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud

Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.1: The Bastard? Last DayEvery morning at dawn they emerge from the desert, black women with earthen red jugs, tall, thirsty jugs atop their heads, their hard-calloused bare black feet squeaking as they pound down the long, broken road, through the floury red dust.See them in the pulverizing sun. Wrapped in shawls of white cotton, two long and tremulous forms start up the mountain, their tall jugs making them look like giants in the distance. Miles they will walk up this mountain, then miles back through the volcanic desert, and all for one jug emptied upon arrival by begging children and fiery, wooly-haired men in raw cotton tunics carrying long black spears and heavy daggers--white-eyed warriors who snatch and gulp their fill.But today it is not just the water that brings the women out of the desert. It is the news, the gossip, which is juicy, like a burst mango, especially on this, the Bastard? last day. If it is his last day, that is.On this point there is much debate, competing rumors, the biggest being that the Spice Woman, the very girl the Bastard dishonored, will at last confront him. Avenge herself. Humiliate him in some way. No one wants to miss that, the humiliation of the frangi, the foreigner.?ook at the sun,