Tomorrow at dusk, just as it went every day, the goods would be exported and replaced with identical imports fit for sale by middlemen. Nothing in the trading post stayed at rest except Rimbaud. He somehow slept soundly on the pallets of firearms and sacks of coffee beans. His biggest buyer, the governor of Harar, recognized both the Italians and fatigue as unwelcome intruders. The war fetched Rimbaud a modest income, as all theatres need props.
He had heard no peep from his muse for ten or eleven years, gracing him with the autonomy to live unleashed and uninspired. During those three years long ago, he glutted the muse with enough poetic fervor to make her pop, just as flexed muscles burst mosquitoes. She had retired utterly, leaving his letters to Charleville circumspect and terse, leaving his mercantile inventory accurate and obvious. He had regained control his voice: monotone but his own.
The affairs, the absinthe, the hashish, and, worst, the histrionic poetry were once among his habits. Some men, Rimbaud had witnessed, spent whole lives shackled to such doom and dismay. He no longer questioned why when bovine men graze on wild grasses some should be pricked by burrs of poetry and others be left to ruminate peaceably, for he had popped his muse.
Once, a camera arrived among the imports. Press the button and reality was conveyed with no possibility of derangement unless a thumb accidentally smudged the lens. Rimbaud took a self-portrait of himself alone. He once snapped a photograph of old refrains, but even revealed by his albumen print he could not decipher her verse.
He lived the good life society had promised him. Money came effortlessly as though he deserved it. He entertained a pride of nubile Nubians, and they entertained him; One might be suitable for motherhood. Perhaps he could raise a boy, an engineer, someone practical, someone he could bring up as best and as right as possible. It was something to think about. Rimbaud ruminated peaceably.
The gates of Harar gaped openly and Rimbaud smiled.
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