Radiant Days Read Free

paintings. Whenthey came to my insect mandala, they stopped dead.
    “Wow! Stained glass.”
    “It’s like a kaleidoscope.”
    “It’s so cool!”
    Then they’d fall quiet, until someone would finally pipe up.
    “Is that a—are those
bugs
?”
    When it was time to take everything down, I gave the insect mandala to Ms. Aronson.
    “Don’t you want to keep this for your portfolio?” she asked.
    I shook my head. “It’ll only get broken at my house.”
    “Well, thank you, Merle.” She set it gingerly on her desk and stared at it. “This will be my pension when you become famous.”
    When I got my report card three weeks later, Mrs. Caldwell gave me a C, with a note beside it:
    The F on your final art project brought your semester grade down. Next time follow instructions
.

2

    Charleville, France
    AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1870
    AT THE END of August he ran away to Paris. He’d saved or stolen only enough to pay for a train ticket to Saint-Quentin, seventy-three miles away, but his friend Luc still owed him money for doing his Latin homework.
    “Here.” Luc dug into his pocket and produced a few grimy coins. He picked lint from one and handed them over.
    Arthur scowled. “That’s not going to get me to Paris.”
    “Sorry. It’s all I’ve got. What about Ernest?”
    “He’s broke.”
    “I’m broke, too!”
    “Yes, but I don’t like you as much.” Arthur pocketed the coins. “Thanks. I’ll bring you back a souvenir. Some hashish.”
    “Bring me a Parisian girl. All the ones here are ugly.”
    Arthur nodded and left, swearing under his breath. He should have planned better—the school in Charleville had closed because of the war, which meant he wouldn’t be able to shake down anyone else till it opened again.
    But he wasn’t going to wait around for the war to end. He hated Charleville, that suburban shithole, and spent as much time as he could walking, trying to convince himself that he’d left it behind, that he was on his way to Paris. He was always walking: from his house to school; from school to town, where he’d steal archaic volumes from the local bookshop, books on necromancy and obscure religious cults; from downtown Charleville to the surrounding woods and fields, where he’d plan his escape and write poems in his head. He chanted words beneath his breath as he strode beneath the beech trees, the thump of his heavy boots keeping time, like the ticking of the old captain’s clock on the kitchen mantel at home.
    On blue summer nights, I’ll wander lost footpaths,
    Stung by wheatstalks, trampling the tender grass:
    Dreaming, that cool touch under my feet.
    I’ll let the wind bathe my bare head.
    I won’t speak; I’ll think nothing.
    But infinite love will fill my soul,
    And I’ll travel an impossible distance, a wanderer
    In the great world—happy, as with a woman.
    It was a form of incantation, a means of welding the world inside his head to the one that surrounded him, words the fiery chain that bound it all together. Sometimes he’d forget where he was, so entranced by the rush of images that the countrysidebecame a blue-green blur, until he stumbled on a rock or tree root. If he’d managed to steal a bottle of brandy, he’d stumble more often, and swear, furiously, all the vile words he’d like to throw at his mother.
    Bitch! Shit! Goddamned sow!
    His father had decamped years before, leaving her with four small children and the grimly expectant face of someone first in line to watch a public burning. Steel-eyed, knife-tongued, parsimonious, she was ruthless in her dealings with tradesmen and the farmhands who worked the family’s fields outside Charleville, sometimes withholding payment for a year or more. Teachers at the local school were known to bolt classroom doors when they saw her coming, and itinerants had learned to avoid the Rimbaud courtyard unless they wanted a bucket of boiling water thrown at them. Frédéric, Arthur’s older brother, had recently joined the army to