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It was all Marius could do, seeing the devastation on Cosette's face as Jean Valjean drew his last breath, not to confess everything right then and there.
The impulse passed quickly, of course. For one thing, he could hardly interrupt such a moment; for another, he doubted he would have been able to say the words, his own throat tight with tears he had choked back.
Later, once all the necessary arrangements had been made and the initial storm of feelings had ebbed away, not to disappear, but to gather forces for a new attack, Marius had a chance to reconsider his initial impulse.
That he had to repent for his own misdeeds was more than clear, but what right did he have to heap infamy on the memory of the man he had so badly mistreated? Jean Valjean had asked but two things from him; to allow him the fleeting joy of visiting Cosette and to safeguard his past. Marius had badly failed him in the first regard; could he really do so again? And yet, how could he confess his crime without betraying the secrets of the dead man?
There was nothing to it. On the evening after the funeral, Marius took Cosette to their private chambers and in short, brief words, without any deflection or self-justification, explained all he had done to push her father away. Taking care to avoid any direct reference to the history of Jean Valjean, he contented himself with the explanation that he, Marius, had gained a tragically misguided impression of Monsieur Fauchelevent’s character and feared him to be a danger to the life he and Cosette were building together. That he had come to realise he had been grievously wrong and had tried to make amends, only to be far too late for his change of heart to do any good. He closed the explanation with assurance that Cosette's father had been the most noble of men, a saint in all but name, whose memory she should be nothing but proud of.
Cosette didn’t seem much reassured. Watching the dawning horror on her face, seeing her step backward as he reached out a hand to comfort her, Marius was struck by a sinking feeling that he had made a grave mistake – but then, such a reaction was hardly less than he deserved.
Cosette had opened and closed her mouth several times. She wanted to ask, he realised, and steeled himself against the questions he must refuse to answer, but in the end, she turned away without a word. It seemed to Marius, watching her leave, as if the sun had retreated into clouds.
For the next several weeks, they haunted the great house on Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire like a pair of ghosts trapped into the realm of living.
Grandfather Gillenormand, assuming the gloomy atmosphere to be the natural result of Monsieur Fauchelevent’s passing, was doing his inefficient best to cheer Cosette up with gifts and stories from his youth, occasionally coaxing a wan smile. Cosette, who had never been quiet by nature, seemed to escape conversation at every turn, spending hours in the drawing room in the taciturn company of Mlle Gillenormand, or in the pitiful garden at the back-end of the courtyard, squeezed behind the carriage lot and always in the shadow of the five floors looming above from all sides. Marius, watching her from the window of the upstairs apartment Gillenormand had provided for the young couple, was struck by the image of prisoners walking the length of a closed courtyard, and he wept bitter tears, guiltily wondering what their life might be like if he had never made his confession. At other times, he found Cosette sitting with one of her father’s books, her gaze fixed at distance, or writing long letters she never put to post. On those occasions, she would quickly hide her tears and he would make a hasty retreat. Neither of them seemed to know what to say to each other.
Even his sleep was troubled. They still shared a bed, despite everything and Marius took what comfort he could of Cosette's silent form beside him, even as he spent his nights tossing and turning. At least he must not have disturbed her too badly, for she always remained perfectly still – so still, that he sometimes wondered if perhaps she was lying awake after all, but he never dared to ask. She was always gone when he woke.
(He never remembers falling asleep)
Laigle is leaning against the wall of Café Musain with a grace so familiar that it makes Marius want to weep, but his eyes are strange and serious. “You’re rather neglecting that pretty young wife of yours, are you not?”
“You are dead,” Marius informs him, staring across the café table. Had they always been sitting here?
“Is that so?” Laigle says lightly. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. But you are alive, unless I’m much mistaken.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Marius replies gloomily.
Laigle seems unimpressed. “And what a peculiar manner it is! You, a newly-wed, wasting away among the shades like us, looking fit to join us at the Père-Lachaise. Has the life aboveground grown so wearisome since I last graced it with my presence? What of all the dreams we breathed into its sweet air? What of your wife?”
“Our dreams crumbled into rubble,” Marius says. “And my wife despises me.”
“Is that so.”
“As well she might. I have earned it.”
Laigle hums. “It is a fine soup you have brewed for yourself, I won’t deny it. Do you really intend to make her empty the pot all alone?”
Marius frowns. “You must be a figment of my exhausted imagination – which rather makes me wonder why I’m even discussing this with you – but as such you should know full well what I have done, and that there is nothing I can do to unmake it. The best I can offer Cosette is to relieve her of my odious presence, until such time should come when she is ready to forgive me – if it ever does.”
“Indeed! Have you thought to ask her what she wants?”
Marius doesn’t understand. “How could she want anything else?”
Something about Laigle’s expression seems to suggest this is a wrong answer.
Suddenly they are standing outside again. Laigle tips his arm towards Marius. “Will you walk with me?”
Marius hesitates, thrown by the abrupt change in scenery, but Laigle remains immovable. “You won’t refuse a favour to a dead man. Will I ever get a chance to promenade on the boulevards again?”
There isn’t much Marius could say to that; he has no choice but to accept Laigle’s arm.
The streets are strange, folding in on themselves as they pass through and blurring at the edges, as dream spaces often do. Unnerved and a bit dizzy, Marius gives up on trying to take it all in and focuses his attention to little details, marvelling at the life-like texture of the street and the small gardens. When was the last time he took a walk with a friend, or spoke to anyone outside his family? Laigle is chatting idly – of the weather, of the passers-by, other unimportant things – and Marius lets it wash over him, allowing himself, for a moment, to be lost in the illusion.
Under the circumstances, Marius is not particularly surprised to find them far from the Place Saint-Michel, wandering through the strange amalgamation of quays of Seine and his old neighbourhood at the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. He shudders to look upon the grimy visage of the Gorbeau hovel, remembering the strange and unhappy hours passed between these walls. The slaughterhouse across the street, which had never bothered him overmuch, seems to loom over the hovel like a great beast over its prey and Marius’ mind wastes no time in providing the memory of every smell and sound he had ever experienced from behind that desolate edifice. It seems to him, in a strange way, as if the old hovel is calling to him for help.
At his side, Laigle murmurs something Marius cannot make out, and tugs him gently along the road towards Bicêtre.
When Marius comes back to himself, he recognises the spot near Barrière du Maine, where Laigle and Courfeyrac had dragged him to a picnic once, as part of their cover for meeting with some marble-workers. Their outing had been pleasant enough, but the memory that now surfaces in Marius’ mind is an entirely different one.
One evening in the late spring, made pensive by what he now realises must have been a great concern for her father, Cosette had shared a recollection of a strange encounter near Bicêtre that had greatly disturbed them both. She had asked if he knew what it meant. Marius, struck by the uncanny nature of the coincidence, could hardly utter a word.
He can hardly say a word now, as the figures Cosette had haltingly described manifest from the darkness: seven wagons in a row, with twenty-four men per wagon, sitting back-to-back, chained together by their necks. Whips crack over their heads and on each wagon, two men with muskets stand on their chains. The muffled cacophony of sound sweeps over Marius and he remains transfixed for what feels like eternity, taking in each startlingly vivid detail. He can’t make out any faces, but he has a sinking feeling he would be able to recognize every single one of them.
Eventually he manages to wrench his gaze away and turns to Laigle, his heart blazing with strange grief and fury. “What is this? Why have you brought me here?”
Laigle simply gazes back to him, silent and unmovable as a statue, his gaze still weighed with that strange seriousness, almost severe in its disappointment. “You haven’t been paying attention.”
“Paying attention to what?” But Laigle is already disappearing, leaving Marius to scramble after him. His legs are heavy and the street ahead of him seems to twist back into itself. Before he has taken ten steps. Marius finds himself very lost and very alone, with only the lingering echo of the infamous procession to keep him company.
“Well, I must say, that went even worse than I expected.”
Marius stares at Grantaire, slouched with his back against the wall, clacking a stack of dominoes onto the wine-stained table in front of him.
He barely glances at Marius, his eyes remaining fixed on the distant convoy, still lingering at the edges of Marius’ consciousness. “Poor devils,” he mutters, reaching for a glass that hadn’t been there a moment earlier, then apparently reconsidering, pushes it across the table towards Marius instead.
Marius stares at the green liquid for a long moment, before gulping it down in one go. He expects it to burn, but instead it feels like nothing at all. Grantaire watches him with something like amusement.
“Why,” Marius eventually asks.
“I would assume it must have something to do with either lack of wits or lack of experience,” Grantaire answers, collapsing the tower of dominoes with a flick of his wrist. “Take your complaints to Messieurs Morpheus and Phantasos if you will, but it won’t do you much good. A dream is nothing but a shadow of reality; the cheaper version of the same, you could say, for it costs only your peace of mind. When one has never left his cave, what is one to do with a troublesome shade of a thing he has no taste of? Makes this whole exercise rather futile, if you ask me – not that anybody did.”
“I’m not talking about the absinthe!” Marius snaps. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
Grantaire doesn’t answer. Instead he finally turns his gaze away from the prisoners, observing Marius with undecipherable, gentle eyes, once again making him feel like he has failed some kind of test.
“It is not that I wouldn’t be glad to see you, if you were real,” Marius eventually concedes, a bit ashamed. “But under such circumstances, how could I feel anything but grieved? You are a figment of a cruel imagination.”
Grantaire shrugs, apparently unbothered by such assessment. “Real, imaginary, does it really matter so much? You were happy enough with the company of shadows when we were still alive to trouble your waking hours.”
Marius swallows. “That’s not true.”
“Mind that I’m not blaming you. People are horribly troublesome and ideas are even worse. The earth is a ghastly place and the poor plucked chicken called homo sapiens isn’t built to withstand too much reality. Who’s to say your shadows are any worse than your fellow man’s?” His gaze flickers across the table, lingering on the glass Marius is still holding. “Although I shall have to make an exception for absinthe. Yours is vastly inferior.”
“My understanding of reality made an orphan of my wife.”
“Ah, that's what troubles you! And for that reason you dug yourself deeper into your cave and decided: “This is it, I am done. I shall bury myself in the sand and infamy, I shall make sure that I never encounter another mind different from my own ever again, lest I find myself to be in the wrong.” What a penance! One must give you due credit, for no one could say you’re not consistent in your habits.”
Marius bristles. He has spent plenty of sleepless nights castigating himself, but surely being mocked by Grantaire of all people is too much. “You will forgive me if I’m not too eager to test your methods.”
“You wound me. I give excellent advice, if I say so myself.”
“What is your advice then? To get drunk? To find some poor soul and talk them to death?”
“To converse. Perhaps even to listen.” Grantaire’s smile is a crooked gentle thing, as he leans back on his chair, fading out of Marius’ mind. “Do as I say, not as I do.”
He’s standing in front of the Gorbeau house again, contemplating the unmatching door and window.
Is he meant to go in? Could the hovel be yet another ghost that has come to trouble his sleep? No. Marius turns and walks away, with as much briskness as the treacly reality of the dream will allow.
There is a ghastly figure walking in step with him, its every movement matched so closely to Marius’ that it takes him a while to notice; once he does, he knows the figure has been following him all along. He quickens his step: it does no good. He tries to look at it – her? – but every time he turns his head, the figure shifts, forever in the corner of his left eye.
Eventually, as they reach what could be considered the dream approximation of the corner of Rue Saint-Jacques, he is struck by a sudden memory of the two apparitions that had once accosted him at the very same corner. The Jondrette girls – Thénardier girls, rather. Éponine. Just as the name forms in his mind, he finds that he can finally look directly upon his shadow, although her figure still twists and blurs.
“Monsieur Marius,” she says and nothing else. He cannot make out her face, but there is no hiding the quiet devastation of her bearing. An odd, awful feeling gripes Marius’ heart, he tries to move away. His legs once again refuse to cooperate, but with great concentration, he can force some distance between himself and the ghastly apparition.
“Monsieur Marius,” the girl repeats. “Please. Listen.”
“Well, what is it?” Marius demands, guilt and grief burning in his chest, turning into a strange fury. “Say what you wish and leave me be.”
Éponine remains motionless, but her unhappy figure seems to fade in and out of Marius awareness. Just for a moment he catches a clear glimpse of her and his heart stops, for it seems to him that it is Cosette's face looking back at him, ravaged by some terrible suffering. Despite himself, he takes a step closer, but even as he opens his mouth to call out, the illusion fades, leaving him once again alone in the desolate street.
“Was she real?” Marius asks, his voice unsteady to his own ears.
“As real as every other person here,” Feuilly says. “You and I included.”
There are flecks of paint on his hands and his coat, and the canvas that is not canvas flickers in front of him. Feuilly considers it thoughtfully, before giving it a slight nudge; the painting unfolds, the shapes and colours fitting themselves into the streetscape around them.
Marius frowns, casting his mind back to Grantaire’s strange remarks. Maybe he should have been paying closer attention. Was this yet another test?
“This is a dream,” he eventually says. He can hardly doubt the reality of his own presence, but the people filling the street around him, if they can indeed be called people, are strange wraith-like beings, blurring and dissolving if he looks too closely at them, more parts of the landscape that Feuilly is painting into existence than genuine living beings. “It’s all – shadows. Reflections. Or paintings.”
“More or less. Every person is real in their own mind. This is yours – your version of reality. It has no room for what doesn’t belong to it,” Feuilly answers. “A stranger you saw once passing in the street can hardly become a fully realised person in the confines of your perception.”
Marius frowns. The explanation has a certain logic to it, he supposes. It is very hard to think straight, in this strange space. “So I can speak to you, because I knew you. Someone like Éponine...” he falls silent.
Feuilly gazes steadily at Marius. “If you never saw someone as a person, they won’t be able to reach you here."
“That’s not –” Marius starts, but the protest dies on his lips. Of course he knows people to be people, it is hardly a novel idea. But what does it mean? Why the guilt, the anger? Why did a good man die of grief? Why these familiar voices haunting him in this strange dream, telling him to pay attention, to listen, listen, listen.
It is difficult to look at Feuilly too closely. There’s something of that wraith-like quality to his presence too, Marius notes uneasily, but what strikes him is the pensive expression on the fan-painter’s usually open face. It reminds him of the last hours of the barricade, with the weight of dashed hopes he had never quite understood, the experience of betrayal from those who should have been their friends.
“The world is full of people,” Feuilly murmurs. “Every single one of them is as real, as complex as you are. Every Éponine. Every Jean Valjean. Do you know that? Do you try to understand?”
“I thought I did,” Marius finds himself responding. Listen, listen, listen. “Perhaps I don’t. Not enough.”
Feuilly doesn’t quite smile, but something about his presence lightens all the same. He touches the paint brush against the canvas that is not canvas. The vista that takes shape in front of Marius’ eyes is a familiar one: he has revisited it in many nightmares. “Let me show you the way.”
The barricade is terrible.
Perhaps it had always been so, or perhaps it was once a place of hopes and dreams. Marius cannot recall that epoch. What he sees now, when he steps out of the Rue Mondetour, is something more harrowing than his darkest nightmares.
The door of the wine-shop has been torn off its hinges, leaving the entrance a gaping wound. There is hardly an inch of the facade that isn’t marred by bullets or grapeshot. One of the window shutters, nailed shut to protect the wounded, has been torn off, making the old house seem like it’s weeping. The barricade itself, overrun but still standing, holds vigil over the horrors below.
The unpaved stretch of street between the barricade and the wine-shop is muddy with rain and blood. Everywhere, at the foot of the barricade and on the ground, against the walls and on the doorstep of the wine-shop itself, lay the bodies of the insurgents and guardsmen alike, thrown haphazardly and without regard like discarded toys of some capricious celestial child.
In front of the ruined wine-shop, Joly is checking the pulse of his own corpse.
Shaking his head a bit, he turns to Marius, his open friendly smile entirely unperturbed, if not a little rueful. “I have to say that I’m well and truly dead. Don’t you think so?”
Marius can only stare in mute horror. The body at his feet is unmistakably Joly himself, recognisable despite the caked blood obscuring half of his face, and the gaping hole in his right side, where the corpse’s stiff fingers are still positioned to keep the intestines in their place.
Ghost Joly pats Marius’ arm, leaving rusty smears on his sleeve. “It’s not so terrible, you know,” he says. “Certainly it could have been worse. At least it’s not cholera.”
Marius opens his mouth; to say what, he doesn’t know. The sound that escapes him is something between whine and a sob. Joly’s smile morphs into a look of concern.
“Hey, hey, sit down.”
Marius doesn’t remember obeying, but he must have done so, for the next thing he knows, he’s sitting with his back against the wall, with his head between his knees. What good that might do, in this terrible nightmare world where closing his eyes does nothing to hold horrors at bay, he doesn’t know, but slowly he finds himself less overwhelmed. His surroundings feel dimmer, more distant. Joly’s earnest concerned face swims back into focus and Marius finds himself clinging to the comfort it offers. “Feeling better?”
“I had forgotten about this part,” Marius hears himself say, or thinks he does. The blood is still rushing through his ears, but Joly seems to understand.
“It is no wonder. You took a very heavy blow to your head. Bound to make mischief of your memories, I would think.”
“I’m told it’s a blessing.” Marius stares bleakly at the rusty earth at his feet. “All the fighting and dying, none of it feels real. That is well, perhaps. But nothing else feels real either.” He chuckles humourlessly. “This is the most real thing I have felt in weeks, and I'm talking to a ghost.”
“For what it’s worth, I feel corporeal enough,” Joly assures him. “Metaphorically speaking.” He casts a rueful glance at his own ill-fated remains. Marius, following his glance, cannot suppress a shudder.
“It’s quite a horrid mess, isn’t it,” Joly sighs. “Poor Musichetta, she must have been so terribly cross.”
Guilt floods through Marius. Musichetta, Joly’s literary friend. What had become of her? The dependents and loved ones of his other lost comrades? It had never occurred to him to wonder. Was this what Feuilly had meant, by not seeing people as real persons?
“Do you wish me to check up on her? I’m sure Cosette would –” He stops abruptly.
Joly gives him a knowing look.
“Does she feel real?” he asks quietly. “Your Cosette.”
“Always,” Marius says quickly, before stopping. It is impossible to hide in this place. “Most of the time. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what it means, for something to feel real. Moreover, is she not far too good to be true?”
“Well, there’s your problem.”
Joly is not looking at him and his tone remains light, but something about it prompts Marius to sit up and pay attention.
“You mistake me. Cosette is wonderful, brilliant. She is the only reason I keep living,” he says, almost defensive.
“That’s quite a lot to ask of someone, is it not?” Joly answers, with the same deliberate lightness. “Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not casting doubt on all the wonderful qualities of your lady. It is well and good to build an altar for your beloved in poetry or song, but it is quite a different matter to expect her to put on a halo every morning alongside her petticoats.”
“Cosette is –“
As real, as complex as you are.
Oh.
Marius sits in silence for a long time, as his world shifts around him. Part of him rails against the thoughts, implications, conclusions flooding his mind, ready to raise in instinctive fury against the mere suggestion of his love for Cosette being anything but pure. The other part of him wants to lay down on the bleeding earth and never get up again.
And then, what does it matter? No unfair expectation he might have imposed upon Cosette in his regard for her, no unintentional wrongdoing, could compare to the one crime he had committed with full knowledge and understanding of his own actions.
“Have you considered apologising?”
Once again, it’s Joly’s voice that brings him out of his reverie. But there is no light for him to focus on in the misery of his soul. Even Joly right next to him is barely visible.
“I killed her father. This is hardly something one can apologise for.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Marius stares back at him helplessly. “What do you want from me?”
The words are nearly a whisper and nearly a shout: all the agitation, all the terrified confusion he has been trying to overcome washes over him all at once, morphing into some nameless terror, hot with the taste of suppressed tears.
Joly raises his hand in a pacifying gesture, but Marius has had enough. Enough of the cryptic conversations, the doubts, the guilt, the heart-rendingly familiar echoes of his lost friends. Was it not enough that his conscience tortured him, did it have to make mockery of the sanctity of the grave?
Joly is saying something that Marius cannot make out over the pounding in his ears. Instead he gathers his spiralling thoughts the best he can and focuses, with all his might, on silence, emptiness, peace.
Slowly, his hands still raised and mouth open, Joly fades out of existence. Only his lifeless body remains crumpled at Marius' feet. The silence is almost peaceful.
Marius stares at it for a long moment, his mind heavy with helpless horror and grief and something else he cannot name. Without another thought, he turns his back on the barricade and runs.
There’s a battle.
Marius runs. It does no good, for both his body and his reality rebel against the efforts of his mind. He tries to focus on his surroundings, to force them into different shapes, but all that achieves is to make him more aware of the horrors around him. Of the cacophony of smells and sounds, open mouths that do not scream. The sensory assault creates a physical barrier; he tries to force himself through. Something warm and sticky clings to his hands, and the back of his mouth tastes like copper. There’s pressure at the back of his head and he knows something must have hit him, but he feels no pain. His legs are not working right, sinking ever downwards, downwards –
“ The Sun now rose upon the right: out of the sea came he. Still hid in mist, and on the left, went down into the sea.”
The voice is the first thing Marius becomes aware of. It’s soft and melodious, soothing with the melancholy comfort of a cherished memory. Compelled by something deeper than curiosity, Marius finds himself following that voice, letting it coax him out of darkness. Cautiously, he opens his eyes and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
“’ Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, that made the breeze to blow!’ – Ah, are you back then?”
Jean Prouvaire is a sight. Had he been the first of the spirits to accost Marius in this cursed realm, it would have been instantly clear to him that he was experiencing a visitation from beyond the grave. Certainly, Prouvaire is dedicated to looking the part; from the ashy pallor of his skin against the blood-stained cravat, to the almost translucent quality of his presence, which makes the light and shadow flicker oddly around him. His chest is a bloody mess. A single bullet hole, like a third eye, is burrowed right over his left eyebrow.
Marius shudders and closes his eyes again, grimly unsurprised when the vision fails to so much as flicker.
“Well what is it?” he demands harshly, too exhausted to be overawed. “What do you want? What are you following me for?”
Jean Prouvaire sighs. “What a welcome. But you haven’t exactly been making it easy for us, have you?”
Marius blinks at him, irritated.
“You think it is a simple matter for us, these conversations? That one day, getting bored with our sepulchre, we decided: “Enough of that! Let us go bother our friend Marius Pontmercy, there is an amusing pastime?” It was not our goal to cause you distress. We assumed, at first, that two or three conversations would be sufficient.”
“What?”
“What do you think?” Jean Prouvaire waves his hand. “Look around you.”
Marius does not; he knows he has never escaped the bloody shadow of the barricade.
“You have come back to this place of transformation, of possibilities. You have been offered guidance by departed souls. You have been asked questions – questions you don’t much like to think of, but which you know, deep in your heart, to be important. You’re a literary man Marius. You’ve translated your Germans, you’ve translated your Englishmen; you know how these matters go.”
Marius does. It’s not a reassuring picture.
“So you’re real then?” he asks, hesitantly. “Genuine spirits from beyond the grave, not fragments of my broken imagination?”
“I thought we went over this already.”
“It’s not as if any of you has been forthcoming with straight answers,” Marius snaps back, irritated. “Shadows and metaphors. Just tell me what you want of me!”
“You really are making this more difficult than it needs to be.” Jean Prouvaire’s voice sounds far away. Marius blinks and he comes back into focus, still bloody and vaguely irate, as if he had been there all along.
“Is this a punishment then?”
“Does it seem like a punishment?”
Marius stares gloomily at the decimated barricade.
Jean Prouvaire shakes his head.
“No. Think of this more as a – not a lesson, exactly. A journey.”
“To where?”
Jean Prouvaire gives another irritating shrug. “Maybe it’s not the destination that matters.”
Marius takes a deep breath. Then another one and another.
“Alright,” he says eventually. “I’m not a complete fool. Let’s see if I understand this right: you’re aware of my wrongdoings, you want me to… not fix them, because such a thing is not possible, but to make up for them in one way or another. You aren’t very forthcoming on how ,” he takes another deep breath. “That’s because you aren’t here to solve all my troubles, just to nudge me towards the right path.” Another deep breath. “And I must assume, to tell me what I have been doing wrong, because it seems I have quite failed to understand all the implications.”
“That’s to be expected: you are terribly self-absorbed,” Jean Prouvaire answers cheerfully.
Marius bristles, more on general principle than out of true offence, but Jean Prouvaire pays him no heed, having wandered from his perch and now deeply absorbed in examining the barricade. “Did you recreate this just from your fever memories? That’s rather impressive.”
Marius follows his course with a vague mix of irritation and relief. It is easier to think like this, without any ghosts staring at him expectantly; easier to put words to his feelings.
“It feels as if I’m going in circles,” he finally admits. “Guilt and helplessness. To plan an action without full understanding is impossible, the understanding without any plan is paralysing.”
Jean Prouvaire turns back to look at him. It’s an unnerving gaze, with a distinct spectral quality. Marius forces himself to meet it for a couple of seconds, before turning away.
“It might make things easier,” Jean Prouvaire says, “if you allowed yourself to feel what you want to feel.”
More cryptic suggestions. Of course.
Marius starts to turn away, but Jean Prouvaire stops him with an imperious gesture. “Listen.”
Marius does. He can no more stop himself than he can look away from Jean Prouvaire’s disconcerting gaze. He stands, rooted in a spot, as the spirit in front of him fades away, even as the roar in his ears grows louder. A roar, a shout that is both a scream of laughter and howl of fury.
Marius stumbles forward, overcome. He wants to run, to cover his ears, but he does neither. Tears stream down his cheeks and wild laughter scratches deep in his throat. Something moves in the shadows. There’s a part of him that wants to bang his fists against the wall, to tear it down, to tear down every building in this city, and leave Paris a rubble of burning inferno. Find a future entirely unburdened by the past, wild with possibilities.
Collapsing to his knees, Marius buries his knuckles in his eyes and howls.
There is an enormous wolf sitting at the foot of the barricade. Bahorel is leaning against the hull of the omnibus, observing Marius with a rakish grin. Or perhaps Bahorel is the wolf, or the wolf is Bahorel.
Nothing about it strikes as too odd to Marius. It seems perfectly natural, in some way, for Bahorel to appear to him so.
Less natural is the scratchiness of his throat, the distinct taste of howling in his own mouth. Something about it unnerves him more than the ghosts and horrors lurking in the depths of his mind. He tries to swallow it down, to smooth it over, forget.
Bahorel follows him with lupine eyes.
“You should hold onto some of it,” he says. “A little bit of anger won’t hurt – well.” His smile is a dangerous thing. “It might hurt somebody . But it will do you a bit of good.”
“What do I have to be angry about,” Marius mumbles. Speaking hurts, but there’s something satisfying, too, about the tingle in his throat. He tries not to dwell on it.
“Oh I can think of a few things.”
“Is that so?” His mind seems to be clearing a bit – at the very least, the words no longer seem to hold a texture for him to sink his teeth into.
“The old man, for example,” Bahorel says. “You might have pulled the trigger, but he did everything short of handing you the gun and telling you to put it at his temple. He used you.”
“That hardly justifies what I did!”
“Well! Who said anything about that!”
“He saved my life!”
“That is true.”
“He was all but a saint!”
“I went to a Jesuit school, you know. That’s hardly reassuring.”
“I don’t understand!” Marius exclaimed, indignant. “You wish for me to be angry with this good man, whose death I am to blame for. And for what? Even if he holds some responsibility in bearing false witness to his own character – what a crime! – I can hardly see what good could be served by holding it against him at this hour!”
The wolf looks at him with something almost close to pity.
“Moreover,” Marius continues, deflating slightly. “While I cannot know what impulse pushed him to present his case the way he did – or lie to me about his own role in my rescue – I can only surmise the fault lies with the prejudices of the society that makes people their own judges and jailers.”
“That is true. You can be angry about this too,” Bahorel answers, unperturbed.
“What good is anger?”
“What good is guilt?” Bahorel shoots back. “Feelings are not actions. I can hardly think the purpose of feeling them is to be of service. But if you do insist on deriving from all this a little morality tale, consider the fascinating possibility that multiple facts can be true in concert.”
“And I suppose all of them are in some ways a fault of the faculty of law?” Marius sighs, but he can’t help smiling slightly.
Bahorel grins back toothily. “You are catching on.”
“So I must be angry with the injustices of society, is what you’re telling me.”
“Well! Excuse me, for I have said nothing of the sort. Your emotions are your own business, I’m not the keeper of them.”
“But you said –“
“That you have the right to your anger. Towards the society, certainly. Towards us, for dying – well, why not. Towards Jean Valjean who encouraged you to do something terrible, that grandfather of yours who is, frankly, a nightmare, and the father who chose to leave you to his care.”
“My father was –” Marius pauses, sighing. “A hero. Right, I suppose we went over this already.” He stares at his hands. “I don’t know if I have much energy left in me for anger.”
Bahorel shrugs. “Suit yourself. Although where marital bliss is concerned, I must recommend another outlet to constant wallowing. Something less exhausting for your wife to deal with.”
Marius takes a deep breath. “Right.”
When he looks up again, he finds the wolf observing him with glinting yellow eyes, wide mouth spread out in an alarming smile.
I do suggest getting down on your knees. The familiar voice echoes through his mind with a hint of laughter, even as the wolf fades away, leaving him with a lingering ache of a howl in his bones.
Marius has been dreading this moment from the moment the pattern of his visitations became clear to him.
Combeferre, somewhat auspiciously, is neither eviscerating him in words nor glowering in him in cold disapproval: in truth he seems quite preoccupied with what Marius eventually recognises as the telescope he had once seen in the Paris Observatory. He stares at it, recalling a comment Combeferre had made on the barricade about star gazing, and tries not to read too much into it.
Eventually Combeferre glances up, looks at Marius and sighs.
“Good heavens, man. I’m not going to bite you. Sit down.”
Marius does.
For a long moment, neither of them say a word, as Combeferre continues with adjusting the telescope. Marius is hardly an expert, but it seems to him that the objective is directed at a strange angle.
“Do you remember five men with four uniforms?” Combeferre asks eventually. “The terrible choice that Monsieur Fauchelevent rescued us from, like an archangel descending from the above?”
Marius nods. The painful reality of his surroundings has scrubbed the cobwebs from his mind, leaving each memory sore and vivid. How could he forget?
“Because of his actions, a good man found safety with his loved ones. And yet, in doing so, he risked to abandon his own child.”
Marius shakes his head vehemently. “He would have never let any harm come to Cosette.” That was the one thing he had always been quite sure of, even through the shameful lens he had chosen for observing Jean Valjean. No one could doubt his love for his child.
“Certainly not intentionally,” Combeferre allows. “But what do you think would have become of her, had you both died here, alone and ignorant of your fate? It was certainly a possibility.”
Marius has no response to that. You have the right to your anger . He wonders if he must pass on that particular lesson to Cosette too – among the many other things he needs to tell her.
He wonders why Combeferre is telling him all this. But then, the answer seems obvious.
“He was there to rescue me.”
“That is no fault of yours – No.” Combeferre raises his hand to forestall a protest. “Do not take on more than is your due. Jean Valjean was master of his own actions, just as much as any man. You do him no honour by taking that away from him.”
Marius withdraws, chastised. Still he feels compelled to point out. “If I hadn’t chosen to pay court to Cosette in such an underhanded way –”
“And if she hadn’t chosen to accept it? She too was well capable of turning you away, or informing her father any time she wished to.”
“She feared that he would take it badly,” Marius says, grimacing. The irony isn’t lost to him.
“I wonder why,” Combeferre answers, a bit dry. “Regardless, she chose to keep your relationship a secret. Jean Valjean chose to follow you to the barricade – that is, after you chose to punish your beloved by getting yourself killed.”
The words strike like a blow. The fact that he has been expecting something like that makes it no easier to withstand.
To a more distant part of Marius, observing the events from afar, it seems as if he’s caught in a freefall. The images and emotions of the fateful night more than a year past flicker past his mind's eye in nauseating speed. Despite himself, he finds himself clinging onto the echo of Combeferre’s voice, the sight of his deft hands on the telescope, as a flimsy tether to not-quite-reality, while the full condemnation of his own memories washes over him.
To punish Cosette – well, yes. Had that not been his intent? Had he not spoken harshly to her, in an effort to make her share something of the horror that gripped his soul at the news she brought?
“She would not come with me.” Worse than any accusation is the wave of outrage that still raises in his soul as the memory plays fresh through his mind, the almost vicious fury of being denied what was meant to be his.
“She wouldn’t leave her father.” And hadn’t he hated Jean Valjean for it, deep down? Wasn’t this why he feared his own anger, too much to acknowledge it even to himself?
“She said once, that he wouldn’t survive without her.” Oh Cosette. Cosette who tolerated much, who rarely asked for anything, except to ensure that her loved ones were safe and cared for. Who faced their darkest hours with bravery and determination, whose resolute positivity even in withstanding her father’s strange disappearance seemed so intrinsic to her, until he had watched the spark disappear from her eyes under the weight of his actions.
What had he done?
Slowly, ever so slowly, Marius picks up the pieces of his own mind, recreating little by little the dark space at the foot of the barricade.
Something tells him he needs to finish this journey.
“What now?” he asks, faintly surprised to find strength left in his voice; he hadn’t expected more than a hoarse whisper.
Combeferre’s face is almost gentle, with a wry little smile twisting his lips “Well that rather depends on you, doesn’t it?”
Marius nods, feeling for the first time that he’s on the same page.
Combeferre nods towards the telescope “You know the way, but I thought this might help.”
Marius gives it a cautious glance. “To observe the rules of honour?” he asks warily.
To his surprise, Combeferre laughs. “No. The telescope is not a metaphor, I promise. But to look for something that doesn’t yet exist… Well, I thought it might point you in the right direction, at least.
Marius nods, he supposes that makes as much sense as anything.
The telescope is directed towards the summit of the barricade. Of course.
Marius takes a deep breath, before leaning closer to the eyepiece
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
He doesn’t specify that it’s not just for the telescope; he thinks Combeferre will understand all the same.
It takes him much longer to reach the summit than the reason would suggest. Marius knows, on some level, that he should be out of breath, but his mind has grown calmer and clearer with each passing step, settling into something almost like peace.
It’s nearly sunrise.
Enjolras is sitting with his back towards him, facing the brightening horizon. Between his relaxed posture and rolled up sleeves, the overall impression is almost incongruently casual against the sepulchral solemnity of their surroundings.
Despite his apparent preoccupation, Enjolras turns to give Marius a small smile, indicating to him the spot by his side. Marius sits down, turning his gaze towards the horizon, oddly disappointed and yet relieved to find it fully obscured by white mist, the approaching dawn lighting it up as if with some secret inner fire.
They sit in silence for a long time. Eventually, Marius realises he must be the first to break it.
“What is out there?” he asks, nodding towards the strange view. “Is this the future? Or the afterlife?”
Enjolras glances at him, with that peculiar faraway look that Marius associates with strange metaphors and speeches that still haunt his dreams.
“What do you think it is?”
“I think – I think I cannot know. I think it isn’t yet, but could be, some day. Unless it’s not.” Marius frowns. The words had made more sense before he voiced them.
Enjolras, at least, doesn’t seem particularly perplexed, only nodding in response, his gaze drifting back towards something only he can see. The light reflects oddly on his face and hair, making it seem as if he’s illuminated by some inner light of his own.
Marius shifts his hands around his knees, absorbed in thought. It’s something he used to appreciate about Enjolras, he suddenly remembers. For all the intensity of purpose and passion that the man contained in his every move, it was easy to sit in silence with him. Easy to think through what was being said without any sense of urgency or being hurried along.
“You saw the future so clearly,” he eventually says, unable to hide the wistfulness in his tone. “I don’t remember everything from that day, even now, but I remember seeing what you saw, when you painted that vision for all of us.”
“A gift for the dying. But now our paths have diverged. The future that is ahead of you is beyond my reach. Only you can affect that now, for better or worse.”
Marius keeps his eyes fixed to the distance, unwilling to discover what he might see in Enjolras’ expression at that moment.
“I seem to be making all the wrong choices,” he eventually says.
“Choices are choices whether you choose to make them or not. You cannot opt out of having an impact on the world.”
Marius makes no reply, staring into the ever growing brightness of the horizon that is not horizon. He thinks about choices. About obstacles that seem insurmountable and those that he has control over.
He owes a proper explanation and apology to Cosette, he knows. Many, many apologies. Would she even consider hearing him out, let alone forgiving him? Well, he tells himself, gathering what little courage he has left, that must be her choice to make. He can only try to deserve her forgiveness. To do what he can, to make their life better for her.
He thinks of their life in his grandfather’s house, the shadows of his childhood looming over them at every turn, their loneliness and isolation from everyone but each other. Surely there are better options for them. He must ask Cosette about what she might prefer.
He thinks too of the bagne and of the barricades. Of the destroyed lives and the stolen futures, of the society broken beyond repair. All these are topics he has considered before, during the lonely hungry hours in the Gorbeau hovel, but then, a thought is not an action. Moreover, he hasn’t even succeeded in avoiding the pitfalls of his own upbringing, when it comes to those he has been taught to hold in contempt. No, such issues are far beyond any single person’s ability to fix. But that doesn’t mean there is no action he could take. After all, he has spent five years learning how to do just that, for all that he has been far from an apt pupil. All he needs is a bit of courage to face the world again.
Right. Only that.
He averts his gaze from the overwhelming brightness ahead, suddenly feeling very small and very alone.
Something warm brushes against his back. Marius glances at Enjolras, who has shifted closer to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Do not despair,” Enjolras says. “You have more paths in front of you than you can yet understand. As long as you keep an open mind and open heart, you’ll find around yourself other people who think like you do. This is enough.”
Marius nods, silent. There is nothing that he feels he could say, so he does not. He knows Enjolras won’t mind.
“You should get going,” Enjolras eventually says. “It’s almost morning and he’s waiting for you.”
Marius casts a cautious glance over the edge of the barricade.
“I suppose it is just as long way down on this side?”
“It will be as long as you make it,” Enjolras says.
This is not entirely reassuring. Marius squares his shoulders nevertheless, turning to face the white mist, before stopping, something occurring to him. “I suppose this is goodbye?”
Enjolras smiles, resplendent and a little bit melancholy. “Watch your steps. You will find what you’re looking for.”
It is the last sight of him Marius catches that he knows will linger in his mind for long time to come: Enjolras, standing on the very edge of what is and what could be, with his arms bare and his hair a wild halo, half smiling, illuminated by strange light, his gaze fixed on something far ahead.
Not without reluctance, Marius turns around and takes his first steps into the unknown.
Courfeyrac is waiting for him at the other side of the barricade, clear and solid despite the white mist still obscuring everything from sight.
Although he has been preparing himself for this moment for what feels like hours, Marius is still stuck dumb. The exact shape of Courfeyrac’s smile, the ways his hair curls at the temple in defiance of gravity – how could he have forgotten? Any words he might have said fall weightless against the force of that smile, leaving him with no release for the swell of feelings inside of him.
Courfeyrac spreads his arms and Marius realises fully, for the first time, that it is on him to act in this world. Taking an unsteady breath, he closes the remaining distance between them.
Marius had never embraced Courfeyrac in life; has never embraced anyone but Cosette on his own volition, for as long as he could recall. Courfeyrac is more solid than he would have expected from a ghost, warm and soft. Marius breathes in the painfully familiar scent of his hair, once, twice, realising there’s a sob under his shuddering breath. Tears, hot and heavy, well in his eyes.
“None of that,” Courfeyrac murmurs, but makes no move to pull away. “It’s been a very long night, hasn’t it?”
Marius wouldn’t be able to answer if he tried to. It’s all he can do to try to steady his breathing, not to waste the precious minutes. Has he not been profligate enough with this wondrous night, failing to appreciate the gift that has been given to him, missing nearly all his chances of saying goodbye?
“None of that,” Courfeyrac repeats, as if in answer to his thoughts, squeezing Marius close one last time before releasing him. “Let’s get you home, shall we?” Apparently recognising Marius' reluctance, he puts his arm around his shoulder. “Don’t you worry, it is quite a walk. I’m not leaving you just yet.
Under the reassurance, there is a hint of a warning. Marius understands: “Not yet” is not the same as “forever”.
They walk in silence for some time. Marius, torn between the reluctance to disturb the moment and itching over the waste of precious minutes, keeps glancing around. The strange mist, still surrounding them like a comforting embrace, slowly starts taking on a more physical form, the shapes of buildings and streets still more a suggestion than reality.
Marius takes a deep breath. “I suppose it’s pointless to ask where we’re going.”
He can more feel than see Courfeyrac’s smile at the corner of his eye. “There are many answers I could give you, each more frustrating than the last. I am exercising restraint.”
“Thank you.”
“The destination matters less than you think,” Courfeyrac eventually says. “It’s a moment of respite, that’s all. Then just must continue onwards.”
“Yes.” Marius' voice almost doesn’t waver. “Without you.”
“Ah Marius. I have been gone for a long time.”
“I know that.”
“It is not so terrible.” Courfeyrac’s voice is gentler than Marius has ever heard it in life. “You’re not alone.”
“Cosette is –” Marius takes a shaky breath. His voice is certainly wavering now. “Well. I suppose we shall see.”
“Marius.” Courfeyrac stops suddenly, turning to face him. His expression is utterly serious. “Please don’t take that as a discouragement against trying to make amends to your wife – heaven knows I wish you both the best. But regardless of how things work out between you, please do find yourself more friends. Both of you.”
“I’m not sure I know how,” Marius admits. All his friendships had come to be thanks to efforts of another – Courfeyrac himself, Laigle, even poor pére Mabeuf.
Courfeyrac’s face is soft, gentle and absolutely unyielding. “Learn.”
Marius can only stare at him, as a fresh wave of grief threatens to choke him. Was there another person in the whole world quite like Courfeyrac? All he can do is nod. “I’ll try.”
Courfeyrac smiles, still with that odd softness in his eyes. “That’s all I ask.”
Afterwards, Marius will never be able to say how long the rest of their journey lasts, for it’s both painfully short, and blissfully far longer than it has any right to be. They speak, he’ll know, of many little and inconsequential things, but the words will escape him in the morning light, leaving only a bittersweet ache of a gift that one does not expect and cannot deserve. Perhaps this is what the thinkers would call Grace.
Eventually, after endless hours and few short minutes, they come to stop in front of the wild garden of Rue Plumet, bright in the morning sun and alive with birdsong.
Some small contrary part of Marius wants to point out that this is certainly not the place he currently calls home, but he supposes it doesn’t really matter. Moreover, he is most certainly dawdling.
Courfeyrac stops in front of Marius, looking at him as if he’s trying to memorise every line of his face, just as much as Marius is trying to memorise his. “Only a moment of respite,” he reminds him quietly. “There’s a long journey ahead of you.”
“I know,” Marius says. It is a promise.
Courfeyrac places his hands on both sides of Marius face and presses warm weather-light kisses on both his cheeks, on his forehead and on his lips. Then, with a quick mischievous smile, he leans back in for another kiss.
“For your wife,” he murmurs.
The smile is still tingling in the air when Courfeyrac fades away with the last vapor of morning mist.
In his bed at Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire No 6 Marius opens his eyes. His lips are tingling and his heart full with sweet ache. As he brings his hand to his face, he realises that his cheeks are wet.
Judging by the angle of the sun peeking between the edge curtains and Cosette’s steady breathing next to him, the hour must be quite early. Nevertheless, he pushes himself out of the bed and goes to open the window.
The street underneath looks the same as it ever does, flooded with the golden light of the late summer morning and still mostly empty at this early hour. The air is bright and warm, the geography reassuringly solid: no matter what the coming days might bring, there is always the promise of a morning following the night.
“Marius?” Cosette’s voice behind him is hoarse with sleep.
“Cosette.” There is so much he needs to say, and far more that he needs to do, to give his words any substance or meaning. Perhaps it will never be enough, and he has to accept that it’s not his decision to make. But every journey has to start from somewhere.
“Cosette. I’m sorry.”