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Sunlight sat softer on soil. Javert had found it rough in the past summers, shielding his eyes from the glare dashed off the white pavements of the city, the heat of it agitating the stink of the gutters, warmth sinking into his coat and making him shift and swear and stamp his too heavy boots. One humid August night he had clicked open his snuff box and found his tobacco flaky and dried out, and upon inhaling it, had coughed up such a storm that his whiskers had been tinged with black right up until October.
But the sunlight on the soil had made him think of summer, and the dark grains themselves of the black powder neglected in the tin box left inside his dresser, and how he had not touched it since last June. Valjean has never offered an opinion on his pinches of snuff, but somehow, he had convinced himself that Valjean wouldn’t approve. It had not occurred to him until later, that Valjean had never seen him sniffing his tobacco, had not known him in the years where it had been his one vice. Those thoughts came upon Javert unbidden, usually in the privacy of the night, and in the company of one single lighted candle.
The aforementioned Valjean has his hands deep in the snuff coloured soil, knelt in the too nostalgic sunshine, kneading the earth with a trowel in one hand and with sunflower seeds clasped in the other. Javert circles him carefully, hands held behind his back in a pose comforting in its familiarity, but there is little conviction in the furrow of his brow. Gardening is an alien sport to him, and he views the action of tending to something as mundane and common as the ground, as useful to handing pistols to Pontmercy. True, he never had a garden, and he certainly did not count the dusty courtyards of his childhood as one. His apartment before Valjean also had been in the middle of Paris, all dark and sparse, no pretty green life weeding its way inside. Javert had thought, for a long time, that flowers were the mere charge of fainting girls and soppy boys, not unlike that Pontmercy.
Flowers certainly not, but vegetables are perfectly practical. It had been the crux of his awkward first conversation with Valjean about credible pastimes. Valjean had mentioned he had gardened, for over ten years, with a dear friend. At the mention of this “dear friend” Javert had felt a rumbling growl rise in his throat and so, snapping, he told Valjean that he would only garden if it had resourceful outcomes. Petunias and roses and carnations are all well and good for his soft faced daughter, but Javert was not exactly a petal person. Vegetables, yes! Carrots and potatoes and spinach and tomatoes, lined up in neat rows, held in line like trembling cadets. Discipline, rigidity, results!
Well, his first batch had died. The second produced tiny, withered carrots, which although sweet to taste, did not resemble the proud orange glories Javert had fantasized. The potatoes did not produce adequate roots, and the spinach was limp and eaten by mean spirited caterpillars. It was only the tomatoes, juicy and rich and red in appearance, that satisfied until they were tasted. Javert felt his resolve begin to topple and fail as he spat red skin and seeds into the sink. He thought back to Valjean, and this so called dear friend, and he found himself lighting more candles over the next few nights.
Valjean had cleared away the failed patches, down to each dead root and lopsided onion (but not the carrots, which he deemed as delicious) and had praised Javert for his first attempts. He discussed the balances of sunshine and water, of seasons, and Javert had sulkily listened whilst prodding the maligned carrots on his plate.
Valjean gently advised another pastime; the tending of fruit. Javert, deterred (and disliking the wilderness of thorny bush berries and apple tree branches) did just that. Apples bloomed, berries plumped, mellows swelling on their green patches. Javert, twitching, watched the weather, counted each drop of rain, measured the sizes and shapes of his fruit. He even plucked off a blackberry, something he had never done since he was a child, and popped it into his mouth. The break of skin, the rush of juice; a sharp, sudden sweetness, so unexpected he had almost recoiled, and Valjean had a rare bout of loud and generous laughter.
So, blackberry pies it is and was, apples and melons and carrots, filling out the pantry. Javert’s chest had felt tight with pride as Valjean had sampled the blackberries and then had found himself unable to have just one.
Valjean wears no jacket or cover, white shirt opened just so; there is the shine of silver hair. Javert’s fingers flex. Valjean looks up; holds out his hand to Javert to join him. The sunflowers, just starting to die and spread new seeds, sway in golden masses around the man built like a bear with the foolish eyes of a child.
“Come, Javert,” he says. “Feel the ground. Feel how warm it is.”
Javert gets to his knees beside Valjean. The man presses Javert’s hands flat on the ground, and Valjean smiles as he speaks.
“Summer is almost here, and the world is coming alive again. Can you feel it?”
Valjean looks down at the soil as Javert looks at Valjean, and silently nods his head.