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That evening Javert sits at the table in his tiny apartment with sheets of cheap paper and a short pencil in his hand and thinks of Madeleine. The breadth of his shoulder, the set of his head, the gait – all of those can tell more about a man than his face. A man might shave and get cleaned, get older and pretend to be more refined, but it will not change a body, its basic shapes and forms. Javert trained himself to remember these things. He also taught himself to draw well enough for his sketches to help him when his memory fails.
Javert tries to concentrate on the shape of Madeleine’s body and finds himself distracted by the mental image of his sharp nose and the soft-looking curly hair. He realizes he doesn’t remember the colour of Madeleine’s eyes – dark but what shade exactly, are they cognac brown or hazel? – it doesn’t matter though because he doesn’t remember 24601’s eyes either (except for how he looked at him and there’s nothing more unlike 24601’s anger and dull hatred than the soft if a bit wary looks Madeleine gives him.) For a moment Javert once again feels stupid for even considering the possibility of such a connection and then he is furious with himself. That’s why it is pointless and even dangerous to dwell on those eyes. He must concentrate on the simplest forms, which are harder to conceal (how can someone make their eyes look soft? Javert doesn’t know, never had a reason to find out.)
He presses the pencil violently and his lines are messy, but he doesn’t care for the aesthetics, and the silhouette of a man emerging on the paper does resemble Madeleine (as he were three days ago when Javert saw him in the morning mist on the other side of the street and still knew without a moment’s doubt it was him.) Yes, that’s the kind of a drawing he needs. Plain forms which he could compare to a sketch he made of 26401 all those years ago. His hand was uncertain then. He tried to practice every day because being able to draw a criminal must surely be advantageous for the police work. So, he tried to commit 26401 – all of him, bare chest and powerful limbs he saw on the day he was paroled – to his memory and then to paper. Javert always knew that sooner or later Valjean will cause some sort of trouble and this bit of evidence might become useful.
He doesn’t need to look at the old sketch though to remember Valjean’s body vividly.
Would Madeleine look like that if divested of all his bourgeois clothes? Javert stares at the shape of a man he has already sketched and tries to simplify it even more in his mind, to strip away everything superficial. How does he look without his greatcoat? Javert falls back on the memory of their first (was it really first?) meeting: Madeleine in his shirtsleeves and the waistcoat, the bare skin of his throat showing when he was looking up at him from his desk. (His dark eyes were full of wariness that day and it also spiked Javert’s suspicion. Some of that wariness lingers but there’s also softness in Madeleine’s eyes now. It doesn’t matter.) Javert focuses on sketching another figure near the first one: just the outlines, the silhouette, how Madeleine would look like without his waistcoat? without his shirt and cravat? would his arms be as muscled as he remembers Valjean’s to be, the planes of his chest and stomach as hard? or would Javert, were he to undress Madeleine, find the softer shapes more befitting a bourgeois?
Oh, he doesn’t think so.
When later Javert lies in bed, he tries to imagine how Madeleine’s soft, attentive eyes and the elusive smile might look like joined with the hard planes of Valjean’s body. He often thinks about it these days. This mental image always disturbs him for some reason – he doesn’t know whether it’s because in some ways they do fit together, or because the thought of Valjean looking at him with those soft sad eyes is incongruous.
It is even more disturbing when he visualizes Valjean naked. Maybe it’s just his gut feeling telling him he is right.
The sleep that night is slow to come and his dreams are restless.