Work Text:
The first time young Joly saw a corpse, he was three. He actually had had no idea that he was tugging on the wrinkled, pockmarked arm of a dead body and that was why his Ajji was ignoring his request for sweets. Of course, when the aged grandmother fell face-first in her rocking chair, Madame Joly whisked her son away to the nursery while the elder siblings screamed, sobbed, or went for a doctor (in that order).
The ordeal left no lasting scars on the child. Death seemed to be finished with Joly for a time, which was how Joly liked it. He was immune to most colds, impervious to broken bones, and considered supreme popularity a Christian virtue. Death had no place in his halycon childhood.
Money, however, did. As much as Joly mourned the loss of his great-uncle with true feeling and an uncomfortable realization that mortality was universal, grief was soon tempered when Oncle Claude’s will was read and sixteen year old Joly declared rich. Or at least, rich enough for a new riding suit, which was all sixteen year old Joly particularly cared about. Oncle Claude might be in heaven where the streets are paved with gold bricks, but in Paris, one needed coin for anything worth doing.
This was the anecdote Joly told his newest friend as they stared down the throat of their first ever medical cadaver.
“I see,” said the friend, poking at the uvula of the corpse with a tone that was interested enough to be polite, but vague enough to express that he rather hoped the conversation was over.
“So you know,” Joly continued, undeterred. “This is only the third dead body I’ve ever glimpsed and the only one who’s been dead for longer than a few days. And poor Claude hadn’t the chance to grow particularly mouldy what with the incense. I say, that’s rather ingenious now that I think of it. They ought to get some of those priests in here with their whatchamacallits or an altar of acacia wood at least.”
“Cut, please,” said the friend. Joly made a mental note to try out his funniest dueling story. Even this chap had to laugh at that. He was so busy formulating the method by which to secure his partner’s eternal and abiding friendship unto death through puns and clever wordplay that he hardly noticed the flow of bile rapidly covering his scalpel, hands, and new velvet waistcoat.
“SHIT. Shitshitshit!” This was apparently something of an inconvenience for his new friend and lifelong comrade, who hopped away like he’d seen a ghost, swearing and wiping his hands on his apron. Joly looked down at the mess and sighed to himself. “Oh dear.”
Afterwards, he and his companion (who apparently was called Com-something, which Joly thought a ridiculous name) shared a cigar in a futile attempt to bury the smell, and talked of politics, and, in veiled terms, of what they had just experienced.
“I don’t suppose he minds much, that we made such a mess of him,” Com-frére muttered ruefully. “He’s with Saint Peter now.” His tone made clear that he didn’t believe himself and Joly genuinely felt sorry for his new friend. His own faith was tenuous at best, but atheism, he had found, was something that ought to be embraced with joy, not clutched at in the night.
“But my friend,” Joly exclaimed. “I’d be delighted to be fussed after by you.” It was meant warmly, if taken with a look of skepticism.
“He was a laborer,” Com-somethingorother continued. “No family to bury him or nurse him in his final illness.”
“My, you are grim about this.” Joly puffed so hard on the cigar he nearly choked. “Come now, it’s like I said about my Ajji! There’s no use worrying about the inevitable. His death in a vile hospital was inevitable, as was his dissection, unfortunately. He is dead and, I hope, somewhere better. But you ought to focus your efforts on those who are not yet lost.” He pointed at a young boy, skipping across a muddy puddle in torn and ragged clothes. “Like this one. Or the hundreds like him. Come on, don’t get melancholy on me, I have just the group of similarly sentimental fellows for you.”
“Sentimental?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I mean it kindly. Though, for someone who seems so torn up by death, perhaps you oughtn't get involved in any activities guaranteed to hasten yours.”
Combeferre gave his first genuine laugh of the day and Joly glowed with success.