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When Valjean was a boy his father had told him about gypsies
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There is a figure standing at the edge of the bridge, leaning on the parapet and looking over. Valjean knows-doesn’t-know who it is. As he always seems to know-not-know when Javert is near by.
He watches. He is curious and realises that this is one of the first times in his life that he has been curious about the inspector.
He checks that thought, turns it around, muses on it. Javert takes his hat off and sets it on the stone, hiding his hands from Valjean’s sight.
Valjean adjusts his previous notion; rather, this is the first time in his life that he has allowed himself to be aware of the inspector beyond something to run from.
When he had been but a boy his father had told him a story about a wolf in the forest.
Valjean watches as Javert sets a small notebook next to his hat.
-
When Javert is eight his mother says to him, ‘We don’t tell fortunes to each other.’ She is counting coin a merchant has left. ‘Only to others.’
She looks at him then. Looks at him as if staring through him and he sits quiet on the dirt. His clothes are ill fitting and hands are filthy. After a moment she gathers him up and says, ‘So, let’s see what your fortune is’.
-
In Toulon Valjean dreams of water. Of a swirling, crashing, clutching water. He wakes and thinks it is a sign from God that he is beyond redemption.
In Toulon Javert dreams of water. Of dark, cold, clinging water. He wakes and wonders when the cards had become so specific and true.
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Behind the barricade one of the boys says, ‘He looks a bit foreign, doesn’t he?’
Javert is tied up and goading them on since he knows well that they are far more dangerous when calm. Easier to manipulate when hackles are raised and blood burning with anger.
Another says, ‘I hear he’s a gitan. A manouche mouchard. Mongrel, really.’
They look at him to see if they have had an effect. Javert, the gypsy mongrel police spy, just smiles. Cheerfully.
‘All gypsies are witches,’ the first one says.
‘Can’t be. Witches aren’t real.’
When Valjean comes to claim him Javert thinks of how wrong the boys were.
-
The Bishop finds a man who needs food and water and a bed and hope. He purchases his soul with silver and gives it to God. He tells him to not fear things of this world, but rather the things that are within the soul. He says that the greatest dangers imaginable are closest at hand. One only needs to look into oneself.
He later wonders what became of the man. But sometimes, sometimes he dreams of a warm place, and a friend, and a bridge over troubled waters, so he knows that the man is all right.
-
The figure on the bridge leans further over, staring. Waiting, it seems, to Valjean who himself is also waiting. He remembers Toulon, briefly. Then reminds himself to not remember. He thinks of Cossette. He reminds himself to not remember her, either.
Javert’s cane is placed next to his hat and notebook and there is his pocket watch. His handcuffs. Valjean thinks, rather belatedly, Oh. Oh.
-
On a summer day a mayor asks an inspector, ‘Why do you keep your hair long?’
The inspector says that he’s turned his back on them. Those who were his family, the nationless drifters called gitan. Called manouche. Called bohemian. He says he cannot be both gypsy and lawman. The same as a one cannot be both sinner and saint. He stares at the mayor.
‘But you keep your hair long,’ the sinner-saint mayor repeats.
They are standing by the factory and despite the warmth of the sun Javert wants to shiver. The mayor who reminds him of dreams of water stares with an unreadable face.
‘As a reminder of what I could have been.’
‘And what is that?’
Between them a butterfly floats by. Light on its wings. The mayor sort-of-smiles.
‘Something great and terrible,’ Javert murmurs. He turns, says his farewell, and he cannot begin to guess what the older man is thinking.
-
When Javert walks into the Gorbeau house Valjean sees only shadows moving and understands what the inspector meant that day in the sun that had been a lifetime ago.
He hears and doesn’t hear, ‘Would you like my hat?’ He wants to laugh. He stops himself and thinks that this is the law come for him and what has he always done before the law but flee?
His father had once told him a story about a wolf in a forest and a man who tried to tame it.
-
Valjean doesn’t know why he followed Javert. There had been something out of place but he hadn’t been able to say exactly what. He hadn’t been in the right mind to say exactly what. When he was close to Javert he usually refused to think about Javert. And when he was far from Javert he thought it wise to not curse his luck by thinking about Javert.
They are now sitting in front of an unnecessary but necessary fire. The morning sun is clawing at the milky blue horizon and Valjean feels like a lifetime has passed in a single night.
There are cards on the floor, lain out in the shape of a Greek cross. Javert is gathering them up and hair is falling out of the too loose queue. It shadows his face. Valjean thinks that he has only ever seen Javert’s face in the shadows.
When he had been a boy he had heard about gypsies. His father had told him that if his misbehaved the gypsies would come for him. They eat the marrow out of the bones of boys. They call the fairie court to do their bidding. They curse you from afar so your soul belongs to them. You must run, my boy, from them when you see them. Or, as the thieves they are, they will steal everything from you.
Valjean doesn’t like to think about the irony.
Javert lays out three new cards. He whispers their names, The Hanged Man, The Fool, The Tower.
The older man waits for more. The colours are drifting from the soft cards, fading from physical memory.
Javert sighs, ‘my mother was a fortune teller’.
Behind him the sun is rising. His face is in shadows.
-
‘When I was a boy my mother told me a story about a red king whose daughter was a witch. It broke the family apart and laid waist to the land.’ Javert is sitting by the window and Valjean is wondering, yet again, why he had saved the man. It has been a month and they are dancing around each other like moths over a flame they cannot name.
‘My mother made a sign against evil then buried a witch bottle by the hearth.’ He isn’t looking at Valjean. He is speaking to Parisian skyline. The sloping, downward jutting, dying sun. ‘In it was a clip of my hair, dirt from where I had been born, some pebbles, a broken button, twine.’ He stops. He consults his watch then continues. “To keep the devils from you’ she had said.’
Valjean waits. There is no more coming so he asks, ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because it means nothing to me.’
Valjean watches. He can see half of the inspector’s face. The other half, as always, is in shadows.
‘I should have had her make a saint bottle, to keep the godly away.’
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They are suspended in air. Javert is leaning forward over the water. He thinks of Toulon. He can see his distorted reflection. The distorted sky above. Valjean is holding onto his coat and leaning back, trying to pull him from the edge. He is looking up and can see stars.
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Later, they are on cobbles exhausted and Valjean is wondering why he saved the law. He asks, ‘Why?’
Later, bent over and trying to not dry heave in front of a convict turned saint, Javert answers, ‘You don’t know?’
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In Toulon Valjean dreams about the sky. It is blue, everlasting, bright, warm. It makes him itch. His body aching for the freedom he knows he’ll never have again.
In Toulon Javert dreams about the sky. It is blue, dark, cold, with pinpricks of light called stars, there is the moon which is sinking into the earth. It makes him remember the past. The counting of constellations between bars. He sometimes wishes for freedom but knows that it is impossible.
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Valjean keeps a careful eye on the inspector, afraid to let him from his sight. Javert notices this on the second week and laughs. It is harsh and unbearable so Valjean says that he is going for a walk. Outside the moon is the sun. Paris is unusually quiet.
‘Going to bring back another charity case?’ Javert asks. He’s standing half in shadows, half in light. ‘God knows we’ve enough rooms to spare.’
'When did it become we?’ Valjean wants to know. Because he too has thought it.
‘You should open a hospital for victims of too many goddamn bridges in Paris.’
Valjean wants to point out that Javert hasn’t answered his question but decides against. Instead he smiles, but only because he knows it bothers the younger man. Though, for once Javert doesn’t scowl in return.
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On the barricade Valjean says, ‘I’ll take him’. And he stares at Javert and can only wonder why he’s saving the law. The law which has done nothing for him. When the law stares at him in the alleyway Valjean can’t help but wonder if maybe he got something wrong.
-
Javert comes in on the fifth week and puts some cheese away and opens a bottle of wine. He says he’s had a hellish day and God he needs a break.
‘You know nothing of sheer, suicidal stupidity until you meet the bureaucracy of the Parisian police.’
Valjean looks startled. Javert sighs and pours a second glass.
‘Don’t look so terrified. It’s decent wine. Though I won’t be able to pay rent.’
‘I’m not making you pay rent.’ Valjean accepts the glass and takes a sip. Javert smirks.
‘You’re too kind.’ He rummages around till he finds bread and takes the cheese back out. ‘I’m going to murder someone one of these days. They’ll find me standing over Laurier’s body with a week old baguette. Blood everywhere.’ A dry laugh. ‘Drink up. It’s too good to go to waste.’
Valjean sits down and takes another sip. He is staring and Javert stares back. The inspector asks, ‘What?’ And Valjean is laughing, it’s sudden and he’s wondering why he hadn’t seen it before. The question is repeated.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m only just realising that you’re a man.’
‘God,’ a snort. ‘Haven’t I always been?’
-
It’s a week later, after the wine and cheese, when Valjean asks, ‘Why do you want to remember what you almost were?’
Javert thinks, Christ how did he remember that conversation? He snaps, ‘Why do you ask so many damned questions? Especially ones you could infer the answer to.’
They are in a small park, it is early July and Paris is beginning to sweat.
Valjean shrugs. Tosses some bread to the birds. The younger man snorts before busying himself with the half-read newspaper.
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It is two weeks since the barricade when Javert discovers that Valjean has not told Marius who he is and all that passed on the barricade and he throws his hands up.
‘And you say I’m the stubborn ass when it comes to personal happiness,’ he grumbles.
‘I’ve never called you an ass,’ Valjean replies. It is mild but there is something else under and it and Javert cannot understand what it is.
‘You’ve thought it,’ Javert snaps back. He shifts, moves to the window. Outside there is sun. Sometimes he thinks he can still smell the gunpowder. It has been a long time since he has thought about things like barricades.
‘She is happier without me.’
'Is she?’ He is absently thumbing the deck. Valjean is watching him. Waiting. ‘No,’ he mutters and tosses the cards onto the table. ‘You can’t use these for this.’
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‘We don’t tell fortunes to each other is what my mother told me,’ Javert explains. ‘Only to the others.’
Valjean asks, ‘Will you show me how it’s done?’
‘Isn’t it considered devilry?’ There is a heaviness behind the question. Valjean starts but then tilts his head to the side a does another sort-of-smile. Javert is getting used to them and finds them easier to bear than the full smiles.
‘Maybe I once would have thought that.’
‘It started as a game.’ Javert is shuffling cards. He turns the top one over. ‘This is the queen of swords. It was my mother’s card.’ He shuffles it back in. ‘They come from Egypt, apparently. Or so Vidocq says. But he is hardly a reliable source.’
‘I know the game,’ Valjean murmurs. ‘We’d play in Toulon whenever someone managed to smuggle in cards.’
‘Yes. And there’s the Italian version, the Spanish and so on. But eventually someone decided to tell the future through them.’ He lays three cards out. ‘It’s rubbish of course. My mother told fortunes through fish bones and shells. See, she carried them in a small leather pouch. This, she said, was good.’ He points to the moon. ‘When a gadjo would come she’d light a candle and let it warm the bottom of the bag and ask them to think on their question. She’d throw the contents out and read how they fell. The Orientals do it with tea leaves, the Turks with coffee grounds.’
‘The cunning woman in our village would read the dregs of stew.’
‘Did she turn loaves for the young girls as well?’
Valjean smiles and is demure. He doesn’t know. He hadn’t thought to inquire. He asks about the other two cards. The Hanged Man again, he sees.
‘What does that word mean? Gadjo?’ He mangles it and can see Javert smirk in the candlelight.
‘Outsider. One who is not gypsy. The Hanged Man is fitting.’ He traces the branch, the rope, the man. ‘It involves new things, new beginnings through letting go of control. The Christians like to claim this card.’
‘The gadjo?’ Valjean is looking amused as he says it. Javert merely shrugs.
‘Yes. The gadjo Christians. They say it is like St Peter on the cross. Upside down and everything. Though it could be pagan.’ His fingers move to the next one. There is a fire beside them and the room is unnecessarily warm. Valjean can see small scars on Javert’s fingers. The knicks and cuts born from life. He wonders when he’ll stop noticing the human and return to just seeing the law. It was easier when he did things just because they were the right things and not because it was Javert he was doing them for.
The inspector continues, ‘the last one is the five of cups. A hopeless situation is never completely hopeless.’
‘You never said what the queen of swords meant.’
‘Hadn’t I?’
-
Behind the barricades Gavroche stands in front of Javert and looks defiant. The policeman stares calmly back. The boy spits, ‘mouchard.’
Javert views this as a teaching moment, he replies, ‘If you want to insult someone, you must know if that person is going to be more insulted by being called what they are or what they are not.’
Gavroche glares more then juts out his palm. ‘Read it.’ He demands. Javert looks at it then back up.
‘I’m afraid it’s rather blank. Can’t read where there are no words. Surely a bright boy like yourself knows that.’
‘No, the lines. Read them.’
He sees the heart line that is too long. The life line that is too short.
‘I don’t know how.’ He lies. It sticks on his tongue. It lodges in his throat.
‘You’re a lier.’
He views this as another teaching moment.
‘Tcha, there you go chavo.’
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In early Autumn Valjean joins him in front of the fire. They say nothing for a moment. Valjean finally asks, ‘Do you miss them?’
‘Who?’
‘Your family.’
The smile is that old hunting-dog cruel one.
‘Hardly. I told you, I do not own them as my own and they hardly own me.’
Valjean thinks it’s sad but knows better than to say anything. Javert is heartless about himself in his arrogance and proud disdain of his childhood.
Javert changes the subject and complains about the new boys at the station who can’t tell a hart from a hind. And Valjean replies mildly that he’s not sure how knowing that would benefit a policeman. Javert snaps that he shouldn’t be deliberately obtuse.
‘It gives you something complain about,’ Valjean hums. He stands to fix the fire. ‘I find you’re only happy when griping.’
‘That’s hardly true.’ He points a finger. ‘And don’t you say that that’s proof. I know your wily ways, convict.’
'And I know yours, inspector.’
-
When he tells his mother than he is leaving she stares at him. Her old world, fairie court stare. He has her eyes, he knows. He wishes he didn’t. He would dash them out if he didn’t have need of them.
‘I always knew you were more gadjo than romano.’
‘You’ve never made a secret of it.’
He is standing in the doorway and holding a sack. He is wearing clothing that is too big and his mother seems angry. Seems sad. Seems proud. She holds out a deck of cards. They belonged to her mother and her mother’s mother.
‘Take them.’ She says.
‘No.’
He leaves and there is no door to close so there is only silence and the sound of his falling-apart shoes on packed earth. He can feel her watching him. He wonders what will come of her then tells himself to stop wondering. She will probably end up in prison again. She will probably deserve it.
Later. Years and years later, someone tracks him down in Paris and hands him a parcel. He knows what it is but doesn’t say anything. Just nods. The other man searches his face for something. He says nothing, allows the man a close look before he shrugs and lopes off into an alley. Javert knows their kind. And he knows there is little good in them.
Between the rumpled sheets of brown paper is a tattered dress and a worn pack of cards. The dress he sells for pennies but the cards he keeps.
-
In Toulon Valjean dreams of a moon and a castle and below it howls a wolf, there is the baying of a hound. Between them runs a river. He asks one of the old men who knows the meaning of dreams and he says that he must be still. Be still.
In Toulon Javert dreams of a moon that is behind him and below him is water and there is an animal tearing at his coat. He is on a bridge and can only see the black depth of a river. He can only hear the howling of a wolf. When he wakes he does not have to ask what it means.
-
It is late, it is cold and dark and in the middle of January and Valjean takes Javert’s hand and murmurs that it has been a long time since they first met.
‘Twenty years or so.’ The inspector agrees.
‘No,’ the former convict amends. ‘Merely seven months. A long seven months. But, I know you better for them than the twenty years before.’ He turns Javert’s hand over and traces the lines on the palm. They are clear and strong and look like woven chains. ‘You know I never saw you as a man until then.’
‘You’d hardly be the first.’ Javert wants to take his hand away. To not feel the warm touch sinking into his skin. ‘It’s a rather universal natural reaction. Care to let me have my hand back?’
‘Can you read them?’
Javert picks up Valjean’s hand from his and looks at then covers it then lets it alone. It drops back to the older man’s side and Valjean is uncertain.
‘We don’t tell fortunes for each other.’
-
Valjean says to Cossette, 'Those of us who do not have a family must be family to each other.'
He says to the same to Javert. Cossette had hugged him all the tighter for it. Javert just laughs. Valjean mutters, 'Well that's the last time I'm going to try to be profound around you.'
-
It is even later, that night, and there are snow flurries brushing against the window pains like a shy cat. Javert is standing and watching and listening and waiting. Eventually Valjean comes to the doorway and watches Javert who is watching him through the reflection in the glass.
‘When did it become we?’ Valjean asks, gently.
‘I hadn’t been aware it had been anything else.’
-
There is a figure standing on a bridge, leaning on the parapet and looking over. Valjean knows-doesn’t-know who it is. As he always seems to know-not-know when Javert is near by.
Valjean realises, Oh. Oh.
He runs and he grabs at anything he can and finds himself staring up at stars and thinks they are beautiful. He wonders why he is doing this and it is until later he knows that he could not bear this world without someone chasing him just as Javert could not bare this world without someone to chase.
They land on cobbles hard. A pack of cards slide out of Javert’s coat and land near Valjean’s knee.
He says, as he wrestles the taller man down the street, ‘You’re as thick as they come, Javert. We will chase each other much more effectively if we are alive. Come. Come.’ And Javert does.
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When Valjean was a boy his father had told him about gypsies.
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