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Grantaire never missed the occasion to mock his friends student and patriots, but he had to admit that one of his favourite victim was, indeed, Marius. So innocent and naive, he was the perfect target of his sarcastic digs. And yet, they both shared an inexplicable romantic spirit that couldn't be shaken even by the strongest hits of reality. After a while, even mocking him lost the initial fun: Marius, instead of reacting with pride, kept sharing his anxiety and loving anguish to Grantaire, looking for advice from his longer -and surely more troubled- life experience.
“I wish I could write her a sonnet, a letter, would you read what I wrote so far?”
Grantaire make a bitter smile. “Marius, it's already difficult to listen to you, I'm sincerely worried about reading you.” Nevertheless, he took from Marius' loving hands the piece of paper he was offering. It wasn't a poem, nor a letter: it was like a series of metaphors from nature, common ones even, about bodies of water, angels feathers and skin like snow. Grantaire massaged his nose bridge. “Just as I imagined. Marius, reading your words, it doesn't seem to me you are even talking about a woman.”
“She is not just a woman to me! Cosette is like an angel!”
“Exactly” the other one made an amused grimace “And you should keep that in mind. She is just like an angel, but she is not one. She is a woman, dammit, made of messy hair, veins on her hands, dry lips in winter and sore ankles.”
At Marius' lost gaze, Grantaire sighed. “I believe you have never read Shakespeare, am I wrong?”
“My education didn't include English literature.”
Grantaire laughed. “What a needlessly mortifying experience must be to love without poetry. Poetry is a guidance, it's a beacon of hope for us common mortal, do you understand me?”
“I'm not sure.”
Grantaire snorted, amused. “Poetic word and thought made immortal men and women just like us, who offered to posterity their love experience and loving tribulations. How to face a denied greeting without having read the Vita Nova? How could one look at their beloved without having read Shakespeare's sonnets?”
“What does Shakespeare say about that?”
“Bring me ink and paper” Grantaire said “The English poet, if I recall, wrote an unusual sonnet for his mistress, because instead of lifting her toward the impossible horizon of perfection, he declared his love for what she really was.” He paused, as if a thought just crossed the dark disorder that Grantaire's mind must have been. “True love doesn't ask for perfection, it wouldn't know what to do with it. You tried to write to the angel Cosette.” He took the pen and dipped it in the ink “Now we will write to the human Cosette.”
Marius was beyond any attempt of salvation and sanity but Grantaire managed to make him talk about Cosette as a woman of flesh and blood and the more Marius talked, Grantaire's smile grew softer while listening, musing before lowering the pen, like he was all intent in the difficult search for a word, for a sound that could transfer on paper his friend's loving soul.
In that moment, Enjolras entered the small room inside the café Musain, walking with pride. Against what he said, Grantaire didn't see his beloved like an angel but more like an Olympian deity. The contemptuous lover of Patria curiously walked towards their table with rapid steps.
“Are you working at some pamphlets? I must congratulate you, Marius, if you managed to address this good for nothing to something serious, I wonder what you could have produced so far.” He said grabbing with a firm movement the paper from Grantaire's yielding hands. Marius, worried, weakly protest but wasn't brave enough contradict in a more decisive way their commander. Enjolras' eyes shot upon the paper, like they were jumping from a word to another, and if they could they would have burned it by the intensity of his gaze.
“Who is this woman?!”
After all, Grantaire expected to be scolded so he didn't reply and kept an apologetic smile and didn't bat an eye.
“Is this how you waste our time?”
“Enjolras, you must forgive me” Marius intervened, getting up from the chair “It was my fault, I asked Grantaire to help me to write a letter for Cosette, it was my idea.”
The blonde lover of the Republic pushed the piece of paper back against Marius' chest. “You amaze me, Marius, I considered you smarter than this. Don't waste your time chasing useless and childish dreams of love.” His blue eyes turned on Grantaire, still sitting, like a lightning bolt. “Moreover, I would have never thought you would have asked for Grantaire's opinion on the matter.”
“And why not?” he finally replied, with an amused and challenging smile.
Enjolras frowned. “You don't believe in anything, not in Patria, not in liberty, not in love.”
“You're wrong.”
Enjolras widened his eyes: he was used to his continuous disrespect but that curt answer and that firm tone was not what he expected. Haughty and proud, he turned his back and walked away to the table were he left his notes and pamphlets. Marius followed him, murmuring apologies: neither of them noticed Grantaire, not even when he heavily put his hands on the table, got up from his usual place and left the room. That evening, he didn't attend the meeting.
At the end of the reunion, after taking the last decisions and the usual greetings to his comrades, Enjolras moved to the exit of the Musain. A persistent rain had been falling for a couple of hours. Outside, he recognized Grantaire's shape, sheltered under the roof. The noise of the opening door didn't make him turn around, maybe because he was drunk, or focused, or just because it got covered by the noise of the rain. Enjolras frowned: that man was an authentic mystery, beyond any logical interpretation. And yet, he couldn't put aside the doubt that something still missed from his point of view, something like a key hidden from the surface and without that Grantaire would have stayed as an inexplicable secret. His gaze seemed lost, inscrutable, and it seemd like he was watching the rain of the roofs.
“Still here?” Enjolras asked in an inquisitorial tone.
“To be a lover of liberty” He replied, without turning around “you must admit you act a bit like a police inspector.” He sighed. “It's raining, by the way.”
“I noticed” The commander paused. “I feel like I owe you some apologies.”
“For what?”
“For Marius' love letter.”
“Ah, right.” He laughed. “Understandable mistake, yours. You wouldn't think that someone like me have ever enjoyed the joys of love. In fact, I have never. Did your education include reading Dante?”
“Indeed.”
Grantaire smirked. “I couldn't expect any less from you. Then we have something to share, a point in conversation. In his Vita Nova, Dante talks about the ennobling power of love. Being loved is not the purpose of love, but to feel your soul become noble thanks to the light that the object of love brings in your life. It's to find out that you are able to love even in absence of everything, even in death.” He said gravely.
“Beatrice's love in Vita Nova is a metaphor.”
“What if it wasn't?” Grantaire turned to face him. His eyes were swollen, as if he had long mused on something painful. “What if it wasn't just a metaphor but a real, significant experience, that gave meaning to his entire life?” Almost ashamed, he lowered his eyes and turned back to look at the raindrops.
“I have never...” Enjolras hesitated for a moment “I have never considered that. It's an interesting point of view.” His rosy lips moved in a sincere smile and places a hand on his shoulder. Grantaire almost jumped at the touch. “But especially because of that you should address your thoughts to the political debate and the Republican cause! There's no higher and purer form of love than the love for Patria!”
Grantaire laughed bitterly but didn't reply.
“I'm sure” Enjolras added “it would make your soul noble too.”
“My soul” the other intervened “can't be made noble.”
“Why not?”
“Because I'm beyond God's grace and you know that.”
The blonde lover of liberty dropped his hand from Grantaire's shoulder and sighed, exasperated. “Believe me, Grantaire, your tenacity to oppose me almost moves me.”
“To oppose you?!” his voice sounded louder than he probably expected. “I have never had this ambition, nor I have ever expected that something could make my soul noble. And yet...” a cloudy and almost melancholy light appeared in his eyes, something that couldn't be explained with cynicism nor drunkenness. “I know what love means. And even if love didn't make me noble in my spirit and intentions, I found out that there's something good in me that I have never known.”
Enjolras felt some kind of tenderness. “Then we have something in common.” He smiled. “Goodnight, comrade. I expect you to attend the meeting, tomorrow.”
“Won't make any promise.”
Enjolras kept his smile and walked away in the rain.
Few days later, Marius couldn't restrain his curiosity.
“Grantaire, your mistress must be a lucky one. Your words were so touching, Cosette really appreciated the letter we wrote.”
Grantaire looked away and took a long sip of wine from the bottle in his hand. “Wouldn't say so”
“You don't write letters to your mistress?”
“I would never.” he coldly replied.
Marius was confused. “You have never told her about your feelings?”
“Marius” he turned to look at him “Not everybody can freely express their feelings. Feelings are a complicate matter. They can be misunderstood, rejected... Sometimes it's better to leave it this way, in silence.”
Marius shook his head. “She must know how deeply in love you are.” Then he noticed something he had always missed. A longing, almost tender, gaze in Grantaire's eyes, pointed on Enjolras, who was speaking with Combferre.
“Oh! Oh! I get it”
Grantaire sighed.
“It must be him!”
Grantaire's wide eyes quickly turned on the other man. “Are you mad, Pontmercy?”
“You cannot deny it!” He said with a big smile “It's clear now! This explains everything”
Grantaire frowned, feelings caught in Marius' intuition. “Lower your voice. I don't want to be kicked out of the Musain. Again.”
Marius gave an affectionate squeeze on his shoulder. “I get why you are so mysterious about it and why you want to keep it as a secret. But... I believe love could never bring shame, to anyone.”
“You are far too optimistic. Happiness makes you blind to our misery.” Grantaire sighed again. “Alas, I do not wish to be loved. It is too far from my reach, I wouldn't even dream of it.”
“Nonsense, everybody wants to be loved.”
A small, timid smile curled Grantaire's lips. “...And yet, I find myself wondering, if my feelings will ever bring anything good to him. If only I could give back a little bit of the light I enjoy from him, then my life wouldn't be a waste of energy and time.”
His eyes were so intently fixed on Enjolras that in that moment he turned his head toward him, like he felt the weight of that gaze upon him. When he noticed Enjolras was staring back at him, Grantaire quickly shook himself and turned his head away, blushing. “Dammit”
Marius smirked. “He's coming this way” He said, squeezing Grantaire's arm as if he wanted to keep him from running away.
“Again wasting your time?” Enjolras accused “Grantaire, you should not support Marius' dreams of love, it makes him inattentive. We need every men's strength now.”
“I'm really not the right man for this job” Grantaire made an apologetic smile “I'm worse than him.”
“So I can tell” Enjolras mused. Before he could say anything else, Marius got up with a big smile. “Enjolras! Have you ever received a love letter?”
Grantaire almost choke in surprise and tried to grab Marius arm to push him away. Enjolras, on the other side, raised a bow. “What kind of question is that. I don't have time for that, nor interest. I must stay focus, not waste my dedication on women things.”
“You are mistaken Enjolras” Marius kept saying “I didn't mean you to write to any woman, I was asking if you have ever received that kind of attention in your life!”
Enjorlas frowned giving a questioning gaze on Grantaire who became pale, worried about anything he could have said or thought.
“Enjolras” he said “forgive Marius, he is not mocking you, he's out of his mind about this love letter matter.”
“I have never received anything like that.” The leader simply replied “I couldn't concern myself missing something I have never had. Probably I do not evoke anything that could be written in a love sonnet.”
Grantaire made a yearning smile and sighed. “Sonnets are not meant for someone like you. I would write an entire epic poetry of gods and wars, I would fight another Trojan war, descend the Abyss, slaughter sea monsters, face gods' wrath and put all of that in ink and paper to write you something that could make you justice.” he said all of that, almost like he couldn't control words out of his mouth.
Enjolras listened in silence, frowning, confused.
“I...” he started, and Grantaire blushed, realising how far he went with that. “I really don't get you, Grantaire. Let's get back to work.” he said, and walked away.
Grantaire sighed and took his face in his hands, cursing himself.
“Why so desperate?” Marius embraced him “It didn't go that bad! It was touching and poetic!”
“It was stupid” he bitterly said.
“No! It was wonderful and I'm sure Enjolras is moved too. He must be!”
“He is running away”
“He is confused! And flattered! He is not made of ice!” Marius smiled and embraced him again “I couldn't imagine there was such a romantic soul in you.”
Grantaire sighed, still worried and confused about what happened. Though, he couldn't miss Enjolras' small smile on his lips, now he was back writing his pamphlets.