Chapter Text
Mysteries as a rule were no secrets to Cosette.
They were everywhere. From Papa’s little valise that smelled like marjory and frankincense to Sister Saint-Michel’s nose, red in summer and white in winter, a clear infringement on the common law of noses. Then shadows and dreams, and the odd fact that Cosette, who was also Euphrasie and Mademoiselle Fauchelevent, still dimly recalled somebody calling her a dog-lack-name.
By now she was versed in keeping her eyes peeled and her ears open. While some mysteries, like the valise and the names, barely let any light through (like the small barred window in the convent’s parlour), others were more pliant. The trick, Cosette had learnt, was to think very hard and very long about the new strange thing until it felt you thinking, and consequently grew less strange. Once friendly, it let you take it up and turn it about, again and again, cradling it in your mind, until it turned into a Good Thing. Take Sister’s nose: it sneezed upon her rounds of the dorms, allowing the girls to snuggle their green apples (and Adèle’s copy of The Misfortunes of Virtue, a gift from her cousin François which she said was a life of the Blessed Martyrs) under their counterpanes.
Today, the mystery was a young man.
The young man who was always there when Papa and she took their daily walk in the Luxembourg garden. Cosette hadn’t spotted him at first, because Papa always had something interesting to say about the roses, or the statues, or the caterpillars, but after a while she had noticed that there were three of them in the alley. Once she had asked to see the round pool, where little children floated their boats on the finer days, and there was the young man, boatless, looking down at his boots. Then they had stopped coming for a while, because Papa had to travel to Montfermeuil and confer with a tree, as he did now and then, and when they showed up again, up showed the young man too, looking as if he had swallowed a whole patch of blue sky with the sun in it.
While Papa talked, he gazed at them intently, mouth slack, headgear askew, and when Cosette’s eyes darted off to him in silent concern (because this was how Sister Marthe used to look when her toe corns troubled her), he blushed and studied the ground with a vengeance.
Cosette wondered if he too was fond of the caterpillars.
Winter came, putting an end to the roses, and Papa began to talk about the statues instead. He told her about Monsieur Condorcet, who had studied calculus in order to invent the popular jury so that poor people got a fairer trial, was martyred for his theorem, but went to Heaven all the same. It was all very interesting, but surely the young man must have heard it before? Most young men who came here were students who could afford no other distraction (Papa once said, adding that his darling, of course, was a young lady who was entitled every sane distraction the world could offer, and would she like to visit a bedridden portress after their walk?).
Still, Papa was Papa, and always spoke beautifully. And perhaps the young man wanted to rest his toe corns.
The winter months trudged by. Spring bounced on their heels, and Cosette found that she had grown another five inches and needed a new dress. Papa looked a little sad at the news, and kept giving bizarre hints that Cosette should at least keep her plush purple hat, Uncle Fauchelevent’s legacy because she had liked it so much on the old scarecrow guarding the tulip bed. Cosette laughed, because everyone knew that you couldn’t wear old and blue with new and white, not unless you were getting married, and how could she marry anyone when she only knew Papa in that new world of theirs?
There were nurses and children and the pool, looking like a tender blue eye, and at least twice as many little dogs to yip this, that and the other. There was the young man, too, and his eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw them. He looked very dashing under the brand new sun, and Cosette could not help smiling at him from under her white hat. Papa, who seemed to be done with the statues, didn’t notice anything and began to tell her about the pigeons instead.
The young man blushed chastely, almost reproachfully. Then he did something very odd.
He took something white out of his pocket; looked right and left; bit his underlip and glanced sideways at Papa, then at her. Cosette saw that it was a handkerchief and opened her eyes wider. The young man pressed the handkerchief to his heart, to his cheek; his face the colour of a Red Delicious now. He brushed his lips to the fabric, and, as he did, it dropped loose from his fingers, revealing two letters, white on white, in a corner : U. F. Small as they were, she could not have mistaken them, for she herself had embroidered them as a New Year’s gift. Papa always said that his birthdate didn’t matter and since he also refused to celebrate his saint’s day (a strange fad in such a devout man), Cosette had decreed that along with Saint Sylvester, Ultime Fauchelevent would be spoiled and petted on the 31 of December, the ultimate day of the year.
Now she did some more thinking. Papa must have lost the handkerchief some time during this year; say in November, when he’d bent down to read the inscription on Monsieur Condorcet’s statue. The young man had found it, but it didn’t appear that he wanted to return it. Cosette looked again. No, he was doing some more kissing with it.
And then, suddenly, the mystery blazed into light.
Back in her convent days, she and the other boarders used to read the Bible, the maiden’s staple diet. This was a girl-tailored edition, stamped by the Bishop and countersigned by the Mother Prieure, and thus reduced to a very slim volume with most of the Ancient Testament hacked off for some reason or other (the Big Girls’ yearly challenge was to smuggle in an unpurged edition, but they had never succeeded in Cosette’s six years’ residency). What stories had survived, the girls read and marvelled over for lack of stronger stuff. Everyone’s favorite was David and Jonathan because it was a rare occurence where the L-word had dodged the nuns’ axe. Thus the younger girls, their hearts aching with tender vicarious emotions, read and reread the sacred text: Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than the love of women. It was well known among the forms that Marie de Valsin and Marguerite Cornier had co-written Jonathan’s letters to the exiled David, an sixteen-page work in progress which the girls passed among themselves on the sly (leading to a terrible mess-up when the Prieure stumbled upon a half-finished draft and summoned the whole community for a vitriolic sermon on the famous Revolutionary painter.)
Cosette's preference went to the stories where the beloved was an older man, a mentor figure. David playing his harp to the tormented Saul, John resting his head on Christ’s chest. Best of all were Elijah losing his coat when he was taken to Heaven in a fire chariot, and Elisha finding it and keeping it forever and ever, because it had belonged to his dearest –
Oh.
Why of course! How silly, how inconsiderate of her to have thought that the young man came because of her! She should have known better. She was an ugly duckling, the nuns always said, and it was universally known that nuns do not lie, ever. Even the Mother Prieure had seemed to think so. Whereas Papa... why, Papa was an angel. Of course the young man would want to be with Papa, who knew everything about Monsieur Condorcet and took such good care of others. It all made sense, though the sense hurt a little, like an extra pinch from her corset, because the young man was so handsome.
Now he was elevating the handkerchief between his raised hands, as in prayer, and Cosette's white hat ducked a little, a signal that she was receiving him loud and clear.
It was no more than Papa deserved, to have an Elisah that would love him and look after him better than Cosette ever could, because he was a man and thus better suited to share in Papa’s mysteries. Of course Papa, being Papa, did not have the slightest idea that he could be loved by one of his kind, as evidenced by the fact that he was still feeding the pigeons their daily crumbs.
The young man folded the handkerchief carefully away, rose, pressed one hand to his breast-pocket and took a soft, sad step towards the iron gates.
Cosette, meanwhile, was taking a resolution.