1.
"Do you know what this means?" Javert asks.
He doesn't expect a response. He's given up hope of anyone really understanding. Not his fellows in the law, who see the limits of their duty and no more, not the fortune-tellers in the jails, who see futures but still only see time travelling forward, certainly not these useless convicts who don't care for anything at all.
"Yes," says Prisoner 24601, "it means I'm free."
"No," says Javert. "You are a thief."
And he is. Thieves wear prison uniforms and serve in prison gangs and lift up heavy masts, and that is what Prisoner 24601 does. Otherwise, he would not be Prisoner 24601. That would be illogical.
"My name," says Prisoner 24601, "is Jean Valjean."
Yeah. Sure it is.
"And I am Javert. Do not forget my name."
If someone only calls him by his name, loud enough, long enough, will it be enough for him to hear? Enough that he doesn't have to blend in again?
"Do not forget me, 24601."
But he doesn't get his hopes up.
2.
"Holy God," says the desperate woman, "is there no mercy?"
Javert is not holy, and he is also certainly not God, so he's not quite sure why he is being asked. If God were to show up and politely resolve the dispute, escort her from the premises, that would make his job a lot simpler. If God were even to confirm that no, in fact, there was no mercy, and they ought to carry on, that would also speed things up.
"I have heard such protestations," he tells her, "every day, for twenty years."
And it's always the same. Never mind the uprisings and the downfalls, the whinings and the re-enumerations of republic, monarchy, empire, it never changes. What is she, anyway, just a whore? Of course she's not going to understand. None of them can see.
"Let's have no more explanations." Not yet. Not from these lecherous foreman and gossiping factory women; they know nothing. Not until they sit still, ready for him to explain everything to them. If only he had a fraction of their finesse, could stitch all the pieces together! Make sense of what he sees.
Until then, it is again another day dealing with incompetents.
3.
Jean Valjean is found. Jean Valjean is taken into trial. It is in another town entirely. It does not concern him, and it does not concern Monsieur le Maire.
This comes as an inexpressible relief, and Javert walks the day around with lowered shoulders, more in exhaustion than shame. So. This is life. It is not a question of fate spinning things out such he has no choice but to follow in the footsteps of Prisoner 24601 for half a decade. It is a string of coincidences and banalities, life trawling on without him, and he does not matter. Neither does that show-off of a mayor.
Oh, Javert is tempted to throw himself on the mercy of the municipality. Forgive me. I believed-I feared-things were too tightly wound together, controlled from afar, rather than persisting as event after meaningless event.
But something stays his hand, turns him away from the mayor's office. There's no sense getting involved when he doesn't have to.
4.
"I," says Monsieur le Maire, "am Jean Valjean!"
Javert sighs.
The bemused judge asks if the esteemed visitor is quite in possession of his senses. No one thinks to ask Javert's opinion on the situation. In fact he trusts in his eyes and ears and nose and mouth and skin, so long as they are limited to the immediate vicinity and he does not have to pretend to ignore the darkness just beyond them, that or the impossibly painful light from above. His perception is fine, and he has never more hated the fact that his powers of deduction are altogether too intact.
5.
"Valjean," says Javert, "at last."
The ninny of a mayor has retreated to be at the bedside of the dying whore. Whatever possesses him to do that, Javert hasn't the slightest.
"We see each other plain."
With all due respect to the sensibilities of the honest nuns, carrying out their sacred duties, this is a downright lie. He does not understand this chimera; prisoner and mayor and slave of duty and "Valjean." Worse, he does not understand why no one else can recognize him. Didn't they see, it was, somehow, the same man! Those faces, those eyes in the darkness, they understood, there had only ever been one prisoner. What had Javert done, to be surrounded by the nearsighted?
"You must think me mad."
Valjean is stronger, if it comes to a fight. But Javert will stay in control. He does not have so little dignity, that he would get into a brawl with a convict in a hospital. One that he knows he would lose. (And how do I know that? he asks himself. Surely I must have faith, in my own powers, in the power of law.)
"Men like me can never change."
This has happened before, Javert is sure of it. Generation after generation, the force of law holds strong against the surges of chaos, and every time before, he has been on the right side of...of something, of a storm that has not yet broken.
How much has he already survived, already triumphed?
Valjean gets away. The nuns pledge that he has not passed through, and Javert believes them. There is no way out, after all. What is he going to do, jump into a river? Unless he lands on a boat he might as well have drowned, and most people are usually not on boats. Even escaped prisoners.
6.
"Another stink in the air."
Another decade, another city, another crowd, another crime.
He likes this, the feeling that eight years can pass in a footstep, and he is no older or slower or more ignorant than he had been before. The problem, of course, is that Valjean is more likely than not out there too.
"And the girl who stood beside him?" No, that was impossible. He remembers the whore's gestures, her daughter had been but that high. And the young woman standing by possibly-not-Valjean was grown, and beautiful in her way. They could not be the same person. Children aged, adults...passed through. Waiting to be reunited with each other, time and again.
He remembers the past, solving crimes, always restoring justice where it belongs. But were those the routine memories, shuffled together over eight years? Or had they been from before, in the same vague way he knows he already has been here before?
He still is not sure.
7.
"Each in your season returns and returns."
The stars are beautiful. He does not need anyone to see them with, and although he can view the world by their light, view his faith in their shadows, that is not necessary. The darkness is as necessary as the light, and can be as sublime. If he appreciates both, it is because he has been equally desensitized to both, and the world is in balance.
"And is always the same."
It is not so strange for the lights to repeat in their cycles, their annual revolutions, is it? Not for his clothing to pass in and out of style, not for the streets behind them to stand much the same, day after day and year after year, with only the names changing. Rue this, rue that, rue the day. Only when it is human minds that cannot escape their cycles, does he fear he is going mad.
"My curtain's never down," sings a singsongy gamin.
Javert whirls. Someone else can see the curtain, too! The veil hiding them from some other world, or that world from them, someone else understands. It is, perhaps, the first time in his life. Or the first time, this time around.
But there is no one to see.
8.
"One more day to revolution."
They don't stand a chance.
He knows it.
He wishes they did, sometimes, that they could smash the order of society and break everything down, make a new start. He would be destroyed utterly, of course. That is not up for question. He has too much faith in the systems that bind him, even now; he could not stand against a hot-tempered flame of these children, were they to take control.
Still, the chance to escape, to be sure you were going forward, to progress, would be worth his life. The law is a leveling force, to restore order; progress, if it can be achieved in the written word and the schoolteacher's fearless hand, is something better. If the children could bring peace, and then build on what France had already won, to rise higher-that would be worth any sacrifice, to break the chains.
"We will nip it in the bud."
9.
"Don't believe a word he says, cause none of it's true."
Of course it is not. Of course, he wants to hiss at the child-he makes the others look full-grown!-it is all just a...a story? He is reading words put into his mouth by something else, this is the June Revolution of 1832 and-
And, what. They are staring at him, a semicircle of schoolboys with dry mouths, gasping for justice. And there is something that has to happen, has yet to happen, but if he could only remember-
"The people will decide your fate, Inspector Javert."
No they won't. The people are asleep. They don't care. Maybe there are other people, looking on, judging him with eyes blurred away by the impossible light, but they will not seal his fate. If there are others, brave enough to take his life into their own hands, they will be scared away by the other mobs, the mobs chanting what is past is past, fight the battles of this world or retreat like the coward you are.
"Shoot me now, or shoot me later."
It will not matter. He is going to die, someday, and the only question is no longer what he will achieve with it but whether anyone can achieve anything, beyond sending him recoiling back where he started.
10.
Jean Valjean-what is he even doing at the barricade, Javert has no idea-comes in, weapons at the ready.
Then promptly cuts him free.
He wants to collapse, there and then, behind their makeshift walls which will never stop the national guard.
"The world is upside down."
Maybe this is enough. Maybe Prisoner 24601's survival and prosperity and showing up at the barricade, in a national guard uniform like he owns the place, is enough to divert the course of history forever. Now nothing may need to make sense, anymore, but what of that?
"You are wrong," says Valjean, "and always have been wrong."
Javert wants to weep. Always? How long have you known me, 24601, you who had a name someone could count, like time that could be measured? How long have we been stuck here, playing out our parts, trapped on opposite-or the same-sides of these fools' barricade?
"You're a man. No worse than any man."
Of course he is no worse. He is better, has been better for a long time. None of the others can see, like him, none of them understand what they're doing. The petty love for another human, even for some imagined fatherland, none of it compares to the weight of the absolute immensities, crushing him, squeezing and blinding them from every side.
"You're free."
It has always been 24601, in the Parisian masses and under the cart and in jail, who he has had to follow. Where has this criminal gotten the right, to speak as if he can forgive Javert the past? Not just the years under his watch, but every previous encounter? Does 24601 even remember?
And then he's giving him his address, as if he thinks he can escape this death trap. Well, what if he can? Javert is a free man, he will walk out, and when the revolution fails-as it will-tomorrow he will still have a calling and a duty. If his job is to arrest criminals, well, he's good at it.
11.
The barricade falls.
Of Valjean there is no sign. Of the revolters, indistinguishable corpses. The children were stabbed, or shot, or knocked cold. There are as many ways to die as there are people, pretending to be unique, dreaming of being free.
One of them lies some distance from his comrades, his hair still brilliant in the pool of blood. The beauty is as artificial as the grotesque; they can all be applied, by anyone with the patience, and they can all be cleared away.
The dead man's ideals cannot be seen or touched, perhaps cannot be spoken without laughing anymore, but they are more enduring than that body, no matter how beatific or ferocious, will ever be. If it wasn't so futile, Javert would almost be proud that something abstract and reasoned and true could endure.
A little ways farther still lies a body too small to have been to college. Javert kneels low, straining to hear the childish echoes, then turns as if squinting to see what the boy had seen, or perhaps because he cannot bear to take in that face.
12.
"Before you say another word, Javert..."
Javert rolls his eyes. He is standing in the sewers, the ugliest and dimmest and smelliest place in Paris, if it even qualifies as "in" Paris-but he knows better than to think he can make it too far away-and who should he encounter? But 24601 and a half-dead revolutionary.
"He needs a doctor's care."
If Valjean is to be trusted-and Valjean sincerely doubts that-the boy is alive. This fool of a child, who'd gotten himself injured at the barricades, is still living and breathing, and only he, Javert, stands between him and the chance for a full life.
The revolution was doomed. They were all doomed. Javert is not convinced he and 24601 are not still doomed. They are set in their places, reliving-dying-through history.
So what, if the boy loved a girl? So what if a girl loved him back? Javert knows that life is not always a silly story of who is falling in love with who. One man's love is not enough to save him.
But maybe he, Javert, has a choice. If it is not an accepted fact, "all the youths at the barricade perished," if the story has not finished, why, then, Javert is responsible for the life of this stranger. He has a choice to make, and he is free to make it.
"Take him, Valjean, before I change my mind."
13.
"I am the law, and the law is not mocked."
But on every side, the jeers; he is too short-sighted. No, he is too unfeeling. No, he is too misguided. No, he believes too much. No, he believes too little.
No, they are watching him, somewhere, from a distance, even if he cannot name them or see them. They will never let him be.
"It is either Valjean or Javert."
No, not quite. Valjean is gone, now, and Javert has chosen-at last-not to find him. He has failed, he is derelict in duty, but he has made his choice. Valjean can live or die, it is no concern of his.
All the same.
"Why must I now begin to doubt?"
What if he is alone? What if none of this has happened before, France has seethed but failed and now lies convalescent? Could he return to his duty? Does he dare?
"The world I have known is lost."
Even if things were simple and made sense, in a sensible world, children do not get themselves killed at barricades. Prisoners do not stalk through the sewers, demanding the obstruction of justice. Mayors do not confess to crime and disappear.
The nonsensical alternatives seem more and more appealing. The unimportant hours, the trivial cases, are forgotten; only death and terror and the anvil of duty remain.
"Is he from heaven or from hell?"
Valjean spared his life, but what is the point of living with nowhere to go? Will he stay on the defensive, waiting-but what sort of an uprising can follow, now? He has no wish to crush his fellow citizens into the ground, but he has been shamed, struck to the bottom of the order, and he cannot lift them towards a higher purpose.
"And does he know?"
No. Valjean was possessed with the conviction of the moment; he fought to spare one half-dead man, nothing more, out of the sheer faith that he could do it, that his fate had not yet been sealed. He is many things, too many things, but he is not like Javert.
"I'll escape now from that world."
Admit defeat. Abandon every hope of pushing forward, this time around. Go alone, let the others free to live or die as they can. Muster up all your faith, that you are not doomed to replod the hell of futility. Throw off the shackles of time, throw oneself off-
14.
"They will live again in freedom, in the garden of the Lord."
All the knowledge he has ascertained, all the notes he has taken, all the advice he leaves behind him amount to nothing, in the end.
All his devotion to the law, all his respect for absolute regulations, all his faith in the workings of justice, get him nowhere.
Valjean's grace, the Parisians' advice, the gamin's vision, could buy him time, but beyond him, time keeps passing.
The simple loves of Valjean's burden may be pleasant, may be true, may be beautiful, but they are fleeting.
The revolution has failed, the revolutionaries-and survivors-have died. But they are not forgotten. In story and song, in word and deed, their ideals are half-remembered, their exploits transformed into legend. And in legend there is room for faith and doubt, progress and circling backwards. The world turns inside out and right side up, is compressed into the sewers of Paris or expands to the stars. Time and again, and again and again and again, Inspector Javert will rise and fall. Mortal voices are desperate, and they are weak, and cannot save him.
It is eternal love, the unconditional gift of the divine, that brings an end to all fear and all death and all shadows, and that never ends in the gifts of unity, and beauty, and mercy. And while his story will survive what remains of his body, in the end, beyond the end, Javert will wake to find the chains broken.