Hello, mes amis! This is my very first serious foray into Les Miserables fanfiction - so the writing is not particularly good. But, I'd love any comments you have!
Thank you to Wendla Bergmann, who informally beta-ed this for me!
Disclaimer: I am not Victor Hugo, I repeat: I am not a long-dead Frenchman with an unfortunate predilection towards loose women!
Slowly, reluctantly, I pull my ragged dress over my head. Now just left in an oversized chemise that covers none of the right things, I begin to shiver slightly. The dress is an ugly, tattered thing, plucked from a charity donation box at some church, but at least it lends me some warmth. I begin to doubt what I'm doing, for a moment - and then remember Azelma, lying on the floor in our apartment, too hungry to cry. I remember Mama's hasty words - "You don't have any other option - so stop your whining! You heard what Papa said - get money and food any way you can. At least, this way, you don't have to feel as much of a beggar - your Monsieur is getting something back in return!"
- and take a deep breath. Besides - it's no different from what I've done with Montparnasse a hundred times before. So why should I question it now?
Still, I seriously consider putting the dress back on. It's so cold, almost as cold as it was under the bridge. But no, I won't - the scraps of fabric holding the dress together would probably be torn to shreds by our neighbour. Montparnasse, at least, knows how to undress a girl without ripping her clothes - but our nice bourgeois gentleman next door will have no idea. And what would I do for clothes then?
It was not always like this, I remember. Once, we owned an inn, a good one, and I grew up there. My father could not pay the bills, though, and we moved here, to the cheapest apartment house in the poorest part of Paris. Once, we had enough food, warm clothing, comfortable beds - and now I resort to this. Selling myself. It is the furthest thing from respectable, but who can afford to care about being respectable anymore? A girl with the cracked, hoarse voice of an old drunkard, who has to seduce her next door neighbour for a crust of bread, can hardly speak of respectability. We fight for survival, all of us here in the dregs of Paris.
Hesitation to knock at someone's door is natural, I suppose. But I must knock, or else Azelma and I will go hungry again. Starvation can propel even the most sluggish into action; when it feels as if teeth tear at your insides, there is nothing one will not do. I pull myself back to the task at hand - to deliver Papa's filthy letter to our neighbour, and then try to - persuade - him into being more generous than he would otherwise be inclined to be. In any case, Monsieur already paid our six-month rent - he surely wants something in return for that as well!
But what's his actual name? I wrack my brains for a moment, before producing his Christian name, Marius. But what is his last name? I do not remember. But I can call him Monsieur Marius, can't I?
I knock. Once. Twice. Has he heard me? Is he at home? It is only just before seven in the morning on a Sunday; he may still be asleep, or perhaps he is at church. I hope he is at home - I shudder to think what will happen if I return with nothing. After two days of nothing to eat, Papa threw me out the door this morning, issuing dire threats as to what would happen if I returned empty-handed. It's a strange feeling, knowing that my family's survival depends upon my success begging from Monsieur Marius.
"Come in."
He is at home! Muttering a hasty thanks to no one in particular, I push the door open.
"What do you want, Madame Bougon?"
He hasn't looked up yet - of course he wouldn't know that I'm not our landlady. I open my mouth to speak, but can't get the words out. I'm frozen to my spot, struck dumb in astonishment.
Monsieur Marius is easily the handsomest young man I've ever seen, with striking, well-defined features. His long, curly brown hair is pulled back into a queue, and his clothes are worn but well-cared for. This room is neat and tidy, in comparison to our hovel - there is actually a blanket on the bed, a small plant stands on the window sill, and the floor is not encrusted with the filth of the streets. He's sitting at a table in the far corner of the room, frowning over a thick volume, surrounded with other books and papers. My heart fills with longing - how long it has been since I have last read a book? I remember well the smooth feeling of the paper, the inky letters, the pleasant smell as I turned each page…A sharp pang of hunger interrupts my musing, and I remember where I am again.
"I beg your pardon, Monsieur—" I falter, not sure what to say. He spins toward me quickly, evidently surprised.
I don't know what to think. I don't even know if I can think. Something's quite wrong with me - I don't know how to describe it. I must be growing sick, for I have to lean against the wall to support myself. With a few deep breaths, I feel more like myself, and am able to think more rationally. It must just be hunger, I reason with myself - that would explain the sudden dizziness.
"What do you wish, mademoiselle?" His voice is attractively deep, and I nearly swoon again.
The letter! I had almost forgotten it, clutched in my hand, numb with cold.
"Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius." I almost wish now I didn't have to do this; it's so degrading. But I must, and hopefully he will understand.
I hand him the letter; he opens it. As he bends his head over the scrap of paper, I cringe inside at the impression of us the letter would present. Monsieur Marius quickly finishes the letter and sets it aside, looking thoughtful. I embarrassedly wait for him to say something in response - I hope, for a moment, that he'll pull out his pocketbook without question, and I can go home without any fuss.
After a moment, Monsieur Marius turns his head to look at me with an odd, pitying expression. He probably thinks I'm nothing but a street gamine, I suppose. A shivering, dirty waif - illiterate and ignorant.
I stare back at him with a defiant glare, almost daring him to pity me. I don't know what I'm doing - this attitude is certainly not conducive towards getting him into bed. But I can't help myself - I want him to like me, to want to touch me, for my own sake - and not just to satisfy some base urge.
He doesn't look away. At last, I turn from him, surveying the rest of the room. His furniture is cheap, like ours - but his is neat and unscratched. His few items of clothing are hanging behind a curtain on the wall; upon closer inspection, they seem to be of better quality than anything I've touched in years - and, more importantly, are clean and nice-smelling. Near the door stands a dresser, on which stand his toilet articles and a few bottles lying on their sides. I rearrange the items, humming tunelessly to myself. As I finish, a small mirror hanging above the dresser catches my eye.
"Ah, you have a mirror!" I say aloud, more to myself than to Monsieur Marius. With a quick glance at him, I see he is rereading the letter. Surely, he wouldn't mind if I took a quick look at myself? After all, I have not seen my reflection in months. I was still a little pretty last time I saw myself - but now, the only word for me is ugly. It hurts, seeing the sunken, lifeless eyes, sharp cheekbones, filthy, greasy black hair, jutting out shoulder-blades, cracked lips, and yellowing, half-missing teeth, and knowing that the creature in the mirror is me. But I am not so hideous when I smile, am I? When I smile, a dull sparkle returns to my blue eyes and a shadow of the girl I once was can be seen. The look in my eyes half-reminds me of an actress in a play I had once seen, and I begin to sing her sweet refrain.
"Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses,
Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours…"
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Monsieur Marius looking at me with a mixture of pity and revulsion. I stop singing immediately, embarrassed. I feel a sudden desire to prove myself something more than just a gamine. My eyes scan the room, desperately searching for something that would set me apart, at last alighting on the books piled on the table.
"Ah! books!" I am not just a gutter rat, and I can prove it now. Once he sees me read, he will know that I am not something dirty and distasteful.
"I can read, I can." I snatch a thick book from the top of the stack and flip it open to a random page.
"—General Bauduin received the order to take five battalions of his brigade and carry the chateau of Hougomont, which is in the middle of the plain of Waterloo—Ah, Waterloo! I know that. It is a battle in old times. My father was there; my father served in the armies. We are jolly good Bonapartists at home, that we are. Against English, Waterloo is."
The small, sane part of my brain tells me that this is madness. The well-educated young man before me can have no interest in my paltry knowledge of Waterloo. With every desperate word I speak, Monsieur Marius looks more uncomfortable. But I cannot bring myself to stop and be quiet. Something about this young man has made me lose my footing, and I simply cannot find it again. I don't even really remember what I came here for.
"And I can write, too!" There is a pen and paper there on the table. "Would you like to see? Here, I am going to write a word to show."
I write the first thing that comes to mind, finishing with a great flourish. Monsieur Marius glances at my scribble, and looks somewhat astonished at my chosen phrase - "The cognes are here."
Before I can catch myself, I start babbling again. I'm hardly aware of what I'm saying - hunger and the strange dizziness seemed to have pushed all sense out of me.
"There are no mistakes in the spelling. You can look. We have received an education, my sister and I. We have not always been what we are. We were not made -" I dimly realize that I'm only alienating him, making him pity me all the more. My mind tells me, "He must be tired of your prattling, Éponine, shut your mouth now!" I ignore this sensible advice - I am a Thenardier, and we don't give a damn about others' opinions - especially those of beautiful young men with curly hair I long to run my fingers through...
I begin singing again - another pretty tune I remembered from a play.
J'ai faim, mon père
Pas de fricot
J'ai froid, ma mere
Pas de tricot.
Grelotte
Lolotte!
Sanglote,
Jacquot!
Once I've finished my song, I think for the barest second about what to say next. In Mama's books, the pretty, fashionable ladies discuss the theater with their suitors - why shouldn't I?
In my most coquettish manner, I exclaim, "Do you ever go to the theatre, Monsieur Marius? I do. I have a little brother who is a friend of some artists, and who gives me tickets sometimes. Now, I do not like the seats in the galleries. You are crowded, you are uncomfortable. There are sometimes coarse people there; there are also people there who smell bad."
Monsieur Marius doesn't respond, but looks astonished at my rambling. He bends his head down, and the candlelight illuminates his head, like the golden halos of the angels in the stained glass windows I see in churches.
"Do you know, Monsieur Marius," I say impulsively, "that you are a very pretty boy?"
He blushes uncomfortably, and says nothing. I prattle on, desperately hoping that his blushes meant he liked me.
"You pay no attention to me, but I know you, Monsieur Marius. I meet you here on the stairs, and then I see you visiting a man named Father Mabeuf, who lives out by Austerlitz, sometimes, when I am walking that way." His dark hair again catches the light of the candle, and he looks so handsome I want to cry. But a hunger pang racks through me, and I remember my task of seduction.
Adopting a throaty, seductive tone, I say, "That becomes you very well, your tangled hair."
I place a cold hand on his shoulder, hoping he would be too much of a gentleman to shrug me off. Even while my actions are all calculated, my stomach is twisting with nervousness and happiness, and I feel giddy and weightless.
Monsieur Marius jerks away suddenly; disappointed, my hand falls back to my side. Montparnasse would never miss such an obvious proposition - by now, he'd be pulling me in close and fingering me up and down. But Monsieur Marius - he will not even try for a fumble? Amazed, I watch as he reaches across the desk, and retrieves a small paper packet. I recognize that — I have seen it before. In a beautiful, cold voice, he offers the small package to me.
"Mademoiselle, I have here a packet, which is yours, I think. Permit me to return it to you."
Oh - he's found it! The package of letters Azelma and I had lost yesterday! We had been delivering Papa's letters, and the package had slipped through the holes in her coat pocket. We had looked everywhere, but had eventually had to return home. Terrified at the thought of the punishment we would sure to receive, we had lied and said that the letters had all been delivered.
"We have looked everywhere!" I exclaim as I take the packet from his hand.
"Lordy, Lordy, haven't we looked, my sister and I? And you have found it! On the boulevard, didn't you? It must have been on the boulevard? You see, this dropped when we ran. It was my brat of a sister who made the stupid blunder. When we got home we could not find it. As we did not want to be beaten, since that is needless, since that is entirely needless, since that is absolutely needless, we said we had carried the letters to the persons, and that they told us: Nix! Now here they are, these poor letters. And how did you know they were mine? Ah yes! By the writing! It was you, then, that we knocked against last evening. We did not see you, really! I said to my sister: Is that a gentleman. My sister said: - I think it is a gentleman."
As I spoke, I opened the first letter, addressed "to the beneficent gentleman of the church Saint Jacques du Haut Pas".
After wondering briefly who it was, I remembered the old man that Montparnasse had pointed out the day before.
"It must be for that old fellow who goes to Mass. And this too is the hour. I am going to carry it to him. He will perhaps give us something for breakfast." What a stroke of good luck! The old man would be coming out of church in roughly half an hour - I could deliver the letter, and, if he proved to be generous, we might get a handout.
Suddenly, I began to laugh. It was a harsh, wheezing sound that almost frightened me.
"Do you know what it will be if we have breakfast today? It will be what we shall have had our breakfast for day before yesterday, our dinner for day before yesterday, our breakfast for yesterday, our dinner for yesterday, all that at one time this morning. Yes! Zounds! If you're not satisfied, stuff till you burst, dogs!"
While I giggled maniacally, I could see Monsieur Marius searching through his waistcoat pockets, looking for a coin. When I finally stop laughing, I'm hardly aware of where I am. Not thinking clearly, I begin to express my darkest moments to the young man.
"Sometimes I go away at night," I confide. "Sometimes I do not come back. Before coming to this place, the other winter, we lived under the arches of the bridges. We hugged close to each other so as not to freeze. My little sister cried: How chilly the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said: No, it is too cold. I go all alone when I want to. I sleep in the ditches sometimes."
Something deep within me needs him to know the real me. I want him to understand the horrible things that have happened to me. But, at the same time, I want to seem a damsel in distress, who he needs to rescue. Like the ladies in Mama's books.
"Do you know, at night, when I walk on the boulevards, I see the trees like gibbets, I see all the great black houses like the towers of Notre Dame, I imagine that the white walls are the river, I say to myself: Here, there is water there! The stars are like illumination lamps, one would say that they had smoke, and that the wind blows them out. I am confused, as if I had horses breathing in my ear; though it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning wheels. I don't know what. I think that somebody is throwing stones at me, I run without knowing it, it is a whirl, all a whirl."
As I tell Monsieur Marius about those endlessly freezing nights under the bridge and inside the sewers, I can see him looking increasingly uncomfortable and awkward, as if he did not know what to say. Embarrassed that I had said too much, I feel the need to explain away my ramblings.
"When one has not eaten, it is very queer."
I mentally scold myself. Of course, such a rich young man could never understand what it was like to be a gamine, with no place to go and nothing to eat for days on end. Of course, I could never hope he could understand my life.
As I stand there, Monsieur Marius at last finds a shining five-franc piece and gives it to me. Some part of me reminds me that this is what I wanted - money, without having to sell myself. Still, I'm more indignant that he thinks I'm only here for money. Despite my attempts to impress him, he doesn't seem to appreciate my efforts. Fine then! Let him think I'm just like every other worthless street rat!
"Good, there is some sunshine! Five francs!" I lapse into unintelligible argot, the street slang we gamins and gamines speak. "A monarch! in this piolle! it is chenâtre! You are a good mion. I give you my palpitant. Bravo for the fanandels! Two days of pivois! and of viandemuche! and of frictomar! We shall pitancer chenuement! and bonne mouise!"
Monsieur Marius looks suitably confused by my outpouring. Of course, he understands none of it. He is a refined gentleman, not one to understand the mysteries of argot.
Even after my argot outburst, I cannot help myself from assuming some of the grand airs I remember from Mama's book. There was one lady, who was at a ball...
"Good morning, monsieur. It is all the same. I am going to find my old man."
Trying to salvage what remains of my dignity, I pull my torn chemise up about my shoulders, I sweep him a low bow, before giving him a wave. As I turn to leave, my eye catches a dry crust of bread left forgotten in the corner of the room. I snatch it up eagerly and cram it whole into my mouth. The hard edges hurt my teeth, making me wince, but that is my punishment; I have wasted his time, made him talk to me and made an imbecile of myself.
"That is good! it is hard! it breaks my teeth!"
I leave the room, bewildered and confused. As I hurry out of the building, clutching the packet of letters in one hand, and Monsieur Marius' precious five-franc piece in the other, I know that I would give whatever I could, simply for him to look at me again. He is handsome, he is kind - when given the clear opportunity, he would not use me. He fed me, he gave me the means to feed my family. I love him.