The crystal ball is murky. I peer into and forget, for a moment, that I am supposed to be asking it to spread out before me the future of my client; I gaze into its distorted, bulbous roundness and look instead for some answer about my husband. Tell me, gods, what must I do? When will my husband be freed from this torture? My eyes are trained to find the response, but it does not come. I see no answer.
"And Anatole?" my client demands.
I must become once more the gypsy witch she has come to see, the Mme. Fifika Jacquot of my wooden sign. Fortunes Told. My name is Fifika, and I do tell fortunes, and I am Madame––but not the one is says. It says Jacquot because I am and always will be the daughter of my mother; but as Madame, I am Javert. My husband is in hell; yet he is on this earth. It is a riddle easily solved by any who have passed within the gates of the bagne of Toulon.
I return to my ball. I send out the tentacles of my heart, or try to. I try to grasp something––if the gods will not help me, perhaps they will answer a question asked on her account. She is young, fresh, untainted. And she is in love. I fancy I see a flash of something positive in the crystal's dimensions; it lights up hot.
"I see a good sign," I say at last. "Anatole loves you. Don't worry about marriage yet. There are good things on the horizon, but they are not fully formed."
"Look deeper," she says eagerly.
I do. But as I press, I feel the walls of resistance that the crystal pushes against me. The future can only be penetrated so far.
"I cannot," I tell her.
She puts a handful of coins on the table. "Read my tarot, then."
I take her money and wrap it in the scarf I keep tucked inside my bodice. I know the type. If the cards do not satisfy her, she will ask for the tea leaves. Most girls like to start with a palm reading, but she wanted the purity of crystal. The openness, the blankness and potential. I know how she feels.
My hair falls in clumps from my headband and bothers my sight. I brush it away and infuse my voice with as much mystery as I can. "Tell me your question, my child."
She pauses and I can see her trying to frame it. "What will happen...to me and Anatole?"
I pull a spread of eight. I scan the first seven and skip to the last––the one that represents the outcome of their love. The World. Wholeness, harmony, perfection, a happy ending. And the first card––this one represents my client––is the Fool. She was young, she was worried, but she didn't need to be. The other six might portend something bad, but I don't want to look. And did they matter? They are simply icons for illusion and delusion, obstacles and strengths, perceptions and representations.
"He may marry you," I say simply. She throws down a gold louis, thanks me wildly, and runs from my tent. I add the louis to my scarf and look down at the cards I have drawn, wishing with all of the pulsing of my heart that they were mine. I want the World too. The Fool card stares up at me and suddenly I see through all of its trappings of blithe fortune––I look at it at face value, and what I see is a particolored man. I know who I see. My husband, my bird in a cage. I pick up the card and my lips touch it briefly. Night is falling fast. I look around; there are no more customers, not even the couples who come tripping in at evening, like moths to the lamp of my tent. I look at the billowing leaden sky and see why. I dismantle my tent, fold my crystal ball into the center, and place all in my knapsack, which I fill with my cards, candles, drapes, and my copper tea kettle. I remove my leather nécessaire, already stuffed with matches, files, picks, and string, and secret my cleavage-money inside––all but the louis, which I leave in the scarf.
The louis should be enough. I pray to the powers that it is enough. I never know what fiendish argousins may be lurking within, barring my way to the common room. A sheet of rain falls from the grey clouds in the distance, to a charged whisper of thunder that resonates off the far cliffs on the beach; saluting the coming storm, the wind picks up, and I wrap my shawl tightly around me. I am not cold yet, but that shall arrive soon enough. Cold and wet are in my future. That is one security I can be assured of.
It is a horrible prison, the bagne of Toulon. Would that they could have sent him to Nice––to Nîmes––to Brest. They are all terrible, but Toulon is the worst-well, the most infamous. Its dirty white walls rise before me, a monster of stone and grating––the dirt and the shame nothing beside the confinement. I knock at the gate.
Le Veau. Thank God. It is Lucien le Veau who answers. I will be able to see my husband tonight.
"Monsieur," I say, "Five francs to grant me entry." It is a lot. He could hardly do better if he were to catch some poor prisoner in his flight within the prison's vicinity and reap the reward.
His fist closes over the bribe. "Nice doing business with you again, Madame Février. Or is it Leroy? Joly? Jeunet? Are you Jeunet's wife?"
"Javert," I remind him. In the beginning, in the months after I'd settled in the town after following his cordon, I had been afraid of getting him in trouble, but in time I realized that le Veau was a guard I could depend on, as long as my pockets were lined. But how long, O God, before he lets me in for free, like the whores he and his comrades feast on three times a month?
"Welcome to my humble lockup, milady," he says, pocketing the fiver piece and ushering me in.
The wind is rising. The outer courtyard of the prison is open, and a carpet of raindrops slowly begins to pattern itself upon the pavement. The breath of the wind curtains the rain, and I hear the water start to whistle in my ears. Lucien unlocks the outer door and ushers me in. Then he nods at me and goes back to his post.
I know my way in. The halls in this wing are deserted, and I know how to get to the dormitory corridor without meeting any argousins along the way. When I arrive at the mouth of the hall. I peer around the corner. The garde-chiourme is there, at the door to the common sleeping quarters; they are all inside in the darkness after lights out. I drape my shawl in the most matronly way possible, and make sure my rucksack is hidden underneath the portion that drapes down my back. My nécessaire can't help my husband––he could get his own files and saws if that were what he needed––but I don't want them taking it.
There is one more preparation. I take a small stiletto from my rucksack and secret it in the scarf hidden in my bosom, before removing the louis to present it to the garde-chiourme.
I reveal myself. He looks at me in silent astonishment for a moment, and while he is still silent I press the louis into his palm.
"Take me to my husband, monsieur. One hour is all I ask."
He looks calculatingly at the gold coin. "One hour," he says. "But I am not responsible for anything that happens to you in there. If anyone finds out you are here, I lose my job, do you understand?
I grease his palm further with fifteen sous. "Come in," he says, and shadows lengthen on the floor as he opens the door.
They are young and younger, old and older. They all look the same age in the dark, a mass of penned men, but in the daylight I have seen youths of seventeen––and men of sixty. The room is thick with the suffering rustle of convicts trying to sleep on bare wooden boards and the incessant noise of chains that follows their movements. The Mediterranean air would normally be stifling in what would usually be the heat of the night, but tonight, mercifully, the breeze and the sound of what will soon be torrential rain drifts in through the narrow, high barred windows in a light spray, along with the outside light that spills onto the bare floor and illuminates the sprawled forms of galley-slaves, their red or green caps bunched under their heads as pillows and their scarlet coats drawn around their bodies as the only bedding they have. At the extremity of the yawning chasm that is the dormitory, more light issues from a number of gun-loopholes in the wall––just a constellation of gleaming pinpricks from where I stand.
There are hundreds of men in this room. Ravenous, lustful, dangerous, but chained to their beds, they are like caged tigers; I am safe only if I keep my distance from the range of their claws and their teeth. As I advance I hear panting and whistles, and I reach inside my chemise and clutch the knife through my scarf. The occasional articulated lewd remark gives way to the threats of those who want to protect my honor, to keep me to themselves, to defend the interests of my husband, to keep my presence a secret. I thank the male voices from the dark that come to my aid.
My husband is number 43457. He is on the right-hand side, and his bed is directly under a ventilation window. I call to him. He hears me through the whispering and the fighting and he answers. I locate him in the dark. He is sitting on the edge of his plank bed. They must not have not shorn his head for some time, for his dark hair is radiant in thorny spires upon his crown; the light from the soupirail falls over his face, and his greyish-brown eyes catch the meager moon-glow like a cat's, while every hair in his stark brown eyebrows, in his long effeminate lashes, is illuminated. His red cap, with its tin label of Travaux forcés and his number, sags rakishly onto his shoulder. He wears the crimson frock like a soldier over his habit of yellow drab. He is my king, my harlequin prince. I see all this in an instant. We only have one hour.
"Marcel," I cry, and find his arms. I hug him tight, and he wraps his arms about me, breathing into my cheek, his wrists on my neck, his fingers caressing my hair.
"So often, Fifi, I dream about you," he murmurs in my ear. "I think of you. I dream we have a child––children. And I wake up––here. I never forget," he says bitterly, "that we are not free."
I lean back and look into his eyes. I do not know if he is being sincere or not. Marcel lies sometimes. But he is right about one thing. We are not free. I pull him forward and plant a kiss on his lips. I love those lips. They are too tender. They are abused. Marcel does not excel at any trade. Marcel is at the grande fatigue, working at the quarry tethered to a greencap ex-cloth merchant from Arras. The merchant is here for life. Marcel has only ten years.
He heaves himself onto the board with a jangle of iron, me upon him. I slip my hand inside his shirt and feel him all around. I make my way up to his shoulder. Drawn always to where he is wounded, my fingers touch the place where the skin is different, the place where I know he is branded with the letters GAL. Galérien—a word that declares his status as rent-out slave whose lease is a decade. That is what the state has made him––a slave. But that is not what he is, my Marcel, my thief Fool king. I roll over, and he climbs atop me, and we make love as all the other souls in hell groan around us.