Author's Very Short Note: Yes, I do realize that the novel Javert would probably not think or behave like that. Yes, I do remember the line about whores and countesses. No, I will not change the story because of it.
Being that this is happening in my AU world, Javert has a head injury – my way of taking literally the words "He had but very little skull."
It's been a good ten minutes since our entire jolly company had piled in – lieutenants Rocher and Amiot, the whore, and myself. I had been sitting at my desk the whole time, staring at the stamped sheet of paper lying in front of me, and hoping to God that my eyes did not make obvious to everyone in the room the absolute chaos inside my head.
My kettle, as my dear departed mother was fond of saying, was not boiling today. No, not boiling at all. Instead of deliberating the length of detention appropriate for the apprehended woman, my mind wandered all over the place.
The weather has really been depressingly lousy these past couple of days, I mused.
That rusty latch on the front door of the station ought really to be replaced, I thought.
And then: sergeant Amiot has been smoking too much, and none of it the good stuff. His uniform stinks to high heavens. There he stands by the stove, a good seven feet away, and I can smell him like nothing doing. I can only pity his laundress.
To banish torpor from my skull, I decided to let appearances slide for a moment and shook my head hard, like a dog getting out of water. I shouldn't have done that.
When the yellow zigzags and purple splotches finally stopped dancing the cotillion behind my eyelids, I thought: My God, how I want this shift to be over! No more rowdy whores, public house brawls, leaking gutters, stolen chickens, run-over dogs, stubborn mules obstructing the thoroughfare – enough! I haven't seen my bed in eighteen hours. Wait, hold on, no, it was eighteen at dinnertime. It's twenty-one now. Twenty-one hours spent alternately on my feet and on my arse. The devil take this job.
The memory of the last shift-and-half immediately made tighten the invisible vise gripping my temples. Blood pounded angrily against the wall of pain in my head. But the whore in the corner wasn't going anywhere, and neither was the report on her misbehavior. I ground my teeth together, which produced a disgusting sound and an even more disgusting sensation, forced myself to pick up the goddamn pen, dipped it into the goddamn inkwell and put the writing end of it to paper. There was no more time to ruminate; I had to get this bloody report over with.
I had squeezed literally four words out when my thoughts once again scattered like spooked cockroaches. It was only the start of my first sentence and I was already hopelessly stuck. I had lost a word, a very important one. At least I assumed it must have been important, for I had no idea how to go one writing without it.
"Apprehended, a woman of the" read the sentence. Woman of the what? Woman of that place. Of that place with buildings and roads. That place; the place where she lives, where I live, where my two lieutenants live, where the entirety of the bloody populace lives! What is it called, god damn it!
Logically, I understood that the word I lost must have been a very simple one. But no matter how simple, at that particular moment when I needed it most, it was suddenly nowhere to be found. It absconded, and what was even worse it took all of its synonyms along. I was left with verbal material that was just on this side of useful: "building," "street," "crossroads," "thoroughfare."
And then even those words began disappearing. They slipped through the cracks in my concentration like a handful of water escaping through the fingers. Clutch your hand as tight as you want - you will still soon be left with an empty palm.
Within seconds most of my French vocabulary was gone. If someone had chosen to ask me just then, "Say, Inspector, what is that feathery thing you are holding?" not only would I not have been able to answer that it's a pen, but I would probably have looked around to see whom he was addressing. "Inspector"? What sort of animal is that and how does one dress it for dinner?
The fire was burning hot in the stove, but I was pouring cold sweat under my greatcoat. Stay calm; stay calm. Don't panic, I ordered myself.
As my logos fled the premises, I was abandoned to purely sensory contemplation. Particularly engrossing were the sounds around me. Drops of pine sap hissed, crackled and spat in the stove. Clumps of muddy, half-melted snow squelched under the boots of the gendarmes as they shifted their impatient weight from foot to foot. The girl crouching in the corner breathed in uneven, sonorous gasps. Out on the town square, cab drivers cursed, horses neighed, whips whistled, hooves clopped, and carriage wheels rattled. Under the station window, spectators guffawed and chattered, and someone's breath was fogging up the glass from the outside and rubbing it with an insistent sleeve in an effort to get a better look at the goings-on indoors.
When the viscous fog cleared somewhat from my head, I looked down and realized that while I pondered the visual and acoustical nuances of my milieu, the pen, which I had been pressing to the sheet this whole time, had anointed my future report with a sizeable blot. I crumpled the sticky sheet and patted down my pockets for another one. Determined to use this moment of clarity wisely, I once again put the pen to paper and quickly scribbled the date, place, name of the arresting officer and detainee, observed offense and other preliminaries.
Now somewhat more collected, I began to ponder the possible outcomes of this arrest. Most of them were deplorable. The last thing I needed was a consumptive whore spitting up the floors and walls in one of my cells. A couple of days of hacking all over the place, I thought, and that's it, the cell is a sepulcher for the next man placed there. I suddenly recalled the unhappy but nevertheless perpetually smiling face of a young red-headed medical I used to see around Isaac back when he was still engaged at the Hotel Dieu. The fellow used to "walk" two fingers up his chest, all the way from the sternum to the gullet, and then mimic consumptive hacking. "The tubercles, love," he told didactically to anyone caring to hear, "they are mi-gra-to-ry. Nothing to be done about it, except that the entire nation keep its mouth shut. And we are a race of chatterers – so be sure to pass on the bad news!"
Suddenly a small explosion went off in my head. The hospital, that's where she needs to be! She can't have more than a couple of weeks left in her - what's stopping me?
The death-rattle in the girl's bony chest was so loud, I was sure I could hear it all the way across the room. (Death-rattle, that is to say, the râles. That would be Laennec's morbid little joke on the rest of us. It takes a medical.) In her case, I'd surmise the gurgling râles, coupled with amphoric breathing and increased vocal resonance, although naturally this was impossible to conclude with certainty without a stethoscope or at least immediate auscultation. But there were other signs aplenty: general emaciation, yellow-gray expectoration tinged with red on a rag clutched in her hand, paleness coupled with a bright, hectic flush of cheek. A textbook case of late stage chronic phthisis. Also malnourishment, and on top of that unnecessary nervous excitation brought on by alcohol and violence. She should have been off the streets weeks ago. That's what happens when they disobey the law and do not submit to the mandatory medical check-ups.
Well, there's nothing to be done now except wait for nature to take its course. And since that must be the case, I decided, it might as well take its course with her laid out on a proper bed instead of a two-inch thick regulation straw mattress. She won't occupy it for long, that bed. No injury to the hospital except insult to the hospital sisters. But that is something I can live with. I dislike the sisters.
Right, I calculated, here is how it's going to play out. Nominally, she gets six months' sentence, suspended until health permits transport to the assizes at Arras. Until then, the sentence is substituted with mandatory hospital bed stay. That works out nicely all around: she gets a bed and some peace and quiet; the streets count one whore less; and on paper at least, the perpetrator is detained by the law for an appropriate amount of time. Justice is served on every front and I sleep easier knowing that she won't be attacking or infecting anyone else. Except maybe the sisters. But that's what they're there for. Everyone benefits, show's over, the curtains are drawn.
Perfect. Now only to write it up and put a signature to it.