Written by me.
English translation by Elwen_Rhiannon.
La Petite Mort
A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman that sets the man off.
(transl. by I. F. Hapgood)
When night falls at the barricade, Enjolras gives them two hours.
Only two hours, thinks Courfeyrac, and while he knows that Enjolras would like them to go to sleep, he doesn't want to waste time. Two hours are not much when one thinks about what will follow. He can sleep later. But when he notices the others are busy, he doesn't insist.
He leaves his companions and goes to Corinthe, to the room where they used to spend so much time. Enjolras called it the hall of the dead, with a prisoner bound to the column and a dead old man spread on the table next to him: two lines intersect the wall, forming a sign of cross. Were it seen by someone superstitious, it might be taken as a bad omen.
But he, Courfeyrac, is everything but superstitious, knowing that one shouldn't be afraid of corpses and crosses; he believes in himself, his bravery and good luck and that's why even if he respects the courage of the killed man, he passes him, raising his eyebrows nonchalantly. When one shows no fear, death won't come close. He ascertained that on many occasions, during last hours and before, when neither of them dreamt about really taking part in the uprising. It's not the lack of respect, but the will to live, able to conquer old age, death and the crowd of soldiers with bayonets beyond their barricade. The youth will win, it has to win, he repeats to himself.
He knows well enough that doubting means losing a battle already.
This is why he cannot stop for even a second, even here, in an almost empty room; the silence doesn't make him sleepy, but gives him a sense of subconscious anxiety. Courfeyrac slowly walks from one wall to another, counting his steps and it's when his own name spoken with a tired female voice reaches him, that he finally looks around. And he notices her. She's sitting in the corner, cringed on a low stool, clenching a piece of fabric for the lint in her hands and looking at him with eyes round with fear.
Neither of them has ever asked what her name really is. It has always been a nickname, given to her one evening when they all drunk one cup of wine too much and everything was devil-may-care as never before. They decided it suits her and that was enough. Gibelotte, like a rabbit stew. A frail rabbit with big, sleepy eyes, too calm and careful to be dangerous.
A rabbit, who hid in a cellar and spent there half of the night and now, nervous about the sudden silence, comes out of rabbit hole, sniffing anxiously and trying to find if anything has changed on the outside.
"Gibelotte," says Courfeyrac with a roguish smile and for a moment he thinks that there was a flash of life in her tired eyes. Everything is good, repeats Courfeyrac with no sound, deciding to forget his own fears; if anything can be of use to them now, it's cheerfulness. He feels that if Gibelotte starts crying now, he will not be able to calm her down.
Gibelotte slowly straightens herself up and sits more surely in her little stool, not bothering to answer him with a word, but Courfeyrac senses a part of the tension leaving her. Perhaps this is why he approaches the woman and sits next to her, watching her with interest. Yet she doesn't look at him anymore: she bends over her work and plucks the linen with a fierceness he would never suspect her of. Light hair, now ruffled, stick out of the tight bun and fall on her face; in the candlelight her eyes don't look fully conscious and the rings round them seem to be darker than usually. Courfeyrac can't recognize the emotions making them alive.
"So you are going to show them all for this one rug? You are merciless, Gibelotte," says Courfeyrac lightly with no deeper thought, just to break the silence. But Gibelotte suddenly takes up the conversation.
„And why should it be a bad reason?" she answers quietly with usual calm, looking at him from beneath her half-closed eyelids. Not even the slightest of the smiles is there to light up her face and Courfeyrac is unsure whether she understood his joke or took it seriously. That's why he does what he usually does: he smiles and suddenly presses a palm towards his heart with a theatrical gesture, pretending to be afraid. Then he blinks to her in the same manner, as he tended to do with all other girls he was ever meeting. A foolish gesture, nonsensical in these circumstances. But, as he reminds himself, Gibelotte is a woman, too.
And then they both finally start to laugh: first he, loudly and carelessly as usually, throwing back his head; then she, cautiously, when he was the one to break the silence between them, as if she waited for his permission. Courfeyrac can't recall ever hearing her laughing: it's like the closeness of death has woken her up from her lethargy, he thinks, watching her with interest again. For one moment he thinks he is seeing her for the first time in his life.
But when Gibelotte notices this look, she suddenly falls silent and concentrates on the linen on her knees. Her fingers move on the lint; the fibers come loose one after another and the fabric moves in her hands faster and faster. Till the moment, when after one too hasty move the threads break with a silent crack, Courfeyrac is unable to bear the sight of these nervously shaking hands and for a moment keeps her palms with his own. Gibelotte doesn't protest; she watches him silently, tightening her fingers on the lint. Courfeyrac can almost hear her heartbeat.
"It's enough," he says in a calming voice and slowly lets her palms go. "There's no need for more".
"Maybe not," admits Gibelotte with a dull voice and a small vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. "Maybe they won't be even of use. But I do not want to sit here and simply wait for them to come".
She slowly puts the lint away, takes a candlestick and without saying anything more she goes towards the exit. Courfeyrac doesn't understand what makes him stand up and follow her, but he has never been thinking much about impulses: he has always been simply following. Nothing is going to be different this time; it's neither a place nor a time to throw away what one has been before. Even if the usually ignored part of his mind keeps telling him that Enjolras wouldn't like it.
But Enjolras is not here and he doesn't have to know. Besides, Courfeyrac wouldn't be able to sleep now anyway; he is unable to sit and wait, too. He prefers to meet whatever awaits him half way. Whatever it might be.
They stop in the kitchen: negligently closed door suddenly set ajar, but neither of them notices. Gibelotte turns towards Courfeyrac, looking at him with sleepy eyes full of fear.
"Mother Hucheloup and Matelote ran away," she confesses all of a sudden and waves her hand in an indeterminate direction. "They think it's going to be better there. That the cellar is not safe enough. We could hear everything from the cellar. Everything".
"And what about you?" asks Courfeyrac, serious as rarely before, wondering what exactly did they hear. But Gibelotte doesn't answer. When Courfeyrac comes closer, he notices a piece of spider's web in her hair. He puts out a hand and carefully combs through the light strand of hair. Than he puts a palm on her cheek.
Gibelotte is pale, frail and delicate, looking like Death herself* and this is why Courfeyrac kisses her hardly, desiring to know whether she tastes like that, too. Maybe it's his wild curiosity driving him to learn all secrets, or maybe just the will to tame the unknown. Maybe he simply wants to know what to suspect when he goes on the outside. Gibelotte doesn't protest: she inclines towards him, closes her eyes and responds, clumsily and uncertainly first, but with a sudden passion. And Courfeyrac doesn't understand why instead of cold earth and stiffy air from the cellar he expected there's a warm summer night and a taste of young, unmatured wine.
He knows for sure now that Gibelotte's life runs under her skin, hidden beyond the surface of pale complexion and eyes always circled with dark rings. He discovers her will to live, much stronger than her slender, fragile body. Gibelotte, of course, he thinks and smiles to himself; he is sure now that they chose for her the right name. It's the unstoppable power of rabbits making the species survive even if one of the animals dies.
It's then when Gibelotte moves back, breaking the kiss. Courfeyrac squints his eyes listening to the silence beyond the windows. He shudders. It's very calm, too calm and even a warm breath of wind coming through the half-closed door can't change it. Courfeyrac takes a deep breath: the air smells of gunpowder and waiting.
"I don't want to die," says Gibelotte out of a sudden, looking straight into Courfeyrac's face, then reaching up her arms and putting them on his shoulders. Courfeyrac moves even closer; he feels her body warmth and stops himself in the last moment from saying that maybe neither of the others will want to shoot a woman.
Maybe they won't shoot a woman, he repeats to himself and doesn't understand why he embraces Gibelotte instinctively with his arm, as if he was protecting her from an invisible enemy. He won't say anything more. No, they don't always kill women, Courfeyrac knows that well enough, even if he saw them attempting to stab a child with a bayonet. Women are allowed to die much later, when they're not needed anymore. Gibelotte may be useful for something else. But she shouldn't be aware of that, not now. Even if he had no restraints about reaching for the same thing the other ones may reach for and still feels her mouth on his lips, this thought makes him nauseous.
Fear crawls into the kitchen through the half-closed door, filling the space between them and Courfeyrac suddenly feels that Gibelotte can read his thoughts, so he presses her body to his own to not leave even the smallest gap for the fear to crawl in. Neither of them speaks anymore because there's no need to: they both know what is hiding beyond the walls of Corinthe. Maybe it's the reason why Courfeyrac lifts Gibelotte's skirt up, searching deeply for what can't be seen on the outside. Every move is like a desperate scream to live and for a moment he's unable to control his own thoughts, thinking whether if he's supposed to die out there, at the barricade, some part of him can survive in her body. Then he doesn't think about anything else.
It's later, when he leans his palms against her narrow loins, that Gibelotte clings to his shoulder and her light, mousy hair tickle his cheek. Courfeyrac tilts head, realizing suddenly that the fear in her eyes is more clear than ever before. For one moment he's not sure whether he should stop and just take her where mother Hucheloup and Matelote are hiding, but then she wraps her legs around him and pulls him strongly to her, as if she wanted to dispel his doubts. Neither of them hesitates anymore. Neither thinks what's going to happen in an hour or even five minutes. There's only hasty, frantic touching, cloudy eyes and little death chasing away the bigger one.
Gibelotte is quiet and her sighs almost inaudible; everything she could say or scream to him is left somewhere inside her, with the warmth of his body and the white trail of his seed. Only her long, nervous fingers find Courfeyrac's shoulders and tighten there with a force he would never suspect them of and her face twists with pain.
Then Courfeyrac sees blood and finally understands. He doesn't know why he looks at her waiting for confirmation when he doesn't need any explanations.
"Yes," says Gibelotte quietly with eyes bored into floor, smoothing the gathers of her skirt with shaking hands. "Better with one of you than one of these others".
Courfeyrac rarely doesn't know what to say and it seems to be one of these moments.
"I have to go," he says finally, just to break the sudden tension between them two. He doesn't even know whether he should feel cheated. No, he does not feel sorry for what happened, even for a moment: one cannot feel sorry for this little bit of life they shared between them because they both have to have something to remember there on the outside, when the shooting begins. Courfeyrac knows that thinking about death is the last thing of use to them and that one moment more and they'll both start panicking. Rabbits in their holes, he thinks irritated, hating to feel so powerless and knowing well enough why Gibelotte was another one unable to wait in hiding for what is going to come.
Courfeyrac realizes once again then how she has never told any of them what her name really is. But now it's too late to ask about anything. When Gibelotte doesn't react, still having her eyes bored into the floor with a vacant look, as if she hasn't heard him at all, he suddenly reaches her mouth with his finger and with one daring gesture wipes a narrow trickle of still warm saliva from her lip. This gesture is the one to wake them both up.
"You'll return, won't you?" asks Gibelotte unexpectedly, lifting up her sleepy eyelids. No sooner than now Courfeyrac is able to see that the fire in her widely opened eyes is the same as in his. And maybe this is why he bursts with a short, sonorous laughter, the same he would dare to conquer all dangers with, and nods. He is unable to answer differently.
When Gibelotte accompanies him to the exit and they both cross the hall of the dead, they catch each other's hands for a moment against dead old men and grim prisoners. The shadow of a cross falls on a floor between them; it disappears when the door opens and a ray of morning light enters the room. They can hear now that the voices of those others are closer and Courfeyrac suddenly hesitates. For a moment he freezes on a doorstep with one hand raised, not turning his head to see Gibelotte. A single shot drowns out any other sound and Courfeyrac makes a bold step into the light.
Beyond the windows of Corinthe the dawn is breaking.
* The translator is fully aware that in English language personification of Death is generally male (let's skip Neil Gaiman here...), yet in French Death is female (see: title) which in both the author's and the translator's opinion highly influences the interpretation of traditional cultural images. Besides, in Cesare Ripa's classical Iconologia an allegory of Death is definitely described as a woman.