If you have ever seen a little girl's face when she's given that doll she has longed for so long, then you can understand how madame Trépat smiled when I told her. She even begged me to excuse her for a moment, during which she left me alone in the living room, and walked, almost ran into the kitchen, only to return dragging the maid along with her.
"Go on, dear, tell Amantine! Tell her what you just told me!" Madame said eagerly, but before I could open my mouth she continued "He talked to her, Amantine. Alexandré talked to her! And more than a few words, there were sentences for crying out loud! Blessed be the Lord! Now, my dear, tell me again, please, tell me what he said!"
"He said the weather was rather nice, madame." I replied "He asked me if I thought it would rain soon."
"And what did you say?" Madame leaned forward as if my answer was a matter of life and death.
"I said I did."
"She said she did! Oh Amantine, are you listening to this?"
"It's wonderful, madame," Amantine said, yet her eyes expressed quite the opposite thought, then she added, looking at me "It sounds almost too good to be true."
"Too good indeed!" Madame exclaimed "Oh dear, he must be starting to recover! Eloise dear, you must come more often, oftener than often, as often as you can!"
"Éponine" I corrected shyly "Of course I would love to come often, but I fear I'll be a little busy, looking for an opening in a factory and a decent room I can rent. But as soon as I can, I'll return, of course it could be months before I'm settled…"
"That is surely a predicament. But priorities are priorities…" Madame rubbed her pale chin and was silent for a moment during which I hoped she had understood what I was heading to.
"Well if that's the case, you better start looking now, huh?" Amantine intervened and I couldn't help to direct a nasty look in her direction, honestly it was beyond me.
"Wait!" Madame clasped her hands and her face brightened again "What if, I know this might sound a little crazy, but what if you worked here?"
"Work here?" Amantine echoed, raising her eyebrows.
"You could even stay here! I mean your presence is clearly good for my nephew." Madame continued "Of course, I will have to ask Phillipe first, you must understand I do not want to make any arrangements that might discomfort him, but if he talked to you I know he will be as excited as I am."
"But madame," Amantine whispered, which made little sense considering I was standing right in front of her "there's no room in the house".
"We'll make room! I shall settle her in your room, after all you are always complaining about how lonely it is."
"With all due respect madame, I complain about how small it is."
"Same thing!" Madame Trépat said "Now please fetch some blankets and pillows, we'll improvise something for the night. Now, I must talk to my nephew right away," She headed towards the stairs but stopped in the middle "But first, I must write to the doctor, yes I must write to the doctor, and tell him all about this!"
She redirected her steps and left to another room across the hall, leaving me all alone in the middle of that cat filled living room.
My first errand was to deliver said note, along with a letter addressed to monsieur et madame Enjolras, in Rouen. The doctor's house was relatively close in walking distance, and the post was on the way there, nonetheless, madame's unclear directions made the trip take longer than it should have been. Besides being forced to go over my steps and stopping now and then to look at the numbers on the houses, I was also slowed by my own anxiety, for I couldn't help feeling Lheureux could be waiting for me around any corner. Even if I knew he would not find me in a neighborhood like that, I found myself looking over my shoulder more than once.
Even so, on my way back to house, my anxiety began to subside, for I was distracted by the people around me. For the first time since the barricade, I took a moment to look at them, and I mean to look at them. I marveled at the everydayness of their lives. Walking past me, going somewhere, and they all seemed to have somewhere to go and reasons to do so, such determination in their steps, such indifference in their eyes. Did they have any idea of the gift they had been endowed with? No, only someone whose steps are empty and meaningless could understand.
Something had, without a doubt, changed that dreadful night in the barricade, something had ended, something was broken, and yet here they were, the people of Paris, off to buy a loaf of bread or a dozen of eggs, off to pay their taxes or visit a friend. Life went on. How quickly did the city forget...Did he forget? Did he forget...
Oh Marius…
I returned to madame Trépat's house before memories could start dripping down my eyes. She took me to my new room, a small chamber accessible only through a wooden door in the kitchen. It was no wonder Amantine had complained about the size, there was barely any room for one's own thoughts in there. Inside the narrow space, which I doubt had been deliberately made to be a bedroom, were two beds, or more appropriately, a bed and a mattress on the floor with some blankets over it. Madame apologized for the quality of it and promised she would get a better one, yet I didn't hesitate to tell her I had slept in far worse places.
"Please, make sure she eats something" Madame added, addressing Amantine as we left the room and stepped into the kitchen, waiting to hear further instructions.
"Yes, madame" Amanitne replied.
"I'll watch my nephew, and tonight-"
"Tonight, madame, you should get some rest."
"Not a bad idea, not a bad idea at all. To be honest I am quite tired." Madame let out a yawn and then looked at me "Now Em-Emi-El-Ep"
"Éponine" I helped her out.
"Dear, let Amantine show you around the house and answer whatever questions you have. If either of you need me, I will be upstairs."
I nodded, and watched her as she walked out of the room. Amantine only spoke when madame was completely out of sight. Now, I would be lying if I said that, despite her short stature, her frown and her cold gaze were not a bit daunting.
"Well, well, well, little rascal, I don't know what you're up to, but I'll be keeping an eye on you."
"I'm not up to anything," She looked at my eyes and I looked back at hers without flinching, I knew that game and I could keep on playing. "I don't want any trouble."
"For your own good, I hope that's true" She then turned and walked towards the old stove. "Now, you see this?"
I nodded, of course I did, it was right there.
"This is off limits. Do you understand? I'm the one in charge of cooking, I might ask you once or twice to help me with something, but otherwise all you do in the kitchen is wash. The silver you don't touch, it's off limits, understood?"
"Alright." I answered as we walked down the kitchen and went through a back door. At the other side there was a patio which resembled a garden, for it was full of every thinkable variety of flowers. Daisies and pansies and lilies to the left, sunflowers and roses and daffodils to the right, and in the center a small space had been left to dry clothes on a rope. Amantine briefly instructed me how to take care of some of the flowers, not all of them, for she made very clear that pansies and roses were off limits. When we walked inside, she led to the far end of the kitchen and pointed at a small set of stairs.
"You can go down to the cellar and clean but don't you dare to touch the wine bottles, they're off limits. You may also go to the third floor, but never into madame's room, that's-"
"-off limits?"
" I'm the only who enters, understood?"
"Understood." I said as we moved out of the kitchen.
"You'll be doing the cleaning and the laundry," She explained as we walked across the hall into a new room. This was the study. A broad room whose pink walls were almost covered completely by wooden shelves stacked with all sorts of books. In the center there was a wooden desk with papers held down by a white sculpture of a cat licking its paw, and on the far end, next to a huge window pane, there was a table with a beautiful chess board and two blue chairs set there for the players.
"You'll be cleaning the shelves, but the books are off limits. The chess is off limits. Refrain from touching anything valuable and whatever you do, don't break any of the sculptures. You can look later at the dining room and the upper floors, but if you try anything funny, I'll notice. Any questions?"
"Where's the bald man who opened the door?"
"You mean Landry? He's the valet, he's around, somewhere." She explained as we walked back into the kitchen "But you have to understand he's not as young as he used to, so he doesn't do a lot of work around here."
"What does he do besides opening the door?"
"Well he…well…not much more"
"Sounds nice."
"He has earned it, he's a war veteran." She said this last remark as if I had wronged her by bringing up the subject. "Anyway, sit here, I'll get you something to eat."
So I did. I waited until she handed me a plate. If it had been a crown, I would not have hold on to it as hard as I did. I was pleasantly surprised by the portions of fish and vegetables, and the quality! Oh, how long since I had tried anything like it! A lightning bolt would have taken longer traveling from the clouds to the ground than what I took eating all. I couldn't help to scrape the dish with the fork as I tried to pick up every last bit, and the gulping was so loud that Amantine even looked up as she folded some sheets to say "It's not gonna vanish, you know?" But, by my own experience, I knew it would vanish, it would vanish in the blink of an eye. Hell, the amazing thing would be if it didn't vanish!
So on and so forth, the day began to die away slowly and calmly, but I should have known this was only the peaceful breeze that announces the storm that's bound to come.
For the nights, they were a different story.
It must have started at ten o'clock. No, earlier, because I remember that, by the time the clock was striking ten, the bells were half drowned by Amantine's shouts. From the second floor she kept telling me to hurry with that bucket of water, but it never occurred to her to tell me where the bloody bucket was! I was relatively new to the house, so finding it was unnecessarily difficult. After leaving the kitchen upside down, deed for which I would pay the following morning, I found a wooden bucket, filled it and ran upstairs trying not to spill the water.
When I stepped into the room, Enjolras was bathed in sweat and shacking violently under the covers of the enormous bed. He was pale as a ghost.
"What do we do! What do we do!" I exclaimed.
"Calm down" Amantine replied, she was seated on the edge of the bed and leaning towards him as she slowly and gently removed the bandages in his forehead. I left the bucket next to her and watched at the unmasked gash which was far from scarring.
"Sit over there" The maid pointed at the opposite edge "and grab his wrist, count the beats."
His arm was frail and I almost let him go once I touched his ice cold skin. I pressed my fingers against his wrist and focused on counting the seconds between his hurried heart beat.
"Keep counting" Amantine instructed as she soaked a cloth on the water. She dripped it and slowly placed it over his forehead. He let out a grunt, I saw the tiny water rivulets drip down his forehead and next to his nose as I tried to track his heartbeat.
By the third time she repeated the procedure, his heartbeat began to steady, but it took an entire a hour of the same for his trembling to stop. If I hadn't been tracking his pulse, I would have sworn his sudden calmness was the product of death. By this point, Amantine told me I could go to sleep, for she could watch him by herself.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Go, you'll need the rest, tomorrow you'll be watching over him." She said, too exhausted to add any of her rather bitter remarks.
As if it was made out of porcelain like one of madame's cat figurines, I slowly left Enjolras's arm back on the bed and prepared to walk away. From the door I watched him one last time, his eyes were closed and he was drifting away to the land of sleep, or less romantically, the land of unconsciousness, of surrender or defeat.
There were two types of nights in the house. There were bad nights and worse nights. That was a bad one.
I know it's slower than the other chapters, but I want to focus on the interactions between characters.
Special thanks to butterfly52, ConcreteAngelRoxHerHalo, a guest, Midnightstar-and-Echosong, Freedom909, Alex-samsprout, Break This Spell666, moonlightsouls, WhoNeedsWorldPeaceI'veGotFood, alwaysaliceinwonderland and ShipBlownFromItsMooring for their support, and thanks too for the ones who helped me find a name for Enjolras!
Comments, questions, critiques, ideas, are all very welcomed!
Greetings from Colombia
