Chapter Thirteen: Till You Are Sleeping
When Eponine woke up the next morning, a harsh, glinting ray of sunlight was shining right into her eye, blinding her, and for a moment she did not know whether she was awake or still dreaming. Then, she heard the softest sound imaginable: a sniffle so subtle it might have been her imagination. She rolled over and immediately focused in on Marius lying beside her in the floor, his head lolled sideways in a deep sleep. Only thirty seconds fresh of sleep, Eponine remembered nothing of the night before.
When she sat up, Eponine saw the source of the sniffle. Her brother was standing stock still at the side of Azelma's pallet. Eponine could not see his face from the front, but she perceived the tiniest of tear drops on his dirty chin. She took in the nervous breathing and the frantic blinking of his eyelids, and the way he seemed drawn towards and away from the bedside all at once; and she understood.
"Gavroche," she said in a near-whisper as she rose into a standing position, a difficult task after having slept against a wall for seven hours; her back felt as stiff as a board. Her brother either did not hear her, or was pretending that very thing. He only stared down at the form on the pallet, an occasional sob shaking his body. Eponine put her hand on his shoulder; his head barely reached her chin.
The picture of Azelma lying on the dirty, rough mattress in the shambled tenement was one of sorrow and irony. It has always been a puzzle how the sickly and the helplessly impoverished are transformed into beings of ethereal beauty only upon the hour of death. Azelma was an angel, with her blonde hair, appearing clean for once, fanned out around her fragile bird-bone face, still moist with sweat from the night. Her skin was as white as cotton clouds, and the blanket pulled up to her shoulders engulfed her almost entirely, giving her the innocent appearance of a six year old child, rather than that of a surly street girl of fifteen. She did not look like herself, Eponine noted with sadness. This gave the tragedy more finality, she felt, as though the real Azelma had been entirely gone days ago, and Eponine had not even realized it. Now she was only looking at a vessel; nothing real to say goodbye to. This pale shell of a girl was not Azelma Thenardier.
Eponine was not crying, but the urge came up her throat like vomit when she looked down and saw that Gavroche was not even bothering to hide the tears running down his cheeks. There was, at this moment, nothing more touching to her than a broken gamin, and the urge to cry became even stronger. Still, no tears came out; she began to sob, but it was in dry gulps. "C'mere," she said softly, pulling her little brother into a hug, turning his head away from Azelma's body. He did not need to see it.
"I hadn't seen her in almost a year," Gavroche whispered as he settled into his sister's embrace and began to sob.
It might have been the sound of the boy's tears or the disturbing abnormality, easily sensed, of death in the room that, some twenty minutes later, roused the still-sleeping Marius. He too opened his eyes to the brightness from the window, and it took him a moment before he really saw what was going on. As with Eponine, he took one look and understood.
Eponine had gone into the situation as a figure of all comfort. Marius, however, became a figure of sense and business. He hugged Eponine tightly for a moment, leaned over to wipe a couple of tears off of Gavroche's cheek and embrace him as well, and moved to observe Azelma in the same way that her sister had. Then, without turning around, he said plainly, "I'll go tell Joly not to come." There was grief in his voice, and when he leaned over and gave Eponine a peck on the cheek she could sense his sympathy, for he had known Azelma as well as anyone else outside the family, but when he walked out of the tenement a moment later the girl felt somehow emptier than before. It was as though she had been waiting for Marius's comfort only for this to happen. All build-up and no result. She touched her cheek where she had kissed it; it tingled and pained her. She now remembered. Oh, what bad luck that the morning-after Eponine had always dreamed of would be ruined by such tragedy!
Sometime in the silence that followed Marius's departure, Gavroche stopped crying and wriggled out of his sister's embrace. He wiped the tears from his face with the back of one grimy hand and sniffed back the rest of the tears with quiet drama. Eponine watched with unseeing eyes as the boy adjusted his lopsided hat atop his head, picked a little dirt off of his shoes, and wiped his face down one more time. He was a pitiful sight, more obviously eleven now than he ever had been before.
"I'm going out," he mumbled, motioning towards the door. There was a short silence in which he seemed to be looking at his sister in search of approval, but when she did not even look at him he turned and went about leaving. Eponine was alone again.
She did not look at Azelma, however drawing it was. She moved about the room, picking up various items and returning them to their places; adjusting the blankets on the beds; killing a couple of spiders that crossed her path. At last, when she did not feel as though she could stay in the room any longer, she left through the door in a flurry, hating to leave Azelma alone, but realizing that it no longer mattered. She marched across the tall grass behind 50-52 Gorbeau and directly towards the creek in the woods, her bare feet slapping clumsily on the packed, sporadically grass-covered soil. The morning was muggy and warm, and the sky was brilliantly blue, but she did not care to notice any of this. She walked with purpose; what that purpose was she was not sure.
As soon as she reached the water's edge, she sat herself down, threw her feet into the water, leaned over against the closest tree, and began to cry. She cried as hard as she ever had, until her tiny body shook and her face was screwed up into a shade of purple. She collapsed over onto the ground, getting dirt all over herself, but she could be covered in mud and not care less at the moment. There was nothing around for miles right now to her.
She cried for Azelma, for everything the girl was and everything she would be missing. It was so cruel of God, Eponine scorned, to create such a beautiful day for Azelma to die on. Her sister had never been one to care for nature and beauty (if it were not her own or that of a passing man), but Eponine knew, she just knew, that if Azelma had recovered she might have paid more attention. A million tears flowed for the future Azelma was not to be a part of. A million more came as Eponine's mind retraced the past; not the days in this hideous neighborhood, but those at the inn in Monfermeil. She closed her eyes and saw the red hearth rug before the fireplace, the fluffy cat all dressed up in doll clothes, the boisterous laughter of the guests at the table as Eponine and Azelma sat playing in the living room. Each memory was like a bullet. Then, Azelma had been a scampering, naïve child, less mischievous as her sister, but ten times more eager and wide-eyed at the world. She had been pretty and plump, with blonde ringlets that looked like a heavenly light, and dimpled elbows and knees. Eponine cried harder upon the thought that that little child had died a long time ago.
"Maman," she cried aloud, her voice high and helpless like that of a child. "I want you here!" The sound rang off the surrounding trees, coming back to Eponine's ears like a call from up the path, but bringing no one with it. She cried harder when she thought that no one was coming for her right now. Her mother was gone, her father would not come even if he were still living in the Gorbeau tenement, Gavroche was somewhere wandering the streets by himself, and Marius was out searching for his friend, Monsieur Joly.
Marius. Eponine summoned up a fresh spring of tears for him. His face popped into her mind the way it had looked last night, in the half-light of the early morning, as he leaned in close to her and whispered to her. He had said everything would be okay. Had she been in her right mind and had Marius been someone else, Eponine would have felt resentment that his words had turned out to be false. He, however, had nothing to do with it, and Eponine knew that. She just kept hearing his words, and seeing his face, and the tears kept coming, especially when the kiss replayed itself in her mind. She could almost feel it again, like a keepsake locked up in a treasure box. He loved her! she thought with a muffled joy. If he did not, then why would he have kissed her? She recalled her reaction: Je t'aime, she had said. She knew she meant that, and wished he would assure her of the same thing. Her heart was bursting with so many things, including this very wish to hear him speak to her so that she could examine his words, possibly catching the answer.
But Marius was not here. A part of Eponine envisioned him coming down the path behind her all of the sudden, coming to hold her as he had last night. She tuned her ear in that direction. No sound met it. He was not coming; he did not even know she was here. Eponine rolled back over so her face was buried in the dirt, and she kept crying, more for herself now than anything. She deserved it just a little, she felt.
They did not have enough money for a burial.
Marius emptied his purse, and Eponine searched the tenement backwards and forwards, even the corner which housed Azelma's pallet, over which the girl's blanket had been thrown. Only the faint outline of a person lying beneath it was visible. Still, they came up short by a large sum. They would have asked Gavroche for help, as an eleven year old beggar was far more useful than one of seventeen, but the boy had not returned all day (it was now nearly seven o'clock in the evening). Eponine showed no worry on her brother's part; she understood his desire to stay as far away as possible from the Gorbeau building.
The earlier part of the afternoon had been spent looking into the matter, after Marius had returned from the café (he had been held up by questions and offers from friends that, from this standpoint, he realized he might have to accept). They had only found one cemetery in which they could afford to bury Azelma, a pitiful plot of land just down the street, home to bodies from families similar to their own. Still, there was the question of a casket. Out of ideas and unwilling to even consider the idea of working on the streets, Eponine suggested that Marius ask to borrow money from one of his friends. She knew that he considered himself above debt, but hoped that he believed this to be a noble enough cause to break out of that train of thought for once. To her surprise, he agreed to do just that. He headed down to the Musain around eight, traveling by fiacre, and returned an hour later with Jehan, Joly, and enough francs for a substantial casket.
The night went by in a whirl for Eponine. Joly and Jehan stayed with them in the tenement, both sleeping on the floor alongside Marius (none of the three actually slept, Eponine knew in her gut), while Eponine was forced upon the comfortable pallet near the window. To her surprise, she slept like a baby, despite the knowledge creeping into her mind that the body of her sister was lying only feet away from her. While asleep, she dreamed of Monfermeil. Gavroche must had come in some time during the night, for when Eponine awoke he was laying beside the older boys on the floor. They breakfasted on a loaf of bread brought by Joly, eating in complete silence out of awkwardness and unspoken respect.
The funeral took place at noon, in the rustic graveyard (hardly able to be called a cemetery) down the street. The gravedigger left immediately after having finished the grave, and lacking money for a real priest to speak, Marius was pressed to perform the informal ceremony. He spoke awkwardly and with little eloquence, keeping his eyes on the Thenardiers the entire time. Both Eponine and Gavroche spent the entirety of the event staring either into space or at their feet, and when Marius asked if anyone would like to say some words about their sister, neither of them spoke up. Not a person there knew quite what was to be said at a funeral. Marius did not remember his mother, and had not been acquainted with his father when the man died. Joly had been an only child with an uneventful childhood that passed with no less family than it had started out with. Even Jehan, with the poetic mind and the beautiful tongue for speech, did not have anything to say. He had not known Azelma until she had died.
It was another odd happening that in the wake of the freeing of a wonderful, youthful soul such as Azelma Thenardier, the funeral guests remained dead silent.