Chapter Thirty-Six
Now This is How it Goes
For a minute, Éponine thought about just diving into the lake and swimming across, so she wouldn't have to ride with Erik in the boat. But that was silly. She couldn't swim. She would not allow him to speak as they crossed the lake. She was so tired, and she was still struggling against the overwhelming panic she had felt from the explosions—what was that about, anyway? Erik had done that? Had anyone been hurt? He said it was just a theatrical effect. But she didn't know if she could even trust anything he said any more. Her brain was reeling and spinning so much, and she was so tired, so very tired.
She stormed into the house ahead of him, into the drawing room. He fluttered about like a moth, lighting lamps, while she struggled to focus her mind. He gestured for her to sit, and she ignored him. He tried to gently grab her arms to lead her to a chair, and she roughly shoved him away. He put his hands up placatingly, giving her a few feet of space. She was shaking and felt weak all over, but she needed to be standing for whatever confrontation was about to go down.
"They won't go to the police," he said, hurriedly. "And if they did, the police would never know where to look. Besides, there's nothing to connect you to this, even if they were to find me. You won't go to jail, Éponine."
"Oh, how sweet. You'd protect your accomplice who knew nothing about it! What a gent you are!" As she spoke, she staggered over to the sideboard, where sat a half-empty bottle of wine. She gulped from it, hoping it would calm her.
"I—"
"How stupid, how utterly stupid you must think I am." She slammed the bottle down.
"Éponine—"
"Don't. Don't speak. Do not… Do not speak." It was such a struggle to get her breathing under control. "How much? How much was in that envelope?"
"'Éponine please understand—"
"HOW MUCH?"
"Twenty thousand francs." His voice was nearly inaudible.
"Twenty thous—" She felt a wave of weakness pass from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. Twenty thousand francs, she had held in her hand. Twenty thousand francs. She had never seen so much money in one place in her entire life, and she had casually plucked it from a pocket and placed it in his hand without counting it. "Twenty thousand francs?" The words were so hollow in her ears for such a massive sum of money as they signified to her.
Nothing from Erik.
It took some time for her to find her voice again. "A few sous here. A franc or two there. And once, a five franc piece from a very dear boy who was poor as a church mouse but had a heart of gold. That's all I got for my father. Twenty. Thousand. Francs. Every month?"
His silence was the only affirmative answer that she needed.
"No. You were right. You're not like my father. You're nothing like that," she said, in a strangled, gasping voice, as she tried to quell the panic and nausea that gripped her. "We—we had nothing. He did what he could, I suppose. He was just a common scoundrel, two-a-penny. You're extorting twenty thousand francs a month. Why? Erik, you could do anything, you—No!" He had been about to speak, and she interrupted him sharply. "No. Do not speak . I don't want to hear your voice, unless I ask you a question. You owe me that much, at least." She pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. Calm. She needed to be calm.
He was silent, and infuriatingly unreadable behind his mask.
"You could do anything else. You don't have to do this. You just—you want to do this." She slid her hand over the top of her head and let it come to rest on the back of her neck, digging her nails into the sensitive flesh there. Trying to bring herself into the moment. Trying to think. She just felt so numb and lost. The night when he'd asked for her help with this, he said he remembered her mentioning that she'd learned to pick pockets. So, that day when she'd stood there after a glass of wine and just laid bare all of the shameful and painful details of her pathetic life, he'd calmly made a mental note of the pickpocketing so he could use it later? When he'd sat silently staring into the fire afterward, as she stood sobbing and wishing he would speak, was that what he was thinking about? He didn't care for her at all, did he? She drew in shuddering breath after shuddering breath.
"'Éponine," Erik said, very softly and hesitantly. Cautiously stepping toward her as one might a wild animal, apt to flee at any moment. "You must let me explain. I should have told you, but I was afraid you would not understand. I am not as other people. I…I have had to live as I can."
She laughed bitterly, and it must seem strange to him. She was remembering that night in the Rue Plumet. "I have to live, I have to eat," her father had said, pleadingly. Her response had been, "Drop dead!" She didn't want Erik to drop dead, angry as she was. Still, the parallel was not lost on her.
"I am not really a wicked man," he said, almost as though he were trying to convince himself. "And it doesn't have to be this way. If you care for me just a little, we could have an ordinary life. Perfectly respectable. I would do whatever you say, I would find whatever means of living you approve of, Éponine…" He was about six feet away from her now. He held out his arms toward her, but did not approach any further.
With a fierce gesture, she motioned for him to be silent. He let his arms drop.
"You know," she said slowly, after some moments of silence, "if you had just asked me, I would have said yes. You could have just said, 'Éponine, I'm going to extort twenty thousand francs. Help me do it,' and I am properly pathetic enough that I would've said, 'Yes sir, what shall I do?' Even if I felt badly about it." She choked out another acidic laugh. "Because that's what I am, right? That's all I am to anyone. 'Oh, send the tapissier's daughter. She'll do it. She does whatever needs doing.' And I always did. I don't think it ever occurred to any of them that I was capable of saying no. Certainly never occurred to me, until the night that I finally did it. They were all so shocked that they just left me alone—what else could they do? Imagine, 'Ponine saying no! Sitting down and saying no, instead of saying yes and hating her life for it. They couldn't have been any more shocked." She laughed again, only it sounded more like a sob. "Yes, you could've just asked me. I've done stupider things for less money, and—and more dangerous things for love."
There. She'd said it.
He just stood there in silence. Even though she didn't want him to speak, there was something rage-inducing about him just standing there and saying nothing.
"But no. Instead, you lied to me. You even said, 'I promise.' And you probably think I'm blind, but I'm not. I just really, really wanted to trust you." She shook her head with a sad, shuddering little laugh. "How will I ever trust anything you say now?"
He looked at her helplessly. He had no answer. She genuinely wanted him to have an answer—an answer that was different from the one she already knew, but desperately wished wasn't true. The answer which was: she could not.
She could not trust him now.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and then decided on her course, even as it rent and shredded her heart to ribbons. "I want a thousand francs, and fare for a fiacre."
He looked at her stupidly.
"My cut," she explained. "And the dresses, which I am taking with me."
"You're leaving?"
She held out her hand. "A thousand francs, and my fare."
"Where will you go?" his voice was hollow and deeply shaken.
She shoved a laugh out past the sob waiting in her throat. "That's none of your concern. We go our separate ways now, and you don't concern yourself with me anymore. If we ever see each other again, you need not even recognise me. That's how it is. This is how it goes. We were just partners in crime. That's all."
The rest was a blur. Erik throwing himself on the ground, kissing the hem of her skirts, grasping, pulling, sobbing, pleading. She let herself go cold, retreating some place deep inside, thinking only of getting her things, which she shoved into a valise that she found in the bedroom, and of getting out. Getting out of there. Leaving him behind. Finding herself alone. In the dark. With money and fare for a cab, but no place to go.
