I often spill a tear over those not here,
But still they are so near.
Please ease my burden . . .
And I still remember a memory, and I weep
In my broken sleep.
The scars, they cut so deep . . ."
– ANATHEMA, "Sleepless"
The clock struck half past eleven, its soft chimes enough to rouse Marius from his reverie. He glanced up at it, then back out through the window. He could see the garden, beautiful by day, even more beautiful after night had fallen, and beyond that, through ornately-wrought iron bars, the rue des Filles du-Calvaire.
Letting the damask curtain fall again, he turned and looked about his study. Or what had been his study before Jean had learnt to walk. After Jean had learnt to walk, he had laid a stubborn siege on the room which no amount of distraction could belie, charming away a certain measure of its inherent gloom. Marius was content with this, merely learning by dint of harsh experience that any loose papers of interest or value had to be either locked in a cabinet or placed as far back on the desk as humanly possible (under a variable mountain of paperweights), and that leaving the desk's inkwell uncovered for any period of time when Jean was in the room and he was not, was perhaps not the most brilliant idea in the world.
Jean had seemed fine all day, and his appetite had been fairly good at supper. Cosette had put him down at half past eight, as usual, and he'd only woken up once before his parents went to bed themselves at a quarter to eleven. Marius had heard him coughing during the night and had gone to investigate, but the child was fast asleep again by the time he made it down the hallway to the nursery.
After stooping down to pick Jean's current favourite toy – a large blue crocheted bear – up off the floor and place it back in his bed, Marius had lingered, watching his son sleep. Sometimes his love for his son frightened him – its intensity filled him so much that it almost hurt. The only other person he felt that way about was Cosette. When he looked at them both, he wondered how much love a person was capable of feeling, giving, or receiving. Because sometimes he felt he was reaching his capacity, so overflowing with happiness that something would have to give way.
Not that he had been feeling extremely happy tonight. He never could, at this time of the year, but for some reason it seemed harder now than it ever had been before. Standing beside his son's bedside, he had had to really fight back his tears. Going back to his own bed immediately was unthinkable – if he did begin to weep then he would awaken Cosette, and even if he didn't, it seemed unfair to pollute their bed with his ancient grief. So he had taken temporary refuge in the study, and sat on the window-seat, pressing his hot cheek against the cool glass until he was able to breathe evenly again, and tears were no longer an immediate peril.
The light from his lamp cast velvet shadows across the wall, and he could smell the bowl of dusky roses Cosette had placed on his desk that morning. The scent was deceptively faint, and had had plenty of time to permeate the room. It was one of those sweet haunting smells which invariably makes one think of the past. But, then again, he had been thinking about the past all day. How could he not?
A few days previously, he had shocked himself with the sudden realisation that he could no longer recall the exact sound of Bahorel's laughter – he seemed to get it confused with Courfeyrac's. It was such a little thing but it haunted him nonetheless. He wanted to be able to remember them with perfect crystal clarity, as they had been before the horrors of June '32 descended. Because the only alternative was to remember them as they had been at the barricades.
The very last time he had seen his friends alive, they had been haggard, exhausted and afraid; they had reeked of sweat and blood and gunpowder. Then they had died. He remembered how Feuilly's limp body had tumbled down from the barricade to strike the ground, bleeding from half a dozen wounds. He remembered Combeferre's agonised cry as a bayonet was thrust into his stomach. Before the final stampede towards the Corinth had begun, he had briefly seen Bossuet, barely recognisable beneath the sabre-cuts slashed across his face, backed into a corner and trying to shelter Joly behind him as half a dozen Guards descended upon the two friends, muskets raised like clubs. He had not seen Enjolras die, but he had see Enjolras kill. And as he killed, even in the midst of that terrible maelstrom, there had been a distance and coldness and sadness in Enjolras' eyes that Marius would never forget.
That was not how he wanted to remember his friends. To remember them like that seemed an insult, a profanity. But today he was unable to get those visions out of his head. Usually, paying a visit to Sainte-Marguerite helped – it was such a tranquil place. Today it had not, and he was not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was the weather; the heat and the pressure of the impeding storms were almost unbearable at times. Perhaps it was what Louison had given to him at the Musain that morning. Some of his friends had inevitably left various personal belongings behind the last time they walked out of the Café Musain. After the massacre, Louison had hoarded it all even though she was unsure what to do with it. Marius had half-meant to bring the sheet of yellowing paper home with him, but had ultimately left it on Prouvaire's favourite table, in the room of memories where it belonged.
Marius wished that he hadn't got to thinking about Sainte-Marguerite. Thoughts of the crow in the apple tree had been plaguing him all evening, and he was not entirely sure why. It hadn't seemed like an ordinary bird, it was too large and vivid and sure of itself. It hadn't seemed shy of him at all. When Marius had spoken aloud to it, it had cocked its head and looked down at him as if it were actually listening. Of course, a perfectly rational explanation was that it had been someone's pet and escaped, or been released.
He had told Cosette about the bird on the trip back home, and she had smiled at the comparison he drew between it and a sentry outside Versailles. But he felt that there was something about the bird that needed explaining.
A soft familiar tread in the hallway brought him out of his thoughts and back into the study. Within moments, he could see the soft glow of another lamp spreading its gentle rosy light through the darkness, but did not move. She would find him.
Marius was used to having his breath taken away by his wife's beauty, but the painful pleasure of it never diminished. The glow in the hallway grew brighter, and then she stepped into the study. She brought more light into the room than a million lamps ever could. She held the lamp in both hands before her, its flickering light making her soft skin glow with an almost ethereal radiance, and her auburn hair blaze like a living flame. Shrouded in her nightgown and cambric wrapper with her hair about her shoulders, she looked almost like a child. But there was nothing childlike about the quiet dignity with which she always carried herself, or the mysterious glory of her eyes.
"I thought you'd be here," she said quietly.
"I . . . I heard Jean coughing, so I just went to check that he was all right. I couldn't come back to bed immediately, I needed to think some things through. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apologise. But please come back to bed."
As Marius picked up his own lamp and followed his wife, he wondered for the thousandth time how there could be so much pain in this world, and yet so much beauty.
I can't believe it. It's still here. And as squalid as I left it.
This apartment on the fifth floor of the once-almost-elegant Vayons building had become Grantaire's home more than a lifetime ago, in a past he could barely remember. If he concentrated, he could recall two faceless youths he had once called friends, and how the three of them had come to Paris and purchased the space with grand plans to turn it into a den of luxury fit to rival Casanova's. What fate had befallen those two hardly seemed important now, but the word "marriage" seemed to swim through his mind. Whatever had become of them, soon only he remained as Paris days and nights blurred into one another, the empty bottles piled up, and the threads holding his life together slowly unravelled.
The fact that the rooms had remained unoccupied all this time was really no mystery at all: Grantaire's tenancy in the building had coincided with its gradual decline. Countless duels, drunken brawls and the occasional dramatic suicide of some unknown artist too delicate to last in this cruel world might contain traces of glamour for the most dissipated and broken-down of bohemians and dilettantes, but the average Parisian found the Vayons environs a little too extreme for personal taste. As Grantaire slipped through the lobby, unseen by the drowsing concierge, and up the flights of stairs, he noted that the atmosphere of decay surrounding the Vayons had flourished nicely in his absence. Once-plush carpets were now threadbare and stained, cracks made the ceilings look like ancient maps, odd boots and tarnished platters (some still bearing half-eaten meals from weeks ago) were left outside closed doors. In addition, it looked as though every other tenant had passed out in the hallway before even making it back to their rooms tonight.
Only three of Grantaire's friends had ever spent a night in the Vayons building with Grantaire. It had been after a particularly wild party, and the four men had returned to Grantaire's address, as that was the closest. Joly had been in a state of alcohol-induced unconsciousness for the duration of the stay, for which he had been quietly grateful. Bossuet spent the night muttering quietly about the bloodstains on the carpet in the hall. Courfeyrac remarked for months afterwards how he still had the occasional odd nightmare. Far from being insulted by his friends' reaction to his living quarters, Grantaire had been perversely pleased. Only he, out of any of them, could have flourished in such squalid surroundings, like a particularly unlovely noxious weed extending its tendrils into a steaming marsh. Truth be told, he could have afforded something better. But moving always seemed like too much of a bother.
Gaining entrance into the rooms had not been a problem. Not because the crow had provided assistance, Grantaire had simply pulled away the dusty boards nailed across the door. It had taken him a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Then he was able to stumble cautiously across the room to the window, and fling the thick and strange-smelling curtains aside. Moonlight filtered through the clouds and the grimy window and he looked about what had been his home.
No surge of fondness or nostalgia assailed him, as he half-expected that it might. These rooms were nothing but a sepulchre now, housing something that was long-dead, the person that he had once been. There was nothing left here that he cherished or desired.
Well, almost nothing.
"I need a drink," the boy had said.
Immediately, the crow had had horrible visions of the boy stumbling into a crowded tavern wearing only the ragged coat and of course having no money. Having just witnessed the sort of damage the boy was capable of inflicting, the crow felt that a full-scale brawl was a little beyond what it was capable of dealing with at this stage of the proceedings.
So, the boy had stumbled off into the city, stonily ignoring the birds attempts to communicate. It soon became apparent that the boy had a destination in mind – but the crow had not been expecting him to return "home". Sometimes they did, true, but usually because the atrocities they had suffered had been carried out there. The boy had already run that first gauntlet, in the back room of the Café Musain. From what the crow could decipher of its charge's tortured and fuzzy thought process, home could offer no comfort or answers to these unspeakable questions.
At first, it had thought the boy was returning to the Musain. But this was not so – he turned an unexpected corner and walked through the front door of a building with a crumbling façade.
Only when the boy squatted down at the foot of a bed (knotted with stained bedclothes on which you could almost see the mould growing) and began rummaging through the chest, had the crow understood. Wonderful. He's an addict. Stubborn, in denial about the whole thing, and an addict to boot. So, alcohol had served the boy has his escape from reality during his life. Only natural that he would recourse to it now. But he was in for a very unpleasant surprise.
It took him a few moments to remember where he had placed them, but he found them soon enough. Flinging open the large chest that squatted at the foot of one of the beds – there were two, so Grantaire had a choice as to which he collapsed onto in the early hours of the morning – and scrambled about furiously amongst the bundles of clothes. Like all objects left in an enclosed space for a long period of time, they felt heavy and inexplicably cold to the touch. But at the bottom of the chest lay what he was looking for.
Whenever he was in money, Grantaire invested in alcohol and squirreled it away, knowing that if he could resist the temptation to drink it on the spot, he would be grateful at a later date. He'd forgotten how long it was before he died that he'd hidden the three bottles of brandy in the chest. A couple of weeks, perhaps. Maybe more. He picked one of them up, and held it to the dim light.
The brandy was not the best in the world. Chances were, it would rip the lining of his throat away. But it would do what he needed it to do – burn comfortingly within him before knocking him senseless. It would blot everything out – even if it for just a few hours – and that was what he wanted right now. And there was nothing now standing between him and this comforting and familiar type of oblivion. Only one thing had been able to stab through the alcoholic fog he was so used to shrouding himself in, and now that thing was gone forever.
Five years amongst the dead didn't appear to take away from over half a lifetime of experience – Grantaire pulled the cork out of the first sleek, dark bottle with his customary expertise.
A clatter of wings and a dark shadow he could just see out the corner of his eye moved forward a few inches.
if i told you not to drink that would you even listen to me
Grantaire swirled the liquor around inside the bottle. He didn't look at the crow. "Probably not."
thought so
Grantaire raised the bottle in a mocking toast. "To absent friends," he said bitterly.
Then he drank deeply.
The first heavenly swallow made him gasp as it burned its way down. He lowered the bottle waited in anticipation for the blissful glow to begin tingling its way through him.
But it didn't happen. The burning sensation subsided, leaving him as cold as he had been before.
That can't be right.
He took another swig from the bottle, unaware of the crow's eyes fixed upon him. This time it didn't even burn – it was as if he were drinking water. The cloying taste of the liquor filled his mouth, but there was no sensation whatsoever. Panicked, he continued to drink from the bottle, unaware that much of the liquor was streaming down his chin and dripping onto the floor. He drank so fast that he felt physically ill, dizzy even. But the elixir of oblivion refused to work its magic on him.
NOTHING. NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NO –
The crow was looking solemnly up at him.
you won't find any comfort there i'm afraid
With a strangled roar, he smashed the half-empty bottle against the floorboards, not caring that he was soaking himself further in the liquid. The crow squawked at the violent outburst and flapped to a safe distance. Holding the broken bottle by its neck, Grantaire staggered to his feet and began to move towards the bird. He stopped almost immediately, knowing the action to be futile – the bird could fly, he could not. The broken bottle continued to drip bad brandy onto the floor, and he was standing in a small puddle of it. He could smell it on his coat and skin and taste it in his mouth. But he couldn't feel it.
After a few moments, he became aware that he was standing in the centre of the room and looking at the tall mirror that leaned against the wall near his bed. The mirror was as dusty and stained as everything else in the room, but he could see himself clearly enough. Sweeping the hair out of his eyes, he tried to regard himself dispassionately, but felt bile rising in his throat. Oh, it wasn't just his ugly countenance, he'd grown used to that long ago. But how could he possibly be standing there, large as life and twice as hideous while others far more worthy – while he – lay in the cold earth?
He saw the face in the mirror contort with rage and grief, the eyes fill with tears once more. A strange wail distracted him, and he realised that it was coming out of his own mouth. Almost as if what was happening in the mirror had nothing to do with him, he watched as his reflection stretched out its arm, pale and white against the dark tattered coat, the fingers on the hand splayed and rigid. He watched as the reflection raised its other hand – the hand holding the broken bottle – and brought it screaming down, slashing the waiting arm wide open from wrist to elbow.
The agony brought him back into his body, immediate and exquisite. He gasped as the cold glass sliced through skin and muscle, and felt the sharp edge scrape against raw nerve and bone. Collapsing to his knees, all the bells of Hell ringing in his ears, he let the bottle drop to the floor and roll away. The pain . . . for a split second it was so great he thought he might pass out. Blood rushed out of the gaping wound, he could actually feel it pumping out in time with his hammering heartbeat, the pulse echoing in his wrists and temples. The blood stained the already-filthy coat and dripped onto the floor, soaking into the dusty floorboards. He could smell it, and the smell and the pain cut through the dark mist enshrouding him, dissipating it. This was what he needed – a physical pain that matched his soul's torment, and made it remotely tangible. It occurred to him that if he could slash his other arm open – or even his throat – then perhaps this would all be over in a matter of moments.
In that blissful and terrible moment, he felt peace.
But then things began to go horribly wrong.
The brilliant blinding pain began to diminish to a steady throb. His arm, hanging uselessly in his lap, began to tremble uncontrollably, and there was that strange buzzing in his ears again. Then, slowly at first, then faster, the bleeding decreased, and that which flowed out grew thicker, and in five or six heartbeats it had congealed. Before his very eyes, the torn flesh of his inner arm began to close over – starting at the wrist and working up the arm. He could see muscle growing, large veins and smaller vessels writhing like little snakes as they knotted together before vanishing from view under his healing skin. The shock was so great that the process was over before he realised it. Within a matter of seconds, all that was left on his trembling arm was a large pale scar indicating where the damage had once been.
This . . . this can't be.
Numbed, he looked down at his coat, at the floorboards. There were the bloodstains – proof that he hadn't imagined the self-inflicted wound. Blood glinted on the jagged edge of the broken bottle. Again, he looked at his arm. The scar grinned back at him like a mocking mouth.
"What's going on?" he asked aloud, before he realised he had spoken.
He could hear the crow beating its wings behind him.
finished with the self indulgence yet boy
"What?" He looked around. The crow was perched on the rim of the open chest, nonchalantly preening. Shaking like the proverbial leaf, he held his arm up. "What's the meaning of this?" He couldn't stop his voice from trembling.
The crow let him wait a few moments before responding.
i was going to try to find a way to work it into the conversation but you beat me to it certain physiological constraints of what is commonly termed the human condition now no longer apply to you
Why did the bird talk in riddles all the time? "I don't understand."
The bird stopped preening and looked at him.
how can i explain this the good news is guns and knives in the hands of bad people are no longer quite the threat they used to be the bad news is that should you get sick of all this throwing yourself out a window or under the wheels of a speeding fiacre or slashing yourself open with say a broken bottle won't have quite the desired effect
The crow watched steadily as the boy blinked, absorbing this information. Sometimes the sensitive approach wasn't the best – you had to get straight to the point, be brusque with them, even. The magical-healing-properties concept was always terrifying – and quite rightly – but it was worse if they had to discover it courtesy of a self-inflicted injury. Oh well, at least he hadn't tried throwing himself into a fire like the last one had . . . The boy would be grateful later on, when he was tussling with people who would like nothing better than to kill him. But for now, perhaps it would be best to let the shock sink in.
It watched as the boy rose slowly to his feet. For a moment he remained terrifyingly still in the moonlight. His thoughts were temporarily unreadable which made the crow uneasy – it wasn't good when you couldn't work out what was going through their heads. Finally, the boy lifted his head. The crow was relieved to see his eyes dry of tears, but the slackness of his face was disturbing. The boy looked at his reflection once more, then looked away. Then he looked down at the coat he was wearing, stained and damp with brandy and blood. Once more the crow felt an overwhelming surge pity for its charge – it looked like he was finally beginning to understand that there was no way out of this hell but through. The boy looked back at his reflection, and there was a calmness in his eyes the crow had not yet seen. Silently he unbuttoned the coat, and without taking his eyes away from the two staring back out of the murky glass, he let it fall heavily to the floor and stepped away from it.
As he moved across the room, he kicked the bloodstained bottle out of the way.
Moving with that same calmness and precision, the boy crossed past the crow and disappeared through a door the crow had not yet noticed. It thought about following him, but decided against it. He returned in a matter of minutes, wearing a pair of black trousers – evidently new as of five years ago – and a pair of black boots rather less new. He remained eerily silent as he crossed the floor towards the chest. The crow squawked and flapped to a safer distance as the boy knelt down in front of the chest.
Grantaire sighed, without looking at it. "Keep your feathers on," he said. "I'm just looking for a clean shirt." At which point he began rummaging through the chest.
The crow remained silent, merely watching. The boy was calmer now, definitely, which was a good thing.
All of a sudden, the boy gasped and recoiled. For a moment the crow wondered if there was some noxious little creature lurking in the chest that had bitten him or something, but then the boy slowly withdrew a garment which, upon hopping up for a closer look, turned out to be a dark red waistcoat. At first the crow didn't understand the significance of it, but then it looked at the boy's face.
Grantaire's eyes were wide and staring, and the breath had caught in his throat. Completely numbed, he held the waistcoat in trembling hands as if it were the Shroud of Turin, unable to believe that it was still here. He could have sworn that he'd thrown it out after that terrible day in April 1832.
There was a simple reason why Grantaire had professed to be so capable of what Enjolras required – he simply had not expected Enjolras to take his offer seriously. Consequently he had had to work hard to cover up his dismay when the man had uttered those fateful words, "I'll give you a trial." As he ran at breakneck speed back to his apartment to find the waistcoat, he had tried to convince himself that he was perhaps capable of what he had claimed. That perhaps there was a chance to redeem himself in Enjolras' eyes, or at least start to. He looked at the other man carefully as he showed him the red waistcoat and marched resolutely out the door once more, but had been unable to read anything in his expression.
All the way to the Barriere du Maine, he tried to formulate what he could possibly say to the men there when he believed in none of it himself. The idea was utterly ridiculous and he knew it – surely Enjolras knew it as well. Indeed, he considered giving up the idea altogether and just not returning to the Musain for a sensible period of time. But that thought was intolerable. Surely he could say something to the workers. Either that or bribe the whole room of them into telling Enjolras that he'd said something.
The workers in the Café Richeau fell silent as Grantaire strode through the door. Many of them knew him, and he saw smirks and raised eyebrows at the sight
of his uncharacteristic getup.
"What's this?" a hulk of a man named Richards chuckled. "The golden boy got drunkards running his errands now, eh?"
The remark was made in jest, but it struck home just the same. In that moment, Grantaire became supremely aware how hopeless the task ahead was. It came down to a choice between surrendering gracefully or embarrassing himself further. Not a difficult choice, really. Enjolras would be furious, but he'd been furious before, hadn't he? So, he pulled up a chair at Richards' table, and joined in the game of dominoes. Why should I care what Enjolras thinks? he asked himself resentfully. He doesn't care about me, so why the hell should I care about him?
But life was hardly that simple.
That night after returning home, he tore the waistcoat off in anger and stuffed it into the chest. He then flung himself onto the bed and spent the night replaying the day's events over and over in his head, knowing how nothing could have been changed.
Against his better judgement, he returned to the Musain the next day, fully aware that Enjolras would be there. Glances from the others informed him that news of what had happened the previous afternoon had spread – glances that were knowing, amused, horrified and concerned – but he maintained his confident swagger, whilst inwardly wondering what Enjolras would do when he registered the failed experiment had walked through the door. He steeled himself for a barrage of insults or reprimands – perhaps today was the day that Enjolras would resort to physical violence.
Enjolras was speaking to Combeferre when Grantaire entered. Grantaire hovered expectantly, he all but cleared his throat to herald his presence. Finally, Enjolras turned around in his seat to regard the new arrival. He looked at Grantaire for perhaps all of two seconds, then turned around again and went back to his conversation.
He didn't speak to Grantaire, or even look at him, for a week.
The boy was rocking back and forth on his heels, his face buried in the cool, soft cloth. Perched on the bedpost, the crow looked down at him with a certain measure of sympathy. The vision had been startling in its clarity, and the boy had not been expecting it either.
he meant the world to you didn't he
Grantaire's voice was muffled by the fabric. "He was the world to me."
a >world worth fighting for
Finally, Grantaire lifted his head. His dark eyes were still wet with tears as he regarded the crow for a moment. Then he rose to his feet, swiftly and silently. Crossing back to the centre of the room, he stood in front of the mirror and regarded his reflection once more. This time there was no rancour, only a grim determination. No point fighting against any of this anymore. The time to prove himself had come. No way out but through . . . The dark eyes bore back into him, and he saw the flames leaping behind them.
The fabric whispered through his fingers, and now he knew what he had to do. Slowly and carefully, he donned the waistcoat, and felt the material slide comfortingly across his cold skin. Adjusting it across his shoulders, he kept his eyes fixed on his reflection as he smiled wryly. Still didn't look remotely like a revolutionary despite the colouring. Red and black. They'd been the colours of Enjolras' world – and now they were the colours of his.
"The last time I wore this, I'm afraid I disappointed you rather," he said aloud. Then he swallowed. "But I won't do it again. That is a promise."
His second-best greatcoat, also black, was hanging on a hook on the wall. Taking it off, he shook the dust off it before putting it on. He'd need it – chances were it would start raining again. Giving his reflection one last dispassionate glance, he turned and made for the door. The crow flapped after him, landing on his shoulder once more. He didn't need to tell it that he would never return to this place.
The crow felt the new sense of purpose surging through Grantaire's body, a new heat building behind his eyes and burning in his heart. The second phase had begun.
did anybody ever tell you red's your colour
As he strode down the hall towards the stairs, Grantaire laughed a short, terrible laugh. "It wasn't mine. It was his."
same thing now
"Sure looks that way to me."