It's the chasm of misery.
And once you have bitten the core,
You will always know the flavour –
The split second of divinity."
– FAITH NO MORE, "The Real Thing"
When Eloise Josse woke to see the crow sitting on the foot of her bed, she had thought that she was still dreaming.
"Is it time?" she asked it.
The crow did not reply, and that was how she knew that this was not a dream. It gurgled in its throat and looked urgently at her, head cocked.
The man in her bed was still asleep. He had been drinking – in his deep sleep he would remain. For a few more hours at least. Her wrapper lay coiled on the floor, so she reached down and draped it about her shoulders. She took up the lamp sitting on her bedside table and she walked on bare silent feet out of her apartment, down the hall to the stairs.
There was no need to attire herself decently for this short walk. Chances were she would see nobody, and even if she did they would not be surprised. They knew what she was and who she was. The crow fluttered ahead of her, leading her, but there was no need. Eloise knew where she was going.
The fair-haired student had lived in No. 40, the room almost immediately above her own.
She had been going up the stairs and the student met her on the way down. She lowered her eyes modestly, tried to pass, but he stopped her. She looked up at him, and his face was grave.
"You are Mademoiselle Josse, yes?"
She nodded. Not that many people called her that.
He held out a key to her.
"When the rent on your apartment runs out, you can move into mine. It's been bought and paid for."
She took the key. What else was there to do? "Why are you doing this? Where are you going?"
His eyes flickered. "There's going to be fighting in the streets. You and your family should stay indoors."
"You're going to the funeral."
The student nodded. "If it's not too much trouble, could you please feed the cat? I've left some money for milk and food on my desk."
With that he was gone, and she never saw him again.
He had known about her family's money troubles – her father had been killed by a bull at the slaughterhouse where he worked and her mother had taken ill after another miscarriage. The child, who would have been her brother, had been absolutely perfect. Only he was small enough to lie curled up in the palm of her cupped hand. Her mother died in the winter of 1834 and her young sister had left with a man who promised to marry her. She had not seen Katherine since, so perhaps he had.
Eloise did move into the student's apartment, after her mother died. She saw no need to shift the furniture around – it served its purpose where it was – and she never touched the books. There had been money on the desk just as he said would be, and he left a note saying that she could sell his clothes if she liked, for whatever money they would bring. So she had, but she had kept his papers and journals much as she had kept his books, half-wondering if somebody would come back one day and want them. The cat had stayed around too, which surprised her at first. She tried calling it by various names, wondering if he had given it once. Either he had not or she was unable to guess it, so she began calling the cat Mariolle. It even started coming when she called, or would be waiting for her when she came up the stairs.
At first Eloise had planned to use the upstairs room for business, because it was larger. But when she thought about the student she realised that she was quite unable to use his bed for such a purpose. So whenever she brought men back to the Rougemont, she took them downstairs to her old room. The system worked well. Having the luxury of a room reserved exclusively for that, she was able to fool herself for whole days at a stretch that what she did had absolutely nothing to do with who she was. That some of the other women who lived in the Rougemont did not resent her and that some of the men did not spit on her skirts during the day and then come to heave themselves on top of her at night.
The dreams about the crow and the student had begun the previous spring. At first they were hardly important figures – she'd be walking through the park and see the crow sitting in the branches of a tree, or she would be waiting for customer to approach her and see the young student hurry by in his usual garb, books tucked under his arm. But as time passed they became more significant. Often the crow would talk to her, tell her that she had to prepare for a homecoming. She would ask who was returning home and the crow would only say "Soon," and spread its wings and fly away, and she would jerk awake in the dark.
The most lucid of the dreams had only been three weeks ago, so real that she thought it was actually happening. She walked up the stairs to No. 40 and found the door already open. She entered the apartment and the young man named Enjolras was sitting in the large armchair with the cat on his lap. His face was livid and his clothes were stained with blood and gunpowder. She knew that he was dead. He said to her, "If it's not too much trouble, will you please feed the crow? I've left my watch on the desk." She replied that there was no watch. The student placed the cat down on the floor and rose to his feet. "I won't be coming back," he told her, "but someone else will. Look to the crow." She was sure he was about to tell her something more but then she awoke and the room was still and soft with moonlight.
"It won't be him," she said aloud, her voice seemed deafening in the silence. There might be no one in here – the door could be locked.
It was not.
Ragged shreds of courage falling away, she almost turned then and there, back to the bed where her latest demon lover slept. Of all the things to be afraid of, she chided herself. And opened the door.
Lying in the centre of the floor was a man. Her heart leapt to her mouth . . . but it wasn't he.
It was a stranger. She advanced cautiously for a closer look, wary and ready to run should he spring to his feet. A few feet nearer and she saw that was not a concern – the man was in a dead faint.
"Is this my visitor?" she asked the crow. She received only a caw for reply.
She placed her lamp down on the floor and settled down by the man to wait for him to awaken.
Although she had seen plenty worse, this man was not handsome. She placed his age between twenty-five and thirty. He was dressed entirely in black save for a red waistcoat with no shirt beneath. Although he was only of medium height she could tell that he would be strong – maybe savage too, judging by his face. She reached down and placed a hand in front of his mouth and nose to check for breath.
It was cold.
She withdraw the hand hastily and resumed her quiet watch. She wondered how this man would have known the other, Enjolras. She supposed that she'd find out soon enough.
And all of a sudden his eyes were open and he was looking up at her.
At first she wondered numbly whether the man was blind – he appeared to be looking straight through her. Then something changed and the eyes flickered, came alive. They were dark, much as she had expected them to be. Eloise remained perfectly still, allowing the man to make the first move.
He did, sitting up slowly and painfully. Winced as though he had struck his head when he fell.
The crow hopped across the floor and stood beside him, looking at both of them.
The man looked back at her with that same strange gaze. She was sure he could see her now, but at the same time he was seeing something else.
"Who are you?" she asked him quietly. Unsure of what else there was to know.
The man looked at her for a long moment. His expression was unreadable.
"Call me Lazarus," he said at last. And then, "Do you live here, mademoiselle?"
"I . . . Yes, I do." Some of the time, anyway. This could be a little too difficult and not important enough to explain, so she left it at that.
"And what is your name?"
"Eloise Josse."
Grantaire looked at the young woman sitting less than a foot from him. Skin like porcelain that glowed in the light of the lamp, with heavy-lidded eyes as dark as green glass. Her face was heart-shaped, framed with dark heavy hair that tumbled down over her shoulders. Her crimson wrapper was gathered around her waist and the chemise she wore left little to the imagination.
The woman was beautiful.
Once upon a time, Grantaire would have cared.
But now his eyes were adjusting to the sudden light and he was still inwardly reeling from the images he had seen when he touched the cat. The cat too had sensed something past between it and the man, for it had swiped at him with its claws, squealed and fled back underneath the desk. He could sense its presence now, tense and afraid and curious.
He had to look around the apartment to assure himself that he was here in the present with only the crow for company, and not witnessing the atrocity exhibition that had taken place in the winter of 1831. What they did to him . . . The air still ringing with thuds and shouts and cries, he looked back at the woman.
"How long have you lived here?" he asked her.
Her gaze did not waver. "Since your friend died."
"So you knew Enjolras, then."
"You could say that."
Grantaire thought for a moment. Decided that he might as well ask. "Did you sleep with him?"
Eloise Josse's eyes flashed. "No!" A strange bitter smile twisted her lovely mouth. "I was fifteen when he went away. Don't get me wrong, I thought him very handsome. But he rarely spoke to me – only when we passed each other on the stairs."
Another little girl holding a torch for the golden boy, and this one a neighbour . . . Grantaire almost had to laugh at the thought.
The woman – girl, really – rose to her feet and he rose too. She looked up at him without fear, only a wary sort of curiosity.
"Tell me who you really are," she whispered.
Grantaire shrugged. "I have."
"No, you just gave me a false name."
"Not as false as you think." Grantaire stepped away from her then. "You know all you need to know – Enjolras was a friend of mine."
This man . . . what was it about him? Maybe I am going to wake up in a few moments after all. "Then tell me, Lazarus, why were you called forth?"
He looked sharply at her – was she mocking him?
The crow flapped its wings and cawed. They both looked at it.
"You knew I was coming, didn't you?" Grantaire said quietly, almost afraid to ask the question at all.
The young woman nodded.
"How did you know?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Grantaire laughed a short, barking laugh. "You'd be surprised the things I've started to believe in the last few hours."
She looked at him closely. He was telling the truth. "Alright then. I dreamed about you. The crow, it told me you were coming."
Eloise was not expecting what came next. The man looked away from her and back at the large black bird. It cawed again. It was impossible to miss what happened between man and crow – communication. Then the man called Lazarus looked back at her. There was something new in his eyes now and she was not sure what it was.
"Would you please let me into his bedroom?" the man asked.
She considered for a moment and then smiled. "On one condition."
"And what's that?" he snapped. Obviously not wanting to play games.
But neither did she. "Tell me your name."
The man was silent for another long moment. Finally he said, "My name was Alain Grantaire."
"Was?" she repeated.
"Was. Is. And shall be ever after." Suddenly the man smiled and his entire face changed. He almost looked pleasant. "Now will you permit me entrance, fair lady?"
She nodded and crossed the floor in front of him. She carried a key which she used to unlock the door. The crow followed them both.
"I doubt you'll find anything of value," Eloise told the man. "Anything of his I didn't sell or throw out, you'll find in the bottom drawer of the bureau. There are candles and matches by the bed. Now I'm afraid I have to go. If you want any more of my time, you'll have to start paying for it like everyone else." He glanced at her, obviously surprised. That was a pleasant change. "Do whatever you have to do. Maybe I'll see you again, maybe I won't. Good-night, Monsieur Grantaire."
With that she withdrew.
Grantaire stared about the bedroom in silence. The crow flapped to the bureau and picked its way carefully through the hairbrushes and ribbons and bottles of scent.
Grantaire let out a low whistle. "Well, Enjolras," he said. "Looks like a woman found her way into your bed after all."
He found the matches and candles where the young prostitute had said they would be, and then crossed to the bureau and knelt down to open the bottom drawer.
The crow looked down at him.
i can't explain why she dreamed about me
"You can't or you won't?"
i can't i promise you boy i never went to her some people just sense these things and obviously she's one of them
The boy grunted in reply and opened the drawer. The crow watched its charge and decided not to mention that such people could just sense these things for a reason.
Grantaire told himself that he would learn nothing here that he had not learned in the main room during those blood-drenched moments before he passed out. Amongst Enjolras' old papers and journals and letters he would find only memories of what had once been – the cold embers left behind when a fire had been smothered and extinguished. Everything here was a testimony to something lost . . . and that was why everything here was so important.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Grantaire sifted clumsily through the contents of the drawer, all the more lost because he had absolutely no idea what he was looking for. Concentrating on the simple of task of picking up articles, identifying them, and then setting them aside, he was able to steady himself against the hideous images that threatened to leap up before him with every moment.
. . . The fist smashed across his face . . . The world exploded in a painful red miasma and he dropped to the floor, landing awkwardly with a cry of pain . . . Jeering jangling laughter echoed far above him . . . there was blood dripping down onto the floorboard . . . it was his . . . His gaze still blurred from the blow, he could see shadows, four pairs of boots gather on the floor about him . . . He tried to pull himself upright into a sitting position at least, and then a rough hand grabbed a fistful of hair and did it for him . . . who were these men . . . WHAT DO THEY WANT? . . .
Something near the back of the drawer, folded up in a piece of cloth. Grantaire reached for it, and as soon as his fingers grasped it he knew what it was.
Oh, dear God . . .
He never would have believed it. Enjolras had kept it.
I can't believe I forgot. Again!
Grantaire watched his breath curl in wisps before him in the cold air. He dug his hands deeper in his coat pockets, hoping that maybe he'd find some more money in them . . . like thirty francs or so.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He'd gone around to Bossuet and Joly's apartment that morning. Joly had been there, had been apologetic, saying that he and the Eagle had already bought a gift and split the cost between them. "I think he'll like it," Joly had continued. As though that were supposed to be some great comfort.
I don't know why I bother to get him anything anyway. It's not like he'll want anything. Not from me.
Grantaire actually learned that October fifteenth was Enjolras' birthday back in 1828. But never had he remembered the date in time to get him anything that he wasn't ashamed to give. He had remembered that morning in 1831 with a jolt – and knowing that he would be virtually broke until the end of the week. Everybody else that day was accounted for, except for Bahorel who was taking a three-day holiday in prison after getting into a drunken brawl with a couple of off-duty Guardsmen.
Grantaire counted the spare change in his right hand. Still three francs.
I could get him a book, maybe . . . or half a book.
The question being, of course, which one? Too hard to decide. And the Musain was only three streets away.
Or just the money. Oh God, what am I thinking???
Grantaire walked on quickly, kicking great clods of wet leaves out of his way. And then a miracle of sorts happened . . . he looked up at just the right moment and noticed a street vendor squashed between a scrivener's booth and a roasted chestnut stall.
He arrived at the Musain five minutes later, flushed, breathless, already deciding that this had been a stupid idea and he'd be even stupider if he actually went through with it. Enjolras completely ignored him as he entered – nothing unusual there. So Grantaire forced himself to walk up to Enjolras' table, and both Enjolras and Feuilly stopped talking, looked up at him with raised brows.
Without saying a word – for once having none to say – Grantaire threw the gift down on the table and headed straight for his own, not looking back and intensely aware of the curious stares. He sat down and tried not to look, and Bossuet had to ask him whether he wanted a drink three times before he noticed that the man was talking to him at all.
Finally . . . with the first glass of wine inside him, he looked across the room at Enjolras' table.
Enjolras was looking straight back at him. His expression was unreadable.
He kept it.
Grantaire held the papier-mache mask with trembling hands. There had been several characters to choose from, but it had been this one he had seen first, this one he knew it had to be. A rendering of Apollo – proportions classically correct, stylised curls adorning the mask in lieu of hair. Hollow eyes and perfect parted lips enabling the wearer to see and speak. The entire mask coated with gold paint and then lacquered for durability. A cheaper version of the masks that actors wear – the stall had been outside a small theatre.
The crow hopped back on the bureau as the young man rose slowly to his feet. It cocked its head at the mask, not recognising it as any object that it knew. But the boy did though, and that was the important thing.
Grantaire looked at his reflection in the round mirror atop the bureau, swallowed, closed his eyes. And then with trembling hand he brought the mask up to his face. Its smooth cool contours slipped perfectly over his own. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the face of a young god staring back at him, its inscrutable beauty concealing the ugliness of his grief and hate. Only the eyes were recognisable as his own. They burned out from behind the mask with a fire that was as dark as Hell itself, and yet so, so pure.
Five faces, ugly with malice, had laughed and leered down at Enjolras, delighting in his pain and in his terror.
And now this face was going to return the favour.