The next day he completely forgot church, but café was open as it always was despite that it was Sunday. It was always open.
Bahorel was there when Combeferre came in.
He acted as though he and Combeferre had never talked, but finally did come over.
"Would you like to see that poetry?"
Combeferre shivered.
"Surely."
Together, they went to the room Bahorel rented.
If it could be called a room.
It was small.
And very plain.
The floor and small desk and bed were cluttered with books and papers.
It had two small windows in one wall, which gave a lovely view of the stone wall of the building beside them. It was a plain wall. It was a boring wall. And Combeferre understood why Bahorel had so many books.
He sat lightly on the bed, avoiding papers.
"You sleep on this?"
"I move the papers."
Bahorel was looking through a stack of papers on the desk.
"I left those poems somewhere. Help me look."
Combeferre carefully stood and began searching through papers on the floor, stacking them as he went through them into neat piles.
Then he did the ones on the bed.
Then the ones everywhere else.
Bahorel was looking worried.
"But I read some only the other day."
He stood from where he was examining the papers in one stack.
"Here's poetry. Only he didn't write it. Someone else did. It rambles a bit. Did he have a pen name?"
Combeferre felt incredulous and unhappy and scared.
"No. And I'll never get him back."
Bahorel looked sympathetic.
"Then you should forget him."
Combeferre looked quickly up.
"What? I can't."
"Yes you can. And it would be better."
Bahorel stepped forward and touched Combeferre's hair.
Combeferre looked worried.
"I love him. I can't forget him. Not again. He needs to be remembered."
"You and I are the only ones who remember him. We could forget him together. It would be a beautiful finale"
He softly kissed Combeferre.
Combeferre pushed away from him.
"Bahorel!"
"Combeferre!"
Bahorel kissed him again.
Combeferre found the doorknob behind himself and quickly escaped.
Bahorel stood staring at the door, feeling rather hurt, somehow.
Combeferre fled to the streets.
He wandered almost purposefully until he found himself over the river Seine.
He stood there, lonely.
All he wanted was Jehan.
He didn't want Bahorel to treat him like that.
All he wanted was what he had.
The flute brought back memories.
But it didn't bring back Jehan.
Why the hell not?
What right did Grantaire have to take a man's existence?
A hand on his shoulder interrupted his thoughts.
He turned quickly.
"Oh. Bonjour, Feuilly."
"Bonjour. The river is lovely, isn't it?"
"I've always liked rivers."
They gazed down at it together.
"They're good to paint."
"You paint rivers?"
Feuilly smiled.
"Oh yes. Rivers and mountains and valleys and snow and people. Horses too. I've always painted horses."
Now Combeferre smiled too.
"And how do you come by models for horses?"
Feuilly yawned.
"Plenty go through the city."
"That true. And people?"
"I don't actually use models for people most of the time."
"Oh."
"I paint from memory. Things that pop into my head. I think of something and I paint it."
"That sounds nice."
"Yes, it is…"
They were both silent a moment the Feuilly spoke again.
"Artists, most, like to paint with models. They like passionate paintings. With rich colours. Lots of contrast."
Feuilly looked wistful and sad as he spoke.
"It's called Romanticism."
Combeferre glanced at him.
"Well, what do you paint?"
Feuilly glanced back at him.
"Beggars. Prostitutes. The streets. Dark paintings. When I'm not doing landscapes."
"Don't sell very well, do they?"
"No," he sighed, "No, they don't. Not well at all."
"I haven't seen any of your paintings."
"No, I guess not. Would you like to? All the others think me quite the curiosity."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you hear them?"
Feuilly sounded amused and bitter.
"Anytime they want anything, 'Ask Feuilly, he will know.'"
"Isn't that good?"
Feuilly continued though.
" 'I showed Mother that painting of the roof tops. She likes it quite a lot. Always acts so amused when she hears about you. You wouldn't believe the jokes we make.'"
"…Why?"
"I'm a curiosity, I suppose. Like the other day. Courfeyrac's cousin is going to Italy. Courfeyrac doesn't remember who painted the Annunciation. He also doesn't remember how many there are. So I'm the one they ask. And of course *I* know."
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"*You* try being a parrot."
"Oh…"
"I'm not valued as myself. I'm known by most as Courfeyrac or Joly or Bossuet or Bahorel's friend. Or I'm the noble revolutionary. A little poor, but still faithful. A bohemian. An artist."
Feuilly looked quickly at Combeferre.
"Which I am, of course. An artist. But when you say 'I love to paint' your immediately branded as knowing every painter and all of his works."
"But you do know a lot."
"Yes, I know a lot."
They were both silent for a while.
Then Feuilly sighed.
"Come to my place and see my artwork and gawk at it and say what a perfectly morbid painter I am?"
"Morbid is very good. I'm in a morbid mood."
"Ah. Nice rhyme."
They walked dismally back into the city, choosing the depressing streets to walk.
"Morbid is a state of being."
Feuilly disagreed.
"State of mind. That's why it comes out in your talk and work."
"But if it weren't a state of being how could it take the solid form of a painting or poem?"
"It does that because man is greedy and wants things so that he can see them"
Combeferre couldn't help but feel amused.
"You're saying that man should be content in just radiating Emotions from themselves to others?"
Feuilly looked disgruntled.
"Well, that's true. But it would work better in any case. Seeing as some people aren't affected by the Emotions in paintings but might be if it was just… er… *given* to them."
"But those people would be the people whose skin is so strong that you can't share your Emotions."
Feuilly nodded in agreement.
"But really, I should be arguing your side of the argument because as an artist I prefer to convey Emotion through sight."
"Musicians by sound."
"Chefs through taste."
"Emotion through taste?"
"Mm. If the chef liked someone he'd give it fuller flavour."
"And if he didn't?"
"Turnips. Cilantro."
"And if he were angry, pepper."
"Right. Of course, all we ate in Poland was cabbage."
"Oh, how repulsive!"
They both were highly amused and took a moment to get over laughing at the rather less than funny joke.
But it was funny because they were just over being depressed.
"What about smell?"
Feuilly smirked.
"Smell and taste are the same. Ever tried eating something and pinching your nose (I have often done this whilst eating the sacred cabbage)?"
"Yes, it doesn't have taste (sacred cabbage?)."
"(Mm)"
They walked on in silence a while then Feuilly glanced at Combeferre.
"I think that touch conveys Emotion the best. Fear, compassion, disgust, hate, desire, envy…"
At that moment beggars, all crying out for money, clawing, sobbing, wretched, attacked them.
They both quickly dug in their pockets for coins (though Feuilly had to dig a little deeper), which they quickly gave, both a little disturbed.
When the beggars were gone they each looked at the other.
Feuilly spoke what they both thought.
"Cheerful roads next time."
Combeferre nodded and half smiled.
Feuilly continued.
"It's not that you don't want to give to them, but the way they claw at you. The way you know they're half mad from cold and hunger and could hurt you. I hope Enjolras's crazy revolution works and there's no more of this."
"You know it won't work."
"Your right."
He sighed.
Combeferre felt a pity for both Feuilly and himself.
He touched the painter's shoulder and realized that he had been true about touch.
"You know, I feel the same way. About the beggars. All my life I've always been frightened of them."
"Everyone has something like that."
"Or a few, more likely."
"Things they never stop worrying about."
"Like if Enjolras will get caught."
"Like if my family in Poland is all right."
Combeferre looked quickly at him.
Feuilly noticed.
"My sisters, my aunt, my uncle, my cousins. My friends. They want Poland free as I do. When they wrote they said there was an insurrection. That was last year, too. I don't even know how they are. They want to own themselves. It's not like us with the king. They don't even have a Polish leader."
He paused.
"Have you ever moved?"
Combeferre looked at the ground
"I've lived in Paris all my life."
"Oh."
Feuilly looked up at the old building before him, which was where his room was.
"Come along."
He led Combeferre up old stairs and down a hall that was damp and smelled as though mildew grew there when it was warm.
Feuilly's room was somewhat better.
It had been vigorously cleaned, the walls scrubbed.
The floor was swept.
There were no dead bugs in the window as there were in most.
It was a dark room and a cold room, with a pipe going up one wall, which gave the most heat there was.
The bed was close to the pipe.
Below the window, so the light hit it, was an easel with a half finished painting on it.
Combeferre glanced at it.
"It's not finished yet," Feuilly explained. "It's the way I think of Patria."
"Unfinished?"
"No. I have her face done, you can see. Pained. You know. Tired. Old. Being hurt and saved by her children. I think I sketched her children in…"
Feuilly went over and began examining the painting.
"Ah, yes. There. Enjolras is the one sitting on the rooftop. See? He'll have gold hair. Cadmium yellow mixed with…"
Combeferre listened in amusement.
"These are the children that are hurting her. One has a musket to her head."
"Does it have a bayonet? Is he stabbing her?"
"Stabbing her in the head? No."
"Oh. Isn't that the style people like, though? Dramatic?"
"Treason? No. People don't pay for it. But I'll show you the ones I mentioned before."
Feuilly left his half finished painting and went over to a number of paintings lying against each other, propped on the wall.
"It's rather dark to see them. Would you like me to light the lamp."
"No thank you. Could I hold them to the window, though?"
"Surely."
Combeferre examined each painting carefully.
They were painful.
Paintings of things some people didn't know were there or ignored.
Paintings of hurt.
And he could see what Feuilly meant.
"They're amazing."
"Thank you."
"But I doubt people will be hanging them on their walls."
"On the day of the revolution I'll let the poor burn them for warmth."
"But Feuilly! They're too good! You'd be wasting-"
"No one will buy the paintings, but if the poor are warm for a few days, isn't that enough?"
"But people… People after us. They won't be able to understand this place without your paintings."
"There are writers."
"Feuilly."
"They would never survive until the next age."
"They might."
"But they wouldn't."
Combeferre sighed.
He knew Feuilly was right.
He knew it was worthless that anyone would buy the paintings. People who could buy things were the sort who only wanted pleasing things to look at. Their houses must be pleasing, their food, their dress, their everything. Combeferre didn't come from a well-known family but they were wealthy and he knew that well.
"All right, all right. Any other art?"
"I make fans and carve things."
"Fans. Really? And you carve things? What sort of things?"
"Flutes. Dolls. Sometimes I carve dolls."
He was blushing faintly.
"Flutes? You carve flutes?"
Then it occurred to him that the other had signature had been "Feuilly".
"Did you ever sell a flute to a boy called Jehan? Prouvaire?"
"The Prouvaire boy again? No. I sell my flutes to a pawnshop. They're the ones that sell the flutes and fans."
"Oh…"
Combeferre felt a little lost.
He thought…
He was so sure that Feuilly would remember Jehan.
Feuilly with such a strong mind that knew one could take away part of the memory.
Suddenly he felt depressed.
"It's late. I should go."
"You're right, it is. Well, au revoir, be careful, the streets aren't handsome when they're dark."
Combeferre quickly gave him a smile.
"Au revoir."
And he left. He was not attacked on the way home, luckily.
He lay on his bed feeling light headed from not eating and worried for not going to church. He fingered the flute, Jehan's flute. Feuilly and Jehan's flute he thought.
That worked. The two men were completely different. Jehan was rather timid and wouldn't write like Feuilly painted. He wrote of beautiful things. He made his writing pleasing so you'd love it. He wrote beautiful of love and dawns and wonderful things in life.
Feuilly, though, painted pain and death and poverty.
Maybe that was because Feuilly had always been poor, even when he lived in Poland, but Jehan had come from a well-known and rich family.
As far as Combeferre recalled the least depressing thing Feuilly had painted was a horse. It had been labeled 'Koniki Polskie' and showed a horse that was sandy brown. It was fat and short and had a thick black mane and tail. Its back had been dappled with lighter spots.
Feuilly had said he painted horses. Feuilly painted horses very well.
Combeferre brought the flute to his lips and tried to play it. He tried for a while to play it. Nothing different happened, he didn't manage, then finally, feeling light headed, he went to sleep.
Bahorel was there when Combeferre came in.
He acted as though he and Combeferre had never talked, but finally did come over.
"Would you like to see that poetry?"
Combeferre shivered.
"Surely."
Together, they went to the room Bahorel rented.
If it could be called a room.
It was small.
And very plain.
The floor and small desk and bed were cluttered with books and papers.
It had two small windows in one wall, which gave a lovely view of the stone wall of the building beside them. It was a plain wall. It was a boring wall. And Combeferre understood why Bahorel had so many books.
He sat lightly on the bed, avoiding papers.
"You sleep on this?"
"I move the papers."
Bahorel was looking through a stack of papers on the desk.
"I left those poems somewhere. Help me look."
Combeferre carefully stood and began searching through papers on the floor, stacking them as he went through them into neat piles.
Then he did the ones on the bed.
Then the ones everywhere else.
Bahorel was looking worried.
"But I read some only the other day."
He stood from where he was examining the papers in one stack.
"Here's poetry. Only he didn't write it. Someone else did. It rambles a bit. Did he have a pen name?"
Combeferre felt incredulous and unhappy and scared.
"No. And I'll never get him back."
Bahorel looked sympathetic.
"Then you should forget him."
Combeferre looked quickly up.
"What? I can't."
"Yes you can. And it would be better."
Bahorel stepped forward and touched Combeferre's hair.
Combeferre looked worried.
"I love him. I can't forget him. Not again. He needs to be remembered."
"You and I are the only ones who remember him. We could forget him together. It would be a beautiful finale"
He softly kissed Combeferre.
Combeferre pushed away from him.
"Bahorel!"
"Combeferre!"
Bahorel kissed him again.
Combeferre found the doorknob behind himself and quickly escaped.
Bahorel stood staring at the door, feeling rather hurt, somehow.
Combeferre fled to the streets.
He wandered almost purposefully until he found himself over the river Seine.
He stood there, lonely.
All he wanted was Jehan.
He didn't want Bahorel to treat him like that.
All he wanted was what he had.
The flute brought back memories.
But it didn't bring back Jehan.
Why the hell not?
What right did Grantaire have to take a man's existence?
A hand on his shoulder interrupted his thoughts.
He turned quickly.
"Oh. Bonjour, Feuilly."
"Bonjour. The river is lovely, isn't it?"
"I've always liked rivers."
They gazed down at it together.
"They're good to paint."
"You paint rivers?"
Feuilly smiled.
"Oh yes. Rivers and mountains and valleys and snow and people. Horses too. I've always painted horses."
Now Combeferre smiled too.
"And how do you come by models for horses?"
Feuilly yawned.
"Plenty go through the city."
"That true. And people?"
"I don't actually use models for people most of the time."
"Oh."
"I paint from memory. Things that pop into my head. I think of something and I paint it."
"That sounds nice."
"Yes, it is…"
They were both silent a moment the Feuilly spoke again.
"Artists, most, like to paint with models. They like passionate paintings. With rich colours. Lots of contrast."
Feuilly looked wistful and sad as he spoke.
"It's called Romanticism."
Combeferre glanced at him.
"Well, what do you paint?"
Feuilly glanced back at him.
"Beggars. Prostitutes. The streets. Dark paintings. When I'm not doing landscapes."
"Don't sell very well, do they?"
"No," he sighed, "No, they don't. Not well at all."
"I haven't seen any of your paintings."
"No, I guess not. Would you like to? All the others think me quite the curiosity."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you hear them?"
Feuilly sounded amused and bitter.
"Anytime they want anything, 'Ask Feuilly, he will know.'"
"Isn't that good?"
Feuilly continued though.
" 'I showed Mother that painting of the roof tops. She likes it quite a lot. Always acts so amused when she hears about you. You wouldn't believe the jokes we make.'"
"…Why?"
"I'm a curiosity, I suppose. Like the other day. Courfeyrac's cousin is going to Italy. Courfeyrac doesn't remember who painted the Annunciation. He also doesn't remember how many there are. So I'm the one they ask. And of course *I* know."
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"*You* try being a parrot."
"Oh…"
"I'm not valued as myself. I'm known by most as Courfeyrac or Joly or Bossuet or Bahorel's friend. Or I'm the noble revolutionary. A little poor, but still faithful. A bohemian. An artist."
Feuilly looked quickly at Combeferre.
"Which I am, of course. An artist. But when you say 'I love to paint' your immediately branded as knowing every painter and all of his works."
"But you do know a lot."
"Yes, I know a lot."
They were both silent for a while.
Then Feuilly sighed.
"Come to my place and see my artwork and gawk at it and say what a perfectly morbid painter I am?"
"Morbid is very good. I'm in a morbid mood."
"Ah. Nice rhyme."
They walked dismally back into the city, choosing the depressing streets to walk.
"Morbid is a state of being."
Feuilly disagreed.
"State of mind. That's why it comes out in your talk and work."
"But if it weren't a state of being how could it take the solid form of a painting or poem?"
"It does that because man is greedy and wants things so that he can see them"
Combeferre couldn't help but feel amused.
"You're saying that man should be content in just radiating Emotions from themselves to others?"
Feuilly looked disgruntled.
"Well, that's true. But it would work better in any case. Seeing as some people aren't affected by the Emotions in paintings but might be if it was just… er… *given* to them."
"But those people would be the people whose skin is so strong that you can't share your Emotions."
Feuilly nodded in agreement.
"But really, I should be arguing your side of the argument because as an artist I prefer to convey Emotion through sight."
"Musicians by sound."
"Chefs through taste."
"Emotion through taste?"
"Mm. If the chef liked someone he'd give it fuller flavour."
"And if he didn't?"
"Turnips. Cilantro."
"And if he were angry, pepper."
"Right. Of course, all we ate in Poland was cabbage."
"Oh, how repulsive!"
They both were highly amused and took a moment to get over laughing at the rather less than funny joke.
But it was funny because they were just over being depressed.
"What about smell?"
Feuilly smirked.
"Smell and taste are the same. Ever tried eating something and pinching your nose (I have often done this whilst eating the sacred cabbage)?"
"Yes, it doesn't have taste (sacred cabbage?)."
"(Mm)"
They walked on in silence a while then Feuilly glanced at Combeferre.
"I think that touch conveys Emotion the best. Fear, compassion, disgust, hate, desire, envy…"
At that moment beggars, all crying out for money, clawing, sobbing, wretched, attacked them.
They both quickly dug in their pockets for coins (though Feuilly had to dig a little deeper), which they quickly gave, both a little disturbed.
When the beggars were gone they each looked at the other.
Feuilly spoke what they both thought.
"Cheerful roads next time."
Combeferre nodded and half smiled.
Feuilly continued.
"It's not that you don't want to give to them, but the way they claw at you. The way you know they're half mad from cold and hunger and could hurt you. I hope Enjolras's crazy revolution works and there's no more of this."
"You know it won't work."
"Your right."
He sighed.
Combeferre felt a pity for both Feuilly and himself.
He touched the painter's shoulder and realized that he had been true about touch.
"You know, I feel the same way. About the beggars. All my life I've always been frightened of them."
"Everyone has something like that."
"Or a few, more likely."
"Things they never stop worrying about."
"Like if Enjolras will get caught."
"Like if my family in Poland is all right."
Combeferre looked quickly at him.
Feuilly noticed.
"My sisters, my aunt, my uncle, my cousins. My friends. They want Poland free as I do. When they wrote they said there was an insurrection. That was last year, too. I don't even know how they are. They want to own themselves. It's not like us with the king. They don't even have a Polish leader."
He paused.
"Have you ever moved?"
Combeferre looked at the ground
"I've lived in Paris all my life."
"Oh."
Feuilly looked up at the old building before him, which was where his room was.
"Come along."
He led Combeferre up old stairs and down a hall that was damp and smelled as though mildew grew there when it was warm.
Feuilly's room was somewhat better.
It had been vigorously cleaned, the walls scrubbed.
The floor was swept.
There were no dead bugs in the window as there were in most.
It was a dark room and a cold room, with a pipe going up one wall, which gave the most heat there was.
The bed was close to the pipe.
Below the window, so the light hit it, was an easel with a half finished painting on it.
Combeferre glanced at it.
"It's not finished yet," Feuilly explained. "It's the way I think of Patria."
"Unfinished?"
"No. I have her face done, you can see. Pained. You know. Tired. Old. Being hurt and saved by her children. I think I sketched her children in…"
Feuilly went over and began examining the painting.
"Ah, yes. There. Enjolras is the one sitting on the rooftop. See? He'll have gold hair. Cadmium yellow mixed with…"
Combeferre listened in amusement.
"These are the children that are hurting her. One has a musket to her head."
"Does it have a bayonet? Is he stabbing her?"
"Stabbing her in the head? No."
"Oh. Isn't that the style people like, though? Dramatic?"
"Treason? No. People don't pay for it. But I'll show you the ones I mentioned before."
Feuilly left his half finished painting and went over to a number of paintings lying against each other, propped on the wall.
"It's rather dark to see them. Would you like me to light the lamp."
"No thank you. Could I hold them to the window, though?"
"Surely."
Combeferre examined each painting carefully.
They were painful.
Paintings of things some people didn't know were there or ignored.
Paintings of hurt.
And he could see what Feuilly meant.
"They're amazing."
"Thank you."
"But I doubt people will be hanging them on their walls."
"On the day of the revolution I'll let the poor burn them for warmth."
"But Feuilly! They're too good! You'd be wasting-"
"No one will buy the paintings, but if the poor are warm for a few days, isn't that enough?"
"But people… People after us. They won't be able to understand this place without your paintings."
"There are writers."
"Feuilly."
"They would never survive until the next age."
"They might."
"But they wouldn't."
Combeferre sighed.
He knew Feuilly was right.
He knew it was worthless that anyone would buy the paintings. People who could buy things were the sort who only wanted pleasing things to look at. Their houses must be pleasing, their food, their dress, their everything. Combeferre didn't come from a well-known family but they were wealthy and he knew that well.
"All right, all right. Any other art?"
"I make fans and carve things."
"Fans. Really? And you carve things? What sort of things?"
"Flutes. Dolls. Sometimes I carve dolls."
He was blushing faintly.
"Flutes? You carve flutes?"
Then it occurred to him that the other had signature had been "Feuilly".
"Did you ever sell a flute to a boy called Jehan? Prouvaire?"
"The Prouvaire boy again? No. I sell my flutes to a pawnshop. They're the ones that sell the flutes and fans."
"Oh…"
Combeferre felt a little lost.
He thought…
He was so sure that Feuilly would remember Jehan.
Feuilly with such a strong mind that knew one could take away part of the memory.
Suddenly he felt depressed.
"It's late. I should go."
"You're right, it is. Well, au revoir, be careful, the streets aren't handsome when they're dark."
Combeferre quickly gave him a smile.
"Au revoir."
And he left. He was not attacked on the way home, luckily.
He lay on his bed feeling light headed from not eating and worried for not going to church. He fingered the flute, Jehan's flute. Feuilly and Jehan's flute he thought.
That worked. The two men were completely different. Jehan was rather timid and wouldn't write like Feuilly painted. He wrote of beautiful things. He made his writing pleasing so you'd love it. He wrote beautiful of love and dawns and wonderful things in life.
Feuilly, though, painted pain and death and poverty.
Maybe that was because Feuilly had always been poor, even when he lived in Poland, but Jehan had come from a well-known and rich family.
As far as Combeferre recalled the least depressing thing Feuilly had painted was a horse. It had been labeled 'Koniki Polskie' and showed a horse that was sandy brown. It was fat and short and had a thick black mane and tail. Its back had been dappled with lighter spots.
Feuilly had said he painted horses. Feuilly painted horses very well.
Combeferre brought the flute to his lips and tried to play it. He tried for a while to play it. Nothing different happened, he didn't manage, then finally, feeling light headed, he went to sleep.
