This is an Eponine Thénardier ficlet; Les Misérables from her point of view, starting with the moment she meets Marius, and continuing through her death. I won't have a chance to update often, but please read and review. The dialogue and most of the blocking is taken straight from Victor Hugo's unabridged edition of Les Misérables, except for the scenes that I make up, of course. Eponine's thoughts, of course, are mine, but many of her memories are not. I have tried to make her thoughts read in almost the same way that her words do; please comment on that as well if it needs improvement, and I will try. Otherwise—bienvenu à Eponine Thénardier!
If only we had money. If only we had a home. If only my father weren't such a—a thief, a scoundrel, a crook, a villain. If only he cared more about us than about his filthy money. If only—oh, if only. I wouldn't be scavenging around Paris with letters to important people, rich people, letters signed with false names and bearing false predicaments. Letters that beg and plead for money, all written by my father, and all one of our last resources.
We are poor. Very poor. We are only still in this hovel of an appartement because our neighbor paid our rent six months ago, and he has not even seen us. I am glad he has not. He might despise us for our filth. Though it was not always like this; once we owned an inn, a good one, and I grew up there. My father could not pay the bills, though, and we moved here. And now—now we resort to this. Begging. It is not even respectable, but who now cares about respectable? A girl with the cracked, distasteful, ruined voice of an old drunkard, nothing but a torn chemise, ragged skirt, dirty coat, and string for clothing can hardly speak of wishing for respectability. We fight for survival, all of us in the dregs of Paris.
Hesitation to knock at someone's door is natural, I suppose. But I have to knock, I must, or I will go hungry again. Hunger can propel even the most sluggish into action; if teeth tear and ravage your insides, there is nothing one will not do. I am now delivering one of those letters to our neighbor, hoping he will have a full wallet and a giving hand. His name is Marius, that I know. I do not know his last name, but I can well call him Monsieur Marius.
I knock. Once. Twice. Has he heard me? Is he at home? It is only seven in the morning; he may be asleep. Or he may be out; I do not know.
"Come in."
He is in! Thank God, thank God. And, thank God, there is a greater possibility that I will eat today.
"What do you want, Madame Bougon?"
He hasn't looked up, so of course he wouldn't know that I'm not that dragoness of a landlady. His hair is black, and curly, and his clothes are neat but worn. This room is so tidy and clean…so much more so than our place, with no floor and dirt encrusted everywhere. He's studying something…there are papers and books on a table in front of him. Oh! he has books! How long it has been since I have read a book…
"I beg your pardon, Monsieur—" I don't know what else to say. I suppose I surprised him, because he spun towards me quickly.
I don't know what to think. I don't know if I can think. Something's quite, quite wrong, and I don't know how to describe it. I must be growing sick, for in a minute I will have to lean against the wall to support myself. Am I dying? I feel more like living with every breath I take. It may be hunger; that would explain the dizziness.
"What do you wish, mademoiselle?"
The letter! I had forgotten the one in my hand. I could hardly feel it, even though my fingers are less cold than they were.
"Here is a letter for you, Monsieur Marius." I almost wish I didn't have to give it to him; it's so degrading. But I must, and hopefully he will understand.
I hand him the letter; he opens it; reads. What is he thinking? He stared at me so oddly; I wonder what he thinks of me. Street gamin, I suppose. Torn skirt, shivering all over, dirty brat. But I'm not, I'm not! No, not in this room, I'm not. I am someone who matters, someone important! I tell you, I am! Someone educated…someone! A person, a being, a human being.
Look! His furniture is neat, unscratched, though inexpensive. His clothes are hanging there, behind a curtain on the wall; they are good quality, and not torn or dirty. He must be somewhat poor as well, though he knows how to grow poor. His toilet articles are so neatly arranged, and the bureau is too big for the few bottles. But he is rich! richer than we are…
"Ah, you have a mirror!"
I have not seen myself in months, really. But I am not so hideous, not when I smile, am I? Look, there…with that hair swept up, I could be a young, rich lady of Paris. Oh, what songs we sang, when I was a small girl…
"Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses,
Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours…"
On the table, over there! Look!
"Ah! books!"
I am not just a gutter rat, see! I can prove it now. He has to see that I am not something dirty, something distasteful—
"I can read, I can." That book over there, the one on top—anything to prove it to him. Flipping the pages, I find a paragraph.
"—General Bauduin received the order to take five battalions of his brigade and carry the chateau of Hougomont, which is in the middle of the plain of Waterloo—Ah, Waterloo! I know that. It is a battle in old times. My father was there; my father served in the armies." He is good for something, even if it was done in the past. Marius—Monsieur Marius, see, I am not a common rogue! "We are jolly good Bonapartists at home, that we are. Against English, Waterloo is."
This is madness. I feel lost in a wave of screaming insanity that is rolling me over and over, and I cannot stop talking. Something about him has made me lose my footing, and I cannot find it again.
"And I can write, too!" There is a pen on the table, there, and paper. "Would you like to see? Here, I am going to write a word to show."
The paper is blank; it is all right. Marius, his name is, and it is almost musical. Not so is my chosen phrase—The Cognes are here. The police, that is what the Cognes are. The gendarmes. And they cannot pincer us—catch us, I mean. I will not speak that dialect of the streets in this room, I won't.
"There are no mistakes in spelling. You can look. We have received an education, my sister and I. We have not always been what we are. We were not made—"
Oh, he must be tired of you, shut your mouth, shut your mouth!—No! I don't care; I am a Thernardier, and we are damned if we care what others think!
"Bah!" I cry, and it sounds futile in the silence that follows.
I don't know what I'm saying, singing…something of no moment. Something of the theatre, and of Gavroche, my brother. I feel even sicker than before, and better than I have ever been at the same time. I am flying, on high, boundless wings, and I don't know why!
No—I might know why. He is looking at me so strangely, and I can feel the bones in my jaw shake.
"Do you know, Monsieur Marius," I say almost boldly, "that you are a very pretty boy?"
I've made him blush. What does that mean? Does—oh, could it mean anything? Oh, what wouldn't I give if it meant something to him—and why I think this, I cannot tell. I—I want him to like me…as a soft, soothing, gentle creature of beauty and grace, whose words could string a harp in his mind…
Any bit of despair I have ever had is now forgotten. I feel almost angelic, and powerful, so powerful, as if I could play God and raise the earth from its foundations. My hand lifts onto his shoulder, and I won't be rebuffed; I know.
"You pay no attention to me, but I know you, Monsieur Marius. I meet you here on the stairs, and then I see you visiting a man named Father Mabeuf, who lives out by Austerlitz, sometimes, when I am walking that way." My voice has grown softer; he has lovely, lovely dark hair…"That becomes you very well, your tangled hair."
My stomach is twisting, and I feel giddy…giddy and weightless. I have never touched someone before and felt as if I were close to crying, but I feel so now—one more moment like this, and I will cry.
He turns away; my hand falls, but the shock is only there for a moment. In a beautiful, cold voice, he holds a paper packet in his hands. I recognize that—I have seen it before…
"Mademoiselle, I have here a packet, which is yours, I think. Permit me to return it to you."
Oh; he's found it! Azelma and I are all right! "We have looked everywhere!" I exclaim. What letter is it, I wonder—not the one by Madame Balizard; that one has a wax mark on the cover.
"To the beneficent gentleman of the church Saint Jacques du Haut Pas. Here! this is for the old fellow who goes to mass. And this too is the hour. I am going to carry it to him." I have not eaten for two days, not counting this morning. But that gentleman—bah, he will be generous! "He will give us something perhaps for breakfast."
"Sometimes I go away at night," I confide to him. "Sometimes I do not come back. Before coming to this place, the other winter, we lived under the arches of the bridges. We hugged close to each other so as not to freeze. My little sister cried: How chilly the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said: No, it is too cold. I go all alone when I want to. I sleep in the ditches sometimes."
I want him to know me. I want him to see what has happened to me. And I want to seem a lovely damsel in distress, one that needs rescuing. Is this why I babble on like this? Oh, bah, forget questions! I am past questioning what I say.
"Do you know, at night, when I walk on the boulevards, I see the trees like gibbets, I see all the great black houses like the towers of Notre Dame, I imagine that the white walls are the river, I say to myself: Here, there is water there! The stars are like illumination lamps, one would say that they had smoke, and that the wind blows them out. I am confused, as if I had horses breathing in my ear; though it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning wheels. I don't know what. I think that somebody is throwing stones at me, I run without knowing it, it is a whirl, all a whirl."
I am not only talking of those freezing nights under the Pont Neuf and on the Rue des Chataillles and inside the sewers, which my father knows as if they were his children. He knows them better than he knows us; it is degrading, it is helpless. It is true, though. My father is a brigand, a villain, a voleur.
"When one has not eaten, it is very queer."
Can he see through what I have said? Can he possibly know that my words was meant for him? He is brilliant, if he does not, it is my stupidity, not his.
Oh, merde! Of course he could not understand my rigmarole. He hands me a shining five-franc piece, as if I were only here for sous. Good God, does it seem like that to him?—but it does, of course; I was at first only here for money. Damn my father and his begging ways!
"Good," I say weakly, taking the piece from him, "there is some sunshine! Five francs! a shiner! a monarch! in this piolle! it is chenâtre! You are a good mion. I give you my palpitant. Bravo for the fanandels! Two days of pivois! and of viandemuche! and of frictomar! we shall pitancer chenuement! and bonne mouise!"
Of course he understands none of that. He is a good gentleman, not one to understand the mystery of argot—our Parisian slang. I will leave now, my father will shout. I pull up that torn chemise about my shoulders, I sweep him a curtsy, and I wave. A fine lady could do no better, could she? In my state, a queen could do no better. Queens do not have their worlds tumble about their heads, of course, they stay the way they were made to be. But this is the life of a Parisian gamine, a street urchin, and her worlds are permitted to crumble. What the bon Dieu must be thinking of!
"Good morning, monsieur. It is all the same. I am going to find my old man."
I snatch a piece of bread—a crust of bread, a dry bit of waste—from his bureau, and I bite it—good. It hurts my teeth, I have to wince, but that is my due; I have wasted his time, made him talk to me, made an imbecile of myself. "That is good! it is hard! it breaks my teeth!"
I leave the room, bewildered, confused, floating on a cloud and knocked into the cellar. As soon as the door is closed, my legs shake and give way, and I fall to the floor, sitting.
My God, I do not know what has happened to me in that room, but I would give whatever I could simply for him to look at me again.
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The random French thrown in here and there in the dialogue is argot; French slang. It is not translated in the book, and I therefore will not translate it here. It's like translating "bling-bling" into French; it can't be done and sounds stupid if one tries. The argot is not meant to be understood; it underlines the low class of the people that speak it. Other French that I will throw in, like appartement, means the obvious—in this case, "apartment", but if it does not, I will translate down here.
"Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses,
Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours…"
This is actually Fantine's song; she sings this when she is sick in the hospital. Eponine hums an unnamed song when she stands in front of the mirror; I thought this would be a nice touch. Translated, it means:
"Violets are blue, roses are red,
Violets are blue, I love my loves…"
"bon Dieu" is both an exclamation and a description, and it usually comes with a "le" (the) in front of it—it means "good God". In this case: "what the good God must be thinking of!"
That's all till the next chapter, in which Eponine reflects on this chapter and subsequently sees a familiar apparition from her childhood in her appartement. Au revoir!