This chapter is dedicated to Rabbi KW, in thanks for the Torah study lesson that inspired it.
And to Frozen fans, wait for the reference... and if you spot it, please let me know! :)
And you won't understand, but you will learn someday
That wherever you are and whatever you face
These are the people who make you feel safe in this world
My sweet blue-eyed girl
— Tim Minchin, "White Wine in the Sun"
Sweat dripped down Valjean's face and into his eyes, stinging and blurring his vision, and he raised one hand and wiped it away with his handkerchief. More sweat beaded on his neck and trickled down his chest and back. All of Paris was sweltering in a late summer heat wave. The cool weather of autumn was still several weeks away, and Valjean and Fauchelevent had to work hard all day to keep the garden watered. Valjean was kneeling in the grass, picking peas – one of the vegetables that they'd managed to save from wilting – when he heard Fauchelevent walking towards him. He sat up slowly, for the heat made him dizzy.
"You looked like you couldn't bear being out in this sun for one more minute," Fauchelevent told him. "It's hot enough to drive a man to swearing. Why don't you shell what you've got, and I'll take a turn at picking?"
Valjean nodded his thanks and picked up his basket full of peas. He was walking back across the garden with it when he heard running footsteps, and then Cosette's sweet voice calling to him, "Papa!"
She ran across the garden to him and flung both arms around him in a hug, even though he was dripping with sweat and had to smell awful. He hugged her back with his free arm and kissed her forehead as she stood up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
"I missed you, Papa," she said. "I thought classes would never be over today."
"It's this heat. It makes the time seem to drag by. You really shouldn't be outside in it." But he said the last part casually, for he knew that no matter how unpleasant the weather might be, it was useless to try to keep Cosette from coming outside to visit him. She was now eleven-years-old, and she had still never missed visiting with her papa for even a single day.
Cosette just smiled. "Delphine and Clorinde said they're staying inside today, and lot of the other girls too, because it's so hot, but I don't care. The heat never bothered me, anyway. But oh, Papa, you look so flushed. Your poor face is all red. Here, come sit down in the shade, and I'll bring you some water."
She took his hand and led him over to the shaded grass beside the cottage, and he sat, leaning against the outside wall, while Cosette ran and fetched the water bucket from nearby. She filled the old tin ladle with water and handed it to him, and as he drank, she soaked her handkerchief – her handkerchief, for they were still swapping back and forth regularly, and she happened to have her own at the moment – and wiped the sweat off his face and neck with it.
"There," she said, dabbing at his forehead one last time. "You're much less red now. Do you feel better?"
"I do, much better. Thank you, Cosette."
"I worry so much about you and Uncle Fauvent, working all day when it's so hot. Are you both getting plenty to drink? We learned in class about how important it is to get enough to drink, especially when it's hot. It's called hydration."
He smiled. "You're getting to be so smart. But your uncle and I are fine, really. Don't you worry about us, sweetpea."
Cosette picked up one of the peas from his basket. "Is this a sweetpea, too?"
Valjean chuckled a bit. "No, those are just ordinary peas. You're the only sweetpea in this garden, Cosette."
Cosette giggled. "Can I help you shell them? Oh, I mean, may I?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she set the basket of peas between them and began to. She still loved to help her father in the garden. Just a few weeks ago, she had suggested that she was big enough now to help him do hard work, but he had shaken his head and said, "No, Cosette, we won't even discuss it," in such a firm voice that she knew arguing with him would be useless. She was never allowed to do any hard work – her father didn't have many rules, but that was one of them – but shelling peas was easy.
"Tell me what you learned in school today," Valjean prompted, shelling peas with her.
"We had a writing assignment in religious class this morning. Sister Marie-Elise said that we're each to write about a person in the Bible who doesn't usually get a lot of attention – a small character."
Valjean nodded approvingly. "That sounds like a good idea. Have you thought of who you're going to write about?"
Cosette pursed her lips and tilted her head, thinking. "Well... I haven't quite decided yet, but I think I want to write about Rahav, from the Book of Joshua."
"Remind me of who she was."
"She was woman who hid some Israelites from the king of Jericho. The king wanted to kill them, but Rahav helped them get away to safety. I reread the chapter about her in Joshua this afternoon, and she even said... hold on, I copied down some verses." Cosette paused and fished a piece of paper out of her apron pocket. She unfolded it and read, "She told them, 'I know the Lord has given the country to you, for your God is the only God in heaven and on earth.'" Cosette paused again, twirling an empty pea pod between her fingers. "Papa," she said thoughtfully, "you always say that God makes miracles happen every day."
"That's right, darling," Valjean nodded. "We don't always see the miracles that God does, but they're always around us."
"Is one of God's miracles..." she asked slowly, piecing her thoughts together, "...that He could take someone who – who used to a bad person, maybe, and change them, and make them into a good person? Or at least... into a better one?"
Valjean stopped shelling peas and looked hard at her. Cosette's question described his own life so well that it was almost too close for comfort. But she couldn't possibly know that. "What do you mean, Cosette?"
"Well, you see, the scripture says that Rahav was a... that she was a..." Cosette blushed and ducked her head. Then, apparently unable to say the word aloud, she held her paper out to Valjean and pointed to another verse that she copied down. Valjean leaned closer to read it; her handwriting was so small and neat now that no one would ever guess that she'd started school late.
They set out, and came to the house of Rahav, a harlot.
Valjean nearly dropped the peas in his hand. Of all the hundreds of minor characters in the Bible, Cosette wanted to write about a woman who'd worked as a prostitute? For a moment, he was too stunned to speak... but perhaps Cosette didn't realize that Rahav had practiced the world's oldest profession. She was only eleven, and she'd lived most of her life in a convent. Surely she didn't really understand what the word harlot meant.
"Do you know what that word means, Cosette?" he asked sharply.
"It means – well, no, not exactly, but... you know, Papa," she stammered, still blushing. "It means she was a – a woman of, um, of ill repute."
Valjean nodded, realizing that Cosette didn't really know what the word meant, after all. That was a relief to him. He wished that she would never know. "Tell me why you want to write about her," he prompted.
"Well... I think her story is supposed to mean that some people might seem like bad people at first – like, Rahav might seem bad, because she was a..." Cosette lowered her voice and whispered the word. "...a harlot, but she helped hide the Israelites from the king, and she knew that their God was the only God, even when no one else in Jericho did. So she really wasn't bad, exactly, but maybe she just, um, made some bad choices."
"Maybe she didn't even have a choice." Valjean's voice was slightly strained, and he quickly gazed away across the garden to keep it from breaking completely. He took a deep breath. Cosette mustn't know that he wasn't talking about Rahav. "Maybe she had no other way to earn a living, and so she had to become a harlot."
Cosette chewed on an empty pea pod for a moment, thinking. She didn't really understand her father's words, but she thought that she did. "That means that we shouldn't judge her, right?" she asked. "You always say that we shouldn't judge others, because only God can judge."
Valjean suddenly reached across the basket of peas and took Cosette's face gently between his hands, raising her head until their eyes met. "That's right, Cosette. We must try to never judge anyone, even..." Even prostitutes, he thought, or prisoners. "...even people who might seem wicked to us at first. That's a very important lesson. Some grown-ups still haven't learned it. I want you to remember that always, all right?"
"I will, Papa," she promised.
"That's my good girl," he praised, and he leaned forward to kiss her brow before he released her. She was such a bright little girl, and with such compassion for others. Valjean prayed that she would never lose it.
Cosette picked up the basket and shook it a bit, shifting the peas around. "I think we've shelled them all," she said. "I don't see any more unshelled ones." She put the basket back down and looked up at her father. "Can I help you do something else, Papa?" she asked eagerly.
Valjean sighed heavily. There was so much that he could never tell Cosette.
"No, I think you've done enough for today, Cosette," he answered softly, still struggling to keep his voice even. "Come here, my girl, and let's just sit for a while." He moved the basket of peas out from between them and held out one arm to her. She moved closer, tucking herself in against him, and for some time, they simply sat there together in the hot, golden afternoon, watching the clouds drift across the sky.
