Chapter Twenty-One
Valjean was not sure what to expect when he set foot in Toulon again for the first time in nearly ten years. He had hoped, perhaps naively, that when he made his way out of that cursed town (which must not have been so bad for those who chose to stay there voluntarily) that he would never have to come back here but he always feared that he would.
What did he know about an honest life, after all? Even his best efforts now amounted to lying about everything that mattered and an innocent suffering in his place. When he had begun to be cheated and rejected and scorned, he had feared that it would not be long before Toulon reclaimed its hold on him. He had not even really appreciated that he was gone before he began to dread this new life parole had given him.
And then when he had stolen from the bishop and, after that, when he had broken parole the fear had grown stronger. Before he had just thought that it was inevitable that something would happen and send him back. Then, now, he knew that he had broken quite a few laws and if they ever found him he would be dragged back here in chains and that this time there would be no way out for him .
And now he was back but the circumstances were some he never could have imagined. He had not thought that he would come back willingly. He was not here to enter the prison as a slave but a distinguished guest. Even when he made the futile choice to try and save Champmathieu, he had chosen only to resume being hunted and not to resign himself meekly to the galleys again.
He had faced the confusion and, in Javert's case, exasperation that came from those he had told of his plans to go to Toulon but no one was slightly suspicious. Cosette had been very upset but he had assuaged her as best he could. But those people, even Javert by this point, saw only Monsieur Madeleine.
Would the people of Toulon even know his new name? If they did, they certainly wouldn't recognize him. But they had known Jean le Cric once. Everyone had known him.
He was pale and trembling when he arrived in town. Riding through in his carriage, he saw a few curious souls stop and follow his carriage with their eyes. They did not seem overly interested but then they could not see him.
The town looked much the way he remembered. On the surface it appeared a town like any other but there seemed to be a faint glow of malice that he was surely imagining. These people of Toulon were just normal people and could not help it if they lived in a town with such a terror as the galley. It was like he was seeing two versions of the town, the version that everyone else could see and the dark land full of shadows that he had grown accustomed to over the course of nearly two decades.
He told himself he was being ridiculous. Even if they all saw him up close and personal, it had been ten years and Jean Valjean was not missing. He was right in Toulon where everyone could see him when he was brought out to work. What must they think of him, those that remembered? What would they think of the way his strength had supposedly failed him and his mind had snapped? Would that have truly been his own fate if not for the bishop's intervention if he had managed to escape prison, with or without breaking parole?
It would take a very dedicated and observant man to see the convict in the mayor and even Javert had been fooled in the end. There was nothing to fear.
But when he arrived at his destination, he stayed in the carriage and merely stared out the window at that hated building. He had not hated in a long time. He had told himself that he was past that, especially since Cosette had come into his life. And he did not hate now, truthfully, but he feared more than he had even feared after learning that the courts believed that they had caught their Jean Valjean at last.
If he walked into this building, who was to say that he would ever come out? If he walked into this building, who was to say that the years of trying to put this place behind him (and it had only been about half of the time he had spent here!) would not melt away and leave only the self that he had been here in Toulon? Without Cosette by his side, could he face this? But of course he could not bring her here. Of course not, it was a foolish notion. He was happy with who he was now and maybe even a little proud though most of that pride had been tempered with the knowledge of the price others had paid for his new and happy life.
But he had been Jean-le-Cric for a great many years longer than he had been Monsieur le Maire or 'papa.' He had been Jean-le-Cric for almost as long as he had been Jean Valjean before that and those years were so often beyond his reach.
"Monsieur?" the carriage driver asked, finally coming around to his side and opening the door for him. "Is everything alright?"
Valjean nodded vaguely. "Ah, yes, the journey was just a little long. It is nothing."
"My apologies, Monsieur," the driver said, bowing his head.
"It is not your fault and it will pass," Valjean said. The driver was still looking expectantly at him so he reluctantly force his legs to move and exited the carriage.
"Will you be staying long, Monsieur Madeleine?" the driver asked.
Valjean quickly shook his head. "I shouldn't think so. Please wait for me and I shall be back in a few hours if not sooner."
"As you will, Monsieur," the driver said with another bow before returning to the front of the carriage and climbing up onto his seat.
And then he was gone and Valjean was alone to contemplate the horror of the task he now had before him.
With no one to push him to move, he just stood there staring and wishing he were elsewhere. But he could not leave without seeing this through and so eventually he closed his eyes and stepped forward.
He was stopped at the entrance by a guard who demanded to know his business and he showed them the letter he had from the commissionaire agreeing to let him enter and speak to one of the prisoners.
That guard called for another and then there was a tall, muscled guardsman with light hair and dark eyes before him and beckoning him to follow.
"I must say, Monsieur Madeleine, that this is all highly unusual," the guard told him as he followed him down the hallway. "No one really wants to come and visit our prisoners in particular. But then, most of them have no family or if they do they don't have the money to make the trip down here."
"I was at the trial," Valjean said shortly. "I am…curious."
The guard laughed at that. "And you shall see! Valjean's an interesting case, you see. He managed to break parole and run for, what, eight years before they catch up to him over some silly little apples! What a farce!"
"I would think that someone who was on the run from the law take care to not attract attention like that," Valjean said neutrally.
"You would think but these prisoners, they never think," the guard explained. "That's why they end up here. Still, I never would have expected Valjean's story to end this way."
"Which way?" Valjean asked, more out of politeness than any real curiosity. "With breaking parole or ending up back in Toulon?"
"It's always a bit of a surprise when someone breaks parole," the guard replied, "because they know what the consequences of that are and are all desperate to stay away from Toulon. But Valjean tried to escape four times while he was here so perhaps it's not so strange that he ran and it's never a surprise when a convict ends up returned here."
"Then what did you mean?"
"I've been here twelve years as of last month," the guard replied. "I was here before Valjean left though not for all that long."
"Of course you could look at his file and see that you were here at the same time," Valjean said, peering closely at the guard but not recognizing him at all. It was not as though he truly expected to. He had not been very aware of the guards, or of much else, for most of his sentence. "But you remember him personally? It was quite some time ago, as I understand it."
The guard nodded. "It was and I do take your point. I don't remember most prisoners after they leave or die but Valjean was different. We were all made aware of those who were at risk for escaping as much as he and then that's the kind of strength you do not forget. It's a pity he lost it. It would have served him well here. And his mind's gone, too, which might be a blessing for him actually. I know that there were some who claimed that he was only pretending to be stupid now and I could see that during his trial but now what's the point? The years have changed him and not for the better."
"I see," Valjean said quietly. He would like to think that the years had changed him for the better and it was hard to think of a way in which it hadn't. He no longer hated the world. He tried his best to help everyone that he could. He was extremely wealthy and respected and even a mayor. The threat of prison was mostly gone from over his head. He had the love of Cosette. But who could have ever imagined such a thing happening when he had first left Toulon? Certainly not him. No wonder it had been so easy for them to believe that Champmathieu was him.
"And here we are," the guard said, leading him to a room. "I know you just asked to see Valjean but his chain-mate is here as well. They're both chained down so we considered it safe enough to leave a guard posted outside the room and let you alone but I would not recommend getting too close to them. They are convicts and who knows what they are capable of? They're all such sly creatures."
Valjean just nodded and entered the room alone.
There were two men in the room both chained down, as he had been told, and neither looking particularly bothered by it. Why would they be, after all, given that this was just one more in a long series of incidents where they were expected to bear chains and not be permitted any sort of freedom at all? He had once complained of how there were chains even when he was sick in bed and couldn't even stand up but it hadn't seemed very remarkable to him then. Now, after all this time, it felt a little less natural to see these men so inhibited.
He had only seen Champmathieu once but that was time enough. The image of that man, so much like him if life had been crueler, had been burned into his very brain and he knew he would not forget. Champmathieu had aged quite a bit in the months since he had last seen him. He was no longer frightened but he seemed as coarse and stupid as ever and an air of bitter hatred seemed to have replaced that. Maybe Champmathieu would never understand why this had happened to him but he certainly understood his predicament now. It would be impossible not to.
The other person was, surprisingly, Chenildieu. He thought it rather unlikely that the two of them had been paired (or paired once more as everyone else would have thought of it) but he supposed these things did happen. He wondered if, after being paired with Champmathieu for all this time, he had realized his mistake. Chenildieu had not been kind at the trial, laughing at Champmathieu and asking if he was 'sulking' that his life was being ruined. But then, Chenildieu was of the galleys and kindness did not, could not, exist there. He had not been kind to Chenildieu, he remembered, when he had first arrived at the galley and was just as terrified as Valjean had once been. He had hated the reminder just as much as he had hated everything. Chenildieu hadn't changed since the last time he saw him, not a bit.
Chenildieu glanced over to see him first and his eyes widened comically. "Well! If it isn't Jean Valjean himself."
Valjean frowned, uncertain as to what he meant. Had he been remembered from his confession? Was Chenildieu mocking him?
"I can't believe you have the nerve to come back to this place," Chenildieu continued, shaking his head. "I know if I had the chance to leave this place behind I certainly wouldn't come back here, not for anything."
Valjean understood, then, that Chenildieu might be the only person in all of France who knew him for what he was. There was something liberating about that, even if it was also highly dangerous.
Champmathieu still hadn't looked up at them. Was he even listening? He did not appear to realize that they were there or, if he did, he simply did not care. Valjean knew that feeling well. If he conceded to being Jean Valjean here where there were no guards it would make no difference as far as Chenildieu was concerned but would it change anything if Champmathieu knew? How could it? If a jury had once heard him confess and still rejected it then who would take the word of a convict over that of a mayor?
But would he then be called upon to deny that he was Jean Valjean so that he could go home to Cosette while Chenildieu toiled here unjustly? He did not think he could do that.
"You know me?" he asked quietly.
Chenildieu laughed. "Know you? How could I now! I might have though this idiot was you for awhile," he indicated Champmathieu, "but after that little confession of yours how could I not know you?"
"No one else seemed to," Valjean replied.
"Brevet and Cochepaille knew, too, but by that point if they weren't going to listen to you then they certainly weren't going to listen to us," Chenildieu told him. "You look better than I thought you would."
What could he say to that?
"You don't look like you're an idiot but you must be if you would try to get yourself thrown back in this hell," Chenildieu said bitterly. "Or being free has gone and made you forget what welcome you would have here."
"I didn't forget."
"Then how can you explain the fact that you would go and confess to being a convict when you didn't have to?" Chenildieu demanded. "They never would have found you, all important whoever you are now, especially not with some poor wretch to put in your place. It is madness."
"It is madness to seek to return to such a place," Valjean agreed. "But I can ensure you that coming back here was the last thing I would have ever wanted."
Chenildieu gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look. "Really. Because that confession of yours seemed to indicate otherwise."
Valjean bowed his head. "My confession was a matter of necessity, I assure you, and not born out of any desire on my part."
"Necessity?" Chenildieu scoffed. "No one suspected you. They were about to convict him before you spoke and did, in fact, convict him afterwards. What sort of 'necessity' are you talking about?"
"It was a moral necessity," Valjean explained. "I did not want to confess and risk going back to Toulon but I had to. It was the right thing to do and my conscience could not let me just ignore it. It is difficult enough to live with the situation as it stands when I have done everything in my power to prevent this injustice."
Chenildieu stared at him for a long moment and Valjean began to get uncomfortable.
"What?"
Chenildieu just shook his head. "Who are you?"
"You know who I am," Valjean said.
But Chenildieu shook his head again. "I knew a Jean Valjean once. You know things about me you couldn't know unless you were in Toulon as well or asked someone who was. But what is all this rots about 'moral necessities' and 'conscience'? You lived in Toulon, you would not…nobody would and certainly not you."
Valjean looked down at his hands. "I did not say that it was easy. But what was I supposed to do? Leave an innocent to suffer in my place while I defied my fate?"
"Yes," Chenildieu said, looking at him as though he were a very great fool indeed. "That is exactly what you should have done. That is, despite your best efforts to the contrary, exactly what you did do. Look at Champmathieu here and let's look at how you're doing and tell me you really think the right thing to do was to be in his place?"
"How can you say it was not?" Valjean demanded. "You are not speaking from a moral perspective, surely!"
"No, I'm not. I have no use for morals here and neither did you, once upon a time. You've gone soft out there and somehow forgot everything you learned here," Chenildieu accused.
Valjean closed his eyes. "If only that were so."
Chenildieu was staring at him with undisguised curiosity. "What did they do to you out there? What happened to you? Did you just hit your head really hard?"
Valjean shook his head. "Nothing like that. I just met a saint whom I stole from and who lied to the police to save me from the galley as well as giving me every little thing of value that he possessed."
Chenildieu laughed. "Is that all? That sounds like an easy mark, not a reason to get all weird."
"He told me that he had bought my soul with that stolen silver and he was giving it to God," Valjean said quietly, almost to himself.
"You do realize he can't actually do that, right?" Chenildieu asked rhetorically. "All this talk of buying souls as if they are anything so valuable! You didn't have to go and lose all your sense just because some bishop was!"
"No," Valjean agreed. "I didn't. But I would not call it losing my sense but regaining it and gaining so much more besides."
"I have seen madmen before," Chenildieu said bluntly. "You should remember how common they are in this place. But you, Valjean, may be the craziest man I've ever seen."
"I've sometimes wondered about that myself," Valjean said agreeably. "But ultimately I am pleased with how my life has turned out."
Chenildieu raised an eyebrow. "Truly? Including the nineteen years in Toulon?"
"Of course not," Valjean said, his gaze darkening, "but I cannot change that and I cannot regain what I lost then. My life since leaving Toulon, however, is very good and I cannot complain."
He had wanted for such a long time for none of that to have ever happened, even if it meant no escaping the crushing poverty that had slowly been killing him or the guilt of never being quite good enough. He still wanted that even though he could barely remember it. But he was grateful for his new life and he had never imagined loving anyone the way he loved Cosette. If he had to choose between them...what a cruel choice that would have been. But there was no point in trying to figure that out since he did not have the option of changing the past.
"I should say not, 'Monsieur le Maire'!" Chenildieu exclaimed. He shook his head. "Ah, there is no reasoning with you! But maybe if I were as lucky as you I could start spitting all this nonsense, too."
Valjean waited but Chenildieu seemed to be done and so he turned his attention to the man he had truly come to see.
"Champmathieu," he said softly.
There was no reply.
Valjean dared move a little closer. He placed his hand lightly on Champmathieu's shoulder and said his name a little louder.
Champmathieu started and belatedly Valjean remembered that he had always hated to be touched in Toulon. No one had touched him after he had left the bishop for the longest time but when little Cosette came into his life he had gotten used to initiating and receiving touches all the time and had come to enjoy them. In Toulon, touches were usually pain and at best were just another sign that he was not a person and could just be touched by a guard in any way at any time.
But he had to get his attention.
"Champmathieu," he said again.
"No one calls me that," Champmathieu said. Now that he was facing Valjean, he could see that his number was 9430. "They all say 'Champmathieu is Valjean, we see through all your tricks.' But it's not a trick. You have to believe me."
"I believe you," Valjean said, an odd tightness in his throat.
"No one believes me. Sometimes I don't believe me. I did not know this place and I did not know these people but they all said that they knew me. Nineteen years here? What about my daughter? What about Monsieur Baloup? Didn't that happen? How can no one see it?"
" 'I am a man who does not have something to eat every day'," Valjean repeated softly. Those had been his words once. Now he only went without when he chose to. Hunger was only a memory growing more distant by the day.
"That's exactly it!" Champmathieu exclaimed. "Except I do not but it's not very good and there's beatings and guards and chains and too much work. I don't shy away from honest work but this, whatever this isn't, isn't it."
"I'm so sorry," Valjean said, finding it difficult to even look at Champmathieu.
This wasn't right. He shouldn't be here. If he wasn't then it would be Valjean in his place and poor Cosette still with the Thénardiers. Oh, he would try to escape as surely as he had tried before and with a new life sentence he would have nothing to fear from a failed escape. Nothing of substance, really, and he thought he still knew how to take a beating. Just the same, he had never been very good at fleeing. More than likely he would still be here even now. He could do so much good free. He was doing so much good free, even more now that Champmathieu had fallen in his stead, and Champmathieu would do nothing but continue to slowly die. He did not deserve Toulon anymore if, indeed, he ever did.
But none of that meant that this was right. None of this was Champmathieu's fault.
"Why are you sorry?" Champmathieu asked, puzzled. "It has nothing to do with you."
Chenildieu started laughing again. "You're wasting your time on this one, Valjean."
"Valjean," Chenildieu repeated. "They all call me that, you know, when they are not calling me 9430 or convict. They called me le Cric at first but they do not do that anymore."
Valjean looked at his feeble arms pityingly. "No, I don't suppose they do."
"What are you here for? You aren't like a convict or a guard so you don't have to be here. Why would you come if you didn't have to?"
"I was at your trial," Valjean told him. "I did not think you should be here. I needed to see it for myself so I would have no illusions about what happened to you."
"My trial," Champmathieu repeated. "I remember my trial. Or should I say Valjean's trial. They all said I was him. Even my lawyer said I was him. I told him I wasn't but he said he had to say I was because then they would be less angry at me and my sentence would be easier. He said I was going to prison and I did. But they did not kill me and he said that that was because he admitted I was who I am not. But he did kill me! They all did. The rest of me just hasn't caught up yet."
It was too much. This steady and earnest stream of whatever was on his head to near-strangers…he knew it well. He had rarely ever spoken in prison but once he had gotten out it was all he could do not to tell the bishop every paltry secret that he had.
This man was him once. If he had been believed when he confessed then he would no doubt be this man again. And Cosette and poor Fantine would be lost and all his hard work undone.
But he would not, could not, be glad when this was what the price paid was.
He had thought that he had been haunted by Champmathieu's fate when he had just seen him once in the court and heard he had been sent to Toulon.
He had been wrong.