بخش 4 کتاب 4

BOOK FOUR

HELP FROM BELOW MAY BE HELP FROM ABOVE

WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN

AND SO, THEIR life gradually came under a cloud.

There was only one diversion left to them, one that had once been a joy, and that was to take bread to those who were hungry and clothes to those who were cold. On these visits to the poor, on which Cosette often accompanied Jean Valjean, they found once more some remnant of their old openhearted intimacy; and, sometimes, when it had been a good day, when many in distress had been relieved and many little children revived and made warm, Cosette would be almost lighthearted in the evening. It was at this time that they had paid a visit to the Jondrette pigsty.

The very day after that visit, Jean Valjean appeared in the villa in the morning, calm as usual but with a great big wound on his left arm. Highly inflamed, highly infected, it looked like a burn, but he brushed it off with some banal explanation. This wound meant he was housebound with fever for over a month. He would not see a doctor. When Cosette urged him to do so, he would say: “Send for the dog doctor.” Cosette dressed the wound morning and night with such a divine expression on her face and such angelic happiness at being useful to him, that Jean Valjean felt all his old joy return, his fears and anxieties evaporate, and he would gaze at Cosette saying: “Oh, what a blessed wound! Oh, what blessed pain!” Cosette, seeing her father sick and wounded, had deserted the villa, regaining her taste for the little cottage and the backyard. She spent nearly all her time by Jean Valjean’s side, reading whatever books he liked to him—in general, travel books. Jean Valjean was born anew; his happiness revived with ineffable radiance; the Luxembourg, the unknown young prowler, Cosette’s cooling off, all these clouds in his soul dissolved. It got to the point where he said to himself: “I must have imagined all that. I’m such an old goose.” His happiness was such that the appalling discovery of the Thénardiers in the Jondrette hole, though so unexpected, was water off a duck’s back to him now. He had managed to escape, his own tracks were covered, what did the rest matter to him! He only thought about it at all to feel sorry for those poor bastards. “They’re all in jail now and can do no more harm,” he thought, “but what a lamentable family in distress!” As for the hideous vision at the barrière du Maine, Cosette had not mentioned it again.

At the convent, Sister Saint Mechthilde had taught Cosette music. Cosette had the voice of a warbler with a soul and sometimes in the evening, in the invalid’s humble cottage, she would sing sad songs that brought joy to Jean Valjean’s heart.

Spring was coming, the garden was so beautiful at that time of year that Jean Valjean said to Cosette: “You never go into the garden anymore, I want you to walk around in it.” “As you like, father,” said Cosette.

And just to obey her father, she resumed her walks in her garden, most often alone, for, as we pointed out, Jean Valjean, who possibly feared being seen through the gate, almost never set foot there.

Jean Valjean’s wound had been a diversion.

When Cosette saw that her father was not in so much pain, that he was on the mend, that he seemed happy, she felt a contentment she didn’t even realize, it came on so gently and so naturally. Then it was the month of March, the days were getting longer, winter was going, and winter always takes something of our sorrows with it; then April came, that summer’s dawn, fresh like all dawns, gay like all childhoods; a little bit of a crybaby, in fact, like all newborns. Nature in the month of April is full of that glorious light that travels from the sky, the clouds, the trees, the meadows, and the flowers right into the heart of humankind.

Cosette was still too young for the joy of April—so like her—not to find its way into her heart. Insensibly, and without her suspecting a thing, the darkness lifted off her spirit. In spring, the light shines in sad souls just as it shines in caves at midday. Even Cosette was no longer so very sad. Anyway, that’s how it was, and Cosette was not aware of it. In the morning, after breakfast, at about ten, when she had managed to drag her father out into the garden for fifteen minutes and was walking him in the sun at the bottom of the garden steps, supporting his wounded arm for him, she did not realize that she laughed at every turn and that she was happy.

Jean Valjean was deliriously happy to see her becoming all fresh and rosy again.

“Oh, what a blessed wound!” he repeated in a hushed voice.

And he was grateful to the Thénardiers.

As soon as his wound was healed, he resumed his solitary walks in the gloaming.

It would be a mistake to think you can walk around like this, on your own, in uninhabited areas of Paris, without meeting with some adventure.

MOTHER PLUTARCH DOESN’T MIND EXPLAINING A PHENOMENON

ONE NIGHT PETIT-GAVROCHE had not eaten; he remembered that he had not eaten the night before, either; this was getting tedious. He resolved to try and get himself some supper. He went on the prowl in the deserted no-man’s-land beyond La Salpêtrière; that is where the windfalls are; where there is no one, you always find something. He got as far as a settlement that looked to him to be the village of Austerlitz.

On one of his previous reconnoiters, he had noticed an old garden there haunted by an old man and an old woman, and in this garden a passable apple tree. Beside the apple tree there was a sort of fruit shed where a person could land himself an apple. An apple is a meal in itself; an apple is life. What sank Adam might save Gavroche. The garden ran alongside a lonely unpaved laneway that was bordered with bushes for want of houses; a hedge separated the garden from the lane.

Gavroche headed for the garden. He came to the lane, recognized the apple tree, checked the fruit shed, examined the hedge; a hedge is a leg up. Day was dimming, there was not even a cat in the lane, the time was right. Gavroche began scaling the hedge, then suddenly stopped in his tracks. Someone was talking in the garden. Gavroche peered through a hole in the hedge.

Two feet away, at the base of the hedge and on the other side, exactly at the point where the gap he was considering would have dropped him, there was an overturned stone that made a kind of bench and on this bench the old man of the garden was sitting, with the old woman standing in front of him. The old woman was grumbling. Gavroche, who was anything but discreet, listened in.

“Monsieur Mabeuf!” the old woman was saying.

“Mabeuf!” thought Gavroche. “What a funny name.”

The old man addressed did not stir. The old woman repeated: “Monsieur Mabeuf!”

The old man kept his eyes on the ground but decided to reply: “What, mother Plutarch?”

“Mother Plutarch!” thought Gavroche. “Another funny name.”

Mother Plutarch went on and the old man was forced to join in the conversation.

“The landlord is not happy.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s owed three quarters.”

“In three months, he’ll be owed four.”

“He says he’ll turn you out.”

“I’ll go.”

“The fruit-hawker woman wants to be paid. She won’t let you have any more bundles of firewood. How will you keep yourself warm this winter? We won’t have any wood.” “There’s always the sun.”

“The butcher’s refusing credit, he won’t give us any more meat.”

“Well and good. Meat’s bad for my digestion. It’s too heavy.”

“What will we have for dinner?”

“Bread.”

“The baker’s demanding an installment and says no money, no bread.”

“Good-o.”

“What are you going to eat?”

“There’s always the apples from the apple tree.”

“But, Monsieur, a person just can’t live like that, without money.”

“I don’t have any.”

The old woman beetled off, the old man remained alone. He set to thinking. Gavroche was thinking alongside him. It was almost night.

The first result of Gavroche’s thinking was that instead of scaling the hedge, he decided to crawl under it. The branches separated a bit at the bottom of the bush.

“Look at that,” cried Gavroche to himself, “an alcove!” And he crept in. He was now practically back-to-back with Father Mabeuf’s bench. He could hear the octogenarian breathing.

So, for dinner, he tried to sleep.

A catnap, sleeping with one eye open. Even while he dozed off, Gavroche was on the lookout.

The whiteness of the twilight sky bleached the ground and the lane made a livid line between two rows of black bushes.

All of a sudden, on that whitish band, two silhouettes appeared. One was out in front, the other, some distance behind.

“Here’s trouble,” muttered Gavroche.

The first silhouette looked to be that of some old bourgeois gentleman, stooped and deep in thought, dressed remarkably plainly and walking slowly because of his age, out for an amble under the stars.

The second was straight, firm, slight. It was walking in step with the first; but in that deliberate snail’s crawl, you could sense suppleness and coiled agility. This silhouette had something unspeakably mean and disturbing about it, the whole look was of what was then known as a fop; the hat was stylish, the redingote was black, well cut, probably of good fabric, and cinched at the waist. The head was held high with a sort of robust grace, and, beneath the hat, you caught a glimpse in the twilight of a pale adolescent’s face. The face had a rose in its mouth. This second silhouette was well-known to Gavroche; it was Montparnasse.

As for the other, he really could not have said anything except that it was some old geezer.

Gavroche went into observation mode immediately.

One of the two out walking clearly had designs on the other. Gavroche was well placed to see what happened next. The alcove had very conveniently turned into a spy-hole.

Montparnasse on the hunt at such an hour, in such a place—this was menacing. Gavroche felt his little boy’s heart lurch with pity for the old fellow.

What could he do? Intervene? That would amount to one weakling trying to rescue another! It would give Montparnasse a good laugh. Gavroche did not disguise the fact that this fearful cutthroat of eighteen would have them both for supper, the old man first, the child next.

While Gavroche was deliberating, the assault took place, abrupt and awful. A tiger attacking a wild ass, a spider attacking a fly. Without further ado, Montparnasse chucked the rose, lunged at the old man, collared him, grabbed hold of him and hung on tight, and it was all Gavroche could do not to let out a scream. A moment later, one of the men was under the other one, exhausted, panting, flailing about, with a knee of marble on his chest. Only, it wasn’t exactly what Gavroche was expecting. The one on the ground was Montparnasse, the one on top was the old man.

All of this happened just a few feet from Gavroche.

The old man had had a shock and had given as good as he got, and so terribly that, in the blink of an eye, assailant and assailed had switched places.

“There’s a proud old war veteran for you!” thought Gavroche.

And he couldn’t stop himself from clapping. But the clap was lost. It did not reach the two combatants, absorbed and deafened by each other as they were, their breath mingled in the fray.

There was a silence. Montparnasse stopped struggling. Gavroche said to himself: “Is he dead?” The old bloke had not uttered a sound, not a word or a cry. He picked himself up and Gavroche heard him say to Montparnasse: “Get up.” Montparnasse got up, but the old man held him tight. Montparnasse had the furious humiliated look of a wolf that has been snatched by a sheep.

Gavroche watched and listened, all eyes and ears. He was enjoying himself immensely.

He was rewarded for his conscientious anxiety as a spectator, for he was able to catch the following dialogue, which borrowed an indescribably tragic tone from the darkness. The old man asked the questions. Montparnasse answered.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“You’re strong and fit. Why aren’t you at work?”

“Work bores me.”

“What is your occupation?”

“Layabout.”

“Be serious. Can I do anything for you? What would you like to be?”

“A thief.”

There was a silence. The old man seemed deep in thought. He stood stock-still but did not let go of Montparnasse.

Now and then the young villain, vigorous and deft, thrashed around like an animal caught in a trap. He gave a jerk, tried to trip the old man up, wildly writhing and twisting his limbs, attempted to break free. The old man didn’t even seem to notice as he held both his arms with a single hand, with the sovereign indifference of unassailable strength.

The old man’s trance lasted a while, then he fixed his eyes steadily on Montparnasse, gently raised his voice, and delivered him, from out of the shadows where they were standing, a sort of solemn address which Gavroche did not lose a syllable of: “My boy, you are embarking on one of the most laborious of existences, out of sheer laziness. Ah! you declare yourself a layabout! Get ready to work. Have you ever seen a very frightening machine called a rolling mill? You have to take great care with it, it’s a sly and savage thing; if it catches a flap of your coat, the whole of you goes in. This machine is idleness. Stop, while there’s still time and save yourself! Otherwise, it’s all over for you; before too long, you’ll be caught in the wheels. Once you’re caught, don’t hope for another thing again. Till you drop, lazybones, forget about rest! The iron hand of relentless work will have grabbed you. Earn your living, have a job, perform a duty—you won’t have any of that! Being like everyone else bores you! Well, then! You will be different. Work is the rule; whoever rejects it as boring will have it as torture. You don’t want to be a working man, you will be a slave. Work only drops you now to pick you up again later; you don’t want to be its friend, you will be its navvy. Ah! You don’t want any of the honest weariness of men, you will have the sweat of the damned. Where others sing, you will moan. You will see from afar, from below, other men working; it will look to you like they are resting. The labourer, the reaper, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in the light as the blessed in some paradise. What radiance in the anvil! To drive a plow, to bind sheaves—sheer bliss. The boat, free in the breeze, what a holiday! You, lazybones, dig, drag, roll, march! Drag your yoke, there you go, you’re a beast of burden in the harness from hell! Ah, to do nothing, that was your goal. Well, then! Not a week, not a day, not an hour goes by without shattering exhaustion. You can’t lift a thing except in anguish. Every minute that passes will make your muscles crack. What is a mere feather for others will be a rock for you. The simplest things will overpower you. Life will turn into a monster around you. Coming and going, even breathing, will be so many terrible travails. Your lungs will feel like they are lifting a hundred-pound weight. To walk here rather than over there will be a problem to be solved. Any other man who wants to go out pushes his door open and, there, it’s done, he’s outside. You, if you want to go out, you’ll have to bore through your wall. To go out into the street, what does everybody else do? Everybody else goes downstairs; you, you’ll rip up your bedsheets, you’ll tie them together, strip by strip, and make a rope, then you’ll go out your window and you’ll hang there by this thread over an abyss, and it will be at night, in a storm, in the rain, in a hurricane, and if the rope is too short, you’ll only have one way left to get down and that will mean dropping. Dropping any which way, into the void, from whatever height, onto what? Onto whatever is below, onto the unknown. Or you’ll climb up a chimney at the risk of getting burned; or you’ll crawl along a sewer, at the risk of getting drowned. I won’t mention the holes you’ll have to cover up, the stones you’ll have to take out and put back twenty times a day, the rubble you’ll have to hide in your straw pallet. A lock presents itself; the bourgeois has his key made by a locksmith there in his pocket. You, if you want to get in, you’re condemned to making an awesome masterpiece; you’ll take a sou, you’ll cut it into two sections. With what tools? You’ll have to invent them. That’s your problem. Then you’ll hollow out the inside of these two sections, handling the outside very carefully, and you’ll cut a screw thread all around the edge, so that they fit together perfectly, like a top and bottom lid. With the bottom and the top screwed together in this fashion, nobody would suspect a thing. To those watching you, for you will be watched, it will be a sou; to you, it will be a box. What will you put in this box? A tiny bit of steel. A watch spring that you’ll have cut teeth into and which will become a saw. With this saw, as long as a pin and hidden in the sou, you’ll have to cut the bolt of the lock, the slide of the bolt, the latch of the padlock, and the bar you’ll have at your window, and the shackle you’ll have on your leg. This masterpiece made, this marvel accomplished, all these miracles of art, skill, cleverness, patience executed, if it comes to be known that you are their author, what will be your reward? The dungeon. There’s the future for you. Laziness, pleasure—what bottomless pits! To do nothing is a woeful choice to make, don’t you know? To live idly off the substance of society! To be useless, that is, noxious! That leads straight to the direst misery. Woe to the man who wants to be a parasite! He will be vermin. Ah, you don’t like the idea of working! Ah, there’s only one thing on your mind: to drink well, to eat well, to sleep well. You’ll drink water, you’ll eat black bread, you’ll sleep on a plank with irons riveted to your limbs and you’ll feel how cold they are at night against your skin! You’ll break this iron, you’ll run away. Very well. You’ll be crawling on your stomach through the scrub and you’ll eat grass like the brutes of the woods. And you’ll be nabbed again. And then you’ll spend years in a dungeon, bolted to a wall, groping for a drink from your pitcher, gnawing on a horrible loaf of blackness even dogs wouldn’t touch, eating beans the worms would have got to before you. You’ll be a wood louse in a cellar. Ah, have pity on yourself, miserable child, so young you can’t have been sucking at your nurse’s tits more than twenty years ago, and doubtless you still have your mother! I implore you, listen to me. You want fine black fabric, patent leather shoes, you want your hair crimped, to run sweet-smelling oil through your curly locks, to please the ladies, to be a pretty boy. You’ll be shaved bald and you’ll wear a red smock and wooden clogs. You want a ring on your finger, you’ll have an iron collar around your neck. And if you so much as look at a woman, a whack of the club. You’ll go in at twenty and you’ll come out at fifty! You’ll go in young, rosy, fresh, with your sparkling eyes and your white teeth, and your beautiful adolescent head of hair, and you’ll come out broken, stooped, wrinkled, toothless, horrible, with white hair! Ah! My poor boy, you’re going the wrong way, laziness is giving you bad advice; the toughest of all work is theft. Believe me, do not take on the dreadful drudgery of being a layabout. To become a villain is not easy. It’s easier to become an honest man. Go now, and think about what I’ve told you. Speaking of which, what did you want from me? My purse. Here it is.” And the old man let go of Montparnasse and put his purse in Montparnasse’s hand. Montparnasse weighed it for a moment, after which, with the same mechanical precaution he’d have taken if he’d stolen it, he slipped it gently into the back pocket of his redingote.

When all this was said and done, the old man turned his back and quietly resumed his stroll.

“Silly old codger!” murmured Montparnasse.

Who was this old man? The reader has no doubt guessed.

Montparnasse stood, stunned, watching him disappear in the twilight. This contemplation was fatal to him.

While the old man was disappearing into the distance, Gavroche was stealing closer.

Out of the corner of his eye Gavroche had assured himself that Father Mabeuf was still sitting on the bench, though perhaps asleep now. Then the little urchin came out of his bush and began to creep along in the shadows behind the motionless Montparnasse. He reached Montparnasse accordingly without being seen or heard, gently insinuated his hand into the back pocket of the redingote of fine black fabric, grabbed the purse, withdrew his hand, and, creeping off again, made good his escape like a garter snake in the gathering gloom. Having no reason to be on his guard, and actually thinking for the first time in his life, Montparnasse didn’t feel a thing. When he got back to the spot where Father Mabeuf was, Gavroche threw the purse over the hedge and ran away as fast as his legs would carry him.

The purse fell on Father Mabeuf’s foot. The commotion woke him. He bent down and picked it up. He could not make head or tail of it; he opened it. It was a purse with two compartments; in one, there were a few small coins; in the other, there were six napoléons.

Monsieur Mabeuf was startled out of his wits and took the thing to his housekeeper.

“This has fallen from the sky,” said mother Plutarch.