بخش 5 کتاب 8

BOOK EIGHT

DUSK FALLS

THE ROOM DOWN BELOW

THE NEXT DAY, at nightfall, Jean Valjean knocked on the porte cochère of the Gillenormand house. It was Basque who received him. Basque just happened to be in the courtyard at the appointed time—as though under orders. It sometimes happens that a servant is told: “Keep an eye out for Monsieur So-and-so when he comes.” Basque, without waiting for Jean Valjean to approach, addressed him: “Monsieur le baron asked me to ask Monsieur if he would like to go up or stay downstairs?” “I’ll stay downstairs,” answered Jean Valjean.

Basque, who was in any case absolutely respectful, opened the door of the downstairs room, saying: “I’ll go and let Madame know.” The room Jean Valjean stepped into was a damp vaulted chamber on the ground floor, serving as a storeroom, as the occasion arose; it looked onto the street and was tiled with red tiles and only dimly lit by one barred window.

The room was not one of those that are bothered by the broom, the ceiling brush, or the duster. Dust was safe there. The persecution of spiders had not been established there, either. A lovely big spiderweb, nice and black and adorned with dead flies, fanned out over one of the windowpanes. Small and low-ceilinged, the room was furnished with a heap of empty bottles piled in a corner. The walls, which had been washed with a yellow ochre limewash, were peeling off in big chunks of plaster. At the back, there was a wooden fireplace painted black with a narrow mantelpiece. A fire had been lit in it; which indicated that someone had counted on Jean Valjean’s answer being: “I’ll stay downstairs.” Two armchairs had been placed on either side of the fireplace. Between the armchairs, in guise of a carpet, an old bedside rug had been spread showing more warp than wool. For light, the room had the fire in the fireplace and the dying light coming through the window.

Jean Valjean was tired. For several days he had not eaten or slept. He dropped into one of the armchairs. Basque came back, placed a burning candle on the mantelpiece, and withdrew. Jean Valjean, his head drooping and his chin on his chest, did not notice Basque or the candle.

All of a sudden, he rose with a start. Cosette was behind him. He had not seen her come in, but he had felt her come in. He turned round. He looked at her. She was adorably beautiful. But it was not her beauty that he was contemplating with that deeply penetrating gaze, it was her soul.

“Well,” said Cosette, “the very idea! Father, I knew you were unusual, but I would never have expected this. Marius tells me it’s you who came up with the idea that I receive you down here.” “Yes, it was my idea.”

“I expected that answer. Well, I warn you I’m going to make a scene. But first things first. Father, give me a kiss.” And she turned her cheek. Jean Valjean did not move a muscle.

“You just stand there. I take note. Action of the guilty. But it doesn’t matter, I forgive you. Jesus Christ said: Turn the other cheek. So here it is.” And she turned the other cheek. Jean Valjean did not stir. It seemed as though his feet were nailed to the floor.

“This is getting serious,” said Cosette. “What have I done to you? I declare I’m baffled. You owe it to me to make amends. You’ll eat with us.” “I’ve eaten.”

“That’s not true. I’ll get Monsieur Gillenormand to scold you. Grandfathers are made to scold fathers. Come along. Come up with me to the drawing room. This minute.” “I can’t.”

Here Cosette lost a bit of ground. She stopped her bossing and moved on to asking questions.

“But why ever not? And you choose the ugliest room in the house to see me in. It’s horrible here.” “You know, Cos—”

Jean Valjean corrected himself.

“You know, Madame, I am peculiar, I have my whims.”

Cosette clapped her little hands together.

“Madame! … You called me madame! … This is new! What does this mean?”

Jean Valjean flashed her the heartbreaking smile he sometimes resorted to.

“You wanted to be madame. And now you are.”

“Not to you, Father.”

“Don’t call me father anymore.”

“What?”

“Call me Monsieur Jean. Jean, if you like.”

“You aren’t father anymore? I’m not Cosette anymore? Monsieur Jean? What is this about? Well, this is a development! What on earth’s happened? Look me in the face a little, why don’t you. And you don’t want to live with us! And you don’t want my room! What have I done to you? What have I done to you? Has something happened?” “Nothing.”

“Well, then?”

“Everything is as usual.”

“So why are you changing your name?”

“You’ve certainly changed yours.”

He smiled again with the same smile and added: “Since you are Madame Pontmercy, surely I can be Monsieur Jean.” “I just don’t understand. This whole thing is idiotic. I’ll ask my husband if you have permission to be Monsieur Jean. I hope he won’t allow you. You are seriously hurting my feelings. A person can have whims, but he is not to give his little Cosette grief. That’s not nice. You have no right to be mean, when you are so good.” He did not answer. She briskly grabbed both his hands and, with an irresistible movement, brought them to her face and pressed them against her neck under her chin—a gesture of profound tenderness.

“Oh!” she said to him. “Be good!”

And she went on: “This is what I call being good: being nice, coming here to live, resuming our nice little promenades, there are birds here just like in the rue Plumet; living with us, leaving that hole of a place in the rue de l’Homme-Armé, not putting on charades for us to work out, being like everyone else, having dinner with us, having breakfast with us, being my father.” He pulled his hands away.

“You don’t need a father anymore, you have a husband.”

Cosette flew off the handle.

“I don’t need a father anymore! What can a person say to nonsense like that!”

“If Toussaint was here,” Jean Valjean began, as though casting about for an authoritative reference and grasping at straws, “she would be the first to agree that it’s true that I’ve always had my own funny ways. That’s nothing new. I’ve always liked my own dark corner.” “But it’s cold here. You can hardly see. It is abominable, this wanting to be Monsieur Jean. I don’t want you to be formal with me.” “A moment ago, on my way here,” replied Jean Valjean, “I saw a piece of furniture in the rue Saint-Louis. In a cabinetmaker’s. If I were a pretty woman I’d make myself a present of that piece, there. A really nice dressing table—modern style. What you call rosewood, I think. Inlaid. Fairly big mirror. And drawers. Very pretty.” “Boo! Nasty old bear!” Cosette replied.

And with staggering sweetness, gritting her teeth and baring them in a snarl, she hissed at Jean Valjean. It was one of the Graces mimicking a cat.

“I am furious!” she said. “Since yesterday you’ve all been driving me mad. I am well and truly riled. I just don’t understand. You don’t defend me against Marius. Marius doesn’t take my side against you. I am all on my own. I do a room up nicely. If I could have put the good Lord in it for good measure, I would have. I’m left stuck with my room. My tenant skips out on me. I order a nice little dinner from Nicolette. No one wants your dinner, Madame. And my father Fauchelevent wants me to call him Monsieur Jean, and for me to receive him in an awful, ugly, mouldy old cellar where the walls have beards and where, for crystal, there are empty bottles and for curtains, there are spiderwebs! You are unusual, I agree, it’s just like you, but people who have just married are granted a reprieve. You should not have gone back to being unusual quite so soon. I suppose you think you’ll be very happy in your abominable rue de l’Homme-Armé. I was pretty desperate there, myself! What have you got against me? You are really hurting my feelings a great deal. Shame on you!” And, suddenly serious, she stared hard at Jean Valjean and added: “Are you annoyed with me for being happy?” Naïveté, unwittingly, sometimes goes deep. This question, straightforward for Cosette, was profoundly complex for Jean Valjean. Cosette wanted to lash out; her claws tore.

Jean Valjean went pale. He didn’t answer for a moment, then, in a toneless voice, talking to himself, he murmured: “Her happiness, that was my life’s sole purpose. Now, God can sign me out. Cosette, you’re happy; my time is up.” “Ah, you called me Cosette!” cried Cosette.

And she threw herself around his neck. Jean Valjean, distraught, hugged her frantically to his chest. It almost felt to him like he was taking her back.

“Thank you, Father!” said Cosette.

Jean Valjean was getting so carried away his heart was about to break. He gently disentangled himself from Cosette’s arms and grabbed his hat.

“What now?” asked Cosette.

Jean Valjean replied: “I’ll leave you, Madame, they’re waiting for you.”

And, from the doorway, he added: “I called you Cosette. Tell your husband it won’t happen again. Forgive me.” Jean Valjean went out, leaving Cosette dumbfounded by this enigmatic farewell.

OTHER STEPS BACK

THE FOLLOWING DAY, at the same time, Jean Valjean came again.

Cosette did not ask him any questions, did not act amazed anymore, no longer cried that she was cold, no longer spoke of the drawing room; she avoided saying either father or Monsieur Jean. She let him address her formally. She let him call her madame. Only, she was a little less joyful. She would have been sad, had she been capable of sadness.

More than likely she had had one of those conversations with Marius in which the beloved man says what he wants to, explains nothing, yet satisfies the beloved woman. The curiosity of people in love does not extend too far beyond their love.

The downstairs room had spruced itself up a bit. Basque had done away with the bottles and Nicolette with the spiders.

Every day that followed brought Jean Valjean at the same time. He came every single day, not having the strength to take Marius’s words other than literally. Marius arranged things so that he was always out when Jean Valjean called. The household accommodated itself to Monsieur Fauchelevent’s new mode of being. Toussaint smoothed things over. She never got tired of saying: “Monsieur has always been like that.” The grandfather issued this decree: “The man is an original.” And that was that. Anyway, at ninety, no new bond is possible; everything is packed tight, a newcomer is an encumbrance. There is no room left; every habit has been acquired. Monsieur Fauchelevent, Monsieur Tranchelevent—old man Gillenormand asked for nothing more than to be released from “that monsieur.” He added: “Nothing is more common than these originals; the place is crawling with them. They get up to all kinds of mad antics. For no reason. The marquis de Canaples was worse. He bought a palace just so he could live in the attic. People do the strangest things.” No one glimpsed the sinister dark side. Who, in any case, could have guessed such a thing? There are swamps in India where the water looks weird, inexplicably quivering when there is no breeze, whipped up when it should be calm. You look at this surface bubbling away apparently without a cause; you don’t see the hydra scuttling along the bottom.

A lot of men have a secret monster like this, an ache that they feed, a dragon that gnaws away at them, a despair that haunts their nights. Such a man looks like any other, comes and goes. You do not know that he has a frightening parasitic pain inside him with a thousand teeth, living inside the miserable wretch and killing him, for he is dying of it. You do not know that this man is a bottomless pit. One where the water is still, but deep. From time to time, a disturbance no one can fathom shows on the surface. A mysterious wrinkle puckers up, then vanishes, then reappears; a bubble of air rises and bursts. It is not much, but it is terrifying. It is the unknown beast breathing.

Certain strange habits, like arriving just as others are leaving, staying in the background while others are showing off, blending into the wall on all occasions, seeking out the lonely lane, preferring the deserted street, not joining in conversations, avoiding crowds and special occasions, seeming fairly well-off yet living in poverty, having your key in your pocket and your candle at the porter’s no matter how rich you are, entering by the back door, going up the back stairs—all these insignificant little oddities, wrinkles, air bubbles, fleeting ripples on the surface, often rise up from forbidding depths.

Several weeks went by this way. A new life gradually took hold of Cosette, with the ties marriage creates, the visits, the care of the house, life’s new pleasures, those weighty matters. Cosette’s pleasures were not costly; they consisted of a single pleasure: being with Marius. Stepping out with him, staying in with him, this was the great occupation of her life. For them it was an endlessly novel joy to saunter out arm in arm into the sun, out into the street, without hiding, in front of everyone, the two of them together all on their own. Cosette had a minor setback. Toussaint could not get along with Nicolette, the pairing of two old maids being impossible, and she took herself off. The grandfather was in fine fettle; Marius had a few cases to plead here and there; alongside the newly married couple Aunt Gillenormand peacefully led the marginal life that was all she required. Jean Valjean came every day.

With familiarity gone, with this vous instead of tu, with this madame and this Monsieur Jean, he was a different person for Cosette. The care he had himself taken to get her to let go of him was doing its work on her. She was more and more lively and less and less loving. She was still very fond of him, though, and he felt that. One day she suddenly said to him: “You used to be my father, and now you aren’t my father anymore; you used to be my uncle, and now you aren’t my uncle anymore; you used to be Monsieur Fauchelevent, and now you are just plain Jean. So who are you really? I don’t like all this. If I didn’t know how good you were, I’d be frightened of you.” He still lived in the rue de l’Homme-Armé, not being able to bring himself to move from the quartier where Cosette lived.

At first, he would spend only a couple of minutes with Cosette at a time, then he would go away. Little by little he developed the habit of staying longer. It was as though he was taking advantage of the authorization provided by the days as they got longer. He arrived earlier and left later.

One day Cosette accidentally called him: “Father.” A flash of joy lit up Jean Valjean’s sombre old face. He pulled her up: “Call me Jean.” “Ah, that’s right,” she said and burst out laughing. “Monsieur Jean.”

“That’s more like it,” he said.

And he turned his head away so that she could not see him drying his eyes.

THEY REMEMBER THE GARDEN IN THE RUE PLUMET

THAT WAS THE last time. After that momentary flash of light, complete extinction was achieved. No more familiarity, no more greeting with a kiss, never again that word, so profoundly sweet: “Father!” At his own behest and with his own complicity, he was gradually driven away from every happiness; and he endured this misery that, after having lost Cosette completely in one day, he then had to lose her all over again a bit at a time.

The eye ends up adapting to dingy cellar light. In a word, his daily glimpse of Cosette was enough for him. His whole life was concentrated in those moments. He would sit next to her and look at her in silence or else he would talk to her about days long gone, about her childhood, about the convent, about her little friends at the time.

One afternoon—it was one of the first days of April, already hot, still fresh, that time of the year when the sun is so jaunty, the gardens around Marius and Cosette’s windows seemed visibly to be waking up, the hawthorn was about to break out, a jewelled array of wallflowers was spreading out over the old walls, pink snapdragons yawned in the cracks between the stones, lovely little daisies and buttercups were just starting to push up through the grass, white butterflies made their first appearance of the year, and the wind, that fiddler at life’s eternal wedding, tried out in the trees the first notes of that great dawn symphony the old poets used to call renewal—Marius said to Cosette: “We said we’d go back and see our garden in the rue Plumet. Let’s go. We shouldn’t be ungrateful.” And off they flew into the spring like two swallows. The garden in the rue Plumet had the same effect on them as the dawn. Already in their lives they had behind them something like the springtime of their love. The house in the rue Plumet still belonged to Cosette, having been taken out on a lease. They went through the garden and through the house. There, they found themselves again, and lost themselves again. That evening, at the usual time, Jean Valjean went to the rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.

“Madame has gone out with Monsieur and is not back yet,” Basque told him.

He sat down in silence and waited for an hour. Cosette did not come home. He bowed his head and went on his way.

Cosette was so intoxicated by her walk with Marius in “their garden,” and so overjoyed at having “lived in her past for a whole day,” that she could talk of nothing else the next day. It never occurred to her that she had not seen Jean Valjean.

“How did you get there?” Jean Valjean asked her.

“On foot.”

“And how did you get back?”

“In a fiacre.”

For some little time Jean Valjean had noticed the cramped life the young couple led. It made him angry. Marius’s economizing was severe, and Jean Valjean meant the word in its absolute sense. He hazarded a question: “Why don’t you have your own carriage? A pretty coupé would only set you back five hundred francs a month. You’re rich.” “I don’t know,” replied Cosette.

“It’s like Toussaint,” Jean Valjean went on. “She’s gone. But you haven’t replaced her. Why not?” “Nicolette’s enough.”

“But you need a lady’s maid.”

“I have Marius, don’t I?”

“You ought to have a house of your own, servants of your own, a carriage, a box at the theatre. Nothing is too good for you. Why not take advantage of the fact that you’re rich? Wealth only adds to happiness.” Cosette did not answer.

Jean Valjean’s visits did not get any shorter. Far from it. When it is the heart that is slipping, you don’t stop on the way down.

Whenever Jean Valjean wanted to prolong his visit and make her forget the time, he would praise Marius; he would find him handsome, noble, courageous, witty, eloquent, good. Cosette would outdo him. Jean Valjean would start again. They never dried up. Marius—that word was inexhaustible; those six letters spoke volumes. This way, Jean Valjean managed to stay for a long while. To see Cosette, to forget by her side, was so sweet to him! It was the dressing of his wound. It happened several times that Basque had to come twice to say: “Monsieur Gillenormand has sent me to remind Madame la baronne that dinner is served.” On those days, Jean Valjean would return home in a very thoughtful mood.

Was there, then, some truth in that comparison with the chrysalis that had popped into Marius’s mind? Was Jean Valjean, in fact, a chrysalis who would dig his heels in and would go on coming over to visit his butterfly?

One day he stayed even longer than usual. The next day, he noticed that there was no fire in the grate. “Right!” he thought. “No fire.” And he furnished himself with this explanation: “It’s quite simple. It’s now April. The cold is over.” “God! It’s cold in here!” cried Cosette, as she came in.

“No, it’s not,” said Jean Valjean.

“So it was you who told Basque not to light a fire?”

“Yes. Soon it will be May.”

“But we light fires up until the month of June. In this cellar, you have to light them all year round.” “I thought we wouldn’t need a fire.”

“Another one of your funny ideas!” Cosette scolded.

The day after that, there was a fire. But the two armchairs had been moved away across the room next to the door.

“What is that supposed to mean?” thought Jean Valjean.

He went to get the armchairs and put them back in their usual place by the fireside. Still, the fact that the fire had been lit again encouraged him. He made their chat last even longer than usual. As he got up to go, Cosette said to him: “My husband said a funny thing to me yesterday.” “What was that?”

“He said to me: ‘Cosette, we have thirty thousand livres in income. Twenty-seven from you, and the three that my grandfather gives me.’ I said: ‘That makes thirty.’ He went on: ‘Would you have the courage to live on three thousand?’ I said: ‘Yes, on nothing. As long as it was with you.’ And then I asked: ‘Why are you asking?’ He answered: ‘I just wanted to see.’” Jean Valjean could think of nothing to say. Cosette probably expected him to give her some explanation; he listened to her in mournful silence. He returned to the rue de l’Homme-Armé so profoundly absorbed that he got the door wrong and instead of going into his place, he went into the place next door. It was only after climbing nearly two flights of stairs that he realized his mistake and went downstairs again.

His mind was racked with surmise. It was clear that Marius had his doubts about the origins of those six hundred thousand francs, that he feared some illicit source. Who knows? Perhaps he had even found out that the money came from him, Jean Valjean, and was hesitating in the face of a suspect fortune, loath to accept it as his own, preferring for them to remain poor, he and Cosette, than to enjoy a tainted wealth.

On top of this, Jean Valjean was vaguely beginning to feel he was being turned away.

The following day, when he stepped into the downstairs room he had a kind of jolt. The armchairs had disappeared. There was not even a chair.

“What!” cried Cosette on entering. “No armchairs! What on earth has happened to the armchairs?” “They’re not here anymore,” replied Jean Valjean.

“That’s a bit much!”

Jean Valjean stammered: “I told Basque to take them away.”

“The reason being?”

“I’ll only be staying a few minutes today.”

“Staying only a little while is no reason for staying standing up.”

“I think Basque needed armchairs for the drawing room.”

“What for?”

“No doubt you’re having people over this evening.”

“We’re not having anyone.”

Jean Valjean could not say another word. Cosette gave a shrug.

“Fancy getting them to take the armchairs away! The other day you had the fire put out. You really are quite peculiar!” “Adieu,” murmured Jean Valjean.

He did not say: “Adieu, Cosette.” But he did not have the strength to say: “Adieu, Madame.” He went away, crushed. This time the meaning was all too clear. The next day, he did not come. Cosette did not even notice till that evening.

“Fancy,” she said. “Monsieur Jean didn’t come today.”

Her heart gave a slight lurch, but she scarcely registered it, immediately distracted as she was by a kiss from Marius.

The day after that, he did not come. Cosette did not give it a thought; she whiled away her evening and slept away her night as if nothing had happened, and only thought about it when she woke up. She was so happy! She sent Nicolette off swiftly to Monsieur Jean’s to see if he was sick and to see why he hadn’t turned up the night before. He was not sick. He was busy. He would come soon. Just as soon as he could. In any case, he was going on a short trip. Madame might remember that it was his habit to go on trips from time to time. No one should worry on his account. No one should give him a thought.

Nicolette, on entering Monsieur Jean’s, had repeated to him the exact words her mistress had used. That Madame was sending her to see “why Monsieur Jean had not come the night before.” “It’s been two days since I was last there,” said Jean Valjean softly.

But the observation was lost on Nicolette, who didn’t breathe a word of it to Cosette.

ATTRACTION AND EXTINGUISHMENT

DURING THE LATE spring and early summer of 1833, occasional passersby in the Marais, shopkeepers, loungers idling on doorsteps, noticed an old man neatly dressed in black, who, every day at around the same time, at dusk, would come out of the rue de l’Homme-Armé near the rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, go past the rue des Blancs-Manteaux as far as the rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine and, having reached the rue de l’Écharpe, turn left into the rue Saint-Louis.

There he would walk slowly, his head thrust forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eyes immutably fixed on a point that was always the same, that seemed to him to be glittering with stars, and yet was nothing more than the corner of the rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. The closer he got to that street corner, the brighter his eyes would grow; a sort of joy would light up his pupils like an inner dawn; he looked fascinated and overcome with emotion, his lips would move slightly, as though he were talking to someone he could not see, he would smile vaguely and slow his pace to a crawl. You would have said that, while he wanted to get there, he was afraid of the moment when he would be quite close. When there were no more than a few houses between himself and this street that seemed to draw him like a magnet, his steps would slow down to such an extent that at times you could be forgiven for thinking he had stopped walking. His wobbling head and his staring eyes reminded you of a compass needle seeking the magnetic pole. However long he managed to defer his arrival, he had to arrive some time; he would reach the rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he would stop, he would shake, he would poke his head round the corner of the end house with a sort of grim timidity and there he would gaze into the street, and in that tragic gaze there was something that resembled the bedazzlement of the impossible and the reflection of a paradise that was shut. Then a tear that had gathered slowly in the corner of his eye would grow big enough to fall and would slide down his cheek and sometimes stop at his mouth. The old man would taste its bitterness. He would stay like this for a few minutes as though turned to stone; then he would go back the way he had come just as slowly, and the farther away he got the more the light in his eyes would go out.

Little by little, the old man stopped going as far as the corner of the rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; he would stop halfway down the rue Saint-Louis; sometimes a bit farther away, sometimes a bit closer. One day, he stayed at the corner of the rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine and gazed at the rue des Filles-du-Calvaire from afar. Then he silently shook his head from side to side as though he were denying himself something, and he retraced his steps.

Soon, he did not even go as far as the rue Saint-Louis. He would get to the rue Pavée, shake his head, and turn back; then he would go no farther than the rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he would not go beyond the rue des Blancs-Manteaux. He was like the pendulum of a clock that has stopped being wound up, whose swings get shorter and shorter before stopping altogether.

Every day, he left his place at the same time, he set out on the same route, but he no longer finished it and, without perhaps realizing it, he made it shorter and shorter all the time. His whole face expressed this one idea: What’s the use? His eyes were dead; the light had gone out. The tear, too, had dried up; it no longer gathered in the corner of his eye; that thoughtful eye was dry. The old man’s head was always thrust forward; his chin quivered at times; the folds on his thin neck would break your heart. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he would have his umbrella tucked under his arm, but he would not open it. The good women of the quartier would say: “That man’s an innocent.” Children would follow him, laughing.