Montparnasse’s voice was so soft the room fell quiet when he spoke. “Do you know Sanson?”
“Sanson?” Azelma shook her head. “No, I don’t. Who’s he? Will you tell me, Montparnasse?”
“He’s the executioner. He’s the man who works the blade—and he gets to keep the silver crosses or gold rings that the jabbering fools bring out with them. Once the blade drops, he pries these treasures out of their still-warm hands … Well, I found where Sanson drinks at night.”
Azelma gasped. “You took the silver crosses from him when he was drunk?!”
“I did. I don’t think it’s stealing if I’m taking what was already stolen, do you?”
The Patron Minette ruled the Paris underworld. They knew how long to hold a man’s head underwater. They’d dig up a freshly dead body in Père Lachaise cemetery just in case it still wore a wedding ring. They used sewers to escape through or hide in—and as I listened I felt ashamed and angry.
I ached for something else. For something good. I thought suddenly of Cosette and the gentle face of the yellow-coated man. Their hearts were the opposite of the black hearts sitting by this fire. Where were they?
I want more than this, I thought. Just like I’d wanted more than a life in Montfermeil. I want to get out of here.
* * *
I stole and stole. There was no other way to get enough money to leave the house on rue de la Charcuterie, so I hurried through Les Halles taking every shiny thing. I took pocket watches and eyeglasses and candlesticks with their candles still in and stirrups from saddles and a pair of lambskin gloves. I whipped a walking cane away from a man, took it back to Maman to replace her rickety branch.
More, steal more … I didn’t even do good deeds as I went. I didn’t have time to, for I just wanted to be far, far away from Babet’s brown teeth, the damp mattress and the lice, and the eye that peered through that hole in the wall.
A blizzarding night. Hard to steal in blizzards because most people were indoors and my hands were too numb to do much.
I stumbled through the snowy streets. I was shivering and blue, but it was better than sitting by Babet’s fire. Here at least I could daydream. Perhaps I will be rescued. Maybe a handsome man will find me, say, “Why is such a beauty in rags and tatters? Come with me …” Such little dreams kept me warm inside.
As I crept along the rue du Puits-l’Ermite, I saw something, bronze-colored, half hidden by snow.
I bent down.
A key. It was big and heavy. What might it be worth and could it be melted down? Was there gold in it? I ran back to the rue de la Charcuterie thinking, This will get us out of there! We’ll be able to live in our own house because of this key!
Maman leaned on her new walking stick and said, “Let me see.”
“Do you think it might be gold? Maman?”
“It’s heavy, for certain …” She weighed it in her hand.
Papa and Babet came with their beady eyes and said, “A key?”
“Eponine found it. I don’t think it’s gold but it might be worth something. Feel how heavy it is.”
Papa smiled. “Never mind selling it. Where did you find it?”
I said, “Rue du Puits-l’Ermite.”
“Where on the rue du Puits-l’Ermite?”
“Near the lamppost that the dogs use.”
“And did anyone see you pick it up?”
“No, Papa. It was snowing and no one was out except me.”
“And is it still snowing?”
“Yes, very hard.” I didn’t understand his questions. “Why, Papa? Why must it be snowing?”
He started to cackle. “Because what do keys open, Eponine? Doors! I’m going to try all the doors on rue du Puits-l’Ermite with it—until a door opens and lets us in … And if it’s snowing?”
“It will cover our tracks!” sang Azelma. “People will stay inside and no one will follow us or know it was us!”
They all came forward at that moment. Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse stepped into the candlelight like ghosts.
“This sounds like a wonderful plan,” Maman said.
“It does,” said Babet. “What are we waiting for?”
* * *
I cried that night. I hadn’t meant for a home to be burgled, for a sleeping person to be robbed of all they had in the whole wide world. I’d just thought Papa could sell the key for its metal, that’s all.
I whispered, “Don’t let anyone die. Please …” It’d be my fault.
They all came back at dawn. Under their snowy coats and in their pockets and carried between them they had tables, paintings, the poker for the fire, a carriage clock, and shiny knobs from the sleeper’s bed. In a polished wooden box they’d found banknotes and jewels. Also, a letter in a woman’s hand in which she had written, “All I ever think about is you …”
“A letter? No value in that,” said my papa. He threw the note on the fire and I watched it burn.
I felt wretched, tired and lonely. The others drank and cackled but I stayed in the bedroom, hugging my knees. Downstairs, I heard Papa say, “Eponine? Oh, she’s too soft and foolish. But she needn’t be sad—I left the key in the door for him, so at least he has something!” And their laughter shook the whole house. I hated that key. It meant that somewhere in Paris, a man lost all that mattered to him on a snowy night. He lost money and paintings—but a love letter too, and maybe that letter was the greatest loss of all.
Papa sold everything—the bed knobs, the jewels.
“But we’ll keep the table,” said Maman. “We’ll need it in our new home.”
“New home?”
“We’ve got enough money now, Eponine. That key hasn’t just opened a crooked old door on the rue du Puits-l’Ermite. It’ll open the door to our new home too.”
I gasped. “Really? No Babet and no Montparnasse?”
“No, just us,” said Maman.
Love. It’s almost the smallest word I know. If it were an object, I might drop it or forget it because it’s so tiny. But it’s not a small feeling, even though it grows from a moment as small as an apple seed.
In my daydreams I found love in the smart parts of Paris, where the ladies wore ermine and music played. I never thought I’d find it in the gray and drafty stairwell of the Gorbeau tenement, but I did.
* * *
Our new home was south of the river. We trudged through the snow toward it, over the Seine, past the old horse market, and beyond the rue du Petit Banquier, where the tannery was.
“Where are we going, Papa?” asked Azelma, clutching her dress at the neck for warmth. “I liked it at Babet’s … Why couldn’t we stay there?”
“We’re going to a place that Claquesous told me about.”
“Claquesous speaks?” said Maman drily. This was the poorest part of Paris, where the homeless huddled by damp fires and where the slaughterhouse was. “Where are we?”
“Salpêtrière.”
Stunted trees, crumbling walls. It’s like the end of the world, I thought.
There was a long black building ahead of us. “There,” said Papa. “That’s our new home.”
* * *
The Gorbeau tenement had row upon row of windows that peered out like eyes. A single door stood, mouthlike. I thought it looked like a skull.
“The rent’s cheap,” Papa said. “It’ll do.”
The landlady was called Madame Bourgon. I don’t think she’d ever brushed her hair because it was knots, all over. She had the slow-moving eyes of someone who drank too much.
“Yes?”
“You’ve got a room to rent?”
She eyed us. “There are four of you?”
“Four.”
“One room is four sous a week. A sou for each person.”
Maman scoffed. “Four? These two are children! They are not yet in their teens! Why should they be a sou each, as we are?”
This was as clear a lie as if she had said it was summer outside.
The landlady cackled.
“These two? Ha! Look at their faces! Those aren’t children’s faces and they’ve got the shapes of women, and”—she brought out a finger, pointed—“if you think I can be fooled by a liar, you’re a fool yourself. Understand?”
So it was four sous and no less.
When asked for our name, Papa said Jondrette.
“Jondrette?” I whispered to Azelma. “Why Jondrette?”
“Everybody knows the name Thenardier,” she replied. “After the murdered bishop? It’s a wanted name in France and that old bat”—she meant Madame Bourgon—“wouldn’t rent her room to us if she knew who we really were.”
* * *
It was an echoing, drafty place. There were lots of stairs too because the corridors were so long that there were stairwells at each end of them. Most of the rooms were empty but some were rented by people who were as thin and poor as us. Our room was on the second floor. There wasn’t much in it, just a single chair and two rickety beds. I had a window but it was so dirty I couldn’t really see through it. There was a small hearth for cooking. A bucket for private doings.
“Well?” said Maman. “What do you think?”
I didn’t know what to say. At least it was better than the house on the rue de la Charcuterie.
* * *
I hoped I might be able to stop stealing now. But no. Maman ordered it: “How else are we going to eat? Keep stealing!”
“But it’s so cold outside …”
“Then steal some firewood to warm yourself afterward! Tsk …”
I crept through Salpêtrière, looking. There was nothing to steal. Even the trees looked poor because their branches had been snapped off for fuel. In the graveyard, people were sheltering against the gravestones and they looked as dead as the people in the ground.
Azelma managed to catch a crow. She carried it back to the Gorbeau, where it flapped and screeched until Papa wrung its neck. It tasted nasty but it was food. Its scattered soot-black feathers never really left our room.
“There’s nothing to steal, Maman! People are poorer than we are!”
“Try harder.”
Madame Bourgon saw all of this. She spied us as we came and went, said, “Always out walking, aren’t you … ?”
From this, I knew she was nosy—and that if I ever wanted to know something, she’d be the one to ask.
* * *
I walked farther and farther into Paris.
Christmas was coming closer. It meant the streets looked more colorful and there was music everywhere. On the rue de Rivoli, people wore fur and long woolen coats and the lanterns dazzled me—but I also thought of the shivering folk in the graveyard in Salpêtrière. It didn’t seem fair to have rich and poor side by side.
One late afternoon, I came to a square called the place Saint-Michel. I stopped because it looked so pretty, with candles in its windows. Snow had started falling again. The nearby clock tower struck seven times.
At the side of the place Saint-Michel was a café. Its windows were steamy from all the people inside it and so I hurried to it, hoping that it might warm me a little. CAFÉ MUSAIN read the sign. I pressed my face against its foggy glass. Inside was a roaring fire and dozens and dozens of young men, drinking and talking so loudly that I could hear them even though the door was closed.
“Vive la république!” cried one with golden curls. They cheered, and another boy with reddish hair raised his glass, saying, “A toast! A toast! To Lamarque!”
They all stood, glasses high in the air. “Larmarque!”
A boy with half-moon spectacles began to sing, stamping his feet.
I stepped away from the window. Such passion. I’d seen it in their pink cheeks and flashing eyes and I’d heard it in the way they spoke. What were they talking about? I didn’t know much but I knew that the king was hated and most people wanted him gone.
Those men wished for a better life, just like I did. I was just one little person in a world of millions but I still mattered. I had hopes and dreams, like them. The thought kept me warm as I hurried home.
Papa was angry. “Nothing? You’ve been out all day and you’ve come back with nothing?” He kicked the wall. “At least your sister brings crows and rats …”
“Rats?”
“It’s food! And it’s more than you’re bringing us …”
“She’s too busy dreaming … ,” muttered Maman, disappointed in me.
* * *
With nothing to steal I had to try something else. And I had a thought: I’ll get a job. It was nearly Christmas after all, and I was sure there would be at least one shopkeeper in Paris who might need a little help. So I tied my hair back with string and scrubbed the stains from my skirt and I knocked on dozens of doors—butchers, grocers, vintners, taverners, fishmongers, the coffin-makers who liked the word guillotine, the confectioner on rue d’Estard whose window was one of the prettiest things I’d seen in all my life. The confectioner saw me looking through his window.
“Hey!” he said. “What do you want? Get away from there!”
I jumped. “Monsieur, I’m just looking for a little work. Maybe I could do something useful for you, in return for a coin or two?”
He did a single, hard laugh. “You?”
“Please, Monsieur, I’m a hard worker, and—”
“Look at you! Grime on your hands and holes in your clothes! There are folk in the ground at Père Lachaise who have more flesh on their bones! Employ you? I wouldn’t even serve you. Move on or I’ll make you.” And he raised his fist.
He was the worst of them: his shop was full of sweetness but the rest of him was sour. But others were not that different.
The butcher folded his arms. “No work here.”
“Not even to sweep the floors? Even if it’s just for one day?”
“No work.”
When I tried one vintner—maybe I could move barrels?—he narrowed his eyes and said, “Are you a royalist? Supporting the king? Or are you after a republic like so many are?”
I wasn’t sure. What had they said at the Café Musain? I mumbled, “I think Lamarque will save us.”
“Then you’re a traitor,” he shouted, “as well as a grubby little wretch! Now shoo, before I set my dog on you!”
For three days, I tried so hard to live a proper life. But I was jeered at and pushed away, and I didn’t get any food to take back to the Gorbeau tenement. I was hungry and cold.
Then I smelled something. What was it? It was sweet and hot and my belly growled at it. On the corner of rue de Pontoise and passage des Patriarches, there was a metal drum. Inside this drum, I saw the reddish glow of coals.
A man stood near it, saw me. “Yes?”
My voice was tiny. “May I stand here a while? Just for warmth?”
He was roasting chestnuts. They were darkening and splitting to show their flesh. I’d have given so much to taste just one of them. I could barely find the strength of heart to speak to him but I said, “Monsieur, forgive me—I don’t have a single coin on me but I would love to have one of your chestnuts. Are there any errands I could do for you? Any pots that may need cleaning?”
He tilted his head. “A single chestnut? Child, I can spare you a single chestnut. Come closer.” He lifted a nut from his fire and held it out.
I was shocked. No curses from him? No Get away from here! “Really? For free?”
When he placed it in my hand it was almost too hot for me to hold—but I loved how it felt. Warmth! At last! He watched me as I ate. His eyes had a shine to them. “Mademoiselle,” he whispered, “look how thin you are …”
I looked. My elbows and knees were the largest part of my limbs. I looked as if I could be snapped like a twig.
“How do you live?”
I wondered how to answer. Then I thought, Be honest with this good man, and so with the taste of chestnut on my tongue, I said, “I’ve tried for work, Monsieur, but no one will give me any. I beg a little. But I steal, most of all. I hate to do it, I really do—but if we don’t steal, we s
tarve.”
The chestnut seller listened. I thought he might call me a name like thief or scoundrel and tell me to clear off, but he didn’t. He just said, “You poor thing. There are many like you, I know. This city … We thought the revolution would lead to a better life but what’s changed? Come closer, still. Warm yourself. And here.” He took a twist of paper, filled it with many chestnuts—five, six, seven of them. “I’ve no job to give you and not much money of my own, but you’re not much older than my son and far thinner. If I can ever help you, child, I’ll try to.”
I took the chestnuts, wordless. Seven of them? For nothing?
“A gift,” he said.
“A gift?”
“It’s Christmas Eve, after all.” I felt like weeping. The vintner and confectioner had been so cruel but this man was so kind … The bells of Notre-Dame pealed across the Seine.
I remembered another Christmas Eve, many years before. The yellow-coated man. His eyes had been like the chestnut man’s eyes—sad and very gentle. Suddenly, my own eyes brimmed and Notre-Dame blurred and I felt so thankful for these chestnuts and for such good people. I whispered, “Thank you,” as I ran home under the nighttime sky.
* * *
My family gobbled the chestnuts up.
“You stole them?” said Maman with her mouth full.
“Yes,” I lied. It just seemed better to, and as I watched them eat I thought, There is still good in the world. The men in the Café Musain had believed it and the chestnut-seller had proved it.
The next morning I said merry Christmas to everyone I’d met and liked in my life: Cosette, Valjean, little Gavroche, the Lefevres, Widow Amandine, the black cat in Montfermeil. Merry Christmas to the stars. Merry Christmas to Old Auguste and his peaches. Merry Christmas to the upturned boat that lay on a riverbed these days but might be a home (or so I hoped) to fish and eels, and unseen river things.
Christmas passed. The year was 1831. The man called Lamarque was being talked of everywhere. Maybe this will be the year that he kicks the king off the throne? Do you think? It wasn’t snowing now but it was too cold for the fallen snow to melt so it just lay there getting dirty. There were yellow spots where dogs had been.
A Little in Love Page 7