And he pushed me into the cell, locked the door.
* * *
I was in that cell for seventeen nights. I wasn’t alone. It was tiny—half the size of our room in the Gorbeau, with no hearth and no glass for the single window—and yet there were ten of us in there. I counted by the light of the candle. Nine pairs of eyes looked back at me.
It was such a small room that we sat with skin pressed against skin and I think our bodies’ warmth helped us—but we still shivered. One girl’s face was scarred as if by a knife; another had lice so she scratched and scratched until her skin bled. One woman rocked to herself, wild-eyed, whispering, “Jean-Jacques? Où est Jean-Jacques?” and then she’d search the cell for him.
We were all the same. All lost and tired.
These weren’t the boasters or braggers of Paris. They weren’t like my father, who’d crow about his dealings and laugh at his own tales. None of us were proud of what we’d done. Some cried, but others didn’t shed a single tear in those seventeen nights that I was there. Perhaps we’re born with all the tears we’ll ever shed and they’d cried them all and had none left.
On a night of heavy snow, one of the women spoke to me. She was balding and had a single tooth left, peg-like. “What was it? For you?”
I sniffed, thought about my answer. “Theft. Years of it. And I had a part in a man being hurt very badly.”
“Years? You’re young, still.”
“Sixteen, I think?” I’d lost count.
“Too young for prisons. They’ll take you out. You’ll see.”
“Is it? My sister’s in here too and she’s younger still.”
“Then they’ll release both of you. Give it time.”
“What of you?”
“Theft too. And worse. I sold what no woman should ever have to sell.” I understood her meaning.
She slept—and I leaned back against the cell wall, looked out the small window at the falling snow. Was it November? I didn’t know. I thought of the holly we used to have in the inn, in Montfermeil, at Christmas—when I still had warm clothes and dreams.
* * *
It snowed and snowed. Each day we’d have to push a new layer of snow off the windowsill. Our food was a half-frozen bowl of watery broth and a crust of blackened bread. We had a single shared bucket, in the corner of the cell. Sometimes we were allowed to walk out in the yard and I liked that. It was bitterly cold but it was cleaner air and I’d walk with my hands tucked under my armpits, for warmth. I looked for Maman and Azelma in the yard and I wondered if they looked for me too. Did they miss me? Or worry?
On the fifth day, I glimpsed Azelma.
I looked up and thought, That girl looks like Azelma, but it can’t be her because she’s so old-looking and her hair’s so thin I can see her scalp beneath it … But it was her.
I stumbled. “Zel!”
She turned.
“Zel! Oh, Zel! How are you? Look at you … You’re so thin!”
“Look at you,” she retorted. “What a sorry state! What a mess! Look at the stains on your dress and the scabs on your face!”
I flinched, confused. Briefly I thought, Maybe this isn’t Azelma after all, because she was being so hateful and sharp. But I saw the red wounds on her arm from where she’d punched the windowpane. She was definitely my sister. “Does it still hurt? Your arm?”
“What do you care?”
“You’re so cross with me … Why?”
“Of course I’m cross!” she hissed. “Weren’t you meant to be the lookout? Weren’t you meant to be guarding your family, Eponine? Ha!” She folded her arms. “I hear you were with Montparnasse, kissing in the shadows … He matters more to you than we do, does he?”
“No, he doesn’t!”
“And yet you didn’t see the policemen, did you? Half a dozen gendarmes came to us, Eponine—half a dozen! They must have walked straight past you while you were having that nice little fumble in the dark … They came into the Gorbeau and broke the door down and arrested us.” She hissed like a cat. “It was your job to protect us! We are all in prison because of you!”
I couldn’t answer. My mouth opened and closed.
“You know Maman is ill?”
“Ill?”
“She’s got a sickness. Nothing stays inside her—not even water.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“A little. I’ve held her hand through the bars. She prefers me,” said Azelma. “She always did. I’m her proper daughter.”
I felt those words, like a punch. We stared at each other. Where was the thumb-sucking toddler who used to call me Ponine?
Azelma hobbled away from me. I could see her cracked heels—like hooves, as Cosette’s used to be. I saw too the shape of her shoulder blades through her dress. She tried to walk with dignity—but how could she? None of us could.
* * *
That night I whispered to the woman with the peg tooth, “I’ve lost so much.”
“You’re lucky. It means you had something to lose in the first place. Me? I had nothing …”
That night I thought about what had been and gone. I watched the snow falling outside the cell, and remembered the swifts that darted past the inn and Azelma’s doll and the outline of trees from our bedroom window. The church’s smell and the butcher’s dog. The owl’s hoot as we ran through a nighttime field and the starriest nights I’d ever seen. The safety of the upturned boat. The hug between Cosette and her mother that rocked from side to side. How we’d fed baby Gavroche with our milky thumbs, Cosette and me.
Life, I thought, goes by so quickly.
I cried a little but maybe the peg-toothed woman was right: I’d had my happy moments and my own special times. I’d known Azelma before she grew hard. I’d known how it felt to lie in the long grass with my little brother and see the blowing clouds. I thought of my mother too—twirling her skirts and saying, Am I pretty, girls? She hadn’t always been crippled and sour, and in my head she wasn’t dying of a fever in a freezing prison: She was watching her daughters swing from the rusted wagon on that bright sunny morning, after weeks of rain.
* * *
When I read her romance novels in the Sergeant of Waterloo, I sometimes found the tips of pages folded over or parts of the story underlined in ink. These were the bits she liked, I think. Beneath the rage and greed and wiry hair, maybe there was still a girl like me, who liked to dream of romance.
She died on our final day in prison. Azelma found me in the snowy yard and said, “Maman is dead,” very flatly.
I thought it wasn’t true. How could it be? I could still see Maman—her puckered mouth and the dirt beneath her fingernails. How could she be gone, for always?
“Dead?”
“Yes. They’ve taken her body away. They’ll throw her in some grave that’s meant for prisoners.” Still such hardness in Azelma. “Also, we’re getting out.”
“What?”
“They’re releasing us. We’re too young to be here and so tomorrow, we’ll be out on the streets again.”
I nodded. “What then?”
“I’ll find Papa. I know which prison he’s in. Babet will take care of me until Papa breaks out of there and finds me.” She sniffed. “I’ll live with Babet and Montparnasse. What will you do?”
I didn’t know. I said, “Maybe I’ll wait for Papa too,” but I could tell Azelma didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe myself. There was a wide, wide space between myself and my family now and I thought, He’ll never forgive me for not being the lookout. I didn’t belong with them anymore. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
* * *
I couldn’t sleep that night. The others in my cell did, coughing and moaning. But I stayed awake.
Dead. It seemed impossible. Maman had been so real and strong. How could she be lying in a pauper’s grave now? But as I watched the moon come out through the cell bars, I wondered if there was a part of my mother that wasn’t dead at all.
I cried for her. But then I realized
I was feeling something else as well. It was strange—as if my heart and head were lighter than they’d been before.
By daybreak, I could name it. It’s relief, I thought. I was relieved because I didn’t have to steal anymore, because I didn’t have to trick or lie or hand out cunning letters to the rich. I didn’t have to take orders from my parents or be scared of being asked, Well? What have you found for us? We all depend on you, you know! I didn’t have to hide my wanting heart away from them. I was free—at last.
I could actually be me, now. The Eponine I’d always wanted to be.
* * *
Here’s what I decided, in that prison cell as the sky lightened: I will live alone. I’ll do all the good, kind acts I’ve ever wanted to. I won’t steal. I won’t lie. I’ll make people’s lives better whenever I can manage it. And I’ll never, ever do cruel things again.
I made another promise too. I hadn’t forgotten how nasty I’d been to Cosette. As a child I had hit her and spat at her and called her names and for eight years, I’d felt the shame of it. I’d never truly gotten rid of how sorry I felt.
I’ll make amends, I vowed. Now and for the rest of my life.
I nodded. I liked this vow.
And him? Marius. I still ached for him. But he’d called me generous and smart, and this would be enough: I’d be these things for him.
Did I still think it was unfair? That he didn’t love me back? Yes, I did. I wanted him to. But I’d learned that life wasn’t fair. If it was, we’d have had no need to pluck rings from fingers or buttons from coats; Widow Amandine wouldn’t have been widowed; Gavroche wouldn’t have been left behind. A woman called Fantine wouldn’t have needed to leave her only child at an inn in Montfermeil. Cats wouldn’t kill mice and leave them, uneaten. Kings wouldn’t grow fat on their thrones while their people begged in their rags.
At least I’m still here, I thought then. At least I’m still alive.
The next morning we left the Madelonnettes. The ground was icy and our breath steamed.
“Well,” said Azelma. “I’m off to find Papa and Babet.”
“How will you live?”
She scoffed. “How we’ve always done, of course. Thieving never suited you but I’m good at it. Papa and I won’t starve.”
“Be careful.”
“Me? Of course. I heard there are grand houses on the rue Plumet. One’s got a brass knocker on its door that’ll be worth a fair penny on its own. We’ll go there. Plunder it.”
I felt sad.
“You’re not coming?” She knew I wasn’t.
“No. I’m going to live on my own.”
That was our good-bye—hers and mine. Azelma shrugged and turned away. She hurried down the rue Volta and was soon lost among the carriages and woodsmoke and early-morning crowds.
* * *
I knew what I’d do. I’d vowed to make amends to Cosette, and I wanted Marius to be happy—even though it hurt to do it. Even though my heart still whispered, him, and ached just to hear his name. I’d made the vow. So I had to find them.
It would be easier to find Marius. After all, I knew so many of the places he went to. The Gorbeau tenement was my starting place. I crossed the river, made my way through the streets I knew and recognized, past the church called Saint-Sulpice and the Pantheon and through the alleyways and market stalls. They were the same as ever, yet I felt different in them. I felt old, and sore inside—and I was close to tears because I loved him. But what else could I do?
I came to the tenement. Snow lay on its roof and I could see our broken window.
It felt very strange to be there again, as if a thousand years had passed, not seventeen days. I made my way up the staircase where I’d first met him and knocked on the door of Room Four.
No one answered. I glanced across to the door of Room Five and saw its wood was splintered. From where the gendarmes kicked it down, I thought.
Madame Bourgon was downstairs.
“Ah.” Her drunken eyes. “A Jondrette. You have some nerve, girl: Your family have ruined this place. The police came, you know? To your room? There was blood and broken glass and a man called Claquesous died. A murder! In these very walls! And”—a finger came round the side of her door, pointed—“your lot owe me rent.”
“Madame Bourgon, I’m so sorry for what’s happened. My father’s in prison and Maman has died.”
“That brattish younger one?”
“Azelma won’t come back here.”
She puckered her mouth. “But you’re here. Why are you here?” She didn’t trust me any further than she’d trust a spider in a house of flies.
“To ask about the boy from Room Four. Monsieur Marius—remember? Does he still live in the Gorbeau?”
She gave a single, hard laugh. “Of course I remember. You were always mooning after him, simpering … Why might he or anyone still be living here, after your family’s ways? They’ve cost me a fortune in lost rent, I can tell you. He’d been a good tenant, too—he always paid on time …”
“Do you know where he’s gone?”
She scoffed. “Still following him? He wouldn’t look at you twice!”
I knew this now. But still, her words were like stones thrown and I winced. “No address? Madame, is he even still in Paris?”
“Listen to me. My tenants—all of them—were so afraid that night they packed and left before sunrise, leaving nothing behind but footsteps and dust. He was the same. I don’t know where he is.”
With that, she slammed her door.
* * *
He wasn’t there—so where? I tried to think but couldn’t. My belly growled and I longed for a deep sleep.
I had no money of my own. No home to go to.
I spent the rest of the day looking for food and a sleeping place. There were alleyways but I didn’t trust them and there was the wasteland but Babet prowled there sometimes. I thought of cathedrals and small churches but their doors were locked at night.
In the end, I took myself back toward the Seine. One of its bridges had a stone ledge beneath it and it looked dry. Rats scurried along the ledge but I didn’t mind them. They were homeless too. Like me, they only wanted a little food and warmth.
My food was just vegetable peelings and my bed was hard and cold but, lying in it, I could see the reflections of lanterns in the water and boats passing by. I can live a good life now. These things were comforts to me.
* * *
I looked and looked for Marius. If he wasn’t in the Gorbeau, where was he? I walked to all the places I’d ever seen him in—each street, each doorway. I went to the Jardins du Luxembourg many times in the hope he still went there. I walked the same route we’d walked that sunlit summer’s evening—past the doves of Notre-Dame, and where the urchins played. In the Jardins I saw how winter turned slowly into spring because gradually, the fountain’s ice melted and its tinkling sound returned. The first pale flowers pushed up.
I went to the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood. I didn’t think he’d choose to be there—to watch lives end like that—but lots of people went there for warmth in cold weather or to buy from its stalls and so I tried it anyway. There was fish being fried; a woman offered stockings she’d knitted—Here, Mademoiselle! Cover those legs up with my stockings, see? I didn’t like it there.
I went to the Café Musain too. I peered through its glass, thinking, Let him be inside. There were faces I recognized—the boy with reddish hair and the boy with half-moon spectacles on the edge of his nose—but I couldn’t see Marius. Could I go in and ask them? I tried to—but as I pushed at the door a young man stopped me. I’d seen him before too—the one with curly blond hair.
“Men only in Café Musain,” he said.
I frowned. “But I’m looking for someone.”
“All the same. Men only.”
“Why?” I felt annoyed by this.
“It’s how it’s always been. And women don’t drink ale, Mademoiselle.”
You never met Mama
n, I thought. “I’m looking for a boy named Marius. Do you know him?”
“Marius?” The man looked at my clothes and my grubby hands. Once, I might have hidden them from him but not now. There were more important things than dirt beneath my fingernails. “What do you want him for?”
“To speak with him—that’s all. Do you know where he might be?”
He shook his head. “I don’t. I’ve not seen him for weeks and I’ve been looking for him too. He doesn’t live where he used to. What’s your name?”
“Eponine.”
“If you see him, Eponine, please tell him we need him here at the café. Tell him Enjolras and the brotherhood are making plans and we hope he hasn’t deserted us. We’ve got a republic to fight for.”
I frowned. He didn’t know me at all and yet he spoke so honestly. “How do you know I don’t support the king? That I won’t tell the gendarmerie about your plans?”
“Because you’re so poor. No poor person could ever support this king.”
Of course. Still rags and bones. Still, and always.
“You’ll tell him? If you find him?”
“Yes.”
“And do you have a message, Eponine? If I should see Marius before you?”
I shook my head. “No message.”
I looked for Marius but there were other people I was scared of finding. Claquesous was dead—but what of Gueulemer and Babet? I was scared of meeting Montparnasse because I’d hated that kiss against the gravestone and his hands on my bodice, and also because I’d made him so angry. What might he do, if he found me? He’d killed people, after all. So I stayed far away from the rue de la Charcuterie. If I saw a man with oiled hair or a flower in his buttonhole, I’d run.
As for Papa and Azelma, I was in two minds. Sometimes I wished Azelma could be sleeping under the bridge too. But I was also scared of meeting them. I knew they’d mock me. Thieving never suited you, she’d said sourly, and, There are grand houses on the rue Plumet. One’s got a brass knocker on its door … Would they try to make me steal with them? I didn’t want the new light in me to be put out by their darkness.
A Little in Love Page 12