The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

A thread of ethereal light pierced an aperture in a wall of stone. Unlike my previous outings, my movement was suddenly restricted to the circumference of a prison cell that reeked of unwashed flesh. This filthy, dark air besieged my senses, causing me to gag as I focused my eyes on a lone window inlaid with poles of rusted rebar. What kind of manmade hell had I encountered on this occasion? My vision soon adjusted to the gloominess at large. Outside the boundaries of my confinement, I discerned the ghastly vista of a city’s square. In the plaza’s corner, a shadowed frame of wood scaffolding housed Death’s most prolific instrument.

  The menacing craftsmanship of Dr. Guillotine’s National Razor glimmered in the grim morning light. The symbol of France’s bid for liberty was already botched in the wine-colored residue of its trade. No additional evidence was required for me to pinpoint my current location. I had been summoned to haunt the Prison La Force at a time when the frenzied chants for equality and fraternity transformed habitually docile men into blood-marred barbarians.

  I returned my attention dejectedly toward the cell’s interior, where I noticed a single chair and table situated in one corner. At this chamber’s opposite end, a greasy straw mattress served as a resting place for a condemned man. The prisoner on the bed sat upright, but his face was partially shadowed from my inspection. Judging by the man’s sedate posture, I assumed he had already come to terms with the reign of terror that awaited him outside this cubicle of despair. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence initially. Perhaps he viewed me as an apparition sent to test his resilience more so than it had already been tried.

  The somber man remained motionless as I stepped through the wedge of dawning cast through this cell’s window. He clasped his hands across his knees, with his stocking legs akimbo. Since he made no initial recognition of my presence, I assumed he was engaged in prayer. His gesture seemed like a trite bid for deliverance from the horrors of this fetid keep. When it was no longer possible for him to deny my existence, he lifted his head as methodically as the oblique blade that awaited all of La Force’s condemned inmates.

  It required little guesswork from me to determine who I kept company with on this occasion. At present, depending on the timing of my arrival in this scenario, I narrowed my choices down to two individuals. The fellow’s charcoal hair blended seamlessly with the wall’s shadows, leaving me with a remote chance to discern any disparities between his features and his look alike. After a closer examination of this character, however, I detected deep furrows in the man’s brow; it was the countenance of a misdirected life. And his eyes, although unquestionably benevolent, reflected a sort of melancholic aura that hinted of a repressed loneliness.

  Yet, despite this bleak arrangement, I sensed no lingering regret in a face that appeared aged beyond its years. He assigned no word of complaint to the plight that he had prescribed for himself. His whiskey-hardened visage had already undergone a transformation of sorts, tempering the creases around his eyes and corners of his lips. This was no longer a self-deprecating man who drowned his sorrow beneath a deluge of booze. The Jackal ceased to prowl futilely through life. Strangely, he had discovered a resolution to his strife here in the worst of all possible venues. Calmness lubricated his expression like warm oil lathered on his skin, making him an unsuitable candidate for the fate that summoned fifty-two others on this execution day. Neither pride nor envy tainted his disposition. Up until this interval in my travels, I admired no person more completely than this beleaguered rogue. The world outside this pitiless den knew his name as Sydney Carton.

  I barely managed to form the syllable of his name on my lips, yet my salutation may have served as the sole device to make myself more than a ghost to him. “Hello, Mr. Carton,” I called out. My response was greeted with silence. I committed an error in judgment if I expected him to acknowledge his true name now. The sequence of events from the preceding night made it imprudent for him to do so. From this point forward, I suspected that he would have only answered to the signature given to him by his captors: Prisoner Twenty-Three. Undoubtedly, these gaolers salivated like famished Parisians at the prospect of Charles Darnay’s decapitation. Their insatiable lust for blood was rivaled by just one tricoteuse, who ceaselessly knitted a registry of doom for a generation of Evremondes.

  Carton narrowed his eyes considerably as I slunk from the crevice of darkness within his cell. He now clearly observed that I was as tangible as he was to the innards of this filthy incubator of death. His muteness indicated that he had no intention of jeopardizing the secrecy of his plan. For a moment, he displayed a stoic glare that froze me in my stance as if I had locked eyes with the Gorgon Queen.

  “I didn’t see you enter,” he muttered suspiciously. “Are you not in secret as well?”

  “No, sir. I let myself in, so to speak.”

  “Then you have a turnkey?”

  “I do not,” I responded. My present demeanor caused me to fumble with a plausible explanation for my sudden emergence in Carton’s cell. In this case, the truth seemed less sincere than proclaiming anything at all. Therefore, I simply let Carton insert the necessary details in order to construct a logical conclusion.

  “Basard,” he grumbled with a jittery intonation. “I might’ve surmised that he’d flub this task in some way.”

  “There’s no reason to be alarmed, sir.” I assured Darnay’s doppelganger. “Basard has made the stealthy transition unnoticed, and you can rest assuredly with the knowledge that Charles will be reunited with his wife and child soon. In fact, even as we speak, they are all safely en route to England.”

  My explanation was designed to alleviate Carton’s uncertainty. But my news didn’t instill how I learned the particulars of his clandestine act of selflessness. It also didn’t supply him with the slightest inclination of who I was and what I might’ve wanted from him. Before we advanced any further in our communication, I guaranteed this altruistic lawyer that the method of my business didn’t include anything to undermine what he had devised.

  “No one outside or within this cell will prevent or delay what you have wished upon yourself,” I assured him.

  “I’m thankful for that,” Carton mused. He still examined my expression for a flicker of deceit. After a few seconds, his eyes widened and his taunt features slackened a bit. “What is your name?” he then asked me.

  “Cobbs,” I replied without reservation.

  “Cobbs? You’re not a cobbler by chance, are you, Mr. Cobbs?”

  “No, sir,” I smirked. “I haven’t any skills for shoemaking.”

  Carton became more analytical with his next inquiry, reminding me that trust was not bequeathed habitually between strangers during a time of revolution. “It may seem a bit indelicate for me to ask, but what purpose do you have in La Force if you’re not a prisoner scheduled to die?”

  If I had a lucid objective for this visitation, I didn’t yet perceive it. Following several seconds of contemplation, I offered this: “I’m eager to learn whatever I can from you, sir. I don’t come across men of your caliber very often.”

  “Indeed,” Carton sighed. “Apparently, Paris has stationed a spy on every corner, and even within the nooks between the doors.”

  “It’s an epoch of terror,” I needlessly reminded him.

  Carton offered me a wry grin and exclaimed, “I’ve endured the best and worst of such times, Cobbs. But if you’re wily enough to sneak in here to see me, then I presume you have a strategy to go directly the other way before the bell tower strikes three.”

  “I’ve secured a safe passage for myself, sir,” I said. As I stared at Carton, I noticed that his hands were still clasped decisively across his bent knees, but he had something wedged between his fingers on his right hand. The thin vein of daylight illuminating this cell’s interior angled directly upon the object in question. It was nothing more than a piece of wilted straw, undoubtedly plucked from the bed he lay upon. Yet in the muted glow of that phantom-like sunray, it glistened like a golden thread. How could I no
t think of Carton’s unrequited love and how it ushered him to his demise?

  “Since you’ve obviously resorted to some degree of espionage,” he resumed, “you must have something in mind that needs remedy.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I thought aloud. Because I knew the outcome of this ordeal and regretted my limitations to alter it, I was reluctant to continue with our exchange. It saddened me to realize that I was envious of a man who was slated to die beneath La Guillotine’s indiscriminating edge in fewer rounds than the clocks hands turned until twilight. Carton’s lost periods of inebriation no longer mattered. He had evolved into a humane character that few, if any, could’ve emulated. In spite of his past transgressions against his own body and mind, I saw nothing but innate courage filtering from within Prisoner Twenty-Three’s moody eyes.

  “I suppose if I wanted to learn one thing from you,” I said. “I would like to understand how someone could love a woman so ardently and unconditionally that he’d sacrifice his own life to ensure her happiness with another man.”

  Carton reposed introspectively on his mattress; I watched his finger twitch with the straw still in place as if it was rooted under his fingernail. He then released his hands from his knees, permitting his palms to open toward me as if they were portals into his most cherished recollections. “My act is no revelation, Mr. Cobbs,” he explained. “Many men before me have died so that others may live. It’s a natural exchange. The fact that I’ve chosen this ending for myself here in someone else’s name makes my deed no more laudable than those who perform similar acts in anonymity.”

  “But I’m sure, sir, that Lucie would not consider your gift so frivolously. I’ve never met a man like you before. Even if I lived two lifetimes, I doubt my altruism could ever equal your own.”

  Carton maneuvered to sit more upright now, extending his legs as if to stretch out the knots contorting his muscles. “I think we’re getting to the core of the matter now,” he remarked. “Your business at hand is to mollify guilt. Am I correct, Mr. Cobbs?”

  Attempting to deny my ulterior intention served no justice in this already unjust place. Despite Carton’s dire circumstances, he worked masterfully within his intellectual range to outwit me. “I have a wife,” I announced solemnly. “But I’m almost ashamed to admit that she’s nearly lost to me now.”

  “Is this by her motivation or yours?”

  “I don’t know if it’s fair for me to assume as much, but I believe it is her doing.”

  “I’m afraid my method for saving marriages can only be offered on a single occasion,” Carton returned. “You’ll have to acquire a more permanent source if you wish to rectify this situation.”

  “It may already be too late for such hope,” I confessed. “I have proper cause to presume that my wife has fallen prey to another man’s persuasions.”

  “Am I to presume that your rival is also your double?” Carton offered only a sly grin with his comment, but I sensed that his sardonic humor was still intact. But unlike Carton, I couldn’t pretend that I accepted my wife’s lover as the better prospect in her life than me.

  “Do you believe your wife is happier in this other man’s embrace, Mr. Cobbs?”

  “I’d hate to think it, but I can’t readily deny that she’s unhappy with anyone other than me at the moment.”

  “That’s a critical self assessment,” said Carton. “Since you strike me as a spy of considerable expertise, I’m sure you’re already aware that I can relate to your agony.”

  “But I’m not ready to give up on her yet, sir. I won’t sit by idly and let another man steal my wife away from me. She’s my woman.”

  “Is that how you truly view your wife—as someone who belongs to you?”

  “Why? Is it wrong for me to assume as much?”

  “Only if you fail to recognize that you’re being impractical. Let me be the first but not the last to remind you, Mr. Cobbs, that whomever your wife elects to love, that emotion belongs to her alone. You can’t control another person’s feelings anymore effectively than you can tame the seasons of this Earth. Furthermore, she will always resent you for anticipating as much.”

  “If what you’re saying is true,” I countered, “then how is it possible to ever be secure in any relationship?”

  Carton squatted tacitly on this point. My own question unraveled inside my brain like a wayward spool of yarn. By the time it had fully unwound, I discerned the answer I least sought to gain. “This failure is all mine,” I sulked. “I’ve tried so hard to hold onto her, to make her love me. But it was all for nothing. Don’t I have anything left to offer other than what you’ve furnished for the woman you love?”

  “It’s not always a terrible option to walk away with some dignity intact,” advised Carton. His eyes then glinted as if kindled by energy deep within himself. “But be mindful not to confuse dignity and pride. They can be like twin sisters who wear the same dress to a wedding. It’s not always easy to decide which one to ask for a dance.”

  I may have been embittered by the wisdom Carton imparted, but it was offered without contempt. Even this cell’s darkness could not barricade the jealously roiling within my eyes. As much as I admired Carton’s self-sacrifice, I couldn’t be so docile when confronted by rejection. While I brooded in the misery of this admission, Carton suddenly stood upright from the mattress and stepped two paces to the cell’s window. He then angled his hand in front of the tapered sunlight, inviting this morsel of energy to glaze his fingertips. The straw he held in his hand glimmered like a shining strand of wool, almost as if procured from the ram’s Golden Fleece at Colchis.

  “As one man to another,” Carton proceeded, “the best that you can hope to do is love your wife without compromise. If this is still not quite enough to keep her soul content, then you must learn to rethink your present mindset.”

  “How could I just let her go? I cannot live with the choices you’ve made in regard to Lucie. What hope do you have to ever receive her love after you’re gone?”

  “The kind of love I speak of can’t be found through another person,” Carton whispered. His eyes then trailed to the dawning outside the window. “Look to where your eyes haven’t taken you before, Mr. Cobbs. There’s a sense of betterment in this place. But your spirit must be intrepid enough to endure the journey.”

  My next thought caused me to cringe despondently. “That’s the problem,” I murmured. “I just don’t view my life as salvageable as yours, sir.”

  “I must disagree with you,” said Carton. “I’m inclined to believe that you wouldn’t have taken the steps to visit me here if you were already resigned to surrendering hope.”

  “I wish I had as much faith in my actions as you do.”

  Carton continued to permit the sunlight to play upon his hands, caressing his skin with the delicacy of a woman’s touch. Before long, dark clouds devoured the sole source of illumination permeating this habitat. Carton then pivoted toward me, reaching out both hands with the straw now settled in his right palm.

  “Give me your hand, please,” he asked. I resisted at first. It seemed that this gesture was somehow an infringement in the membrane separating his world from my own. Eventually, when it became apparent that he didn’t intend to accept my refusal, I extended my own right hand and set it parallel to his palm. Carton positioned the straw so that it touched both of our hands simultaneously.

  “Something vital is disconnected from your heart,” he mused. “But it’s not too late to get it back again.”

  “What must I do?”

  “Recall it to life,” Carton advised, still balancing the straw between us. “And once you uncover the link, be sure to never let it slip away again.”

  “But where do I begin to search for what I’ve lost?”

  “I believe you already know the answer to that quandary, Mr. Cobbs. There comes a moment when a man must put down his mask and gaze at his own reflection earnestly. Once you accomplish this, you’ll see yourself for what you truly are,
but more importantly, you’ll preview the person you’re yearning to become.”

  Carton slowly lowered his hands, allowing me to cup the straw in my palm. His words echoed in my mind like an imminent storm, but I asked no further questions. Here was a man who navigated through the most tumultuous trek of his lifetime, yet he still recognized his own fate as being less essential than the destiny of others. He chose not to squander his remaining time on selfish ambitions that monopolized the majority of our kind. Instead, he bestowed life onto another human being with full knowledge that his Earthly ending was in essence the onset of an everlasting salvation.

  Chapter 36

  11:11 A.M.