Child of the Law (ch1)
6 February 2016 04:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeLet's see, so far I've ended up changing Javert's address (I'd managed to pick the name of one of the roads in Paris where the barricade was built, in a feat of spectacular subconscious association), Cosette's hair colour(!) and the degree of 'leniency' shown in Javert's later cases (I really don't see him letting criminals get off scot-free, however disproportionate their crime). This is what comes of breaking the habit of a lifetime and uploading a chapter to fanfiction.net before first putting it up here and letting it sit and stew for a while... I shall be very interested to see whether anyone on FFnet notices that the location of Javert's lodgings has changed between the original chapter 1 and the upload of chapter 2!
This was obviously a considerable stylistic experiment. Having done musical-verse Eponine, I thought I'd go for the full Hugo this time as a means of summarising and compressing the narrative if nothing else (ironic as the idea of Hugo's compressing anything is...) It was originally intended as a one-shot, but it got somewhat too long for that.
In any case it was a considerable challenge to un-learn all the conventions about 'limited third-person PoV' that I'd spent the last couple of decades in perfecting and to deliberately introduce authorial moralising, head-hopping and tendentious generalisations ("she was a child, and hence she loved...") I had to keep consciously pushing the story back when it tried to turn into my standard dialogue/monologue-driven narrative: I didn't quite manage to write it without any direct speech at all, but I came pretty close.
Hugo does of course give us direct dialogue — indeed, he gives us entire chapters of stream-of-consciousness transcription where some of his more bombastic characters are concerned — but he rather tends to keep things at a distance and tell us about the characters talking rather than show the conversation through the eyes of one of the participants as a modern author would. I was aiming hard for that 'detached' feel.
Chapter 1: l'inspecteur Javert
In the year of Our Lord 1825, beneath the plane trees in the square of the little town of Montreuil-sur-mer, a brisk autumn wind whisked eddies of dust and fallen leaves along with snatches of childish laughter. A dozen little girls, warmly dressed, were deeply engrossed in a chasing game, the rules of which were discernible only to themselves but which entailed shrieks of excitement as each in turn sought to evade her friends' pursuit. There could have been a year or two in age at most between them, and with their bright cheeks and tumbling curls, at first glance they were as alike as all joyous young things.
But a close observer might at length have discerned that one among them was deferred to more than the rest. Not through any claim to authority, for of that she made none, but on account of a certain gentle air of deliberation to which the others at intervals would make appeal whenever the outcome of the game seemed in doubt. Judgement once given, the chase would recommence with as much delight as before; but at length by mutual agreement it appeared the entertainment began to pall and the girls broke off to reconvene homewards in twos or threes, swinging muffs and chattering as they went.
At the corner of the rue de Carcerie, one of their number bade a final farewell to her companions with many lingering embraces and went on alone. It was she to whose gentle verdict the others had deferred as of right, a lively girl of ten years old with soft brown ringlets escaping from beneath her woollen cap. She wore thick, serviceable mittens in lieu of a muff and was neatly clad from head to foot in sturdy grey wool without frills or fur, at present a little dishevelled from her exertions but brushed clean and well cared-for. Halfway up the narrow street she bent to stroke a neighbouring cat that rose from its doorstep to greet her, and it could be seen that the child's smile held great sweetness above the firm little chin, and there was tenderness in her eyes.
She was called, sometimes, 'la fille du flic', or — behind her back — 'petite moucharde'; but not by those who loved her, and never to her face. For all her quiet ways she could be fierce in defence of those she held dear, and one direct look from those clear eyes had the habit of silencing the most ill-intentioned. But with all that said, she was well-liked, and in the two years since her arrival Montreuil-sur-mer no longer murmured against her.
Her name was Ursule Javert, and she lived with the police inspector who was not her father. Once, she had been called Cosette, but that was in a time she tried not to remember.
"Three days. Three days, in the name of justice — and then you can do with me as you will. Take me in handcuffs if you wish. I'll pay the whole." Madeleine's voice had been desperate, and Javert showed his teeth in something that was not a smile.
"Three days... and then we'll see what your word is worth. Three days to see this tavern-keeper pay for his fraud. And then afterwards, my fine friend..."
"Afterwards — there will be a child. An innocent child who must not be permitted to follow in the footsteps of her mother." His grip tightened on Javert's sleeve. "I leave it to your conscience, monsieur. For if I go to the galleys, she will have no-one but you."
When Inspector Javert returned from the depot of the chain-gang in Toulon, it was a nine-days-wonder. For he returned with an empty pair of handcuffs that had once held M. Madeleine, the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, and that was marvel enough; his face still bore the grim satisfaction of that triumph. But slung across his shoulder on that chilly morning as he climbed down from the coach, held fast with as much care and as little tenderness as the great stick he bore, there was a sleeping girl-child wearing the black of deep mourning... and that was a marvel such as the town had never seen from Javert from that day to this.
He was not her father, despite all the whispers that arose. He had made that very clear to her from the start.
He was not her father, and she was not to call him 'père'. Of her mother he spoke often, in those first days, but only in tones of contempt. Of his own parents he spoke likewise without pity, impressing upon her in private the shared parallels of their lives: if his mother had died in a prison cell, it was only by God's mercy that hers had died before she, too, achieved that inevitable condition. If his mother had been a jailbird wed to a crook, then hers had never been wed at all. If he had dragged himself by main force and rigid virtue from such a birth out of the gutter, then so too could she.
She had no father and no family. He gave her his name, and another, Ursule. Whatever her true christened name, he did not know it; and 'Cosette', to him, was no proper name for a child.
For her part, she was glad of the change. To her, 'Cosette' meant above all the raucous summons of Thénardier's wife, or sudden waking by a curse or a cuff to the ear. It was a name to which she answered only to cringe. At the summons of 'Ursule', she trembled, but obeyed... and obedience to Javert, she learned, brought not unmerited blows but harsh approval.
He was cold. He was grim and unwelcoming. But she had no memory of a mother's love or of any caresses beyond a pinch or spiteful blow. To be fed and clad in clean linen and set to sleep in her own little bed in his rooms on the rue de Carcerie was, to her, very heaven. If she learned, if she obeyed, she was not punished, and this was a justice beyond any she had ever known.
The memory of Cosette the innkeeper's drudge withered and died, unmourned. In her place there blossomed out Ursule, the ward of Javert, neat and quick and precise in all things and ever attentive to her guardian's will. The great store of affection that hitherto in her had been stifled and rebuffed set root in this barren soil almost without the knowledge of either of them. She was a child, and hence she loved. She was Javert's, and hence sought to love Javert.
And Javert, who had fed and watered her out of duty as if she were a cagebird in his keeping, found that duty grow strangely lighter as the bird began to sing. She had learned perforce to dress and wash herself at the inn. She could play in a corner for hours with a little doll she had made herself from a wooden spoon and an old handkerchief she had begged of him, and she was no trouble to care for; indeed, she soon took it upon herself unbidden to keep the rooms as neat and clean as he could desire, making a busy game of it to set everything in its place and chase every speck of dust from the corners.
She obeyed him, but she very soon ceased to fear him. What, after all, was a stern inspector of police to her, compared to the tyranny of La Thénardier? And like the little chirruping creature that she was, she filled his life with unheard prattle and gave no more heed to his lack of response than to that of her doll, or of her broom.
Ursule was happy; she bloomed; she sang. Javert found himself bemused but not displeased. He determined that she should learn her letters, and purchased her a slate.
Over this treasured possession she would pore by lamplight at the tasks he had set her, leaning on the arm of his chair and crooning softly to herself in concentration. Later, she would labour obediently through passages from discarded bulletins or from the shelf of books he kept in a corner. It occurred to neither of them that this was queer reading matter for a child, though she acquired some quaint turns of phrase thereby that might have made another man smile.
At first, if he had been asked, Javert would have said that he tolerated Ursule. Meticulously honest as he considered himself to be, after three months he would have admitted, had it occurred to him, that she had become in some way necessary to his existence and that her absence would have been felt like a blow. Fortunately for his peace of mind, it did not occur to him to pose himself the question.
He remained unbending, ferocious, austere; more indifferent than accepting where the affectionate impulses of the child were concerned. Yet he did not, as he might have done, repulse her. The town of Montreuil-sur-mer became accustomed in time to a trotting small shadow at the heel of the silent figure that stalked its streets, and Ursule gazed with unflinching eyes upon misery, crime, and the offspring of the two, human vileness. Under Javert's tutelage, that ready instinct for justice that burns in the breast of any child was kindled in her to a flame.
Yet she did not draw the lesson he might have wished from the sights that she witnessed in his wake. In degradation, she saw cause for tenderness and pity. She looked steadily upon fallen women and understood that her mother had been one of their number; in that knowledge she found not condemnation for the dead but sympathy with the unfortunate living. Squalor held no false mysteries or fears for her. Young as she was, she had known the evils that suffering can bring, but they had not hardened her. Javert looked upon the transgressor as utterly lost, but Ursule perceived also the beast driven savage by want: he is not to be trusted, but the fault of that does not lie solely in him.
Ursule's justice comprehended mercy, and that of Javert did not. This, too, she understood simply as being the way of things, as only childhood can. Javert's world was harsh but constant, without fear or favour, and there was an unyielding comfort in that.
Still, little luxuries crept into their lives when Ursule ran the errands: a pinch of tobacco for him, a sprig of white heather for her, cherished for weeks 'for luck'. A spare sou saved by chaffering at the market bought sweet rolls for them both, laid out by her with as much care as the feasts she presented to her doll and eaten without comment in what became a tacit weekly ritual. It was a yielding of austerity never acknowledged between them, and thus never denied. On the shameful day when the bread was too warm and fragrant and she came home instead with a bag full of crumbs, her guardian said nothing at all; but Ursule wept herself to sleep that night in the knowledge of her own self-indulgent lapse.
It was scarcely three weeks later, on a stifling August afternoon with all the casements flung open and the dust heavy on the fields, that the jackdaw stole the brioche from her basket. The bird was half-tame, accustomed to pick up the scraps shaken out in the street by old Mère Brassard opposite, and it had been watching Ursule with a beady eye, quite unafraid. A moment's pause for the child to adjust the cloth that covered her purchases was all the opportunity it needed; there was a flurry of black wings and beak and the feathered assailant was gone, and one of the rolls she had just bought from the bakery gone with it.
Ursule's first thought was to give chase, but of course it was useless. Tired and breathless in the heat, she was forced to lay out a sadly depleted table. They ate in silence. What hurt was not Javert's lack of sympathy at her story, but the fact that he so clearly did not believe her.
They were halfway through a strained meal when Ursule jumped up with a cry. She had opened the window wide onto the little ironwork balcony outside in an attempt to alleviate the oppressive heat; now there came a sudden dark shape against the light and a clatter as of an intruder, and as she shrank back the jackdaw swooped down again upon the table, emboldened by the earlier theft.
At the first alarm Javert had caught up his great stick from the corner. He struck out on instinct with enough force to send the bird half-stunned to the floor, caught it up by the neck, and flung it without a second glance out over the balcony before slamming the shutters.
For a long moment he and Ursule looked at each other. In the twilight of the abruptly darkened room she could not read his face.
Then her guardian brushed aside his unfinished plate and sat down again, slowly. There were two or three black breast feathers on the table, little curling puffs of down that stirred in the breath of his movement. Moving with rigid precision, Javert trapped each in turn between finger and thumb and set them down before him in a neat stack, as if weighing evidence. The single brioche was still at his elbow where it had lain throughout in mute accusation — an accusation that had not been made, but which all the same quivered now in the air unacknowledged.
"Take it, Ursule." He thrust the roll in its napkin across the table harshly, in a movement less of generosity than of repudiation; turned away, until she could see nothing of his face beyond the tangle of his sideburns and great grizzled brows. "I said take it." The words were savage and unforgiving, and Ursule, herself still trembling from the shock of that brief violent flurry, understood in a sudden upwelling of womanly intuition that there was more amiss in Javert's world than a simple matter of unjust judgement.
To blame a child for something she had not done was nothing. Young as she was, she had already absorbed the bitter reality of that. But to blame himself for that error — to find authority set aside, infallibility betrayed, hierarchy overturned and the order of things upside down, to fear above all the encroachments of an unsought affection upon that perfect impartial machine to which he had bound his life's service; to be wrong where she, Ursule, was concerned, and for that to make any difference — none of this could she have put into words, but woman-like she could sense the gulf behind the gesture, and child-like could see only the need for comfort.
"Monsieur, please—" She ran round the table to put her arms around his neck, as she had never yet dared; felt him stiffen beneath that assault, face still averted, and laid her own cheek against his shoulder.
People can be wrong, monsieur. People can be forgiven. It's allowed. It doesn't matter... But she couldn't, she knew, say that to her guardian. She could only tear the soft crust of the brioche, morsel by morsel, and coax him to share it with her for even one bite and to yield to please her in this smallest of things. He was just, rigidly just, and he had taught her to honour that. But just was not always fair...
Javert, besieged from this most unexpected of quarters, faltered a moment and found himself overcome. The child's embrace twined affectionately about his neck and her light weight slipped onto his knee as if by right, brief and heartfelt; with the roll once shared, she was gone. He stared after her, bewildered, as little snippets of song drifted from the other room. She seemed, of all things, happy.
The feathers on the table had drifted from their neat pile in the whisk of her darting passage. One lay on the floor in a scatter of crumbs. Javert's gaze fell upon it fixedly and remained there for a long time.
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Date: 2016-02-07 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 08:37 pm (UTC)And also, when he does initially become suspicious of the mysterious 'beggar who gives money away', he fails to arrest him because he isn't prepared to arrest a man without cast-iron evidence: Javert's rigid principles work both ways...
The novel explores a lot of non-romantic relationships between various of the characters: indeed, these are in the overwhelming majority (Marius/Cosette is more or less the only canonical exception, along with Éponine's unreciprocated attraction to Marius). But fan-fiction tends to interest itself solely in the sexual possibilities. I really don't see Javert in that light, but I can see him grimly accepting the task of making an upright citizen out of a child destined for the gutter -- and being unprepared to cope with receiving affection in return!