road_to_calvary: (24601)
Jean Valjean ([personal profile] road_to_calvary) wrote2014-01-24 12:24 pm
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OOM: Galatians 6:17





Valjean walks to his room with a measured gait. He nods at the people he passes in the hallway, offers a murmured madame when wished a good evening, smiles at a small child running past. He unlocks his door, opens it, closes it and as he often does, sags against the back of it. The mask slips from his face in the dark. He breathes, encased in blessed silence. There is no sound, not even a clock. No smell, because these rooms are sanitised to the point of neutrality. There is nothing to anchor him to anywhere, any time, any place. He is simply here, navigating by the compass of his own conscience. Due north is gone; she sleeps on another world, unaware, not knowing he is even away. Her world turns without him. He cannot bear it.

It is some time before he moves. It would not be the first night he has slid to the floor and remained there. There is often no point in moving. But tonight he does, spurred to it by the news that Javert – Javert, of all people – will create something. He cannot identify the reason it brings such despair, though he feels it will come; it is something he feels the edges of, though it is out of his reach to grasp. He should feel happy about it; he does want to feel happy about it. The man is out of danger, probably. He was not digging his own grave out there in the woods, he will not die in this place because of his, Valjean’s, selfish mercy. It is good. It is progress.

It is something he will never have.

He loosens his cravat, and trails it over the back of a chair as he moves to switch on the bedside lamp. He unbuttons his coat mechanically, and lays it on top. Then the waistcoat, then the cuffs of his shirt. The skin at his wrists is as uneven as a bad road in winter; he runs his thumb over the bumps of one, ridges and valleys forever hidden from judging eyes. Then lets his hand drop, as the lead balloon of despair sinks down his chest. He is an ungrateful wretch, always and ever. He is in a place filled with people who might not see these marks for what they are, or who would not care, or would not understand. He should be happy. All he wants is to leave.

He steps to the door of the bathroom. There is a mirror on the back of it, long enough to show most of his form. He uses it only to ensure everything is straight before he leaves for his morning walk. Tonight, he pulls his shirt off and drops it to the floor. It is a long time since he looked, for what is to be gained? Tonight, he must.

On the front, the scars are few. His wrists, yes. Some deep ridges on his biceps and forearms – how did he come by those? Not from whips. From work, probably. This one – he fingers his right arm, tracing the length of it – from a falling stone, the day he held the falling balcony on his back. Six men were given time to escape because of it. He was allowed medical treatment. A good trade-off, for a slave. He remembers this one. The reason for the others are lost, but it does not matter. He lets his hand drop. This is stupid. It is a waste of time. He is ungrateful; he should not wallow in his own sin. He should be glad of those years, because they brought him to her. Without that, he is truly nothing.

The light in the bathroom is bright. Too bright; it stings the aching recesses of his eyes, where the tears pool and then recede. How long has it been since he cried? Not since the Bishop. Good, that is good. He wets a flannel under the tap, bows his head, presses it to the back of his neck. Water runs freely; he cannot feel a thing until the drops seep into the waist of his trousers, saturate the cloth and brush the unmarred skin below. He has never seen the full wasteland of his back. He does not need to. He has seen many others, and they are all alike. He closes his eyes, and remembers the first time he saw a man’s skin struck so hard it burst; he was so close he saw the edges of the wound fly apart and spit blood into the air. That was two weeks before the first time it happened to him. He clenches a fist now, and fights a wave of sickness. This was years ago; years. It no longer matters. He has God. He has Cosette. He has changed.

He half-turns, and looks into the mirror behind the sink. How many years? Seventeen since the last bad lash. Nine since his second sojourn in the galleys, but the whip did not hurt so much that time. Perhaps it was the light of Christ keeping him. Perhaps the thought of the girl he would rescue. Perhaps because he had lost all feeling in his skin by then, and nothing they could do would hurt him. He blinks in the harsh light, and reads the brand on his shoulder. T P. Travaux Perpétuité. Labour for life. He almost laughs. Well, they were not wrong. He turns further, and sees the ends of the lash marks curling around his sides, disappearing to places he cannot see. Some are white with age. Some pink. Some dark red; angry. He looks with dispassionate eyes. He feels nothing.

Back in the bedroom, he paces. There are no candlesticks to soothe him with their presence, and the Bishop is very far away tonight. He can only imagine what he might say, how he would be delighted to hear a house of God was being built here. Even by Javert. Especially by Javert, who needs the Lord more than any of them. He should be delighted too, but he has never attained the level of the saintly man who freed him, and knows he never will. All he can think is the time it will take. How long it may be before the man finds some measure of peace, and he will be allowed to go free. He does not begrudge him the effort, and possibly this is a lesson for them both; that it is not only justice that must be tempered with mercy, but also mercy must be tempered with thought. Valjean raises his hands to his face, runs his fingers through his hair, over the white lines on his scalp where nothing can grow – no, he thinks. No. I still would not let him die there. If I knew what he would do, I would have not let him leave my house, that is all. But how was I to know? God? How was I to know?

You did not see comes the reply, and he nods. No, he did not see. Worse, he did not care to look. Javert was not a man, he was prison. That is all. So he has earned this lesson. His penance is to stay here, away from Cosette, and make things right. No matter the thought squeezes his heart until he cannot breathe, until the world contracts before his eyes and he almost falls. It is not important. He must stay, he must help, he must correct his mistake. He must pay.

He goes to bed. In the dark, he thinks of the man Javert might become. He thinks of what he himself was, an unseeing wretch, blind with fury. And since then? He does not know. He has tried, that is all. If Javert tries, who can say? And who knows what he has seen since he was driven to take his own life? If he feels he has to save his soul – and who does not? – then this is surely a good way to start. So, yes. He is pleased for him. He is pleased, and he is envious, and he has anger that he has not known for years. Anger he hates himself for, but which will not be denied.

Release me. He is not speaking to God; that is a quite different prayer that means different things, and he will no longer beg to be freed from his own life. Not since Toulon has he asked for it. The thought comes with a whip crack attached.

Release me, I beg of you. He whispers it into the freezing air; out into the night where a man is digging on his knees in the dark, building so he will not have to pray. No answer comes. How could it? And why should it? Jean Valjean lies on a bed of his own scars. He is not owed a response; he is not owed anything. This is as it should be.

Sleep does not come. Tonight, it is easy to believe it never will again.