Chapter Text
In mid-May, the air in the countryside near Sorgues was warm and fragrant. Here, laborers weary from a hard day’s work gathered their tools at sunset and chatted amiably during their journeys home. The young commented on the many virtues of their loved ones or boasted of their latest gallant adventures to hearty laughs; the elders spoke of the impending harvest or the succulent lentil dish that awaited them at home. For them life ran in a calm and industrious routine which was rarely altered.
But this afternoon a monstrous creature of soulless bodies crawled on the dirt paths of the commune with its many legs, challenging the quiet of the hills and triggering with its mere existence an onslaught of fear and shame: the Chaîne bound for Toulon crossed the territory. For a few hours in the middle of this workday Sorgues was no longer the small provincial town struggling to thrive in the mild climate of the South. All along the main street irritated shopkeepers shuttered their doors as a crowd of morbidly curious townsfolk eagerly awaited the time when the horror would show its face.
After captain and lieutenant rode into view on horseback, the good people of Sorgues gaped in disbelief at the trailing columns of hundreds of bruised and bleeding convicts chained together at their necks. Disbelief gave way to astonishment when a sharp-eyed onlooker pointed out the pair of battered carts loaded with supplies and those too weak to travel on foot -- was it possible for beasts like these to become ill? Soon the incessant rattle of the chains was drowned by a maelstrom of cruel insults from the righteous and bitter threats punctuated with obscene gestures from the convicts.
It did not matter that the Chaîne passed through the same towns every two months. In every town, for every incarnation of the Chaîne, verbal abuses invariably turned physical after the first stone was cast and this time it was no different. Many convicts lost their footing in the commotion that followed, thrown every which way by the sharp and unpredictable tugs on their mutual chain as all attempted, mostly in vain, to dodge the projectiles. A riot took place when several convicts of like mind veered off their column to assault the public, with hands ready to enter any unprotected pocket or rub with absolute impudence any female body their fingertips could reach. Such was the revenge of the damned. A long, urgent whistle signal filled the air as guards struck the bodies in the column indiscriminately with their canes, adding a few more strikes for good measure even after guilty and injured alike fell back in line.
Off to the side of the street a dark-skinned boy with long black hair quietly awaited orders. A pair of dusty leather shoes tied together by their laces dangled from his neck and dwarfed his scrawny chest. After conferring with the town mayor, Captain Thierry spoke with the impeccable diction of a man accustomed to command and who expected obedience -- "Boy, tell the men that we head eastward to the stable of Malmaison, as usual!"
“Yes captain!” responded the boy with a sharp nod of his head.
"Remind them the orders were to cross the town as quickly as possible -- only four days to Toulon and they need all the hands to rush the next ship-of-the-line! It would be a shame to lose convicts to gendarmes now."
Though the captain did not change his tone, the observant boy understood the sense of urgency from the glance Thierry cast at the group of mounted gendarmes about to charge at the column. He turned quickly on his bare feet and tugged at the torn sleeves of his ragged jacket to cover as much of his slender arms as possible, for they were already covered by a rainbow of bruises at various stages of healing. He ran down the length of the column repeating the orders at the top of his voice. Aside from raised arms to shield his head he tried his best to ignore the projectiles that the hostile crowd hurled at the Chaîne, and which struck prisoners and guards alike.
Guards enforced the order with more caning; it mattered little that the curses of the convicts redoubled in intensity and violence, or that the cries laden with pain became desperate pleas: the uncouth men in uniform herded their cattle with little mercy to hasten the pace.
The Chaîne reached an esplanade that opened up in front of a huge stable and stopped. For one night, the stable would be the bedroom of the prisoners, and the dirty straw utilized by the animals would be their beds. The boy watered and brushed the horses of the officers with an efficiency learned through practice while convicts emptied their bowels in groups over a trench serving as communal latrine, timed by blows of the whistle.
"Hey, clumsy boy!!" the cook's husky voice rose above the general din, "Come to collect the stew for the guards before it cool down! Wicked Boy, where the hell have you been?"
The boy traded brush and water bucket for the stew and hustled it over to the table where the grouchy guards dined in shifts and vented their displeasure over an ample supply of wine. These jobs paid little, but kept the men well-fed.
“My arm is already sore from all the caning and I still have to search these animal's rectums. Why can't they stop stealing?” complained one burly guard to no one in particular.
"If only they were animals!” spat his neighbor, “A mule would never steal!”
"Stop complaining and eat, otherwise you have to finish eating after enjoying a front row view of all their assholes!" laughed a different man. The guard shook his head and held out his empty cup, which his companions quickly refilled.
The boy hurried back to the chef to gulp down a few bites of the stew himself, unfazed by the pained screams of convicts. When the final group of guards rose the boy cleared the table to allow the captain and his lieutenant to deploy the maps and study the next day's itinerary. With all these tasks complete he finally dug into his bowl of stew ravenously, while the groups of convicts collected their rations from the chef and ate sitting on the ground. He did not hear the captain come and winced when the man's deep voice echoed.
"Javert,” the captain asked, “have you studied your letters today?"
The boy immediately stood to attention, his food completely forgotten as he looked up at his captain in awe. What magic did the captain invoke to keep his uniform eternally clean and crisp, as if he had just stepped out of his closet? How did he keep his boots so shiny? The boy looked dejectedly at his own shirt, so stained with sweat, blood and filth that it was impossible to guess its original color. "Yes, captain," he responded.
"Good. Now give me your paper."
Javert reached into the pocket of his worn-through trousers and took out a piece of carefully folded paper, which he presented to Thierry with both hands.
"Well, boy, now pay attention.” The captain went to the table and picked up a pencil with which he quickly scribbled some signs. “This is the letter k, this is the l, m and n. Do you understand?"
"Yes, captain: k, l, m, n."
"That's it. Learn to draw them and bring me water for washing.” At Thierry’s order the boy ceased tracing the outline of the letters with his finger and returned the paper to his pocket, but the captain did not leave for the house where he will sleep. The boy followed the captain’s gaze down to the pair of shoes dangling from his neck and lowered his head in shame.
"Monsieur Javert,” Thierry said, “If you are not going to wear the shoes you should sell them and buy something nice for yourself. You earned your pay and those must have cost more than a month’s wages.”
"Yes captain," Javert whispered, in awe that he had been addressed as Monsieur for the first time in his life. With enough hard work, maybe in thirty, forty years even a romani child and son of a convict could become a captain like Thierry. He must forge his own path for this long journey, and tonight it will begin with a single step -- taken in the pair of oversized shoes he must grow into.
Not far away, a young convict known as the Mute sat outside the stable, his meager portion of watery soup and black bread half finished in his lap. His face was a mess of coagulated sweat, blood, and dust. Dried tears crusted around his eyes and down the contours of his suntanned cheeks. His rear ached from the cavity search and his body had traveled to the opposite shore of France, but his mind never left home.
His neighbors have not heard a single word from him throughout the past three weeks, and thought him incapable of making any sound other than the guttural, mournful wail which emanated from him periodically. Now his neighbor blatantly fished a piece of bread out of his soup and waved the soggy, dripping mass in front of his face. Back when his daily toil was enough to put food on the table, his sister used to take pieces from his bowl and give to his nephews.
A tender smile appeared on the Mute’s face.
“See? He doesn’t even react. What did I tell you? He is mute. Give me my ten sous!” the neighbor demanded triumphantly after he swallowed the piece of bread.
“Maybe he is blind, not mute. He will speak, you go keep listening.”
“Then he is blind and mute! You just wait and see -- only four days more!”
The Mute did not hear. His eyes were wide open, but they saw only a private and illusory reality. A tree-pruner from a very young age, he lacked the mental faculty to comprehend why he had no option but to steal so his seven nephews could eat; nor could he comprehend why as a result, he was sentenced to five years in a Bagne with these men who boasted shamelessly about trinkets they stole at each stop made by the Chaîne. He was afraid to see, to take in fully, the lush, thriving farmlands around him, so familiar yet foreign in every insect-bitten leaf and every speck of dust. He did not want to be aware that every step took him further away from the children whom he failed to deliver the stolen bread to, the eldest of whom will be sixteen in five years and the youngest eight. All of whom were already close to death the night he left for bread and in all likelihood had perished in the month and a half since.
The seven children now surrounded him at the end of a long day as the family waited for dinner. The eldest boys pleaded for him to teach them how to climb trees, and the youngest, with the help of several siblings, tried to climb him as if he were a tree and his shoulders its highest branch. And when the always clumsy eldest boy crashed inexplicably to the ground in front of him, he became worried once again that this boy will fall from a tree while pruning and end up in an early grave like his grandfather. He wrapped his hand around the boy’s underdeveloped bicep and helped him up.
“Marcel --”
The lecture he was about to give to the boy was quickly forgotten as a pair of steely blue-grey eyes stared back in shock, deep-set and mesmerizing against olive-brown skin. This boy was no longer his nephew but a guard, and he, Jean Valjean, was no longer an uncle but a convict.
“Sorry -- I am sorry,” he choked out as he let go of the boy’s arm. His world shattered. He wept inconsolably and retreated from the questioning eyes of the young guard to find his nephews again. The illusion had broken and soon their faces will fade in his memory. He prayed that each of them will find kindness in the world and that they will live, somehow, and that he had not sentenced them to death with his failure to provide for them.
“Ten sous, you motherfucker!”
“God damn it, Mute, couldn't you keep your mouth shut another four days? Son of a bitch!!"
So this convict was no mute after all. Young Javert dusted his shoes off with his hands and stood back up, careful not to trip over them again, then committed the face in front of him to memory even though he did not expect ever to meet this convict again.
Future events will prove him wrong. This convict will surprise him again and again, over the course of his life.