Chapter Text
There are certain pairs of people in this life whom some force of the universe – call it Providence or Fate, to your liking – seems determined to thrust together. Such people, regardless of their social status, their temperament, even at times their own desire, find their paths converging time and time again, often against seemingly insurmountable odds. To a lucky few such pairs, who are naturally well-matched and occupy positions in this world which are not born to natural conflict, this force is a great and benevolent one. They call it names like true love, and each other soulmate. Such people often marry, and live out their days in a type of bliss that is rare indeed, full of the quiet and enduring joy that comes with being one half of a whole that has been bound together by some higher force.
There are other such pairs, however, who are far less fortunate – those whom society has conspired to keep apart even as this indefatigable force draws them ever closer. These unhappy souls must struggle in vain against the bonds of fate that bind them; they grow to despise and fear the face of the one to which they are intrinsically linked, even as it appears in their dreams and consumes their waking thoughts. Hate takes hold where love might have blossomed had circumstances been less cruel; not even the death of one or the other can truly set them free, for instead of relief, the living is forever plagued with a shapeless regret that cannot be explained, and can never hope to be laid to rest.
So it was with Police Inspector Javert and the convict Jean Valjean.
Neither of the two was truly conscious of this bond, although at times they felt its pull as if it were a physical thing. Such is often the case with the unhappy members of this second class of people. The words employed by the former class of pairs, sweet endearments like “soulmate,” imply a love freely given that is absent in the latter’s case. Instead they must make do with calling each other sneering names like rival or nemesis, simple crude words that cannot begin to capture the hopeless depth of obsession and directionless hunger which the other inspires in them. The woeful imprecision of language has damned them: one can scarcely hope to understand a thing which one calls by an insufficient name, or for which no sufficient names exist.
Inspector Javert called Jean Valjean “criminal” and “scum” and “the constant thorn in my side.” When Valjean was recaptured for the second time after his long reprieve in M. sur M. and sent to the galleys once more, Javert’s delight was real and immense and unfaltering. His pleasure went beyond his usual quiet satisfaction at seeing justice done.
But when he received word that the prisoner Jean Valjean had fallen into the sea and drowned, he felt nothing so much as a vague, yet fierce disappointment for which he could not hope to account. For a period of time following this news, Javert was prone to silences more profound than usual, and from which he was in the habit of emerging with a flinty pronouncement of relief that “such a dangerous criminal will never escape again;” those few people who spent any great deal of time around him soon grew tired of hearing such statements. In this way, by sharing these false declarations with as many people as possible, Javert sought to render the sentiment true.
It did not work as he hoped. The knowledge that Jean Valjean existed somewhere in the world, whether as a fugitive from justice or as a prisoner of the law, had become vital to him in some way; the very air seemed different without this knowledge, still capable of sustaining life but missing some indispensable component that it once had offered him with every breath. Valjean alive was a thorn in his side, once removed, it left a wound in Javert that Javert could not explain, and which did not heal.
So it went for over a year. The man who had succeeded M. Madeleine as mayor was in some ways more reprehensible to Javert than the convict had been; this blackguard did not even play at niceties. When the opportunity came, in the form of a transfer to the Parisian police, to remove himself from M. sur M., Javert quickly and readily accepted it. During this time the hole which Valjean’s death had opened up in him continued to quietly bleed – one cannot bandage and tend to a hurt which one refuses to acknowledge.
We cannot know if this injury would have ever gradually closed and scarred over of its own accord, for some fourteen months after Javert had received the news of the death of Jean Valjean, he was accosted on his daily rounds by a runner for the police who bore the following breathless message:
“Sir – you are wanted at the station - the criminal Jean Valjean has been found – he is alive.”
What profound effect these few words had on the man! What sweet and familiar torment flooded his consciousness at once! For several moments he found himself unable to make any reply; he had the peculiar sensation of his spirits leaping even as a familiar fury kindled within him; he felt like a man who only when suffering some deadly disease can feel well.
He made his way to the police station at once, full of familiar wrath at Jean Valjean for escaping, for having been thought dead, for living again. Yet he felt a breathless anticipation, too – he was scarcely able to believe that he might once more look upon the man whose phantom had troubled his dreams these long months past.
“Where is he?” he demanded as soon as he strode through the door. The mayor was standing within the room, in conversation with two gendarmes; it was to him that Javert directed his barrage of questions. “The prisoner Jean Valjean - where is he being held? I must see him at once. I must determine if it is indeed him. Thought he could hide forever, did he? Nineteen years a prisoner and still he underestimates the power of the law – ha! He shall yet be cured of that!”
All this before the mayor could say a single word.
“We do not have him here,” said the mayor calmly, when Javert paused at last.
“He is being held somewhere else?” Javert supplied expectantly. “Very well. I might have expected. I will leave at once.”
“He is not in captivity.”
At these words, a measure of uncertainty crept into Javert’s manner. He had been standing very still and very straight, as calm in appearance as he was excited in speech, but now he inclined his head forward as if he had not heard the mayor correctly, and his words came less quickly. “Then – then we know only that he is living, and not where he hides?”
“No. We have obtained an address.”
“Ah,” said Javert, and straightened himself again. “Certainly forces are on their way to apprehend him.”
The mayor sighed. “We do not have plans to arrest the man. Not immediately.” He spoke as if the words caused him some little pain.
Javert’s expression did not change; his impeccable posture did not falter, but something about him shifted; the cold glint that was in his eyes abruptly extinguished, and when he spoke his voice was disbelieving. “Monsieur?”
The mayor related to him, rather unhappily, the following information. Another convict, this one the head of a formidable band of Paris thieves, had escaped from the galleys some months ago. During his time at Toulon, he had been chained to Jean Valjean. It was believed that he was in Paris again, and that the two fugitives were working in concert, but thus far only the location of Jean Valjean had been divined. The police, and the mayor, suspected that the latter criminal might lead them to the former.
Javert listened to this gravely. At length he said: “It is a simple thing. We shall arrest Valjean. He will lead us to his confederate.”
The mayor shook his head. “It will not be that simple, Inspector. He will not talk so easily.”
“We shall compel him to speak.” Javert spit the words through his teeth as if the hypothetically reticent Valjean were cowering before him already.
“We may try, and fail, and the man and his band of thieves go back into hiding again – we cannot risk it.”
“But surely - we cannot allow the convict to go free…?” Javert sounded desperate. The excitement which had colored his speech moments earlier was utterly gone.
“Certainly we will not!”
The mayor, along with the two gendarmes, had concocted a plan. It had been determined that the criminal lived in a decrepit little hovel near the edge of the city, alone but for a child of six or seven years and an old housekeeper – “this woman has been spying on him some days now; it was she who alerted us to his presence.” The housekeeper, fearing for her safety, had been easily enticed to accept an agent of the police as a lodger; this man would play the dual roles of spy and turnkey. Under his watchful eye, the fugitive Jean Valjean would be unable to escape, and when the diligent agent spied him in conference with the other convict, both would be apprehended and the network of criminals revealed.
Before this moment presented itself, the agent would sleep under the same roof as the criminal, take his meals alongside him, and draw him out with polite conversation. These were necessary debasements.
Throughout the explanation of this plan Javert listened with his customary air of obedient deference, but he was unable to keep a sour look from creeping across his features.
“Mr. Mayor, I beg your pardon - it cannot be done. They will both escape,” he insisted, though he kept his eyes downcast and spoke with the utmost respect. The depths of his convictions can be easily imagined, for him to permit himself to speak so forcibly to one above him. Yet though he argued as fiercely as he would allow himself, the mayor would not budge.
At length, in utter desperation, Javert said – “Let it be me who goes, at least. I will not allow him to slip through my fingers again.”
“You!” the mayor laughed. “He knows you, does he not? He would recognize you at once.”
“Convicts such as him see only the uniform – he will never recognize the man.”
On this point Javert was so persistent and so persuasive that the mayor at last was forced to concede. It was agreed that Javert would install himself in the ramshackle number 50-52 on the Boulevard de l’Hopital where the criminal and child were hidden away. A disguise was concocted at once, and after his whiskers had been shaved, his hair and glinting eyes hidden under a worker’s cap, and his immaculate uniforme replaced with dirtied, worn clothes, even the mayor conceded that Javert might go unrecognized. Some men wear the uniform of their work – Javert was possessed by his uniform and without it he ceased to give off the formidable air for which he was known; he did not stand quite as straight or seem quite as bold. On the contrary, he seemed ill at ease, and prone to the grimaces and quick nervous glances of someone who imagines they are being mocked. Utterly without effort, he became a different person.
So, within hours of receiving the news that Jean Valjean was alive again, Javert was being propelled to him once again. He did not reflect on the suddenness of this reunion; during the trip to the area of the city where the convict was ensconced, Javert remained deep in thought, as one who must quickly attempt to reassess and lay to rest many memories and many emotions in light of some new fact. In addition to this he was filled with an intolerable impatience, and by the time he arrived at his destination he was nearly trembling with untold emotion of one kind or another.
The address that the mayor had given Javert led him to a building even more dilapidated and filthy than he had expected. Standing at last in front of the house where Jean Valjean was hiding, Javert shuddered to think that he must stay there (even if, surely, only for a night or two) and at the same time felt some measure of satisfaction to see how far the convict had fallen since his days as M. le Maire.
After some minutes spent studying the house, during which time he unsuccessfully attempted to calm his thoughts and steady his hands, Javert knocked on the crude wooden door. There was the sound of footsteps hurtling down stairs, and the door opened to him.
Where he had expected to see Valjean’s face, however, there was only the musty darkness of a cramped and poorly lit stairway; Javert did not understand who had opened the door until a small voice in front of him said: “Hello.”
Javert looked down. A small child stood there, her hand still upon the door. She was exceedingly thin, and her eyes, which stared up at him wide and unblinking, were pitted with fatigue, but her hollow cheeks were rosy, and she was dressed warmly in new woolen clothes.
“I wish to speak to the woman who – “ Javert started stonily, without preamble, but his words died on his lips – he perceived movement in the dark, and from the shadows a familiar voice came, gently reproaching – “Cosette, have I not told you it is not safe to - ?” and then this voice stopped as well.
Jean Valjean, clad in a worn yellow coat, stood frozen on the stairs, his eyes fixed on Javert.
The silence lasted only a brief moment, but to Javert it was unendurable centuries. The folly of his position hit him suddenly and fully. How could he hope to obscure his identity with nothing more than old clothes and a few smudges of dirt? Valjean, too, had altered his appearance since last they met, and yet the sight of him was so familiar it took Javert’s breath away - how could he have ever entertained the possibility that this man, whose face had burned itself behind Javert’s eyelids, could not possess within him a similar indelible image of Javert?
Javert’s rough hands clenched at his side; his whole being shook imperceptibly with great emotion; it was only with much effort that he restrained himself from dropping the bag he carried, lunching forward, and seizing the convict by the collar before he could push past him and make his escape. Indeed, it was possible that some part of him had insisted to be sent here in the hopes of this very thing happening – although he would never dream of directly disregarding the mayor’s orders, if Valjean recognized him he would have no choice but to seize him immediately – and how he hungered to put Jean Valjean at his mercy once again!
But the long moment passed; Valjean blinked as if to rouse himself from a dream and said only, “Well, I suppose you are the lodger Madame Beaudin has found? Pardon my confusion, Monsieur. We had not expected you today.”
It is indicative of the convoluted, paradoxical nature of the connection they shared that when this moment passed, in spite of his fear, Javert felt a measure of angry humiliation mingled with his relief at going unrecognized by the man whose face he knew so well.
He did not trust himself to speak. He permitted himself only a stiff nod.
“Come, Cosette,” the criminal said, and the small girl turned and slipped her hand into his. “Madame Beaudin is not in, Monsieur; if you follow, we will show you your room.”
Thus Inspector Javert took his first step into the lair of the man whom he despised.