Chapter Text
Tomašis Yoska Javert led a miserable life, but one he did not consider to be so bad. He was fed, though the food was abysmal, and he was sheltered, though there were gates to keep them so. Occasionally, he could get himself an extra chunk of dry bread or even a few sous, when he ran little errands for the guards, carrying notes and washing bowls and such. They were cruel, but rarely to him. They ignored him, mostly, unless he approached them. His mother was there, and she was pretty and kind. When the guards were not around, she let him play with the cards she kept in her skirts. He liked the pictures. All in all, he did not consider his existence to be so terrible, but then, it was all he had ever known.
He did not know that most little boys played pretend with sticks and had space to run and play in the sun. Tomašis played with bits of straw from the floor and had nearly free run of the prison, so long as there were bars he could slip through rather than solid wall. He did not know that most little boys had a father who taught them to tie their boots and shave their faces when the hair began to grow. Tomašis did not have boots, and he was not yet old enough for the second to become a pressing concern.
As he grew, however, he noticed the jeers the guards directed at them, how they would point to his mother and make gestures with their hands. She always turned his face away and told him in their secret language that it was nothing, he was to ignore them, so he tried. It became increasingly difficult as time went on.
A prisoner was brought in one day – new to this place and weeping. When she saw him, she lit up in a frantic fit of anger? Excitement? Tomašis did not know the name for the emotion he saw. She flung herself against the bars and cried out to the guards, begging for her child to be brought to her, asking why could this woman, this gitane have her bastard boy when she could not have her own precious daughter? The guards ignored her cries and the woman eventually sunk to the floor, overcome with sobs that shook her whole body. She sat there for a long while until his mother went over and put an arm over her shoulders, helping her to stand and leading her to sit on a bench against the wall. They sat there for hours, the woman crying into his mother’s shoulder and his mother gently stroking her hair, not saying a word.
This was the first time that Tomašis Yoska Javert wondered why he was where he was.
In the months following this incident, Tomašis began to observe. He watched the guards, with their biting words and heavy hands. He watched the other prisoners, with their sallow faces and bitter compliance. But most of all he watched his mother, always ready with a smile for him. He noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the hollowness of her cheeks, the gray in her hair, and wondered why.
He was leaving the infirmary once, having just delivered a bag of rolled bandages, when the doctor called him back.
“Boy!” he said. “Come here.”
Tomašis turned and walked to him, expecting to be given a task to complete.
“Do you speak French?” The doctor asked, peering at him over clouded spectacles.
Tomašis nodded but said nothing. He had found that he was more likely to get his ears boxed when he opened his mouth, so he spoke only to the other prisoners – and even then, rarely. Though he wasn’t a prisoner. Not really. He just had nowhere else to go. He knew nothing else.
The doctor nodded and made a gruff noise of approval. “Do you know your letters?”
Tomašis shook his head. Where would he have learned his letters, being here his whole life? Stupid man.
“Sit,” the doctor said, pointing to the chair across from his own.
Tomašis sat. The doctor pulled a book from the drawer in front of him – a Bible, Tomašis recognized it. If a prisoner was dying and could not move to go to the infirmary, he was sent to fetch this book so that the prisoner might be given last rites before she died.
The doctor opened the book to where the frayed ribbon marked the page. “Pay attention. This is a D. It is the first letter in the word Dieu. D-ieu. That is the sound it makes. Do you understand?”
Tomašis nodded. D. D was for Dieu and docteur and dégage. He understood.
“Good. This is a T. It is the first letter in tabernacle.”
And in my name, Tomašis thought, but you don’t know that, because you have never asked. He nodded.
It was in this manner that Tomašis Yoska Javert learned his letters. The doctor showed him their shapes and sounds, and he went back to the cell and scratched them into the dirt floor with his fingers. His mother seemed very proud of him for this. At times, he saw her crying when she thought he couldn’t see. He didn’t understand why she cried. Not yet.
After a time, he could scratch out his own name: T O M A C H E S. His mother told him the spelling was wrong, but she was smiling when she did. T O M A S, she showed him instead, the name writ on whatever roster the prison kept of its occupants. Then he scratched her name: D A I E N A. He had to ask her to help him spell it, but the letters he produced on his own. She could not read, only write her own name and his, and she was proud of him for this and told him that reading and writing French would take him much farther in life than she ever had gone. He offered to teach her what the doctor taught him, so that they might go far in life together, but she just shook her head and stroked his hair.
Tomašis Yoska Javert did not know how old he was when he realized that his mother expected – or perhaps planned, he did not know – to die here in this prison. It seemed to be a fact he had always known, yet never said out loud, for fear the words would make contact with the air and become fate. He knew, too, that whether the words were spoken or not, his mother’s destiny had been decided.
He returned from an errand one day to find his mother on her knees, the doctor standing in front of her. For a moment, he stepped forward, curious, but then the sounds reached his ears: wet, sloppy. He knew those sounds well, as anyone would who lived within those walls, but he had never expected to hear them here in what he liked to think of as their place of residence, their home, their corner of the large cell. He turned and ran, shame and anger and embarrassment building up until it spilled over from his eyes and he fell to the ground and wiped angrily at his face to rid himself of the tears. His attempts were in vain, and he knelt there on the ground for quite some time before he was recovered enough to stand on shaking legs and make his way back to the cell. The doctor was gone, and his mother sat on their bunk, looking at the floor.
“Maman,” he asked her, “Why are we here?” What did you do, the question that he did not say, but they both heard beneath the words.
She smiled sadly. “I did a lot of things, Toma. A lot of things I regret.”
He frowned. She couldn’t regret them too terribly; she still did them, even here where there could not possibly be anything to gain. He added liar to the mental list of his mother’s faults. That morning, he had the idea that she perhaps didn’t have any faults, as young children often think of their mothers. Now, there was a list. He had stumbled through passages of the Bible, he knew the words for the sins he had seen. Liar. Fornicator. Just earlier that day, the doctor had made him read aloud from the book of Micah: I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no more tellers of fortunes…And in anger and wrath I will execute vengeance on the nations that did not obey. Liar. Fornicator. Fortune-teller. Tomašis did not like the pictures on the cards so much now.
He nodded and could not remove the frown from his face, but stayed silent. There was nothing to say. But when she reached out a hand to touch him, he leaned back and turned his face away.
He pretended not to hear her sobs that night. He pretended for hours. But then he could no longer take it and he scooted closer to her on the bunk to kiss her cheek and work his way into her arms. He pretended not to notice how tightly she held him and how many kisses she placed on the crown of his head. He pretended not to notice that he, too, began to cry as he fell asleep. He didn’t notice when his mother stopped crying but did not stop sniffling. He didn’t notice the rasping of each breath she took. Fate had come to lay her claim.
His mother fell very quickly into sickness. It seemed to Tomašis that one moment she was fine and healthy and the next, coughing and pale. Of course, no one was ever fine and healthy within these walls, not even the guards. The air was poisoned with the stench of unwashed bodies and disease. No hope survived here. It did not make for an environment conducive to health.
The guards mocked her when she struggled to stand, saying all manner of crude, horrible things. When Tomašis tried to rebuke them, to defend her, she hushed him gently, stroking his hair and telling him to stay on the good side of the guards, to not anger them for something so trivial. Her words made him even angrier – how could she call these insults to her honor, her very being, trivial? Though nothing they said was untrue, she confirmed it herself when he asked.
He hated the guards when they said those things, but he hated his mother more for proving them right. Then he hated himself for hating his mother. He wondered if it was possible to hate and love someone in equal measure and tried to ask the doctor about it, to ask if there was anything God had said about it in the Bible, but the doctor just sighed and shook his head.
“Look, boy. Your mother is as fine a mother as she can be, I’m sure. But she’s a criminal and a sinner and God is giving justice. When the law is broken, one must be punished. That’s why your mother is here. When God’s law is broken, it is the same. Punishment is never pleasant, but it is necessary for justice to exist.”
Tomašis left even more conflicted than before. His mother was a sinner and a criminal and he hated her because she had broken the law of France and the law of God and had stranded them in this place. But he loved her as well. How could he not?
She seemed to be getting better one evening – the color had returned to her face and the light to her eyes. She pulled Tomašis close with more strength than she had had in the weeks since she first began to cough.
“Tomašis Yoska,” she said, her voice steady and not at all raspy and wispy like a dying woman’s should be, “You are my only son and I love you and I want the best for you. So, promise me one thing. Promise me that you will get out of here and you will make yourself a good life on the outside. You are –” here she stopped and hunched over, coughing, for several moments. When she relaxed and laid back, there was blood on her lips. She smiled, and the blood dripped onto her chin. “You are a smart boy. You know your letters and you know how to work with disagreeable people. These are valuable skills to have in this world. You can make yourself an honest living, I believe in you. Don’t let yourself end up in here like me,” she said, smiling sadly. In French, accented like his had never been, she told him, “You deserve better than this, Toma.”
Before he could form a reply, another fit of coughing seized her. After a minute or so had passed and the coughing remained, Tomašis helped her sit up and rubbed at her back, trying to ease the congestion. So focused he was on the coughing that when it stopped, he did not notice that she did not take another breath, and he began to hope. Then he looked up to her face and he knew. His mother was gone.
Gently lowering her back onto the bunk, he stood up and squeezed through the bars like he did a hundred times a day and found the nearest guard and told him that his mother was dead and that someone should be notified. Then he turned and walked back and squeezed through the bars again and sat on the edge of the bed, staring forward.
A gentle hand on his shoulder pulled him from whatever place he had been in since he saw the light gone from her eyes, and he looked up to see the woman who had a daughter, the one who had cursed him and called his mother a gitane. He had not seen her since that day, so many years ago. Now, he saw tears in her eyes and she opened her arms as if to embrace him.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled, then stood up, walked to a corner, and promptly vomited. It was not much, for he had been eating little, stealthily giving his portions of food to his mother in hopes that she might regain her strength. When he had finished, he straightened up and walked to his mother – to the body – and took the set of cards from the pocket where he knew they were, tied up with yarn that was once a vibrant red, but now was the color of meat gone sour. He tucked the cards inside his shirt, for he did not want them to be found and taken by the guards or the doctor or whoever would remove the body.
When he had finished this as well, he was unsure what to do, and so he sat again on the edge of the bed.
“You are not crying,” the woman noted. Her voice was thick. She was crying.
“She was a criminal. Criminals do not deserve respect. Or tears.”
She shook her head. “Everyone is not deserving of respect at some point in their lives, even the law-abiding citizens. But still they receive respect. I’m sure their sons cry for them. Why should your mother be any different?”
Tomašis could feel the familiar heat behind his eyes that meant he was about to cry. He began to blink very fast. “She was a criminal and therefore not a good person. I don’t want to cry for a bad person, for surely it means that I am sorry that the world has lost someone who would make it worse and unsafe.”
The woman frowned. “Oh, come now. You aren’t a stupid boy. You may know right from wrong, I’ll give you that, but you also know that people are much more complex than that. No one is entirely a good or bad person, no matter what they do.”
Tomašis turned away from her and did not respond, but he allowed silent tears to run down his face. Logically, he knew that a person could not be both good and bad, but that logic also told him that he could not hate and love someone in equal measure, a fact which his heart strongly disagreed with. He put this idea to the back of his mind and tried to ignore it, for it confused him and he had no one to ask that understood his confusion.
He was alone now, truly. His mother was dead, and his father was some faceless man by the surname of Javert (whom his mother had never spoken fondly of) who was, for all Tomašis cared, dead or worse. Now he understood why his mother told him to leave the guards well alone when they said cruel things. They would be his only hope to get out of this place one day.
The funeral, if one could call it that, was a grim affair later that night. A shallow hole was dug, and the body was tossed in. Tomašis was not invited to attend, but he watched through the bars on the window above his bunk. He felt he owed her that. He said a prayer as well, though there was little chance it would help. His mother had never been religious. They hadn’t even thought to administer her last rites. She probably wouldn’t have wanted them. Tomašis was certain the gods she spoke of on occasion were not in the Bible. Another for her list of crimes: Liar. Fornicator. Fortune-teller. Heretic.
Tomašis did not know what they would have done with him had he not come to them with a proposal of his own first. Thrown him out maybe, or sent him to an orphanage. Or perhaps they would have just let him stay until he died, too, and thrown him in another shallow grave like his mother. Whatever fate had planned for him, he never gave her the chance to enact it. Not twenty minutes after the funeral, Tomašis had made his way to the office of the head guard, a man called Chabouillet. The office was neither locked nor guarded. It was a small prison, and most were in for petty theft or prostitution. The very dangerous criminals went to the Bagne in Toulon. This, Tomašis knew because he listened. He listened to what the guards said when they thought everyone around was too angry or too stupid to pay them any mind.
This was the proposal that Tomašis Yoska Javert presented to Monsieur Chabouillet: Tomašis was a resourceful boy, one who knew his letters and the law and who knew all the goings-on of the prison. Allow him to stay and work doing whatever they needed, and his value would far outweigh his cost.
Looking back, it was not a very strong proposal, but one must understand that to a boy just barely ten years of age, it sounded very smart and solid. Whether because the man took pity on the boy or because the boy’s mother had somehow paid for his life (Tomašis never discovered the reason, but as he grew, the painful wisdom of age led him to believe that it had been the latter), the man accepted his offer, and Tomašis began his new life the same day his mother’s ended.
For two years, he carried notes and packages, cleaned cells, bandaged wounds in the infirmary, counted time while the prisoners had their toilet, and he watched and he listened and he learned. He was given a copy of the Code Pénal and with it, continued his studies of written French (the doctor had ceased his lessons when his mother died, and Tomašis was left to assume that his mother had been giving the man her body in exchange for his reading lessons. This realization led him to cry tears of sorrow and of guilt for quite some time). He still scratched in the dirt with his fingers, but now he scratched whole sentences. He learned the code backwards and forwards and no longer needed the book. It was put into the stack of cards and tied with the yarn, as well.
The wages he earned were minimal, so little as to be practically nothing, but he did not pay for food or for a place to sleep, and he was good at saving. By the end of the first year, he had saved enough to buy himself a new shirt, which he took great care to keep as clean as he could, and a sturdy pair of boots, which he got a bit too large, that he would be able to grow into them. He wore them every hour he was awake, and sometimes he left them on as he slept, too. They caused his feet to blister and redden terribly for several weeks, and the younger guards, the ones who had known him only as errand-boy and did not think themselves too good to speak to him, remarked on his constant grimace. Eventually, though, his feet grew accustomed to being trapped in shoes and he no longer noticed a difference.
He had been working for the prison for two years, perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more, when the head guard Monsieur Chabouillet summoned him to his office. Tomašis stood there in his boots, hands respectfully behind his back, head forward but not bowed – never bowed.
“How old are you, Javert?” They all called him Javert. Or gitan. The only one who called him Tomašis Yoska was dead.
Tomašis blinked. The question of his age had never occurred to him. “I think…..12, I think, Monsieur.”
The man nodded and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. Tomašis waited. Then, finally, “I have a message that needs to be delivered to the police station-house in this town.” He held up the envelope, which was labelled with the address. “Do you know where that is?”
Hesitantly, Tomašis nodded. “I would be more comfortable consulting a map, but yes, monsieur, I think I know where that is.”
“Then a map you shall be given,” he said, already searching to produce one. “We don’t want you or this message getting lost.” He sniffed and, finding the map, handed it over. “It is not so far. And you will be given money to hire a ride, if you can find anyone willing to take you.”
Tomašis nodded his assent. “When should I leave, monsieur?”
“Tomorrow morning. Early. It is not more than a day’s journey, but you won’t want to waste any daylight.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
Tomašis took his leave of the office and went to the cell. He knelt in front of the bunk by the wall and unrolled the map before him. He searched with his finger, finding the town relatively quickly. It truly was not far. He thought that perhaps he would not need to hire a ride if he walked along by the river. It was a straight shot and he could make it there in the late afternoon if he did not dally, which he knew he wouldn’t. He wondered if he would be allowed to keep the money that was intended for the ride.
True to his word, Tomašis rose before dawn the next morning (as he had for many years) and collected the message and the money from Chabouillet, and then he was on his way.
The shirt he had worn as a child, always so large on him, had finally gotten too small to wear even as a work-shirt, and he had torn it into even pieces and, with needle and thread borrowed from the infirmary, he had sewn it into a little bag. Perhaps not a very fashionable bag, perhaps more a pouch with a raggedy strap, but serviceable nonetheless. It was this in which he carried the message, the money (given to him in a small pouch, from which he had not yet removed it), the map, a small chunk of slightly stale bread, the Code Pénal, and his mother’s set of cards. Everything he owned in the world. Besides the map, the message, and the money, which he did not own. And his clothes and his shoes, which he did own, but were not in his bag.
As excited as he normally would be to be outside (when he had gone to buy his boots, it had taken nearly 3 hours because there was simply so much that he had never seen before), this time he was on duty. He had a mission and he would not jeopardize it for his own childish distractions. If he swung his bag a little too eagerly or paid a little too much attention to the fields and farmhouses he passed, well, no time was wasted and therefore it was harmless.
He had been walking for long enough that his feet began to ache by the time that he thought to pull out the map again. He briefly considered removing his boots to see if walking barefoot would help at all, but decided against it. He did not want to give the impression that he was just some gamin, some lost gitan child.
Squinting at the map, he frowned. He knew he was headed in the right direction, but he wasn’t entirely sure where he was. None of these towns had signs or labels to denote which was which, as they did on the map. Estimating the distance he had traveled, he guessed that he should soon come across the town of Faverolles.
Just as he looked up to see if there was anything to confirm or deny his guess, he heard footsteps behind him. A group of boys, not older than himself by too many years, but definitely larger, were approaching. He resolutely told himself that there was nothing to give him cause to fear, that they were likely just going to go about their business and ignore him, but he could not stop his heart from beating faster or his legs for taking quicker steps.
“Look what I’ve found,” one of them called out, “a wild gitan. I wonder if it’s lost, all alone out here, so far from the herd.”
“Pierre…..” another one of them said, “Let’s just go, yeah?”
The first boy, Pierre, laughed. “Ha! Why? I’m sure it doesn’t even speak French! It’s not as if it can understand me!”
Tomašis walked even faster, trying to remember all that his mother had told him about ignoring the guards when they had taunted them. He had a message to deliver, he could not get distracted. He had a message to deliver, he could not get distra –
“Hey, gitan! Read my palms, won’t you? Tell me my future!”
At this, Tomašis stopped. And turned. “Fortune-telling is a crime that I have no intention of committing today, thank you. I have to go; I have somewhere to be.”
The taller boy, Pierre, smirked. “Oh, he has somewhere to be, does he?”
One of his friends, who looked alarmingly stupid, laughed and repeated what Pierre had said. The other grabbed his bicep and again said, “Just leave it. Let’s go.”
Pierre laughed again and shook his head wildly, almost as if – by God, was he drunk? This did not bode well for Tomašis, who knew that men got much bolder and much crueler with wine in their bellies. They forgot their fear of the law, their sense of right and wrong.
He turned to go.
Pierre hollered after him, “Oi! Salaud! I was talking to you! Get back here!”
By this point, Tomašis was walking very quickly indeed. Pierre had apparently decided that he would not be able to catch up, for his footsteps ceased, and Tomašis breathed a silent sigh of relief. That did not last long however; not twenty seconds later, something flew by his head. A rock. The next hit him square in the back and Tomašis cried out, not so much from the pain, for it truly did not hurt so bad, but from the mere shock of it.
He clutched his bag tighter and started to run inland, in hopes he might come across someone who would scare the boys away. A third rock hit him, in the shoulder this time, and when he turned to see if there were more, he was caught around the arm by the stupid-looking one.
Pierre approached them, bouncing another rock in his hand. He threw it over his shoulder and glared at Tomašis. “Stupid gitan, should have paid heed to me,” he spat out, emphasizing his words with a punch in the gut that was hard enough to knock the wind from Tomašis’s lungs.
Pierre wound up his fist, ready to hit him again. Tomašis spat on him. The boy spluttered, wiping a hand across his face. It landed in his eye, Tomašis noted with some satisfaction. The boy drew back his arm again and Tomašis squirmed, trying to free himself of the stupid one’s grasp, but to no avail. He heard the hit before he felt it, the cracking sound that might have been a tooth or might have been his jaw. He hoped that it had been Pierre’s knuckles.
Then there was a new voice. “Hey! What are you doing? Leave him alone! Get out of here! Go on, shoo!”
The arm holding him up released him (though not without twisting his arm painfully behind him) and Tomašis fell to the ground. The sound of his attackers fleeing made him smirk, though it hurt to do so.
“Child? Are you alright?”
With the satisfaction of hearing the boys flee, Tomašis had almost forgotten about his savior. He bristled at being called a child, but put it out of his mind and tried to stand.
“Careful, careful,” his savior said, grabbing him around the waist. “That was no light blow you took. Can you lean on me? I can help you, that’s it.”
At that moment, to Tomašis’s utter horror and embarrassment, he found himself completely unable to stand, and was scooped up in the man’s arms like the child he had been mistaken for. He then proceeded to fall unconscious.
He woke to the sight of a ceiling unfamiliar to him. He quickly sat up, regretting it when he did so, as it triggered a pounding headache. He hissed and raised a hand to his head.
“Ah, you’re awake!”
Tomašis turned to find his rescuer, who was significantly younger than he had thought him to be, judging by the pitch of his voice and the strength of his arms. By his youthful face and patchy beard, the man must have barely been out of his teenage years.
Tomašis cleared his throat. “Yes, I am awake. Thank you, monsieur. I’m sorry to say it, but there is nothing I can give you in return for your rescue.”
The young man snorted. “You need not repay me. I hardly did anything at all – just scared away the boys. How is your head?”
Ignoring the question, Tomašis sat up further, turning his head to look around him. “Where are we?”
“My home. Or rather, the home of my sister and her family. But it is where I reside as well. In Faverolles.”
Tomašis’s eyes caught the window and he frowned upon seeing how high the sun was in the sky. It was well past noon! If he did not leave now, his message would arrive too late and he would have to return in the morning to give it to the police officer.
“I have an errand to run. I must arrive before dark,” he told the young man, already standing and looping his bag across his shoulders (though not before giving it a thorough search – criminals were lurking everywhere and who knew what this man might have taken?).
The young man shook his head. “I do not think you should be going anywhere in a hurry after that blow to the head.”
Tomašis squared his shoulders. “Thank you for your help and for your concern, monsieur, but I have a job to complete.”
The man sighed. “Will you at least return after you have completed it?”
Tomašis hesitated and then – a halting nod. “If monsieur wishes it, then I shall return.”
“Jean.”
“What?”
“My name. It’s Jean,” the man told him. He raised an eyebrow. “And you are?”
Tomašis was a bit taken aback. No one offered their name to him willingly, let alone ask his in return. “I – I am called Tomašis.”
Jean nodded. “Then Godspeed, little Tomašis. I pray that you do not again find yourself in need of help, as I will not be there to give it.”
“I – thank you.”
“The river is a left turn from the door. Follow it, and you won’t get lost.”
A quick nod and then he was gone, walking much quicker than he had been before this whole mess. He did not swing his bag or admire the fields.
Just as Jean had predicted, the journey was short, and Tomašis arrived before the sky had begun to turn orange. He would hazard that the time was 4 o’clock or perhaps 5. The town was small, and he had no need to ask for directions to find the police station-house. The building was at the center of the town, next to a carriage-house. He entered.
“This is a police house, boy. Don’t think to try anything stupid,” a voice warned him as he crossed the threshold.
Tomašis bristled. “I have a message for Monsieur l’Inspecteur. It is from the jail by Pontlevoy.”
An officer stepped forward and held out a hand. “I will take it.”
Tomašis looked him up and down. “Are you Monsieur l’Inspecteur, here, monsieur?”
“No, but I will deliver it to l’Inspecteur,” the man said, giving Tomašis a smile that looked more irritated than pleased.
“With respect, monsieur, I would prefer to deliver it to his hand directly. I can wait.” He clasped his hands behind his back and stood straight, prepared to do as he had said and wait.
The officer sighed. “I will make him aware.”
He disappeared down the hallway and did not return for some time. Tomašis waited. The bottom of his right foot began to itch, and he tried to ignore it. His attempts were not successful, and he was left to squirm uncomfortably. After what seemed like at least a quarter of an hour, the officer returned, a large, imposing man trailing behind him.
Tomašis took a step forward and inclined his head. “Monsieur l’Inspecteur.”
“I hear you have a message for me that you have been rather reluctant to hand over,” the inspector remarked, though it did not sound like a question.
“Yes, monsieur. I have it here,” he said, drawing out said message and holding it before him.
The inspector took the letter but did not open it. Private business, then. “Accountability and integrity. Notable virtues in one so young,” the inspector told him.
Tomašis puffed up with pride at his words. “Thank you, monsieur.”
“You would make a fine policeman, when you’ve grown,” the inspector remarked. “Do think on it.”
Tomašis nodded, looking at the floor to hide the smile he could not help from breaking out across his face. “I will, monsieur. Thank you.”
The inspector nodded. “Good. You may go; this letter shall have no response today.”
Tomašis respectfully inclined his head and turned to go. The sun was low in the sky, but not so low that Tomašis felt he needed to stop and find lodging for the night. He was distracted the whole way back, the inspector’s words echoing in his head, and Tomašis almost felt that he was giddy with the compliment. A passerby would have noticed a particular bounce in his step that hadn’t been present upon his entrance to the prefecture.
He had almost forgotten that he had agreed to return to the house of Jean’s sister and her family, but as he passed by the town, he saw the man himself, carrying a heavy bucket of water as easily as if it were empty.
He walked to meet the young man. “Jean of Faverolles,” he said by way of greeting.
Jean smiled widely. “Little Tomašis. So, you made it after all? And look, the sun is just now touching the horizon. You made haste.”
“I am quick on my feet,” Tomašis replied.
“So I see,” said Jean. There was laughter in his voice, but Tomašis did not understand why. “Come on, then. I need to set this down before I look at the bump that’s surely appeared on your head.”
Not knowing what else to do, Tomašis followed Jean of Faverolles to his home.
He was not prepared for the sheer noise of the place when they entered. Before, earlier in the day, there had been no one there save him and Jean. Now, the house was full of children’s prattle and the smell of cooking food. Tomašis froze on the step, but squared his shoulders and made himself enter in after Jean.
He stood awkwardly to the side as Jean deposited the water bucket on a small stool in the corner and greeted his sister with a kiss on the cheek. To the man, whom Tomašis assumed to be the sister’s husband, he offered a brotherly hand-clasp. As he walked by the two children, playing on the floor, he ruffled their hair, making the older boy squawk indignantly and reach to fix it and the younger – a girl, Tomašis guessed, though he was unsure – giggle and clap her hands over her head.
The sister gave Tomašis a wary glance. “And who is this, frère Jean?”
Tomašis stepped forward, hands clasped tightly behind his back. “I am Tomašis Javert, madame. Your brother saved me from a bit of trouble earlier this day and requested that I return so he could see how I fared.”
The woman frowned. “A bit of trouble? Jean, you didn’t speak of any trouble.”
Jean was quick to reassure her. “It was nothing, Jeanne, just some local youths being cruel. But the boy had been dealt a rather hard hit to the head, and I wanted to be sure nothing worse had occurred.”
She relaxed and then turned back to Tomašis. “Well, Monsieur Javert, surely you can stay for supper?”
He startled, eyes wide. Monsieur Javert. “I – that is very kind of you, madame, but I could not accept.”
“Nonsense,” she brushed his denial aside. “And you shall stay the night, too. I won’t have young boys wandering alone at night. Any number of things could happen!”
He opened his mouth to again decline her offer, knowing that he had no way to pay her (and to refute the assumption that he was a boy. Hadn’t he decided just earlier that he was 12 years of age? Perhaps even 13! No longer a boy, of course! But Jean caught his eye. He was shaking his head in a way that made Tomašis think there would be no denying Jeanne.
Still, he made a valiant attempt. “Madame, there is no way I can pay you for your kindness.”
She said the same thing her brother had said when Tomašis had brought up the same argument: “You need not repay me. It is just what one does. And besides, work has been plenty this year and there is food to spare. Who will eat it if you do not stay?”
And so, he stayed.
Jeanne’s husband was called Nicolas, as Tomašis soon found out. He did not speak much, and when he did, he was always exceptionally soft-toned and kind. Tomašis wondered briefly if perhaps he might be slow in the head. The oldest child, the boy, was Claude, and he was 10 years of age, not so much younger than Tomašis himself. The girl (it was a girl, he had been right) was Marie, and she was 4 years of age. The infant, which Tomašis had not noticed until it had been introduced, was born just seven months past and was called Lou. They did not say whether this was an epithet for Louis or for Louise, and the gender of the infant was unclear.
At first the supper progressed awkwardly, everyone sipping at their soup in silence, with the occasional attempt at conversation. Tomašis suspected he was the cause of this awkwardness.
“Where are your parents? Should they be notified?”
“No, madame, my parents are dead.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“Do not be.”
……
“Marie, remove your hands from your soup!”
“Oui, maman.”
……
“Claude, would you like to tell our guest how your school is progressing?”
“Boring. I do not like to learn arithmetic.”
“But surely it is important to learn such things?”
“I do not care.”
“Claude! Do not be rude.”
“Oui, maman. Sorry, monsieur.”
……
“Marie, do not make balls from the bread.”
“Oui, maman.”
…….
“Nicolas, how is work?”
“It is work, Jean.”
“….Good. That is good.”
……
“Marie, stop playing with your food.”
“Oui, maman.”
Before she had even finished pronouncing her agreement, Marie proceeded to fling a soggy pea in her spoon, quite entirely by accident, surely, though it landed with a splat on the wall behind Tomašis. He smiled, and she began to laugh and Jeanne, given up on disciplining the girl, smiled as well. Finally, the awkwardness ceased, and conversation became more natural.
“So, Monsieur Javert,” Jeanne began, “what brings you all the way to Faverolles? It is not exactly a common place for travelers to stop.”
He nodded. “I was delivering a letter to l’Inspecteur de Police nearby and had to pass through the town on my way.”
She frowned. “Where did you leave from?”
“I left from the prison near Pontlevoy,” he told them, looking down into his soup.
He could practically feel their eyes on his wrists and his neck, looking for the tell-tale signs of a prisoner, though one so young as he would hardly have been lashed with a chain, not in a prison so small as his. He winced. “Forgive me. I was unclear. I merely work at the prison, I am not an inmate there.” Though I do reside there, he added silently. There was no harm in leaving that out. He had told no lies.
There was a tangible sense of relief in the room at these words. Understandable. If he had unknowingly invited a criminal into his home, to dine and stay the night? It was unthinkable. Of course, he did dine and stay the night with prisoners, every day besides this one, in fact, but that was by neither choice nor accident, merely fate.
“That is still a long way to send a boy on foot all alone,” Nicolas remarked quietly.
Tomašis shrugged. “I ask for work, they give me coin to see it done. I am in no place to pick and choose the shortest and easiest routes.”
Jean nodded, a weary look briefly crossing his face, as if he knew and understood the hardship of little work and many workers. It was not the place of the worker to question the work, for he would just be removed and replaced with another worker. There was always another.
At that moment, Claude belched loudly and quickly covered his mouth, mumbling “Pardon.”
Tomašis wondered how this child could possibly be within two years of his own age. He himself had surely never been so foolish, so innocent. To see the type of boy he probably should have grown to be made him suddenly grateful for the fate he was handed. This Claude would not be able to survive without his mother and father, not for a while yet, though Tomašis hoped he never had to.
“Monsieur Javert?” Marie asked, “Why is your hair so long?”
His back stiffened, but he forced himself to relax. His hair, long and black, undeniable proof that he was the gitan everyone called him, had always been one of the guards’ favorite things to mock. Tomašis liked his hair like this, and so he left it. But the cruel words were always difficult to bear. To Marie, he simply replied, “I like it this way.”
“Enough, Marie,” Jeanne chided her. “No more questions.”
“I do not mind,” Tomašis said. He did not lie; he found that he truly did not mind.
When supper had ended, Tomašis helped Jeanne clean the dishes, despite her insistence that he didn’t need to. She had been absentmindedly patting at her belly every few minutes, and Tomašis suspected that she was with child, rather than just well-fed, as he had previously assumed. He had seen in the prison what happened to pregnant woman who worked too hard, and he did not wish that fate upon Jeanne. He would help her while he could.
When they had finished, Tomašis was treated to something he had never before experienced: the well-polished nightly routine of a close-knit family. Jean went out of the house, returned with an armful of wood, and went about setting the fire. The children were put to bed and went with little complaint, though Claude did ask briefly if he could be permitted to stay up just a bit longer. Jeanne answered him firmly no, and he accepted it with no further questions. It seemed to be something he asked every night, for he knew in advance what the answer would be. The infant – Lou – was moved, basket and all, into the other room in the house, presumably the bedroom of Monsieur Nicolas and Madame Jeanne. Nicolas sat for a while at the supper table, carving a small chunk of wood into some unknown shape. Jeanne retired early, but the muted sounds of singing told Tomašis she was still awake, tending to the infant.
Tomašis did not often feel as though he had missed very much with the childhood he had had. His mother, criminal that she was, had nurtured him and given him the best opportunities she was able to procure for him. She had loved him. It had always been enough. But now, watching from within the domestic scene around him, Tomašis felt something that felt distinctly like longing rise up in his chest. He did not let it linger.
“Are you a woodcarver, Monsieur Nicolas?”
The man shook his head. “No, it is just a silly hobby of mine,” he said, smiling softly at the chunk of wood in his hands. “I am a carpenter. I made all of the furniture in this room.”
Tomašis looked around. “It is of good quality. You should be proud.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Javert,” Nicolas said quietly. He looked pleased.
A crackle in the corner told them that the fire had been lit. Not knowing precisely what to do with himself, Tomašis crept towards it, drawn like a moth. Growing up forever cold and damp, he had never been able to resist the warmth of a fire. The look on Jean’s face told Tomašis that he was not subtle in his movements.
“How did you come to work at a prison, little Tomašis?” the young man asked, tilting his head a bit.
Tomašis met his eyes. “There is always work to be done, and a prisoner’s bastard is cheaper to hire than a street gamin,” he said, honestly.
Jean nodded, as if he had guessed as much. “But you yourself are not imprisoned?”
“Not as such.”
“Then why do you stay?” he asked. “Surely there is better-paying work to be found, somewhere.”
“Ah,” Tomašis said, grinning bitterly, “But what work is there for a gitan with no papers who can only barely read or write?”
Jean frowned and was silent for a moment, as if the words had to turn about in his mind several times before they made sense. “But,” he said finally, “There is much work that does not require reading or writing. I know neither, and I am a tree pruner.”
Tomašis shook his head. People like Jean of Faverolles would never understand. “It is just different, monsieur. We were handed different fates.”
They were silent after that until Nicolas stood up and announced he was retiring to bed.
Jean stood, as well, and began collecting the cushions from the sofa. When Tomašis inquired as to what he was doing, the man replied, “You are a guest, and the floor is hard. But I am not giving up the sofa.” He laid the cushions out on the floor beside the sofa, in a line like a very thin, very strange mattress.
Tomašis nodded and sat on the cushion closest to himself. “It is your house. I would not expect you to yield the sofa.” He did not mention that he had slept on the floor for many years with no cushions. He suspected that Jean had guessed this. He removed the shirt-bag he had worn across his chest throughout all of supper and the events after. Setting it beside the cushions, he wondered, belatedly, if perhaps keeping it on his person during supper had been a breach of etiquette. The Code Pénal said nothing of etiquette, so he did not know.
“What’s in the bag, that you guard it so closely?” Jean asked, seating himself on the sofa.
“A map,” Tomašis told him. “And a book, and some cards, and a few coins which are to be returned to Directeur de Garde Chabouillet.” The bag was lighter, for the message had been delivered, and the bread had been eaten.
Jean looked curious. “Cards for playing or cards for reading fortunes?”
“For reading fortunes, monsieur, but I do not use them,” Tomašis told him, straightening his back. “Such things are a crime against God and a crime against France.”
“So you would not read mine if I asked?”
A brief hesitation. “No, monsieur.”
“You need not call me monsieur,” the young man said, leaning back into the sofa. “Call me Jean, as you did before.”
Tomašis started. He had not even realized he had stopped. “Pardon. Jean.” Then, after a pause, “You said you are a tree pruner? How is that?”
Never before had Tomašis seen a man light up so rapidly, especially not at the mention of his work. In the time between his asking the question and the fire dying down to just embers, Tomašis learned more about trees and their keeping than he had ever wondered or thought to wonder before. Jean’s enthusiasm made the information welcome, though, more than just useless facts. Tomašis went to sleep that night warm and feeling more in touch with the green world beyond the prison walls than he had in his whole life.
Tomašis awoke the next morning to find the household already awake and busting, though it was just barely dawn. The house smelled of eggs and bread and the children were running about. Nicolas was again whittling away at his chunk of wood, and Jean was dressed as if to leave, boots already on his feet. Jeanne blocked his way and hassled him into a chair at the table. When she saw that Tomašis was awake, she did the same to him, and they both were served plates of egg with slices of warm bread. There was a pewter pitcher of water in the center of the table, and Jeanne set before each of them a wooden cup.
All of this happened in less than 5 minutes, and Tomašis was stunned. If the guards at the prison had this kind of efficiency, productivity of the laboring inmates could double, perhaps even triple. He ate his eggs. The bread he tried to save, hiding it under the table in his lap, but Jeanne caught him and promised him another piece for the road. She would hear no protestations.
He thanked her and finished his meal quickly, helping once more with the dishes. Not wanting to overstay his welcome (and needing to get back to the prison at a reasonable time), Tomašis went about taking his leave of the house, still-warm bread in his bag and egg in his belly. He thanked Nicolas and Jean first, for their hospitality and willingness to let them into their home. Then he thanked Jeanne, for the meals and the company, and for her trust. She drew him into a tight hug (one that he was too stunned to return) and wished him well before she sent him off.
Jean was leaving as well, so they walked out and down the road together for a while. When the time came to part ways, Jean gave him a handshake and a smile, and Tomašis walked away feeling more alive than he had since he was a child in his mother's arms. The trip back to Pontlevoy was much more pleasant than his first journey. He was not accosted once, and the bread he had to sustain him was warm and not at all stale.
When he reached the prison, he went straight to the office of the head guard. He gave the man a brief report – leaving out the incident in Faverolles, saying only that a local family had given him shelter for the night – and offered the coin pouch. Chabouillet waved the pouch away and instead held out a uniform, folded with a cap on top. He smiled.
“You did well with this, and I feel it is time that you take on a proper role here. Congratulations, petit garde Javert. Training starts tomorrow.”