Ghost Story
Written for Talissa Rocsham.
In the winter, the boarding house in Paris was a mixture of cold and hot. In some rooms, when one lit a fire in the fireplace, the walls kept in all the heat from the burning wood and made the place stifling. In the other rooms, it didn't do a thing, and one would shiver all night long. Everyone who stayed there adapted to the conditions in different ways. For the most part, it seemed safer to get the warm rooms so as not to freeze to death, and just wear one's lightest clothes, but a good number of people also took the cold rooms and bought extra quilts and afghans.
No one worried much about the summer. They would all bake anyway.
The boarding house was very old, and some of them thought this accounted for the hot and cold. The roof didn't leak--yet. All of the floors creaked, and everything collected unbelievable amounts of dust. The windows would not open. And yet, somehow, there were always people living in the place.
Quite a few of them had been living there for a very long time. They were accustomed to the way things were, and either didn't mind or had become resigned long ago. They knew each other, and eyed new boarders warily, never quite trusting anyone until he had lived in the boarding house at least six months with no trouble. There were ten of these people, and with them all occupying their own rooms, there were only four available for newcomers.
Of these four, one belonged to a young man who owned a bookstore in the city, and whom no one ever saw because he got up so early to mind his place and came back so late in the evening.
One belonged to a somewhat well-off dressmaker who kept it full of all sorts of materials and delightful cloths. The old inhabitants didn't expect her to stay long, but they still liked to find excuses to visit her and look at her things.
One belonged to a tiny family who didn't yet have a house of their own, although the husband would say often, in a soft, worried voice, that it was only a matter of time. The boarders talked about him and his wife and their infant... infant (no one knew the sex of the baby) regretfully. To some they were sad, and to some pathetic.
The last room belonged to an aristocrat's son, and no one knew what he was doing there. It did not seem the proper place for anyone wealthy. They watched him coming and going from his college, and tried to mistrust him, but when he saw them, he always smiled and waved, looking delighted and innocent, and it was rather difficult to assume he might have ulterior motives. He had eyes the colour of violets, he was eager to talk, and they learned his name very quickly. It was Jehan Prouvaire.
~~~
Jehan loved his new boarding house. It was full of ghosts.
The ghosts in the country on his parents' estate were usually miserable and often glowered at him. He was afraid this was because of his parents. Once in a while, there were some who were content just to sit on his windowseat and put their fingers through the glass and laugh, and there had even been an interesting one who would sleep on the foot of his bed like a cat. The trouble with her was that from there, she liked to put her hands through his blankets and grab his ankles, and that went from rather frightening to horridly annoying. But for the most part, the ghosts in the country just lay with their backs on the ceiling or the walls and glowered or wept.
When Jehan went to Paris for college, however, things were different. First he stayed in an expensive place that his parents arranged, but there was a little transparent cat who was always running in circles around him and trying to get him to run after her. This caused trouble because she only appeared in public places, and people started looking at him oddly. One day he decided just to follow her, and she led him to a poor-looking building where he saw other transparent cats looking out at him through a high window, and a young man at one of the other windows, who stood with his hand gently and elegantly resting on a cat's head, looking at Jehan quietly.
Immediately, Jehan left his first boarding-place and moved to the new building.
The young man had been dead for sixty years, as he explained, but was fond of his cats, and they wouldn't leave. His name was Raoul, and he told Jehan he'd died of consumption.
He was a clever and an interesting companion, but Jehan did his schoolwork for six months with Raoul peering over his shoulder and whispering to know what this or that meant. Raoul had never been to college. Raoul also liked reading Jehan's poetry, which flattered him rather, and Jehan was very pleased about the cats, because real cats made him sneeze.
But after six months, during which his professors complained about the splodges on his essays from the rain coming through the roof, and the distracted manner in which he wrote (that was, of course, because of the cats walking on his desk), he saw a white bat through the window and decided it was best he move again. He packed his things and said good-bye to Raoul.
The new boarding house was better kept, and the old woman living in his closet was much quieter than Raoul. She hardly came out. The trouble was, when she finally did, she wanted to talk as much as possible. She said she was lonely, and Jehan felt bad, so he listened.
"Is the white bat yours?" he asked.
"Oh! Yes. Bats are darklings, even when they're white, don't you think? Little darklings. He's quite stupid, though. He let a cat catch him."
"One of Raoul's cats?"
"No. Even he isn't stupid enough to be caught by one of those. Huh. Raoul's cats indeed."
Jehan moved from there in a hurry.
After that, there was the boarding house with the snakes and the man who claimed he was a magician who had been the victim of a mob, and then another one with a man who talked to himself all night long, along with his pretty, silky dog. By the time Jehan had left the place where the little girl and her huge, flowing, transparent fish stayed, he was afraid he'd never find anywhere he could live that wasn't full of animals and mad ghosts.
And then he found the old boarding house in Paris, with its overheated and its freezing rooms.
All the ghosts there were old, and most of them were agreeable, and they seemed to like him. He was always walking in on Valerie reading (she liked to read in the chair by his window) and when he did, she looked up long enough to smile before going back to it, or else he would find old Bernard in the lobby, sleeping on the couch. There was Daniel, who minded the fireplaces because he had nothing else to do, and he always told Jehan personally if the fire in his room had gone out. Madeleine embroidered things, and showed him her patterns. So they must like him, he thought.
It pleased him terribly. He'd spent such an awfully long time trying to find the right place. After the country and the country's ghosts, and then all the failures in the city--he thought himself lucky to have found the perfect boarding house.
He quickly learned that the living people who stayed in the boarding house rather liked him too, and he learned also that this was an honour. The newcomers in Rooms Three, Eight and Twelve were not half so well received.
Twelve was the bookshop owner, and Jehan wanted desperately to meet him. Anyone, he thought, who lived among books for so much of time must be wonderful and terribly intelligent.
It was the ghosts who helped him meet Twelve at last, or, to be precise, it was Madeleine and Daniel.
It was eleven at night, and Madeleine had finished one of her transparent tapestries. She was holding it up for Jehan to look at when Daniel came in to look at the fire and sweep the ashes from the hearth back into the grate as usual. This could take him a good half an hour, and usually longer, because his hands brushing were like tiny wisps of wind, and only had the smallest effect on the ashes.
Madeleine's tapestry was beautiful. Somehow, Jehan had not expected it. He looked in wonder at the tiny white stitches, and then, daringly, put out his hand to touch it.
Later, he wondered why in the world Madeleine had tried to give it to him. Perhaps she was flattered by his awe, or perhaps she just forgot. At any rate, she carefully put the tapestry into his arms and of course, it sank through and fell on the hearth.
Daniel had the glass doors to the fireplace open while he swept, and the tapestry, half in and half out, caught instantly and went up in a huge burst of white-hot, blazing, ghostly fire. Jehan fell back with a loud yelp of surprise, and Daniel and Madeleine both vanished.
Jehan's door was flung open, and there was Twelve from across the hall, alternately staring at the scorchmark on the hearth and looking at Jehan worriedly.
"Did you cry out?"
"Yes--yes--" Jehan stared back from the floor. His hair was singed around his face.
"What happened?"
"I don't know--something caught fire."
Twelve came over and helped him up. "You ought to be careful."
"I'm sorry," Jehan murmured, feeling abashed. "I'm Jehan Prouvaire," he added shyly. He realised that Twelve was terribly lovely, and that made him shyer than ever.
"Michel Enjolras," said Twelve.
"Er--you own a bookshop, don't you?"
"Sometimes." Twelve's beautiful eyes studied him carefully. "Are you at all familiar with Les Amis de l'Abaisse?"
"I've--I've heard of them. I admire them..."
"I am their leader, Monsieur Prouvaire."
~~~
In summer, the boarding house in Paris missed two of its tenants. Jehan Prouvaire and the bookstore owner in Twelve disappeared with no word for three days, before someone came to collect their belongings for their families. At this, everyone was stunned.
They all knew Jehan Prouvaire, after all, with his smile and the way he was always so polite! and the way he liked to talk to the old inhabitants. Of course, they didn't know Twelve at all, so perhaps he really was a dangerous terrorist. Well, of all things. Owning a bookstore seemed so respectable. But Jehan Prouvaire!
Then, during the night of June tenth, everyone was startled from sleep by a muffled kind of wailing from Room Eleven, Jehan Prouvaire's old room, currently vacant. Someone investigated, but said there was no one there.
Valerie had set down her book at last and was cradling the pale, transparent form of a sobbing young man whose eyes used to be the colour of violets. Old Bernard had come up from the lobby couch, and was trying to say supporting things. They were both looking furiously over the boy's shoulder at Daniel and Madeleine.
"I know you were fond of him," Valerie whispered at last, "but letting him meet Enjolras when you knew he could be killed! What were you thinking?"
"He wanted to meet Enjolras. He was always saying so. And at any rate, we loved him," Madeleine said stubbornly, before old Bernard could protest. Daniel nodded.
Valerie was not really very surprised when Jehan moved away to stay with Raoul. The leaking roof was a small price to pay.
Back to the Index.