l'esprit mort
Written for Musey.
�ponine was only stupid when she was around people who were better than her. Being among her equals brought out her cleverness, her kicked-cat sense; made her sharp little eyes sharper and her calloused little feet quick and worthy of respect from any gamin who had ever had to outrun a copper.
When she was begging, she was a hideous, worm-infested, dirty shadow of a girl, a dumb child who had been born into poverty, with no skills to save her life. From the moment she sidled up to a rich man and pawed at his coat and hung her grimy head, she was the lowest creature in the streets. There was no pride in begging. There was nothing for her. The men were better than she was. The ladies were beautiful and fine. The children, particularly, dressed like little copies of their parents, well-fed and smiling, laughing, children with pocket money and schooling--the children made her the stupidest she could be. To be among them, asking for coin, was humiliation and wretchedness and in their eyes a lack of feeling. �ponine was nothing around her betters.
But with 'Zelma, with the other gamines who sometimes huddled together in the winter to keep warm, she was something special. She was overrun with insects, inside and out, but she was magnificent. She could tell by looking at a man whether he was paying enough attention to himself to notice his wallet as it was removed from his pocket. She had no shoes and her toes were bloody and stunted because she had scraped them on so many cobblestones, but she could feel the ground beneath her anyway and knew to get out of the way when a fiacre came through the streets. Her thin arms were strong enough to grasp anyone's coattails, and she had an imperious way of speaking that made the smaller urchins stand in awe of her, though Montparnasse cheerfully told them that it was only show.
Her father was a man who was no better than she was, and he beat her and whored her and sent her across Paris with letters of petition, but she had no respect for him, and he could not make her less than she was. He tried, and she was clever enough to be afraid of him when he was there, but still he could not make her less.
She stood in the shadow behind her mother, but her mother loved her, fiercely, like mad, and so she had no respect for her mother. She loved being touched kindly and kissed, and sometimes being called 'belle �ponine', even though it was a lie, but her mother was no mother. Her mother was an equal, just another woman. No mother.
'Zelma couldn't even count. 'Zelma had not yet learned to have sharp eyes and clever feet, and she showed it in the bruises on her little arms and legs. �ponine supposed sometimes that she cared for 'Zelma, but it was in a sharp, ungentle way, by pulling her about and lecturing her, and it was the clearest thing in the world that 'Zelma could not even hope, now or ever, to be better than �ponine. 'Zelma didn't count, then.
There was also, however, one person with whom she had never quite managed to know whether she was equal, or whether she was better or worse. Montparnasse was a shadow like herself, but he was a different kind of shadow. She was a shadow because she had no substance, because the wind could have blown through her like so many dead leaves; but he was a dark thing, a creeping, absorbing thing, quite a different kind of shadow indeed. He spoke commandingly also, but his commands were obeyed by everyone. He was both a murderer and a wise man, a man concerned with his appearance who also was poor, a boy who carried a rose and took money and lives.
And then, of course, he was beautiful.
�ponine did not respect anyone else in the world but him, because he was beautiful and because he was just like her. He was not beautiful and rich, so he was not removed from her. He laughed at her and kissed her, called her his slut and whore and sometimes someone else's, braided her hair with idle fingers and said that she made him sick. He loved her when it was cold and she had nowhere to go, and sometimes in the summer he lay with her in too-hot, dingy rooms, touching her body and letting her know that he would have to find some way to wash afterwards because she had gotten lice on him. He never let her touch his clothes. He was both refined and profligate, both horrible and cruel to her and deeply concerned about her.
In the spring, when the young ladies all had new dresses and paraded in the gardens with their parasols, he once bought her a pair of pink lace gloves second-hand, and made her wear them, stained, faded, torn little things that made her hands feel breakable. She touched everything around her gingerly, amazed, and he stood back and laughed.
"Do you like them, �ponine?" he asked.
"'Course I do," she murmured, and it sounded like scraping and spitting low in her throat, this murmur, because she could not do it properly. "'Sbeautiful stuff. Lace?"
"Yes, indeed, lace. I think you may have them. Of course, I ought to buy my girl presents, oughtn't I?"
"Well, y'needn't," she said, turning her hands over and over and staring at the pink lace that made patterns of her grey skin. For a moment, she wondered where he'd gotten them, and supposed he might have killed somebody, because although they weren't nearly fine enough to kill anyone for, to her they seemed almost like a princess'. And Montparnasse laughed, and kissed her roughly and teasingly.
Another time, on the Jour de Roi, he brought her a little girl's linen petticoat. She looked at it scathingly.
"D'you think I can wear that, monsieur Montparnasse? What do you think I am, eh?"
"You're my pretty girl," said Montparnasse lightly. "Put it on."
"Shan't either, I shan't. S'pose you'll bring me a garter next. I ain't wearing it."
"I got it for you particularly, �ponine, for the holiday. I'll thank you to wear it." He sounded as though he were getting angry, and she knew very well that it was a stupid thing to make him angry, a good way to be put out for the night or else slapped around a bit, but she couldn't help it. And yet the petticoat was no sorrier than the lace gloves; indeed, it would have kept her warmer, and it didn't have as many tears. He gave it to her with exactly the same air as he had the gloves.
Perhaps he was even gentler that time. Before he brought it out, he had sat her on his bed and stroked her arms with one finger, whispering to her about the cold and the snow and the way Paris was dark and bright at the same time, while she stared up at him with her mouth half-open and wished she understood him. He was like her, and entirely unlike her, could talk poetry and murder, was smart and sensible and matter-of-fact about cruel things, and yet sometimes had bouts of melancholy when he talked cryptically of the part of his life before she had known him and could not be roused to anger or else raged passionately at her. No, she could not understand Montparnasse.
When he gave her the petticoat, she was angry with him, and she didn't know why. He sent her out into the streets and she spent the Jour de Roi under a bridge, shivering, and wondering why it was that she understood nothing about the world. She felt like the smallest thing there was, and she didn't feel better than anybody, not even her father, and she didn't understand why they had Jour de Noel and Jour de Roi, anyway.
One time it rained, for days and days. Montparnasse disappeared somewhere, and she would hardly have noticed if it were 'Zelma who had disappeared, but as she went about doing her usual tasks of begging and delivering letters, she wondered where he'd gone. A well-dressed gentleman tripped over her and struck her with his walking-stick, and she couldn't gather the presence of mind or will to do anything about it. She was simply too tired to bother trying to snap at his hand or pull ugly faces at him or pick his pocket, so she let him walk on, and lay in the road for a moment to see what would happen.
Nobody noticed her, lying in the mud, with the rain splattering her face and thin, ugly little arms, and she felt someone step on her hand once. Just a body, ain't I? she thought dully, as a nasty creeping in her hair told her the lice were getting worse again. It was horrid. She might as well just lie there for-ever. She might as well... just to see what would happen. Nothing would happen. Nothing would ever, ever happen. She was the only person in the world, and everyone else who went by was part of the big grey-brown mass of background that walked through the grey-brown world. She was the only person, she, a dark and stark white person, a tired, sick person, lying in the street and waiting to see if part of the grey-brown mass would come forward and crush her eventually. Well, there wasn't any reason to move. There wasn't anything to get up for. She might as well... Hell, she thought tiredly, and didn't even bother trying to think anything else.
"�ponine. Get up," said a sharp voice.
She turned her face ever so slightly to see what was bothering her.
"I won't have you lying right there. You're half-naked. The world is not to see my girl, do you understand? Do you suppose that because I go off on my own business for a few days, it gives you the right to be the whole city's slut? Get up."
Montparnasse's thin, strong hands pulled her up, and her legs shook. She made a little noise that sounded half a careless snort and half a whimper. Then 'Parnasse was tugging her, dragging her, off down the wet, muddy cobblestones and up a back alley, and finally he pushed her into a corner of his room. She recognised it barely. It was one he'd had a few months before. He must've liked it... she thought.
"What was all that about? You're not to sit on the bed until you're dry," he added, pushing her away with his foot when she made a move towards the mattress.
"Was tired," she muttered.
"Indeed, and you were showing off your breasts for any man to see."
"Shift's torn."
"I know that. I bought you a new one. It's disgusting, the displays you make. Just because you're a dead mind and a sick soul in a rotting body does not give you the right to let other men see what is mine." He paced a little. "You are my dead mind, �ponine."
"Huh."
Suddenly he knelt beside her, and began to stroke her dirty, wet hair. "Yes, you are. You are my dead mind. Do you know that there is something beautiful about that face? Hideous. You have hardly got teeth, girl. I wish you could see your eyes. Do you want to know what you look like? Your eyes are black, dull and black. There's nothing there. Your face is broken, bruised--and ugly. You are ugly. But you're beautiful. It's the queerest thing."
Suddenly she began to cry.
She was not sure why, and she had not cried in years, because you just didn't, and besides, she'd never needed to. There was always something to do instead of crying, and anyway crying was stupid and people didn't hold you worth anything if you cried. Anyway she had never needed to. She had always been able to take something or hit something or let something hit her, and then it didn't matter any more because she'd forget.
She made harsh, throaty gulping noises when she cried, and it made her hurt, although plenty of things hurt, so it wasn't that she noticed. Montparnasse pulled her against himself and got her mud on his beautiful clean clothes, and she heaved and gulped and cried as he made clicking noises with his tongue and drew her closer, rocking her body.
"I believe I lied to you, �ponine. Your eyes are not entirely empty. Perhaps you know that. Perhaps you've seen yourself in windows. You have something in your eyes which moves when you are angry or when I kiss you. There is a little something which darts about in your eyes. �ponine, you're alive."
She said nothing.
"You are a dead mind and a sick soul, �ponine, and your body is certainly rotting, but there is something about you. Your eyes. You're alive. Your mind is dead, but your eyes are alive. How does that feel? I'm entirely alive, but only part of you is? What is it like?"
"What'm I going to tell my father?" she whispered brokenly. "Lost his letters. Lost my money, that's dinner for a week, that is. Y'know what I mean, doncha? 'Course we gone hungry before, but I thought we was gonna eat. I gone hungry longer that this afore, but when you think, when you think you're--"
"That's the dead mind. That isn't the part of you that's alive."
"We both gone crazy, ain't we? I'm cryin' and I dunno what to do, and you're talkin' about dead things and me. We're both crazy mad, 'Parnasse."
"I bought you a new shift while I was on my business trip. It's grey and ugly, and wretched, and I could have bought better, but I had no intention of doing so, but it will cover you up and it will be dry and clean. If you put it on, you may get into bed with me. On my business trip, I obtained money, and to-morrow I mean to waste it. I shall buy myself new clothes, far better than I would ever think of buying for anyone else, let alone you, and I shall buy food," he said, still rocking her. "Yes, food."
"Won't give me any, though. 'M not stupid enough to ask, y'know."
That made him laugh. "No, you're not stupid. It's your eyes. You're a clever girl. Put on your new shift and come to bed." The crazy part of him had passed, and he was acting just like himself again, so she put on the shift when he gave it to her.
She expected him to make her take it off again in a moment, but he didn't. He just lay beside her and wrapt his hands in her horrible hair and stayed awake all night long, watching her, after she had fallen asleep.
There it was. She didn't know how he worked, even though she'd figured out that he didn't work exactly by the regular rules. He wasn't like everyone else, and she still didn't know whether he was better or worse than she was, or whether they were equal. Sometimes she thought that they were just separate, and she wasn't going to know. But the thing of it was that, even though she didn't understand him and she didn't know how they fit together, she was still just like him.
So she didn't ever want to leave him for-ever. She might go away from him, and he might go away from her, but she didn't ever want him to disappear. He changed the way he acted with her by the moment, and sometimes he got angry and cut her with the knife that he used when he was on 'business trips', and sometimes he brought her strange little gifts. He kissed her face and talked about her eyes and blacked them, too. He kept her warm on the cold days. He even fed her a little.
Then she had a good day. She was awake all day long, really awake, in her head and her senses and her eyes, and she got all her letters delivered and stole a little of the money she had begged for her family to buy herself some of the stale end-of-the-day bread from the poorer caf�s. She didn't quite see how, but with her head so awake and alert, she began to think, really think.
She thought that maybe it was that Montparnasse loved her. Maybe a little. Maybe that was why he did everything he did.
�ponine didn't love him, or at least not properly. She wasn't sure how you did love, and she was too tired and hurt and busy staying alive to think of doing it or doing it properly.
But maybe...
And then she realised. She was better than 'Parnasse, too. She was better than all of them. She was magnificent. She was the shadow who could feel fiacres through the street and knew how to pick pockets and knew how to stay alive. And Montparnasse thought she was dead. She was better than he was. She needed him anyway.
That night, he brought her a ring, a ring with some rich lady's initials on it, a ring that had false stones in it and was made of cheap metal. She put it on her hand to please him, and let him kiss her and tumble her. Afterwards, she meant to throw it away, if she couldn't sell it.
She was horrible, worm-infested, ugly 'Ponine. She didn't love Montparnasse properly because he didn't love her properly. There was nothing good about her. But right then, she was something special, and she was better than he was. She belonged to herself.
The first thing �ponine did when she left him in the morning was to find a shop with windows, and look at the reflection of her face, of her eyes. When she saw it she smiled. She smiled her ugly, toothless smile. 'Parnasse was right. There was a something moving in her eyes. She was alive.
She didn't suppose she'd ever again lie in the street with no real reason to get up. She guessed she'd want to die, but she didn't think she'd try again. She was alive.
The next day, she met her neighbour at the Gorbeau tenant. His name was Marius Pontmercy.
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