Emmanuelle

On the 2^nd of February, Javert walked into the flat, shivering and shaking snow off of himself. He stomped it off his boots on the mat at the door. He was tired of snow. In the city, it grew dirty fast, and by the end of January, long patrols in the bitter cold were tiresome. At least today he had worked the day shift, so the sun had been out, tricking his mind and body into thinking it was warmer than it really was.

At the sound of the door opening and shutting, Emmanuelle stopped playing the piano music that Javert had heard from outside.

“Don't stop playing,” he called to her, shucking his overcoat and taking off his hat. But she came trotting into the hallway, breathless and grinning, and he smiled at her curiously.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I have to tell you something!” she said excitedly.

“What?” he asked again.

“My bleeding – it was supposed to start ten days ago. It hasn't started yet.” She giggled.

“Does that mean -”

“I think so!” she exclaimed.

He laughed and embraced Emmanuelle tightly. So there would be a child, after all.

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Javert spent the rest of February coddling Emmanuelle, holding her hair and rubbing her back when she had morning sickness, spending his time off work listening to her play piano, taking her to the opera and ballet whenever he could, and making love gently and slowly to her every once in a while.

She seemed genuinely content, and kept asking when they were going to fix up the second bedroom as a nursery. Javert always laughed and told her to be patient, that in a few months she could decorate it however she wanted.

In the beginning of March, she told her mother about the pregnancy, and Madame Douvant was thrilled at the prospect of a grandchild. Javert struggled to see himself holding a newborn infant, but he was determined to be the best father he could possibly be, and he knew Emmanuelle would be a splendid mother.

“I wonder if it will be a boy or a girl,” Emmanuelle said pensively at supper one day early in March.

“You're going to have to be patient to find out,” Javert noted, taking a sip of his wine. Emmanuelle was drinking milk, per the doctor's recommendation.

“What shall we name the baby if it's a boy?” she asked.

“Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?” he posited, raising his eyebrows.

“No!” she insisted.

“What about Matthieu?” Javert suggested. “It's my favorite Gospel.”

“I like it,” she said, smiling. “What about Charlotte for a girl?”

“It's sweet,” he said approvingly.

He had to work after dinner, and he kissed Emmanuelle goodnight, a soft and light kiss on the lips as he put on his hat and headed out the door. He didn't wear his overcoat; the snows were melting and the sun had been out today. The air was moist and mild. Javert turned to give Emmanuelle a final glance as he crossed the threshold. She stood smiling gently at him, her hair up in curls, wearing the cornflower blue dress that she loved to wear with the sapphire earrings he'd given her at Christmas, which glistened in her ears tonight. She blew him a kiss. He smiled fleetingly at her once more, and then was gone.

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Javert was stalking slowly through the streets of the Latin Quarter two hours later when he heard running footsteps behind him. Instantly on alert, Javert raised his nightstick and whirled around. In the darkness, he saw Beasse running toward him, his hat in his hands.

“Beasse?” Javert said incredulously, lowering his nightstick and squinting his eyes.

“Javert!” Beasse was breathless. “I've been searching for you for a half hour. You need to go home, right away. Your maid came to the station covered in blood. She said the doctor's already at the house -”

“Emmanuelle-” Javert interjected, fear slicing through his voice.

“She's... Javert, she's dying.” Beasse looked stricken. “The doctor said she's not going to make it. You have to hurry.”

Javert set off running, sprinting as fast as he possibly could toward Saint Germain. It was a mile to the house, and his lungs were burning by the time he was halfway there. He pushed himself to keep running, ignoring the pain in his thighs and the wrench in his gut. He was in a panic. Was she hemorrhaging? Why was Jeanette covered in blood? Had someone attacked her and Emmanuelle? What on Earth was going on? The baby... the baby was gone, he told himself, and soon Emmanuelle would be, too. Javert felt hot tears stream out of his eyes as he ran, tears of terror and dread.

At long last he reached the flat, fumbling frantically for his key. He dashed inside, throwing his hat on the ground in the hallway. He could hear voices upstairs, and screaming sobs. She was still alive. Flying up the stairs and through the open doorway of the bedroom, Javert skidded to a halt beside the bed and locked his eyes on the dreadful scene before him.

The blankets had been pulled back and Emmanuelle lay propped up by pillows on the bed. There was blood everywhere. A huge oval of bright red sheen lay under her on the white sheet, and her cornflower blue dress was covered in it. Her left hand, dangling over the side of the bed, was dripping with blood, and it pooled on the wood floor under her fingers. There was blood on her face and in her hair where she'd clutched herself, and bloomers and a petticoat, both sodden with blood, lay strewn on the floor beside the bed. Jeanette stood at the foot of the bed, crying, her white apron splattered with blood and her hands and arms smeared red. Doctor Tournette stood at the other side of the bed, his jacket off and the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. There was blood on his shirt and all over his hands and arms.

Emmanuelle was sobbing, her screams hoarse and weak as if she'd been shrieking for hours. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her head shook from side to side. She didn't seem to notice Javert come storming through the door, but Jeanette and Doctor Tournette both looked at him gravely.

“Holy God,” Javert breathed, putting his hand over his mouth and bursting into tears. “What happened?” he managed to ask.

“A spontaneous miscarriage, Inspector,” Doctor Tournette replied. “She's hemorrhaging badly. She... she's lost too much blood.”

“Is she still bleeding?” Javert asked through his tears.

“No; she stopped bleeding about ten minutes ago.”

“Then, for God's sake, get her washed and into a clean bed!” Javert exclaimed. “Jeanette, go draw her a bath!”

Jeanette nodded but looked skeptical, and hurried out of the room.

Javert bent down by Emmanuelle's side and took her face in his hands, feeling the dried blood crusted beneath his fingers.

“Emmanuelle,” he said gently, and she stopped crying out to look at him. Her eyes were glazed and she had huge circles under them; she looked drawn and white, as if she were already dead. A sheen of sweat glistened on her sallow skin.

“I killed the baby,” she sobbed, looking at him.

“No, no, hush,” he said, shaking his head and sniffling through his own tears. “God works in ways we won't understand until we meet Him, Emmanuelle. There will be other babies. That baby is with Jesus now. But you're going to stay here, with me,” he said, his voice quavering. “You're not going to die. You're going to grow very old someday. You need to be strong. You need to fight. You can't leave me, Emmanuelle,” he shuddered into sobs then, collapsing onto his knees.

“Don't cry,” she told him, her voice cracking. She had stopped crying and sounded oddly peaceful, as if she were floating. “It doesn't hurt anymore.”

“No, Emmanuelle! Stay here! You can't leave me! I can't lose you!” He shook her bloody face and gasped for air.

“Inspector, I'm going to fetch a priest,” the doctor said above him, and Javert whirled.

“No! She's going to be fine!”

“You need to say your farewells, Monsieur,” Doctor Tournette told him sadly, and Javert let out a hideous cry of rage and despair.

“No! You don't know her like I do! She's going to fight!”

“She doesn't have enough blood left, Inspector,” Doctor Tournette shook his head.

“Emmanuelle,” Javert said, turning back to her. Her eyes were closed, and he shook her face. She opened her eyes slowly and smiled gently at him. “We're going to get you cleaned up and put you in the bed in the other bedroom to rest,” Javert said.

He stood and reached under her to cradle her in his arms. He knew he was getting blood all over his uniform, but he didn't care.

Jeanette came back into the room. “Monsieur, the bath is... ready...” she said, looking at Javert as though he were tragically delusional.

“Good,” Javert answered, sniffing back tears, and he walked next door to Emmanuelle's dressing-room. He sat on the chair at her boudoir and rotated her so he could unbutton her beloved blue dress, now ruined, and pull it off of her. She was wearing the corset he'd given her at Christmas, and he unlaced it and took it off of her, as well. She coughed a few times and took a deep breath once her corset was off. “There,” Javert murmured, “That's better, isn't it?”

He pulled off her bloodied slip and cradled her nude body. She looked up at him with a glazed gaze.

“I'm dying,” she said sadly.

Javert began pulling the pins out of her hair and let the curls fall down. “No, you're not,” he insisted.

“Everything feels slower,” she said, her voice sounding like a child's, “and darker. And colder.”

“You'll feel better once we get you cleaned up,” Javert said authoritatively.

“I love you,” she said weakly.

“I love you more than anything in the world, Emmanuelle. You're going to be fine.”

He placed her in the hot bath and began using the soap and sponge to wash her body. He washed her hair and combed oil through it. He didn't stop until there wasn't a trace of blood left on her. The water was opaque from the soap, and tinged red from the blood. Javert pulled Emmanuelle from the bath and toweled her off, braiding her hair and pulling a clean nightgown over her trembling body. He cradled her in his arms again and walked with her into the second bedroom. He tucked her into the bed and lit a fire in the fireplace. He pulled off his stained woolen jacket and dragged the chair from the writing-desk up next to the bed.

“I'm not leaving you, Emmanuelle. Don't leave me,” Javert said, tears starting up again.

“I'm so sorry about the baby,” she croaked.

“I'm only worried about you right now,” Javert said, though his heart ached to think of the lost child.

“Can I sleep?” she asked. “I'm afraid I may never wake up again.”

“Just don't leave me, Emmanuelle,” Javert begged, gasping and wiping tears from his eyes.

“I'm going to sleep,” she said quietly. “If I don't wake up, just know this – I have never loved anything, or anyone, in the whole world as much as I love you. You are my everything. I will wait for you in Heaven, and I will love you until the end... until the end of time. Il sera notre temps toujours,” she said, quoting the engraving on the back of the pocket-watch she'd given him at Christmas. With that, her head tipped to the side, and her eyes shut.

Javert frantically pressed his ear to her chest to listen for her heartbeat, but he heard silence. Her chest did not rise and fall with breath.

She was gone.

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Two days later, Javert attended Emmanuelle's funeral in the same church where he'd married her five months earlier. He could vividly remember how she had looked in her wedding dress, standing up at the altar beside him. Now she lay up there in a wooden box. They buried her wearing her sage green dress, the one she was wearing the day Javert met her. At his request, they left her hair flowing down. Under her dress, she wore the corset he'd given her at Christmas, and around her neck, the emerald pendant lay glowing. He'd kept the sapphire earrings she'd been wearing the night she died. They put pearls in her ears instead for the burial, pearls that her father had bought for her. Javert had already ordered her headstone, to be made of the finest granite. “Emmanuelle Douvant Javert,” it would read, “April 18, 1808 – March 6, 1829.”

She hadn't lived to see her twenty-first birthday, Javert thought ruefully to himself during the funeral. How was it right and just that such a perfect young woman be taken from this Earth at such a young age, while the street rats and criminal scum Javert saw every day in his work lived to be old men? He could see no justice in that, and it roiled him.

Javert vowed to himself that he would never touch another woman again. He and Emmanuelle were soul mates, meant to spend eternity together. She was waiting for him, and when his own death came, he wanted to be pure for her.

He donated many of her clothes and belongings to charity organizations, but kept certain things, like the hairbrush in the bedside table, the sapphire earrings, one of her nightgowns, and the salmon-colored gown she often wore. He wore his pocket-watch every day, thinking of her every single time he flicked it open to check the time.

He often talked to her, staring at the portrait of her that had been painted two weeks before she'd died. He knew she could hear him, and it was the only way whatsoever that he kept from feeling completely and utterly alone in the world.

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Three years later...

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Valjean had set Javert free. He couldn't reconcile the right and wrong of the situation, whether the man was a demon or an angel. Javert felt he should have been killed by the fugitive; that was the only outcome that made sense. But to be set free by a convict... then Javert himself had shown Valjean mercy by allowing him to take the injured boy home. He'd compromised his own morality.

It was an irreconcilable paradox. There was only one solution to the problem for Javert, and that was to remove himself from the problem. In this upside-down world where right and wrong swirled into a vortex of cloudy meaninglessness, he had no purpose, no reason to exist.

He climbed onto the railing of the Pont Neuf, staring into the cold, deep, black water beneath him. He took out his pocket-watch and flicked it open, noting the time. He flipped it over and ran his finger over the engraved words. “Emmanuelle,” he murmured, praying that he'd get to see her.

“Il sera notre temps toujours,” he said, and flung himself from the bridge.

 

~ FIN ~