Elysium (Finale)

Part III: Elysium

Seventy-two days.

The Commune had lasted for seventy-two days. Seventy-two glorious days of upheaval and ideals that had pierced the skies more furiously than the grand spire of Notre Dame. But the sun had risen and the Seine had ceased to run red.

The timid sunlight tickled Henri’s broken nose, its warmth failing to push through the barred window of his jail cell. He heard another shot interrupt the tranquility of the dawn and silently cursed himself for choosing to follow Marius instead of Philomène. He reminded himself that she had been but a figment of his imagination, that his rational arms and his rational legs would have never dared disobey orders for a ghost, no matter how exquisite. He closed his eyes for some time, conjuring up images of her laughing, surrounded by the luscious greenery of Martinique. Odette tentatively took her first steps, encouraged by the softness of her mother’s voice and the gentle clapping of her hands. But after three wee strides, the sudden breeze upended the already precarious balance she had miraculously found and eased her to the ground. Philomène’s heart stopped before it began beating once more at the sound of Odette’s giggles.

The cry of a fellow fédéré followed by the shot of yet another rifle interrupted Henri’s reveries. Somewhere beyond these prison walls, beyond the barricades he had erected and the palace walls he had burnt to the ground, stood a far-removed France with its rivers blue and its pastures green. And the people’s skins were gritty from the sweat of their labor, not the blood of their comrades and the dirt of their cells. And their rats were well-fed, devoid of any maladies.

Raoul passed him the rodent, unable to stomach its raw flesh any longer. Henri squeezed the creature in his hands and threw it across the ground. A woman of gaunt countenance immediately grabbed it, ravenously biting down on whatever was left of it. Another rat began to nibble at the wound festering on his calf, but Henri shooed it away.

“It’s almost our turn,” he groaned, his voice gruff from his thirst. “I don’t care if these whoresons see hunger before they shoot me.”

Raoul blinked but did not reply, slowly letting himself fall on his side. A boy who was no more than sixteen pushed him back to his original position, as the crowdedness made it impossible to be anything but seated and still. Raoul’s chains clattered against the stone as he shook his hands together, indicating that he was listening to the man he had only just met, but would follow to the bowels of Hell simply out of curiosity. Henri wondered if that same vice was the reason why the peculiar man was the only one in chains.

“I hope they see it—that hunger,” Henri resumed, “I hope they know I wasn’t finished so that they may return to their wives every night, wondering when the next revolution will come to collect their lives.” He rested his head against the wall, a jagged stone slicing at the nape of his neck.

“Reckless fool,” Raoul muttered. “Just tell them you were barely involved and you’ll be out in six months. But if you continue your tirade, then they’ll really shoot you down like a dog.”

“Where will they send us?” The boy asked.

“I heard some are being sent to New Caledonia,” Raoul whispered, as if afraid that the news could agitate their cellmates. But no one moved a muscle and resumed the dreadful task of doing nothing and waiting for what eventually had to come next, be it doom or death.

The boy furrowed his brows and scrunched up his nose. “Where’s that?”

“Far, my boy,” Henri answered. Too far in fact, for there was not a corner of the world Henri could be sent to that was further away from Philomène than the South Pacific. A loud clang echoed down the corridor, followed by the loudening steps of a guard. The hurried murmurs that had once filled the already cramped space ceased completely, quickly replaced by the savage beating of their hearts. Henri demanded his fragile organ to stop the deafening ringing in his ears, in vain. Rational may his arms and legs have been, his heart would always remain anything but.

The guard stopped in front of the cell and pointed at Henri to follow him. Henri lept to his feet, wincing at the pain his leg caused him as it rippled throughout the entirety of his body. He limped his way out of his cage and past the seemingly endless rows of this menagerie, each more populous than the next. He briefly imagined he was window-shopping under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli or promenading with Adelaïde down the Champs-Élysees. He chuckled at the ridiculousness of his daydreams, a reaction which warranted a sharp tug from the guard, nearly making him fall into the dirt and grime. But the stripping of his final ounce of pride was not much of a matter to Henri, who could have crawled his way through the prison if it meant that he could finally be free.

The two men crossed the courtyard, walking past the bloodied wall where the last of his comrades would eventually fall. Expecting to be shot on sight, or worse—be given a hearing—he was instead led to the main gates, which a second guard opened upon the telltale nod of whom Henri had previously believed to be his executioner. He was pushed outside, the gate violently shutting behind him.

“Equality, my ass,” one of the guards muttered. “This vermin destroys the Vendôme column and he gets off scot-free.”

“I knew these communards were a joke,” the other added.

Why? Why am I not dead? Henri asked himself, trudging down the streets of Versailles. Indeed, it had not occurred to him that he now stood completely alone, and had been in such a sorry situation since the de Moreau family had forsaken him. With Marius gone as well, his circle had been reduced to ashes. He briefly considered his in-laws, whose names would have sent shivers in the Assembly under a different epoch. But this was a new France, a France devoid of Adelaïde, and of her power, and of her glory.

By the time Henri had found his way back to Montmartre, the sun had dipped below the horizon, casting a long shadow down the mound. He walked up to the final floor of a decrepit apartment building, opening the doors to the attic that was and always would be Marius’ studio. A few of the canvases that had borne witness to the birth of so much—adoration, passion, a revolution—still lined the walls, ready to be sold like the tattered souls rotting in Versailles.

Henri fell onto the mattress which creaked under his weight, inhaling a cloud of smoke and dust. He noticed the curious shape of the headboard, the crooked wooden beams that were once used to frame Marius’ oeuvres. One such work lay rumpled on the dirty floor, its loose threads and cracked paint partially caught in the fissures of the parquet. He smoothed it out and placed it on the bed, wiping away the grime to reveal Philomène’s face.

The infamous portrait of Philomène, which had lit an ardent flame within the most respected gentlemen of Paris—including his own—had merely found its way back to its creator when Henri had believed it to be gone all of these years. He hugged the heavy fabric against his chest and shut his eyes to prevent the tears from trickling down his cheeks.

“I did not bail you out so you could weep like a child.”

Henri slowly turned to the door, where Léopold de Jaucourt stood all prim and proper like always as if Paris had not spent the last few months tearing itself apart.

“That leg of yours is not looking good.”

“Why?” Henri asked, the hoarseness of his voice betraying the anger that threatened to spill out of his chest. “Why free me when we’re not family anymore?”

“Indeed, we are not,” Monsieur de Jaucourt hissed, pointing the end of his cane into Henri’s heart. “Which is why a quick death, or even a few months of forced labor would have been too light a punishment for what you took away from me.”

Henri refused to move and merely looked down at the limp canvas he clutched in his hands.

“I could not let you go and live off your undeserved days under the Caribbean sun with that lowly maid and that bastard child.”

Henri’s head snapped up at the mention of Philomène and Odette, and he instinctively grabbed his father-in-law’s cane, throwing it into the corridor. “Don’t you dare speak of them in this way,” he snarled.

“Stop pretending like you have honor.”

Henri pulled away. “I don’t,” he admitted, “I don’t have any honor left in me. Only regrets.”

“Good. Then, you will remain in France until I say otherwise. Or I’ll have you arrested again.”

“Let them,” he spat.

“Oh no, dear boy. You still owe me a life.” Monsieur de Jaucourt grabbed Henri’s shoulder, stepping on the portrait he had dropped to the floor. “You will work under me and do everything I say.” He looked around the studio and sneered. “I would have told you to pack your belongings, but nothing in here is worth keeping.”

Henri found that it had been easier to muster his revolutionary fervor while he rotted in a prison cell than on the velvet seat of Monsieur de Jaucourt’s cushy carriage. He watched Paris pass him by, waiting for a sign that he should simply jump out.

When the carriage neared the Porte de Versailles, Henri reached down to his calf and pulled out the bloodied blade he had lodged under his flesh. Before Monsieur de Jaucourt had time to react, he planted the knife in the man’s throat and jumped out of the moving vehicle. Without thinking, he picked himself up from the pavement and ran down Victor Boulevard towards the Seine. The mad beating of his heart threatened to make his eardrums implode as his right leg struggled to keep up with his left. When he reached the quay, he spotted an abandoned boat and jumped into the water. Hoisting himself inside, he pushed it off the bank and hid under the planks.

He listened for the sound of agitated police constables or soldiers who had surely been alerted of his crime, but there was absolutely nothing. The boat flowed down the Seine, where Henri hoped to quickly reach Le Havre and catch a ship bound for the Caribbean Sea. As he distanced himself from Paris, he resolved to sit up and row. But despite his best efforts, he could not move.

His leg had seemingly spurted out all the blood it could, and the wound’s once brilliant vermilion began to turn a gangrenous purple. A fever Henri just realized he had weighed down his throbbing head and he lay completely still, barely noticing when the night had finally turned to day.

“Hey!” a man called out, shielding Henri’s eyes from the harsh midday sun. “You okay?”

“Where am—” he began asking but his tongue was too dry to finish.

The man pulled Henri to his feet, although his legs immediately gave out and he collapsed. “Hey, Langlois!” The man called out to someone Henri could not see. “Get a doctor or something. This man’s dying over here.”

He initially propped him up against a crate, before dragging him to a bench instead after receiving a string of curses from the box’s owner. “So, what’d they call you?” He asked.

Henri did not reply, merely pointing at a ship on the horizon like the singular vessel was the answer to all of his prayers.

Understanding dawned on the man, whose grin revealed the yellow of his teeth. “Aah, you tryin’ to leave. Where you goin’?”

“Martinique,” Henri wheezed. “I need to get to Martinique.”

He closed his eyes to slow his heartbeat, replacing the shuffling of footsteps with the distant drumming of the West Indies. Somewhere beyond the Atlantic Ocean, Philomène had to be waiting for him. Henri clung to her image, as four hands wrest his body away from the port and into a perennial dream.