(no subject)

[le_centre]

 
Courfeyrac is lounging in an armchair by the fire, his legs dangling carelessly over one arm. There's a book open on his chest, something about existentialism - but he's not reading a word. He's rather more concentrated on a bottle of wine, and watching patrons go back and forth. He hasn't spent enough time doing that since he's been here, what with one thing and another  - but he reasons that no one can object to him sitting around all he likes, what with the dearth of other things to do.


[tiny!tag: Joly]

Comments

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche plops down on the other arm, half in the chair and not caring.

"Hello, Courfeyrac."

[le_centre]

'Hello, Gavroche.'

He doesn't care either.

'How are you, my not-so-young friend?'

[street_sparrow]

"Very well, and how are you? Settling in? Have you seen Joly?"

[le_centre]

His head jerks around, and he half-rises from his slouch.

'Joly is here?'

[street_sparrow]

"He is!" Gavroche confirms happily. "Arrived a day or two ago."

[le_centre]

He grins, and raises his glass.

'Well! There will soon be a time when we are all here. I drink to it!'

Literally.

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche raises his empty hand in a mirror of the gesture, and signals to a rat with the other for a real drink.

"Every friend finding his way brings more hope of it. But how are you?"

[morethanprops]

Moist is also near the fire reading an Ankh-Morpork Times in one of his traveling suits with mud on the trouser cuffs.

Courfeyrac catches his attention since he seems bored and like he might be interesting. When Courfeyrac glances his way, he nods at him.

[le_centre]

'Good evening!'

Courfeyrac is an exuberant chap for the vast majority of the time, and company is always preferable to none.

'Please monsieur, tell me that nod is there to save me from myself. I would prefer not to have to amuse myself with a book.'

[morethanprops]

He folds his paper and smiles at Courfeyrac, his accent is hard to place but almost something from Europe,

"Good evening and yes, it was. I know that look of boredom."

[le_centre]

'Perhaps I should not sell these authors short without first perusing their work.'

He picks up the book. Existentialism: Dostoevsky to Sartre.

And tosses it down.

'Ah, no. I am sure it is very good. But sometimes, a man doesn't want to read.'

He pushes a spare glass towards the stranger.

'Do you have a name, monsieur? I am Courfeyrac, lately of Paris.'

[morethanprops]

"That's a serious title. Are you a philosopher? Alfred, last in Quirm,"

He leans forward to pour a glass as he sets his paper down. The headline blares: Quirm Guards Get Him!

[le_centre]

He laughs heartily at that.

'No! Good Lord, no. I would pale in comparison to any great mind, including those of my acquaintance.'

He is all right with that. And his eyes fall on to the paper; the headline causes a flicker of surprise, then amusement.

'I have not heard of, ah, Quirm. But it looks an interesting place.'

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Someone with absolutely no respect leans over the back of his chair and fishes the book out of his hands. After a brief inspection he tosses it back. "Really, Courfeyrac?"

[le_centre]

'Existentialism! I'm sure it is the very thing, if I can only bring myself to start on it.'

He started on a bottle of wine instead, and pushes a glass in Bossuet's direction.

'Perhaps you might read it for me, and tell me what occurs?'

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Some of them wrote novels. More your speed, I'd think." Yes, yes, he's giving Courfeyrac a hard time. While helping himself to the wine. "Thank you, my dear fellow. You've heard that Joly is here? If you haven't heard that Joly is here, let me set your mind at ease on the subject at once: Joly is here."

[le_centre]

'I have heard that Joly is here, but by all means repeat it as often as you like. Such wonderful news bears speaking as often as possible.'

He grins widely, drains his glass and holds it out to be refilled.

'I am sure he will read the thing for me.'

Bossuet is extremely mean, and not at all any kind of good friend.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Oh, if you insist: Joly is here."

Bossuet fills the empty glass generously. "You might try disguising the book as a volume on infections disease. He'd get to it sooner. --I should read it myself. I looked up the term--existentialism--in an encyclopedia when I ran across it in some other reading, when I was studying so hard the first time I came here. But I retained nothing more than the word absurd. Which is an alluring word, to be sure."

[le_centre]

'Considering where we are sitting, and the fact of our deaths, I would think absurd is the only thing that matters at all. And I am all for the allure of it. But don't tell Enjolras that; he will frown at me, and quite right too.'

He opens the book at a random page, clears his throat and reads aloud:

'"Nikolai Kuzmich," he said benevolently and imagined that he was also sitting on the horsehair sofa, without a fur coat, thin and wretched.'

He blinks at it.

'Well. I feel...I do not feel as though I exist at all, in a world with these words.'

He examines the top of the page.

'Rilke. Does that mean anything to you?'

[capture_eternity]

There's a young man of about Courfeyrac's age lounging on another sofa not far from him.

"Existentialism," he says, shrugging. "Something they talk about in the future."

[le_centre]

'Do they? Well yes, they must, there is a book about it.'

He is, obviously, not reading said book.

'I'm sure it is absolutely fascinating on a day that is both more scholarly, and much colder than today.'

Because there is a time and a place for studying, you see, and a warm summer's afternoon with a bottle of wine is absolutely not one of them.

[capture_eternity]

"They get so existentialist that all traffic stops, one fellow has told me," the young man says, as if to point out the relevance of that obscure term.

"I say, what wine is that?"

[le_centre]

'It is red!'

That is all it needs to be.

'Would you like some?'

Offering - and drinking - wine is far more fun than trying to decipher references to things he hasn't read about yet.

[capture_eternity]

"Yes, please!" the young man says. "Are you French? Then I'll defer to your taste in wine and just take what you have."

[le_centre]

'I am. My name is Courfeyrac.'

He pours another glass. It is a perfectly serviceable Bordeaux; Courfeyrac is not too fussy about what he drinks, being a student. Even a wealthy one. He pays nothing here, so will drink what he is given.