A Tough Act

Les Misérables was not known as Les Mis in those days. The teacher-in-charge of the Violet Club adapted a scene from that book for the Dramatics Competition. Knowing her students well, the teacher did not assume that they were familiar with the book. She summarized, ‘Jean Valjean spent nineteen years in jail for stealing bread to save his starving nephew. He has been released from prison. Alone in a world now strange to him, he knocks on a bishop’s door. Here, in this act, we will present the redemption of Jean Valjean.’

The actors were not impressed. But the teacher knew that the theme would go well with the Christian school authorities and the judges, mostly Hindus but well-meaning adults like her with a keen sense of morality and altruism, at someone’s expense if not one’s own. The teacher did not inform the students that Victor Hugo had faced opposition from the French public, and even his son, for including a bishop as the life-changer. She did not understand why the public of that time was against a Catholic bishop. Hugo’s son had suggested a lawyer, the teacher noted, laughing at the choice. She said to herself, ‘With a lawyer, Jean would have spent another nineteen years in jail.’ She had read in that same guide that Hugo had justified his choice by stating that the bishop was meant to be his ideal bishop, and not any real bishop. That confused her even further.

She had other pressing troubles too. The teachers-in-charge had to keep a close watch on the students. Such activities that put the young in close proximity for a few hours during or after school hours usually brought love in its wake. That was frowned upon in that school. In the Violet Club, that year, the teacher had more than her fair share of troubles because of love.

The one-act twenty-minute drama had two scenes and seven actors, Jean Valjean, the bishop, his sister, a housekeeper, a police inspector and two constables. There were also two girls to help the production as stage-hands.

There was no love lost between the students acting as Jean Valjean and the bishop. The bishop wanted Jean’s role knowing well that that was tailor-made for the best actor award. Jean reasoned with the bishop that he looked more thin and haggard, and that the bishop was too fat to be a prisoner out of jail after nineteen years, and added that the fat boy looked quite perfect to be a bishop. The bishop could not produce a counter-argument against such facts and accepted his lesser role. The rivalry between the two was further aggravated by a misunderstanding about love.

One of the stage-hands felt that Jean was in love with her. She sent word through the bishop telling him not to chase her around. Jean was surprised by that accusation but the harder he refuted it, the more convinced the others became of the love. The bishop chose to believe it because he had been secretly pining for the same stage-hand.

The bishop’s sister was a close friend of that allegedly chased after stage-hand and she too was ready to believe that Jean was up to no good. She herself was of the stern female variety, never ever thinking about love and never ever making others think of love towards her.

Meanwhile, the other stage-hand was desperately in love with Jean Valjean and she expressed herself quite openly. Jean took her aside one evening and told her that he could not love her. She loved his openness, she told him. Jean then told her that he could not love her because he knew that the bishop secretly loved her. That loving girl quickly shifted her attention to the padre. That affair worsened the relationship between the two main male actors. During the many arduous rehearsals, the bishop refused to look at Jean with a kindly eye and Jean Valjean found little in the bishop’s ways to change his life. The teacher was often heard praying, or cursing, ‘Only God knows what you all will do on stage.’

Then there was the housekeeper. Though the teacher had wanted a senior as housekeeper, she had to pick a colleague’s daughter from the junior classes. The teacher knew that the pretty young thing would hardly keep that house without a flutter. As expected, Jean Valjean was often left tongue-tied in her presence. But he declared to the others that he looked at the girl as the younger sister he never had. Unfortunately, for him, she took him seriously. The bishop did not declare any such thing but strangely, before he could even cast an amorous eye on her, the little one turned to him like a faithful in awe of a priest. As elder brother and priest, the two boys still showered their celibate attention, if not their randy thoughts, towards the housekeeper. Jean tried to make her act and gave up after the first week. The bishop told her kindly that her lines should be directed at the microphone and not to some inner soul. The teacher changed the script and reduced her lines and on-stage presence.

On stage, as in life, the three policemen remained untouched by such affairs. The inspector delivered his impassionate lines stiffly and the constables stood like statues. One young ruffian in the audience even booed that lot.

But, on the day of the competition, the main actors did well. Jean Valjean enthralled the audience as the prisoner for nineteen years known with just the number 24601. In the first scene, it was easy for him to be confused and furious with the bishop’s kind and seemingly spurious reception. Jean remained wary expecting the bishop to betray him in some way. He dined with the bishop, eating like a savage, and later that night, stole the bishop’s silver with determination but mixed emotions. In the second scene, the police catch him with the silver and bring him to the bishop’s house to confirm the theft. Jean looked exactly like a thief, struggling against the policemen, waiting for the bishop to hand him over to the police for stealing the silver and his love. Jean was actually surprised to see kindness in the bishop’s eyes. When the bishop tells the police that he had gifted the silver to Jean and hugs prisoner number 24601, Jean breaks down. The judges and the audience were equally convinced that he would be a changed man from then on. Even the bishop felt that Jean Valjean might not be so bad after all. In the two scenes, the bishop’s sister maintained her unhealthy suspicion towards Jean, rather than the good nature prescribed by the script, but that added an edge to the play, probably unexpected by Hugo or the teacher. The housekeeper flitted in and out charming the audience with her sweetness. 

The drama presented by the Violet Club won the first prize and Jean Valjean got the best actor award. Jean Valjean remained a bachelor in search of love, forever prisoner 24601 and in some gaol of his own construction, but far from any bishop. The bishop married well, found love, grew fatter and had his fair share of trials and tribulations. The bishop’s sister married, and to everyone’s surprise, she loved and was loved. The stage-hands joined that mainstream, leaving behind suspicions and affections, and lived happily ever after, not with each other though that would have been a lovely twist to the tale but with normal loving hardworking men who never acted. The pretty young thing remained pretty and broke many a heart before settling down with a man not her brother or her priest. The policemen remained so.  Many years later, the teacher still thought about that production and philosophically mused if all of life was like that, a tough act with an easy plot but complicated by actors following plots of their own and the end result always quite unpredictable.