Victoire

by Maryse Conde

  Victoire did not appreciate the fuss made of her person. She reluctantly confided in Anne-Marie the secret of her culinary compositions so that the latter could name them and have them printed. As with a writer whose editor decides the title, cover, and illustrations of her book, it was partly like being dispossessed of her creation. She would have preferred to keep it secret. For her, cooking in no way implied wreaking vengeance on a society that had never made room for her. More than music, where she never excelled at playing the guitar or the flute, it was her way of expressing herself, which was constantly repressed, prisoner of her illiteracy, her illegitimacy, her gender, and her station as a servant. When she invented seasonings or blended flavors, her personality was set free and blossomed. Cooking was her Père Labat rum, her ganja, her crack, her ecstasy. She dominated the world. For a time she became God. Once again, like a writer.

  We can of course imagine Anne-Marie and Victoire in collusion, sharing everything between them, where Anne-Marie would be called to the rescue to add the finishing touches to Victoire’s culinary creation. But I refuse to believe anything of the sort. The creator is too jealous of her work to tolerate sharing. Victoire obeyed Anne-Marie grudgingly. Any information had to be dragged out of her.

  Believing she was doing the right thing, Anne-Marie hired Francia, whose mission consisted of carrying out the unrewarding jobs that guarantee the perfection of a dish. But, as we said, Victoire did not tolerate any intruder in the temple where she officiated, and Francia didn’t last long.

  Every Friday evening the double doors of the grand living room were opened wide and the guests would surge in. A string quartet would get them dancing the haute-taille and the réjane until suppertime. But all that interested them was eating. Once dinner was served they did their best not to make a dash for the table. I have also found issue 55 of L’Écho pointois, where the menu of one of these dinners is published:

  Shredded saltfish, smoked herring, and fresh tomatoes

  Crayfish calalu

  Whole sea bream marinated in limes

  Turtle fricassee from Les Saintes

  Indian rice

  Cush-cush yam gratin

  Heart of cabbage tree salad

  Chodo custard

  Gateau fouetté

  TO TELL THE truth, these weekly receptions, which were a pretext to show off gold chokers and the latest fashion from Paris, were an ordeal for Anne-Marie as well. The only avenging pleasure she felt was when the guests clapped their hands in frenzy, calling for Victoire. She would appear, swallowed up in a beige apron embroidered with a grill, an allusion to Saint Lawrence, patron saint of cooks, her cheeks flushed from the attention, then dart back into her refuge.

  All this was also displeasing to Boniface, the least sociable of men, whose only subject of conversation was the price of a barrel of saltfish. Furthermore, we can assume that he was unhappy seeing his Victoire exhibited like a fairground attraction, gifted though she was. Consequently, he took his courage in both hands and informed Anne-Marie that it was causing too much expense. Just the drinks were exorbitant! He backed up his grievances by listing the cost of the brandy, aged rum, anisette from Bordeaux, and gin she gave to her guests. Cursing his miserliness, Anne-Marie, whose dowry, lest we forget, brought neither a bank account, property, nor country estate, had to accept.

  The receptions came to an end. The operation, whose point was to crown Victoire with prestige, had failed. The recently created association of cooks did in fact offer her the honorary presidency. But she declined the offer, which was felt as an insult.

  Pursuing my comparison, like many writers and artists, Victoire cared little for recognition by the Other. On the contrary, her shyness made her cherish her anonymity. Cooking was her way of satisfying an inner need.

  IN THE MEANTIME, Jeanne was growing up.

  She spoke Creole only with her mother, since Anne-Marie forbade speaking this jargon under her roof, even with the servants. They should be addressed in French. They would jabber as best they could in reply.

  Ever since Jeanne was seven or eight, her skin had darkened to a deep brown, which was surprising if you think of Victoire’s color. Likewise, her hair, first curly then curled tight like an Arab shepherd’s, turned frizzy and kinky while remaining thick and long. In this color-obsessed society, did she suffer from being so different from her mother, from having come out the “wrong” color? I haven’t a clue. Throughout her life she made a point of despising the light-skinned peaux-chappées, rewriting in her manner the Song of Songs:

  I am black and I am beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem,

  Black as the tents of Kedar

  As the curtains of Solomon.

  Everyone concurred that she was cold, aloof, and not at all agreeable. She talked very little and smiled even less. Always impassive, she tolerated without blinking the strangest situations. At mealtimes, she would take her place at the oval table in the dining room that was covered in crystal, porcelain, and silverware. Meanwhile, her mother would be busy serving the meal before eating with her hands out of a calabash on her lap in the yard. Jeanne would wash in the children’s bathroom using perfumed soap, talcum powder, and lotion, whereas her mother rubbed her own body down with a clump of straw in the servants’ washhouse. Thanks to Anne-Marie, who once a quarter drew up a list of items to be ordered from the department stores in Paris, Jeanne wore dresses, shoes, and hats in the latest fashion, whereas her mother in headtie went barefoot or wore slippers and shapeless golle dresses. Since Anne-Marie disliked the promiscuity of school, although it was reserved for white children, the destitute widow of a former plantation owner, Mme. de Saunier du Val, came to teach Jeanne as well as Boniface Jr. the rudiments of reading and writing. What never ceases to surprise me is that mother and daughter didn’t make use of the occasion to share the same alphabet primer, Jeanne teaching Victoire the alphabet, both of them making mistakes, reciting and deciphering the letters together, and that Victoire remained illiterate as before. Was she ashamed of putting herself on the same level as her daughter? Was she afraid of Mme. Saunier du Val, hardly affable, like all those who have suffered a reversal of fortune? Whatever the case, she missed an opportunity to remedy a flaw that afflicted her throughout her life.

  La bayè ba, sé là bèf ka janbé. There where the fence is down, the bull jumps through. Creole proverb.

  The servants who feared and were jealous of Victoire did not dare take it out on her. Instead, they took their revenge on her little girl. Flaminia burnt her on the shoulder with an iron. She bore this mark all her life. Her relations with the rest of the household were not simple. With Boniface Jr. especially, they were always ambiguous. Sometimes capricious and cantankerous, he took the side of the servants, calling her an intruder and a bastard. Other times, he defended her against their sarcasm and stifled her with kisses and caresses. I don’t know how far they went. But I believe she was always wary of him as if he stood for danger. Since she did not have an ear for music, Anne-Marie chose to ignore her. Her own mother apparently had no time for her, too busy praying to God, listening to music, or cooking. The only person left who constantly showed her any affection was Bèf pòtoriko, although she never called him by any name other than Monsieur Walberg.

  How I would like to include here a case of pedophilia! The white Creole swine abusing the little Negro girl, his servant’s daughter. Alas! Boniface Walberg was a modest man of integrity. He would enter Jeanne’s bedroom simply to read her a bedtime story and then make the sign of the cross on her forehead. He would spoil her as if she were his own daughter, returning home from the quai Lardenoy with his pockets filled with siwo candy, grabyo koko, and sweet corn kilibibi. At carnival time he would take her onto the Place de la Victoire to admire the masqueraders wearing toques. For her fifth birthday he gave her a marionette, a bwa bwa, dressed in a striped suit, wearing a crown, whose arms and legs moved when you pulled the strings. She began to hate him at the age of eleven because she discovered the nature
of his relations with her mother. One stormy night, streaked with lightning and booming with the stentorian voice of thunder, she took refuge in the Regency room and found him asleep in Victoire’s arms with the sheet thrown back, exhibiting his monstrous private parts.

  Soon everything changed. The ambient hypocrisy, harassment, and indifference no longer had any importance. Jeanne discovered what was going to matter in her life: her studies. Mme. de Saunier du Val, who had served her time, was replaced by M. Roumegoux, who came every morning to give private lessons. This illegitimate son of a white Creole and an Indian mother, a former seminarian, who had been terrified by the vows of chastity, had been hired by Anne-Marie on the basis of an advertisement in L’Écho pointois: “Young man who has studied at Pau, of illegitimate birth but belonging to a well-established and reputable family, seeks position in a family who would appreciate his extensive knowledge. Likes Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Offenbach. Untalented player of the violin, recorder, and lute.”

  Since the nursery was no longer big enough, she fitted out a room with somewhat disparate furniture: a large writing desk with three drawers, a Directoire bookcase, and four or five chairs in the Louis XVI style. M. Roumegoux sat his bony buttocks in an armchair of the same style and the lesson began:

  “The world is comprised of five continents: Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and Europe.

  “Africa doesn’t count. Over there is a bunch of savages and cannibals who eat one another in a cooking pot. Asia and Oceania are not much better. The armies of Alexander the Great, who was the first to enter India, brought back stories of people who instead of burying their dead devoured them alive. There was a time when the Americas were mistaken for an earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden. Amerigo Vespucci writes in a famous letter dated 1500 to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici: ‘It is true that if there is an earthly paradise somewhere in this world, I believe it cannot be far from these lands.’

  “In the end they discovered that here too was nothing but a place of barbarity. All that is left is Europe. Situated at the center of the world, Europe is the heir and apex of classical civilization. Ever since the fifteenth century, since the Renaissance, it has constantly generated a torrent of fertilizing ideas. We have witnessed a genuine passion for knowledge and the greatest expansion of the arts ever seen. In the eyes of its philosophers, there is nothing more admirable than Man.”

  Jeanne swallowed all that hook, line, and sinker, and M. Roumegoux marveled at her intelligence.

  “You could go far. Pity you’re so black!” he sighed, caressing what Boniface Jr. in one of his bad days had christened with the name of a cactus commonly found on La Désirade and known for its spines: “Englishman’s head.”

  On May 12, 1898, a daughter by the name of Valérie-Anne was born at the home of the Walbergs. I have no idea how Boniface strayed into the bed of Anne-Marie, since the only words that passed between them were on the subject of the household accounts. Was he drunk that night, because sometimes he did drink to excess the aged Martinican rum Crassoul de Médoul, and went in the wrong door? We shall never know. Anne-Marie’s unwanted pregnancy was terrible. She lay bedridden from beginning to end. Vertigo. Nausea. Vomiting. Both legs swollen like tree trunks. What’s more, the infant had the misfortune of inheriting the freckles and red hair of an Irish ancestor.

  “Good Lord, she’s so ugly!” exclaimed her mother, pushing her away when the midwife tried to lay her on her breast. “Nine months of torture to give birth to that!”

  We are told that a newborn hears these words, and all through her life never forgets them as well as the person who pronounced them.

  In order to hide her red hair, they called upon the services of a dressmaker, who fashioned lawn and linen bonnets resembling the headdress of the women in Saint-Barth. Henceforth, there was someone more mocked and forlorn than Jeanne, who now had somebody to console. For a time Valérie-Anne snuggled up under her wing. Then she snuggled under Victoire’s when the latter, finding herself removed from her daughter, felt as forsaken as Valérie-Anne.

  Sometimes the ill-treated take their revenge. Still a teenager, Valérie-Anne married the son of a rich banana planter from the region of Saint-Claude who was rolling in money. At the end of her life it was rumored that her jewel box weighed forty pounds. She bore five sons, one of whom became a monk.

  As an adult, she would never go near my mother. Both of them hated each other.

  EIGHT

  One evening in April, shortly after sunset, the sky was ablaze with a glow through the persiennes.

  “Yet another fire,” said Boniface, coming out onto the balcony in his pajamas without bothering to slip on his dressing gown. “Fortunately we have nothing to fear, since the wind isn’t blowing in our direction.”

  He calmly went back to bed, where Victoire, rolled up in a ball, was waiting for him. They made love two or three times as they usually did each night.

  The next morning La Pointe awoke amid the sound and the fury. Surging in from the outlying districts, the maléré had invaded the center of town. Groups of ragged individuals were gathering at the crossroads and filling the sidewalks, sobbing and moaning noisily.

  The event was major.

  At the age of thirty-eight Dernier Argilius had just perished in the fire that had broken out the night before at the offices of the newspaper Le Peuple. Apart from the rue Henri IV, the rue Barbès, the rue Sadi-Carnot, and a good part of the rue Schoelcher had been destroyed. If Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus had not been at the National Assembly in Paris, where he was a representative, they would have been mourning the assassination of two leaders, since the people’s anger had been aroused by the fact that this fire had been set on purpose by the white Creole factory owners. Under the pretext of political instability, their objective was to call the United States of America to the rescue and turn Guadeloupe into another Cuba or Puerto Rico. For the maléré, oblivious of the vicissitudes of sugar, enemy number one was M. Ernest Souques, owner of the Darboussier and Bellevue factories, and shareholder in the companies at Port-Louis and Sainte-Anne. In fact, it wouldn’t have taken much for them to accuse him of striking the match himself.

  Victoire heard the news from the milk seller who came by every day at six thirty on the dot, balancing her tray of bottles on her head. As usual, she did not show any emotion and took in the news without blinking. Then, untying her apron, she went upstairs to dress. In the bedroom she held her head between both hands: when she was sixteen this man who had just perished had initiated her into sex. He had been neither tender nor affectionate. He would possess her brutally without a word, withdraw as soon as it was over, light a horrible Brazilian cigar, and, completely naked, bury himself in the newspaper. Sometimes, he would write an article. His Sergent-Major pen, dipped in mauve ink, scratched over the paper. He would look up only when the door creaked and she left to go.

  “See you tomorrow!” he growled roughly.

  It was an order, an assessment of his power.

  “Silplètadyé!” God willing!” she murmured.

  Nevertheless, she had taken pleasure in his arms and conceived. For the first and last time. As a sign of mourning she chose a black golle dress with white polka dots and a mauve headtie.

  Passing the bedroom door of Anne-Marie, who was writing to Rochelle or Etienne, Victoire was tempted to inform her of Dernier’s death. But she guessed the caustic remarks she would make:

  “One bastard less! The world will be better off without him. For goodness’ sake, you’re not going to shed tears over him!”

  So she merely murmured through the wooden door:

  “Mwen kale. I’m off.”

  It’s always a surprise that the weather is beautiful when the heart is hurting or in distress. Outside, the sun was shining yellow in a blue sky washed of clouds. Gathering pollen from roses in the gardens and hibiscus in the hedgerows, the hummingbirds outdid one another with their trills. The western neighborhood of the town was a heap of smolderin
g, charred planks and corrugated iron. Since the rue Henri IV was nothing more than ashes and rubble, Dernier’s remains had been carried to one of his aunts, on the rue des Abymes. A sizable crowd was cluttering up the sidewalk, since he had been the darling of those who distrusted Légitimus. Wasn’t the latter colluding with the enemy, the white Creole factory owners? In actual fact, their fears were not unfounded. A few years later, Légitimus was to sit down at the same table as Ernest Souques to sign the Capital-Work agreement, considered by historians, except for Jean-Pierre Sainton, as treason.

  People looked Victoire up and down. Where did this mulatto woman spring from? Who was she wearing mourning for? What was she after? A whiplash from a zambo? There were quite a few among the mourners. But given her determined look, they drew back and let her in.

  Dernier had been so disfigured by his burns that out of respect for the family he had immediately been placed in a coffin away from the public gaze. In the only bedroom it was quite a crush. His family, a genuine tribe of picky head country bumpkins from Marie-Galante, was in tears. An aunt firmly held a bottle of volatile alcali under the nose of Dernier’s mother, who was on the verge of fainting. Since he had been a Freemason, members of the Egalitarians’ Masonic Lodge of Freethinkers complete with hats and black suits were swaggering next to the more slovenly looking representatives of the Republican Youth Committee and the Social Studies Club. There were a great many women. Uniformly dressed in garnet-colored dresses with leg-of-mutton sleeves, they belonged to the association of the True Daughters of Schoelcher. Numerous kids too, claiming to represent the association the Children of Marianne. Except for the latter, everyone was drinking heavily and the level of rum in the demijohns was getting dangerously low. Those who had had the most to drink were sobbing shamelessly.