Victoire

by Maryse Conde

  The round of visits was made on Sundays.

  On those afternoons, Jeanne dressed to the nines, dabbed herself with perfume, then fastened around her neck the gold choker she had bought with her first wages since everyone was sized up by her collection of jewelry. She then slipped on her silk stockings and patent leather pumps. A little mascara around the eyebrows, a little lipstick, and some rouge on her cheeks. Then, flanked by her mother, who had put on her best golle dress, she turned the key in the door, opened her parasol, and set off. A list of personalities was engraved in her head, for she couldn’t afford to forget anybody, otherwise she would have made formidable enemies for herself: Monsieur So-and-So, first black physician; Monsieur So-and-So, first black pharmacist; Monsieur W——, first lawyer; Monsieur X——, first magistrate; Monsieur Y——, first customs inspector; Monsieur Z——, first court bailiff, et cetera, et cetera, while most of the batch comprised the first black elementary school teachers.

  In immaculate drawing rooms smelling of wax polish, not a grain of dust on the Honduras mahogany furniture, while guests savored the coconut sorbet to the grate of the ice cream maker operated by a servant in the yard, the conversation would turn to politics. Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus was no longer the sole leader. The quarrel was raging around Achille René-Boisneuf, his sworn enemy whose wit was legendary. Hadn’t this hotheaded polemist called Légitimus a “ghost” because of his chronic absenteeism at the National Assembly in Paris as well as at the Conseil Général in Guadeloupe? Some people were accusing him of being a traitor, who had denounced the “politics of race,” and never failed to include a dutiful speech on serving the Race like a priest serving God, and the example that should be given to their unfortunate brothers still plunged in the hell of ignorance.

  The most formidable of the Grands Nègres in Le Moule were without doubt M. and Mme. Outremont Faustin, who lived in a charming upstairs-downstairs house on the square in front of the church. The house has miraculously resisted the onslaught of the demolition workers and still exists not far from the multimedia library. Outremont, a dermatologist with a degree from Toulouse University, was married to Emma Boisfer, who taught music at the Catholic school for girls, La Voie Droite. Emma did not gain her reputation because of her fourth certificate of merit for singing, but because of her brother Sylandre. Sylandre had studied at the National School of France Overseas and numbered among the colonial governors from the Antilles since he had been appointed to Oubangui-Chari. Numerous photos showed him in full uniform parading among scarred but smiling Africans. The Faustins were a handsome couple. Monsieur Faustin, built massively like Paul Robeson, also sang with a bass voice. Madame Faustin was slender and graceful. Jogging enthusiasts before jogging became fashionable, they covered several miles before dawn every morning. The first time Jeanne introduced herself, her heart was pounding wildly, since it was a well-known fact they were scathing in their comments and made and broke reputations. Like every other examination, however, she passed this one with flying colors. The Faustins never stopped singing her praises: a little cold perhaps, but remarkable from every point of view. As for the mother, however, their verdict was irrevocable: she was impossible.

  I have to admit that Victoire in fact was a problem.

  Sitting on the edge of her Hepplewhite chair, she didn’t say a word throughout all the conversations because she was incapable of handling French, that weapon without which all the doors of civilization remain closed. At the time, however, thanks to lessons by Valérie-Anne, she managed to memorize a few phrases:

  “I’m very well, thank you.”

  “And how about you?”

  “God willing.”

  “May it please God.”

  Unfortunately, she was not gifted. She would overdo the pronunciation with the most comical of effects. Sometimes, she would quite simply muddle everything up. For example, to the question “How are you, Madame Quidal?” she would invariably reply “God willing,” despite the exasperated reprimands of Jeanne, who would lecture her like a child before they went out.

  Soon, at the initiative of the Faustins or at least with their collusion, the Grands Nègres of Le Moule nicknamed her Madame Godwilling. But matters did not rest there. A neighbor reported the shocking visit by Boniface Walberg and a blaze of gossip began, kindled by the wind of maliciousness. Hadn’t she been his mistress? But her daughter was too black, much too black to be his child. Who was the father? As a result, they dug up the past in Marie-Galante to discover that under her hypocritically pious air, Victoire had been a first-rate bòbò and a man-eater. Before Boniface Walberg, she had been the mistress of a Dulieu-Beaufort who, after he had finished with her, passed her on to his cousin. Not surprising there was such a pig swill! Mulatto women were known to have the hots. Oddly, nobody thought of Dernier Argilius, since the hero was above all suspicion. This mockery and malicious gossip got back to the ears of Jeanne and Victoire. We don’t know what the mother thought, always impassive and walled in silence. It is quite likely that she was not too affected since she was used to being excluded. But I know that the daughter was divided between distress and helpless rage.

  It would have been easy enough to stop frequenting such a collection of snobs and bad-mouthers. But Jeanne was incapable of doing such a thing. For her this was Desirada, the promised island for the sailors of Christopher Columbus, reached after days of misadventures. For better or for worse she had to carve out a place for herself. So Sunday after Sunday she started all over again her stations of the cross.

  It was then, for once, that God himself intervened.

  The priest in Le Moule knew Reverend Father Moulinet from the church of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul in La Pointe. The latter knew all about Victoire’s culinary gifts, which on Sundays he had often been invited to sample. He told his colleague of the treasure that Le Moule had in its breast. The priest in Le Moule concocted the idea therefore of asking Victoire to cook for his soup kitchen. A modest edifice built of corrugated iron and wooden planks, answering to the wonderful name of the Open Door, served a hundred or so meals every day to the maléré of Le Moule. Victoire did not accept the proposition without the approval of Jeanne, who hesitated for a long time. In the case in point, however, cooking amounted to honoring God, and she ended up approving.

  From that moment on, Victoire was back at her kitchen range. As soon as her housework was done she set off for the Open Door, where she worked until three in the afternoon. A crowd of country women helped her, slicing onions, grinding garlic, fanning the fire, and doing the washing up. They were all scared of her, her whiteness, her unsmiling face and kept very quiet.

  Given his paltry resources, the priest in Le Moule had nothing but root vegetables, pigs’ snouts and tails, saltfish, and sometimes tripe at his disposal. Occasionally, charitable merchants made him a present of goods that were going to spoil, such as crates of cauliflower, carrots, and turnips. Victoire metamorphosed everything. It was something like the Transfiguration. In her hands, the fattest, toughest, and gristliest pieces of meat turned tasty and melted in the mouth. The maléré in their amazement, unused to such good fortune, surged in and the numbers swelled more than fifty percent.

  No longer able to contain his gratitude, the priest in Le Moule extolled Victoire’s merits in his sermon at high mass and called her a true Christian. He went so far as to invoke the wedding at Cana when Jesus changed the water into wine. Fully aware of the malicious gossip rumored about her, he made it known that it is possible to massacre the French language and have one’s heart in the right place.

  Did this quash the gossip and the mockery, I wonder?

  This first year of teaching at Le Moule coming after years of humiliation at Versailles forged my mother’s philosophy of life and dictated the education she gave to us, her children. The whites and mulattoes are our natural enemies. But as for the Negroes, oh the Negroes, big or small, their wickedness is immense. They are hurricanes and earthquakes that we must guard against. She convi
nced us that friendship does not exist. We have to live alone. Above the crowd. Finally, she convinced us of the vulnerability of women. According to her, the reason why the inhabitants of Le Moule hounded her mother and sullied her reputation was because she was nothing but a woman living alone with her daughter, without a man to protect either of them. Neither father nor husband. In order to navigate the ruts of life with a minimum of damage, you need the arm of a man. But not any man! Love was a mystification, a folly that could very well be fatal. You needed to arm your heart and carefully choose for a partner a man whose personal qualities put him above the others and who stood tall like a protecting tree.

  A Grand Nègre, in fact! We always came back to them.

  During the long vacation, teachers who were starting out met at the Lycée Carnot in La Pointe for training courses.

  Ever since it had been founded in 1883 following the initiative of Alexandre Isaac, himself a mulatto, director of home affairs in the government of Guadeloupe, the Lycée Carnot was more than a simple secondary school. It was a breeding ground for the budding intelligentsia of color. Under the shadow of its massive mango trees in the recreation yard, all whom Guadeloupe would count as important personalities would pass along its balconies. Since it was also a boarding school, it could house the trainees. This enabled Jeanne to keep a promise she had made years ago: never to set foot again in the rue de Nassau.

  But what was to be done with Victoire?

  She couldn’t force her to stay behind in Le Moule without her. With a heavy heart she had no other choice but to let her return to the Walbergs, in other words to Boniface’s bed. Victoire had the tact not to show her joy at the prospect of moving back to the rue de Nassau. But the shine in her eyes, the coloring of her cheeks, and the way her entire person came back to life spoke for themselves. The day she bade farewell to the Open Door she cooked a banquet for almost two hundred maléré, and people still remember it today. The priest at Le Moule noted in his diary: “Today, June 22nd, Madame Victoire Quidal surpassed herself. It is the Almighty who has manifested Himself in her hands.” They say that some of the malérés in their gratitude carried Victoire’s and her daughter’s trunks free of charge to the diligence. But that remains to be confirmed.

  I don’t know what gave Victoire the greatest happiness on the rue de Nassau. Being back with Boniface? Or with Anne-Marie? Or being back in her den, her domain, her kitchen range? The market women, who had somewhat neglected the place, set off back to her kitchen, and every morning there was an unloading of treasures. Victoire would weigh the red-eyed rabbits in their white fur, and sniff the tench and red snapper. Her fingers tapped away, pattering and pouring the salt, saffron, and cardamom, cutting, boning, and trimming.

  She was also happy to be back in the afternoons resounding with melodies. I bet too she was happy to be back with Valérie-Anne and Boniface Jr. A sincere affection bonded her to these two, whom she had seen born and who oddly enough remained closer to her than her own daughter. They both called her Mamito, and Boniface Jr. confided in her the name of all his conquests. Since he detested his mother, he was grateful to Victoire for giving his father stability and a semblance of happiness.

  True to her discretion and taught by her lesson at Le Moule, she in no way wanted to embarrass Jeanne by her visits to the Lycée Carnot. Consequently, although the rue de Nassau is just two steps from the rue Sadi Carnot, they were separated for almost three months. Anne-Marie’s radical change of attitude toward her godchild dates from that moment on. She had taken the brunt of a good many refusals and humiliations without saying a word in the interest of not hurting Victoire. But this time Jeanne’s behavior, betraying a reprehensible indifference with regard to a mother whose only thoughts were for her daughter, shocked her deeply. From that moment on, she became downright hostile, making increasingly scathing attacks every day on her selfishness and vanity. Victoire did not agree.

  “A pa fòt aye!” she murmured.

  “It’s not her fault?” thundered Anne-Marie.

  Victoire absolved Jeanne almost entirely, considering she was more to pity than to blame, torn as Jeanne was between her filial love, her ambition, her pride, her narcissism, and that terrible fear of the Other that she has passed on to all of us, her children.

  Unquestionably the happiest of the entire household was Boniface. Every night was an enchantment. Every meal, a feast.

  “You’re spoiling me, you’re spoiling me,” he would repeat, and you never knew whether he was thinking of his nocturnal or diurnal pleasures.

  In the evening he would no longer stay behind at the club or lose his money at an occasional party of whist. On leaving the store on the Lardenoy wharf he would stop by the Place de la Victoire to listen to the municipal concerts. It was strange because he had no taste for music and would often doze off in the middle of the most remarkable adagios. It was because he loved to be with Victoire and even Anne-Marie. The proximity of these two women, who had woven his days, made him appreciate those left for him to live. When the musicians put away their instruments, ever so slowly the three of them would return home, not yet three old bag of bones, but already largely worn out.

  At the very start of the twentieth century, life began to change for women. They did not yet have any rights. But at least they were no longer confined between four walls. Admittedly, daily mass, monthly confession, communion, and the weekly calalu constituted the bulk of their schedule. Yet every afternoon Anne-Marie dared set off with Victoire for the Place de la Victoire. This square, laid out and planted with grass, had become the town’s throbbing heart. Anne-Marie and Victoire always chose the same bench near the music kiosk. Never satisfied, Anne-Marie sharply criticized the musicians’ performance, especially the first violins and the choice of program. One concert alone found favor with her: the one given by an orchestra from Martinique. It began with some beguines and mazurkas and finished with the overture to The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein by Offenbach. Such eclecticism delighted her. She vehemently repeated her theory that there is no such thing as “highbrow music” or “popular music.” There is only music. The rest is a matter of taste, which is up to the true musician to satisfy. Ever since she was a girl, Anne-Marie had uttered opinions that were not to be contradicted. Neither Victoire nor Boniface was in a position to stand up to her. Moreover, they didn’t even bother.

  One afternoon, the trio saw Jeanne loom up. She was walking with a group so absorbed in conversation that they looked neither right nor left. Each member of the group wore a subtle type of habit: all had identical dark complexions, spectacles, hairdos, jewels and shoes. The way these young people moved, spoke, and laughed testified they were conscious of forming an elite, an example for the rest of the island. Victoire had eyes only for her child. She who was so awkward, common, and unattractive, how had she managed to create such a prodigy? She was touched by her daughter’s expression, which seemed to say: “Look at me. I’m the prototype of a new generation. Be careful! Hands off! I am not for any Tom, Dick, and Harry!”

  If she had been less blinded by Jeanne, Victoire would have noticed by her side a Negro fitted perfectly into a navy serge three-piece suit, wearing a soft felt fedora, who had just turned forty, in sharp contrast to his extremely young companions. His walk was characteristic: as stiff as a poker, with his head thrown backward. This was my father, Auguste Boucolon, whom Jeanne had just met. Principal of a school for boys on the rue Henri IV, he was so highly regarded by his superiors that they had put him in charge of the teachers’ training courses. He was thinking, however, of leaving the teaching profession, since he had other ambitions in mind and had no intention of finishing his life as a civil servant. He had been so dazzled by Jeanne that she had made him speechless, something that seldom occurred. Jeanne, however, had not reciprocated. She found him bodzè, a bit of a dandy, somewhat common with his fine mustache. But she wasn’t used to being desired or regarded as an irreplaceable precious object.

  What nobody knows is that on
that particular afternoon as she walked past the kiosk with her colleagues, Jeanne was perfectly aware of Victoire seated between her white Creole patrons. On the right, her mistress, elegantly dressed in a two-piece suit of georgette crepe, although a little too stout, wearing a gold choker, her complexion skillfully enhanced by her makeup. On her left, her boss, his suit a little too tight, he too somewhat potbellied, somewhat big-bottomed, a starched collar digging into his Adam’s apple, with a jet-black mustache and a full head of hair that resisted the passing years. Victoire the servant, so much like a servant, held in her lap a parasol, a handbag, and a skipping rope belonging to Valérie-Anne, who was playing nearby. Go and kiss her? That would mean introducing her and the Walbergs to her friends. Jeanne guessed the thoughts that dared not be uttered and the remarks made behind her back. She imagined the conversation:

  “How are you, Madame Quidal?”

  “God willing.”

  She did not have the courage and proudly walked past, her eyes fixed on the foliage of the sandbox trees. This memory, together with that of a multitude of minor and major betrayals, probably tortured her up to her death.

  After completing the training course, she was assigned to the girls’ elementary school at Dubouchage in La Pointe—quite a promotion. It was a huge establishment for its time, the biggest school on the island in number of pupils and classes. She worked there as a schoolmistress for thirty-seven years and people are not yet ready to forget her. Many were the pupils who hated her; many were those who adored her. She left none of them indifferent. At over seventy, Michèle M——, with tears in her eyes, reminded me recently of her status as teacher’s pet.

  “I was her favorite pupil. After school, I was the one who always carried the homework she had to correct back to her house. At ten o’clock recreation she would send me to fetch her a cup of milk and a buttered slice of bread. Adelia, the maid, would arrange the plate on a little wicker tray that she covered with a doily. I can remember her favorite cup, orangey yellow, decorated with a Japanese lady in a kimono. Her house was filled with lovely things, all sorts of curios I had never seen before.”