Victoire

by Maryse Conde

  FOURTEEN

  In August, taking advantage of Anne-Marie’s dentist appointment, Jeanne made an exception and set foot once again in the house on the rue de Nasssau to inform Victoire she was to be married the following month.

  Victoire was in the kitchen cleaning a capon she had the inspiration to stuff with green papayas, cinnamon, and diced bacon.

  “Pouki sa?” she asked, inspecting surreptitiously her daughter’s belly.

  “I’m not pregnant,” Jeanne reassured her coldly.

  That’s not the way we do things, her stuffy person and prim posture was saying. So why? What was the hurry? Why was she rushing into marriage? She had just reached twenty. With her physique, her prestige as an elementary school teacher, and, by no means insignificant, her salary, she was an enviable match. She had every freedom to choose and all the time in the world. Auguste Boucolon, Grand Nègre, admittedly could boast of never putting a foot wrong! Brought up by his mama, who was abandoned long before his birth by her seafaring common-law husband, he had proven to be unusually intelligent ever since the local elementary school. He was one of the first to win a scholarship to the Lycée Carnot. Moreover, he was considered good-looking. Supremely well attired. A genuine Beau Brummel with his choice of hats—fedora, boater, and pith helmet—as well as his well-tailored suits. But at the age of forty-two he was older than the mother of his betrothed and already balding, displaying a crown of graying hair. Furthermore, he was a widower, father of two small boys and an illegitimate daughter, conceived while he was a schoolboy, who worked at the registrar’s office at city hall and whose mother sold her produce in the market. All that wasn’t very romantic!

  I was told that despite appearances he was not lacking in lyricism. Apparently, he confided in a friend:

  “If I don’t have her I’ll kill myself.”

  Going down on one knee, he was reported to have assured her:

  “I will be the quilt of your life.”

  Or else:

  “Like Orpheus, I would descend to the ends of the underworld for you if need be.”

  In his desire to please her, it was said he gave up a ten-year liaison with his mistress, who was convinced she would have a wedding band on her finger after his first wife died. Victoire, who was not at all thrilled by these wedding plans, did not even think of raising an objection. She knew full well she had no say in the matter.

  Although the announcement of Jeanne’s wedding and her setting up house in La Pointe was to nobody’s liking, it drove Boniface to despair. For him it meant one thing: the end of his relationship with Victoire. Jeanne would require it. Furthermore, he knew Victoire was accustomed to obeying and secretly terrified by her daughter. She was not up to defending a love that her daughter considered intolerable and even more despicable than adultery. At night, he tried to win her over. But Victoire as usual didn’t say a word.

  It was perhaps as a result of this distress, tension, and anguish that he contracted the illness, never clearly diagnosed, which was to carry him off so quickly. Anne-Marie had no qualms spreading the rumor that he was dying of a broken heart, from having been cast aside, something Victoire’s detractors were quick to believe.

  In a threatening letter, Anne-Marie ordered Jeanne to come and officially introduce her fiancé. Weren’t Boniface and herself a sort of adopted parents? They had ensured her education and paid for her schooling. In short, they had made her what she was. They had even provided her with a dowry. Anne-Marie did not know that on his death Boniface had left a legacy for Jeanne. Consequently, to call the modest sum he had placed in her account a dowry was the product of Anne-Marie’s exaggerated imagination, which had no bounds. Jeanne grudgingly complied.

  Auguste therefore had two magnificent bouquets of roses delivered, one for each of the mothers—the biological and the foster—chocolates for Valérie-Anne, and Havana cigars for the father and son. This did not prevent Boniface Jr. in his jealousy from refusing to attend and going to lunch alone at the Hotel des Postes, where his father had an account. It was at that time he sent Jeanne the letter that I have already mentioned. I don’t know whether she answered it. I discovered it over sixty years later in her personal papers.

  On the said day, Auguste and Jeanne turned up at the rue de Nassau on the dot, unusual in our climate. Under the avid looks of the servants who were watching the scene from the yard, Auguste removed his boater and with a click of his heels kissed the hand of Anne-Marie.

  Mary mother of Jesus! Where on earth did these Negroes learn such things?

  Jeanne took off her cotton gloves to show her engagement ring, a good-size diamond, purchased by catalog from the Belles Pierres store in Reims, the French affiliate of a factory in Antwerp. While drinking the Bollinger champagne before the meal, Auguste elaborated his plans and discreetly introduced himself as a good match: a six-room town house and enough to buy a change-of-air house given his solid bank account. It was Anne-Marie who responded, and without her realizing it, unless it was deliberate, her short speech was deeply hurtful. She recalled that without her, without Boniface especially, Jeanne would not have achieved her uncommon status and would probably be speaking a heavy Creole, hiring her services to some bourgeois family, scrubbing their floors and emptying their chamber pots. In exchange for so much kindness she was merely asking for a little respect and gratitude.

  Pale with rage, Jeanne had to drink a toast with her.

  Victoire had cooked a meal whose menu unfortunately nobody has kept. She arranged it in a lavish dinnerware set as if it were a cooking competition, but left it up to the servants to carry in the dishes. For once, she sat down at the table, to the left of Boniface, as the second Madame Walberg, with Anne-Marie on his right. Auguste laid down once and for all the tone of his relations with Victoire. Given their similar ages, relations should have been fraternal. There was, however, never any intimacy between them. Deep down, she had little sympathy for him, considering him not good enough for her jewel of a daughter, like all mother-in-laws. As for him, we shouldn’t be under any illusion. He despised her. Beneath his easygoing manners, he was intolerant, a militant black like all the Grands Nègres, convinced that sexual relations by a woman of color with a white Creole constituted an intolerable scandal. If Fanon had already written Black Skin White Masks, Auguste would have certainly appreciated the pages on the complex of lactification. The only agreeable element was when he spoke to Victoire in Creole; in his mouth the language he had also used to speak to his mother took on a different and intimate inflection.

  Creole, he seemed to indicate, is our mother tongue, our common link. Let us be proud of it.

  Those gathered for this meal didn’t have much in common. Fortunately, except for Anne-Marie, who was never at a loss for words, Auguste was capable of talking for two, three, or even four. This feature of his character became increasingly unbearable for Jeanne as she herself became gradually more taciturn and haughty. He spouted anecdote upon anecdote. He told the story, for instance, of how as a student at the Lycée Carnot in 1889 he had been sent to Paris with other Guadeloupeans and Martinicans to visit the Universal Exhibition. He described the amazement of the Parisians when they entered a café or restaurant. How certain customers in a panic rushed for the door. Everyone noisily expressed their astonishment that they knew how to handle a knife and fork. Children cried when approached. Others were bolder and came and rubbed their cheeks to see if the color rubbed off. There were happier moments in the evenings when they went and danced the beguine wabap in the Paris dives. His look of nostalgia gave the impression there were other moments of pleasure that he did not mention out of respect for Jeanne. Anne-Marie, who still harbored the regret in her heart of not having completed the years at the conservatoire in Boulogne, inquired about his thoughts on the City of Light. He made a face.

  “You know what Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus said about it?”

  Anne-Marie and Boniface confessed their ignorance.

  “But you know who Jean-Hégés
ippe Légitimus was, don’t you?” he asked with a sudden insolence, staring at them with his sparkling eyes.

  How could Anne-Marie and Boniface not know that his Terrible Troisième party had sounded the death knell of the white and mulatto supremacy in Guadeloupe? They stammered a timid yes.

  “He said,” Auguste declared, “that Paris was too cold and the streets were too busy.”

  Thereupon he burst out laughing amid the terrified silence at the mention of the name of Légitimus. This was the only false note, albeit minor, we admit, during the entire meal.

  The servants then served coffee and cognac in the back garden. Boniface, who had always had a liking for botany, had planted some Tristellateia australasiae, whose glowing yellow flowers looked like a multitude of tiny suns.

  FIFTEEN

  Auguste and Jeanne were married on September 12, 1910, two weeks before the new school term started. They postponed their honeymoon until the following year, when they planned to visit Paris on a grand scale during the long vacation.

  Stubborn as always, confident, she believed, in her right as a benefactor, Anne-Marie took Valérie-Anne by the hand and insisted on going to the wedding ceremony at the new town hall, which had just moved into a lovely eighteenth-century building on the Grand-Rue. Once there, however, she almost turned around and went back, amazed at all these Negro men and women dressed in the latest fashion, speaking French French and making the mother and daughter feel that their presence was out of place. Filled with a kind of terror, she wondered where she could have been when this tsunami had battered the shores of the island. Did she still have a place here? The homily of the deputy mayor, he too a jet-black Negro, frightened her even more. Looking her straight in the eye, he spoke of the time that was coming when the color of the skin would be nothing more than a shadow of the past. White or light skin no longer signified ipso facto accession to privilege.

  “That time is over and definitely over,” he thundered.

  She clutched Valérie-Anne’s hand—Valérie-Anne was equally scared—to give herself a semblance of composure. She was so shaken that back home on the rue de Nassau she went to bed with a migraine and did not attend the religious ceremony at the cathedral. Auguste, though a Freemason true to Légitimus, agreed to the church ceremony to please Jeanne, who would not have accepted a civil wedding. For the reception, miscalculating the extent to which Jeanne was determined to turn her back on her former life, Anne-Marie had offered the house on the rue de Nassau, which with its series of salons would have made a perfect setting. Jeanne hadn’t even taken the trouble to reply. She chose the Grand Hotel des Antilles, which had just opened its doors. This magnificent establishment appeared to be the sign of things to come. It was situated at the corner of the rue Sadi-Carnot and the rue Schoelcher. Telephone and running water in every room, it publicized. Access to the salons was through a garden where Chinese fan palms, introduced at great cost, and purple flower crape myrtle grew. The salons themselves were decorated with an array of potted palms and ixoras.

  For the first time Victoire wore a European-style dress. A drape of prune-colored crepe de Chine that Jeanne had ordered from a catalog at La Samaritaine in Paris. She had to have it altered by a dressmaker, since Victoire was so small and slender. Such finery showed off her beauty: an unusual beauty. An insidious beauty that the eye did not see at first. A beauty spoiled by the lack of confidence in herself, the conviction of her unworthiness, and the awkwardness that comes with it. People who vainly tried to converse with her whispered that she could have borrowed a little assurance from her daughter, who with enough to spare had made herself obnoxious. What they didn’t know was that outwardly so different, Victoire and Jeanne were identical. Like mother, like daughter. Both tormented souls scared stiff of their surroundings.

  Victoire would have liked to proclaim her love for her daughter in the only way she was capable of—by preparing a meal more extravagant than that of the engagement. A meal where she could display her treasure chest of inventions. The menu was there in her head like the draft of a novel that will testify to the genius of its author. But Jeanne did not want to treat her mother like a servant. She insisted on hiring a caterer by the name of Soudon who dispatched a maître d’ and a dozen waiters in white starched uniforms. She sat Victoire in the middle of the room like an Akan queen mother in a magnificent armchair. All that was missing was the parasol over her head.

  Victoire felt extremely ill at ease with all these eyes on her. Like an adulterous woman, she waited to be stoned. Among the guests, nobody had committed a sin like hers.

  The guests whirled around to the sound and rhythm of the waltzes from Paris performed by an orchestra that serenaded as best it could. At eleven forty-five it stopped playing. The dancers made a circle around Auguste and Jeanne. Auguste then made a speech. First of all he paid homage to his mother, who had not lived to see this day. Then he turned to his mother-in-law, who had fashioned the jewel of which he, the most fortunate of men, was taking possession. He made the mistake of using the same words to celebrate both women: valiant, feisty, belligerent, and pillars of society. The fabrication was obvious. Then the violinists played the habanera from Carmen:

  L’amour est un oiseau rebelle,

  Que nul ne peut apprivoiser,

  Et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle

  S’il lui convient de refuser.

  There was a storm of applause. A genuine ovation. Yet it was nothing but pure hypocrisy. Most of the guests knew the cards had been dealt wrongly, that Victoire in no way deserved such praise. However, more than Auguste’s lying hyperboles, it was the musical interlude that gave great displeasure. Was Jeanne Boucolon—it was surely her idea—in her right mind? To have Georges Bizet’s opera played for her mother, her illiterate and uneducated mother! Why not Johann Sebastian Bach? Who was she trying to delude? Everyone knew Jeanne. She always thought she was the cat’s whiskers. But this time, she had crossed the line.

  Shortly after midnight, a car drove the couple to the rue de Condé. The rue de Condé is situated on the other side of the Place de la Victoire, and until the emergence of a black bourgeoisie, it defined the limits of the town’s habitable perimeter. In this emerging neighborhood Auguste owned a modest one-story house with a balcony and attic—nothing like the one he had built on the rue Alexandre Isaac shortly before I was born. He had lived there for ten years with his first wife, now deceased. The new couple settled in amid the debris of a first love.

  At last, Auguste could savor Jeanne’s body, which he had lusted after so desperately. There was no griotte to hang out the wrappers stained with blood. But she was a virgin, that’s for sure. I don’t know what my mother thought of her wedding night or any of the following nights. What I do know is that I never heard her broach the subject of sex—which is unusual, even exceptional in our islands—without some measure of disgust.

  One week later, it was Boniface’s turn at the wheel of his Cleveland to take Victoire to the rue de Condé. He loaded onto his shoulder like a porter the trunk containing her old clothes. In this quiet neighborhood the intrusion of the Cleveland produced the same effect as in Le Moule: people came out on their balconies or on their doorsteps to contemplate this high-powered car. They had much to be amazed about. What was this white Creole doing at the Boucolons? Who was this mulatto woman with him? Jeanne’s mother? She looked like a woman from Les Saintes. Did she come from Terre-de-Haut? From that moment on, the gossip began to rage.

  The unfortunate Boniface had put time to his advantage. Night after night, he attempted to prove to Victoire the sanctity of their relations. Since she listened to him without saying a word, he did not know whether he had convinced her. In despair he was prepared to talk to Jeanne himself. He was not asking for much. Just so they would let him see his Victoire from time to time. But confronted with Jeanne’s impenetrable and contemptuous expression, he realized she would not listen to reason. So he kept silent and stumbled out of the house.

  J
eanne had prepared for her mother the best room in the house: on the second floor, opening onto a balcony, since she did not want to relegate her to the attic under the roof like a servant. In order to climb into the four-poster bed à boules, you had to use a small pair of steps. The highlight of the furnishing was without doubt an oval cheval glass, surmounted by a decorative motif on an ornate frame, which gave a full-length reflection. The emotion and gratitude that such munificence could have caused Victoire was largely tempered by the conversation that followed. Jeanne calmly reiterated what she had already said in Le Moule. In the world she was entering, her association with a white Creole was unacceptable. Intolerable. No more commerce of the flesh or anything else. No mixing with company that might invite malicious gossip. Just as Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion, so the mother and mother-in-law of a Grand Nègre should be unassailable. The white Creoles were our enemies. They had subjugated and whipped their slaves for generations. They had only one desire at heart: humiliate the blacks by every means possible and reduce them to the level of animals.

  Even if it had been said in Japanese, the effect of this short speech would have been the same. Victoire was incapable of understanding it. She did not know the meaning of the words “class” or “exploiters.” In her eyes, the Walbergs were not enemies: neither Anne-Marie nor Boniface. She didn’t dare say they were her friends. To use an out-of-date term that would have made Jeanne’s blood boil, they had always behaved like good masters.

  I admit I have difficulty accepting the fact that Victoire relinquished Boniface so easily—her companion for twenty years who had given her pleasure, who had forgiven her infidelity, who had looked after her child, and who in a manner of speaking considered Victoire his only reason for living. I refuse, however, to accept the theory generally acknowledged by the inhabitants of La Pointe that since Victoire could get nothing more out of Boniface, she shamelessly turned her back on him. I believe that once again the fear instilled by her daughter got the upper hand. She could not envisage for one moment standing up to her at the risk of displeasing her. There is no doubt whatsoever the thought of Boniface tormented her, denying her sleep. I can see her at night with her eyes wide open in the dark, tossing and turning in her bed, thinking of her partner. I can imagine her in the midst of her daily routine suddenly gripped by his memory and obliged to stop for fear of bursting into tears.