Victoire (6 page)

What a magical object a book is! Even more so for someone who can’t read, who doesn’t know there are bad books that are not worth sacrificing whole forests for.

Victoire would turn them over and over again in the palms of her hands. Sometimes she opened them and studied the signs that were indecipherable to her. She regretted her ignorance. Yet her heart did not hold Caldonia to blame. All she wanted to remember was Caldonia’s tenderness. Living a life of solitude, she could constantly hear Caldonia’s grumpy, affectionate voice repeating the riddles whose answers she knew by heart but pretended to search for:

“On ti bòlòm ka plin on kaz?”
(A little man who fills the whole room.) A candle.

One day. The heat was suffocating. Dry lightning streaked the sky. The sea was glowing like a gold bar being smelted. With tongues hanging out, the dogs did little else but sniff one another’s backside and seek the shade. Livid, the anole lizards puffed up their dewlaps on the stems of the hibiscus. Victoire arrived at Les Basses soaked in sweat. For once, Dernier was at home. He had taken off his frock coat and, shirt wide-open on his hairy chest, he was fanning himself with a newspaper. She greeted him shyly in a muffled, slightly hoarse voice.

“Ben l’bonjou, misié!”

He inspected the tray, tasted the food, made a face, shrugged his shoulders, and exclaimed in Creole:

“What bunch of heartless individuals sent you out in this heat?”

Victoire remained expressionless. Did she share his opinion? He disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a towel that he threw at her.

“Go and wash your face in the washroom,” he ordered.

“Washroom” was a fancy word for it. A trellis fence marked out a space behind the cabin where a half-empty water jar and toiletry utensils could be found. Victoire obeyed and went outside. He came out onto the doorstep to stare at her with his arrogant eyes. Out of modesty she hesitated to undo her headtie in front of him. When she finally made up her mind, her black hair immediately tumbled down to her shoulders.

“What’s your name?” he shouted.

“Victwa, misié!”

“Where’re you from?”

“La Treille, yes!”

She filled a basin, washed her face and neck, dried herself, then went back inside. He had settled back in the rocking chair and looked up to stare at her with sustained attention, caressing her breasts with his eyes. Under this fiery gaze, she picked up the dishes from the day before and got ready to take her leave.

It was then that he stood up and walked over to her.

“You’re in too much of a hurry!”

He took her by the arm.

Did they make love that day? It’s unlikely.

I believe on the contrary that she was frightened; frightened by his touch, by this male smell that was filling her nostrils for the first time. She wriggled free, secured the tray on her head, and made a bee line for the town. People who saw her shoot past strained their necks. What was this crazy girl running after? Sunstroke, that’s all she could hope to get.

Danila’s suspicions were aroused from the very first day. Monstrous suspicions. Amid the ensuing misfortune, she grouched that her heart had warned her before everyone else.

She was putting the final touches to a sea urchin stew when Victoire came charging in, red and sweating. She was coming back from Les Basses, Danila remembered. What was she running away from? No use asking her, she wouldn’t answer. Danila noticed her hands trembling as she clumsily put away the plates she had brought back, even more awkwardly than usual. She almost fell flat on her face while crossing the yard. In charge of seasoning the salad, she mixed up the salt and pepper servers. While clearing the table, she crossed the knives and forks under Gaëtane’s very eyes and earned a sharp reprimand to which visibly she paid no attention.

Then she left untouched her more modest meal (no hors d’oeuvres or dessert), which she took with Danila in the kitchen. She sat daydreaming, her chin resting on the palm of her hand, before tackling the washing-up and breaking two ramekins in one go.

O
NE MORNING, SHE
who was generally mute as a blowfish, started humming a song while putting the wash to bleach. An old wake ceremony song that Oraison used to sing at La Treille, each time
accompanied by bursts of laughter that flew from all sides. An old melody that Caldonia liked:

Zanfan si ou vouè
Papa mò
Téré li an ba tono la
Sé pou tout gout
Ki dégouté
Y tombé an goj a papa

In her amazement, Danila, who was busy kneading the batter for vegetable marinades, grated her left middle finger, mistaking it for a chunk of pumpkin.

I
F PEOPLE HAD
eyes to see—but people are blind, that’s a fact, and can’t see farther than the end of their noses—they would have noticed one thing: that Victoire’s beauty, up till then questionable, argued over, even contested, burst into the open.

Here she was suddenly less sickly, less adolescent. Not in the least bit little Miss Sapoti. A head of hair as thick as the Black Forest. Surreptitiously, her portliness made her breasts heavier and rounded her shoulders. Her overly pale complexion took on a velvety texture and darkened.

Danila, made perspicacious by her hatred, was the only one to notice this metamorphosis, which was even more suspect since Victoire no longer touched her food. What nurtured her were the kisses, the caresses, and the sweet words breathed into her. From where?

From a man, no doubt.

There is nothing like love to make a woman as beautiful as that. It’s not only the feeling. But the act. Making love.

What man are we talking about?

Danila refused to imagine the unimaginable or a fortiori speak the unspeakable. As her nurse,
mabo
Danila had held Thérèse over the baptismal font. She had wiped her behind, washed her menstrual-stained undergarments. She had no proof whatsoever, but wanted to shout at her:

“Watch out! Open both eyes! You think she’s a child, but she’s not the child you think she is. She’s a perverted little thing. A female of the first degree!”

Fifty years later, on her deathbed, Danila was still racked by remorse. She beat her breast: “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” For hadn’t she heard whisper that Dernier was an incurable womanizer? Under the guise of literacy lessons, Dernier received a constant stream of peasant girls. Some rumors had it that he was the father of Marinette’s son, who worked at the Folle-Anse plantation, and also Toinette’s, who toiled at Buckingham. Yet she hadn’t told anyone of these rumors. Not even her confessor. What was holding her back? The fear of hurting her beloved Thérèse. And now look what happened!

Her heart had jumped, that’s for sure. But in the end, what purpose had it served? Nobody had come out of it unscathed and she had not protected the girl she worshipped.

W
HAT DISGUSTS ME
in all this is that Victoire was never considered a victim. I can excuse Thérèse, who was blinded by her own grief. But as for the others, there was not a moment of compassion. Victoire was just sixteen. Statutory rape. Dernier was twice her age. He was educated, and a respected, even well-known notable. Everyone treated her like a criminal. I like to think that she hid her tears in her attic, revolted by her pregnancy, but not complaining, crushed by her solitude and convinced of her insignificance. Perhaps too she was expecting Thérèse to say something, but she never did.

“Here we are the two of us, both taken for a ride. At least you carry the future in your womb. Me . . .”

Fulgence demanded Oraison come and take back his daughter. She had disrespected the sanctity of his home. Oraison turned up at eight in the morning—he hadn’t gone to sea that day—flanked by Lourdes. Informed of her crime, he flung himself on Victoire and gave her such a slap that she fell to the ground, her mouth covered in blood. He then vented his anger by kicking and punching her. Under the terrified gaze of Gaëtane, Fulgence had to hold him back.

If he wanted to kill his child, let him do it elsewhere. There would be no bloodshed on his floor.

Without a farewell, without a thank-you, and, most significantly, without a penny, Victoire left the home where she had toiled for over six years, hugging the wicker basket containing the loose
golle
dresses and matador robe that Thérèse had forgotten to take back.

Poor Thérèse was in agony. Her monogrammed sheet pulled up over her head, she had been weeping and sobbing since the day before. She refused to open her door to Gaëtane, who was primarily concerned with the humiliation.

“Oh my goodness! People will laugh at us.”

“Oh Lord! How will I be able to look at people at high mass?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, mercy on us!”

Thérèse did let Danila in; she was carrying a woman weed herb tea. Thérèse took the cup with trembling hands.

“I pati?”

Danila nodded that Victoire had left and there followed a long, uncomfortable moment.

Two months later Thérèse booked a category two first-class cabin on board the
Louisiane,
a steamship belonging to the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. With no regard for her parents’ grief, whom she was never to see alive again, she journeyed to France, where she lived for the rest of her life. Something was broken inside her. She had lost her savoir-faire and her assurance. She bought
a two-bedroom apartment on the rue Monge, opposite the Lutetia amphitheater, and earned a mediocre living by giving music lessons to children of the colored bourgeoisie. Accompanying herself on the piano, she would hum the well-known melody that was still very topical:

J’ai pris mon coeur, j’ai donné à un ingrat,
A un jeune homme sans conscience
Qui ne connait pas l’amour
Ah! N’aimez pas sur cette terre
Quand l’amour s’en va, il ne reste que les pleurs!

She kept quiet about that period of her life. As a rule, seated at the piano, she would sum it up thus with her sweet, broken voice:

“I nursed a viper in my bosom and it bit me. My life is over. That’s all I can say.”

Sometimes between scales she became worked up and asked in a tone of despair:

“Why? Why me? I did nothing to deserve such a blow dealt by fate. I was pure. A virgin. Naive.”

She never married.

O
RAISON WAS WALKING
in front, his chest puffed out in anger. Wretched females whose bellies bear nothing but shame upon shame! Behind him came Victoire and the sympathizing Lourdes. On leaving the town, where the Maurice Bishop Center now stands, Lourdes linked arms affectionately with her niece, who nestled against her side. Unfortunately, at that very moment, Oraison turned round and caught their gesture of affection. He sent them both flying, one to the right, the other to the left. Victoire lost her balance, fell into the ditch, and twisted her ankle. Thank God, her baby was unharmed.

In the space of a few years, La Treille had undergone major changes. Half of its inhabitants had emigrated to the mainland of Guadeloupe, leaving their cabins to go to ruin. Cut grass and sensitive plants filled the once Creole gardens. The trees were overgrown with creepers. The white blossom of the Santo Domingo briar rivaled the lilac flowers of the gliricidia. No longer were there oxen grazing under the hogplum trees. No longer any oxcarts, arms lowered, waiting to be loaded. There reigned an atmosphere of desolation. When Oraison had been in such a hurry to move in with Isadora, Félix, Chrysostome, and Lourdes had not tolerated the insult to the memory of Caldonia. In unison they moved to a cabin at the other end of the hamlet. Then Félix and Chrysostome each set up house with a woman and went their separate ways. Since Félix was Victoire’s godfather, that was where Oraison brought the criminal, throwing her at his feet with a kick. Félix had given Victoire her baby formula; he had given her piggybacks and carved oxcarts from an avocado pit. Victoire was not the first and would not be the last to push in front of her the belly she got on credit. It was a mode that was here to stay, and stay for a long time, that’s for sure. Deep down in his heart, Félix believed she should be spared. Blame should be placed above all on the wickedness of these Grands Nègres, these sermonizers, who were no better than the small-time blacks, even the maroons. But Destinée, his companion, couldn’t put up with this slut under her roof and he had to give in.

Lourdes asked for nothing better than to inherit Victoire. But money was cruelly lacking. How could she feed yet another mouth? After much reflection, they came up with an idea.

Up till then, Victoire had escaped the bondage of working in the sugarcane fields. Now it was the only way out. Since she had never handled a hoe or a cutlass, she would offer her services as a cane bundler. All they needed to do was make a dress and mittens from pieces of jute and old rags. The two women labored all night and in the gray of the dawn set off for the plantation.

It was harvesttime.

The sun was still hiding coyly in a corner of the sky. Yet already dozens of men and women in rags were busy working. The carts drawn by oxen drained of their force trundled through the cane pieces. Not anyone can be a cane bundler. The job is carried out by federations, genuine convoys of olden times, made up of elderly women, even very old women, who are too worn out for weeding and clearing.

Did José the foreman, a mulatto himself, take pity on Victoire’s belly?

Whatever the case, he accepted her request, and under a sun growing bolder by the minute, she braved exhaustion, the sting of the cane, and dizziness in order to deliver her bundles of sugarcane.

It was Lourdes who was so happy! Hoisting up her skirt over her bow legs the color of
kako dou,
she indulged in so much tomfoolery that she managed to get a smile out of Victoire.

Coming after so many bad days, the evening was blissful. And the following night even more blissful.

Alas! The following morning, no sooner had they set foot in the field than a song rose up amid the laughter and vulgar jibes. It was about a mulatto girl, a slut fallen on hard times, who, after having had her fill of men, stole the bread out of the mouths of her poor black neighbors. Victoire took to her heels and fled.