Victoire (9 page)

The room they half jokingly called the Regency room, the loveliest in the house, was situated on the third floor. It owed its name to two Regency-style armchairs with lion’s feet and a sofa in the same style, mounted likewise on lion’s claws, which served as a bed.

More than anyone, Boniface dreaded Anne-Marie’s moods and stinging repartee. He kept mum about the extravagant idea of attributing the Regency room to a cook and her brat, thus deserving once more the pet name Flaminia had given to him, Pontius Pilate.

Disgusted, Flaminia showered him with a look of commiseration.

S
IX
 

Officially, then, Victoire was hired as a cook in the service of the Walbergs. Yet there is no document to confirm this. With her very first meal she astounded the entire family. Far from merely cooking Creole dishes with panache, she used her imagination to invent them. On her second day, she served up a guinea fowl
au gros sel
and two types of cabbage that sent Boniface, who, we must confess, was already under her charm, into raptures.

What I am claiming is the legacy of this woman, who apparently did not leave any. I want to establish the link between her creativity and mine, to switch from the savors, the colors, and the smells of meat and vegetables to those of words. Victoire did not have a name for her dishes and that didn’t seem to bother her. Most of her days she spent locked up in the temple of her kitchen, a small shack behind the house, set slightly back from the washhouse. Not saying a word, head bent, absorbed over her kitchen range like a writer hunched over her computer. She would let nobody chop a chive or press a lemon, as if in the kitchen no task was humble enough when aiming at perfection. She frequently tasted the food, but once the composition was completed, she never touched it again.

Her reputation for the time being, however, remained within
the boundaries of the rue de Nassau. Since neither Anne-Marie nor Boniface entertained at home, folk in La Pointe for a long time knew nothing of the jewel they possessed.

In the meantime, they settled into a ménage of three, even four, whispered malicious gossip, though we have no proof. Contrary to the usual practice of women of her class, who often led a life of leisure, Anne-Marie privileged music over writing and did not keep a diary. All we know of her is through a regular correspondence of no great interest, comprised of letters to her mother, Rochelle, and to her brothers and sisters, especially Etienne, who was her favorite. We can only go by a number of clues. The servants’ gossip, led by Flaminia, and the spitefulness of the white Creoles in La Pointe, all were in agreement that the true Madame Walberg was not who we thought she was. Unlike most children, Jeanne was weaned very early on and placed in a box room that had been converted into an English nursery for the Walberg children while under the supervision of a
mabo
. The furniture in the Regency room was changed. The sofa, elegant but uncomfortable, especially for two people, was replaced by a sleigh bed. As soon as they repealed the Edict of March 1724, which had been lying around for over a hundred years in the drawers of the Ministry for the Colonies, prohibiting a donation inter vivos to any descendant of slaves, Boniface transferred a sum to the account of Jeanne, which she drew out on reaching her majority. Later on he included her in his will. A letter that Anne-Marie wrote to Etienne, quoted in a history thesis defended at the College for Social Sciences in Paris, contains the following sentence, which is open to interpretation:

“I loathe the life I lead, even though our faithful and beloved Victoire consoles me by relieving me of many an obligation.”

In the same thesis, entitled “From Plantation Owner to Businessman: A History of the White Creoles in Guadeloupe,” my attention was also caught by a letter that Boniface wrote to Evremond, his older brother, who was very close to him, although they went different ways: “My life would be filled with unhappiness if it weren’t constantly illuminated by the devotion of my faithful Victoire.”

We note that each time reference is made to the word “faithful.” We might very well ask ourselves to whom Victoire was faithful. Was it to Anne-Marie? To Boniface? Or was she pursuing her own private ambition that centered on Jeanne? Only Jeanne?

Let us add that in the Antilles there is a time-honored practice where the white male marries the white female, but takes his pleasure with every mulatto or black girl he can lay his hands on. Slavery or no slavery.

As for imagining an intimate relationship between Anne-Marie and Victoire, I refuse to believe it. If some people have no trouble going there, it is because the tradition of both masculine and feminine homosexuality is well established in the Antilles. There is abundant research to prove that the masters entered into such passionate and stifling relations with their domestic slaves that most of the latter preferred to work in the fields rather than in the house. At the end of the nineteenth century female homosexuality was still thriving. In La Pointe the
zanmis
were very open about their relations, living together, sporting the same costumes and dancing lasciviously during carnival. One of them by the name of Zéna composed a beguine for her beloved, which got the whole island dancing:

Ninon, mwen renmé vou
A la foli danmou
Ninon, mwen renmé vou
Kon foufou renmé miyel
E kon bouch renmé bô

When her beloved left her for another she lamented:

Aïe, aïe, aïe, mwen vlé mò
Pa ni soleye ankò
La vi pa dous
Mwen vlé mò

I
PREFER TO
believe that Anne-Marie and Victoire fell head over heels into an exceptional friendship at first sight and remained accomplices to the very end.

Was Victoire rewarded for her services?

Mulatto women one generation before hers had no scruples fleecing their white lovers and mocking taboos. When they were forbidden to wear shoes they decorated their toes with diamonds given them by the very same lovers. It was obvious that Victoire had lost such a gift. Apparently she never had a penny to her name. When she thought it absolutely necessary, Anne-Marie had a shapeless
golle
dress made for her and bought her a headtie or a pair of shoes. Always the same model: embroidered velvet slippers. On the other hand, Anne-Marie devoted herself entirely to the care of Jeanne, who was always rigged out like a duchess, which later on entitled Anne-Marie to consider herself unfairly treated as a benefactress.

Whatever the nature of the ties that bonded them together, Victoire and Anne-Marie wore their social status outwardly: Anne-Marie authoritarian and brusque, Victoire silent and constantly in the background. The servants on the rue de Nassau, however, in their terror put them both in the same basket and declared that Victoire was the worse of the two:

“Victwa, sé pli môvé-la.
”

Likewise, throughout La Pointe the silhouette of Victoire trotting behind her haughty mistress, who was a head taller than she was, soon came to be loathed. The white Creoles thought she should be mistrusted like all mulatto women, “the women of no shame,” as they were called. It was said that they had always dreamed of “taking their revenge on their masters with the arms of pleasure,” according to the expression of the priest at Emberménil, Father Grégoire. As for the people of color, meaning mulattos, who were increasingly numerous, they took offense at the condition of one of their own. Slavery was over. To prostitute yourself for your master was a shame. Only the Negroes, too busy struggling for social ascension or survival, took no interest in Victoire.

Both women’s lives seemed to be dominated by the same passion: God and music. Up till then, God, who had not worked any miracles for Victoire, did not mean much to her. It was on contact with Anne-Marie that she became religious. At least in her deeds.

Every morning she would walk up the rue de Nassau to the rue Barbès, cross the Place de la Liberté, and climb up the steps of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul to attend five o’clock mass, the so-called dawn mass. Like the rest of La Pointe, this church was evidence of God’s power. One hundred and fifty years earlier it had been razed to the ground by Victor Hughes. Then an earthquake had destroyed it and it had been damaged by fire and a hurricane. Each time, it had risen from its ruins.

As I have already said, Victoire clearly signified in her comportment that she was the subaltern. She followed Anne-Marie to the altar, three steps behind, and took communion after her. When Anne-Marie came out of Father Rouard’s confessional, Victoire would go in and kneel down. Yet they were both given the same three dozen rosaries. Such a light penitence! They surely hadn’t confessed they shared the same man and perhaps, at times, took pleasure in each other. Confessions are only made to institutionalize the lies.

Sunday was the day for high mass.

Thursday for Anne-Marie, a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was the day for calalu and rice. La Pointe at that time counted a considerable number of needy, the poor
maléré
as they were called. In fact, there were two distinct towns. The town of the well-to-do white Creoles and a few mulattoes, residing around the cathedral, and the town of the
maléré,
the Negroes cast out to the edges of the Vatable Canal district. Dug by a former governor in an attempt to drain the surrounding marshland, the canal had soon become a dumping ground. The traveler Toussaint Chantrans wrote in 1883: “The banks of the canal are nothing but foul mud where rubbish of all sorts rots and spreads a nauseating stench.”

The
maléré
took only one meal a day consisting of root vegetables moistened with a little oil, together with microscopic pieces of beef, salt pork, or codfish for the luckier ones. With an apron tied
around her waist, blonde like one of the Good Lord’s angels, Anne-Marie, assisted by Victoire, piously served the long lines of ragged individuals in front of the trestle tables set up on the sidewalk. On receiving their plateful, the
maléré
thanked profoundly their benefactress for the goodness of her heart before casting a malevolent gaze at Victoire.

I have often asked myself the reason for this animosity. I think I now know why. Given her status as a servant, Victoire did not possess the aura of holiness that haloed the white master. Her presence was disturbing and humiliating.

A
PART FROM THAT
, they never missed vespers or rosary, Tenebrae or the month of Mary. In short, none of those many ceremonies that the Catholic Church contrives to devise for the greater happiness of its followers. At carnival, however, when the devil appears as a
moko
zombie dancing on stilts, ringing bells, and asking for coins, they would close doors and windows.

I don’t blame Anne-Marie the same way I blamed Thérèse Jovial for having neglected to educate Victoire because Anne-Marie taught her music. For her it was the supreme form of expression. Ever since Boniface had started snoring in the very middle of Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and a great many guests had dozed off at the same moment, Anne-Marie had taken this as a pretext not to perform in public.

“It’s like casting pearls before swine,” she would say.

Every afternoon she would lock herself in her room with Victoire. She taught her the rudiments of the guitar—a few simple chords over which my grandmother spread her childlike hands—as well as the recorder. But Victoire preferred to listen to Anne-Marie. They were usually personal compositions that she labored over, sending Délia to buy her pens, ink, and lined paper from the Simon Matureau store on the rue de la Liberté, now rue Alexandre Isaac.
Apparently she composed beguines, rhythms that were becoming wildly popular in Guadeloupe as well as Martinique. I regret that these pieces have disappeared entirely. Thus, we shall never know whether Anne-Marie was a genius or merely a good musician.

I can but imagine the emotions that inspired this strange pair in the heat of the afternoon as the town of La Pointe lay in its siesta under mosquito nets. They were in ecstasy under the torrent of trills and arpeggios. Anne-Marie, standing, frenziedly stroking her bow. Victoire seated in a rocking chair, cradling the guitar, humming in her reedy voice or dreaming silently like Gauguin’s
Brooding Woman
. As refreshment, they would drink aniseed-flavored lemonade.

Like every lady of her station, Anne-Marie hardly set foot out of doors. Utterly drained after these sessions, she would sit in the back garden or on her balcony. She would watch the day as it drew to a close, the sky turning orange over the harbor and the darkening silhouette of the ring of hills. The stench that wafted up from the outlying districts upset her. In the meantime, Victoire had gone back down to the kitchen to prepare supper, only a tad more frugal than lunch. She then concocted some pâtés that she seasoned with rat poison and laid down on the sidewalk for the stray dogs. These dogs were the bane of La Pointe, running by day in aggressive, mangy packs. It was not unusual for them to attack small children. At night their yelping and dog fights made it impossible to sleep. To poison them was the only way to get rid of them, since the municipality did absolutely nothing. In the morning their stiffened corpses with bloodied muzzles piled up in the garbage carts that crisscrossed the town.