Maryse Conde - Victoire - My Mother's Mother

He started eating dinner alone, having learned that his wife had gone to Goyave without telling him, as usual.

“Goyave? What on earth is she doing in Goyave?”

Flaminia, the servant, had no idea.

Those who know their geography know that the river Salée is the name of the stretch of sea that separates Grande Terre and La Pointe from Basse-Terre and Goyave. A barge operated as a ferry to cross it. Anne-Marie and Victoire had to wait their turn for two full hours, stuck between numerous carriages.

When they arrived at rue de Nassau it was already dark.

Holding his spoon midair, Boniface looked at the strange trio that came into view. Anne-Marie, regal, wearing a low-cut dress revealing the cameo jewel nestled against her ample breasts; a small, frail mulatto girl wearing a black-and-white-check madras headtie whose pale eyes were boring into him; and a chubby baby who was exhausted by the trip, going by her shrieks.

“This is Victoire, our new cook.” Anne-Marie made the introductions with an air of authority.

Oh, Boniface said to himself, befuddled by Victoire’s gaze, so we needed a new cook. Flaminia wasn’t enough.

“À vòt sèvis, mèt!” the mulatto girl murmured in Creole, in a voice that, like her gaze, sent shivers down his spine.

Before he had had time to emit the sound of an answer or pronounce a banal “ka ou fè ” greeting, the trio had left the room and swept up the stairs.

Flaminia reappeared carrying the cod brandade and red beans.

“She’s putting her in the Regency room,” she hissed.

She hated Anne-Marie, whose spitefulness outdid her own. In her youth, she had brought Boniface up during his childhood on Marie-Galante, been one of his father’s mistresses, and kept house for him while he was a bachelor. For him, she had left the scents of her island for this filthy town that stank of excrement and dead dogs and where the dames-gabrielle shamelessly traded their charms.

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.

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