“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 modeclass="underline" 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.