At four in the morning, the first up, Victoire slipped on a wòbakò and crept into the kitchen. Around five, Maby and Délia, still fuddled with sleep, joined her and began filtering the coffee. Maby had replaced Flaminia, whom Boniface had finally sent back to Marie-Galante. Victoire insisted on preparing herself the didiko that Boniface took to his store on the quai Lardenoy for his ten o’clock break. It was her way of continuing to communicate with him. She knew he was fond of blan manjé koko and filled his meal tin with it. She then crossed the yard that was still in the shadows to the washroom reserved for the domestics.
The house on the rue de Nassau was one of the first to have running water, although other facilities were lacking for a long time to come. The WC, for example. Until 1920 the servants still decanted the contents of the tomas into the sanitary tubs during the predawn hours.
Victoire had always loved water. In La Pointe she took delight in discovering the rain. Not the quick shower immediately dried by the sun in Marie-Galante. But the never-ending rain that empties the streets; hammers on the zinc roofs; lashes against the persiennes, the verandas, the wrought iron of the balconies; refreshes the houses; and sprouts dreams in damp beds.
Naked, she would crouch against the rough wall of the stone basin above which dripped a tap. She would wash her long, straight hair that during the day she rolled into buns bristling with pins under her headtie. She would rub her body with a bunch of leaves, lingering over her private parts, surprised at the pleasure she felt. Already sovereign, the sun was climbing into the sky. She went back up to the room where Boniface, wide awake, still lazed in bed, and dressed for mass.
She then joined Anne-Marie at the foot of the stairs. The day they were to take communion they didn’t have breakfast. Other times they drank coffee.
Outside, the sun was shining with its artful eye. The day was just beginning.
SEVEN
January 15, 1891, was a date to remember.
First of all, Boniface Walberg Jr., born nine months after Jeanne, was christened in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul in front of an assembly of white Creoles. Boniface Jr., who had inherited his mother’s beauty, was nevertheless conceived under an unlucky star. His life went up in smoke like cigarette paper. Later in life, he married a white Creole from Dominica who died giving birth to their first child. Two years later he married a young girl who also died, from complications of an extrauterine pregnancy. After that he grew old on his own, sleeping with his maids.
Although I cannot prove it, I suspect he was strongly attracted to my mother, who returned the compliment without ever admitting it. He would have been only too keen to continue the tradition initiated by his father of sleeping with the Quidal women, but she refused. When she married my father, Boniface wrote to her as a frustrated lover accusing her of selling herself out to respectability. There was no doubt she didn’t love the man she took for a husband. I don’t know whether my mother ever answered his letter.
Second, on the occasion of this christening, Victoire’s talent as a cook was revealed to one and all.
Why then?
Probably because Anne-Marie had had enough of the hostility that surrounded her only friend yet spared her. She wanted to thumb her nose at the narrow-mindedness and arrogance of polite society.
“I’ll make them drool,” she was heard to say.
Among the papers my mother kept was issue 51 of L’Écho pointois, where right in the middle of a laudatory article appears the menu for this christening banquet, lyrically composed like a poem and probably sent to the newspaper by Anne-Marie:
“The occasion was held at the Walbergs, a Roman feast, the work of a genuine Amphitryon. Judge for yourselves:
Black pudding stuffed with crayfish
Whelks on a bed of wild spinach and dasheen leaves
Lobster with green mangoes
Pork caramelized with aged rum and ginger
Rabbit fricassee with Bourbon oranges
Chayote gratin
Golden apple gratin
Green banana gratin
Purslane salad
Three sorbets: coconut, passion fruit, and lime
Creole gateau fouetté
What bold imagination, what creativity presided over the elaboration of these delights! Dear reader, isn’t your mouth already watering?”
IN THOSE DAYS servants were passed around and exchanged like coins. They were borrowed and returned and never asked for their opinion or paid the slightest wage. From that day on Anne-Marie was bombarded with requests on visiting cards from the most eminent families. Could she loan Victoire for a christening, a birthday, or a wedding? Each time she had great pleasure replying in the negative. Since it is a well-known fact that desire is aroused if it is not reciprocated, Victoire’s reputation increased with every refusal. Those who had disparaged her the most, in a total about-face, coveted her and dreamed of appropriating her for themselves.
Victoire did not appreciate the fuss made of her person. She reluctantly confided in Anne-Marie the secret of her culinary compositions so that the latter could name them and have them printed. As with a writer whose editor decides the title, cover, and illustrations of her book, it was partly like being dispossessed of her creation. She would have preferred to keep it secret. For her, cooking in no way implied wreaking vengeance on a society that had never made room for her. More than music, where she never excelled at playing the guitar or the flute, it was her way of expressing herself, which was constantly repressed, prisoner of her illiteracy, her illegitimacy, her gender, and her station as a servant. When she invented seasonings or blended flavors, her personality was set free and blossomed. Cooking was her Père Labat rum, her ganja, her crack, her ecstasy. She dominated the world. For a time she became God. Once again, like a writer.
We can of course imagine Anne-Marie and Victoire in collusion, sharing everything between them, where Anne-Marie would be called to the rescue to add the finishing touches to Victoire’s culinary creation. But I refuse to believe anything of the sort. The creator is too jealous of her work to tolerate sharing. Victoire obeyed Anne-Marie grudgingly. Any information had to be dragged out of her.
Believing she was doing the right thing, Anne-Marie hired Francia, whose mission consisted of carrying out the unrewarding jobs that guarantee the perfection of a dish. But, as we said, Victoire did not tolerate any intruder in the temple where she officiated, and Francia didn’t last long.
Every Friday evening the double doors of the grand living room were opened wide and the guests would surge in. A string quartet would get them dancing the haute-taille and the réjane until suppertime. But all that interested them was eating. Once dinner was served they did their best not to make a dash for the table. I have also found issue 55 of L’Écho pointois, where the menu of one of these dinners is published:
Shredded saltfish, smoked herring, and fresh tomatoes
Crayfish calalu
Whole sea bream marinated in limes
Turtle fricassee from Les Saintes