Indian rice
Cush-cush yam gratin
Heart of cabbage tree salad
Chodo custard
Gateau fouetté
TO TELL THE truth, these weekly receptions, which were a pretext to show off gold chokers and the latest fashion from Paris, were an ordeal for Anne-Marie as well. The only avenging pleasure she felt was when the guests clapped their hands in frenzy, calling for Victoire. She would appear, swallowed up in a beige apron embroidered with a grill, an allusion to Saint Lawrence, patron saint of cooks, her cheeks flushed from the attention, then dart back into her refuge.
All this was also displeasing to Boniface, the least sociable of men, whose only subject of conversation was the price of a barrel of saltfish. Furthermore, we can assume that he was unhappy seeing his Victoire exhibited like a fairground attraction, gifted though she was. Consequently, he took his courage in both hands and informed Anne-Marie that it was causing too much expense. Just the drinks were exorbitant! He backed up his grievances by listing the cost of the brandy, aged rum, anisette from Bordeaux, and gin she gave to her guests. Cursing his miserliness, Anne-Marie, whose dowry, lest we forget, brought neither a bank account, property, nor country estate, had to accept.
The receptions came to an end. The operation, whose point was to crown Victoire with prestige, had failed. The recently created association of cooks did in fact offer her the honorary presidency. But she declined the offer, which was felt as an insult.
Pursuing my comparison, like many writers and artists, Victoire cared little for recognition by the Other. On the contrary, her shyness made her cherish her anonymity. Cooking was her way of satisfying an inner need.
IN THE MEANTIME, Jeanne was growing up.
She spoke Creole only with her mother, since Anne-Marie forbade speaking this jargon under her roof, even with the servants. They should be addressed in French. They would jabber as best they could in reply.
Ever since Jeanne was seven or eight, her skin had darkened to a deep brown, which was surprising if you think of Victoire’s color. Likewise, her hair, first curly then curled tight like an Arab shepherd’s, turned frizzy and kinky while remaining thick and long. In this color-obsessed society, did she suffer from being so different from her mother, from having come out the “wrong” color? I haven’t a clue. Throughout her life she made a point of despising the light-skinned peaux-chappées, rewriting in her manner the Song of Songs:
I am black and I am beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem,
Black as the tents of Kedar
As the curtains of Solomon.
Everyone concurred that she was cold, aloof, and not at all agreeable. She talked very little and smiled even less. Always impassive, she tolerated without blinking the strangest situations. At mealtimes, she would take her place at the oval table in the dining room that was covered in crystal, porcelain, and silverware. Meanwhile, her mother would be busy serving the meal before eating with her hands out of a calabash on her lap in the yard. Jeanne would wash in the children’s bathroom using perfumed soap, talcum powder, and lotion, whereas her mother rubbed her own body down with a clump of straw in the servants’ washhouse. Thanks to Anne-Marie, who once a quarter drew up a list of items to be ordered from the department stores in Paris, Jeanne wore dresses, shoes, and hats in the latest fashion, whereas her mother in headtie went barefoot or wore slippers and shapeless golle dresses. Since Anne-Marie disliked the promiscuity of school, although it was reserved for white children, the destitute widow of a former plantation owner, Mme. de Saunier du Val, came to teach Jeanne as well as Boniface Jr. the rudiments of reading and writing. What never ceases to surprise me is that mother and daughter didn’t make use of the occasion to share the same alphabet primer, Jeanne teaching Victoire the alphabet, both of them making mistakes, reciting and deciphering the letters together, and that Victoire remained illiterate as before. Was she ashamed of putting herself on the same level as her daughter? Was she afraid of Mme. Saunier du Val, hardly affable, like all those who have suffered a reversal of fortune? Whatever the case, she missed an opportunity to remedy a flaw that afflicted her throughout her life.
La bayè ba, sé là bèf ka janbé. There where the fence is down, the bull jumps through. Creole proverb.
The servants who feared and were jealous of Victoire did not dare take it out on her. Instead, they took their revenge on her little girl. Flaminia burnt her on the shoulder with an iron. She bore this mark all her life. Her relations with the rest of the household were not simple. With Boniface Jr. especially, they were always ambiguous. Sometimes capricious and cantankerous, he took the side of the servants, calling her an intruder and a bastard. Other times, he defended her against their sarcasm and stifled her with kisses and caresses. I don’t know how far they went. But I believe she was always wary of him as if he stood for danger. Since she did not have an ear for music, Anne-Marie chose to ignore her. Her own mother apparently had no time for her, too busy praying to God, listening to music, or cooking. The only person left who constantly showed her any affection was Bèf pòtoriko, although she never called him by any name other than Monsieur Walberg.
How I would like to include here a case of pedophilia! The white Creole swine abusing the little Negro girl, his servant’s daughter. Alas! Boniface Walberg was a modest man of integrity. He would enter Jeanne’s bedroom simply to read her a bedtime story and then make the sign of the cross on her forehead. He would spoil her as if she were his own daughter, returning home from the quai Lardenoy with his pockets filled with siwo candy, grabyo koko, and sweet corn kilibibi. At carnival time he would take her onto the Place de la Victoire to admire the masqueraders wearing toques. For her fifth birthday he gave her a marionette, a bwa bwa, dressed in a striped suit, wearing a crown, whose arms and legs moved when you pulled the strings. She began to hate him at the age of eleven because she discovered the nature of his relations with her mother. One stormy night, streaked with lightning and booming with the stentorian voice of thunder, she took refuge in the Regency room and found him asleep in Victoire’s arms with the sheet thrown back, exhibiting his monstrous private parts.
Soon everything changed. The ambient hypocrisy, harassment, and indifference no longer had any importance. Jeanne discovered what was going to matter in her life: her studies. Mme. de Saunier du Val, who had served her time, was replaced by M. Roumegoux, who came every morning to give private lessons. This illegitimate son of a white Creole and an Indian mother, a former seminarian, who had been terrified by the vows of chastity, had been hired by Anne-Marie on the basis of an advertisement in L’Écho pointois: “Young man who has studied at Pau, of illegitimate birth but belonging to a well-established and reputable family, seeks position in a family who would appreciate his extensive knowledge. Likes Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Offenbach. Untalented player of the violin, recorder, and lute.”
Since the nursery was no longer big enough, she fitted out a room with somewhat disparate furniture: a large writing desk with three drawers, a Directoire bookcase, and four or five chairs in the Louis XVI style. M. Roumegoux sat his bony buttocks in an armchair of the same style and the lesson began:
“The world is comprised of five continents: Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and Europe.
“Africa doesn’t count. Over there is a bunch of savages and cannibals who eat one another in a cooking pot. Asia and Oceania are not much better. The armies of Alexander the Great, who was the first to enter India, brought back stories of people who instead of burying their dead devoured them alive. There was a time when the Americas were mistaken for an earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden. Amerigo Vespucci writes in a famous letter dated 1500 to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici: ‘It is true that if there is an earthly paradise somewhere in this world, I believe it cannot be far from these lands.’