“I hate them! I hate them!”
The only distraction.
Because they kept on meeting them in front of the church, before or after mass, the Walbergs discovered they were related to the Rueil-Bonfils, owners of the Roujol factory on the outskirts of Petit-Bourg. This factory is now defunct. When I was a child it still existed but already looked a ruin. I often cycled over there. I can remember its blackened, dilapidated silhouette, a wreck washed up in the midst of an ocean of cane fields.
One Sunday, the Rueil-Bonfils invited the Walbergs for lunch in their opulent house beside the factory, and it soon became a ritual. The Rueil-Bonfils tribe could easily have figured in a French sitcom: the mustached grandfather in a wheelchair; the grandmother, hale and hearty, also with a mustache; an aunt, an old maid, with dangling ringlets held in place by a black velvet ribbon; a libidinous uncle, mentally handicapped, who exposed himself to little boys; the dignified father; the mother, a platinum blonde; a dozen children, including a little blind girl who played the piano four-handed with her twin brother. They would all sit down together after mass. As soon as Victoire arrived, she would docilely tie on an apron and join the other servants around the charcoal burners in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Jeanne would go and sit with the visitors in the drawing room or in the garden, weather permitting. With her black skin, she was looked upon as a curiosity by the Rueil-Bonfils, who practically blamed the Walbergs for treating her as an equal. She had to confront a barrage of questions that were a mixture of paternalism, hypocrisy, and racism.
So she was at boarding school at Versailles! And studying for her elementary school certificate?
No! Studying for the superior school certificate!
And she studied Latin as well?
Yes, she knew a little Latin.
So she was counting on becoming an elementary school teacher? What a wonderful profession!
Good Lord, the Negroes have come a long way since they arrived from Africa, beasts of burden under the whip! We may very well ask ourselves, however, whether they have really evolved. Still as lazy, depraved, and calculating. On this subject, the Rueil-Bonfils kept reeling off a never-ending stock of stories about the behavior of their factory workers.
One day, Félicité, who liked to think she knew a thing or two about literature, with a spiteful smile offered Jeanne a short novel by Anaïs Ségalas, her idol, called Tales of the Antilles: The Forest of La Soufrière. Since by an amusing coincidence I had been awarded the Anaïs Ségalas Prize by the Académie Française for one of my books, Tree of Life, I made inquiries about this writer and discovered she was a Creole from Saint-Domingue who in her time had enjoyed a certain reputation. I even read her book reedited by L’Harmattan. It’s a worthless pack of racist ideas of that time, curiously combined with an abolitionist rehash. Here is an extract: “Jupiter must have been about thirty; he was a Negro of African race of the finest black or rather the ugliest. He was of average height, strong and energetic. Like all Negroes his feet were deformed and extended behind and in front of his shinbone. His hair was woolly. The bottom of his face stretched out like a muzzle.”
Did Félicité intend to hurt Jeanne, whose intelligence we would have thought was above such stupidity? In any case, she hit her mark and my mother suffered enormously. In fact, she never stopped suffering. At mealtimes, when Victoire served up culinary delights of her invention, a capon with breadnuts, for example, she received an ovation and a heap of praise that implied she at least knew her place. Not like some people. Jeanne never stopped asking herself whether she ought not to make a scene, stand up, and leave. I do believe that what consequently came to be known as her “impossible nature” was born from having suffered her humiliation in silence out of respect for her mother. The worst of it all, however, was that Aymeric Rueil-Bonfils was competing with Boniface Jr. He insisted on openly courting her, encouraged by the entire family, according to him. She in fact sensed that the family would have applauded if she had been generous with her favors, just as Victoire had been generous with Boniface, thus regaining her true vocation.
All this suddenly came to an end.
One day out of the blue, Anne-Marie declared she didn’t like Félicité Rueil-Bonfils, who knew nothing about music. In fact, all she talked about were her books and her simple or double flowering gardenias. Valérie-Anne whimpered because the children of her own age poked fun at her pilosity and called her Red Head. Since Boniface Jr. mistakenly imagined that Jeanne preferred Aymeric, he decided Aymeric was one hell of a joker. Aymeric boasted that his mare Torride always came first at the races and won him sums obviously multiplied by ten. Only Boniface Sr. could possibly like the company of Amédée Sr. Knowing he was in desperate straits, riddled with debts and vainly seeking a buyer for the factory, reassured him in his conviction that trade was a better choice than sugar.
Finally, the loathsome holidays drew to an end. The Walbergs left for La Pointe. Jeanne for Versailles. This time she did exactly as she pleased and chose the steamer that only took six and a half hours, stopping at Sainte-Rose, Deshaies, and Pointe-Noire.
For two years Victoire didn’t visit her. Only their letters provided a semblance of communication between them. During those years Jeanne worked herself to death and passed her school certificate with the grade “Very Good” plus “Congratulations from the Jury,” which opened the doors to the teaching profession. But that wasn’t enough for her. In a long, detailed epistle she explained that she would have to continue studying at Versailles for another year. This long separation without the holidays in Vernou, since Jeanne regularly taught remedial classes during the long vacation, was extremely damaging for the relations between mother and daughter. Victoire, feeling abandoned, withdrew further into herself, cooking to excess. At that time when refrigeration did not exist, you couldn’t keep food for more than a day or two. Délia and Maby distributed the leftovers to the families of the needy maléré, carefully selected for their good behavior and their devotion to God. Boniface, so particular about waste, did not protest. Everything his Victoire did was right. She drew even closer to Anne-Marie, who had no need for an explanation, since she could read her like an open book, and thus played certain pieces especially for her. The afternoon sessions therefore changed. Victoire no longer fiddled on her guitar or practiced on her flute. With eyes closed, sitting in her rocking chair, she listened. At times, painful sighs welled up in her breast and tears rolled down her cheeks. Yet Anne-Marie never intervened with questions or words of consolation. She left it up to the music to do its work.
TWELVE