Creole, he seemed to indicate, is our mother tongue, our common link. Let us be proud of it.
Those gathered for this meal didn’t have much in common. Fortunately, except for Anne-Marie, who was never at a loss for words, Auguste was capable of talking for two, three, or even four. This feature of his character became increasingly unbearable for Jeanne as she herself became gradually more taciturn and haughty. He spouted anecdote upon anecdote. He told the story, for instance, of how as a student at the Lycée Carnot in 1889 he had been sent to Paris with other Guadeloupeans and Martinicans to visit the Universal Exhibition. He described the amazement of the Parisians when they entered a café or restaurant. How certain customers in a panic rushed for the door. Everyone noisily expressed their astonishment that they knew how to handle a knife and fork. Children cried when approached. Others were bolder and came and rubbed their cheeks to see if the color rubbed off. There were happier moments in the evenings when they went and danced the beguine wabap in the Paris dives. His look of nostalgia gave the impression there were other moments of pleasure that he did not mention out of respect for Jeanne. Anne-Marie, who still harbored the regret in her heart of not having completed the years at the conservatoire in Boulogne, inquired about his thoughts on the City of Light. He made a face.
“You know what Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus said about it?”
Anne-Marie and Boniface confessed their ignorance.
“But you know who Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus was, don’t you?” he asked with a sudden insolence, staring at them with his sparkling eyes.
How could Anne-Marie and Boniface not know that his Terrible Troisième party had sounded the death knell of the white and mulatto supremacy in Guadeloupe? They stammered a timid yes.
“He said,” Auguste declared, “that Paris was too cold and the streets were too busy.”
Thereupon he burst out laughing amid the terrified silence at the mention of the name of Légitimus. This was the only false note, albeit minor, we admit, during the entire meal.
The servants then served coffee and cognac in the back garden. Boniface, who had always had a liking for botany, had planted some Tristellateia australasiae, whose glowing yellow flowers looked like a multitude of tiny suns.
FIFTEEN
Auguste and Jeanne were married on September 12, 1910, two weeks before the new school term started. They postponed their honeymoon until the following year, when they planned to visit Paris on a grand scale during the long vacation.
Stubborn as always, confident, she believed, in her right as a benefactor, Anne-Marie took Valérie-Anne by the hand and insisted on going to the wedding ceremony at the new town hall, which had just moved into a lovely eighteenth-century building on the Grand-Rue. Once there, however, she almost turned around and went back, amazed at all these Negro men and women dressed in the latest fashion, speaking French French and making the mother and daughter feel that their presence was out of place. Filled with a kind of terror, she wondered where she could have been when this tsunami had battered the shores of the island. Did she still have a place here? The homily of the deputy mayor, he too a jet-black Negro, frightened her even more. Looking her straight in the eye, he spoke of the time that was coming when the color of the skin would be nothing more than a shadow of the past. White or light skin no longer signified ipso facto accession to privilege.
“That time is over and definitely over,” he thundered.
She clutched Valérie-Anne’s hand — Valérie-Anne was equally scared — to give herself a semblance of composure. She was so shaken that back home on the rue de Nassau she went to bed with a migraine and did not attend the religious ceremony at the cathedral. Auguste, though a Freemason true to Légitimus, agreed to the church ceremony to please Jeanne, who would not have accepted a civil wedding. For the reception, miscalculating the extent to which Jeanne was determined to turn her back on her former life, Anne-Marie had offered the house on the rue de Nassau, which with its series of salons would have made a perfect setting. Jeanne hadn’t even taken the trouble to reply. She chose the Grand Hotel des Antilles, which had just opened its doors. This magnificent establishment appeared to be the sign of things to come. It was situated at the corner of the rue Sadi-Carnot and the rue Schoelcher. Telephone and running water in every room, it publicized. Access to the salons was through a garden where Chinese fan palms, introduced at great cost, and purple flower crape myrtle grew. The salons themselves were decorated with an array of potted palms and ixoras.
For the first time Victoire wore a European-style dress. A drape of prune-colored crepe de Chine that Jeanne had ordered from a catalog at La Samaritaine in Paris. She had to have it altered by a dressmaker, since Victoire was so small and slender. Such finery showed off her beauty: an unusual beauty. An insidious beauty that the eye did not see at first. A beauty spoiled by the lack of confidence in herself, the conviction of her unworthiness, and the awkwardness that comes with it. People who vainly tried to converse with her whispered that she could have borrowed a little assurance from her daughter, who with enough to spare had made herself obnoxious. What they didn’t know was that outwardly so different, Victoire and Jeanne were identical. Like mother, like daughter. Both tormented souls scared stiff of their surroundings.
Victoire would have liked to proclaim her love for her daughter in the only way she was capable of — by preparing a meal more extravagant than that of the engagement. A meal where she could display her treasure chest of inventions. The menu was there in her head like the draft of a novel that will testify to the genius of its author. But Jeanne did not want to treat her mother like a servant. She insisted on hiring a caterer by the name of Soudon who dispatched a maître d’ and a dozen waiters in white starched uniforms. She sat Victoire in the middle of the room like an Akan queen mother in a magnificent armchair. All that was missing was the parasol over her head.
Victoire felt extremely ill at ease with all these eyes on her. Like an adulterous woman, she waited to be stoned. Among the guests, nobody had committed a sin like hers.
The guests whirled around to the sound and rhythm of the waltzes from Paris performed by an orchestra that serenaded as best it could. At eleven forty-five it stopped playing. The dancers made a circle around Auguste and Jeanne. Auguste then made a speech. First of all he paid homage to his mother, who had not lived to see this day. Then he turned to his mother-in-law, who had fashioned the jewel of which he, the most fortunate of men, was taking possession. He made the mistake of using the same words to celebrate both women: valiant, feisty, belligerent, and pillars of society. The fabrication was obvious. Then the violinists played the habanera from Carmen:
L’amour est un oiseau rebelle,