Jeanne began by answering in no uncertain terms that her mother was not a cook at his beck and call and consequently, she was free to do as she pleased. Then she suspected that this change of behavior could have some worrisome significance. She therefore dashed into the room where Victoire, who stayed in bed later and later, was still lounging between the sheets.
How thin she had gotten these last few months! My God, what had she been thinking? The person she loved most in the world, even though she expressed it so badly, was wasting away and she had not even noticed it! Her skin was diaphanous and her sticky, patchy hair floated like dead seaweed over her shoulders. All the love she felt toward her surged back to her heart, flooding her with its burning wave. She sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand.
“Ka ki ni?” she asked softly.
What was wrong? Victoire shrugged her shoulders and played down her condition.
She was tired, that’s all. A weariness that tied her down from morning till night. She had lost all willpower. If she were to take her own advice, she wouldn’t get out of bed the entire day. Yet she categorically refused to send for the doctor. What she needed was rest. Nothing but rest. And more rest.
Jeanne was perspicacious enough to clearly see the first signs of depression, even though she refused to acknowledge the cause. Constantly accused, victimized, bullied, and prevented from enjoying what in Victoire’s own eyes could have lit up her life — love, friendship, and remembrance of lost ones — Victoire was losing her footing. With the energy she was known for, Jeanne undertook to care for her mother. In order to do so, she established a drastic set of rules. She gave orders to the servants that the children were not to disturb Victoire. Especially Auguste, to whom Victoire gave everything he wanted. The result was that she made two people unhappy instead of one. Deprived of his grandmother, poor pasty-faced Auguste whimpered from morning to night and began to regress. He antagonized the servants, who called him all sorts of names:
“Tèbè! Kouyon! Sòti là!”
They reserved their adoration for Jean, the little rascal, who walked, stumbled, fell, and bruised himself all over, treating his brother with the contempt that God reserves for inferior creatures.
Before leaving for the Dubouchage school, Jeanne made sure that Victoire’s breakfast tray was well stocked with coffee, coconut cassava cakes bought straight from a shop in the outlying district, soft-boiled eggs, and fresh fruit. Several times during the course of the morning she was tempted to leave the class and run back to the rue de Condé. Her sense of duty forbade it and she dispatched two trusted pupils who came back with a detailed report.
“Blood pressure 110 over 80, miss.”
“She hasn’t got a temperature, miss. It’s 98.6 Fahrenheit.”
When she came home for lunch she expected to find Victoire in her rocking chair, her back resting on a pile of cushions. Forbidding her to confront the perils of the stairs, she had Victoire’s meals sent up to her. Then she enclosed her under her mosquito net for a long siesta. So as to occupy her, she brought her piles of illustrated albums, which Victoire looked at with Auguste, who managed to slip in and join her. Pictures illustrating the tales of Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault. She took pity on the little match girl and admired Karen’s red shoes, which reminded her of Thérèse Jovial’s present. But the picture she preferred above all was the wolf disguised as the grandmother in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Auguste and she reveled in its big gleaming eyes behind spectacles, its large pointy ears under its nightcap, and its sharp teeth sticking out of its mouth. There was only one point on which Jeanne never managed to impose her will. Around four in the afternoon, Victoire flouted all restraints, got dressed, and, as best she could, dragged herself to Anne-Marie on the Place de la Victoire as if it were a salutary recreation.
Times had changed. As a result of deep budgetary cuts, there were no more municipal concerts. Only the bands from the ocean liners moored at quay performed from time to time. The one from an Italian ship, the SS Stromboli, gave a performance of The Barber of Seville in magnificent costumes.
Yet in the eyes of Victoire, Anne-Marie, who could no longer fit into her dresses, was still just as entertaining as ever. She never stopped talking about her children. A certain Maximilien du Veuzit, a lad of seventeen, the only son of a white Creole from the region of Saint-Claude, who had had the rich idea of exchanging his coffee plantations for banana groves, had noticed Valérie-Anne at an afternoon birthday party and ever since had been languishing for her. In order to leave her mother and the rue de Nassau, Valérie-Anne would have given herself to the devil in person if he had wanted her. Consequently, she too claimed to be lovesick.
Should she let them get married?
Without stopping, Anne-Marie became venomous.
“Give me some news about Jeanne.”
She had added some new grievances. Apparently she too had frequented Antoine Deligny’s spiritualism séances. Not to get in touch with Boniface, whom she had seen enough of while he was alive, but to communicate with her mother and above all her beloved Etienne, who had passed away accidentally the year before. She had been outraged by Jeanne’s accusations. Especially the way she had treated the gendarme. According to her, Jeanne had sent a series of letters denouncing him to the assistant governor general, which accounted for his expulsion from the colony. This seems to me most unlikely. At the time, Jeanne had no access to colonial administration circles. I would even say that as an educated black woman she was automatically suspect. The French authorities had not yet cataloged her among the totally inoffensive, right-thinking personalities whom they showered with republican decorations such as the Palmes Académiques, the Ordre du Mérite Social, and, what was the crowning achievement for my father, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. Yet as I have said, I have not managed to shed any light on this mysterious affair. Anything, therefore, is possible.
Given her state of health, Anne-Marie would accompany Victoire back to the corner of the rue de Condé and the rue de la Liberté, but not a step farther. She would only set foot in Jeanne’s house once Victoire was really sick and bedridden.
Because of this drastic agenda, life on the rue de Condé became even less enjoyable. In the evening, the children, educated as Europeans, were sent to bed very early. The mabos left as early as six in the evening and the servants a little later, after they had served supper. Auguste would then read his newspapers, with a preference for Le Nouvelliste and its editorials. Sitting opposite him, Jeanne would prepare her lessons and begin carefully correcting the pile of homework. Around nine o’clock she would go up to tuck in her mother, who was listening to records on her gramophone, a present from Boniface. It took all her self-control not to burst into tears and shower her with kisses on seeing how frail her mother had become. Instead, she turned down the lamp on the bedside table, for economy’s sake. Shadows stretched over the walls and the tropical night, the color of Indian ink, took possession of the room. Victoire often listened to her records far into the night. She was oblivious to the fact that the sounds carried on the night air and seeped through the persiennes shutters amidst the silence of the street.