Victoire

by Maryse Conde

  At this time, the very poorest were preoccupied with an education. Free schooling for all had been one of Monsieur Schoelcher’s promises, which they planned on keeping. The Brothers of the Christian Doctrine of Ploërmel had opened a school in Les Basses, where the airport now stands. Apparently, Caldonia didn’t think for one moment of enrolling Victoire. No more than she did her younger children. As a result, my grandmother never learned to read or write. She never learned to speak French correctly, and so as not to shock her daughter’s acquaintances, she kept a stubborn silence under all circumstances.

  The only schooling she received—but can we really call it schooling?—was religious. Aurora Quidal taught catechism in her wattle cabin. Sitting in a circle, the children would chant, oddly alternating phrases in Creole and in French.

  Ka sa yé sa: lanfé?

  One God in three distinct persons.

  Ki jan nou pé vinn pli bon.

  Eat and drink. This is my body.

  Throughout her life, Victoire, even though she never spoke of it, remembered her childhood as a paradise lost. It appears, however, that it was mostly dull, hardly entertaining, and darkened by poverty, which was the lot of the laboring classes.

  The day would begin with the white light of dawn seeping through the commissures of the cabin’s only window. Oraison and Elie, up in the dark since three in the morning, prepared a billy can of food, then went to join Oraison’s brother before setting off to sea in the boat christened Ezékiel. One hour later Caldonia ventured out of doors. She emptied the toma of the night’s urine, rinsed out her mouth, and said her prayers: a dozen Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. She lit the fire in the hearth, three rocks arranged in a triangle, and while the water was boiling, she would shake Lourdes, the youngest, to take Théodora the cow to the pond, and then woke Félix and Chrysostome.

  Breakfast, if we dare call it that, was quickly expedited. Mother and children dipped their stale slice of kassav in some weak tchòlòlò coffee. Depending on the time of year, Félix and Chrysostome would go down to the cane fields or hoe the family’s Creole vegetable garden while Lourdes, in charge of the household chores, would sweep the yard with a palm broom. Finally, Caldonia would enter the room where Victoire was sleeping. Then followed a long cuddling session that would have surprised a good many people. Where did Caldonia get this rosary of sweet talk from? These loving caresses? This fondling? She would carry Victoire to the water barrel. The water was cold. The little girl would whimper while her grandmother rubbed her dry and slipped on cotton panties that couldn’t hide her protruding belly button. Then she did her hair. Victoire only found consolation once she had been given her cereal flavored with cinnamon and sweetened with wild honey. Then Caldonia would gather up the bundles of dirty washing collected from the town during the week. Ever since the time of the great plantation houses, the women in her family had been washerwomen, and they were proud of this skill that placed them above the common lot. Finally, she set off for the washhouse.

  This washhouse, the one at La Croix, no longer exists today. It was built over a spring, now dried up, but once bubbling and joyful, called Espiritu. A dozen washerwomen would be up to their thighs in the water. There would be a babble of creole, laughter and cries amid the slap and beating of clothes mingled with the smell of savon de Marseille and the Sainte-Croix eau de Javel. For Caldonia, Victoire was the most adorable little girl in the world, a gift from the Good Lord who had been meager in His generosity. A photo that no longer exists today or perhaps never existed, but that I can re-create, does not allow us to throw further light on the matter.

  It wasn’t every day you had your portrait taken at La Treille. The photographer came from La Pointe with his magic box, his plates and black cloth. Oraison was dressed in his best suit. Black striped serge trousers. Jacket. Even a waistcoat. Bare headed. His badly combed mop of hair gives the final touch to his rustic look. Standing beside him, Caldonia is wearing her best Creole costume. Her madras headtie seems to me to be tied somewhat curiously. Its diagonal pleats are tight-fitting like a bonnet. The children are lined up in a row in front of the couple. In the center Victoire stands out like a chick among a brood of ducklings.

  For most people Victoire was scary, with her skin too white and her eyes too light. A superstition coming from Nan-Guinnin claims that the souls of the dead, if they are lucky, manage to escape from the jars where they are held captive and slip into the bodies of children. Consequently, they reacquire the joy of living. This must have been the case for Victoire. She was one of the walking dead, a zombie. Sometimes she would grab a handful of guinea grass and chew on it. Most of the time her hands lay palms-up on her lap while she stared straight in front of her.

  Others were convinced she was no less than Ti-Sapoti: that so-called orphan who haunts the roadside at night, dragging the passerby, who has the misfortune to stop and show compassion, into unknown regions. An ba la tè? No one knows where.

  “Ka ou ka fé là, ti-doudou an mwwen?”

  “What am I doing here?” Ti-Sapoti, dries his tears and becomes a predator.

  When Caldonia had finished her washing, she crammed a bakoua hat onto Victoire and returned to La Treille. Lourdes had already put the root vegetables to boil and thrown in a hot pepper and a pig’s tail. They would always eat in silence. After lunch, Caldonia pounded her starch, carefully grinding the lumps. Then she would starch her washing and hang it out to dry. After that, usually flanked by Victoire, she would go down to the shore and wait for Oraison’s return. If she didn’t immediately take charge of the proceeds from the fish he had caught, he would distribute three-quarters of the money to his string of girlfriends and drink the remainder with his banélo of buddies. Each time, this return to land was a ritual. Oraison’s boat came into view on the horizon, made straight for the beach, then seemed to change its mind and head out for the open sea. Making a final skillful sweep, it would turn back toward the shore. It was then that the fishermen would jump into the waves and drag the boat behind them like a reluctant, untamed animal.

  There came a softness in the evening air. The landscape imitated a picture postcard.

  The sun drowned itself over by Dominica. With the irons laid on the burning coals of an outside stove, Caldonia would iron her washing after having smoothed it with candle wax. Oraison would be sucking on his pipe, while mending the mesh on his fish trap. Lourdes was simmering the thick soup. Félix and Chrysostome would be telling stories while roasting corn cobs that Victoire nibbled on. Oraison would often join in the conversation and come out with one of his half-invented stories that he was so good at.

  Once, according to him, an orca had dragged in its wake the Ezékiel all the way to Antigua. Together with his brother and son, he had crossed the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin, leaving behind them the white sand beaches of Saint-François. Suddenly the animal disappeared. However hard they scrutinized the deep blue surrounding them, all they could see were fishing boats like theirs. Another time they had passed a floating wreck of a ship loaded with men with slit eyes, lemon-colored skin, and black hair who pointed to them, babbling in a strange tongue. In the time it took to get their senses back, the ship had vanished. And then once, when they were far out in the ocean, they saw the water rise up like a mountain. The boat began to dance from one crest of a wave to the next. A few yards distant, a genuine wall of water was unfurling.

  “An mwé!” they had shouted in despair.

  Suddenly, as if by magic, the wall collapsed in a haze of drops and everything was back to normal, while the waves came to die softly on a line of reefs.

  A pa jé! I’m not lying, the sea plays you some of the most incredible tricks!

  TWO

  Once a month Caldonia, loaded with bundles of leaves, scrubbing brushes, and basins, rounded off her meager receipts from washing and fishing by scrubbing the floors of the mayor, Fulgence Jovial. He was her cousin twice removed, but he preferred to boast of his more flattering relationship to Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus,
the first black man to have entered the political arena. He had been his right-hand man at Grand Bourg and, like him, proclaimed himself “Grand Nègre,” an expression that has nothing to do with money but implies intellectual and human values, self-pride, respect, and social esteem.

  After having knocked up half the girls who were at an age to be impregnated on the galette of Marie-Galante, Fulgence Jovial mended his ways and married at the town hall and church Gaëtane Sébéloué, the illegitimate daughter of a bastard mistress of a wealthy owner of a sugar plantation. Thanks to the estate of his wife, he could boast of owning the most precious of mahogany furniture in his upstairs-downstairs house. Like a guide in a museum, he would walk his visitors through one room after another, having them admire the wardrobes from Nantes, the chests of drawers, the consoles, and above all the magnificent sideboards.

  When Caldonia went to work for the Jovials, she entrusted Victoire to her sister, a trinket seller at the market. On this particular day, she made an exception because for once Thérèse was in Grand Bourg. The Jovial couple had in fact an only daughter, Thérèse, whom they idolized. Going against Fulgence’s wishes, who considered music frivolous and dreamed of her becoming a doctor, Thérèse was studying piano in Cuba under the great Marista Nueva Concepción de la Cruz and only returned once or twice a year to visit her parents. A few years earlier she had held Victoire at the church font, as she did dozens of children every time she came back to Marie-Galante. In our islands the godmother is chosen wisely; we can even say it’s a calculated choice. She is a surrogate mother. Well-off, even very wealthy, she must be able to give her godson or goddaughter everything the biological mother cannot. And she should be capable of taking over in the event of death. Thérèse cared little for the numerous children she was supposed to have in her charge. But she had a particular liking for Victoire. Was it because of her unusual physique? She never forgot to bring her back a recuerdo de Cuba, however small it might be.

  On this particular day, she had her come up to her room, a bonbonnière filled with her childhood toys: celluloid and porcelain dolls, cuddly teddy bears, wooden puppets, and a rocking horse. Then she placed a 78 record on the phonograph. As soon as the music started, Victoire drew close to the gramophone to touch it. She remained rooted to the spot, fascinated by the slow rotation of the record. When the melody stopped, she who was usually so gentle began to stamp her feet:

  “Mizik! Mizik!”

  Amused, Thérèse started up the phonograph again and the morning was spent listening to one record after another. At one o’clock, when Caldonia came up to fetch her, Victoire refused to go with her. Quite unusual for her, she squirmed and sobbed enough to break your heart all the way to La Treille, constantly murmuring the magic word:

  “Mizik!”

  How I would like to discover the melodies that gave Victoire these first emotions!

  I know that Thérèse’s ambition was to become a concert pianist. But fate decided otherwise. After her love life had been wrecked, she retired to France, where she sank into oblivion. What was she listening to that morning? Was it a suite for piano by Isaac Albéniz, who was to become her favorite composer? Was it a beguine or a bèlè from Martinique? Was it one of those Neapolitan rondos so dear to Nueva Concepción?

  We shall never know.

  What we do know is that from that day onward, her interest grew for this atypical goddaughter, who, strangely enough, seemed to share her musical tastes and who was so different from the local bitako bumpkins. She placed her under the formal protection of Gaëtane, making her mother swear that she would take care of Victoire’s well-being. In short, Thérèse first treated Victoire with great indulgence, then later cast her as the very picture of deceitfulness.

  But let us not get ahead in our story.

  CALDONIA NEVER LEFT La Treille. The island where she was born and where she would die fully satisfied her. She therefore instructed her sister, who went to La Pointe once a month, to procure a music box. The sister bought from Abel Lhullier, rue Frébault, a small metal trapezoid box painted in white and decorated with a double frieze of blue flowers. When you turned the handle as far as it would go, it emitted a metallic melody: the habanera from Carmen by Bizet:

  L’amour est un oiseau rebelle

  This quaint object was found among my mother’s personal belongings together with jewel boxes, mother-of-pearl fans, letters, and bills. It was an intriguing piece. Nobody could understand where it came from.

  Victoire now possessed more than a toy: a fetish. From morning to night she would listen to her music box, singing softly to herself. She even slept with it. Sometimes, Lourdes teased her by hiding it. She would then cry so hard that Caldonia became angry and laid into Lourdes with all her might.

  Victoire’s early years were uneventful. I can only point to one incident that people called supernatural. It happened when she reached seven or eight in the middle of Lent during the month of March or April.

  One afternoon, Caldonia had left Victoire asleep and gone down to watch over Oraison’s sale of fish. When she got back there was no sign of Victoire in her kabann. Nobody answered her calls. Completely beside herself, she began by beating Félix, Chrysostome, and Lourdes for not watching her. Then the entire family set off in a search party, running along every path and track.

  In fact, where was there to go?

  In those days there were no “ogres” in Marie-Galante feeding on young flesh. Child molesters and kidnappers were unknown. There were no wooded spots on the island where a foolhardy child could play in all innocence. Nothing but the infinite glare of a jailer-sun where stunted savannas alternated with cane fields. The harvest had taken place three months earlier, but the young cane stalks were already budding and impenetrable. Who would ever dream of penetrating their dense foliage?

  An idea flashed across Caldonia’s mind like a poisoned arrow: the ponds, what about all those ponds on the flat island? She began to run from one to another, frightening the goats and the chameleons sleeping among the loose stones. Félix ran to warn his father, who was downing neat rum punches one after another at the Keep on Pouring rum store, to tell him that the little girl had disappeared. He stood up in a daze, his mind blurred by alcohol but conscious of the enormity of the misfortune, and joined the search party. As night fell, they lit chaltounés and the torches studded the dark like large glowing eyes.

  Around eleven in the evening some of them gave up, thinking to themselves that Victoire had gone back home to hell. They found her in the graveyard at La Ramée, two miles from La Treille. La Ramée is a delightful graveyard by the sea where the dead rest wrapped in the blue linen shroud of the ocean. Each grave is marked with a border of conch shells. Victoire was asleep on her mother’s grave, under the cross that bore the clumsy lettering:

  ELIETTE QUIDAL

  PASSED AWAY IN HER FOURTEENTH YEAR

  God, how our mothers die young!

  Awakened without a word, Victoire slipped her hand into Caldonia’s and trotted off beside her. She never told anybody what had happened that evening. Caldonia plied her with questions: How did she manage to cover such a distance? Had someone guided her? If she had found the way all by herself, then she must have seen it in a dream. Victoire didn’t say a word and Caldonia worried herself sick. Was it a sign that her mother was calling for her and that her short time on earth was drawing to a close? Yet the year ended and others followed. Without incident.

  When Victoire was ten she passed her catechism exam after two attempts. She could therefore take her first communion. First communion has the formality of a wedding and the gravity of a rite of passage. It takes place one Sunday morning at the time of high mass. A procession of children dressed in identical white albs, in order to eliminate any discrimination, with fingers joined together on mother-of-pearl rosaries and the girls wearing crowns of artificial flowers in their hair, enter the church singing. They walk up to the altar in unison. Then the families go to enormous trouble to make sure there is the
chodo cake at the reception.

  A few months later Gaëtane Jovial asked Caldonia if Victoire could come and help her servant Danila. Caldonia hesitated before giving her approval. Not because there was no offer of wages. This was usual for this type of restavek job. The truth was that ever since the unexplained incident at the graveyard, she didn’t like to be separated from her granddaughter. Victoire followed her everywhere, silently losing herself in the shadow of her ample silhouette. She finally accepted because she thought the child would gain experience and an education. Gaëtane, in fact, was simply and reluctantly obeying Thérèse, who urged her to do so in all her letters. Like Danila, she attached little importance to Victoire. Like the people at La Treille, both of them must have been scared of her. Danila managed the amazing feat of never saying a word to her during all those years of cohabitation, except for giving her orders:

  “Fô ou fè . . .”

  “Pa obliyé . . .”

  “Atansyon!”

  In fact, Victoire was treated like a pariah, like a slave at the Jovials. Never like a relative, not even a poor or disreputable one.

  Sweep, dust, scrub the floor, beat the rugs, wax the furniture, shine the silverware, wash the sheets, boil and starch them with the shirts and the petticoats, as well as help in the kitchen—such was her lot. Every morning she started work at six and ended her day at seven, even eight. She would walk back to La Treille in the dark and, exhausted, slip into Caldonia’s bed (Caldonia had now been totally abandoned by Oraison). Curled up against her grandmother, she pretended not to hear the roar of the wind over the sea, the gallop of the three-legged horse, the Bête à Man Ibè, around the cabin and the wails of all those soukouyans scouring the countryside, thirsting for the blood of humans. To reassure her, her grandmother would tell her stories or hum songs. The little girl especially liked a cane-cutter’s song: