Dance on the Volcano

by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

  Minette, however, said nothing. She had understood not only the meaning of the passages, but also that Joseph, carried away by his unrealizable ideals, was consoling himself reading revolutionary books.

  “Tell me about Bossuet,” she said sweetly.

  “He was a priest.”

  Then she made a great gesture of surprise.

  “A priest!”…

  They looked at one another in silence. Then Joseph began laughing. He seemed rejuvenated, happy, relaxed. He had closed himself up for three days at Louise Rasteau’s house with The Sermons! And for three days he had been addressing an imaginary crowd, with sweeping gestures of the arms and a tone of voice full of moving persuasion. Once he found himself alone with Minette, he told her that he had met a Jesuit at Labadie’s house who, on learning what vocation was calling him, had taken an old book out of his cassock and said:

  “Because the laws of this country designate the servitors of God by the color of their blood, read this my son and, without cassock and without the priesthood, plead your people’s cause.”

  “I shut myself up in Louise’s house for three days. I know the book more or less by heart. There are spots where the prose is sublime…”

  He sighed and bent down toward Minette.

  “Ah! If only I could speak to my brothers. If I could gather them all together, my words would reach every last one of them.”

  Joseph’s exaltation dazzled Minette. Never had she seen him as impatient, as boldly carried away by his ideals.

  “How wonderful it must be to feel a miracle emerge from a crowd one has galvanized oneself. To watch it become conscious of itself and to be able then to say, ‘This is the work of God having chosen me to enlighten them.’ ”

  It was seven o’clock. Jasmine immediately called for Minette.

  When Minette left the back courtyard, she found the front room bustling with people. Men, women, and children from the neighborhood were there, all waiting to escort her to the Comédie.

  An hour later, perfectly elegant in her white and gold velvet dress, she arrived at the Comédie. She noticed that Goulard was avoiding her. Ever since that day she had agreed to get into the planter’s coach, Goulard had not been the same. He avoided looking at her, or being alone with her – even speaking to her. Saint-Martin had lost his exaggeratedly polite attitude and impertinently undressed her with his eyes. In that, too, she noted another sort of injustice – the injustice of gossip that condemns based on appearances without seeking the truth of things.

  She was hurt. That Claude Goulard and Saint-Martin, up to that point so affectionate and respectful, would so abruptly change their attitude toward her without even according her the benefit of the doubt proved to her that they had only ever held her in the lowest esteem. The natural opinion of a white person with respect to any person of color, she told herself, and the thought made her bitter. Well, too bad for them. I’m not their slave. The Acquaires and Magdeleine Brousse welcomed her graciously. Mme Tessyre, obliged to perform that evening despite her sorrow, wiped away furtive tears that everyone did his or her best not to see, so as not to be too moved. Only Saint-Martin, as he passed near her, pinched her cheek in a gesture that tried to be brusque, but that was full of compassion.

  Macarty stopped near Minette. His hands on his hips, he examined her costume and, staring at her jewels with a disapproving gaze said:

  “Be prepared to read very nasty things in tomorrow’s paper. You’re too beautiful and you’re wearing too many jewels.”

  Minette’s lips tightened in annoyance:

  “My jewels are fake…”

  “Your beauty enhances their value and makes them look real.”

  He took her hand and made her turn around as he whistled knowingly.

  Saint-Martin shouted:

  “It’s time to go onstage. Gather round, gather round. The Prince is in the Governor’s box. Macarty – onstage for the opening of the curtains. Get ready!…”

  Three warning claps and the curtains parted. For a moment, the spectators were truly transported to Paris, and a great pride came over them all, producing a wave of enthusiasm that exploded in a long round of applause.

  Macarty waved, opened his arms wide to call for silence, and thanked Prince William for having honored them with his presence. The orchestra then played a British fanfare, for which everyone rose and cheered with cries of “Long live His Majesty, King of England! Long live His Majesty, King of France!”

  When Minette entered the stage, she was obliged to stay silent for a long moment, so prolonged was the applause that welcomed her. She took the opportunity to scan the hall. In the Governor’s box, she saw the Prince and a very beautiful and very blonde young girl, dressed in a dark dress with a high and severe collar. She was leaning forward and looked at Minette openmouthed, her eyes wide and thoughtful.

  In the upper loges, she spotted her mother, Lise, Joseph, Nicolette, Kiss-Me-Lips, Beauvais, the two Lamberts, Labadie, Louise Rasteau, and everyone from her neighborhood, along with the rest of the colored population.

  Once she began to sing, the public hung on her every word, utterly transported. The fantastical set, her costume, her beauty, and her talent all together created an extraordinary atmosphere. The young Prince leaned toward the Governor and said a few words. The latter agreed with a respectful nod of the head.

  At that moment, their hands enlaced, Goulard and Minette were mixing their voices in a duet. Minette, her face close to his, looked into his eyes smilingly. “How stupid you are,” she seemed to say, “to blame me for something I didn’t do!”

  At the end of the opera, her triumph was absolute, and as she left the stage to the sound of thunderous applause and in a hail of flowers and notes, a white constabulary officer came to tell her that Prince William was awaiting her in his box to present his compliments. Mme Acquaire, who had rushed onto the stage to gather up the flowers and letters, gave them to Minette, drawing attention to one in particular.

  “Here,” she said. “Someone just brought this for you.”

  “Who?”

  “A young man. He said his name’s Pitchoun.”

  “Ah!”

  She then took a little bouquet of roses from Mme Acquaire’s hands along with a folded note she put in her bodice, asking that the rest be given to her mother. Then she followed the officer to the Prince’s box. Trembling with emotion, she made a deep and graceful curtsy.

  “Rise, ‘Mademoiselle,’ ” said the King of England’s son to her. “I appreciate your talent and am grateful for your beautiful singing. May the Lord grant you a long life.”

  As she lowered for another curtsy, the Prince took her hand and raised it, joining his fingers to her own:

  “I invite you,” he added with a charming smile, “to accompany me to the ball this evening.”

  “Monseigneur, I would never dare,” stammered Minette.

  “I am inviting you,” the Prince insisted.

  The Governor turned bright red and let out an uncomfortable cough, then, rising, offered his hand to the young blonde girl with him. Minette’s heart stopped beating for a moment. No, it was not possible that she had heard the Prince correctly. That she would go to the Whites’ ball on the arm of the son of the King of England! She shut her eyes, just as she always did when overcome with emotion. When she was able to look at Prince William again, she had the impression that his blue eyes were sparkling with gaiety and amusement.

  In the theater, where the spectators were waiting for the Prince to depart before they could leave, people began whispering as they looked toward the Governor’s box.

  The ballroom was entirely illuminated. A tight little crowd had gathered in two rows, waiting for the Prince’s arrival. The people of color applauded Minette from their section. Jasmine, seated between Lise and Joseph, took her handkerchief from her pocket to wipe away her tears of emotion and joy.

  When Minette entered the ballroom on the arm of the Prince, they were met with a low murmur of
disapproval. It did not last long, for the Governor, fearing protest, was the first to applaud them. Everyone immediately followed suit. Minette’s talent put her above the others of her race. Having gone out of their way to hear her sing, the Whites could just as well tolerate her presence among them that evening, said the guests, as if to justify their indulgence. Nevertheless, several of the ladies, closing their fans with a snap, headed discreetly for the exit. Everyone pretended not to notice.

  Alongside the Prince, passing by all those white people she could barely look at, so much was she trembling, Minette noticed a man who was applauding ostentatiously and bowing even lower than the others: it was François Mesplès, in a velvet suit. Oh! How triumphant she felt looking in his eyes, her waist supple and curved, her head tilted back, and smiling with a smile at once moved and proud. Despite everything, she had to thank him, because the sight of him enabled her to pull herself together.

  The Prince, imperturbable, opened the ball with her. His eyes sparkled with an amusement he was trying mightily to make inoffensive. But everything in his demeanor seemed to be saying: “I won’t stop you from going to my colonies and doing the very same thing, if you want, but for the moment I’m having fun, my dear Frenchmen, I’m having fun…”

  The young blonde girl with the Governor exchanged conspiratorial glances with the Prince from time to time. She, too, despite her incongruously austere outfit and her serenely sweet brown eyes, seemed to be enormously amused whenever she looked at the Governor’s uncomfortable rubicund face and at her father’s outright disapproving air as he chatted with the King’s Bursar. When Minette went back to the table and the Prince went to dance with other ladies, she leaned toward Minette and said:

  “I’m Céliane de Caradeux. You have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard. I’d like to ask you something: would you come sing at my home for my next Christmas party?”

  “Of course, Mademoiselle,” said Minette, unable to hide her astonishment.

  So that was Céliane de Caradeux! The wealthiest white heiress in the country and daughter of the cruelest, most evil of all the planters! How could that girl – sweet, simple, so humbly and severely dressed – be the daughter of the Marquis de Caradeux? For Minette, so young and inexperienced, all the planters’ daughters had to be as evil and perverse as their fathers.

  The actors had just arrived in the ballroom and were received with cheers. Goulard, struggling with himself in vain, came to ask Minette for a dance.

  “Go ahead,” said Mlle de Caradeux, “don’t break his heart.”

  Decidedly, that young lady was delightful, and Minette sang her praises to Goulard, saying:

  “My word, she’s gentle and lovely, that planter’s daughter!”

  The young actor’s lips trembled as he responded:

  “Was it her uncle’s case she was making so passionately?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Claude.”

  “Minette, why? Why did you get into that man’s coach?”

  “Oh, you’re so annoying!”

  “I thought you were an honest girl.”

  “I believe that I am.”

  “Swear to me that’s true.”

  She felt sorry for him, thinking to herself, How can he possibly love me so much? And so to be done with the whole thing said:

  “I swear it.”

  But she realized he still had doubts when he declared:

  “I curse that filthy man and wish I had the right to challenge him to a duel.”

  That evening, seeing him so carried away with jealousy made her want to kiss him. He asked her to leave with him and she agreed, lowering her eyes. She then returned to the table and, after curtsying to the Prince, clasped her hands to her heart, as any good artist knows how to do, and said:

  “Monseigneur, I shall never in my life forget the honor you have done me.”

  “Farewell,” said Prince William, “and give thanks to your own talent. It will open the doors of heaven to you.”

  She kissed Goulard under a lone almond tree standing along Bursar’s Square and, pressed against him, her arms around his neck, her mouth raised to his, swore to him that he was the first man to ever hold her in his arms.

  When she left him, they had made up. But despite the burning traces of his kisses and the delightful sensations he had revealed to her, she looked deep into her own heart and was surprised not to discover that marvelous flame she expected love would have illuminated.

  XIV

  WHEN MINETTE came back home that night, she found the house still full of people. Decidedly, celebrity made solitude impossible. There was such excitement in the air that neighboring dogs worriedly came over to join in the festivities, and then began barking nervously. Everyone wanted to embrace her. Lise insisted that she demonstrate the curtsy she had done for the Prince and declared that she, too, hoped someday to be presented to such important people.

  Joseph was as proud of Minette’s success as Jasmine and Lise, but deep down he feared that all of this would change something in his little sister, as he called her. Jasmine’s authority had further diminished, for at present she blindly accepted her elder daughter’s slightest whim. Used to being dominated by her masters, it seemed natural to her to bend to the will of the privileged young girl she had carried in her own womb, and to adore her like a goddess. As strict, chattering, and mother hen-like as Jasmine had been before, Joseph felt that this had been a true lifesaver for her children. In her sorrowful eyes, which nervously observed the slightest of their faults, there was a sort of guiding light that allowed her to see their errors and to find the best way to influence them. This guiding light had been transformed into an expression of pride, of which Minette had become all too aware and which risked leading her to become indifferent to her mother’s authority. This was what the young man was thinking.

  That night, once the friends and neighbors had left, he looked for an opportunity to speak to Jasmine alone. The girls were undressing in the bedroom and, as their mother was about to wash the dirty dishes in the courtyard, Joseph called to her with a silent gesture. She put down the basin full of dishes on the little table and came over to him.

  “Jasmine,” he said, “even though you’re proud of your elder daughter, don’t show it too much and keep hold of your authority as her mother.”

  Though she made no answer, her eyes shone strangely.

  “It’s for the good of both of you that I’m speaking this way. Minette is very young.”

  Jasmine briefly looked toward the door to the bedroom.

  “Oh, Joseph, my son, that child has a great destiny,” she whispered, as if fearing to be overheard by someone other than the young man. “She has a great destiny. She has her father’s blood in her and it seems to me that nothing courses through her veins but that white blood, that terrible paternal blood, full of fearlessness and arrogance. I’m weak, and she is strong; I’m fearful, and she is brave. Believe me, there is nothing of the slave in that child. Her father’s white blood has marked her. He was a nobleman, a great lord, full of cunning and harshness.”

  She spoke fearfully, quickly, as if compelled to reveal herself.

  “I realized all of this recently, seeing her on the stage, proud and completely unperturbed, sustaining the gaze of a thousand Whites.”

  “Jasmine!”

  “Before realizing all of this, in order to protect her, to teach her to hate them, I showed her my back and my breast. Oh, Joseph! Sometimes I have the impression she wants to avenge me, and that she hates the entire world.”

  “I’m sure you’re wrong about that.”

  Hearing the door creak, Jasmine lowered her head to wipe away her tears furtively.

  Lise came into the room, followed by Minette, who was completely beside her self with rage.

  “Lise, give me back that paper!” she screamed.

  Lise dodged between the furniture, all the while trying to read what was written on the paper.

  “Lise, give that back to me…”


  “Not before I’ve read it…”

  Minette bent down, took off one of her shoes and threw it at her sister’s face. It hit her in the forehead and a bright spot of blood appeared.

  “Minette!” shouted Jasmine.

  In her emotion, Lise had let the paper fall to the ground. Without a word, Minette picked it up and stuffed it in her bodice. Then, looking at Lise she said:

  “I never would’ve done it if I didn’t have every right, you know – and all three of you know it. My letters belong to me and I won’t have my little sister…”

  “Minette, please,” begged Jasmine, looking at Joseph as if to say: “Now do you see what I’m saying?”

  Minette left the room, went into the bedroom, and quietly closed the door. She sat down on the bed and took out a little bouquet of roses, smelling them with her eyes shut. Then she read the letter. It was short. Signed Jean-Baptiste Lapointe, it read:

  Come to Arcahaie. We will welcome you like a queen. I am your admirer.

  Her heart was beating furiously. It was beating now the way it should have beaten when Claude Goulard had kissed her. She lay down on her back and smiled. So it would seem I’ve snared them all in my web, she said to herself, white men and men of color, too. She sat up, opened a bag and took out several letters, which she let rain down on her skirt as she smiled. This was all only the beginning. She had entered the ballroom on the arm of a Prince. And she would do even better. What? She had no idea, but she was sure of one thing: that nothing would stop her and that she would continue to rise – to rise to the most dizzying heights. She went to bed and pretended to sleep when Lise and her mother entered. The letter signed Jean-Baptiste Lapointe that Pitchoun had passed to Mme Acquaire was hidden along with the red roses between her breasts. The next morning, she stowed them away in her trunk with all of her most precious affairs and among which there was the little pewter ring Pitchoun had made for her.

  At around eight o’clock, she rose, took a bath and got dressed. Lise had a bandage on her forehead. Minette looked away and ate her breakfast without saying a word. But when Jasmine went to set up her stand, Minette helped her bring it into the street before leaving for the theater. She had not forgotten that she was to receive the profits from the performance, and so she was going to claim what was owed to her.