Victoire (10 page)

One picture haunts Jeanne’s memory: that of her mother impassively preparing these macabre meals with the same hands that prepared feasts for the living. Initiated into Greek and Roman mythology, the child thought she was seeing one of those Fates who presided in turn with equal impartiality over the birth and death of humans.

As you can see, life at the Walbergs was fairly monotonous. I wonder whether such monotony was not often burdensome, whether Victoire was not often tempted to slam the door and go back to her
own people, their pleasures, and their exuberant, violent forms of entertainment.

The opulent upstairs-downstairs houses or those with yard and garden on the rue de Nassau soon petered out and gave way to the Vatable Canal district. Although by day it was neither lovely to look at nor cheerful to behold, this all changed in the evening. The district became a fairylike realm of sleazy dives and rum shops aglow with alcohol amid the din of dominoes and rough shouts. The dances began early Saturday and the shameless
bòbòs
would lift their petticoats over their velvet thighs as they danced the
roulé, gragé, mendé,
and
lewoz.

But this class to which she belonged had rejected her from early childhood. Because of her color. This color, without money or, failing that, without education, is nothing but a curse. Once she pushed open the door of one of these dives, a niggerman would be bound to mount her like a
tambouyé,
his drum. Afterward he would turn his back on her like Dernier did.

We learn, thanks to
L’Echo pointois,
that sometime in November 1890 Victoire accompanied Anne-Marie to a concert in the Bobineau Hall, rue Barbès.
L’Echo pontois
had replaced
L’Illustration,
dead and buried, and likewise claimed to represent polite society. Anne-Marie wanted both of them to hear Léo Delibes’
Lakmé
interpreted by the Capitole troupe from Toulouse. This story of a young Indian girl and an English officer sounded interesting. Anne-Marie’s presence that evening caused a sensation. She was eight months pregnant and at that stage it was indecent to be seen in public. People wondered where her husband was and considered it out of place for her to attend a social evening alone with a servant.

We do not know what Victoire thought of the concert. But we do know that Anne-Marie was disappointed. She complained in a letter to her beloved Etienne that the acoustics were bad and in the tenth row where she was seated she could hardly hear a thing. The opera itself did not appeal to her. As for that melody which had been given such a glowing tribute in the
Courrier mélomane,
commonly
called the Bell Song—“Where is the young Hindu girl going”—she declared it highly overrated.

W
E DO NOT
know for certain what Victoire’s feelings were, sharing her bed with
Bèf pòtoriko
.

Everything leads us to believe that she first obeyed Anne-Marie and agreed to relieve her of a loathsome conjugal duty. Yet gradually she grew attached to Boniface and in my opinion ended up loving him. Proof of this was her grief when he died.

Boniface was not devoid of a sort of coy charm. He had, therefore, always been his mother’s favorite, taking precedence over his more handsome brothers. I have to say in all truth that most people thought it was simply a calculation on Victoire’s part. She saw in him nothing but a rich “stepfather” for her daughter.

Let us dream a little.

Was Victoire sensual? Was she fond of lovemaking? Everything points to the affirmative.

Nevertheless, men at that time bothered little about women’s pleasure. Women themselves seldom expected to reach a climax. Boniface thrust himself into Victoire four to five times a night. She had an orgasm somewhat by chance. Afterward, they slept in each other’s arms, united by a fear of the dark, a survival of their childhood. When it rained or the wind blew, they felt especially close. The sleigh bed rolled like a sailboat on a swell of blackness. Boniface clutched Victoire against his heart as they waited with bated breath and open eyes for a break in the weather. At the end of the nineteenth century, earthquakes were a common occurrence. For no reason whatsoever, a muffled groan would rise up from the depths. The wooden house would vibrate and crack in all its joints. Objects would fall to the ground. Pictures would fall off the wall. Then everything returned to normal. It was more frightening than anything else, and night resumed its unwavering march.

At four in the morning, the first up, Victoire slipped on a
wòbakò
and crept into the kitchen. Around five, Maby and Délia, still fuddled with sleep, joined her and began filtering the coffee. Maby had replaced Flaminia, whom Boniface had finally sent back to Marie-Galante. Victoire insisted on preparing herself the
didiko
that Boniface took to his store on the quai Lardenoy for his ten o’clock break. It was her way of continuing to communicate with him. She knew he was fond of
blan manjé koko
and filled his meal tin with it. She then crossed the yard that was still in the shadows to the washroom reserved for the domestics.

The house on the rue de Nassau was one of the first to have running water, although other facilities were lacking for a long time to come. The WC, for example. Until 1920 the servants still decanted the contents of the
tomas
into the sanitary tubs during the predawn hours.

Victoire had always loved water. In La Pointe she took delight in discovering the rain. Not the quick shower immediately dried by the sun in Marie-Galante. But the never-ending rain that empties the streets; hammers on the zinc roofs; lashes against the persiennes, the verandas, the wrought iron of the balconies; refreshes the houses; and sprouts dreams in damp beds.

Naked, she would crouch against the rough wall of the stone basin above which dripped a tap. She would wash her long, straight hair that during the day she rolled into buns bristling with pins under her headtie. She would rub her body with a bunch of leaves, lingering over her private parts, surprised at the pleasure she felt. Already sovereign, the sun was climbing into the sky. She went back up to the room where Boniface, wide awake, still lazed in bed, and dressed for mass.

She then joined Anne-Marie at the foot of the stairs. The day they were to take communion they didn’t have breakfast. Other times they drank coffee.

Outside, the sun was shining with its artful eye. The day was just beginning.

S
EVEN
 

January 15, 1891, was a date to remember.

First of all, Boniface Walberg Jr., born nine months after Jeanne, was christened in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul in front of an assembly of white Creoles. Boniface Jr., who had inherited his mother’s beauty, was nevertheless conceived under an unlucky star. His life went up in smoke like cigarette paper. Later in life, he married a white Creole from Dominica who died giving birth to their first child. Two years later he married a young girl who also died, from complications of an extrauterine pregnancy. After that he grew old on his own, sleeping with his maids.

Although I cannot prove it, I suspect he was strongly attracted to my mother, who returned the compliment without ever admitting it. He would have been only too keen to continue the tradition initiated by his father of sleeping with the Quidal women, but she refused. When she married my father, Boniface wrote to her as a frustrated lover accusing her of selling herself out to respectability. There was no doubt she didn’t love the man she took for a husband. I don’t know whether my mother ever answered his letter.

Second, on the occasion of this christening, Victoire’s talent as a cook was revealed to one and all.

Why then?

Probably because Anne-Marie had had enough of the hostility that surrounded her only friend yet spared
her
. She wanted to thumb her nose at the narrow-mindedness and arrogance of polite society.

“I’ll make them drool,” she was heard to say.

Among the papers my mother kept was issue 51 of
L’Écho pointois,
where right in the middle of a laudatory article appears the menu for this christening banquet, lyrically composed like a poem and probably sent to the newspaper by Anne-Marie:

“The occasion was held at the Walbergs, a Roman feast, the work of a genuine Amphitryon. Judge for yourselves:

Black pudding stuffed with crayfish

Whelks on a bed of wild spinach and dasheen leaves

Lobster with green mangoes

Pork caramelized with aged rum and ginger

Rabbit fricassee with Bourbon oranges

Chayote gratin

Golden apple gratin

Green banana gratin

Purslane salad

Three sorbets: coconut, passion fruit, and lime

Creole gateau fouetté

What bold imagination, what creativity presided over the elaboration of these delights! Dear reader, isn’t your mouth already watering?”

I
N THOSE DAYS
servants were passed around and exchanged like coins. They were borrowed and returned and never asked for their opinion or paid the slightest wage. From that day on Anne-Marie was bombarded with requests on visiting cards from the most emi
nent families. Could she loan Victoire for a christening, a birthday, or a wedding? Each time she had great pleasure replying in the negative. Since it is a well-known fact that desire is aroused if it is not reciprocated, Victoire’s reputation increased with every refusal. Those who had disparaged her the most, in a total about-face, coveted her and dreamed of appropriating her for themselves.

Victoire did not appreciate the fuss made of her person. She reluctantly confided in Anne-Marie the secret of her culinary compositions so that the latter could name them and have them printed. As with a writer whose editor decides the title, cover, and illustrations of her book, it was partly like being dispossessed of her creation. She would have preferred to keep it secret. For her, cooking in no way implied wreaking vengeance on a society that had never made room for her. More than music, where she never excelled at playing the guitar or the flute, it was her way of expressing herself, which was constantly repressed, prisoner of her illiteracy, her illegitimacy, her gender, and her station as a servant. When she invented seasonings or blended flavors, her personality was set free and blossomed. Cooking was her Père Labat rum, her ganja, her crack, her ecstasy. She dominated the world. For a time she became God. Once again, like a writer.

We can of course imagine Anne-Marie and Victoire in collusion, sharing everything between them, where Anne-Marie would be called to the rescue to add the finishing touches to Victoire’s culinary creation. But I refuse to believe anything of the sort. The creator is too jealous of her work to tolerate sharing. Victoire obeyed Anne-Marie grudgingly. Any information had to be dragged out of her.

Believing she was doing the right thing, Anne-Marie hired Francia, whose mission consisted of carrying out the unrewarding jobs that guarantee the perfection of a dish. But, as we said, Victoire did not tolerate any intruder in the temple where she officiated, and Francia didn’t last long.

Every Friday evening the double doors of the grand living room were opened wide and the guests would surge in. A string quartet would get them dancing the
haute-taille
and the
réjane
until sup
pertime. But all that interested them was eating. Once dinner was served they did their best not to make a dash for the table. I have also found issue 55 of
L’Écho pointois,
where the menu of one of these dinners is published:

Shredded saltfish, smoked herring, and fresh tomatoes

Crayfish calalu

Whole sea bream marinated in limes

Turtle fricassee from Les Saintes

Indian rice

Cush-cush yam gratin

Heart of cabbage tree salad

Chodo custard

Gateau fouetté

T
O TELL THE
truth, these weekly receptions, which were a pretext to show off gold chokers and the latest fashion from Paris, were an ordeal for Anne-Marie as well. The only avenging pleasure she felt was when the guests clapped their hands in frenzy, calling for Victoire. She would appear, swallowed up in a beige apron embroidered with a grill, an allusion to Saint Lawrence, patron saint of cooks, her cheeks flushed from the attention, then dart back into her refuge.

All this was also displeasing to Boniface, the least sociable of men, whose only subject of conversation was the price of a barrel of saltfish. Furthermore, we can assume that he was unhappy seeing his Victoire exhibited like a fairground attraction, gifted though she was. Consequently, he took his courage in both hands and informed Anne-Marie that it was causing too much expense. Just the drinks were exorbitant! He backed up his grievances by listing the cost of the brandy, aged rum, anisette from Bordeaux, and gin she gave to her guests. Cursing his miserliness, Anne-Marie, whose dowry, lest we forget, brought neither a bank account, property, nor country estate, had to accept.

The receptions came to an end. The operation, whose point was to crown Victoire with prestige, had failed. The recently created association of cooks did in fact offer her the honorary presidency. But she declined the offer, which was felt as an insult.