ideas. We have witnessed a genuine passion for knowledge and the greatest expansion of the arts ever seen. In the eyes of its philosophers, there is nothing more admirable than Man.”
Jeanne swallowed all that hook, line, and sinker, and M. Roumegoux marveled at her intelligence.
“You could go far. Pity you’re so black!” he sighed, caressing what Boniface Jr. in one of his bad days had christened with the name of a cactus commonly found on La Désirade and known for its spines: “Englishman’s head.”
On May 12, 1898, a daughter by the name of Valérie-Anne wasborn at the home of the Walbergs. I have no idea how Boniface strayed into the bed of Anne-Marie, since the only words that passed between them were on the subject of the household accounts. Was he drunk that night, because sometimes he did drink to excess the aged Martinican rum Crassoul de Médoul, and went in the wrong door? We shall never know. Anne-Marie’s unwanted pregnancy was terrible. She lay bedridden from beginning to end. Vertigo. Nausea. Vomiting. Both legs swollen like tree trunks. What’s more, the infant had the misfortune of inheriting the freckles and red hair of an Irish ancestor.
“Good Lord, she’s so ugly!” exclaimed her mother, pushing her away when the midwife tried to lay her on her breast. “Nine months of torture to give birth to that!”
We are told that a newborn hears these words, and all through her life never forgets them as well as the person who pronounced them.
In order to hide her red hair, they called upon the services of a dressmaker, who fashioned lawn and linen bonnets resembling the headdress of the women in Saint-Barth. Henceforth, there was someone more mocked and forlorn than Jeanne, who now had somebody to console. For a time Valérie-Anne snuggled up under her wing. Then she snuggled under Victoire’s when the latter, finding herself removed from her daughter, felt as forsaken as Valérie-Anne.
Sometimes the ill-treated take their revenge. Still a teenager, Valérie-Anne married the son of a rich banana planter from the region of Saint-Claude who was rolling in money. At the end of her life it was rumored that her jewel box weighed forty pounds. She bore five sons, one of whom became a monk.
As an adult, she would never go near my mother. Both of them hated each other.
E IGHT
One evening in April, shortly after sunset, the sky was ablaze with a glow through the persiennes.
“Yet another fire,” said Boniface, coming out onto the balcony in his pajamas without bothering to slip on his dressing gown. “Fortunately we have nothing to fear, since the wind isn’t blowing in our direction.”
He calmly went back to bed, where Victoire, rolled up in a ball, was waiting for him. They made love two or three times as they usually did each night.
The next morning La Pointe awoke amid the sound and the fury. Surging in from the outlying districts, the
maléré
had invaded the center of town. Groups of ragged individuals were gathering at the crossroads and filling the sidewalks, sobbing and moaning noisily.
The event was major.
At the age of thirty-eight Dernier Argilius had just perished in the fire that had broken out the night before at the offices of the newspaper
Le Peuple
. Apart from the rue Henri IV, the rue Barbès, the rue Sadi-Carnot, and a good part of the rue Schoelcher had been destroyed. If Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus had not been at the National Assembly in Paris, where he was a representative, theywould have been mourning the assassination of two leaders, since the people’s anger had been aroused by the fact that this fire had been set on purpose by the white Creole factory owners. Under the pretext of political instability, their objective was to call the United States of America to the rescue and turn Guadeloupe into another Cuba or Puerto Rico. For the
maléré,
oblivious of the vicissitudes of sugar, enemy number one was M. Ernest Souques, owner of the Darboussier and
Jeanne swallowed all that hook, line, and sinker, and M. Roumegoux marveled at her intelligence.
“You could go far. Pity you’re so black!” he sighed, caressing what Boniface Jr. in one of his bad days had christened with the name of a cactus commonly found on La Désirade and known for its spines: “Englishman’s head.”
On May 12, 1898, a daughter by the name of Valérie-Anne wasborn at the home of the Walbergs. I have no idea how Boniface strayed into the bed of Anne-Marie, since the only words that passed between them were on the subject of the household accounts. Was he drunk that night, because sometimes he did drink to excess the aged Martinican rum Crassoul de Médoul, and went in the wrong door? We shall never know. Anne-Marie’s unwanted pregnancy was terrible. She lay bedridden from beginning to end. Vertigo. Nausea. Vomiting. Both legs swollen like tree trunks. What’s more, the infant had the misfortune of inheriting the freckles and red hair of an Irish ancestor.
“Good Lord, she’s so ugly!” exclaimed her mother, pushing her away when the midwife tried to lay her on her breast. “Nine months of torture to give birth to that!”
We are told that a newborn hears these words, and all through her life never forgets them as well as the person who pronounced them.
In order to hide her red hair, they called upon the services of a dressmaker, who fashioned lawn and linen bonnets resembling the headdress of the women in Saint-Barth. Henceforth, there was someone more mocked and forlorn than Jeanne, who now had somebody to console. For a time Valérie-Anne snuggled up under her wing. Then she snuggled under Victoire’s when the latter, finding herself removed from her daughter, felt as forsaken as Valérie-Anne.
Sometimes the ill-treated take their revenge. Still a teenager, Valérie-Anne married the son of a rich banana planter from the region of Saint-Claude who was rolling in money. At the end of her life it was rumored that her jewel box weighed forty pounds. She bore five sons, one of whom became a monk.
As an adult, she would never go near my mother. Both of them hated each other.
E IGHT
One evening in April, shortly after sunset, the sky was ablaze with a glow through the persiennes.
“Yet another fire,” said Boniface, coming out onto the balcony in his pajamas without bothering to slip on his dressing gown. “Fortunately we have nothing to fear, since the wind isn’t blowing in our direction.”
He calmly went back to bed, where Victoire, rolled up in a ball, was waiting for him. They made love two or three times as they usually did each night.
The next morning La Pointe awoke amid the sound and the fury. Surging in from the outlying districts, the
maléré
had invaded the center of town. Groups of ragged individuals were gathering at the crossroads and filling the sidewalks, sobbing and moaning noisily.
The event was major.
At the age of thirty-eight Dernier Argilius had just perished in the fire that had broken out the night before at the offices of the newspaper
Le Peuple
. Apart from the rue Henri IV, the rue Barbès, the rue Sadi-Carnot, and a good part of the rue Schoelcher had been destroyed. If Jean-Hégésippe Légitimus had not been at the National Assembly in Paris, where he was a representative, theywould have been mourning the assassination of two leaders, since the people’s anger had been aroused by the fact that this fire had been set on purpose by the white Creole factory owners. Under the pretext of political instability, their objective was to call the United States of America to the rescue and turn Guadeloupe into another Cuba or Puerto Rico. For the
maléré,
oblivious of the vicissitudes of sugar, enemy number one was M. Ernest Souques, owner of the Darboussier and
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