Victoire Read Free Page B

thepasserby, 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 themthe 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!

T WO
 
    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