The Cost of Sugar

by Cynthia McLeod

  “But isn’t it difficult being Jewish as well as Christian?” asked Rutger admiringly.

  “Oh, all that fuss about nothing. I think that it doesn’t matter to God whether people are Jewish or Protestant or Catholic as long as they lead a good life and do no harm to other people.”

  “What a wise and well-considered remark for a young girl,” said Rutger, looking at her amusedly.

  “Are wise remarks always reserved for men and old women, then?” asked Elza.

  “Of course not, but you don’t fit in so well with the young ladies,” replied Rutger.

  “At least, the men think that,” said Elza sharply.

  Now Rutger laughed out loud: “Miss Elza, I think you’re exceptionally quick-witted.”

  As they walked back, Elza showed him how the village was constructed, as a square with four streets across. The houses in the corners of this square were large and comfortable, the others sometimes simpler, but everything was very attractive. Most of the houses had gardens on the slopes. And in the middle of all this, the lovely synagogue, built of bricks, about thirty metres long, fourteen metres wide and eleven metres high. If possible, she would let him look inside later. There was a beautifully decorated ceiling and a huge cedarwood ark with lovely carvings in which the Torah scrolls were kept. Silver chandeliers, large candelabra and various candlesticks.

  Jews and gentiles were in agreement: this synagogue was one of Suriname’s real gems. It was a pity, however, that many rich Jews had left or now lived elsewhere on plantations, whereby Joden-Savanna had gone into steep decline and was inhabited mainly by the elderly such as her grandmother and Aunt Rachel’s parents.

  Near the synagogue was the great tabernacle. A little further along the valley a few smaller huts had been built by men who appreciated having their own tabernacle.

  Once the service had finished, everyone left the synagogue and went to sit on benches at long tables that had been set up in the hut. This was the high point of the Feast of Tabernacles. Three huge, round loaves, baked specially for the occasion, lay on the table. The rabbi said a prayer, broke the bread and distributed it among those present, after which the wine was poured and distributed.

  After this traditional ceremony, dishes were brought by the slave-boys and slave-girls from the houses and the feast could begin. Rutger had as a matter of course come to sit next to Elza, and when father Levi had taken a place at the same table and had made Rutger’s acquaintance, a congenial round of conversation arose among all those seated there. Elza looked around once to see where Sarith was, but she wasn’t at any of the tables. Was she perhaps still busy changing? She really didn’t know what the matter was with Sarith, but, all right, perhaps she didn’t feel like eating at the moment and would come along later.

  The conversation at the table was not always congenial, for there soon arose talk of the colony’s problems. The attacks by the escapees. Only recently they had raided several plantations. They had made it as far as the Temptatie, where they had killed the Jewish owner and his wife, as well as the overseer. They had freed the slaves, who had immediately joined them, and they had set the plantation house on fire as well as the sugarcane in the field.

  Some weeks earlier they had raided the Jukemombo Plantation on the Boven16-Commewijne River. The owner, Master Biertempel, was away at that moment. His wife was murdered and his three children were wounded. The raiders had taken everything, even the children’s clothes. When the father had hastened back home the following day, he had found his children, half-naked, weeping over their mother’s corpse. The colonists were now well and truly frightened. A stop would have to be put to this!

  Rutger remarked that in his opinion it would be better for the government to make peace with the Maroons and not persecute themany longer. Suriname was so large, and nobody used the hinterland. That could be the free negroes domain. Many of the guests turned on Rutger. He was still new in the colony and didn’t know what he was talking about. The government had already made peace with the bush-negroes. Some years ago there had been a huge fuss because the government had made peace with the escapees on the Boven-Suriname River. Did Rutger perhaps think that peacemust bemade every time a wild group appeared in the hinterland? Then you could just keep on doing that and very soon the whole of Suriname would be portioned off to those devil’s children.

  A corpulent women in a dress of black silk declared that she believed that an uprising wasn’t far off. Everyone could surely remember the terrible uprising in Berbice a few years ago. Well, they could expect something like that here. An uprising in which all the whites would be murdered or forced into slavery by the negroes.

  “Would it not then be better if all slave owners treated their slaves well?” Rutger asked, “Without the terrible punishments that are handed out. Is it not the fear of these brutalities, such as being hung on a meat hook, a hand or a foot being hacked off, a savage beating, burning alive, that makes slaves run away?”

  Pa Levi nodded in agreement when Rutger made this remark, but most of the guests at the table laughed heartily. Rutger really was a naïve newcomer. Punishment was the only way to treat slaves: they were stupid and lazy. If you didn’t terrify them with heavy and cruel punishment, they would get the idea that they could do what they liked. And in any case, were they not created by our Lord to sweat and toil for the whites? Rutger wanted to remark that he would gladly like to hear how it was so unequivocally known that negroes had been created to this end, but Elza whispered to him, “Oh, Rutger, say nothing now. These folks are real fanatics. You’ll fall so out of grace with them if you share your opinion that slaves must be treated well.”

  So Rutger had said nothing further. He was after all a guest there.

  SARITH

  But Sarith was not resting in her grandparents’ house. She had seized an opportunity that had presented itself as everyone was leaving the synagogue, had sidled up to Nathan and said, “Come now, I must talk to you.”

  “Must that be now?” Nathan had asked apprehensively.

  “Yes, now,” Sarith replied, “And if you don’t come this minute, I will scream, and I will do it right here and loudly.”

  Nathan then told Leah that she should carry on to the tabernacle because he had to go and fetch something, and he walked off in the other direction with Sarith, to the back of her grandparents’ house where the garden overlooked the valley.

  “Nathan, you said that you loved me! I was really the one you wanted to marry. And then I suddenly hear that you are engaged to Leah. How can you, Nathan?” Sarith almost stumbled over her words, so quickly did she utter them.

  “Oh, Sarith, Sarith.” Nathan held both her hands. “I really do love you, but I have no choice, don’t you see. This was decided long ago by my parents.”

  “You knew that then, but you would explain everything, that’s what you said.”

  “It simply cannot be, Sarith, really not. My father is heavily in debt. He could lose the plantation. There are another three children after me, and Leah is an only child and the heiress, and that plantation is so huge and, uh …”

  “So it’s about the money. I should have known.” Sarith pulled her hands away. “But still you loved me. Have you forgotten what happened between us?”

  “No, Sarith, no, I shall never forget that. I shall keep it in my heart as my most cherished memory.”

  “That’s a lot of good to me, isn’t it,” said Sarith cynically.

  “Oh Sarith, you just have to understand. A person doesn’t always marry the one he or she really loves.”

  Nathan looked at her and wanted to stroke her cheek, but she knocked his hand aside and said, “What if I were pregnant now? What if I were to tell everyone here what has happened between us?”

  “Oh no, Sarith, no, you mustn’t do that. Everyone would … everyone would think so badly of you.”

  “Of me, eh? Of me?” Now Sarith was screaming. “Of me, not of you, eh? You coward. Oh you vile, vile coward. I hate you!”

>   “Sarith, calm down.”

  Nathan wanted to take hold of her hand. He hesitated, however. This was a very different Sarith from the sweet, cooing young thing he had had in his bed. This petite ball of fire scared him. She knocked his hand aside and before he knew it she had slapped his face hard, screaming, “Don’t you dare touch me, you coward! I hate you! Leave me – go away, go to your Leah!”

  She turned and ran off through the back door of her grandparents’ house. Nathan remained a while, pensively rubbing his cheek, before returning slowly to where the guests were at table.

  The tears rolled over Sarith’s cheeks as she stormed upstairs and threw herself on a bed in one of the bedrooms, sobbing uncontrollably, her head pounding the pillow. But wait … she would have Nathan. She would let him see how all the men wanted her. She would show him, really show him. She called to one of her grandmother’s slaves, since she didn’t know where Mini-mini was, and ordered her to fetch a basin of cold water so that she could freshen up.

  When Sarith went and sat at the long table a quarter of an hour later, there was no trace of what had just happened. She was exceptionally happy, joked and laughed with everyone and pouted and flirted with all the men, young and old. Every time her laugh rang out she saw Nathan looking her way, embarrassed or concerned, but she pretended not to notice him. Could he not see how charmed all the men were with her? During the afternoon all the ladies went to have a rest. Some men also rested, but many remained sitting in the shade of the large trees, or had slave-boys hang hammocks up, and then chatted, smoked and drank rum punch. Sarith did not go to rest with the other ladies, but remained in the company of the men and chatted nineteen to the dozen while she sat, now with the one, now with the other, briefly in a hammock and even taking a sip from some glass or other.

  In the evening a ball was held. The estate was decorated with Chinese-style lanterns, all alight, and with the ladies in their wonderful evening gowns and the men in their evening suits the evening took on a most festive air. Elza danced and chatted mainly with Rutger. Dressing for the ball, Elza had told Sarith with a blush that the new assistant administrator was so pleasant and easy to talk with. Sarith had wondered for a moment whether she should extend her flirtations to this new young man, but had decided against it. It was Nathan she wanted to hurt, not Elza, and it was not every day that men showed some interest in Elza. And above all, she, Sarith, wasn’t at all interested in some poor office clerk, especially one who wasn’t all that handsome anyway.

  Sarith passed laughing and cooing from the one pair of male hands to the other. She was merry, even provocative, and not seldom was an angry glance cast in her direction by a wife or fiancée. Elza was too preoccupied with keeping Rutger engaged to pay much attention to Sarith. She had seen Rutger now and then glance amusedly in Sarith’s direction and he had remarked, “What a pretty girl your stepsister is, and how jolly.”

  Then Elza had noticed how Sarith was especially enjoying herself in the company of the widower Robles de Medina. The thirty-three-year-old Julius Robles de Medina had lost his wife and a child in a smallpox epidemic the previous year, and was left with two daughters of ten and eight years. This was the first time since the loss of his wife and child that he had travelled with his two daughters from his plantation on the Boven-Commewijne River to Joden-Savanna to attend the feast.

  Elza noted with considerable amazement how her stepsister was now flirting with ‘Noso’ and how provocatively she was behaving with him. She and Sarith had never liked Julius Robles de Medina or his wife very much, and as little girls they had given him the nickname ‘Noso’ because he had such an enormous nose. In recent years they had always kept out of his way at parties because Sarith considered him such a bore, always wanting to talk about his beautiful Klein Paradijs17 Plantation. And now that same Sarith was sitting so close to him and talking and laughing while she teasingly stroked his hair and told him how handsome he was. Elza couldn’t understand at all what was the matter with Sarith.

  Most of the company remained for almost a week at Joden-Savanna, and Sarith’s behaviour did not change. When she and Elza went to bed at night, Elza got no chance to talk with her stepsister because Leah was sleeping in the same room, as was one of Nathan’s sisters. And while Sarith was being undressed by Mini-mini she would hum merrily or make a remark along the lines of, “Some people can’t get a man themselves and have to be married off.”

  After five days or so, Nathan departed with his parents, brothers and little sister. Nathan’s cousin from the Rama Plantation and Rutger went in the same boat, too. Two days later Pa Levi, mother Rachel and the girls left. Rachel, above all, was pleased that the stay was coming to an end. She could not help noticing that both young and old ladies had been looking disapprovingly at Sarith and uneasily at their husbands. One of the ladies had even remarked that Sarith was behaving like any old coloured concubine. But when her mother-in-law, the widow Fernandez, had said to her that Sarith was behaving far too provocatively and freely with all the men, Rachel had answered that the poor child certainly meant no harm by it. It was just a young girl’s fun and pleasure. Although in her heart she agreed with her mother-in-law, she could not permit anyone to say something hurtful about the apple of her eye.

  Sitting in the boat, she now looked at her daughter, who was no longer the happy, flirtatious young girl, but was rather just looking straight ahead with a bored expression. And mother Rachel wondered and worried about what was going on in her daughter’s pretty head.

  1 Mister.

  2 Negro foreman (himself a slave).

  3 A large type of iguana that lives on eggs and small animals.

  4 A twig from a citrus tree.

  5 Jews

  6 Mistress.

  7 “Misi o weri disi?”

  8 “Ai misi Elza, yu moi baya!”

  9 “Ai misi, luku bun yere, m’o firi mankeri fa mi misi n’o de.”

  10 “Luku yu p’pa yere, no meki a feti nanga a granmisi.”

  11 “M’o meki Koki bori wan switi griti bana gi mi misi t’ai kon baka.”

  12 “Sorgu misi Rebecca bun.”

  13 Paramaribo, which is often referred to as ‘the town’.

  14 In Suriname the term Marron is used.

  15 Now a region of Guyana.

  16 Upper.

  17 Little Paradise.

  CHAPTER II

  RUTGER LE CHASSEUR

  It was a journey of many hours from Joden-Savanna to Paramaribo in the tent boat rowed by ten slaves. When the tide started coming in they broke the journey at a plantation and spent the night there. The following day on the ebb tide they continued the journey. When the boat arrived in Paramaribo the sun was already setting and Rutger looked out from the boat at the beautiful white town that came ever closer. Now that he was approaching it from the land side, of course he saw it from different angle as compared to a good three months ago, when he had sailed in from the sea. Didn’t it look crisp and cared-for. Totally different from Amsterdam, where he came from and where the narrow streets were paved with cobblestones. The streets of Paramaribo were planted with orange blossom, and this gave it a floral feel overall. Rutger could not help thinking that Governor Mauricius, who had caused considerable upheaval about fifteen years earlier, had in the end achieved good results with his measures to improve the town. Not only Paramaribo but the whole colony had made great strides forward under the rule of this enterprising governor, despite his having been thwarted by a group of rich, conservative planters who simply would not understand that better treatment of the slaves and making peace with the Maroons could only be to their advantage. Plagued and tormented by these planters and in the end wrongly impeached, Governor Mauricius had been forced to leave the colony. Although his name was cleared in Holland, he did not return to Suriname to finish what he had begun as his life’s work. Luckily, this well cared-for and bright town was a permanent reminder of his good intentions.

  Rutger le Chasseur was lodging with his patron, t
he administrator Van Omhoog, who occupied a spacious house in the Gravenstraat. One of the rooms on the ground floor served as an office. Rutger still recalled his surprise at seeing this beautiful mansion for the first time. He hadn’t expected to find such houses in a faraway colony. Now he knew that there were many of these houses in Paramaribo. All were built and furnished in more or less the same way.

  In front of the building was a large, high veranda that ran the whole breadth of the house. You entered through a renaissance-style door with a highly polished copper door-knocker and came immediately into the large front hall, with its own particular style of furnishing, typical of the colony. Usually there stood on the one side a piano, above which hung a large mirror with a heavily gilded frame; in the middle a huge mahogany table with a sizeable chandelier hanging above it, to be lit by candles. Around the table four rocking chairs and often along the wall another set of mahogany chairs. Two sofas stood opposite each other, and in one of the four corners there would be a large mahogany wall unit, a chiffonier or tallboy, on which would be standing all kinds of objects in glass and earthenware and also crystal glasses, smaller glasses and carafes with wine, liqueur and Madeira. In its cupboards glittered the expensive porcelain and silver tableware. On the walls hung paintings, a pendulum clock and candlesticks with finely chamfered glass reflectors. The windows had Venetian blinds and were spanned with green gauze. Magnificent curtains of silk or cotton were tied with loops and bows along the sides of the windows.

  At the Van Omhoogs’ there was, next to the front hall, a sitting room that served as an office. Behind that there was a second sitting room. The dining room was behind the front hall. At the back of the house there ran a wide gallery where tea or coffee was taken. At the end of the gallery the minor cooking quarters were to be found: a pantry and the inside kitchen itself. A large selection of plates stood in long rows along the walls, and under the open sink were the copper pans and baking dishes. The staircase leading to the upper floor also opened onto the rear gallery. On the upper floor there were four spacious rooms. In the bedrooms stood large, high mahogany bedsteads decorated with copper bands and globes. In the grounds of the house stood the kitchen in which the real cooking was done, the large wash-house and the building used for storage. Then, a little further away, stood the slaves’ dwellings, in two rows facing each other. In between there was the brick-lined well, and nearer the house there was also a large rainwater tank. Behind the slaves’ dwellings there was yet another garden with all kinds of fruit trees.