The Cost of Sugar

by Cynthia McLeod

  Mrs Crommelin was being very rude to Jean Nepveu. In the past they had been good friends, but since he had become interim governor she was very unfriendly towards him. The Crommelins had been granted leave, but were still in Suriname and were still living in the governor’s palace, where Jean Nepveu had to work every day in the office. Governor Crommelin himself had turned into a grumpy old man, and the staff and slaves in the palace didn’t know where they stood. Should they obey Misi Crommelin or the new governor?

  Oh, yes, and have you heard how Klaas Doesburgh’s coloured concubine managed to send her slave to the Doesburgh’s house on the Waterfront with the message that Klaas must go straightaway to the concubine’s house because one of her children was ill, and he had gone, too, to the great annoyance of Mrs Doesburgh. What an impertinence of that coloured! It gets worse and worse with those types. And Sarith got bored and annoyed at these parties. She didn’t feel like them any more. She wanted a man; she wanted to get married! She was twenty-one already. An old spinster, without a husband on the horizon. How was it possible for her to be in this situation when she was so much prettier than all the others?

  A few months later, at the end of September, Uncle Levi received a last letter from Elza from Holland, which went as follows …

  Amsterdam, 2 August 1769

  Dearest Papa,

  When you receive this letter we will be just about to leave or will already be at sea. We board in the first week of October. In this way we’ll be out of these parts before the autumn storms begin. If everything goes well, we’ll arrive in Paramaribo the last week of November or the first week of December. I shall be very glad to be back in our own home, especially since Gideon will be getting a little brother or sister around the middle of January. I don’t mind which, as long as he or she is healthy. Oh, Papa, you must congratulate Esther and Jacob on the birth of their fourth son. For Esther’s sake I had hoped that it would be a daughter this time round, but well, four sons is also quite something. And what a worthy kaddish they’ll have said for them later on! How are things with Rebecca and Abraham and their little Zipporah? Is Rebecca already expecting again? It was really fine that you were able, after all, to send Leida to the town for two months to be with Amimba. Have you seen Amimba’s son yet? Rutger and I had a good laugh when we read in your letter that the child has been named Rutty, after Rutger.

  It has been really hot here, sometimes hotter than at home. I stayed for three weeks with Gideon at Annette and her husband’s country house. Annette is Great-uncle Frederik’s third daughter. They have four children, from four to eleven years old. We went there in a carriage: a huge country house near Bussum. Really nice. Sometimes I felt I was at home, at Hébron.

  Gideon has kept himself amused. The nieces and nephews played with him a lot, and it was usually so warm that he could wander around in next to nothing, just as at home. He really liked that – he so hates all those clothes on his body.

  He’s now beginning to talk and says, amongst other things, something like ‘Masha’. Both Maisa and Afanaisa claim that it is her name he’s saying. Rutger was also in the country for two weeks. Niece Marie is sorry that we’re leaving. She says that the house will feel empty without us. I think that Alex is also sorry that we are returning. Rutger sometimes allowed him to go out on his own. I think he knows Amsterdam like the back of his hand. He will miss all the conversations with the acquaintances he’s made here. He’s been so happy to have been able to speak to a white person without anyone disapproving, and to be able to come and go wherever he wants. When you hear him talk, he seems like a real Amsterdammer.

  Well, Papa, that was it then. Do greet the whole family, have a big kiss from me, and goodbye for now.

  From your Elza

  Uncle Levi was staying along with Rachel and Sarith at the house of Jacob and Esther de Ledesma, on the occasion of Yom Kippur. That was traditionally a day of fasting followed in the evening by an extensive dinner. For this the table would be covered with a beautiful Jewish table cloth. The best porcelain, crystal and silverware were brought out and polished up for the day. Everything bright and shiny. The table bore so many plates and dishes that a hundred people could have feasted. Elza’s letter was again the talk of the day, especially that she would soon be returning and was expecting another baby.

  Sarith sat with a vexed look on her face, staring straight ahead. She was getting irritated, and every time Elza’s name was mentioned she wanted to scream. Now Sarith knew one thing for certain: that she must be married by the time Elza and Rutger returned. She didn’t know yet to whom, but it didn’t really matter to whom, she just had to have a man and be married. Just had to!

  When the family went to Joden-Savanna two weeks later for the Feast of Tabernacles, she saw upon arrival, among all the other guests, Julius Robles de Medina. He had been a widower for five years now. That was a suitable candidate. Oh, she knew well that she and Elza had always laughed at him in the past and had called him ‘Noso’ because of his large nose, but that didn’t matter. Well, she would use all her feminine cunning to ensure that he fell in love with her and would ask her to marry him. All this must happen during these days that they were here at Joden-Savanna.

  Julius didn’t know what had hit him when Sarith A’haron suddenly showed so much interest in him. She was always near him, spoke really sweetly and pleasantly to him and was oh so interested in his two daughters, who were now twelve and fourteen. It had begun with her sitting next to him on the very first day, and telling him how good he looked, as always. He had asked her how things were with her stepsister in Holland. He expected that Sarith would be very pleased that Elza was returning soon, for she must miss her sister a lot. He still remembered how they were inseparable as growing girls, always together, smiling and giggling, yes, he remembered it well. And how this lovely pair had grown up to be such beautiful ladies, especially she, Sarith, was particularly enchanting. Sarith had sweetly and charmingly answered that of course he himself had such a lovely twosome in his daughters Miriam and Hannah. Wasn’t it difficult for him to bring up these two lovely children alone, without a mother? Julius had sighed that it was indeed difficult, but that they were mostly in the town at their aunt’s, their mother’s sister. They attended the French school. Was it not dull for him, alone on the plantation, Sarith had asked, and Julius could only reply in the affirmative. Yes, it was often dull, alone on his plantation, Klein Paradijs, on the Boven-Commewijne River.

  Time and time again Sarith was at his side, full of interest in his plantation, in him, in his daughters. She also talked a lot with his two daughters, who soon came to regard her as a really pleasant person. Within a week Julius Robles de Medina could no longer think of anything but Sarith A’haron. How wrong he had been. He had always thought that she was a frivolous girl, rather too merry and too easy, but she wasn’t like that after all. Now he had come to know her better, he realized what a noble and honourable person she was; a good woman. Should he ask her to marry him? But he didn’t dare, for she appeared to be very fond of going out, and how could he ask such a beautiful young woman, who loved to go out and about, to marry him and go to live on Klein Paradijs, a two-day journey from Paramaribo? When, however, Sarith said to him that there was nothing better than the peace of a distant plantation, he thought that he had better try it, anyway. Timidly, he asked her whether she would like to share the peace with him on such a distant plantation. And he couldn’t believe his luck when she agreed. She had said ‘yes’! This fantastically beautiful young woman, who could set all men’s heads spinning and all male hearts beating, wanted to marry him, Julius!

  Uncle Levi and Ma Rachel couldn’t believe their ears when Julius spoke with them and told them that Sarith had agreed to be his wife. He wasn’t exactly the man that Ma Rachel might have had in mind for her prettiest daughter, but, well, Sarith was twenty-one and had been so moody and surly of late. Rather Julius Robles de Medina with his large nose than no man at all. The engagement party was held immed
iately there at Joden-Savanna, and Sarith herself said to Julius that there was no point in waiting too long to marry. Why should they? A long engagement was usually needed for the partners to get to know each other better, but that wasn’t necessary in this case. They had known each other for years. And so it was decided that the wedding would take place in four weeks’ time at Klein Paradijs, and all the guests at Joden-Savanna were immediately invited.

  The next four weeks passed quickly. Everything was hastily prepared, and in the third week of November the tent boat left Hébron. Sarith departed from the plantation where she had lived for almost fourteen years. Mother and Uncle Levi went along, as did Kwasiba and Mini-mini.

  Sarith had managed to persuade her mother to let Kwasiba remain with her as well. She had never been to Klein Paradijs and was in fact a little afraid of the unknown. With the familiar Kwasiba and Mini-mini she would feel at ease more quickly. Kwasiba was simply happy that she could be with her daughter Mini-mini in the future, too. They remained in the town for a few days, where the rest of the family joined them, and then they all left for the plantation that would be Sarith’s home. Klein Paradijs was a coffee plantation. The house was pleasant but not all that large. Far too small, thought Sarith, disappointed.

  After the wedding most of the guests stayed on for a week or so and Sarith enjoyed herself tremendously with all the parties that were laid on in her honour. She was afraid of the first night alone with Julius. She did not love him, that she knew full well. She had used him for her own ends. But she would do her best to be nice to him. After their first union, when Julius had naturally discovered that she was certainly no virgin, he was of the opinion that he had the right to know who his predecessor had been. Sarith told him about Charles van Hennegouwen. She spun the tale that she was a naïve girl of fifteen, who believed that a love affair was the real thing, and Charles himself, being still young and knowing no better, had taken advantage of this. She even managed a few tears while recounting that if she had known how it would all turn out, it would never have happened, but could Julius please forgive her? That he did readily. She should quickly forget it all. He, Julius, would never lay any blame. He was just happy that she now loved him.

  When Elza and Rutger arrived back in Paramaribo on 30 November, to be awaited by the rest of the family, the first news they heard was that Sarith was married to Julius Robles de Medina and now lived at Klein Paradijs on the Boven-Commewijne. Elza was astonished. Sarith married to ‘Noso’? The same Noso whom they had always ridiculed and who according to Sarith was such a bore? Well, she must have been extremely desperate to have come to such a decision.

  ELZA

  It was really fine to be back home again, thought Elza, and the first day she went through the whole house to see all the familiar things again. She also went in the grounds to the slaves’ huts to see Amimba’s little son, who was a chubby, sturdy baby, and she gave Amimba some of Gideon’s cast-off blouses. Maisa, Afanaisa and Alex had their hands full these early days recounting everything. The others wanted to know everything, and Elza often saw them all at the threshold of Alex’s or Amimba’s room, sitting in a circle around the narrators. The favourite topic to be recounted was how in Holland the whites actually did manual labour.

  The others had not believed this at first. Maisa and Afanaisa were trying to take them for a ride! Even when Alex confirmed it, they could not believe it, and Misi Elza had to intervene and confirm that it really was the case: in Holland the whites worked. And the slaves rolled around laughing, roaring their heads off with tears in their eyes. Really true?

  Did the whites actually know how to work with their hands? And time and time again Afanaisa and Maisa had to imitate the kitchen maid peeling the potatoes, the housemaid with broom and pail and how the coachman kept the stalls and the animals clean in the stables. And everyone laughed. Oh, that was a really priceless joke! Whites working with their hands. They never tired of this story, and from then on in this household whenever anyone came with a tall story, the reaction was, “Next you’ll be trying to tell me that whites work with their hands!”146

  Elza’s second child, another son, was born on 17 January, just a week after his brother’s second birthday. He was called Jonathan. Just as on the first occasion, everything went fine. Elza fed the child herself and felt completely fit again after just a few days, but was kept in bed again by Maisa, who still insisted that getting up before the sixteenth day was fraught with danger. After that things got busy, for Mr and Mrs van Omhoog would leave Suriname on 27 February, and in the first week of March the Le Chasseur family would move from the Wagenwegstraat into the large mansion on the Gravenstraat.

  SARITH

  In the meantime Sarith was finding Klein Paradijs to be a totally dull and boring spot. She got annoyed, was surly and moody. Julius was exceptionally loving and attentive, but all that loving stuff on his part irritated her and she often restrained herself with difficulty from snapping at him. Sarith had thought that they would go to Paramaribo around New Year, so as to attend the various festivities, such as that of Esther and Jacob. But when she suggested this to Julius, it turned out that he had a totally different plan. He had had to spend so many New Years at parties. No, he wanted something different. He wanted to remain cosily with his darling little wife alone on their own plantation. And so it turned out, too. How angry Sarith was to be sitting there on her own with Julius while all those parties were going on in Paramaribo. Oh how she hoped that there would very soon be some good reason for her to go to town, urgently and for a longer period. To pass the time, Mini-mini had to give her a massage very often. Sarith noticed something about Mini-mini. Was it just her idea, or was she very much down in the dumps? And then suddenly, around the middle of January, Sarith realized what was up with Mini-mini: she was expecting!

  Sarith was surprised. She had never seen the girl together with a man. Mini-mini herself was very beautiful, but not the provocative type, in fact rather shy. Sarith had noticed often enough how men looked at Mini-mini, and she knew that some of Uncle Levi’s guests at Hébron had on occasion asked whether they might not receive that beautiful slave-girl in their room. Uncle Levi had always answered that he had no authority over Mini-mini because she was his step-daughter’s slave-girl. Sarith had occasionally asked Mini-mini whether she would like to sleep with such a person, and Mini-mini had always replied, “Me? No misi, I don’t want to.”147

  Now, of course, Sarith was really curious as to who was the father of Mini-mini’s child. Mini-mini told her that around the beginning of the year, when Sarith was staying so frequently in the town, she had got to know a young man. Also of mixed race, but a free man. He was called Hendrik de Mees. She had initially seen him frequently around the Saramaccastraat, where the De Ledesmas lived, and later he had admitted that it was for her that he was so often there. He was the child of a white man who had bought his slave-girl into freedom and kept her as a concubine in a small house in the Gemene Weide148 area. The father had cared well for mother and child, but had died when the boy was four years old.

  The mother had managed to raise the boy by selling small cakes. They were poor but they were free. Hendrik had also learnt to read and write, and at the age of fourteen he became apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. He was still working there and didn’t earn very much, but enough to be able to keep himself and his mother and also enough for a wife. After their first meeting he had visited her on many occasions and had secretly spent the night with her (secretly, for it was forbidden for free mulattos to consort with the slaves). She had also visited him on occasion, on Sunday, when his mother wasn’t at home. He had promised that he would save up so that he could buy her into freedom and then she could go to live with him, but that would take some time yet.

  “And now you’re already expecting his child?” said Sarith, when she had heard the whole story. “Yes, misi,” said an embarrassed Mini-mini, and Sarith realized with a shock that she would lose Mini-mini if she were bought into freedo
m by her beloved. But, come now, that was still a long way off, and she generously promised the girl that if she were freed, she could take the child with her without having to pay for it.

  Mini-mini was glad she had told all this. Perhaps that misi of hers wasn’t so bad after all. The new masra was really nice. He was crazy about his wife, that was obvious to Mini-mini. She could also see that her misi did not love the masra. She could only hope that the misi would not do anything stupid, as she had with Masra Rutger. The masra sometimes gave her and Kwasiba a coin. Kwasiba usually bought tobacco, but Mini-mini saved everything she received so as to be able to help towards buying her freedom.

  At the beginning of February 1770 it was announced that Governor Crommelin would retire and that the interim governor, Jean Nepveu, would now be appointed governor. The official installation would take place on 8 March. To mark the occasion an extensive dinner would be held in the palace that evening, with a spectacular ball the next day.

  When the invitation for this arrived, Sarith was beside herself with joy. Something at last! Finally a party at which Sarith could make her mark. She would have to go to Paramaribo as quickly as possible to make all the necessary preparations. Bemused, Julius wondered why that all had to happen right now, since the festivities were still five weeks away. But Sarith managed to persuade him that it was absolutely necessary. After all, she needed to see to her clothes and have her ball gown made. He certainly wouldn’t want her to be going in an old ball gown that everyone knew already? People would be sure to make remarks and think that he didn’t want to give her a new gown. Julius had not thought of that, and so Sarith departed for the town four whole weeks in advance of the festivities, installing herself as before in the De Ledesmas’ house.