The Cost of Sugar

by Cynthia McLeod

  It was siesta time. Around one o’clock they had lunched royally, and now it was half past three. Everything in the house was still silent. Next to her, Reindert also awoke. He looked at her, smiled and began to run a finger over her bare stomach.

  “Rein, I think I’m expecting, did you know?” Sarith asked gently.

  “Oh yes?” asked Rein. “Who do you think the father is?”

  “I don’t know. Terrible, eh?” said Sarith.

  “We’ll consider that your husband is the father. That will be best for all concerned,” said Rein.

  “Aren’t I a really bad woman?” Sarith now asked.

  “A fine, lovely, bad woman,” laughed Rein, taking her in his arms.

  Suddenly there was uproar outside. Shouting, screaming, “Oh heavens, bush-negroes, bush-negroes.”182

  Footsteps in the corridor downstairs. Rein was out of bed in one leap, pulling up the only piece of clothing he was wearing: thin pyjama trousers. He opened the bedroom door, ran onto the passage, and looked out of the window, that reached to his middle. At that same moment a shot rang out and he collapsed onto the floor of the passage, mortally wounded. Her eyes wide with fear, Sarith sat up in bed, pressing her thin batiste nightdress to her naked body. She had heard the shot. What had happened; where was Rein?

  Then she heard Jethro crying and calling, “Mini-mini.” The next moment Jethro was on Mini-mini’s arm with her in the room, followed by Kwasiba, who, gasping, closed the door and whispered hoarsely, “Go and hide, my God misi, go and hide. The bush-negroes are here.”183

  She pulled Sarith from the bed, opened a cupboard door and pushed her, Mini-mini and Jethro in the cupboard, closed the door and quickly shoved a screen in front of it.

  Immediately after that there was a lot of noise in the corridor and on the stairs, footsteps, shouting. The room door was flung open and five Alukus raced in.

  “Where are they, where are the whites?”184 one of them shouted to Kwasiba.

  “Whites? There are no more whites. Haven’t you killed him already?”185 pointing to Rein’s body that lay in the passage.

  “The others, where are they hiding?”186 they shouted again.

  “There are no others; they’re all in town.”187

  Kwasiba said this most calmly. Meanwhile a group of the plantation’s slaves stood outside. One of the Maroons called from the window, next to which Rein’s body lay, “All you slaves, we have killed the white man already. You can leave. Run away. You are free.”188

  A loud cheer rang out and the sound of running feet could be heard.

  Suddenly a loud voice came, “Well, then I will sleep here tonight! Aren’t you leaving, woman?”189 “Oh, no,” said Kwasiba. “If you are sleeping here then I can better stay, too, and you can eat a good meal.”190

  “Yes woman, you are right. Cook for me. Cook for all of us.”191

  “So who are you, brother?”192 asked Kwasiba.

  “I am Agosu.”193

  The slaves had often of late heard the name Agosu. He was one of the new leaders. When Kwasiba heard the name she was afraid, but she let nothing slip, and continued, “So you are Agosu, eh? I have heard your name. You are a great man.”194

  Agosu laughed, “You have heard it, eh? Well, now go and cook. The great man is hungry. I will stay here.”195

  Sarith and Mini-mini in the cupboard heard how Kwasiba left the room and they also heard Agosu pacing up and down the room, sometimes silent, sometimes talking to himself. They were both frightened to death. It was pitch dark in the cupboard. At first they stood up, trembling, Sarith still naked, with the nightgown pressed against her. Later she carefully put it on. Mini-mini had sat on the ground with Jethro on her lap. She whispered very cautiously in his ear that he must keep deadly still, must make no noise and must not cry, or they would be discovered and murdered. Jethro, who was four years old, had already heard so much about those terrible Maroons who went around killing people that he understood that this was now a matter of life and death, and there wasn’t a peep out of him. Sarith was so scared that she had to muster all her self-control to ensure that the sound of her teeth chattering would not be heard, or they would be discovered and murdered. It wasn’t true, she kept trying to persuade herself. This wasn’t really happening; it was a nightmare. Soon she would wake up and everything would be normal and safe again. But the nightmare went on. Now and then they heard footsteps, now and then the sound of a chair being moved and a voice saying something. And Rein, where was Rein; what had happened to him?

  She didn’t dare ask this of Mini-mini, afraid that her voice would be too loud. She began biting her fingers and had to force herself not to burst out sobbing. Mini-mini held Jethro pressed against her. Oh, as long as nothing happened to this child. If only this negro would leave. Perhaps they would all leave quickly now, now they believed that there were no further whites. That officer, the lad who was carrying on with the misi, was certainly dead. She had seen him lying there on the ground in a pool of blood. If they just remained dead still here in this cupboard, then the men might leave without discovering them. She understood that her mother was now busy cooking. Perhaps they would leave after they had eaten.

  Every minute seemed like hours for Mini-mini and Sarith. After a while she heard Kwasiba coming. She said loudly that she had brought food and that all the men downstairs also had food. Agosu now opened the bedroom window, which had been closed all this time, and called, “All of you take the weapons away and come back to collect more.”196 After he had eaten he went and lay down on the bed, saying, “It’s already dark. I will stay here.”197 Kwasiba went and sat in the rocking chair and began talking to him. She asked him all kinds of things: how they worked in the bush, how they lived, and every time she said, “Yes, you all are right, you’re getting them where it hurts, those infernal whites.”198

  When she had gone downstairs, Kwasiba had seen none of the people from the house. She understood very well that they would not all have fled, but that some of them had perhaps gone into hiding somewhere. She had thought that the best thing she could do in this situation would be to let the treacherous Agosu think that she was completely on his side. It was perhaps for the best that he wanted to stay upstairs, for then at least he would not set fire to the house, which so often happened.

  Perhaps the soldiers would come. Perhaps they would come to ask where that one was, that one who loved the misi but who now lay dead on the ground. If only the three in the cupboard could remain immobile and not make any noise. For that reason she stayed in the room and talked with Agosu. She spoke loudly to signal that he was still in the room and also in the hope that he would not notice any sound that was made. She had to stay and talk to him, therefore, and so she asked him about everything and nothing while she rocked to and fro in the chair. Was it true what the people were saying about Joli-Coeur? Had he really hacked off the head of that wretch Schulz? Was it true what they did with those whites on the plantations?

  Agosu spoke. Yes it was true. Sometimes they acted cruelly. But all the negroes’ cruel acts totalled up would not come to one-thousandth of all the cruelty inflicted on the negroes by the whites. And in fact the negroes did not want to fight and murder whites at all. They just wanted their freedom. Freedom to live there in the bush. They wanted nothing from the planters or the government: just freedom. Because the whites seemed unable to grasp this, that was why they sometimes had to be cruel. But Kwasiba knew very well, in fact, that negroes were not of themselves cruel. Every cruel act they had first learnt from the whites. A negro would not be cruel without due cause. For this reason they so often left the white soldiers alone. They were, after all, innocent. No, a negroe’s faith would not permit him to treat cruelly someone who was innocent. If he did that, then his kra (spirit) could leave him. This was apparently very different for the whites, who, it would seem, had no kra. Did Kwasiba know what the soldiers did if they managed to capture an Aluku village? Women and children were murdered, cruelly with a lance pu
shed through the stomach and sometimes, yes sometimes, and Agosu looked at Kwasiba with a look of steel while he told her, “Soldiers have crushed our children in a mortar just as you might crush bananas, until they were dead.”199

  “But I’ll tell you this,” Agosu stood up while he spoke. “If I come across a white child, I let the mother watch and then I take the child, I cut a finger off, then another finger, another one, then a hand, then a foot, the other foot, until I’ve cut the child into pieces like this right before his mother’s eyes.”200

  In the cupboard, Sarith felt as if she would faint when she heard this. This is what she could expect: that her child would be cut to pieces in front of her eyes. Jethro had fallen asleep in Mini-mini’s lap. When she heard Agosu’s words, she clutched the child even more tightly and pressed her hand on his free ear to prevent him from hearing any of this. Sarith pressed herself completely against Mini-mini as if she wanted to creep into Mini-mini’s body.

  Agosu and Kwasiba continued talking. Apparently he had gone to lie on the bed. Now and then it went quiet and you heard only the bump of the rocking chair. Then even that stopped occasionally. Hours passed. On the bed in the room Agosu slept with brief interruptions. In the rocking chair Kwasiba dozed off occasionally, as did Mini-mini in the cupboard. But Sarith did not sleep. She was wide awake. This was her punishment, that much she believed for sure. This is how God punished people who were bad. Was it not this very afternoon that she had asked Rein whether she wasn’t perhaps a bad woman? This afternoon – it seemed like a hundred years ago. And Rein, what had happened to him? Had he managed to flee or was he dead? This had all happened because of her wickedness. In silence she prayed, “Lord God, allow this to pass, let them leave, have them not murder me and Jethro. I shall never be bad again, I promise.” She thought over all the bad things she had done. Oh so many. Not only all this with Rein, but earlier, that with Rutger, when she had caused Elza so much sorrow. She had had Ashana whipped to death. And Julius, how bad she had been to Julius. In the first place she was married to him without being in love with him, and she had betrayed him. “Oh God forgive me,” she prayed. “I shall not be bad any more, may he go without doing anything to us, I beg of you.”

  Day had broken. They heard Agosu talking again. They heard Kwasiba saying that she would get him something to eat, and some coffee. After that he paced up and down, looked out of the window now and then, sometimes shouted something below. In the cupboard they could see through a chink under the door that it had become light. Jethro woke up. Mini-mini whispered with her mouth right next to his ear that he still must be dead still. He badly needed to pee, but in that case how, and where? At her wits’ end, Mini-mini took one of Julius’ coats from the rack and rolled it up. Jethro would have to pee into that. In that way the urine could not stream out of the cupboard. Sarith was terribly thirsty. What would happen to them? Would they be saved? Would Agosu and his men leave of their own accord? Would he discover them?

  The hours dragged by. In the middle of the day Kwasiba went again to cook something. Sarith, Mini-mini and Jethro could smell the food while Agosu was eating. Especially Jethro was very hungry, but most of all he was scared, oh so scared, and silently he cried with his face in Mini-mini’s lap, who was holding him fast and stroking his hair. How many hours had passed? How long had they been sitting in the cupboard? It became warmer and more stuffy. How long would this torment last? Such uncertainty, not knowing what would happen the next moment. Now Jethro needed to do more than a pee. He whispered in Mini-mini’s ear. She whispered back that it was impossible, he would have to keep it back. Sarith, too, hissed to her son that he must hold it back. But Jethro could not any more.

  Then they heard Agosu shouting out of the window. They didn’t understand, but then they heard, “Wait, I’m coming,”201 and they heard the room door open and Agosu run onto the passage. Now Kwasiba was therefore alone in the room. Very carefully Mini-mini opened the door and whispered, “Psst.” Kwasiba came closer. “My God, be quiet, do keep quiet there.”202

  Quickly Mini-mini whispered what the problem was. Now, quickly, then. Kwasiba took Jethro with her. He would have to be quick. In the small room where the chamber pots stood she took his trousers down and said, “Quick, quick!”

  Jethro did his best and strained as quickly as possible on the night pot. Quickly she pulled his trousers up again and was intending to take him back to the cupboard, but she had taken just two steps into the room and there stood Agosu in the doorway. Kwasiba froze with shock and Jethro turned deathly white.

  “Oh, so that’s it. Where’s the little white thing come from?”203 and he came towards Jethro. Kwasiba stood in front of the child and held him tightly behind her, saying, “Leave him alone, oh, the poor boy, leave him.”204

  Agosu went towards the room with the chamber pots. “Where is his mother?”205

  “He has no mother, she is already dead,”206 said Kwasiba, turning with the boy still behind her, so that she was constantly between him and Agosu.

  In the cupboard Sarith hung semiconscious onto Mini-mini. She had heard so much about hell, but now she knew: this was what she was experiencing, this was hell, and it was all happening as punishment for all the wicked things she had done. Yes, so it was: she was in hell and this was her retribution. Now it was going to happen. Now this ghastly negro would cut her child in pieces. Mini-mini wasn’t even aware that her fingernails were biting into her misi’s arms from the fright. Then they heard Agosu say, “Haven’t I told you what I would do to a white child?”207

  Jethro, pressing against Kwasiba’s legs, suddenly saw a knife and screamed, “No, no!”

  Kwasiba held her arms out against Agosu’s approach, shouting, “Look, if you dare to do anything, then you will lose your kra. Surely you don’t want that! You need your kra to fight. Leave the child alone, I beg you, leave him in peace.”208

  In the cupboard it felt to Sarith as if her heart had stopped. Mini-mini was ready to jump out of the cupboard. She didn’t care any more. That awful Agosu could cut her fingers off, but not Jethro, oh no, not Jethro. Agosu took another step towards Kwasiba, the knife raised. At the same moment voices and footsteps sounded on the stairs and someone shouted, “Agosu, quick, quick, get away, boats are coming, boats full of soldiers and they’re already at the jetty. Get away, all the others have already gone. Come on, Agosu.”209

  Agosu glanced again at Kwasiba, then turned and hurried away. From the cupboard they could hear his bare feet taking leaps down the stairs.

  Commotion, then, and noise at the front. Shots fired, cries, whistles, men running around the house and then men’s feet, fast, on the stairs.

  “Sarith, Sarith, Jethro?” and a gasping Julius stood in the room. “Where is the misi?”210 he cried, and the next moment the screen was pushed over and a semiconscious Sarith fell from the cupboard, followed by Mini-mini.

  “So you’re alive! Thank God, you’re alive! Oh God, oh God!” and Julius sank onto the bed and looked at his wife, who was sitting in a stupor on the floor.

  Kwasiba dumped the wailing child in his father’s lap and, throwing herself onto the bed, cried, “Oh my God, my masra, oh my father,”211 and began weeping and shouting uncontrollably.

  Julius looked from the one to the other, but it was as if he didn’t really see anything. He was conscious of only one thing: they were alive, his wife and child were alive. All those hours since three o’clock that morning when there had come a knock on the window in the Saramaccastraat and someone had shouted, “Masra, get up, the bush-negroes have raided Klein Paradijs,”212 from that moment on he had expected nothing other than to find his wife and child murdered. He had left the town immediately, had made the oarsmen row against the tide, had himself rowed, and always with the one thought going through his head: what would he find when he got there? “God,” he had prayed, “Let them live.” It did not matter to him if his plantation was burnt out or destroyed, if only they survived. God had heard his prayers. But how? Wha
t had happened?

  “Kwasiba,” Sarith barely managed to whisper, “Kwasiba has saved us; it’s thanks to Kwasiba that we’re alive.”

  And now that the reality of what had happened penetrated her consciousness, she began weeping, not rebelliously and obtrusively, as she did when she wanted to get her own way, but softly, silently the tears dripped from her eyes. Mini-mini wept, too. She had drawn Jethro to her and held him fast with both arms while rocking her body back and forth.

  “If Kwasiba hadn’t been here, we would no longer be here, either; it’s all thanks to Kwasiba,” was all that Sarith could manage to say, and Julius looked at Kwasiba, still straddling the bed, shouting, “Those wretches, those devils!”213

  Then everyone began talking at the same time. Jethro wanted to say something, Sarith wanted to say something, Kwasiba got up to make sugared water to calm everyone down. When they opened the door Julius suddenly noticed a foot belonging to the body that lay there on the passage. That young man, what was that man doing there? And suddenly everything welled up inside him, everything that in his anxiety had been suppressed. All the tales, all the gossip about his wife, and now that man, lying dead in the passage.

  “Sarith, that lad, what was he doing here?”