The Cost of Sugar

by Cynthia McLeod

  Elza was at her wits’ end and could only pray and pray to God to spare her little daughter. Then at a certain moment she went into Abigail’s room and saw Gideon standing next to her bed. “Gideon,” she said, alarmed, “Hadn’t we agreed that you wouldn’t come in here?”

  Gideon looked tearfully at his mother, asking, “Why does she have to suffer like this, mama; why?” And he stroked that little forehead and took a fan to cool her.

  From the bed there emerged only an occasional groan. After a while, Maisa said gently to Elza that she should go and get some rest. Elza went to her room. Despondent, she sat on her bed, prayed again to God, begging Him to make her daughter better. Then she heard the door slowly open. It was Gideon. He came and stood near her and then leant on her so heavily, it seemed as if he wanted to creep into her body. “What’s up, Gideon?”

  She looked at her son, but knew what the answer would be before a word had been spoken. “No, oh no!” Elza cried.

  But Gideon nodded, throwing his arms around his mother and laying his head in her bosom, sobbing, “She’s dead, mama; Abigail is dead.”

  And Elza could not contain herself any more, and wept copiously with her arms around her son.

  It had been decreed that yellow-fever sufferers must be buried as soon as possible, and just the following morning the little Abigail was taken to her final resting place. Elza was inconsolable and Rutger wept too, unable to think of anything but his little daughter.

  Father Levi Fernandez had come to the town a few days earlier with Aunt Rachel. She was now in the Heerenstraat, for Rebecca had also been taken ill. In the days that followed more and more cases were noted, and it became known that there had been deaths in nearly all families.

  Then Gideon also became ill. Elza couldn’t cope any longer. She implored God not to take her son, oh please not her eldest son, who, although she would not admit it, was really the apple of her eye. Not Gideon, no God, please, not Gideon. It was Maisa who sat at Gideon’s bed day and night, washed his face, wiped his body with a cloth drenched in water in which herbs had been boiled, changed the sheets, held Gideon upright when the convulsions came. Maisa didn’t sleep at all, sitting there day and night, indefatigable. Rutger and Elza came and went in the room, being unable to do much, just look how Maisa was occupying herself with their child. After a while Rutger would leave the room again, totally despondent.

  This damned land with all its tropical diseases. He had already lost one child. He begged God not to take his son, too. Elza came out of the room. Fresh water was needed. She had one of the slave-boys fetch it from the rainwater vat and took it to the room herself. When she entered the room she saw Maisa on her knees by the bed. The boy lay very still on the bed, no wheezing and groaning, no convulsions.

  “My God, no!” Elza felt that she could only scream, but Maisa turned round and said softly,

  “Look misi, look – his fever has gone. Look how gently he’s breathing, he’s getting better.”264

  Elza hastened to the bed and sure enough Gideon’s head was no longer hot, he was no longer gasping, but was breathing regularly.

  “Oh Maisa, he’s getting better, thanks to you, Maisa, thanks to you!”265

  She wanted to embrace Maisa, but Maisa put her hand out, saying,

  “Don’t touch me misi, don’t touch me.”266

  And Elza looked at Maisa and saw only now what Maisa had known and felt for the past two days: the swollen bloodred lips, the bloodshot eyes.

  “No Maisa, oh no!” cried Elza.

  Maisa tried to grasp one of the bedposts, but those hands that had constantly washed, cared and calmed, now had no strength left, and slowly she sank to the floor next to the bed in which lay the boy who would recover due to her efforts.

  Three days later Maisa was dead. Gideon recovered. It took quite a while, but he did recover. In the meantime Rebecca had died, and Ezau too, who had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. Joshua was recovering, but now Jethro was ill, really ill.

  SARITH

  In the Saramaccastraat, in the house so engulfed in mourning, Sarith sat in her sick child’s room. Everything seemed so unreal. This house, always so full of joy and life, now in mourning because first the father and now one of the sons had died. And now her son was lying there so ill.

  Sarith herself could do nothing: she was completely helpless in this kind of situation. She was so scared when Jethro had vomited that deep-red blood, she had run from the room, weeping. Was God now going to punish her like this? Was she going to lose her child?

  It was Nicolette who was looking after Jethro along with Julius. Sarith had sent an errand boy to fetch Julius from the Weidestraat. She had never expected that she would do something like that, but seeing Jethro lying there so ill, she had not known what else she could do. Julius had been there by his son’s bedside since the previous morning and would hold the child upright when Nicolette changed the sheets. Jethro was almost literally glowing with fever, and now and then he would come to from his delirium. Now, at this moment, too. And his lips formed the words, “Mini-mini.”

  “Mini-mini isn’t here, my boy,” answered Julius, laying the child back on the pillows.

  Only a groan, that seemed to emerge from the very core of that small body. Sarith got up from the chair near the window where she had been sitting and came to stand by the bed.

  Again Jethro mouthed, “Mini-mini.”

  Julius glanced at Sarith. “He’s asking for Mini-mini.”

  Sarith nodded. Julius looked at her.

  “I’ll go and get her,” he said.

  Sarith nodded again. He could certainly fetch Mini-mini if only that would mean that Jethro would get better. Nothing mattered any more if only the child would recover.

  Julius got up and walked slowly out of the room and down the stairs. But before he had reached the front door he heard a stifled scream from above and hear his name being called. His knees trembling, he walked back and came to a standstill under the stairs leading to the next floor, looking at his wife, there above on the stairs with a hand in front of her mouth. Sobbing, she called to him, “It’s no longer necessary, Julius, it’s no use anymore. He’s dead. My God, my Jethro is dead.”

  JULIUS

  Two weeks later the Klein Paradijs tent-boat was on its way to the plantation. Julius sat in the boat with Sarith and with little Eva. He had never imagined that this was how the journey home would be. What grief, what sorrow. His son, his bright, handsome son, was no more. What agony they were leaving behind them there in Paramaribo, where nearly every family now had someone to mourn.

  In the Saramaccastraat seven of the twenty-two slaves had died, and with a heavy heart Julius wondered what he would find back at Klein Paradijs. At the plantations where they had to stop now and then there had also been people sick and dying, and everyone knew that their son had died.

  Sarith said little during the journey. She was a downcast, sorrowful woman who was asking herself whether all this was happening because God wanted to punish her in this way for all the wrong she had done. She looked at Julius. In the past he had loved her, but now he no longer loved her. He loved Mini-mini. If only she could talk to him. But since the business with Rein Andersma such a chasm had opened up between them that there was no longer any question of their being husband and wife: they were just strangers to each other. Jethro had been the only link that they still retained, and now he was gone, too.

  Two days earlier Julius had come to tell her that he was returning to the plantation, and she could see that he was surprised when she had said that they would return with him.

  Julius stared ahead while the boat glided along. What was the use of all this? What dreams he had had twenty-seven years ago when he started the plantation. Everything had appeared rose-coloured. A lad of twenty, then. He had started with money from his father, and everything had progressed well and quickly. A coffee plantation. The area was not all that large, but the coffee fetched a good price. Then came the smallpox epidemic
of 1764 that claimed the lives of his first wife, his son and many of the slaves. That had actually been the beginning of the end.

  Arriving at the plantation, he looked around. Yes, everything indeed looked unkempt. There were not enough slaves for all the work. The harvest the previous year had not been all that successful. He had made less money than he had expected. He had repaid hardly any of the money he had borrowed three years earlier, after the Maroons’ raid. Before he had even set foot in the door the supervisor came up to him. He expressed his sympathy at the death of Jethro, but also came to say that twelve slaves had already succumbed to disease. It was almost impossible to work. Even if all the slaves were put to working in the field and in the coffee mill, even then there were too few, and there was no-one left for all the other things that needed doing, such as maintenance, weeding the grounds, keeping the canals clear, working in the carpenter’s and blacksmith’s shops.

  Julius said nothing. What could he say? Hadn’t he foreseen all this? In the evening he sat in silence on the rear veranda. He really didn’t care any more. He wanted nothing for himself. He wanted only to be with Mini-mini. How he longed to be near her, to feel her comforting hand, to hear her voice. That alone was what he longed for: to be with Mini-mini. He could see her now in his mind’s eye, when he had gone to tell her that Jethro had died. He could still see that intense sorrow in her eyes, sorrow for the child she had regarded as her own, the child that had suffered in that way and was now gone for ever. If only he could be with Mini-mini for evermore. Never leave her again. And, in fact, why not? Why should he continue with this plantation? What was the use? He didn’t have the money for it. Should he just get deeper into debt? What for? In a few years’ time he would be dead, and what then? Jethro, who could have carried on running the plantation, was no more.

  Both his daughters were married and had no desire to inherit a plantation that was heavily in debt. And Sarith? Sarith had never liked Klein Paradijs. If he was no longer there she would immediately try to sell off everything. So why should he carry on? He might as well try to sell everything straightaway. The grounds themselves would probably not sell, for it was highly improbable that anyone would now want to buy a plantation on the Boven-Commewijne River. Quite the opposite. The plantations that were still being bought were all much closer to the town. He made his decision. He would not get into debt any more in an attempt to keep the plantation running. No, he would sell everything. If the plantation itself could not be sold, then the slaves, the drying shed, the machines and that kind of thing could be. Of whatever remained after the loan had been settled he would invest a part for Sarith and a part for himself and Mini-mini’s boys, and he would go and live with her in the town.

  And Sarith? Now, Sarith had after all never been happy together with him and had never really regarded Klein Paradijs as her home. And Eva? Well, sorry to say, he could never think of that child as his own. She bore his name and he would ensure that she was cared for, but she was Sarith’s child, not his.

  The next day, Julius walked around the plantation, thinking about what he had decided. He then told Sarith. He explained to her that she could leave if she wished, could take whatever she liked, and whichever slaves she wanted. Although divorce was virtually unknown in Jewish families, she could regard herself as ‘free’, he said, and if she really wanted to marry another man, he would do everything he could to permit that in law. He also told Sarith that he was planning to bestow his name on Mini-mini’s boys.

  “I shall certainly do that, and you’ll hear about it, so I’m telling you myself,” said Julius.

  Sarith nodded. She had expected this.

  “Then these half-cast children will also be called Robles de Medina,” she said.

  “Your child is called Robles de Medina,” he retorted. “These half-cast children, my children, will be called Robles, simply Robles.”

  A few weeks later the tent-boat left the plantation. Sarith left. Little Eva stood in the boat with Nicolette holding her hand. Nicolette was also leaving, as were her own two small children and her mother.

  The boat was heavily laden with everything that Sarith was taking in terms of household goods and furniture. They would stop briefly in Paramaribo and then continue on to Hébron, where she longed to be. On Hébron, with her mother and stepfather. In the familiar surroundings of her carefree childhood.

  She left. The boat sailed away and the jetty faded into the distance. Away from the plantation, which in time would be empty – empty and deserted. Where only the buildings would remain until they were completely engulfed by vegetation and collapsed. Nature would reclaim what was hers. Bushes and trees would grow there, and after thirty, maybe fifty years there would be nothing to distinguish the spot from the rest of the jungle. Klein Paradijs on the Boven-Commewijne would be forever history.

  263 In contrast to the Zwarte Jagers, this was a corps of free negroes and coloureds who gave their services professionally.

  264 “Luku misi, luku, a no habi korsu moro, luku fa ai hari bro so switi now, ai kon betre.”

  265 “Ai kon betre, tangi fu yu Maisa, tangi fu yu.”

  266 “No fasi mi, misi, no fasi.”

  EPILOGUE

  ELZA

  It was the last week of February, 1779. Governor Nepveu was now gravely ill. This had been the case for several months, but now his condition was regarded as terminal. ‘The fox’, as he was called by many, would therefore depart this life, and even the plantation owners who had been so much against him during his life had to admit that he had served the colony well in that time, if only by the creation of the Military Cordon Path, which had given access to a part of the otherwise impenetrable jungle.

  It was not a happy time in the colony. Many families were still mourning the passing of one or more loved ones, and there was still much disease among both people and cattle. Even the harvests were poorer. Many things were scarce. Dutch ships did not dare to enter the area because of the pirates. Ships from America with goods for Suriname were being captured by the English.

  Elza sat on the rear veranda of her spacious home on the Gravenstraat and looked out over the grounds where Jonathan and Gideon were playing with Amimba’s sons under the great mango tree. Gideon was still very thin from his illness, but how tall he had grown, thought Elza. She sighed. That terrible disease. Only that morning she had had one of Abigail’s little aprons in her hands and had put it in a cupboard. Her lovely, tiny Abigail, her little angel, who would no longer wear that apron. She missed her, but thanked God that He had not taken Gideon, and who knows she might now be given another little girl, for she had known for a few weeks that she was expecting again. It was Maisa whom she could never replace. How she missed Maisa. She missed her so much that it was almost a physical pain. Maisa!

  Only when Maisa had passed away had Elza realized fully how dependent she had been on that one person. Not she, Elza, but Maisa had been the axis around which everything had revolved. The household: that had been Maisa’s household. It was then that Elza had discovered that she in fact knew nothing at all. She didn’t know how and where things were bought, what was needed. She knew absolutely nothing, for Maisa had always seen to everything.

  A few days earlier, Lena the cook had come to say that they had run out of flour. Elza had suddenly burst into tears, to the considerable astonishment of Lena, who could not understand why the misi should be weeping like that just because there was no flour. That was, of course, not the reason for her tears: flour was scarce right now. No, Elza had suddenly felt just how much she missed Maisa. She had always been there to give good guidance. She would certainly have found out where and how flour could be obtained.

  It now occurred to Elza that her family was in fact a model for all Suriname society. Wasn’t everyone and everything totally dependent on the slaves? Just as she felt so completely lost without Maisa, so the colony would be totally lost without its slaves. They did everything and knew everything, and the whites knew nothing and were incapa
ble of anything. The whites needed the negroes, but the negroes didn’t need a single white person: look how the Maroons had managed to create a complete society in the jungle, knowing how to put everything to good use. Without tools and weapons they knew how to survive, feed themselves and defeat the military. And the whites? If they got lost in the jungle, that meant certain death, for they could not survive of their own account. If the negroes were no longer in this colony the whole structure of society would collapse like a puffed-up pudding. There were already enough plantations that had had to be wound up due to lack of slaves.

  Elza thought back to what Rutger had told her two weeks earlier. Julius Robles de Medina had come along to his office. He was going to finish with Klein Paradijs. It was simply no longer manageable. He had insufficient slaves to keep the plantation going. He had been unable to repay even half of the loan he had received three years earlier. He would sell everything: the slaves, the coffee-drying apparatus and what remained of the cattle.

  Rutger had wanted to encourage him to give it another try, but Julius had looked him tearfully in the eye and had asked dejectedly, “Why, for whom?” His sons were already dead. When he was no longer around, Sarith would simply sell everything, since she had never at all cared for Klein Paradijs. The children he had had by Mini-mini would not be able to inherit the plantation. So it was better simply to sell everything. A part of what was left he could invest to provide for Sarith, and from the rest, albeit a meager sum, he just wanted to live out a peaceful old age with Mini-mini. For that was in fact all he now really longed for in life: to be with Mini-mini and to stay with her in peace.

  Elza could sympathize with Julius. Perhaps he was right. Mini-mini would certainly be a loving partner for him now. And what was Sarith doing now? She had gone to Hébron, but she would certainly not stay there for long because she would get bored with it. Actually, Elza was also concerned about her. Sarith had always sought pleasure and entertainment to such an extent that she could never find contentment and enjoy what she did have. What an empty, sad person she had become.