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, the 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.