“No, a man can’t do that, eh?” answered Julius cynically. “Not that, but he’s supposed to accept that his wife has someone else’s baby. That’s all right, it seems!”
Esther was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say to that. “Julius, calm down now, go and freshen up and take a rest, and then we can always see this afternoon what’s what.”
She pulled his arm and drew him out of the room, but not before Julius had turned to his wife, saying, “If anything’s happened to her, then I swear I’ll strangle you with my bare hands!”
Jethro, who had followed all of this in sheer terror, now grabbed his father’s hand and said, in tears again, “Will you find her, papa; where is she, papa?”
“Quiet now, Jethro, quiet. I’ll bring her back. I promise you she’ll come back!” He left the house. Esther wanted to remark on his unshaved face, but he was already gone.
Of course all the slaves in the house knew what was going on, and while his master was inside, Benny had heard in detail how Masra Beunekom had arrived the day before yesterday with Misi Sarith and how he had taken Mini-mini with him. When Benny saw his master come out of the house, he said only, “Masra Beunekom took her with him.”254 To the stock-exchange, then. He would be sure to be there at this time of the morning.
Everyone knew Masra Beunekom, a trader who sold mainly salt-water negroes. These newly arrived negroes were first put in a slave depot until they could be sold. The sale was a public affair, usually a few days after the ship had landed. The slaves had to stand on a table and they were examined and pummelled from all angles. But in most cases the more significant transactions had already taken place at the stock-exchange.
Mr Beunekom was, however, not in the stock-exchange. Well, perhaps he was at the slave depot. Julius and Benny hurried to the depot on the Kleine Combéweg, but Masra Beunekom wasn’t there, either. The slave who was there at the shed said that Masra Beunekom would certainly not be coming there today, for after all there were no slaves to sell right now: only a few decrepit negroes were there in the depot. Julius wanted in any case to look inside, just to be sure that Mini-mini wasn’t there, so the slave opened the door for him with a large, rusty key. She wasn’t there. Julius was becoming increasingly nervous and frightened. Every minute that passed without his finding her could mean something terrible happening to her. All right, so now to Masra Beunekom’s house. He lived in the Jodenbreestraat. Julius ran there with Benny on his heels.
MINI-MINI
When the misi had suddenly come up with the plan that they should all go to town, Mini-mini had already had serious misgivings, and when the man stood at the door that evening she had immediately understood what the score was. It was over; everything was finished. How could she have ever thought that she would sometime be free, living her life with a man who loved her and whom she loved, too? That was just a dream, never reality for a slave-girl.
The man had taken her to his home and had locked her in a room. Thank goodness, she had thought at that moment, for she had been afraid that he would take her to some brothel or other. At that stage she did not know what was in store for her, for Beunekom was busy considering how this beautiful slave-girl could make him the most money. But in the meantime he would make the most of her himself. So when, a little later, he had entered the room with bare chest and a lamp in his hand, she had understood completely what he was after. She had resisted, punched, kicked, scratched. But that served only to make him more eager, and in the end he had hit her a few times, forced her against the wall and raped her. When it was all over, he had left. The key had ground in the lock and she was alone again in the darkness.
Mini-mini wept. Oh, that this should be her fate. Could the masra know what had happened to her? The following day an old slave had come along with a bucket of water for her to wash herself, a gourd with a few vegetable roots and some salted fish, and another with some water to drink. With pity in his eyes he had murmured, “Oh, poor thing.”255
The whole day she had sat miserably in a corner of the room, rubbing her ankle, for she had twisted it during the fighting the previous evening. That evening Beunekom came again. He was clearly blind drunk. Mini-mini felt sick with disgust for the man, but she didn’t resist this time, knowing it would be no use.
She looked for a way to escape. If only she could do that, and then go into hiding. But the door was locked and the windows had locks as well as grills. She could only open the blinds and just get a hand through, nothing more. Exhausted and miserable, she went and sat on the floor again. And then suddenly she heard something! Wasn’t that Masra Julius’ voice? Oh, perhaps she was just imagining things. She limped to a window. But the room’s windows looked out onto the grounds and the negroes’ entrance, not onto the street. She heard how the old slave closed the front door again and she heard departing footsteps on the pavement. With all her might she screamed, “Masra, help me, I’m here. Get me away from here, I beg you, get me away!”256