The De Ledesma family, therefore, with five sons, had enough on their plate. The twins, now sixteen, had had their Bar Mitzvah three years previously. Tomorrow it would be teeming there with all the guests. Elza did think, however, that it would be better to leave little Charlotte behind. She was coughing a little, was in any case not all that strong, and often suffered from bronchitis. No, it would be better for Charlotte to stay at home with Maisa. Then just Afanaisa would go along to help. Abigail, however, was really looking forward to the next day. There would be so many other children. Elza thought about the family in the Saramaccastraat and automatically about Sarith, too, for Sarith was more often there than at Klein Paradijs.
What a to-do there had been two years earlier when Julius had installed Mini-mini in a cottage on the Weidestraat! He had had to borrow money for that from Rutger: money to buy Mini-mini’s freedom and money to rent the house. Rutger had told Elza that he had taken pity on the large man sitting opposite him and telling him that it was Mini-mini whom he loved, whom he longed for, who gave him love and a sense of security, whom he really had been seeking all his life. And Elza could well imagine this, knowing what a sweet person Mini-mini was, which could certainly not be said of Sarith. Rutger had not been able to increase the loan on the plantation, but had personally lent Julius the money he needed so that Mini-mini now lived in the Weidestraat and already had two small sons.
Julius was now very often in the town with Mini-mini, and Jethro was often there, too. He was sometimes with his mother in the Saramaccastraat, but even if Julius wasn’t with Mini-mini, one of the Saramaccastraat errand boys would take him to Mini-mini.
It seemed as if Sarith had resigned herself to all this, though Maisa had heard from one of the slave-girls there that Sarith had more than once remarked that Mini-mini had stolen not only her husband but also her son. Elza felt that there was no talk of stealing in this case. It was after all Mini-mini who had cared for Jethro from the moment he was born. No wonder he loved her more than he did his mother, whom he seldom saw. Tiny Eva was a dapper little thing, completely blond, with light-blue eyes. Of course this gave rise to the necessary whispers, for there had never been anyone blond in Sarith’s family or in that of Julius. Sarith herself said that this was all quite normal. Elza’s Abigail was almost blond, after all. But that was of course something completely different, for Rutger had light-brown hair, and according to Maisa Abigail was the spitting image of Elza’s mother, Misi Elizabeth.
Elza sat by the window. It was hot and dusty. It had not been a good year for the colony. There had been a lot to complain about: so much illness among the people and especially among the cattle. On many plantations cows, horses and mules had been dying quite inexplicably, and even among the wild animals in the bush there had been many deaths: so many, in fact, that even the vultures could not cope. Maisa came in and asked whether the misi already knew which dress she would be wearing that evening. “This evening? Oh, yes, that’s true.” She and Rutger had to attend a theatrical evening at the Jewish theatre.
In 1775 a Dutch theatre had opened in Paramaribo, but the Jews were not allowed to attend it. One of its most important founders was Hendrik Schouten, a Dutchman who had married a half-cast, Susanne Hansen, in 1772. He had considerable problems with his wife’s not being accepted in the foremost white circles in Paramaribo, and took to writing all kinds of satirical poems about this society in which his wife was not welcome. Rutger found it quite incomprehensible that someone who himself suffered so much from discrimination then made such a distinction and founded a theatre bearing the inscription ‘Pro Excolenda Eloquentia’ followed by ‘Jews prohibited’. The Jews, however, had opened their own theatre after that, and twelve productions were being staged there each year.
The next day there was incredible hustle and bustle in the De Ledesmas’ home. Carriages coming and going, guests in the large front hall and the dining room, children running up and down the stairs and around the grounds, slaves under the trees who had accompanied their masters’ families and were there to lend a hand.
Abraham Cohen was deep in conversation with Rutger. He had a lodger, a certain Joachim Morpurgo from a small town in Italy. The Jews there had been hearing a lot about the colony of Suriname, where the Jews enjoyed certain privileges and where the Portuguese Jews had founded the beautiful village Joden-Savanna: a new Jerusalem on the river. The fame of this place had spread as far as northern Italy, where this group of Jews had ended up after extensive wanderings through much of Europe. A number of well-to-do families, about forty souls in total, now wanted to emigrate to Suriname to establish themselves at this Joden-Savanna, and Joachim Morpurgo had come to see and arrange everything. He had already been to Joden-Savanna and had liked it. Of course he had heard that the place was not what it had been, and he could also see this for himself. Many of the wealthier families had departed for the town and had stayed there. But he and his group would be able to breathe new life into Joden-Savanna. They had enough money to establish plantations and could themselves live at the Savanna. After all, they had everything they needed there: the beautiful synagogue, houses that could be done up, a bakery, a butcher and the famous cemetery.