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.”