The day after Rutger’s return, he sat in his patron’s office, and Mr van Omhoog wanted to know all about his experiences. How were things on the plantations Mijn Geluk and De Goede Verwachting?19 Those were the plantations Rutger had had to visit. And what were his impressions of Joden-Savanna? Had there been many guests present? Of course, mainly Jews. And Rutger recounted how he had enjoyed the people’s hospitality and how he had already made many new friends. He had become especially friendly with Elza Fernandez and her father Levi Fernandez, owner of the Hébron Plantation. Mr van Omhoog naturally knew who Levi Fernandez was. Did Rutger realize, however, that it was better not to become too friendly with the Jews? They formed such a closed, individual circle, and in recent years there had arisen considerable ‘anti’ feelings among the Christians with respect to the Jewish community. Rutger did not really understand this. Had it not been the Jews who had been the founders of this colony and had set a good example with the plantations and so forth? Why, then, all the antagonism? Administrator Van Omhoog did not know this, either, but those feelings did exist, even to the extent that there was talk of housing the Jews in a separate part of the town. A kind of ghetto, so to speak. Rutger shrugged: “Small-minded colonial palaver! I’m man enough to choose my own friends and won’t let myself be misled by the prejudices of others.”
“Of course, the position of the Fernandez girl is somewhat different,” the administrator continued. “She herself isn’t a Jewess because her mother was Lutheran, but, well, she does have a Jewish name.”
Rutger remarked that, as far as he had observed, the Fernandez girl had very good judgement when it came to matters of Jew and gentile, Christian and non-Christian: really refreshing amongst all this small-mindedness. Mister van Omhoog could not help laughing at what Rutger was – somewhat curtly – saying, but he still found that it would be better to avoid being too intimate with the Fernandez family. As far as female company was concerned, if Rutger needed a woman, the administrator could provide a pretty mulatto girl. Almost all whites had a mulatto woman as mistress or concubine. This satisfied the needs of the man and carried absolutely no responsibility. For of course, no white man would ever be so stupid as to consider marrying one of these women. If such a woman had children by him, then a few guilders sufficed for their care and upbringing. He, Van Omhoog, himself had such a mistress. He had installed her in a small house on the road to the Oranje Cemetery on the edge of the town. She had had two children by him. There were even a few whites who gave such children their own family name, but he, Van Omhoog, certainly did not intend to do this. Many of these mulattos then began to get big ideas and started behaving as if they were white, but he would not be party to that.
Rutger listened in astonishment to his patron’s words. It was not the first time he had heard this kind of thing. What double standards: use a woman, conceive children by her, and then look down on your own children because they were coloured. Rutger thought, “God help me never to become like this.” When he heard the whites in Suriname going on like this about the negroes he wondered whether he really wanted to remain in this country, and he had often wondered whether he was the only one who thought this way. Of all the people he had met thus far, the sixteen-year-old Alex, his slave, was possibly the most intelligent. He had noticed that the predominant occupations of the colonists, as far as the men were concerned, were drinking, eating, playing cards and other games of chance, sleeping with various women, and indulging in so-called deep conversation, that always concerned money, the governor, attacks by the bush-negroes, and their own small circle. With the women it was no different: chatting, gossiping, complaining about the slaves’ laziness, about their husbands’ behaviour, endless nibbles, and yet more gossiping. And for the rest, all the showing off, partying, one-upmanship and displaying one’s wealth and magnificence.
When Rutger had accompanied mister and mistress Van Omhoog in their carriage to church the first Sunday of his stay (even though the church was no more than a five-minute walk away, just around the corner, in a large hall above the town hall on the church square), he could not understand why two slave-boys, two slave-girls and his own Alex had to walk alongside the conveyance. Only upon their arrival at the town hall on the square did it become apparent what this was all about. The Van Omhoog couple were decked out in all their richest finery and the slaves, too, had beautiful clothes on, but naturally no shoes, for it was strictly forbidden for slaves to wear shoes. When the company alighted from the carriage, Mr van Omhoog’s personal slave held a large parasol above his master’s head while another slave walked behind him with the prayer book. This pattern was repeated for Mrs van Omhoog: a slave-girl with parasol, another with the prayer book. Since Rutger had no parasol, it was Alex who walked behind him with the prayer book. All the colonists had come to church in this manner, with or without a carriage, but always with five or six slaves in attendance. Rutger could barely restrain himself from laughing out loud at this comedy act. What a farce, what a stupid, vain show. And when you looked at the churchgoers’ severe, deadpan faces, then you really wanted to burst out laughing. Just as all the feasts and parties: each wanted to outdo the other with rich attire and a superfluity of dishes.