He came to realize more and more that he was falling in love with Mini-mini! The whole day long he could think of nothing else but her. Every minute that he was away from her he felt a kind of longing, a deep desire to be lying on the couch, feeling her caring fingers and hearing that dulcet voice. This was true love. He loved her dearly.
It would have been easy for him to have taken her in his desire. He was, after all, her master. But that was something he didn’t want. His feelings for her were too deep, too sincere for him to misuse her in that way. He wanted her, oh how he wanted her, but not like that. No, she would have to give herself in love or not at all. And of course, her master’s feelings did not go unnoticed by Mini-mini, either. She, too, knew that he was far from indifferent to her: he was so good, so nice. But it was simply not in her nature to seduce a man, and in any case she was afraid, for what good would something like that do her.
In the meantime Julius decided that it was time for his son Jethro, now five years old, to begin to learn to read and write. In the early evening he would therefore sit with Jethro and Mini-mini in his office and teach the boy numbers and the alphabet. Because Mini-mini was always there with him, she learned, too. When the two were together during the day, they practised together, sometimes outside with a stick in the sand, sometimes on a slate with a chalk pencil. Every evening the three sat there in the lamplight, and when Sarith on occasion walked past the office and looked in, she noticed that there was a certain something between those three there, something intimate, something between the three of them in which she had no part. Three dark heads bent over the table in the lamplight. She would hear Jethro cry, “O Mini-mini, your a’s look like tadpoles.”232 And Mini-mini would laugh and reply, with that soft voice of hers, “Those 2’s of yours look a bit like ducks.”233 And then came Julius’ voice, and the three of them bursting out laughing.
Every afternoon Mini-mini massaged the masra, and every afternoon he had to work hard to restrain himself from taking her in his arms, kissing her and returning her fond caresses.
Sarith had not been moaning any more about going to town. Perhaps she was ashamed about the child she was expecting? Or perhaps she realized that there was no money to be spent on all kinds of unnecessary purchases.
The baby was born in April. In the middle of the night, during a heavy shower of rain, Mini-mini had to rush to the slave quarters to get women to help with the delivery. It was a girl, a stripling of a thing with a bald head. But when she opened her eyes for a second, they were blue. It was Mini-mini who went to the masra and insisted that he go to his wife. When he saw the child, he said only, “What’s her name?” Sarith had no name for her daughter, nor did Julius: he couldn’t care less what the child was called. So they decided to call her Eva.
Was it the new baby that reminded Julius that afternoon that Mini-mini had also once had a baby? When she was massaging him that afternoon, Julius said, “Today I want to hear the story of Mini-mini.”234
The girl thought he meant the tale that she had told before, the story of Koprokanu, and so she said, “But I’ve told the masra that tale so often.”235
“No, not the tale of Koprokanu – your story, Mini-mini, about the child you once bore, about his father and who your man was.”236
With that mellow voice of hers, Mini-mini then told of Hendrik and her, his promise to save to buy her freedom, how he had rejected her, preferring another, free, woman, and the child whose lot it was not to live. With a sigh she told how stupid she had been to have believed that a free man would take a slave-girl; she was a slave, not good enough for a free man. When she said this, and Julius saw the tears in those beautiful dark eyes, he could no longer control himself.
He threw his arms around her and drew her towards him, whispering, “Never say that, Mini-mini. You’re the loveliest, the best, the best, believe me. The best man in all the world is not good enough for you. If I could do that for you, give you someone like that, then believe me I would do it.”
He kissed her on her tearful eyes, then on her mouth, caressing her, holding her. And she? She returned his kisses and caresses, for she loved him, too, and she knew well that there was no evil lurking in this man, that he had only good intentions towards her. What both of them had so long felt coming on and what both had tried to avoid, now happened. They loved each other, and they confirmed that love then and there, on the couch in the office. After this first time, it would happen very often.
Julius was totally besotted with Mini-mini. When she was massaging his back and he felt those fingers, the tender hands continually caressing him, he had the feeling that this was what he had been waiting for all his life. Every moment that he was not with her he was overwhelmed by an intense longing to run to her, throw his arms around her, hold her to him to be able to feel, stroke and caress her. He was almost jealous of Jethro because he could be with her nearly all the time, could sit on her lap and feel her arms around him. It was now so clear to Julius: he cared for no-one but her. He wanted to tell the whole world, shout it out loud: yes, he loved only Mini-mini.