The Chameleons
13. Elfriede and the spirits of the dance
If you listened carefully above the crackle and spit of the fire in the clearing, you could hear the Suriname River sloshing and gurgling beyond the trees, a living entity digesting all that carelessly fell into its depths. Somewhere in the distance, a family of howler monkeys shrieked and yelled at each other and in the trees the black and green, arrow-poison frogs were calling eerily to their mates, “Hoi, Hoi, Hoi.”
Apart from the flickering lights of the fire, this night was starless and chokingly dark and Elfriede clung to her aunt’s voluminous skirt and shuddered. The creatures sounded like the voices of the dead come to welcome a new addition to their ranks but all human sounds had been momentarily stilled as the people waited. A mother’s hand stifled her baby’s cries as it threatened to break the tension and Elfriede’s heart pounded in her chest. As the drums shattered the silence, she jumped and yelped and the dancers ran into the clearing.
It had been seven long days since her mother had died of a heart attack; seven tortuous days for a nine year old to endure. She had watched as they’d wrapped the body tightly in strips of cloth and placed it in a hammock in the funeral house. She had looked at her mother’s face and feet, which remained exposed and found it difficult to believe she was dead. She had sat beside the corpse as various family members had come the next day to make speeches and had accompanied them to the ancestral shrine to inform the spirits. She’d helped wash the corpse on the third day and dress it in seven layers of cotton and watched the men make the coffin adding the many embellishments they had felt her mother deserved. She’d fainted when the lid of the coffin was nailed shut and privately cried for hours after she’d regained consciousness. Then she believed her mother really was dead and was confused by the stories she was told of spirit life and how she could talk to her mother again through various ways and means.
On the fifth day, she had helped prepare the meal for the gravediggers and joined in the yells and cries as they left for the grave site, without really knowing why, though it made her feel better to scream out her frustration. The men were given a live hen and a rooster to take with them and there was more singing and eating. Eventually, it was time for her to say her final goodbyes to her mother’s body and after the family had asked the spirit if it was ready to go, she ran up, bent over it and whispered a near silent message of love and promises to the woman she had loved so much. The men carried the coffin out of the funeral house and touched it three times to the ground before carrying it around all the houses in the village. She watched in awe as her aunt’s famous fury was let loose on them as they carried it to the house where an old man lay sick with fever but couldn’t understand why this was such an unlucky omen. Finally, a gun was fired and her mother was carried away in a canoe to the gravesite further along the river.
From that moment, she found she couldn’t cry anymore although she was frightened of what the future might hold. She would now be part of her aunt’s family and a very small part and suspected that life would be very hard indeed.
The rhythm patterns of the Skratji pounded through the trampled earth and into the feet of the onlookers. It was impossible to stay still and all around the edges of the audience, people were beginning to dance and sway, as the beat grew more insistent. The first dancers were bare-footed women, dressed in long red skirts with white bands sown onto them. Their tops were blue and more often than not draped with blue, white and red tassels and fringes. Around their heads were scarlet bands to absorb the sweat as the dancing became more frenetic. This was a dance to summon the Wintis, of whom Elfriede had heard but had never seen. They were demi-gods and were supposed to move as fast as the wind until they chose to take possession of someone’s mind. There were two singers who jumped into the rhythm and called and answered each other in song. The rest of the people joined in, providing coarse harmonies and a background chorus to the sea of movement. Elfriede could feel herself been caught up in the swirling sights and sounds. She flung her arms in the air and kicked wildly, singing and screaming, in imitation of the adults around her. Before she knew it, she found herself in the centre of the clearing, surrounded by whirling colours, her head crowded with sound. At some given sign, the first dancers gave way and blended with the people on the outside but Elfriede hadn’t noticed and continued dancing and singing, her eyes closed, oblivious to her surroundings. On the edge of her consciousness, she heard the high-pitched yodelling as the Wintis rushed into the circle. On opening her eyes, she found herself encircled by several spinning figures, their long threads and tassels splayed out around them, a riot of colours in the firelight, in turn lashing and caressing her limbs. Their faces were streaked with white and their eyes seemed like hollow pits in terrifying skulls. She was both alarmed and thrilled by these ghostly figures but couldn’t stop dancing and couldn’t break away to rejoin the swaying ranks beyond.
‘These are the Winti,’ she thought,’ they’re here to honour my mother and I must honour them because they are gods.’
Whether it was the smells, or the noise, or the colours, she couldn’t tell but she imagined that one of the Winti was looking especially at her, looking deep into her soul. It danced hypnotically towards her. So close; she could smell the god, she could breathe it in. Suddenly, all movement on the edge of her field of vision seemed to freeze. She and the Winti were now moving in perfect synchronisation. It was both inside and outside her body as if she had absorbed it and it had absorbed her. The Winti seemed to create a luminescent cocoon of pure music and rhythm, through which she could just see the flames of the fire, leaping and hurtling skyward. Effortlessly, she and the Winti were lifted by a single dazzling spark and transported upward. She felt lightness as if the weight of her body had been discarded and she was floating like a Hummingbird feather in a warm thermal. Looking down, she could see the heaving throng of revellers surrounding the fire. From the flames, she watched as her mother’s face manifested itself and smiled up at her and at the edge of the burning embers, she saw a small, hunched figure, head bowed but with splayed fingers reaching to the sky and swaying gently.
She recognised her own body.
14. Duty and promises
In later life, she could never put into words where she emerged with the Winti that night. It wasn’t a place, yet she felt that she existed there and it was much more real than a dream. She had already learned that Winti literally meant the wind but was mostly interpreted as ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ and that the way she was during that time, though invisible and formless, still somehow represented a dynamic form of existence.
“Elfriede Urmi,”
“Yes,” she started at the voice but was unafraid. Four figures emerged from the darkness, each appearing to be human but each shimmering and glowing, so that she knew they were spirits. Behind them, in the shadows cast by their light, wandered other figures in various costumes. Some wore chains around their ankles or necks and all looked familiar, though she knew she had never met them before.
One of the spirits came forward.
“Your kra is very strong child. We can see you are not afraid. That is important. Your courage must stay with you in the years to come for you have been chosen as one who will represent us in the physical world. I am the Tapu Kromanti and do the bidding of Anana Keduaman Keduampon in matters of the air.”
With that, the spirit created a vision for her. In a brief second, she became an element of the sky, the wind and the clouds and understood their purpose. She knew the name of Anana, or the Gran Gado as most people called him; he was the creator god and the all-powerful being responsible for all existence and the spirit in front of her was a lesser god of the air. Instantly, she understood who the other three figures were. The Gran Winti, a goddess of the earth; the Watra Wenu, a god of water and the Busi Winti, a goddess of the bush. They appeared before her in turn and demonstrated their areas of responsibility. Within the shortest time, she was given insight into the workings of the four structures of the universe.
The Watra Wenu spoke directly to her and she could feel the essence of a waterfall,
“Since you were born Elfriede, you have been a ‘task’ or a ‘promise’ created by Anana. What you will become depends on how you live and react to the universe, the living and the dead that surround you and how you maintain harmony and balance between all the elements. It is easy for humans to create disharmony. Most humans are weak and make mistakes. You will make mistakes too but because of what we give you now, you will have more power to control your destiny and the destiny of others.”
The Busi Winti came forward and she became a leaf on a tree in the midst of the forest.
“You will need to be careful Elfriede. Power gives you temptations and you will need to judge carefully. Remember, your actions are recorded in your Yorka and after your earthly body dies, you will be held to account for what the Yorka holds.
We will be your Dyo Dyos, your foster parents in the spiritual world. We will enhance your Kra. This honours you. Most humans are adopted by the deceased in their own families but you have tasks to perform and for that you will need to speak to us and accept our advice. Do you think you are capable of bearing the responsibilities ahead of you?”
Without hesitation, Elfriede nodded and bowed. She was only nine but she now carried the wisdom of generations of her forefathers. Whatever Anana wanted her to do, she felt absolutely ready to do it.
The last spirit to speak was the Gran Winti, who enclosed her in a rock, so that she could feel the rhythm of the earth’s core.
“You must work hard Elfriede; harder than you believe possible. You must be educated. You must be prepared to leave this land. You must endure pain and joy in equal measure but you must remember to whom your responsibilities lie and that you serve others and not yourself. We will return you now to your earthly body but first, we will each give you a gift. You will not know what this gift is until you need to use it but never forget from where it comes and use it unselfishly, or you risk losing balance in your Kra, with all its consequences. Your ancestors are here to witness what has been said at this time.”
With that, she understood who the shadowy figures behind the gods were and bowed once more.
The next thing she knew was the feeling of water trickling down her chin and looking up she saw her aunt’s concerned face peering down at her.
15. Elfriede’s education
Elfriede found herself totally dependent upon her Aunt Jose and her family after her mother’s death. Her father and uncle had been gone from the village for two years now and there were persistent rumours that they had been killed in a quarrel over gold at the mines deep in the bush. There had been a recent influx of Brazilian Garimpeiros in the area and violent arguments with the local miners were commonplace. Her aunt had found a bag containing a small amount of gold buried in her mother’s house, which she assumed had been sent by her father. It had been immediately sold, her aunt claiming that the money would be needed to help pay for Elfriede’s upkeep. Elfriede had little interest in money and would listen to the villagers complaining of how they were continually underpaid by the Silver Star Corporation, for whom most people worked. She watched every morning as the men left in trucks to go to the timber projects or the bauxite mine and see them come back, exhaustion etched in their faces. Yet nobody became rich; that she did understand. Her older cousin told her that people like her father took off into the bush to try to find gold illegally whenever a rumour was heard that a new seam had been found. It was the only way to get rich quickly, he’d said but she never saw any evidence of anyone’s success. Meanwhile, as the youngest in her new extended family, she was expected to work very hard in the houses. Her own house had been acquisitioned to help accommodate her large number of cousins but she lived with Aunt Jose.
“… Where I can keep an eye on you.” she’d said. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Elfriede had gone into trance that night and her Aunt suspected that there had been some special purpose behind it. She had a healthy respect for the old gods and didn’t wish to take risks with her young charge.
She went to school as normal and worked as hard as she could in all subjects. Although everyone spoke Sranan Tongo, she had to learn Dutch and to the amazement of her teacher, mastered the basic language in a matter of months. She developed a strategy of watching how her cousins performed and used them as targets. Starting with Rita, who was eleven, she overhauled them one by one academically, until there were frustratingly, only two to catch but at the time, they were fourteen and fifteen year old boys and she realised she was forced to accept her limitations. Her efforts hadn’t gone unnoticed by her teachers however and glowing reports reached her aunt about Elfriede’s potential as a student. When she was fourteen and her sibling rivals had left school to work, Aunt Jose realised that she had to do something about Elfriede.
“She was almost completely responsible for the school winning the Young Writers prize,” she jubilantly informed the head of the village council, “…and look at this article she had published in the newspaper.” She waved it in his face until he took enough notice to read it.
Elfriede herself ensured that her spiritual education was not neglected. She had enough memory of the night her mother had been buried to realise that she needed to learn many things, which were not available to her in school. Her aunt had told her to visit the village Dresi-man for advice. Although there was a doctor and a clinic nearby, many people still took their ailments to the Dresi-man for healing. He was widely acknowledged to have spiritual guidance as well as a vast store of herbal medication and cures from the bush.
She never forgot the night she entered his house for the first time.
“I know you child. You are the one with a shining destiny and a powerful Kra. I have been told you would come to me and that I have to teach you all I know.”
She stared through the clouds of incense, smoke and dust swirling around the squatting man and felt again that spiritual confidence she had felt when she was nine years old. In his wrinkled face she could see his wisdom and experience and yearned to learn as much as she could from him. He told her that the work would be long and tedious and that only he would decide when she was finished. She accepted the conditions and for the next few years, spent a great deal of her spare time listening and making notes. She learned about the old rituals of the Winti religion and of the meanings and power of special dances, the Kaseko music and the ritual feasts. She learned about the history of her people and of Surinam through the slave memories the old man had been given and through this learned how adversity could be turned around if the proper rituals were observed. On that first evening, he demonstrated his power by summoning a Kabra and she encountered a woman who was her ancestor exactly seven times removed. It was not a particularly successful meeting. The Dresi-man tried to limit the Kabra’s contact with the girl but she was only interested in communicating with Elfriede and the séance quickly broke down. Nevertheless, Elfriede was mightily impressed. She also learned how to summon the spirits for herself, though was forbidden to try.
“You will know when it is necessary to be done,” he told her.
However, the part of her education she found most interesting concerned the use of plants as a source of medicine. The old man told her that this knowledge should be handed down orally; people could only learn so much from books, the rest had to be practised. Too little knowledge could be extremely dangerous when dealing with people’s health. He told her about Kwasi, the slave, who had lived in Surinam over two hundred and fifty years ago. In 1730, he discovered that a certain plant was very good against Malaria and the plant, Quassia Amara, was named after him. He even went to Holland, where the Prince of Orange, Willem V, gave him a medal, a laced coat, a sword of honour and a three-cornered hat for his discovery. The Dresi-man produced a battered silver button which he claimed came from that very coat. She was told, that the malaria plant was of greater interest to the Europeans and only represented a fraction of Kwasi’s knowledge of herbal medicine. He, the Dresi-man, had inherited that knowledge from his forefathers and in turn, he was passing it onto her. Once more, she could feel the weight of destiny and wondered what lay in store for her in the rest of her life. His final lessons, before he considered that she had absorbed enough of the basics to be able to function without him, concerned the evil arts. He told her that wherever she found herself in life, there would always be a Wisi-man nearby and that she needed to learn how to harm people herself in order to be able to counteract the Wisi-man’s effects. She had heard of this witch-doctor figure since childhood and she knew how people feared his powers. There were rumours that such a man lived in the next village and her Aunt had warned her to be respectful to adults at all times, irrespective of what they did in case one of them was a Wisi-man.
“He can kill you without even seeing you,” she told her sharply. “I have nightmares about him. We wondered if your mother had offended someone so badly that they had paid the Wisi-man to kill her!”
Elfriede couldn’t imagine this logically but found the whole idea very frightening nevertheless and was eager to find out the ways in which such magic could be avoided. The Desi-man told her that although there was a spiritual, magic even, element to the Wisi-man’s powers, they were mostly based on poisons and hallucinatory plants and that there was little to fear, providing one took the right precautions. Then one day, she arrived at the healer’s house and was told that she had learned enough; there was little more he could teach her.
“But never think that you know it all,” he warned. “Like me, you only know a fraction of what there is to know and you will learn of things I can only imagine but remember, it is your duty to pass on your knowledge, otherwise it is useless and dies with you. Your greatest problem will be knowing who the right person is to have it. It is a great responsibility.”
16. An opportunity to be grasped
Soon, it was time to make important decisions about her future. Elfriede had two things against her; she was a girl and her family was poor. In theory, that shouldn’t have been an impediment to progress; there were grants available for the brightest students but after her aunt had painstakingly filled in the forms and sent them off and then waited six months without reply, another solution had to be found. It came from an unexpected source.
Erik van Halen was visiting the area in his capacity as chief of operations in the bauxite division of Silver Star. His immediate task was to negotiate a new basic pay deal with the local workforce and he was meeting stiffer opposition than he had expected. It was going to take at least another day, so he asked around for overnight accommodation and was told that the school Principal’s wife occasionally took in paying guests. Over dinner that night, the conversation turned towards the betterment of the area in general and he had to admit that the teacher’s arguments for the company investing in the village rather than exploiting its cheap labour were persuasive. He knew he had little chance of convincing headquarters that the area was worthy of an influx of company money but he did make some concessions to common sense. A happier workforce was a more productive workforce; in simplistic terms that was true in any company and he hadn’t realised how disaffected the people were. The influx of illegal workers from Brazil and even Venezuela was creating pressures, which could result in severe consequences for the company. God knows, the government were doing very little apart from talking about the problem with their neighbours. It could take years before agreement was reached and even then, it was likely that little would change. During that time, the company would be taking the brunt of the criticism and it could all explode like a powder keg.
Consequently, he decided to accede to some demands the next day and at least put forward some of the village’s main points. If the locals could be pacified, there was much more chance that they would remain loyal and resist the immigrants.
Fortunately for Elfriede, she became part of the deal. When Van Halen happened to mention that his wife could do with an intelligent girl to help with the housekeeping, her Principal immediately thought of Elfriede. He sang her praises as a hard worker but emphasised that she was no common bush girl and that she deserved a chance to reach her potential and in that way, maybe do some good for her village in the future. Thus agreement was reached that Elfriede would travel to Paramaribo and work for the Van Halens for two years. At the same time, she would go to school and when the time came, if she was good enough, the Van Halens would pay for her to go to university. After that, she would be on her own. No one considered asking Elfriede’s opinion, much less that of her guardian, the formidable Aunt Jose and it was left to the Principals’ wife to do the persuading the next day. Jose was no fool. She realised that this was a fantastic opportunity for the girl but she had few qualms about negotiating a gardener’s position at the school for her slowest son as compensation and with both parties satisfied, hands were shaken.
Elfriede took the news philosophically. She had long since sensed that her destiny wasn’t hers to decide and although the prospect of leaving her familiar and small world filled her with trepidation, she agreed willingly. She had been given an opportunity she could never have expected and as the days passed became more and more excited at the prospect. It was no small news in the village either and a special dance and feast was held in celebration of her good luck. Therefore, despite an aching sadness, she was full of optimism, when she waved goodbye to the people she had known all her life and carried her one suitcase onto the bus heading for the regional capital and then to Paramaribo.
If you listened carefully above the crackle and spit of the fire in the clearing, you could hear the Suriname River sloshing and gurgling beyond the trees, a living entity digesting all that carelessly fell into its depths. Somewhere in the distance, a family of howler monkeys shrieked and yelled at each other and in the trees the black and green, arrow-poison frogs were calling eerily to their mates, “Hoi, Hoi, Hoi.”
Apart from the flickering lights of the fire, this night was starless and chokingly dark and Elfriede clung to her aunt’s voluminous skirt and shuddered. The creatures sounded like the voices of the dead come to welcome a new addition to their ranks but all human sounds had been momentarily stilled as the people waited. A mother’s hand stifled her baby’s cries as it threatened to break the tension and Elfriede’s heart pounded in her chest. As the drums shattered the silence, she jumped and yelped and the dancers ran into the clearing.
It had been seven long days since her mother had died of a heart attack; seven tortuous days for a nine year old to endure. She had watched as they’d wrapped the body tightly in strips of cloth and placed it in a hammock in the funeral house. She had looked at her mother’s face and feet, which remained exposed and found it difficult to believe she was dead. She had sat beside the corpse as various family members had come the next day to make speeches and had accompanied them to the ancestral shrine to inform the spirits. She’d helped wash the corpse on the third day and dress it in seven layers of cotton and watched the men make the coffin adding the many embellishments they had felt her mother deserved. She’d fainted when the lid of the coffin was nailed shut and privately cried for hours after she’d regained consciousness. Then she believed her mother really was dead and was confused by the stories she was told of spirit life and how she could talk to her mother again through various ways and means.
On the fifth day, she had helped prepare the meal for the gravediggers and joined in the yells and cries as they left for the grave site, without really knowing why, though it made her feel better to scream out her frustration. The men were given a live hen and a rooster to take with them and there was more singing and eating. Eventually, it was time for her to say her final goodbyes to her mother’s body and after the family had asked the spirit if it was ready to go, she ran up, bent over it and whispered a near silent message of love and promises to the woman she had loved so much. The men carried the coffin out of the funeral house and touched it three times to the ground before carrying it around all the houses in the village. She watched in awe as her aunt’s famous fury was let loose on them as they carried it to the house where an old man lay sick with fever but couldn’t understand why this was such an unlucky omen. Finally, a gun was fired and her mother was carried away in a canoe to the gravesite further along the river.
From that moment, she found she couldn’t cry anymore although she was frightened of what the future might hold. She would now be part of her aunt’s family and a very small part and suspected that life would be very hard indeed.
The rhythm patterns of the Skratji pounded through the trampled earth and into the feet of the onlookers. It was impossible to stay still and all around the edges of the audience, people were beginning to dance and sway, as the beat grew more insistent. The first dancers were bare-footed women, dressed in long red skirts with white bands sown onto them. Their tops were blue and more often than not draped with blue, white and red tassels and fringes. Around their heads were scarlet bands to absorb the sweat as the dancing became more frenetic. This was a dance to summon the Wintis, of whom Elfriede had heard but had never seen. They were demi-gods and were supposed to move as fast as the wind until they chose to take possession of someone’s mind. There were two singers who jumped into the rhythm and called and answered each other in song. The rest of the people joined in, providing coarse harmonies and a background chorus to the sea of movement. Elfriede could feel herself been caught up in the swirling sights and sounds. She flung her arms in the air and kicked wildly, singing and screaming, in imitation of the adults around her. Before she knew it, she found herself in the centre of the clearing, surrounded by whirling colours, her head crowded with sound. At some given sign, the first dancers gave way and blended with the people on the outside but Elfriede hadn’t noticed and continued dancing and singing, her eyes closed, oblivious to her surroundings. On the edge of her consciousness, she heard the high-pitched yodelling as the Wintis rushed into the circle. On opening her eyes, she found herself encircled by several spinning figures, their long threads and tassels splayed out around them, a riot of colours in the firelight, in turn lashing and caressing her limbs. Their faces were streaked with white and their eyes seemed like hollow pits in terrifying skulls. She was both alarmed and thrilled by these ghostly figures but couldn’t stop dancing and couldn’t break away to rejoin the swaying ranks beyond.
‘These are the Winti,’ she thought,’ they’re here to honour my mother and I must honour them because they are gods.’
Whether it was the smells, or the noise, or the colours, she couldn’t tell but she imagined that one of the Winti was looking especially at her, looking deep into her soul. It danced hypnotically towards her. So close; she could smell the god, she could breathe it in. Suddenly, all movement on the edge of her field of vision seemed to freeze. She and the Winti were now moving in perfect synchronisation. It was both inside and outside her body as if she had absorbed it and it had absorbed her. The Winti seemed to create a luminescent cocoon of pure music and rhythm, through which she could just see the flames of the fire, leaping and hurtling skyward. Effortlessly, she and the Winti were lifted by a single dazzling spark and transported upward. She felt lightness as if the weight of her body had been discarded and she was floating like a Hummingbird feather in a warm thermal. Looking down, she could see the heaving throng of revellers surrounding the fire. From the flames, she watched as her mother’s face manifested itself and smiled up at her and at the edge of the burning embers, she saw a small, hunched figure, head bowed but with splayed fingers reaching to the sky and swaying gently.
She recognised her own body.
14. Duty and promises
In later life, she could never put into words where she emerged with the Winti that night. It wasn’t a place, yet she felt that she existed there and it was much more real than a dream. She had already learned that Winti literally meant the wind but was mostly interpreted as ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’ and that the way she was during that time, though invisible and formless, still somehow represented a dynamic form of existence.
“Elfriede Urmi,”
“Yes,” she started at the voice but was unafraid. Four figures emerged from the darkness, each appearing to be human but each shimmering and glowing, so that she knew they were spirits. Behind them, in the shadows cast by their light, wandered other figures in various costumes. Some wore chains around their ankles or necks and all looked familiar, though she knew she had never met them before.
One of the spirits came forward.
“Your kra is very strong child. We can see you are not afraid. That is important. Your courage must stay with you in the years to come for you have been chosen as one who will represent us in the physical world. I am the Tapu Kromanti and do the bidding of Anana Keduaman Keduampon in matters of the air.”
With that, the spirit created a vision for her. In a brief second, she became an element of the sky, the wind and the clouds and understood their purpose. She knew the name of Anana, or the Gran Gado as most people called him; he was the creator god and the all-powerful being responsible for all existence and the spirit in front of her was a lesser god of the air. Instantly, she understood who the other three figures were. The Gran Winti, a goddess of the earth; the Watra Wenu, a god of water and the Busi Winti, a goddess of the bush. They appeared before her in turn and demonstrated their areas of responsibility. Within the shortest time, she was given insight into the workings of the four structures of the universe.
The Watra Wenu spoke directly to her and she could feel the essence of a waterfall,
“Since you were born Elfriede, you have been a ‘task’ or a ‘promise’ created by Anana. What you will become depends on how you live and react to the universe, the living and the dead that surround you and how you maintain harmony and balance between all the elements. It is easy for humans to create disharmony. Most humans are weak and make mistakes. You will make mistakes too but because of what we give you now, you will have more power to control your destiny and the destiny of others.”
The Busi Winti came forward and she became a leaf on a tree in the midst of the forest.
“You will need to be careful Elfriede. Power gives you temptations and you will need to judge carefully. Remember, your actions are recorded in your Yorka and after your earthly body dies, you will be held to account for what the Yorka holds.
We will be your Dyo Dyos, your foster parents in the spiritual world. We will enhance your Kra. This honours you. Most humans are adopted by the deceased in their own families but you have tasks to perform and for that you will need to speak to us and accept our advice. Do you think you are capable of bearing the responsibilities ahead of you?”
Without hesitation, Elfriede nodded and bowed. She was only nine but she now carried the wisdom of generations of her forefathers. Whatever Anana wanted her to do, she felt absolutely ready to do it.
The last spirit to speak was the Gran Winti, who enclosed her in a rock, so that she could feel the rhythm of the earth’s core.
“You must work hard Elfriede; harder than you believe possible. You must be educated. You must be prepared to leave this land. You must endure pain and joy in equal measure but you must remember to whom your responsibilities lie and that you serve others and not yourself. We will return you now to your earthly body but first, we will each give you a gift. You will not know what this gift is until you need to use it but never forget from where it comes and use it unselfishly, or you risk losing balance in your Kra, with all its consequences. Your ancestors are here to witness what has been said at this time.”
With that, she understood who the shadowy figures behind the gods were and bowed once more.
The next thing she knew was the feeling of water trickling down her chin and looking up she saw her aunt’s concerned face peering down at her.
15. Elfriede’s education
Elfriede found herself totally dependent upon her Aunt Jose and her family after her mother’s death. Her father and uncle had been gone from the village for two years now and there were persistent rumours that they had been killed in a quarrel over gold at the mines deep in the bush. There had been a recent influx of Brazilian Garimpeiros in the area and violent arguments with the local miners were commonplace. Her aunt had found a bag containing a small amount of gold buried in her mother’s house, which she assumed had been sent by her father. It had been immediately sold, her aunt claiming that the money would be needed to help pay for Elfriede’s upkeep. Elfriede had little interest in money and would listen to the villagers complaining of how they were continually underpaid by the Silver Star Corporation, for whom most people worked. She watched every morning as the men left in trucks to go to the timber projects or the bauxite mine and see them come back, exhaustion etched in their faces. Yet nobody became rich; that she did understand. Her older cousin told her that people like her father took off into the bush to try to find gold illegally whenever a rumour was heard that a new seam had been found. It was the only way to get rich quickly, he’d said but she never saw any evidence of anyone’s success. Meanwhile, as the youngest in her new extended family, she was expected to work very hard in the houses. Her own house had been acquisitioned to help accommodate her large number of cousins but she lived with Aunt Jose.
“… Where I can keep an eye on you.” she’d said. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Elfriede had gone into trance that night and her Aunt suspected that there had been some special purpose behind it. She had a healthy respect for the old gods and didn’t wish to take risks with her young charge.
She went to school as normal and worked as hard as she could in all subjects. Although everyone spoke Sranan Tongo, she had to learn Dutch and to the amazement of her teacher, mastered the basic language in a matter of months. She developed a strategy of watching how her cousins performed and used them as targets. Starting with Rita, who was eleven, she overhauled them one by one academically, until there were frustratingly, only two to catch but at the time, they were fourteen and fifteen year old boys and she realised she was forced to accept her limitations. Her efforts hadn’t gone unnoticed by her teachers however and glowing reports reached her aunt about Elfriede’s potential as a student. When she was fourteen and her sibling rivals had left school to work, Aunt Jose realised that she had to do something about Elfriede.
“She was almost completely responsible for the school winning the Young Writers prize,” she jubilantly informed the head of the village council, “…and look at this article she had published in the newspaper.” She waved it in his face until he took enough notice to read it.
Elfriede herself ensured that her spiritual education was not neglected. She had enough memory of the night her mother had been buried to realise that she needed to learn many things, which were not available to her in school. Her aunt had told her to visit the village Dresi-man for advice. Although there was a doctor and a clinic nearby, many people still took their ailments to the Dresi-man for healing. He was widely acknowledged to have spiritual guidance as well as a vast store of herbal medication and cures from the bush.
She never forgot the night she entered his house for the first time.
“I know you child. You are the one with a shining destiny and a powerful Kra. I have been told you would come to me and that I have to teach you all I know.”
She stared through the clouds of incense, smoke and dust swirling around the squatting man and felt again that spiritual confidence she had felt when she was nine years old. In his wrinkled face she could see his wisdom and experience and yearned to learn as much as she could from him. He told her that the work would be long and tedious and that only he would decide when she was finished. She accepted the conditions and for the next few years, spent a great deal of her spare time listening and making notes. She learned about the old rituals of the Winti religion and of the meanings and power of special dances, the Kaseko music and the ritual feasts. She learned about the history of her people and of Surinam through the slave memories the old man had been given and through this learned how adversity could be turned around if the proper rituals were observed. On that first evening, he demonstrated his power by summoning a Kabra and she encountered a woman who was her ancestor exactly seven times removed. It was not a particularly successful meeting. The Dresi-man tried to limit the Kabra’s contact with the girl but she was only interested in communicating with Elfriede and the séance quickly broke down. Nevertheless, Elfriede was mightily impressed. She also learned how to summon the spirits for herself, though was forbidden to try.
“You will know when it is necessary to be done,” he told her.
However, the part of her education she found most interesting concerned the use of plants as a source of medicine. The old man told her that this knowledge should be handed down orally; people could only learn so much from books, the rest had to be practised. Too little knowledge could be extremely dangerous when dealing with people’s health. He told her about Kwasi, the slave, who had lived in Surinam over two hundred and fifty years ago. In 1730, he discovered that a certain plant was very good against Malaria and the plant, Quassia Amara, was named after him. He even went to Holland, where the Prince of Orange, Willem V, gave him a medal, a laced coat, a sword of honour and a three-cornered hat for his discovery. The Dresi-man produced a battered silver button which he claimed came from that very coat. She was told, that the malaria plant was of greater interest to the Europeans and only represented a fraction of Kwasi’s knowledge of herbal medicine. He, the Dresi-man, had inherited that knowledge from his forefathers and in turn, he was passing it onto her. Once more, she could feel the weight of destiny and wondered what lay in store for her in the rest of her life. His final lessons, before he considered that she had absorbed enough of the basics to be able to function without him, concerned the evil arts. He told her that wherever she found herself in life, there would always be a Wisi-man nearby and that she needed to learn how to harm people herself in order to be able to counteract the Wisi-man’s effects. She had heard of this witch-doctor figure since childhood and she knew how people feared his powers. There were rumours that such a man lived in the next village and her Aunt had warned her to be respectful to adults at all times, irrespective of what they did in case one of them was a Wisi-man.
“He can kill you without even seeing you,” she told her sharply. “I have nightmares about him. We wondered if your mother had offended someone so badly that they had paid the Wisi-man to kill her!”
Elfriede couldn’t imagine this logically but found the whole idea very frightening nevertheless and was eager to find out the ways in which such magic could be avoided. The Desi-man told her that although there was a spiritual, magic even, element to the Wisi-man’s powers, they were mostly based on poisons and hallucinatory plants and that there was little to fear, providing one took the right precautions. Then one day, she arrived at the healer’s house and was told that she had learned enough; there was little more he could teach her.
“But never think that you know it all,” he warned. “Like me, you only know a fraction of what there is to know and you will learn of things I can only imagine but remember, it is your duty to pass on your knowledge, otherwise it is useless and dies with you. Your greatest problem will be knowing who the right person is to have it. It is a great responsibility.”
16. An opportunity to be grasped
Soon, it was time to make important decisions about her future. Elfriede had two things against her; she was a girl and her family was poor. In theory, that shouldn’t have been an impediment to progress; there were grants available for the brightest students but after her aunt had painstakingly filled in the forms and sent them off and then waited six months without reply, another solution had to be found. It came from an unexpected source.
Erik van Halen was visiting the area in his capacity as chief of operations in the bauxite division of Silver Star. His immediate task was to negotiate a new basic pay deal with the local workforce and he was meeting stiffer opposition than he had expected. It was going to take at least another day, so he asked around for overnight accommodation and was told that the school Principal’s wife occasionally took in paying guests. Over dinner that night, the conversation turned towards the betterment of the area in general and he had to admit that the teacher’s arguments for the company investing in the village rather than exploiting its cheap labour were persuasive. He knew he had little chance of convincing headquarters that the area was worthy of an influx of company money but he did make some concessions to common sense. A happier workforce was a more productive workforce; in simplistic terms that was true in any company and he hadn’t realised how disaffected the people were. The influx of illegal workers from Brazil and even Venezuela was creating pressures, which could result in severe consequences for the company. God knows, the government were doing very little apart from talking about the problem with their neighbours. It could take years before agreement was reached and even then, it was likely that little would change. During that time, the company would be taking the brunt of the criticism and it could all explode like a powder keg.
Consequently, he decided to accede to some demands the next day and at least put forward some of the village’s main points. If the locals could be pacified, there was much more chance that they would remain loyal and resist the immigrants.
Fortunately for Elfriede, she became part of the deal. When Van Halen happened to mention that his wife could do with an intelligent girl to help with the housekeeping, her Principal immediately thought of Elfriede. He sang her praises as a hard worker but emphasised that she was no common bush girl and that she deserved a chance to reach her potential and in that way, maybe do some good for her village in the future. Thus agreement was reached that Elfriede would travel to Paramaribo and work for the Van Halens for two years. At the same time, she would go to school and when the time came, if she was good enough, the Van Halens would pay for her to go to university. After that, she would be on her own. No one considered asking Elfriede’s opinion, much less that of her guardian, the formidable Aunt Jose and it was left to the Principals’ wife to do the persuading the next day. Jose was no fool. She realised that this was a fantastic opportunity for the girl but she had few qualms about negotiating a gardener’s position at the school for her slowest son as compensation and with both parties satisfied, hands were shaken.
Elfriede took the news philosophically. She had long since sensed that her destiny wasn’t hers to decide and although the prospect of leaving her familiar and small world filled her with trepidation, she agreed willingly. She had been given an opportunity she could never have expected and as the days passed became more and more excited at the prospect. It was no small news in the village either and a special dance and feast was held in celebration of her good luck. Therefore, despite an aching sadness, she was full of optimism, when she waved goodbye to the people she had known all her life and carried her one suitcase onto the bus heading for the regional capital and then to Paramaribo.
The Amsterdam Series
Home
17. Elfriede finds love
The Van Halens’ housekeeper, who was retiring as soon as Elfriede had settled in, met her off the bus. A thin, imposing woman, she had nevertheless received Elfriede with friendliness and the girl felt immediately at ease. The city was a different matter however. The noise and the sheer numbers of people in the streets overwhelmed her. She wasn’t ignorant; she knew what it looked like from books and magazines but the reality still came as a shock. During those first days, she felt she could hardly breathe with the traffic fumes, even though the Van Halens lived in the leafy suburb occupied mainly by foreigners, businessmen and diplomats. Here also, for the first time, she saw the real difference between rich and poor. It was not that the beggars and down and outs distressed her, she knew what poverty looked like but she had never seen real wealth and the difference it made and it opened her eyes to the possibilities life could offer. She didn’t want to be rich for herself but wanted it because it was evidence of education and progress and because she knew she was capable of the latter; the former would be a welcome by-product.
Her new duties were lighter than she’d expected; certainly lighter than she was used to and she finished her chores easily and efficiently, much to the delight of her new employers, who had expected problems with a girl from the bush, however intelligent she was supposed to be. This gave her the time to study, which she set about assiduously. Her new school was large and impersonal but she soon established herself and showed every justification for her old principal’s optimism. She learned from her peers how to be sophisticated when necessary and within six months, apart from her accent, nobody would have known that this was once a simple country girl. Her natural modesty made her friends and she presented no obvious challenge to the teenage leaders around her. Besides that, she kept her academic ambitions well hidden and once more set up her targets to be eliminated as she climbed the academic ladder.
Two years passed very quickly but happily in her employers’ yellow, colonial villa on the Lindenstraat. Mrs. van Halen had really taken to the girl as soon as she had shown what she was capable of and as soon as the old housekeeper retired, Elfriede was promoted. She had shown an aptitude for bookkeeping and impressed the household by her thrifty and money-saving ways. The Van Halens felt that their investment had paid off in many ways and were quite prepared to uphold their end of the original bargain, when it became obvious that Elfriede was university material. However, whatever expectations the Van Halens had for her and whatever aspirations Elfriede had for herself, were clearly opposed to the course the gods had laid out. During the short period in between Elfriede passing all her exams and her proposed entry into further education, she fell in love, fell pregnant and was married!
George Christiaanse was a shopkeeper’s son who had left school early to help his father run their small hardware business. He was intelligent, though not academic and his strengths lay in practical work with his hands. He found that from an early age, he only had to watch someone do a job and he could remember how to do it later himself. He loved nothing better as a child than hanging around his uncle’s garage watching the mechanics work their magic on rusted and outdated cars and trucks. By the time he was fifteen, he could strip an engine and carry out all but the most awkward repairs and dreamed one day of owning his own garage business. It was only when his father broke his leg falling from a ladder, that he began working in the shop and ended up staying because his father found him so useful.
He was tall and muscular but not particularly handsome. A badly operated harelip as a child had left his mouth looking lop-sided and many people underestimated his ability on the strength of his looks alone. Certainly, the local girls more or less gave him a wide berth and it wasn’t until he was eighteen that he had his first real girlfriend. His fumbling shyness and inexperience had led to a quick ending to the relationship and he retired into his shell, concentrating on making the shop as profitable as possible. If he couldn’t have love, he’d do all he could to make life as comfortable as possible by earning money.
Elfriede had to buy an assortment of things that day, light bulbs, screws and hinges for the house. She’d wandered into the shop and seen George, his back towards her, dusting shelves.
“Excuse me, could you help me? I’m looking for a few things but I haven’t a clue where to start.”
When George turned around, her heart jumped a little. She was shocked at herself. She had never been particularly interested in boys, although one or two had shown interest in her at school. Nothing had ever come of it; almost all her time was taken up with work and study and her aunt’s severe words of warning about sex made her dismiss any ideas in that direction pretty quickly. When she looked into George Christiaanse’s eyes however, she felt longing for the first time. She even loved his mouth and its slightly comical slant. These feelings were entirely mutual and after showing her to the correct shelves, George decided there and then to ask her out.
The following Sunday afternoon, he arrived at the villa in his rumpled suit and tie, clutching a bunch of flowers he’d picked from his father’s garden and wrapped in the shop’s most colourful packing paper. He’d even found a piece of ribbon in the street, carefully ironed it and tied it to one of the stems. Elfriede only had one dress that she thought was suitable for a date but had stood for ages in front of the mirror in her room wondering if it made the right impression. She knew it was old fashioned but she had no choice and she’d never considered spending any of her carefully nurtured savings on anything so ‘unnecessary’ as a new dress. When she opened the door and stepped out, George gave her the bouquet and told her she looked lovely. From that point on, it didn’t matter what either of them were wearing, they liked each other as people. He had taken her to the cinema that afternoon and they had watched a Dutch film, which Elfriede found fascinating. George was pleased with her reaction, although he had found it a little boring himself. Either way, he felt more sophisticated than he had ever felt and more self-confident because this girl treated him as an equal. Afterwards, they walked through the park and sat on a bench and talked for hours until the light was fading and the crickets and frogs had begun their chorus. He then escorted her home and shook her hand before almost skipping back to the flat above the shop.
In the next two months, they managed to see each other almost every day, even if it was only for a few minutes and the relationship deepened. Elfriede was convinced she was in love.
Later in life, Elfriede could mark the moment when the course of her life seemed to have been taken out of her hands. She had no regrets though. Whether the Winti had plotted her destiny, or that it was the result of a series of natural occurrences, she knew for certain that that night amongst the rocks above the lake was a significant turning point.
The evening had started innocently enough. George had called for her at the Van Halen’s as usual and they had walked towards the park, arm in arm and engrossed in each other, virtually unaware of the spitting raindrops and threatening storm clouds. Eventually however, the shower became a torrent and they were forced to look for shelter. Standing under the umbrella-like branches of a Jacaranda, George had an idea.
“We could go to Sylvesters.”
Elfriede was swayed by the excited look in his eyes.
“I’m not sure; I’ve never been to a coffee bar before. Is it a safe place?”
Elfriede had read the papers, which usually suggested that coffee bars were practically dens of iniquity and that young people were up to no good if they went there.
“Well, I’ve never been either but people who come in the shop say it’s a great wasn’t too great a leap from coffee to alcohol and although his resources were pretty much drained, the attraction of the garish cocktails in their fat glasses place and that all the rumours are rubbish and that people just drink coffee and dance and have a good time. I don’t know about you but I’d like to try it just once; we can always leave if we don’t like it. If you don’t want to I don’t mind, really I don’t but we’ve got to get out of the rain anyway and it’s too early to go home.”
Elfriede knew that if she insisted, that’s exactly what they would have done but she sensed that George would be disappointed and anyway, he was right, there was nothing wrong with trying something once.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Full of nervous excitement, she gripped his arm and they ran towards the beckoning neon that was Sylvester’s coffee bar.
George’s customers had been right; there was nothing to worry about. The coffee bar was full of young people just like themselves, though Elfriede thought they were clearly more sophisticated. It was shiny and colourful; noisy and smoky and they had to fight through the gyrating figures to find a corner with two free stools. George fetched two foaming, glass cups of milky coffee and they stood wide-eyed and watching and sipping the unfamiliar liquid, until they felt less like fish out of water. The atmosphere was irresistibly infectious and before long they took their first, hesitant steps onto the dance floor. Elfriede found the latest Calypso and Ska from the Caribbean intoxicating and quickly learned how to move from watching those around her. George was more awkward and jerky but was clearly beginning to enjoy himself as well. It was impossible to resist. As the hours passed, George’s dancing became a lot more fluid and Elfriede couldn’t remember ever being so uplifted. She felt a growing excitement at the prospect of a future including a university degree but also coffee bars, dance halls, cinemas and above all, George by her side.
When they finally staggered outside, laughing hysterically and clinging on to each other, the rain had stopped and the balmy air was laden with the scent of wet earth and tropical foliage. The sky was clear and lit bright by an almost full moon. Although they weren’t aware of it, the inevitability of their ensuing actions followed a pattern that flowed through the history of humanity. They weren’t the first young lovers to be swayed by excitement, perhaps a little too much alcohol and a warm, moon-bathed night and they certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Elfriede welcomed George’s kisses and exploratory caresses amongst the rocks above the lake. She welcomed them in full awareness of the natural outcome but in blind ignorance of the possible consequences. She accepted George as her first lover because she wanted to. She loved him and he loved her and it mattered little that it was a clumsy, inexperienced coupling. She knew what to expect; she wasn’t stupid and had listened intently to the giggling gossiping of the various women in her life, for whom it seemed a dominant topic of conversation. Even the short, sharp pain as he entered her, was countered by the warmth of his body and the absolute conviction that it was right. Later, as she lay in bed, she was glad she had given herself to George Christiaanse.
After two months, Elfriede knew enough to suspect she was pregnant and despite the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, eventually plucked up the courage to go to Mieke van Halen for advice. A doctor’s diagnosis confirmed her suspicions and from that moment, there was confusion and recrimination on all sides! George’s father was furious. He had plans for the business and his son was a crucial factor in those but they didn’t include a pregnant bush girl, the finances wouldn’t stretch that far. He marched up to the Van Halen’s villa and first asked what they were going to do about this sorry business and then demanded compensation. Needless to say, he was sent packing with a flea in his ear but that led to unpleasant repercussions for Elfriede. Erik van Halen felt betrayed. He accused her of throwing away her future, of abusing their trust and of bringing down their good name. Hadn’t they almost treated her like a daughter? Hadn’t they taught her to behave responsibly at all times? How could she bring her bush behaviour into their household? Elfriede knew the first two questions were untrue and was deeply offended by the third. When Mr. van Halen suggested that the best thing would be if she went back to her village, she heartily concurred and stormed off to pack her bags. Luckily, Mieke van Halen was more pragmatic and besides being genuinely fond of the girl, thought it such a waste of ability to send her back home. She also had a fair idea of Aunt Jose’s reaction. This was borne out several days later, when an irate Aunt Jose sailed up the garden path and confronted Elfriede with all the righteous rage she could muster. How could the girl shame her family so? What would she tell the rest of the village? Did she realise she had let down so many people who had believed in her? The truth was, of course, that Jose had embellished Elfriede’s weekly letters to her friends and boasted just a little too much of the girl’s academic prowess and popularity in Paramaribo’s society circles. To take her back home, unmarried and with a bastard child, having achieved nothing of which she was now famed, was unthinkable. A compromise had to be found and once more Elfriede was not asked to contribute her opinion. As it turned out, she had no complaints whatsoever. She and George had met secretly and planned to elope, under the misguided belief that love conquers all. Fortunately for them both, their plan could be realised but with the sort of security neither of them expected was possible. The Van Halens, George’s father and Aunt Jose had come up with a plan that suited all parties and in doing so; felt they had rescued whatever chance this brilliant girl had of making something of herself. Yes, she would have a baby and a husband but all felt that George was, at his best, a good, honest worker and would help rather than hinder his teenage bride’s progress. It was also abundantly clear that, however young, the couple had great affection for each other and in the best of all possible situations, would have been ideal partners anyway. Erik van Halen had to pull some strings and George’s father had to contact some seldom seen relatives but these were minor problems and would be easily overcome. The Van Halens agreed to finance the plan and all parties shook hands and celebrated their collective wisdom with a bottle of rum. Elfriede and George were to be sent to The Netherlands but first, there had to be a wedding.
18. Mia does the necessary
After Marcel had left, Mia examined her motives for appearing to be so callous. She was tired; she was emotional and she’d had a frustrating day. All these were true and at first, they seemed to constitute good reasons for her refusal to go straight to the hospital. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down and thought further. The look on Marcel’s face, when she’d told him she’d visit Ben tomorrow, made her feel like a child backed into a corner after having lied. Once said, it couldn’t be retracted and the only defence was to dig your heels in and stubbornly refuse to accede to reason. Okay, she’d been childish but the fact was that Ben’s accident frightened her. It made her feel responsible to someone she didn’t want to be responsible for. She didn’t want all that. Ben had been another in a lengthy line of sexual escapades. She liked him well enough but this…? If she rushed off to the hospital it would signify commitment or caring; he might take it as a sign of something deeper even; none of which she was prepared to give at this stage. No, she’d done the right thing and she didn’t feel guilty at all. She didn’t! After ten minutes of wrestling with her conscience, she picked up the phonebook and looked up the number of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis hospital. A few minutes later, having established that Ben wasn’t in a life-threatening situation, she felt better. She finished sorting the pile of books she’d been working on, closed off the computer, picked up her coat and went home.
The following week, she was dozing off on the settee in her oldest but most comfortable sweat pants and T-shirt, after a busy day at the shop with the television murmuring quietly in the background, when the telephone rang.
“Hi, it’s me.”
She caught herself pulling her T-shirt over her bare midriff and adjusting her pants. What was that! She was on the phone for God’s sake!
“Oh, Ben. I thought I’d made it clear…”
There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the line. Mia sighed, a little more loudly than she’d meant.
“Yes but…we can still be friends can’t we? I mean, I thought we had fun together; not just as lovers.” His tone was needy.
“I don’t think that’ll work, do you?” ‘Stupid thing to say, obviously he does!’ she thought to herself.
“We did have fun yes but I’m sorry I just don’t feel that we have anything in common anymore.”
Has this got anything to do with my accident? We were fine before then.”
“No, don’t be silly. How could it? I thought I’d explained things in the hospital.”
She knew she hadn’t explained things at all. Within the space of five minutes, she’d gone in there, asked him how he was feeling, finished with him and left. It was the only way she could do it. She knew that if she got into long and involved discussions, she’d back down, or compromise. After all, she didn’t hate him; he hadn’t actually done anything wrong but once she’d made her mind up about something, she regarded it as a sign of weakness if she didn’t carry it through. She’d watched her mother compromise all her life and had seen how her father had taken advantage of it and assumed an authority that was now rarely questioned. Much as she loved him, she decided at an early age that no man would ever dominate her in that way. Fathers were fathers, partners were just that and just because they were men gave them no right to take a leading role in the relationship. It was a stumbling block that was the cause of many of her romantic failures but she was proud of herself for maintaining her principles. She had recognised her inability to enter into deep relationships years ago but prided herself on being self-sufficient. She couldn’t live with anyone else and no one could live with her, so it was easy; just don’t get too involved. There wasn’t much danger of that either. Mia had a sixth sense, which told her when to pull down the shutters and beat a hasty retreat and she felt that in that way, she would always escape without being hurt.
“You’re such a cold fish, a real bitch in fact, do you realise that?” He was becoming bitter; she recognised the pattern. It wasn’t the first time this had been thrown at her and she had her stock responses.
“Oh well, if you’re going to resort to insults!” she exclaimed indignantly.
The phone clicked and the line went dead. ‘Mission accomplished’ she thought with some relief and went to pour herself a sherry. She wasn’t particularly proud of herself but she wasn’t ashamed either. The phone rang again.
“Now listen Ben, I don’t want you to call me ever…”
“It’s your mother dear.”
“Oh, hi Mum. I thought it was someone else.”
“Clearly! Another boyfriend bitten the dust then?”
“Mother! I don’t want to talk about it, really!”
She knew what was coming if she didn’t nip it in the bud and she was in no mood for one of her mother’s lectures on how the years were ticking by; how her biological clock wouldn’t wait and so on.
“Alright, alright. It’s your business. I’m not one to preach but…”
“Mum, you are one to preach and I really don’t want to hear it. I’ve had a hard day. How are you anyway?”
“Changing the subject won’t make it go away you know! Oh well, I suppose you know best. Actually, I had a question I wanted to ask. You are coming on Christmas Day, aren’t you? I wondered if you could get me something for your father? I wanted to give him a little surprise.”
‘Damn,’ thought Mia, ‘why can’t I ever have the courage to tell them I hate Christmas with all its faux sentimentalities?’
“Yes, I’ll be there. What do you want me to get?”
Her mother spent the next five minutes explaining in great detail the sort of golf clubs she wanted Mia to find.
“Of course, I’d get them myself but the best shops are in Amsterdam and anyway, where could I hide them? Your father would be sure to find them.”
“And how do you expect me to get them to you Mum?”
Mia adored her father and would do anything for him but considering the trams and trains she would have to catch to get to Weesp, a bag of golf clubs would be mighty inconvenient.
“Oh you’ll find a way. Of course, if it’s too much trouble…”
“No, that’ll be fine. It’s no problem really.”
After they had exchanged the usual pleasantries and chatted about this and that, Mia hung up and looked around her apartment. She suddenly had the urge to buy something new for herself, as a sort of consolation for being alone but she didn’t know what. She had all the basic elements and was pleased with how everything looked but just fancied a little shopping therapy; maybe a painting this time, there were enough galleries within walking distance of de Pijp but could she afford what she liked? ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’m famous for my bargaining skills. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow and I’ll have a look for those bloody clubs as well.’ She looked out of the window. The weather had changed and it was a cold, clear night. If she stretched, she could even see a star or two and it looked as though there might be quite a hard frost by morning. ‘Good,’ she thought, ‘I’ve had enough of continuous grey and damp days. I want some real winter.’
Just then, a light came on in a kitchen opposite and in walked a man in his jockey shorts.
The houses in the Govert Flinck straat were tall and imposing. Many of them were divided up into individual apartments and as was the case in most big cities, people were mostly strangers to each other, even if they were immediate neighbours. Mia had never noticed this guy before, not that that meant much but she had the feeling that he had only recently moved in. Even if people didn’t take much notice of each other, subliminally, landmarks and faces were noted and became familiar. So if anything new appeared, it caught the eye.
Although de Pijp’s late nineteenth century housing had been put up in a hurry and was regarded in smart circles as a rather scruffy area, Mia enjoyed living there. As cosmopolitan and varied as any in Amsterdam, she liked its mix of immigrants, students, yuppies and original Amsterdammers, which gave it a colourful and noisy atmosphere. It was a multicultural village within the city, with all the tensions and benefits of mixing different peoples together but in the summer evenings, the bars and restaurants spilled out onto the street and Muslim families wandered quite happily past the junkies in the Sarphatipark. Most times, it seemed to work.
Mia couldn’t help staring at the man in the kitchen. She switched her table lamp off and weighed him up without the danger of being spotted herself. He was tall, well built and of indeterminate age, probably late twenties, with short blond hair and a rather large nose dominating a good-looking face. He was obviously comfortable with himself. Mia rarely walked around her flat naked, she just couldn’t feel natural doing it, although she could see no logical reason why. After he’d made himself a sandwich, the light went off again and he disappeared.
‘Hmm,’ she thought, without a trace of guilt that she’d just dispensed with the last conquest, ‘I’ll keep an eye out for him.’ She then put him out of her mind and went to bed.
The next day was Saturday and after her usual strong coffees, Mia felt ready to face the world again. She’d decided not to go into the shop until later. More often than not at this time of year, her main customers early on a Saturday morning, were kids looking for cheap books to give as presents and she felt she just couldn’t face bargaining with a ten year old, runny-nosed haggler at that time of the morning. She needed shopping, so walked around the corner into the Albert Cuyp market. It was a beautiful morning, clear and sunny, with the frost still white on the roofs. As usual, every inch of space was taken up with market stalls, crates, traders and the occasional early morning Heron in search of free fish. It was also beginning to fill up with people so she decided to get what she wanted as quickly as possible. After she’d got vegetables and a fresh chicken for the weekend, she joined a queue at a cheese stall, glaring fiercely at a woman who was edging in front of her and reached for her purse to get the money ready for when her turn came. Just at that moment, there was a yell from a young boy on one of the electric trolleys that deliver wares to the stalls. It wasn’t that he’d lost control of the vehicle, they moved too slowly for that but he’d swerved to avoid a dog and was heading straight for the patient crowd waiting for cheese. Mia was unlucky enough to be caught off balance in the ensuing mêlée and fell in an undignified heap amongst her potatoes and carrots, clutching at the air for the bank notes that had fluttered out of her purse. Behind her, she could hear people’s laughter.
“Typical,” she muttered, “Nothing like other people’s misfortune for giving you bastards a good laugh!”
Cursing and spluttering, she crawled around the ground trying to retrieve what she could, unaware that her skirt had ridden up over her bottom, exposing much more than she would consider ladylike. She felt a hand tugging at her rumpled clothes and full of rage, turned to strike the would-be molester with all the force she could muster.
“Can I help you? You seem to be having a bit of difficulty.”
At first, she didn’t recognise her erstwhile helper and thumped him nevertheless.
“Whoa! I was only trying to help lady. You were showing your knickers to the world!”
Then she saw the nose and remembered the man from last night. Putting on her best effort at a smile, she took his hand and was pulled to her feet.
The Van Halens’ housekeeper, who was retiring as soon as Elfriede had settled in, met her off the bus. A thin, imposing woman, she had nevertheless received Elfriede with friendliness and the girl felt immediately at ease. The city was a different matter however. The noise and the sheer numbers of people in the streets overwhelmed her. She wasn’t ignorant; she knew what it looked like from books and magazines but the reality still came as a shock. During those first days, she felt she could hardly breathe with the traffic fumes, even though the Van Halens lived in the leafy suburb occupied mainly by foreigners, businessmen and diplomats. Here also, for the first time, she saw the real difference between rich and poor. It was not that the beggars and down and outs distressed her, she knew what poverty looked like but she had never seen real wealth and the difference it made and it opened her eyes to the possibilities life could offer. She didn’t want to be rich for herself but wanted it because it was evidence of education and progress and because she knew she was capable of the latter; the former would be a welcome by-product.
Her new duties were lighter than she’d expected; certainly lighter than she was used to and she finished her chores easily and efficiently, much to the delight of her new employers, who had expected problems with a girl from the bush, however intelligent she was supposed to be. This gave her the time to study, which she set about assiduously. Her new school was large and impersonal but she soon established herself and showed every justification for her old principal’s optimism. She learned from her peers how to be sophisticated when necessary and within six months, apart from her accent, nobody would have known that this was once a simple country girl. Her natural modesty made her friends and she presented no obvious challenge to the teenage leaders around her. Besides that, she kept her academic ambitions well hidden and once more set up her targets to be eliminated as she climbed the academic ladder.
Two years passed very quickly but happily in her employers’ yellow, colonial villa on the Lindenstraat. Mrs. van Halen had really taken to the girl as soon as she had shown what she was capable of and as soon as the old housekeeper retired, Elfriede was promoted. She had shown an aptitude for bookkeeping and impressed the household by her thrifty and money-saving ways. The Van Halens felt that their investment had paid off in many ways and were quite prepared to uphold their end of the original bargain, when it became obvious that Elfriede was university material. However, whatever expectations the Van Halens had for her and whatever aspirations Elfriede had for herself, were clearly opposed to the course the gods had laid out. During the short period in between Elfriede passing all her exams and her proposed entry into further education, she fell in love, fell pregnant and was married!
George Christiaanse was a shopkeeper’s son who had left school early to help his father run their small hardware business. He was intelligent, though not academic and his strengths lay in practical work with his hands. He found that from an early age, he only had to watch someone do a job and he could remember how to do it later himself. He loved nothing better as a child than hanging around his uncle’s garage watching the mechanics work their magic on rusted and outdated cars and trucks. By the time he was fifteen, he could strip an engine and carry out all but the most awkward repairs and dreamed one day of owning his own garage business. It was only when his father broke his leg falling from a ladder, that he began working in the shop and ended up staying because his father found him so useful.
He was tall and muscular but not particularly handsome. A badly operated harelip as a child had left his mouth looking lop-sided and many people underestimated his ability on the strength of his looks alone. Certainly, the local girls more or less gave him a wide berth and it wasn’t until he was eighteen that he had his first real girlfriend. His fumbling shyness and inexperience had led to a quick ending to the relationship and he retired into his shell, concentrating on making the shop as profitable as possible. If he couldn’t have love, he’d do all he could to make life as comfortable as possible by earning money.
Elfriede had to buy an assortment of things that day, light bulbs, screws and hinges for the house. She’d wandered into the shop and seen George, his back towards her, dusting shelves.
“Excuse me, could you help me? I’m looking for a few things but I haven’t a clue where to start.”
When George turned around, her heart jumped a little. She was shocked at herself. She had never been particularly interested in boys, although one or two had shown interest in her at school. Nothing had ever come of it; almost all her time was taken up with work and study and her aunt’s severe words of warning about sex made her dismiss any ideas in that direction pretty quickly. When she looked into George Christiaanse’s eyes however, she felt longing for the first time. She even loved his mouth and its slightly comical slant. These feelings were entirely mutual and after showing her to the correct shelves, George decided there and then to ask her out.
The following Sunday afternoon, he arrived at the villa in his rumpled suit and tie, clutching a bunch of flowers he’d picked from his father’s garden and wrapped in the shop’s most colourful packing paper. He’d even found a piece of ribbon in the street, carefully ironed it and tied it to one of the stems. Elfriede only had one dress that she thought was suitable for a date but had stood for ages in front of the mirror in her room wondering if it made the right impression. She knew it was old fashioned but she had no choice and she’d never considered spending any of her carefully nurtured savings on anything so ‘unnecessary’ as a new dress. When she opened the door and stepped out, George gave her the bouquet and told her she looked lovely. From that point on, it didn’t matter what either of them were wearing, they liked each other as people. He had taken her to the cinema that afternoon and they had watched a Dutch film, which Elfriede found fascinating. George was pleased with her reaction, although he had found it a little boring himself. Either way, he felt more sophisticated than he had ever felt and more self-confident because this girl treated him as an equal. Afterwards, they walked through the park and sat on a bench and talked for hours until the light was fading and the crickets and frogs had begun their chorus. He then escorted her home and shook her hand before almost skipping back to the flat above the shop.
In the next two months, they managed to see each other almost every day, even if it was only for a few minutes and the relationship deepened. Elfriede was convinced she was in love.
Later in life, Elfriede could mark the moment when the course of her life seemed to have been taken out of her hands. She had no regrets though. Whether the Winti had plotted her destiny, or that it was the result of a series of natural occurrences, she knew for certain that that night amongst the rocks above the lake was a significant turning point.
The evening had started innocently enough. George had called for her at the Van Halen’s as usual and they had walked towards the park, arm in arm and engrossed in each other, virtually unaware of the spitting raindrops and threatening storm clouds. Eventually however, the shower became a torrent and they were forced to look for shelter. Standing under the umbrella-like branches of a Jacaranda, George had an idea.
“We could go to Sylvesters.”
Elfriede was swayed by the excited look in his eyes.
“I’m not sure; I’ve never been to a coffee bar before. Is it a safe place?”
Elfriede had read the papers, which usually suggested that coffee bars were practically dens of iniquity and that young people were up to no good if they went there.
“Well, I’ve never been either but people who come in the shop say it’s a great wasn’t too great a leap from coffee to alcohol and although his resources were pretty much drained, the attraction of the garish cocktails in their fat glasses place and that all the rumours are rubbish and that people just drink coffee and dance and have a good time. I don’t know about you but I’d like to try it just once; we can always leave if we don’t like it. If you don’t want to I don’t mind, really I don’t but we’ve got to get out of the rain anyway and it’s too early to go home.”
Elfriede knew that if she insisted, that’s exactly what they would have done but she sensed that George would be disappointed and anyway, he was right, there was nothing wrong with trying something once.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Full of nervous excitement, she gripped his arm and they ran towards the beckoning neon that was Sylvester’s coffee bar.
George’s customers had been right; there was nothing to worry about. The coffee bar was full of young people just like themselves, though Elfriede thought they were clearly more sophisticated. It was shiny and colourful; noisy and smoky and they had to fight through the gyrating figures to find a corner with two free stools. George fetched two foaming, glass cups of milky coffee and they stood wide-eyed and watching and sipping the unfamiliar liquid, until they felt less like fish out of water. The atmosphere was irresistibly infectious and before long they took their first, hesitant steps onto the dance floor. Elfriede found the latest Calypso and Ska from the Caribbean intoxicating and quickly learned how to move from watching those around her. George was more awkward and jerky but was clearly beginning to enjoy himself as well. It was impossible to resist. As the hours passed, George’s dancing became a lot more fluid and Elfriede couldn’t remember ever being so uplifted. She felt a growing excitement at the prospect of a future including a university degree but also coffee bars, dance halls, cinemas and above all, George by her side.
When they finally staggered outside, laughing hysterically and clinging on to each other, the rain had stopped and the balmy air was laden with the scent of wet earth and tropical foliage. The sky was clear and lit bright by an almost full moon. Although they weren’t aware of it, the inevitability of their ensuing actions followed a pattern that flowed through the history of humanity. They weren’t the first young lovers to be swayed by excitement, perhaps a little too much alcohol and a warm, moon-bathed night and they certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Elfriede welcomed George’s kisses and exploratory caresses amongst the rocks above the lake. She welcomed them in full awareness of the natural outcome but in blind ignorance of the possible consequences. She accepted George as her first lover because she wanted to. She loved him and he loved her and it mattered little that it was a clumsy, inexperienced coupling. She knew what to expect; she wasn’t stupid and had listened intently to the giggling gossiping of the various women in her life, for whom it seemed a dominant topic of conversation. Even the short, sharp pain as he entered her, was countered by the warmth of his body and the absolute conviction that it was right. Later, as she lay in bed, she was glad she had given herself to George Christiaanse.
After two months, Elfriede knew enough to suspect she was pregnant and despite the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, eventually plucked up the courage to go to Mieke van Halen for advice. A doctor’s diagnosis confirmed her suspicions and from that moment, there was confusion and recrimination on all sides! George’s father was furious. He had plans for the business and his son was a crucial factor in those but they didn’t include a pregnant bush girl, the finances wouldn’t stretch that far. He marched up to the Van Halen’s villa and first asked what they were going to do about this sorry business and then demanded compensation. Needless to say, he was sent packing with a flea in his ear but that led to unpleasant repercussions for Elfriede. Erik van Halen felt betrayed. He accused her of throwing away her future, of abusing their trust and of bringing down their good name. Hadn’t they almost treated her like a daughter? Hadn’t they taught her to behave responsibly at all times? How could she bring her bush behaviour into their household? Elfriede knew the first two questions were untrue and was deeply offended by the third. When Mr. van Halen suggested that the best thing would be if she went back to her village, she heartily concurred and stormed off to pack her bags. Luckily, Mieke van Halen was more pragmatic and besides being genuinely fond of the girl, thought it such a waste of ability to send her back home. She also had a fair idea of Aunt Jose’s reaction. This was borne out several days later, when an irate Aunt Jose sailed up the garden path and confronted Elfriede with all the righteous rage she could muster. How could the girl shame her family so? What would she tell the rest of the village? Did she realise she had let down so many people who had believed in her? The truth was, of course, that Jose had embellished Elfriede’s weekly letters to her friends and boasted just a little too much of the girl’s academic prowess and popularity in Paramaribo’s society circles. To take her back home, unmarried and with a bastard child, having achieved nothing of which she was now famed, was unthinkable. A compromise had to be found and once more Elfriede was not asked to contribute her opinion. As it turned out, she had no complaints whatsoever. She and George had met secretly and planned to elope, under the misguided belief that love conquers all. Fortunately for them both, their plan could be realised but with the sort of security neither of them expected was possible. The Van Halens, George’s father and Aunt Jose had come up with a plan that suited all parties and in doing so; felt they had rescued whatever chance this brilliant girl had of making something of herself. Yes, she would have a baby and a husband but all felt that George was, at his best, a good, honest worker and would help rather than hinder his teenage bride’s progress. It was also abundantly clear that, however young, the couple had great affection for each other and in the best of all possible situations, would have been ideal partners anyway. Erik van Halen had to pull some strings and George’s father had to contact some seldom seen relatives but these were minor problems and would be easily overcome. The Van Halens agreed to finance the plan and all parties shook hands and celebrated their collective wisdom with a bottle of rum. Elfriede and George were to be sent to The Netherlands but first, there had to be a wedding.
18. Mia does the necessary
After Marcel had left, Mia examined her motives for appearing to be so callous. She was tired; she was emotional and she’d had a frustrating day. All these were true and at first, they seemed to constitute good reasons for her refusal to go straight to the hospital. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down and thought further. The look on Marcel’s face, when she’d told him she’d visit Ben tomorrow, made her feel like a child backed into a corner after having lied. Once said, it couldn’t be retracted and the only defence was to dig your heels in and stubbornly refuse to accede to reason. Okay, she’d been childish but the fact was that Ben’s accident frightened her. It made her feel responsible to someone she didn’t want to be responsible for. She didn’t want all that. Ben had been another in a lengthy line of sexual escapades. She liked him well enough but this…? If she rushed off to the hospital it would signify commitment or caring; he might take it as a sign of something deeper even; none of which she was prepared to give at this stage. No, she’d done the right thing and she didn’t feel guilty at all. She didn’t! After ten minutes of wrestling with her conscience, she picked up the phonebook and looked up the number of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis hospital. A few minutes later, having established that Ben wasn’t in a life-threatening situation, she felt better. She finished sorting the pile of books she’d been working on, closed off the computer, picked up her coat and went home.
The following week, she was dozing off on the settee in her oldest but most comfortable sweat pants and T-shirt, after a busy day at the shop with the television murmuring quietly in the background, when the telephone rang.
“Hi, it’s me.”
She caught herself pulling her T-shirt over her bare midriff and adjusting her pants. What was that! She was on the phone for God’s sake!
“Oh, Ben. I thought I’d made it clear…”
There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the line. Mia sighed, a little more loudly than she’d meant.
“Yes but…we can still be friends can’t we? I mean, I thought we had fun together; not just as lovers.” His tone was needy.
“I don’t think that’ll work, do you?” ‘Stupid thing to say, obviously he does!’ she thought to herself.
“We did have fun yes but I’m sorry I just don’t feel that we have anything in common anymore.”
Has this got anything to do with my accident? We were fine before then.”
“No, don’t be silly. How could it? I thought I’d explained things in the hospital.”
She knew she hadn’t explained things at all. Within the space of five minutes, she’d gone in there, asked him how he was feeling, finished with him and left. It was the only way she could do it. She knew that if she got into long and involved discussions, she’d back down, or compromise. After all, she didn’t hate him; he hadn’t actually done anything wrong but once she’d made her mind up about something, she regarded it as a sign of weakness if she didn’t carry it through. She’d watched her mother compromise all her life and had seen how her father had taken advantage of it and assumed an authority that was now rarely questioned. Much as she loved him, she decided at an early age that no man would ever dominate her in that way. Fathers were fathers, partners were just that and just because they were men gave them no right to take a leading role in the relationship. It was a stumbling block that was the cause of many of her romantic failures but she was proud of herself for maintaining her principles. She had recognised her inability to enter into deep relationships years ago but prided herself on being self-sufficient. She couldn’t live with anyone else and no one could live with her, so it was easy; just don’t get too involved. There wasn’t much danger of that either. Mia had a sixth sense, which told her when to pull down the shutters and beat a hasty retreat and she felt that in that way, she would always escape without being hurt.
“You’re such a cold fish, a real bitch in fact, do you realise that?” He was becoming bitter; she recognised the pattern. It wasn’t the first time this had been thrown at her and she had her stock responses.
“Oh well, if you’re going to resort to insults!” she exclaimed indignantly.
The phone clicked and the line went dead. ‘Mission accomplished’ she thought with some relief and went to pour herself a sherry. She wasn’t particularly proud of herself but she wasn’t ashamed either. The phone rang again.
“Now listen Ben, I don’t want you to call me ever…”
“It’s your mother dear.”
“Oh, hi Mum. I thought it was someone else.”
“Clearly! Another boyfriend bitten the dust then?”
“Mother! I don’t want to talk about it, really!”
She knew what was coming if she didn’t nip it in the bud and she was in no mood for one of her mother’s lectures on how the years were ticking by; how her biological clock wouldn’t wait and so on.
“Alright, alright. It’s your business. I’m not one to preach but…”
“Mum, you are one to preach and I really don’t want to hear it. I’ve had a hard day. How are you anyway?”
“Changing the subject won’t make it go away you know! Oh well, I suppose you know best. Actually, I had a question I wanted to ask. You are coming on Christmas Day, aren’t you? I wondered if you could get me something for your father? I wanted to give him a little surprise.”
‘Damn,’ thought Mia, ‘why can’t I ever have the courage to tell them I hate Christmas with all its faux sentimentalities?’
“Yes, I’ll be there. What do you want me to get?”
Her mother spent the next five minutes explaining in great detail the sort of golf clubs she wanted Mia to find.
“Of course, I’d get them myself but the best shops are in Amsterdam and anyway, where could I hide them? Your father would be sure to find them.”
“And how do you expect me to get them to you Mum?”
Mia adored her father and would do anything for him but considering the trams and trains she would have to catch to get to Weesp, a bag of golf clubs would be mighty inconvenient.
“Oh you’ll find a way. Of course, if it’s too much trouble…”
“No, that’ll be fine. It’s no problem really.”
After they had exchanged the usual pleasantries and chatted about this and that, Mia hung up and looked around her apartment. She suddenly had the urge to buy something new for herself, as a sort of consolation for being alone but she didn’t know what. She had all the basic elements and was pleased with how everything looked but just fancied a little shopping therapy; maybe a painting this time, there were enough galleries within walking distance of de Pijp but could she afford what she liked? ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’m famous for my bargaining skills. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow and I’ll have a look for those bloody clubs as well.’ She looked out of the window. The weather had changed and it was a cold, clear night. If she stretched, she could even see a star or two and it looked as though there might be quite a hard frost by morning. ‘Good,’ she thought, ‘I’ve had enough of continuous grey and damp days. I want some real winter.’
Just then, a light came on in a kitchen opposite and in walked a man in his jockey shorts.
The houses in the Govert Flinck straat were tall and imposing. Many of them were divided up into individual apartments and as was the case in most big cities, people were mostly strangers to each other, even if they were immediate neighbours. Mia had never noticed this guy before, not that that meant much but she had the feeling that he had only recently moved in. Even if people didn’t take much notice of each other, subliminally, landmarks and faces were noted and became familiar. So if anything new appeared, it caught the eye.
Although de Pijp’s late nineteenth century housing had been put up in a hurry and was regarded in smart circles as a rather scruffy area, Mia enjoyed living there. As cosmopolitan and varied as any in Amsterdam, she liked its mix of immigrants, students, yuppies and original Amsterdammers, which gave it a colourful and noisy atmosphere. It was a multicultural village within the city, with all the tensions and benefits of mixing different peoples together but in the summer evenings, the bars and restaurants spilled out onto the street and Muslim families wandered quite happily past the junkies in the Sarphatipark. Most times, it seemed to work.
Mia couldn’t help staring at the man in the kitchen. She switched her table lamp off and weighed him up without the danger of being spotted herself. He was tall, well built and of indeterminate age, probably late twenties, with short blond hair and a rather large nose dominating a good-looking face. He was obviously comfortable with himself. Mia rarely walked around her flat naked, she just couldn’t feel natural doing it, although she could see no logical reason why. After he’d made himself a sandwich, the light went off again and he disappeared.
‘Hmm,’ she thought, without a trace of guilt that she’d just dispensed with the last conquest, ‘I’ll keep an eye out for him.’ She then put him out of her mind and went to bed.
The next day was Saturday and after her usual strong coffees, Mia felt ready to face the world again. She’d decided not to go into the shop until later. More often than not at this time of year, her main customers early on a Saturday morning, were kids looking for cheap books to give as presents and she felt she just couldn’t face bargaining with a ten year old, runny-nosed haggler at that time of the morning. She needed shopping, so walked around the corner into the Albert Cuyp market. It was a beautiful morning, clear and sunny, with the frost still white on the roofs. As usual, every inch of space was taken up with market stalls, crates, traders and the occasional early morning Heron in search of free fish. It was also beginning to fill up with people so she decided to get what she wanted as quickly as possible. After she’d got vegetables and a fresh chicken for the weekend, she joined a queue at a cheese stall, glaring fiercely at a woman who was edging in front of her and reached for her purse to get the money ready for when her turn came. Just at that moment, there was a yell from a young boy on one of the electric trolleys that deliver wares to the stalls. It wasn’t that he’d lost control of the vehicle, they moved too slowly for that but he’d swerved to avoid a dog and was heading straight for the patient crowd waiting for cheese. Mia was unlucky enough to be caught off balance in the ensuing mêlée and fell in an undignified heap amongst her potatoes and carrots, clutching at the air for the bank notes that had fluttered out of her purse. Behind her, she could hear people’s laughter.
“Typical,” she muttered, “Nothing like other people’s misfortune for giving you bastards a good laugh!”
Cursing and spluttering, she crawled around the ground trying to retrieve what she could, unaware that her skirt had ridden up over her bottom, exposing much more than she would consider ladylike. She felt a hand tugging at her rumpled clothes and full of rage, turned to strike the would-be molester with all the force she could muster.
“Can I help you? You seem to be having a bit of difficulty.”
At first, she didn’t recognise her erstwhile helper and thumped him nevertheless.
“Whoa! I was only trying to help lady. You were showing your knickers to the world!”
Then she saw the nose and remembered the man from last night. Putting on her best effort at a smile, she took his hand and was pulled to her feet.
- Elfriede and the spirits of the dance
- Duty and promises
- Elfriede’s education
- An opportunity to be grasped
- Elfriede finds love
- Mia does the necessary
