< Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >
Locket # 34:
Well, the speculation has started again. Almost ten years after the
disappearance, there has been a sighting. There have been sightings before,
mind you. This time an American visitor who went up there, all backpack
and sandals, now swears he met Robert, the Mormon young man who went
missing. “He’s grown a beard and he looks as bronze as the native Indians,”
he said.
We have Mormons in Georgetown. White shirt sleeves and tie, walking and
working in pairs through our streets and heat. One day, one of them just
took off and vanished.
Somebody wrote to the newspapers suggesting Robert might have been
“abducted” by bandits for ransom, or by aliens for research. If you think
that was stretching things, that that sort of “abduction” couldn’t happen
in these parts, well, at the rate things going, mind and body grinding dry
cane, is only a matter of time. Our days getting shorter, our nights really
dark.
They didn’t publish a photo of Robert. Just a report he was last seen in
the Northwest District. If he was a Georgetown boy you would hear his
whole life story, from birthday to vanish day.
Our local investigators were alerted. They interviewed his work companion.
His story was, they were staying at a rest house at Mabaruma, in the
Northwest. He woke up one morning and Robert was gone.
He stepped outside, not sure where to start looking. He asked around, did
anyone see him? How could someone not notice Robert’s white shirt,
Robert’s white face?
He heard someone’s personal belongings had been found near the river.
When he got there he discovered they were in fact Robert’s things, his shirt,
pants, shoes, bible, a letter with foreign stamps; arranged neatly and
laid out on a towel held down by stones.
Everybody supposed the young man had taken his own life by drowning.
They couldn’t find a body.
Everybody assumed the perai got to him.
Perai, for anyone who don’t know, is a species of fish said to have three
rows of teeth. Sharp as tiny sawmill blades. If a perai find you floating in
our river, it sneaks up. It strips your flesh starting with your buttocks. A
A family of perai could have feasted on Robert leaving only bones and
astonishment.
A fellow flew in from the US, saying he was a private investigator, and how
he come her to “investigate”. In no time at all he managed to antagonise
our police investigators.
A prominent politician, lawyer, Comrade (and permanent rascal, if you ask
me) got involved. Ever since the Jonestown horror camp, he said, he didn’t
trust any “charitable” activity by foreigners. Like these Mormons, running
a church with no church bells! Starting up a farm project when in truth
under the canopy, talking like they care, they work to enslave the minds
of vulnerable people. He expected action to follow his words.
I was surprised the boy’s parents didn’t show up, declaring this was a
tragedy, and wondering how the head of our country could allow sonething
like this to happen.
The whole thing, the whole story, just fade away.
My good friend at the police station, Sargie, who keeps me informed of
developments, told me he knew two persons who had information about
Robert. A mother and daughter, living on the East Bank (they were
interested in joining the church). They were the last people to see Robert in
Georgetown.
The two Mormons, they said, stopped by every Wednesday. Came all the way
to their house for a “finger food” lunch break, in this case a dish of Roti and
Curry. And a glass of mauby. Which they could purchase anywhere, but they
liked the home setting and preparation. (Unknown to the boys, the meal
was prepared elsewhere and “home” delivered.)
They remembered Robert, the quiet one, leaning over his plate to bite in,
and reaching for a napkin. “I keep telling this girl, her life need direction.
She should learn to concentrate like him. Find some regular activity to put
her mind to.”
The last time they visited, something unexpected happened. Robert asked to
use the bathroom. There was an encounter, you could say, with the
daughter. She was nineteen then.
He just open the door and walk in, just like that, his fingers unbuckling.
Which I find hard to believe. And her towel just happened to fall at the same
time. Also hard to believe.
I could just imagine the fight his eyes put up to stop looking. For as long as it
takes a stranger to say Imbaimadai three times his eyes looked.
The young woman insists, nothing happened. Caught off guard, her
nakedness ‒ breasts, belly, thighs, loose damp hair ‒ plastered on his face,
Robert turned into a cherry of embarrassment.
Sometimes people does get their feelings mixed up. Important feelings like
faith and lust suddenly flaring up in one ungodly struggle. I not saying that
is what happened here. But one little drama does lead to one big drama.
Personally, I don’t believe this young man is dead. I don’t believe any harm
come to him either. All that identity stripping by the river, carefully
arranging his personal effects so they could be recovered and returned ‒ if
there’s logic in that, I don’t see it. Just don't see it.
People like Robert the Mormon come into this country, they feel
untouchable; they free to do the craziest things, things we ourselves can’t
imagine doing.
That display by the river was not the end. More like the beginning, if you
ask me.
The Northwest District, I never visited. Canal, yes, but the Northwest? with
the steamer rising and plunging through the Atlantic all night, arriving the
next morning? Not me and that.
Call it my mid-Atlantic insecurity. But there’s always a first time. And
always a good reason. So I heading out there.
If you want to understand why, you should read “Shadows Move Among
Them”. It’s a book by Edgar Mittelholzer.
Apparently, Robert left a copy of this book with his things near the river.
A stunning development, yes. The investigators must have flipped through
the pages, looking for clues, like a suicide note or something. They probably
just put it aside,
I kept thinking, this young Mormon comes here, starts reading “Shadows
Move Among Them”; then he “disappears”. Where’d he get this book? Did
his walking buddy know about this book? Why leave this book with the rest
of his things?
And what did his hands grip now ‒ a field shovel? a canoe paddle? Did
rectitude still steer his walking days? Maybe he was just hiding out. That
young man has plenty explaining to do.
I heard the name Mittelholzer, how he was this famous author. I’m ashamed
to admit I never read a word he wrote. Not one word. Searching on and off
for a copy of his book took years. I gave up at one point. I’m reading it now.
It contains language people in Georgetown no longer find useful. Too many
of us don’t read, never heard of Mittelholzer. And when time come to gasp
and think, most of us fall quiet, fall in line with the tribe.
I’m beginning to understand, though, why people feel they must
“disappear”. At least for awhile, and not with any river drama.
Something inside you says, you have to move! Away from conditions that
keep you on edge all the time. Like ignorance and its cell mate ‘a little
knowledge’; the blows people take every day, not saying anything, now
that our morality gone with the perai.
Believing is one thing, moving and seeing for yourself is another.
So I heading out to the Northwest District ‒ yes, me on that steamer,
ploughing through the choppy waters of the dark Atlantic. Mittelholzer
style.
No, no big plan. Just a short trip. Hoping to see for myself the forest and
the river, the strange behaviors they say happen there sometimes.
Human nature is human nature. Dressed or undressed, people don’t change
much despite what they do, where they go.
Malcolm De Abreu
Georgetown, Guyana
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 