<Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >
Locket # 44
Well, to start with, I have never ridden a bicycle on the streets of Georgetown.
That shouldn’t surprise any visitor or resident here. On a bicycle? with all the
helter skelter pelting down our roadways? I would be putting my body at risk.
Maybe this country wasn’t meant to modernize like that, with cars and two
way traffic lanes and traffic lights. Maybe we should have stayed a bicycle
nation, like one of those Chinese cities you hear about, everybody pedaling
and even getting stuck in bicycle jams.
I couldn’t imagine a time in Georgetown when people went around on
bicycles. Until I met this staring man.
I was walking down Church Street, heading for the market square to catch
public transport. He was standing outside the old Astor cinema. Just standing
and staring.
He saw me coming and he was like, “Hello, excuse me, you know what time
they bringing down the cinema?” Pardon? “This cinema. They said on the
radio it was going to be demolished today. I came here to see it one last
time.” Asking like if anybody walking past the cinema would be carrying
that information.
He was dressed like a foreign Guyanese, you can always spot them. They
wear clothes that look purchased just for the trip. And the way they walk,
point A straight to point B., perspiring and worrying about their
perspiration.
This one was not much different, though he had nothing better to do than
stare at an old building and ask when it would be “demolished”. I liked his
word demolish.
I found out later he was right. It was supposed to come down.
"So where you going?” he asked, switching his concern. To the market to
catch transport. “And why you can’t ride. Back in my day you didn’t need
to walk for transport. We had bicycles. I rode a bicycle. I used the bus if I
had to, but we didn’t depend on these sardine body cans they have running
around now.”
He was referring to our minivans. Sardine body cans, that’s a good one, I
said, preparing to move on.
He reminded me of my grandfather who died when I was a child. I knew
about him, but my parents never took me to visit. I saw him for the first
time at his funeral, a big man sleeping in a coffin. I never asked why they
kept their distance from him. This man was clearly from his time.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, holding me back. “You see that place?
It was paradise. We came to the paradise on bicycles.”
I tried to imagine it. I know the frustration of vehicles on the roads today.
But streets of bicycles? people pedaling to work, to school, to the cinema?
“I’m telling you, we left our bikes at the front of the cinema right there.
You locked the bike, you bought your ticket, plunged through the curtain at
the door. They had three shows each day between 1.00 p.m. and midnight.
The best times of our lives.”
He said if I passed by I’d see stacks of bicycles in neat rows; and when the
show was over and you came outside, you found your bicycle buried under
a pile. You waited. Owners emerged and removed theirs one by one. You
waited.
Not that everything was always cool. Sometimes a headlight was missing.
A policeman could stop and walk you to the station for riding without light.
Which sounded ridiculous, but at least the police offficers did honest night
work then.
He got me so excited, I started to believe in his world of bicycles, his city
of bicycle lawbreakers marched to the station for silly crimes. A strange,
long ago world, with “respectable” people, and bandits getting away on
two feet or two wheels.
"I don’t live here anymore. I came here to see how they would demolish
the building. Is not a stone building, so you can’t wire it up with explosives
and bring it down. I mean look at it, it’s a wooden building.” I didn’t hear
anything about demolishing this building? “It was on the radio?” Nobody
listens to radio here. “I travel with a radio wherever I go.” Stuck in his old
radio ways, oh boy.
“Can you imagine how long it took them build it? back in the 1940s?” Well,
it was empty for years, they stop showing movies there. Anyway, I have
to go. Some conversations you'll never have again.
I don’t usually stop to talk to any and everybody on the road. I was
surprised this old man didn’t try getting friendlier, asking about my
expectations; saying I look like a smart young lady; nibbling away, getting
friendlier and friendlier; until if you dare crack a smile, just hope regret
don't come to stay by you later.
I haven't talked to anyone about him. I was heading home, but my home
situation isn't exactly friendly. I don’t have too many real friends. How old
am I? Seventeen.
There’s a wild side of me, I admit, that has these dreams of a place where
I part the curtains, go inside, find this big cave all lit up like a cinema
screen, with people talking and doing amazing things. Paradise itself.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t just walk away from this conversation. That and
the look on the old man’s face as he talked.
I felt a little sympathy for him and his paradise. I’d never seen anyone so
serious and worried. Who cares that much about an old building?
Across the country, some people abandon their homes; they give up and
move away. It might have been their Garden of Wonder growing up, but now
they want a place somewhere with comfort and peace of mind. Usually they
move away for good, leaving everything to the weeds or to relatives.
Anyway, the next day, there I was walking down Church Street, approaching
the cinema. The roof and wood sidings had been ripped off, how I couldn’t
tell. I didn’t see any demolishing machine nearby, only a few shirtless men
poking through the rubble.
The old man wasn’t there. Maybe he came and saw what was going on and
he left. This couldn’t be what he was hoping for.
The rotten wood frame was still hanging in the sky. It was as if a swarm of
wood hungry rodents had come out of hiding while we were sleeping, and
ate everything inside, but left as the sun came up. It looked terrible.
Anyway, it has been over a year now since all that happened.
I don’t have to tell you, but I’ll tell you: I have a boyfriend now. And I won’t
have met him if I hadn’t changed my walking route to the Market square,
avoiding Church Street with the old torn down cinema.
He has a motorcycle. Yes, like I moving up in the world, joke all you want.
He brings a helmet for me when we go for rides.
You know how sometimes you read in stories, “she felt a flutter in her
chest”? Well, on the motorbike with him, my knees clutching his thighs
when we take bends, I feel flutters in my chest. Lots of flutters. There
are first times, hard to forget, for everything in this world.
He’s from Brazil. I don’t know the whole story, what he was up to back
there, and what he’s hoping for now; but he’s adapting. His conversation is
coming along At least he’s polite, not loud and quick-tempered; or stuck in
the past.
He asked me how I got my name, I told him I didn’t know, was the name my
parents gave me. He said, in his careful speaking way, he is "growing fond"
of me. I like the growing part. I used to wonder what would have to
happen to peel me away from this city.
Yes, he is older. How much older? You don't need that information.
He is not ripe yet for my paradise. If and when we get there, I’ll know.
No, I don’t have a plan, I’m not building anything.
Isabella V.
Georgetown Guyana
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 