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Jun 01, 2014 News
COUNTRYMAN – Stories about life in and out of Guyana, from a Guyanese perspective
By Dennis A. Nichols
Just as every country has its façade (see last week’s Countryman) every society has a unique folk culture, one distinct aspect of which is story-telling, based on beliefs, traditions and superstitions passed on through generations. Guyana is no exception; in fact ours is superlatively rich in imagination and character.
In my own early rural childhood, there were stories told to itchy-eared children in the classroom on rainy days, or in the schoolyard under some large, umbrageous tree when the afternoon heat was more than they or their teachers could bear indoors – tales from Greece, Arabia, or Africa, with fantastic characters and fanciful endings.
And there were stories told on moonlit nights in the old school yard at Highdam, with the salty, moth-scented night air wafting in from the Atlantic, or hanging from the eaves of every building, and from every tree and from every creature, including man, that ventured into the dark. It mingled with the ashy, vegetative odour emanating from smoke pots carried by villagers strolling through the night, dispersing swarms of marauding mosquitoes.
These country folk would gather in knots to play dominoes under the roadside tamarind tree by the Farinhas open yard, or to gaff or gossip, or steal away nonchalantly in pairs to make love in the bushes behind the burial ground. But in the schoolyard, the children gathered around the headmaster’s wife and the headmaster’s children and their own kinfolk, to hear jumbie stories; to shiver when the wind whipped itself to a chilly gust and to edge closer to the storyteller as the moon sank lower, and the night grew darker and more still.
It was a village story that night, and it was told by the headmaster’s wife. The children didn’t care or consider if it was true or not; the sensuous words, the changing expressions on the face of the headmaster’s wife, the masterful imagery conjured, the mixture of exhilaration and fear churning up their insides, and the association with their own story-listening tradition, was enough grist for their minds. Here, in my own words, is the story she told.
It began on an overly warm September morning in 1953, with the sound of a seven-month old baby whimpering in his makeshift cradle in a small wooden cottage in the village of Mahaicony. His mother was startled because the cry was weak, very unlike the robust squalling that sometimes wakened the entire Farrier household during the night. She walked quickly from the kitchen to her bedroom and anxiously peered into the crib where little Daniel lay. He looked sick.
The first thing she noticed was that he looked thinner than he had looked a day earlier, and his eyes were sunken, with darkening rings around them. He seemed to be in some pain as he writhed every few seconds and drew his tiny legs up toward his chest. He looked feverish but felt unnaturally cool to the touch, yet the first thought that came to the mother’s mind was ‘malaria.’ The mosquito netting spread over the cradle had a couple of largish holes in them. But did seven-month old babies get malaria?
Her husband, preparing to go to work at the Methodist school nearby, looked into the room and after hesitantly acknowledging her suspicion and noting the concern in her voice, told her not to worry unnecessarily. Daniel didn’t look sick to him, he said, and it was almost impossible for an infant to get malaria ‘just like that.’
She felt a little better then, but her mother’s heart told to be watchful, and watch she did at about fifteen-minute intervals throughout the day. He nursed sporadically during the day and sucked down some mashed papaw, and by eight ‘o’ clock that night seemed to be sleeping peacefully. It didn’t last long. Shortly after midnight, Mrs. Farrier awoke with a strange sensation coursing through her body. Her stomach felt like there was a large knot in it, her head was ‘swinging’ and her eyes felt hot. Somewhere outside her bedroom, a window banged against its sill, and she jumped violently.
She shook her husband awake and told him what was happening to her. And even as she was doing so, a sound came from the baby’s crib just a few feet away that, as we say in Guyana, made her skin ‘grow’ and her hair ‘stand up’. It started as a peevish infant’s wail but soon grew to a blood-chilling shriek that pierced the still night air before it died away with a kind of unearthly, mournful sob. Paralyzed with fear for a moment, she quickly caught herself and rose nervously from the bed as her husband fumbled to light the lantern on the night stand.
She heard the sound of her son thrashing in his crib before she saw him. His little fingers were grabbing wildly at the blanket that covered him, his eyes wide and pale and his narrow chest heaving with some kind of unnatural exertion. And even though by the lantern’s light she couldn’t see clearly the now darker rings around his eyes, she saw that he looked sicker than the previous morning.
Then it came again – the unearthly wailing shriek, this time as from a distance, but still with enough horror in it to chill the marrow in her bones. She looked across at her husband and saw by his awestruck eyes, that he too had been unnerved by the sound. As the window banged again she suddenly darted from the bedroom into the living room, followed by Mr. Farrier. Both saw immediately that it was wide open, with the window blinds billowing outward into the chill and moonless night air.
Then, as her husband reached to close the window, they saw it – an uneven ball of glowing fire that appeared to float about 50 yards away across the road, hovering uncertainly before swiftly receding and disappearing into the opaque darkness. They shuddered simultaneously before he closed the double windows. Then Mrs. Farrier’s emotions broke and she began to sob softly, leaning her head against her husband’s shoulder. They both felt, rather than knew, what it was.
The only one to get any sleep the rest of that night was little Daniel. But it was fitful, and as his parents kept vigil over the crib, they noticed that he would occasionally jump out of his sleep, then settle back into a doze. Clearly, something was disturbing his sleep. Strangely enough, neither parent said a word about what, in their hearts, they suspected; after all they were respectable and educated people. Super-natural events happened only to other people, or in the movie theatres in Georgetown. But deep within the recesses of their soul, they knew something that neither could understand nor explain.
The next morning, a Friday, Mr. Farrier casually brought up the subject of the supernatural with one of his more trusted colleagues at school, Ms. Olive, an elderly teacher with sharp eyes and an excessive overbite that gave her a distinct, if somewhat ridiculous resemblance to a reptilian creature well-known to all the villagers. He’d heard that she knew things others only thought they knew. Rather sheepishly, he told her of the previous night’s happenings at his home. Her response was definitely un-sheepish.
“Mr. Farrier,” she began, “you ‘ear what I telling you today (she was an ‘H’ dropper like several other villagers, though she did it with an elegance that bordered on absurdity) don’t play wit’ fire. You ‘ave a lot of education, but not enough wisdom. We old people know what really goes on in the next world.” She lowered her voice and it took on a conspiratorial tone. “The spirit world… Old ‘igue is real, more real than the two of us standing ‘ere. Listen, you go and talk to Cousin Jane, and she going to tell you what to do. ‘Urry now, you don’t ‘ave much time.”
Looking now more bemused than sheepish, the headmaster thanked Ms. Olive and went on with his headmasterly duties for the rest of the day. Listlessly, he tried to dismiss the notion and the picture of the old blood-sucking horror that the younger villagers laughed and mocked and cursed about. The older folks (the over-forties, that is) had a more fearful respect for the creature that no one had ever actually seen in the gory act for which it had become notoriously hated by them.
But when he got home that afternoon, Mr. Farrier’s bewilderment turned to real concern; even to unaccustomed anger, when he saw the condition of his firstborn, and the face of his wife. Her face was flushed, eyes reddened and puffed from crying. However, it was the face of his son, and the posture of the tiny body in the bed that sent his heart racing and his temples throbbing with anxiety, not from an imminent headache this time, but from disbelief and impotence.
Daniel Farrier lay, not in his crib, but on his parents’ bed. His face had paled to an anaemic chalkiness and contrasted sharply with the thick black curly hair that framed it. He lay perfectly still in the middle of the vast expanse of bed. Tiny, spidery, blue-tinged veins stood out on his hands, and at the side of his neck close to his left shoulder, there appeared two small circular red patches. The headmaster stood transfixed, as his wife gently reached out and took the infant in her arms. It was only then that Daniel’s father saw that his son was still alive, and breathing.
(In Part 2, Cousin Jane’s confession!)
(Dennis Nichols is a teacher, journalist, creative writer, and winner of the 2000 International Short Story Competition, run by the UK-based Commonwealth Broadcasting Association)
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