The house stands forlorn, gutted: no gate, no roof, no glass patio door, no fancy brickwork, no guttering. At the front a big window from which no one will look out stares out like a sad blind eye: no frame, no glass, just an empty hole really. A vine, planted by the birds, hangs from roof to ground, bearing a single, ethereal, yellow flower, as if nature were still trying to redeem mankind. Inside there is darkness and sadness; the ghosts of long ago move among shattered bricks lying on the ground, hammered out in sheer rage from the walls built by his father when he was just a tiny boy. The walls are covered with crazy words drawn in what seems like black charcoal, some of them Bible references, desperate to invoke protection against demons.
One person alone did this, with inhuman strength. As his soul is eaten away, his personal environment faithfully displays it. He cannot hide. He is a cocaine addict. He has a degree in Fine Arts (Graphics) and has completed the first part of the UG law degree. But his house is hollowed out, there is nothing left to sell, not even bathroom fittings. Not even a toilet, that symbol of separation of man from the animals. It is as empty as his soul. It is strange how some, descending into mental illness and realising they are losing inner control, will at first, trying not to drown, desperately attempt to control the objects around them instead. Eventually control over these external objects are lost too – the resultant chaos reveals to others looking on in sheer horror what their insides look like.
In his case he attacked the house that sheltered him with a sheer savagery; climbing to the roof, getting burnt by the sun, ripping off the zinc from above his own head, and throwing it to the ground, to sell a sheet for a hundred dollars in the nearby predatory squatting area, in order to get a fix that would last for about five to ten minutes…
“I remember when his father built that house, painstakingly coming to check on its progress,” says one neighbour. “He and his brother were little squealing boys, dashing from place to place excitedly.”
“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be,” says Ophelia in Hamlet, as she goes mad. Here were two brothers, close in age, growing up side by side in the same house, with the same parents, in the same environment. The younger grows up and has a family and a job, and is totally responsible.
The other squealing little boy grows up too. One night he lights candles to keep away demons. His house goes on fire. He is seen walking off down the road, calmly, muttering: “Let it all burn.” The neighbours are screaming; they form a bucket brigade. One father and son are mainly responsible for saving the house. The son screams for a pair of boots so he could break down the glass doors and walk in over the burning floor. The Campbellville Fire Station Brigade arrives in record time and puts out the fire. Relatives and police and curious spectators arrive. His mother, only shortly before forced out of the house her late husband lovingly built, hides in a relative’s car, cataleptic. The addict returns – with take-out food. Half-naked in the burnt sitting room, and oblivious to the hoses, firemen, police and angry relatives, he sits and eats chowmein. The police are gentle – they seem embarrassed by his low-hanging pants, and tell him to put on a shirt, before taking him away. He is very obedient, more worried about leaving his food behind. Neighbours and relatives try to persuade police and firemen that this is arson. “Lock him up! Put him in the mad house!” But no one in authority seems to know whose responsibility he is.
An Australian psychologist once told his father he was one of the worst cases she had ever seen. His father tries to get the observation ward or the Psychiatric Hospital in Berbice to keep him, but is told they cannot do that, since he is not mentally ill, but an addict.
Many nights one or two neighbours would waken from sleep and rush into the street in their night clothes to help protect the father, whom he was threatening, in order to extract money from him. The father would often have to drive off into the night, to stay safely at a relative’s house along the East Coast. Nothing was safe; there was nowhere anything could be hidden from him. He would break into his father’s car boot, search through pockets when the father was sleeping, steal from his mother’s purse, and even sold his mother’s wedding ring for $12,000. When she asked for her ring, he said he knew nothing. All drug addicts become compulsive liars, cunning and manipulative. One day his father goes to a neighbour; he carries books in his hands. He says he used to hide them in the car boot; it is no longer safe. “Could you keep them for me?” he asks. One of them is a beautifully bound volume of the philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, flotsam from another life, which he used to read every night. One day he returns for his books, probably ashamed to have asked the neighbour to keep them. No doubt they went too, as did he, one night, from a massive heart attack, tired and grown old from dealing with the darting little boy, who grew up to become a drug addict.
The son puts his father in the old car, and tries to drive him to hospital, but it is too late. His father’s death seems to shake him up; it is as if he sees his father, now that he can no longer see him. As he struggles to open the gate in the mornings, he marvels: “Look, Mummy
