By Michael Whayl
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The thought of compounding the wrong that I had already done seemed, somehow, repulsive, as if I was surrendering to the commonplace culture of offering blandishments in exchance for illicit favours. I had often taken a public and robust position on issues of moral correctness and from my perch on the moral high ground the floor seemed an intimidating distance away while the monumental hypocrisy of painstakingly clambering down from my precarious perch rested in the pit of my stomach like a sack of hardened cement.
The problem was that even as I was mentally setting my face against the temptation to make the gesture I began to contemplate, more deliberately, the implications of doing otherwise. I recalled a similar experience on which I had unhesitatingly surrendered myself to my fate. That time, I made my choice and paid a high price, part of which was a fair measure of personal embarrassment. I might have avoided that ordeal if I had simply pursued the optional course of action. I didn’t think that I wanted a repetition of that experience.
I have strong feelings about what I consider to be illegal practices. I blame that side of me entirely on my upbringing; I call it my mother’s curse. She had drilled into me the maxim that honesty is the best policy and that there was no gain worth securing or no consequence worth evading if, in the process, you were required to compromise your honesty. Once, having discovered that I had brought home a strange pencil from school she had sternly instructed me to return it and to “find the owner.”
Of course, my now long dead mother’s maxim no longer holds good. Trading honesty for material gain has now become so commonplace in Guyana that in some circles the practice has come to be regarded as ‘good sense” rather than the defiling of some moral code; and, moreover, here I was, my mother’s son, having to decide whether I should sin my soul to evade a penalty. When you live in a society where corrupt practices are commonplace and when, moreover, those practices are frequently not attended by consequence, you can eventually come to see the benefits that derive from those practices and to ignore the moral implications of those kinds of indulgences. I would love, today, in contemporary Guyana. to engage my mother in an energetic discourse on the subject of bestowing legitimacy on corrupt practices.
Just down the road from where I sat contemplating my dilemma stands a house that belongs to a state official. It is conspicuous in its hugeness, its high walls and imposing wrought iron gate plus the fact that it was set in the middle of a huge expanse of land, the remainder of which had been fashioned into a well-manicured lawn, bespoke a vulgar kind of affluence. The owner had acquired a reputation for “selling” state favours. Once, when irrefutable evidence of his roguery had been uncovered he had been cleared by the courts for “lack of evidence.” An accomplice, a less well-connected clerk was still before the courts and while the proceedings went on, seemingly forever, he had lost his job and been forced to sell his house.
I contemplated the differing circumstances of the two men, both corrupt but one luckier, more favoured. My own attempt to try a thing, so to speak, could go either way; amd what would I do if it went the wrong way?
I had reached a point in my thought process where a kind of fuzziness that attends the need to make a hasty distinction between right and wrong and, more particularly in my circumstances, to make the right choice, had entered my head. The long and short of it is that I was utterly confused. I could feel both the sweat and the note in my palm, the two symbolizing my fear, on the one hand and my temptation on the other.
The alcohol too, was not helping. Initially, it had helped me make light of the situation. Eventually, however, it began to impair my thought process, to slow it down. Because I had been drinking I needed more time to think the situation through. Time, however, was not on my side.
I took my cue from her. It appeared that she had sensed my indecision and was giving me time to make my move. I thought then that her patience was an indication that she knew what I wanted to do. I decided to bide my time, to enter into yet another round of rationalization.
This time around my thought process was more deliberate. If I yielded to the temptation and my gesture was rejected I could be in even more trouble. The second offence, the offence of actually making the gesture would almost certainly carry a much harsher penalty than the first if my gesture was rejected. Moreover, I find rejection personally humiliating.
People like me do not belong in a thoroughly corrupt society such as ours. Our weakness, our indecision, our ‘soppy’ Judeo-Christian morality make us laughing stocks and losers. We are consumed by our self-inflicted penalty which the luckless and less-favoured invariably pay. We resign ourselves to ‘making do’ while, not infrequently, envying the bold, those who take the risks and reap the benefits. We retreat into the sanctuaries of our moral selves, enduring all the while the perpetual temptation to venture out, into the real, thoroughly corrupt world. That disposition is nothing if not cowardly. What you discover once you venture out, however, is that materialism is great gain and that once that gain manifests itself, the consequences that could otherwise derive from corrupt practices tend to get pushed to the back of your mind.
I know another corrupt person, another state official. He too had settled comfortably into one of the many cocoons of corruption that fester in the state system. I marvelled at his boldness and, moreover, at the fact that his widely publicized reputation as a thief appeared to have enhanced rather than diminished his social standing.
I have seen him at cocktails, bold as brass, ‘knocking glasses’ with the very top of the social pile. If it always seemed to me that his vices clung to him like an unbearable stench I doubt that my opinion mattered to him in the least. The last time I saw him he had his arm round a girl half his age. They were inside a jewellery store grinning at each other and discussing an intended jewellery purchase. I was making an awkward enquiry as to whether my watch band could be replaced and the store attendant had regarded me with an expression which said “try the market, We don’t do that sort of thing here.”
She was growing restless and she showed it by shifting from one leg to the next and whispering something that I could not make out clearly. That was when I decided to look up at her. She caught the fear on my face and seemed surprised. She wore a reassuring expression that said “go on, make your move.”
Still I couldn’t. I had never before been placed in a position where I had to handle this particular kind of situation. She knew then that the next move was hers. My time was up. She stooped, pushed her face closer to mine and ordered me out of my car. I cursed my luck and stepped out into the brisk drizzle that had begun to fall.
