The case of the gun licence -a short story
Wednesday Ramblings
Stabroek News
April 14, 2004
The buzzer rang and Ivan Vasil'ev Ramjattan leaned from the window of his office just off Gagarin-Mikhaylovsky Square. It was a cold November day and the icy Caribbean winds swirled around the little town.
"Who is calling on me so early?" he wondered disturbing him from his green tea and cherry blintz breakfast. Anything to clear the blur of last night's party at Freedom House in celebration of further debt relief. The Stolichnaya had flowed and the finest Osetra caviar, flown in from the Caspian Sea was served on cassava bread. How gaily he had danced with Comrade Gayla Sviatoslavova Teixeira. All the old men of the party had applauded. There was no doubt his star was rising despite what he conceded were bouts of intemperance. It was in his Berbician/Siberian blood, where as a child he had chopped wood and herded the goats of Cheddi Iakovlevich Jagan.
But one thing was nagging at his mind this morning. As he was leaving the party he remembered passing Comrade Oleg Mikhailovich Ramotar on the stairway. Their eyes had met and he saw a flicker of distrust, a questioning of his loyalty. "You are quite the man of the moment, Comrade Ramjattan," Ramotar de-clared, "and very busy too. My colleagues say you have been carousing in Young St lately."
Ramjattan had wisely let this slight pass. The General Secretary was not a man to cross sabres with.
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"Good morning Comrade Ramjattan!" bellowed the grubbily clad man from the icy street below. "My name is Oleg Borodin Chowtie. Comrade Konstantin Iakovlev Gajraj had given me your name. I am a humble fish -farmer from Hog Island. There is a small matter of which I wish to speak."
"Come up, comrade, come up," Ivan told him. A man of the soil was always worth knowing, the backbone of the PPP's ten-year agrarian revolution to make the whole country equally poor but with excellent bridges.
He settled down in his swivel chair and prepared himself, twiddling his thumbs and puffing out his chest just a little. "Come in!" Ivan shouted when the knock on the door came. But he suddenly noticed a copy of the banned Stabroek News still on his desk. (Banned ever since it had published an article by a renegade party member- now dispatched to the Gulag of Bartica - that had described Supreme Leader Vseslav Jaganov Jagdeo as infantile.) The door creaked open... In a blind panic Ivan stuffed all 24 pages into his mouth.
"Comrade Ramjattan, thank you so much for seeing me at short notice. I know you are a busy man, with great responsibilities under the five-year Poverty Reduction Strategy... and your work on the Committee for Reforms to Commissions, Boards, Task Forces, Panels and Councils is being applauded throughout the provinces. Why only this morning I heard a speed boat operator praising your name."
Ivan was relieved for the man's monologue as he digested that day's editorial on foreign affairs. He had always said they were hard to swallow.
At last the sports pages went down and he was able to speak, waiving away the praise.
"Kind words, Comrade Chowtie, you are a fish- farmer, you say? Interesting. Have you read the seminal work on the subject by Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, entitled Egalitarian Aqua-culture?"
"Yes, yes, the theory that all fish are spawned equal?"
"Well there is that of course but also the process of culling the most virile fish for the sake of the pond."
"My sentiments exactly...Comrade Ramjattan, you may be a sophisticated lawyer but you certainly are a man of the soil."
"What can I do for you?" Ivan asked
"As I said Comrade Gajraj sent me to you. I need a letter of recommendation for a gun licence."
Ivan's brow furrowed. Konstantin Iakovlev Gajraj was a man with whom he had had only a few dealings. Why had he been chosen as a reference? Why would a fish- farmer have such friends? Perhaps Konstantin Iakovlev Gajraj had never even heard of him.
"Comrade, how long have you been a member of the party?"
"Many glorious years. Ever since the struggle began back in the days of the tyrannical Tzar Alexander Pavlovich Burnham. I helped smuggle sardines from Suriname during the great famine of '77. My family is well known on the Corentyne..."
I am from there, Comrade Chowtie, but your name is not familiar. What other work have you done for the party?"
"I accompanied Minister Vasilii Gubin Nokta on several trips into the interior provinces in the 90s."
Comrade Nokta was indeed a party stalwart who wore a button of Founder Leader Cheddi Iakovlevich Jagan on his lapel.
"And I was a member of the Guyana-Soviet Friendship Society," Chowtie said as he pulled out his wallet as if to show his membership card.
Ivan weighed his options. The request was from a simple farmer but in fact it had the force of at least two pillars of the party. To refuse it would be effectively a snub at them.
"I will give you the letter, Oleg Borodin Chowtie. But I want your word the gun will be used only in self-defence. Am I clear?"
"Pellucidly clear, and as a token of my gratitude, I have brought you this." And with that he plunked a big bundle of newspapers on Ivan's desk, unwrapping it to reveal five glassy-eyed tilapia.
"Fresh from my pond!"
"Thank you Comrade, come tomorrow for your letter."
But as the farmer left, Ivan felt a queasiness come over him. Maybe it was from eating the Stabroek News, but also something was not right about that farmer.
Was this a trap? Last night's encounter with Oleg Mikhailovich Ramotar on the stairway and now a strange request from Konstantin Iakovlev Gajraj.
As he gazed at the five dead fish, his mind returned to Dzerzhinsky. Could it be he was to be culled for the sake of the party?