A REVIEW OF A DEATH IN PANAMA

 

There are many reasons that I would commend Ron Williams’ second book (the first was Four Saints and an Angel), A Death in Panama, as a great read. He writes brilliantly in the classical Anglophone linguistic tradition while exposing his intimacy to the colloquial expressive mother tongue.  Dialect assumes an eminence with Chaucer which I never fully consumed, but I noted its stature in literature in the way that Ron’s dialect captures the authenticity of the gut experiences of the ordinary folk.  Seems like I’m making a case for its inclusion on the book options of secondary school literature? Yes, I am.

But more, my choice for literature has been on hold for a few years now as I find my head deep into heavy academic reading of psychoanalytic, group relations, management and communication theory, and here comes along, A Death in Panama, which is an absolute joy to have in your hand. Not only because it merges fiction and history, grapples with complex issues such as the struggle between the individual and society, between a rock and a hard place, between morality and context, between life and death, with sex being a cathartic relief from the guilt and drudgery of life.  My first reaction is that this is outside the box of the Bajan’s comfort zone; it’s very courageous in addressing the plantation issue from a White perspective. 

The main character is a White Barbadian named Barnes who had left the plantation and the island, for a better chance on life in Panama, as indeed many Black Barbadians had done.  Pause.  A White Barbadian?  Yes.  I had heard of the “Silver Men” but this was the first time that I was hearing that some were White.  Maybe this omission by several researchers is because of the lexical choice of “Silver”, but Barnes turned out to be, well, gold, the “Gold Man.”  Strange how life is, how privilege gets transferred.  Ron explains trans-national identity through Barnes as one that is complex, driven and shaped by context, desire and ambition, but often dogged by internal loneliness and restlessness and so full of longing for connections with relationships that were abandoned on the island in the quest for fulfillment. Was Ron bringing parts of himself as a transnational?  How did he get this insight of what occurs behind the curtains of the plantation?

And what did Rupert Barnes, the main character, leave behind? Barnes abandoned the clandestine love relationship with a Black woman, the broken-hearted daughter of one of his sister’s workers, pregnant.    Audrey would join the many women who were left behind “with child”.  He was also leaving behind the feeling of worthlessness which his sister, Ruby, felt for him. “He would succeed in Panama, and his sister could go to hell.  Audrey he was not sure about.”

This book is reading me really slowly because it has turned out to be a discovery and a conversational piece at the same time.  My guess is that Shakespeare and the likes of Thomas Hardy, Toni Morrison and Paula Marshall, elicited similar reactions from their readers because they understood and reflected the soul and psyche of their people.  I guess this is another reason why this book ought to be in your hand; it gives you a certain pride that this writer is of me and this cultural product is co-owned (find another way to say this?).  But that’s political.

In the tensions that play out between the environment and Ruth, who was bequeathed the estate much to the chagrin of her brothers, one is let into the human struggle to survive the uncanny unpredictability of the weather which threatens the demise of the privileged plantation life.  When it doesn’t rain, the low crop yields signal increasing debt, food prices, and hard choices that rip away the seemingly distant humanity. The striking parallelism of austere existence in the colonial economy is expected in the lower classes, but here in A Death in Panama, the grim reality besieges the poor and privileged alike.  As Ruth and her village ram brother Rupert battled over whether her humanity would allow her to relieve some of the sufferings of the village by releasing some of the produce as a reduced price, the village grapples us with deaths and sickness of their children. 

You see, as a young boy growing up under the shadow of the Wildey Plantation here in Barbados, though not dependent on its economic survival, my experience of the life within the great house was mediated by projections of a better life, since real interactions with its residents only happened when the White girls came riding into the cart roads on their horses and seemingly wanted to play…around the psychological boundaries that separated us.  Yet, we seemed enjoined by our youthful curiosity.  Ron skillfully examines this relational boundary in heated romantic exchanges where an imbalance of power led to violation, deception and betrayal.

If you are amazed by the historical research of Ron’s book, or moved by detail given to etiquette, architecture and other ostentatious symbols of power in Washington as opposed to the harness of plantation life, you will equally admire his political swag in high politics.  Ron is not without exposure to the manipulative and conniving Machiavellian playbook, having served as the first Black president of the Prince George Community College, in a county where navigating the political land mines is a test of one’s brilliance.  Here in Washington, the Canal is crafted in the raw desires of power, control and greed, while the lives of those who are to build it are mere pawns in this international imperial game as per this dialogue:

“The French failed because they are French.  Colonel Lemieux, great task can only be performed by great cultures and while France may have been great once, it has lost that spark which inspires a nation.  That is why they failed” (in building the canal).

“I’m not sure, Mr. Walters, that culture has much to do with it.  What a nation achieves is done through the genius of its individuals, its commitment to freeing the individual’s will, and its capacity to generate the wealth great enterprises demand.”

My grandfather had gone to Cuba and Panama in search of the same. He returned silent about those experiences and I often wonder what happened there, but now know that he was either lucky or wise.  I never guess what he might have seen or what was done to him, but he seemed a man driven inward.  Panama from this story was harsh.  Romulus, an agency hit man, noted in an exchange: “Haight is an analyst, Sir…He never seemed to realize his analysis meant people would die.”

And so my conversation with this book deepens and quietly engages the unconscious desires these characters have for ultimate control of the future. This book is an adventure into the dark corners of human nature indeed, where the Audreys and Ruthies, and Rubys, whose lives and leadership are unappreciated, undermined, and therefore pushed to the background, remain a secondary concern for gender relations.  A Death in Panama with all its nuances, predicaments, paradoxes, and crescendos is not ultra-depressive as it eases me into a nice psyche preparation for badly needed rest at night. I'm also finding that it is returning my love for good literature.  I am reading on….  

Dr. Omowale Elson is an Associate Professor of Management and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland University College, and CEO of Elson Consulting Group, (Barbados) Inc. Omo@elsonconsultinggroup.com