Malcolm De Freitas knows that I still want to kill him

Feb 13, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have seldom mentioned the name Malcolm De Freitas on this page (I think in passing about three times over a twelve-year period). He is currently one of the executives that administer the Theatre Guild in Kingston (he acts and directs).
We were teenagers in Wortmanville (he on Bent Street, me on D’urban Street). We were friends from those days and still are. When I told my wife I had breakfast with Malcolm last week, she laughed. She always laughs whenever I relate to her my encounters with him on the streets of Georgetown.
My wife knows that I still have plans to kill him, plans that I hatched 33 years ago. Malcolm De Freitas knows that I still want to murder him. This man is responsible for the fact that I have no photographs of my courtship days except a lousy one that was not properly taken.
At the end of 1978, just weeks before we were to get married, my girlfriend and I took Malcolm with us on the seawall and the Botanical Gardens to take photographs of us. There were 36 films on the reel. Malcolm was our still photographer. There were the remnants of an old train station at the junction of Camp Road and the seawall road outside the CID head office at Eve Leary.
We sat there and Malcolm snapped away. Next stop was the Botanical Gardens. The next day I went to have the negatives developed. We got one only – my girlfriend in my arms on the kissing bridge of the Botanic Gardens. Thirty-five exposures were spoiled, compliments of my crazy friend in Wortmanville. To this day I regret that failure of Malcolm because I have no images to show my daughter of her parents’ courting days. Since then Malcolm knows that I bear that in my mind and one day will crucify him.
Last week Monday, we sat at the Rose Bud Café to have breakfast. And of course politics came up. Politics always come up when Malcolm De Freitas and I catch up. The last time we had any meaningful conversation was in the Brickdam Cathedral at the funeral service for David de Caires. As I walked into the church from the western door, he was sitting alone and I joined him.
The first words that greeted me was; “Freddie what is your daughter studying at university?” I said; “Chemistry” to which he replied; “Good, we can’t take two Freddie Kissoons in Guyana.” I don’t know what he meant by that, but I told him if we weren’t in church I would have cussed him out.
So there was I having breakfast with him. He was unable to walk or move his left arm because he had fallen from a platform at the Theatre Guild. I asked why he is not fighting Manzoor Nadir to take over TUF, because he was one of the founders of the new TUF. He told me he was not interested any longer.
Then a mild quarrel broke out when he lamented the fact that the Guyanese people are not doing anything to confront the Jagdeo Government. I inquired what he was doing. I bluntly told him that I don’t see him doing anything. And I accused him of being like the Guyanese population that he was criticizing.
Here are some words I encounter all the time when I ask businessmen why they don’t speak out against atrocities under the Jagdeo Government that not even Burnham would have been so barefaced and ruthless to contemplate; “Freddie you try deh; who gun talk up fuh we?”
Everyday, I repeat, everyday, I meet people who would tell me; “Man Freddie why de Guyanese allowing dis to happen?” But they never see the contradiction in their own utterances. Malcolm De Freitas was no exception. Malcolm and I will meet again and we will argue and he will remain my friend from Wortmanville, the man I am fond of, but still want to kill.
This aspect of the Guyanese attitude bewilders me. I cannot count the numbers of persons who would describe for me the silence of the nation, but they cannot see that their reticence is part of the wider picture.
The University says that you cannot bring out information about what is discussed at its internal engagements (of course there is more than one way to choke a dog) but on Tuesday at one of the statutory meetings of the Academic Board, I got up and described the University of Guyana as a pathetic institution for remaining silent on the pathological Le Repentir dumpsite. Hope I managed to convert Malcolm.

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