The Murderer by Roy Heath

For the first time it occurred to Galton that he might be mentally ill. Not, indeed, because he had killed Gemma. He was convinced that any self-respecting man would have done so. Rather, his lack of success at achieving any goal he had set himself and his inability to face up to a situation that had taken him by surprise implanted in his mind the idea that he was progressively losing his grip. The following day, he told himself, he would be in a better position to assess the facts. One gain he had certainly made: he had achieved what he had always longed for, an area that belonged to him alone and from which others could be excluded at will.

Here is another book from Guyana, but how different it is from Beryl Gilroy's warm and lyrical Frangipani House. Roy Heath's murderer is Galton Flood (great name): a man from a middle-class Guyanese family who grows up under the shadow of his better-adjusted brother, Selwyn. Galton is moody, mercurial, unable to build the human relationships his brother does; instead of pursuing his studies he takes menial jobs in the Guyanese "bush," then as a night watchman. Somehow, Gemma, the bookish and thoughtful daughter of a man from whom Galton rents a room, falls for him. He flees her, but the letters she writes him are some of the book's greatest moments, filled with provocations and ironic recriminations. She calls him her "torturer," and perhaps this is the only language that can reach Galton, who turns away from sentimentalism with disgust. Eventually, she induces him to marry, but his jealousy and resentment are too powerful, and one night, he strikes her dead with a plank of wood and disposes of her body in the harbor.

The Murderer has Dostoyevsky's fingerprints all over it. Galton is, in a way, a Raskolnikov that is stupid. Like Raskolnikov, he rationalizes and justifies his deed so that he might ignore the deeper urges within that drive him to it. And like Raskolnikov, Galton's murder is an attempt to control the larger world, and thus detach oneself from it; though he yearns for Gemma, marriage for him is a torture, because it requires submission, entanglement with another. This need is inseparable from good old-fashioned male jealousy: it tortures Galton to think that his wife has had other lovers, and does not live for him alone (though he can't see that she's the only person who could ever come close to doing anything like this).

The Murderer is bisected by Galton's deed: about half the book comes before, and half the book comes after. The second half of the book deals with the consequences of Galton's deed. Some are practical--he takes up with another girl, but her father refuses to allow her to see Galton because he is still technically married, having lied and said that Gemma emigrated to Venezuela. Others are psychological: Galton travels from place to place, from the tenement to a boarding house to his brother's house, never staying in any one location for long because, like Gemma, other people make demands on his time and his self. Eventually, Gemma's father, accompanied by an old friend of Gemma's, comes to understand what Galton has done, but the police don't care; there's no arrest or punishment forthcoming. Instead, Galton is forced to live the rest of his small life bearing the consequences of being himself.