He commanded the person who touched the manuscript to find his bones and flute and give them a Christian burial, or they would die. Voorman wrote the manuscript before he died and put a curse on it. He committed suicide and was never given a proper burial: his bones and flute lie somewhere in the Guyanese jungle. Voorman’s wife and daughter were killed by the rebels, but he managed to escape with his precious flute and hid in a cave. Ralph Nevinson, a successful businessman in New Amsterdam, British Guiana, comes across an old manuscript written by Jan Pieter Voorman, a Dutchman who died during the slave uprising of 1763. This book by Guyanese writer Edgar Mittelholzer is set in Guyana in 1933. A tuneless, wandering trickle of treble notes coming from out of the trees that stood so still in the night.” It was a flute, clear, leisurely, distant. It had nothing of the imaginary about it. “In this instant my trance of introspection vanished.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |