‘Malinda Almeida. He was my best friend.’
You catch the breeze and let it throw you into the air. You are unsurprised to find yourself in Galle Face Court on that famous terrace.
Jaki is in shorts and has cropped her hair and speaks into a phone that doesn’t have a wire. ‘Did you ever meet him?’
The voice on the other end sounds American and confused. ‘I’m sorry. What is this about?’
‘You are Tracy Kabalana?’
‘How did you get my number?’
‘Did you receive a parcel of photos from Sri Lanka last year?’
‘My dad was Sri Lankan. He passed away years ago. I never knew my half-brother. Mom never spoke his name. I haven’t opened the parcel.’
‘I’d be happy to buy the photographs from you. All of them.’
‘I don’t know where it is. It might have been thrown away.’
‘He spoke fondly of you, Tracy.’ Jaki lies like a poker player, though that doesn’t make what she said untrue.
‘I’m sorry, lady. I can’t deal with this right now. I gotta go.’
Click.
Jaki swears and lies back on the beanbag. Radika Fernando runs fingers through her cropped hair and shakes her head.
‘Has she got them?’
‘The girl is all of fifteen. What was Maali thinking?’
‘He once told me that you were stupidly in love with him,’ says Radika. Her newsreader voice is nowhere in sight.
‘When?’
‘That night at your flat. When we first kissed. He told me to set you up with a nice Tamil boy.’
‘So you did the opposite,’ says Jaki, stroking the fingers at her scalp.
Radika picks up two photo frames and places them on Jaki’s lap.
‘Are we ready to pack these?’
‘Why?’
‘How many times to tell, Jaki? You want me to move in or not?’
‘Can I keep one?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want you to see me, not him.’
Both photos had been lifted from the exhibition at the Lionel Wendt. One was of you and Jaki in a tree house overlooking the great rock near Kurunegala, which Queen Kuveni threw herself from, leaving only her curse. The other was a shot of four bodies, taken from the top floor of a broken building. A woman and her baby, an old man with glasses, and a pariah dog. Each is surrounded by shrapnel, though that is not what killed them.
Jaki nods and lets Radika put both photos in a box, which she carries away. Jaki sighs and closes her eyes and does not hear you say goodbye.
Dr Ranee is not at the River of Births when you lead the leopard there. You take the weakest wind but you cannot find the three kumbuk trees. The river is empty and still, and there is no one floating on it.
The leopard growls and claws at the tree by the waters. ‘I’ve met sloth bears smarter than you.’
‘I’m helping you. So maybe ease on the insults.’
‘I believe it is I who am helping you.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘I met an elephant in Udawalawe who predicted the coming of the next Buddha.’
‘When is that?’
‘Not for 200,000 moons.’
‘Superb prediction.’
‘I met shadow creatures who live in mirrors and watch you watching yourself.’
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘I’ve met a pacifist eagle who refused to hunt mice and let her chicks starve.’
‘Most cold-blooded killers I’ve met say they hate killing. It’s usually another slice of bullshit.’
‘I’ve watched your kind. Both as beast and as ghost. I can’t understand why humans destroy when they can create. Such a waste.’
‘There it is. One, two… three kumbuk trees. If you jump in front of the third, the river will take you.’
‘Where?’
‘Where you need to be.’
‘I need to be human.’
‘Drink from the right bowl and maybe you will be.’
The leopard inches closer to the bank and dips a paw in the waters.
‘That’s damn cold. Why don’t you jump with me?’
‘I don’t want to be reborn.’
‘Why not?’
‘I may come back a leopard.’
‘None taken. You really want to spend eternity behind a counter?’
‘It’s not bad. You meet some odd characters.’
‘Jump with me.’
‘Are you Dr Ranee in disguise?’
‘Who?’
And then you tell him about Ranee and Sena and Stanley and DD and about boxes under beds. The leopard sits on a branch and listens till the moon is high in the sky.
It arches its limbs and this is how you would photograph it if you still had a broken Nikon around your broken neck. But you don’t, so you blink, and imagine that you do.
The leopard nods its head and shakes its tail and jumps into the water. And right then, with the moon in the sky, you realise you have nothing left to tell and no one left to tell it to. You recognise this as a simple fact and are neither dismayed nor gladdened.
So, you jump.
And when you jump you know three things.
That the brightness of The Light will force you to open your eyes wider. That you will choose the same drink and it will take you somewhere new. And that, when you get there, you will have forgotten all of the above.
PRAISE FOR SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA’S CHINAMAN
‘Carries real weight… a mixture of, say, CLR James, Gabriel García Márquez, Fernando Pessoa and Sri Lankan arrack… essential to anyone with a taste for maverick genius.’
Simon Barnes, The Times
‘Chinaman is a debut bristling with energy and confidence, a quixotic novel that is both an elegy to lost ambitions and a paean to madcap dreams.’
Adam Lively, The Sunday Times
‘Karunatilaka has a real lightness of touch. He mixes humour and violence with the same deftness with which his protagonist mixes drinks.’
Tishani Doshi, The Observer
‘A crazy ambidextrous delight. A drunk and totally unreliable narrator runs alongside the reader insisting him or her into the great fictional possibilities of cricket.’
Michael Ondaatje
‘The strength of the book lies in its energy, its mixture of humour and heartwrenching emotion, its twisting narrative, its playful use of cricketing facts and characters, and its occasional blazing anger about what Sri Lanka has done to itself.’
Kamila Shamsie, The Guardian
COPYRIGHT
First published in Great Britain in 2022 by
Sort Of Books
PO Box 18678, London NW3 2FL
Distributed by
Profile Books, 29 Cloth Fair, Barbican, London EC1A 7JQ.
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Typeset in Minion Pro to a design by Henry Iles.
Copyright © Shehan Karunatilaka 2022
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1908745903
eISBN 978–1908745910
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. on Forest Stewardship Council (mixed sources) certified paper.