‘Leather belt, leather boots,’ he said. ‘I take it you’re not a vegetarian.’
‘No.’
‘I respect vegetarians. I don’t agree with them, but I respect them.’
He rubbed long fingers over his chin.
‘What I can’t abide are those who condemn me as a murderer while eating fillet steak and wearing leather jackets.’
‘Perhaps it’s the public aspect of this they don’t like,’ I said. ‘Turning it into a spectacle.’
‘If you think this is just a spectacle, then you haven’t understood anything about bullfighting.’
He turned his attention back to the events on the sand.
I thought of trying another question, but it was clear that Rafaelillo wasn’t listening. In the ring, Perera was performing his first moves, his feet planted firmly on the ground, chin pulled in, hips thrust forward. He was tall for a bullfighter, and from his posture and presence appeared to be towering over the bull. The audience had fallen into a concentrated silence, and for a moment the ‘fight’ became quite gentle, the bull being drawn, as though spellbound, by the red cloth, passing backwards and forwards in front of this man in his glittering suit.
A first, lonely cry of olé came from somewhere across the ring. A pause, and it was followed by another, then several more at once. Within seconds the entire crowd was cheering and clapping: a moment of magical force had sprung up, like a jinn, and gripped us. Behind, the whistling man of earlier had stood up again, and was shouting with all his strength.
¡Olé, olé, olé!
I sat motionless, my eyes fixed on the drama below. Perera seemed to have brought the bull quickly and silently under his command.
Then something extraordinary unfolded, something so strange it was like a kiss, an unexpected yet meaningful kiss from a beautiful woman you thought was unattainable. It was as if the division between matador and bull disappeared, as though for a fleeting instant they became one single being, brought together and unified by their struggle: one entity, not separated by their mutual wish to kill each other, but drawn to each other by a kind of tenderness, a passion. It was as if, for a brief time, they were joined through something that felt almost like love. But it was not any kind of love that I had ever sensed or been aware of before, nothing I had ever known. And yet it was there, binding them and making them one.
It came in a flash, one exceptional moment, and was gone. But the entire crowd had felt it as well, and a roar went up. Many were on their feet, clapping, more shouts of olé echoing around, while at the other side of the arena the band started up on a paso doble.
Rafaelillo turned and looked at me. He could see it in my face: yes, I’d sensed it as well.
‘Do you understand now?’
No need to answer.
‘It can’t be explained. It can only be experienced.’
My gaze returned to the graceful and powerful figure of Perera below.
‘This is what they want to take away from us. They are only capable of seeing a man killing a bull in public. Nothing more. And it shocks them, so they want it to be hidden away.’
He swept an arm through the air.
‘But this is not an unsung, unheroic death along with millions of others in some industrial abattoir. Here we look death in the face, and the bull looks death in the face, and with that we celebrate life. This is not a sport. Nor is it a spectacle. It is a ritual with ancient roots, involving everyone here – bull, bullfighters and audience.’
Perera was now stretched up onto the balls of his feet, the sword raised high above his head, ready to push down into the bull’s back. A few metres in front of him, the bull’s horns gleamed a dull white in the overhead lights, sharp and hungry. The final scene: within seconds, one of these two – man or bull – would be dead. The only sound came from the wind rippling through the flags above our heads.
‘If you hide from death you run from life,’ Rafaelillo said in a low voice. ‘Life is not an absence of death. Without death there is no life. That is what bullfighting celebrates.’
I stared down at the sword in Perera’s hand, the dark congealing blood, the dry heavy tongue hanging from the bull’s mouth. The crisp, ecstatic feeling of just a few moments before still lingered, vivifying the cold evening air.
‘That is what makes this sacred.’
The Piece of String
SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA (born Galle, Sri Lanka, 1975) was raised in Colombo before exile in New Zealand. He has written ads, rock songs and travel stories, but spent the last three years interviewing drunkards and watching Sri lankan cricket games. The result was a novel about a sportswriter’s quest to find a forgotten cricketing genius, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, selected as one of Waterstones top debut novels for 2011. www.shehanwriter.com
The Piece of String
SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA
Is this the world’s longest staircase? asks Tomas on the way up. Had I the energy I would’ve replied that it sure felt like it. My companion had dragged me up this mountain kicking and screaming, though after the first hour, my legs had lost the ability to kick. They say only a fool would visit Sri Lanka and not climb Adam’s Peak. They also say that only a fool would climb it twice.
Officially, the world’s longest staircase is next to the Niesen-bach tram tracks in the Swiss Alps. And while it is conceivable that this service stairwell has stories written about it, I doubt they are as numerous and as beguiling as those surrounding Adam’s Peak. Known also as Sri Pada and Butterfly Mountain, this cathedral of rock and shrub has attracted pilgrim, explorer, king and holy man for many millennia. Each year the curious and the faithful throng by the thousand to negotiate these jagged steps and greet the sunrise. To watch the mountain’s shadow fall upon the clouds and to bow before the footprint at the summit.
We’re here to see a man about a piece of string. Not just any piece of string and, according to Tomas, not just any man. The string in question is a pirith noola, an innocuous thread tied around the wrist to ward off evil and offer its wearer protection and strength. Tiger Woods, a lapsed Buddhist, has taken to wearing one, presumably to ward off raunchy text messages from porn stars. He has pledged to wear it for the rest of his life.
Many Sri Lankan Buddhists sport a pirith noola as a symbol of piety or as a visual reminder of a solemn vow. You can see one below the batting gloves of ’96 World Cup hero, Sanath Jayasuriya or on the wrists of politicians trying to prove their spiritual chops to skeptical constituents. You can pick one up for free at any Buddhist temple around the country. Why we have to climb five hours’ worth of stairs to get one is a question Tomas promises to answer once we reach the summit.
A cheerful Scandinavian investment banker in his thirties, Tomas is a frequent visitor to the island his mother hails from. Like many Sri Lankans who haven’t grown up here, he sees magic in sights that jaded locals like myself find prosaic. Where I see a piece of string, a pointless climb or an overrated footprint, Tomas sees a mystical quest.
The footprint and its mysteries are shared by four religions. Not unlike how the mountain is shared by four rivers; the Mahaveli, Kalu, Walawe and Kelani. Each using a different path to reach a common destination. Buddhists believe Lord Buddha harnessed the summit’s energies to levitate upon it. Hindus see the colossal imprint of Shiva. The Muslims believe it may belong to the first man, Adham, while some Christians claim that St Thomas the Doubter ascended to heaven from here.
I decide to ignore my misgivings and the silly proverb. It is my second visit and though my muscles and joints would beg to differ, I do not feel foolish for being here. My last climb was as a teenager and was less a spiritual quest and more of a box to tick. I raced to the top in under three hours and stifled disappointment that the foot didn’t resemble a Hollywood Walk of Fame imprint. The relic was gigantic and adorned with symbolic carvings. In terms of realism, as Dr John Davy described in 1817, it ‘bears some coarse resemblance to a human foot’. Unimpressed, I then dozed off during a g
rey and rainy sunrise.
THIS TIME, FOR PHYSICAL as well as spiritual reasons, I take this ascent slower. I stop to admire the trail of lights weaving across the rock face, chat with pilgrims at the tea shacks along the way, and watch the full moon throwing silver over the evergreens. I gaze at the summit and wonder how many cups of tea before I reach there. That’s when Tomas tells me about his last visit. It was December 2004 and he’d just been dumped by his fiancée of eight years. ‘I told everyone I was searching for my roots, but that was bullshit. I just wanted to go some place no one knew my face.’
He braved the mountain solo and was smoking a cigarette on a rock, when a man in robes leading an entourage of stray dogs offered him a cup of tea. The man wore thick spectacles and carried his tea in a plastic bag that looked like a water balloon filled with rust. The man poured the liquid into a coconut shell, offered it to my friend and then bummed a smoke.
‘I didn’t know holy men smoked,’ I say, catching my breath.
‘That’s what I thought,’ says Tomas. ‘He said it was for a friend.’
The man claimed to have lived in a cave on the mountain since he was thirteen. He said that he had climbed to the top every full moon. He then offered to read Tomas’s palm. ‘You have lost something that you think you will never find,’ said the man. ‘But you are wrong.’
The man then pulled a reel of thread from his cloth bag and without warning began muttering in tongues and wrapping the string around Tomas’s wrist. When he had finished he smiled at my friend and said something that haunts Tomas to this day: ‘You are stronger than you think you are. You will use your strength to help people who have lost more than you.’
Three weeks later, Tomas found himself in the south of Sri Lanka, clinging to a coconut tree, watching refrigerators, bicycles and screaming children engulfed in whirlpools. As the tsunami raged around him, Tomas clung to that tree for twenty-seven minutes staring at the piece of string on his wrist.
SRI PADA HAS ATTRACTED visitors from all corners of history. Moroccan traveler Ibn Batuta writes of pathways filled with giant roses and multi-coloured flowers, a cave spring filled with fishes that no one can catch, and a blessed footprint adorned in gold, ruby and pearl. He also mentions ‘chains of faith’ that dangle from the edge of the peak, offering intrepid pilgrims a final test of devotion.
In the fifteenth century, Persian poet Ashraff records that these iron chains were placed here by Alexander the Great. The king and his companion, Greek magician Bolina, arrived in Sri Lanka – or Taprobane, as it was known circa 300 BC – to take a break from empire-building.
Today the chains are replaced by steel ladders, railings and steps. While the climb takes me longer than my previous effort, I feel something magnetic and indefinable pulling me towards the summit. It could be my will, though it feels like something far more powerful.
TOMAS SPENT SIX MONTHS after Boxing Day 2004 as a volunteer for the Red Cross, burying corpses, clearing rubble, manning phone lines, arguing with bureaucrats, and playing with silent children. His ex-fiancée called asking him to come home and he politely asked her not to call back.
We see many characters on our way to the top, but none of them resemble the man from Tomas’s memory. Tomas extracts a browned morass of thread from his wallet. It resembles hair pulled from a bathtub plughole.
‘I’ve worn this for the past five years,’ he says, not without pride. ‘I think it’s time I got a new one.’
We marvel at old ladies in white negotiating the incline, armed only with walking stick and prayer. There is the great bell at the summit that pilgrims toll to signify how many journeys they have taken. One of these ladies would ring that bell nineteen times and smile at me kindly as I sheepishly rang it twice.
We are followed all the way by one of Sri Pada’s many guardians, a brown mongrel dog, who stays three paces behind and stops whenever we do. We meet a Japanese monk who says he climbs twice a week. I look forward to watching him ring the bell several hundred times, but suspect that he may be well past such vanities. He carries a tiny drum, which he taps in rhythm with his footsteps. We ask him if he knows of a bespectacled monk who lives in a cave. He shakes his head.
We meet followers of the sun, who gaze at the descending poya moon with pleasure, their camera lenses poised to capture the morning rays.
But mostly it is the pilgrims. Observing customs that date back to 100 BC, when King Valagamba first discovered this mythic footprint. They bathe in the icy streams of Seethagangula, say pansil prayers and tie a coin wrapped in white cloth for protection. At Indikatu Pana, some place a threaded needle on a shrub to mark the spot where the Buddha mended a torn robe.
Over the centuries, dynasties of kings have helped clear this trail and raise the temple at the top. We arrive there a few hours before sunrise and visit the shrine to the god Saman, one of the many deities protecting this mount. Tomas is visibly disappointed and I suggest he get a pirith noola from the nearby temple.
‘It’s not the same,’ he says. ‘If you saw the guy, you’d understand.’ People see divinity in strange things. I realise that belief can build mountains. Higher and sturdier than the one we had just conquered.
WE JOIN THE QUEUE to lay flowers at the feet of the foot. This time, I am more respectful. I marvel at the weighty symbols carved upon its face and imagine the original foot relic, said to be buried under the rock and set in jewels.
A brass lamp, set there by King Wickremabahu in the fourteenth century, casts a light that never goes out. We look for some shadow to sit upon. The fluorescent bulbs at the peak, tastelessly kept on throughout the morning, are an aesthetic and spiritual irritation. We opt to settle below the summit and watch as the sky changes colour.
Tomas is silent. December 2004 was a turning point in his life and the pirith noola is the thread that links him to his spiritual awakening. I have met too many false prophets in my time and I keep my cynicism to myself. I see divinity in guitar riffs, in camera angles, in a well-told joke or a nicely executed cover drive. I have visited cathedrals, mosques and temples, but God does not speak to me. Even in the holiest of places.
But then the sun emerges and stirs a primal awe in everything around me. Silver gives way to gold. Orange rays obscure the white poya glow. The distant sound of chanting melts into the silence and then gradually we begin to see it. The shadow of a pyramid lengthening over the clouds. It sits there for less than forty-five minutes, like a message from God that we are unable to decipher.
Herman Hesse had a transcendental experience at this very spot, gazing upon this revelation of light and shadow. This is where Arthur C. Clarke imagined a portal to the stars. Maybe it’s not necessary to decipher a message in order to understand it.
THE DESCENT IS HARD. Paralysis has set into my lower body and I am grappling with the well-trodden path, the rising sun and the whims of gravity. But I am also seeing things that the darkness hid from me. The pitcher plants, the hub-nosed lizards and the pink orchids. The towns in the distance and, somewhere behind the clouds, the ocean.
From the corner of my eye I recognise the dog who followed us on the ascent. A scraggy mutt with a broken tail, he darts off to the side of the trail, where he joins three other dogs in various states of disrepair. Behind them, bearing a cloth bag and a tree branch, is an upright man in his fifties, wearing saffron robes and large spectacles.
Tomas stops in his tracks, clasps his hands and gazes at the man. He holds up his tattered thread and walks towards him. The man smiles as the dogs circle his feet.
Sri Lankans smile for many complex reasons, but usually to disguise confusion. I can see from the eyes behind the thick spectacles, that this man does not have the foggiest idea who my friend is, but recognises a customer when he sees one.
We are led off the track through shrub. The man’s name is Chittasena and his English is better than Tomas’s Sinhalese. He repeats his story. The cave he lives in was occupied by a great ascetic who died when Chittasena was thirteen. He
has been climbing the mountain and looking after its strays ever since.
I am less than convinced. The cave we are led to is a cavern of kitsch. It smells of kerosene and houses a bed, a large alarm clock, a shrine to an unnamed deity and piles of magazines. While it is perfectly acceptable for a holy man to read Newsweek, I wonder if the three rat-traps in the corner of his home are in harmony with his beliefs.
Tomas is enthralled as the man shows us how he has diverted a nearby stream to run past his front doorway. The door is adorned with Buddhist symbols and overlooks a river. ‘This is where I meditate,’ says Chittasena, eyeing me with suspicion.
He speaks in an even tone with long pauses, as if he is listening out for something. I wonder if I am being unduly harsh in my judgements. He offers to read my palm and I decline. ‘I’d rather not know my future,’ I say.
‘You like to travel,’ he says. ‘But you don’t like travelling.’
I ignore him and point at a black eagle soaring below the temple. Two yellow-eared bulbul birds hop from step to step as if observing a vow to abstain from flying. And finally, standing before the cave of a monk I do not fully trust, I see the butterflies.
They fly in waves from all directions to die on this holy mountain. Some say they are angels who leave trails of jasmine leading to the footprint. Some say they are souls flying into the arms of God. I am seized by the sudden urge to follow them. To bear witness to their final sacrifice and to toll the bell a third time.
Tomas gets his fresh pirith noola. He tells the man of his tsunami experience and we share cups of tea. There is no bumming of cigarettes. Tomas has long given up and so has our friend, it would appear.
He tells us that he rarely talks to tourists or to the false monks from the Japanese monastery who climb the mountain in designer sneakers.
‘This is my last year on the mountain,’ he says with a smile. ‘It is time for someone else to look after this cave.’
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