Welcome to the world of “retired” Colombo-based sportswriter W.G. Karunasena, “Gamini” to long-suffering wife Sheila and to best friend and fellow cricket fanatic Ari Byrd. An alcoholic, deeply knowledgeable about his beloved sport, its history and its finer points, and is dying thanks to his affinity for arrack, the Sri Lankan hooch that is so much a part of the island’s life.
“Did drinking make me a thinker or did the thinking make me drink?” Karunasena asks from his hospital bed after his cancer-ravaged body has faltered midway through a chase that gives his fading years a purpose. Asked to give it up, he tries — and as is so often the case — fails. “Alcohol strips my mind of noise and helps turn my thoughts to words. It keeps me smiling and guarantees me a dreamless sleep. It stops me from thinking of things that thoughts cannot cure”, he says in mitigation.
“I attempted giving up in the early ’80s... But it is pointless. Once the amber tint leaves your glasses, you are left with unused energy and rage. People’s failing grate on you, hatchets get harder to bury... And no matter how much cleaner your skin, fresher your breath, or springier your step, you see you have become a bitter bastard and you reach for the sweetener”.
W.G. — or WeeJee — and a host of fellow-thinkers find themselves on a quest to track down the elusive Pradeep Mathew after a fight between Ari Byrd and a former journalist colleague of W.G.’s at the wedding of the Great Lankan Opening Batsman, or GLOB. The trigger for the fight and the subsequent hunt is an all-time XI comprising cricketing geniuses of all nations, all eras. The only Sri Lankan name to make the grade that night is of spin bowler Mathew who, however, played only a handful of matches for his country before dropping out of sight.
Over the following years, W.G.’s trail twists and turns — ironically, Mathew is an eyewitness to the fight at GLOB’s wedding — but Mathew remains tantalisingly beyond sight.
Once they set off in search of the elusive Mathew, W.G. and Ari Byrd are unstoppable. They are helped along the way by unexpected allies, stymied by powerful enemies of the bowler they want to track down and — more importantly — return to the consciousness of a country that has quite happily forgotten a man the two hunters feel, even on the basis of his short four Test-match career, is the greatest Sri Lankan cricketer of all time.
He is a tricky character to hunt down, this Mathew. He not only changes names and teams, he also alters the way he bowls, from pace to spin, from left-arm to right-arm, and from googlies to the chinaman as he goes from schoolboy cricketer to club player to turning out in national colours — throughout the book, a grey shadow.
Shehan Karunatilaka pulls the reader along with his protagonist and his buddy as they ferret through dusty statistics, interview coaches and administrators, fellow-players and family, and yet turn up with next to nothing time after time. In the end, there is a twist in the tale, one that is worth seeking despite the winding, sometimes torturous yet always entertaining course of this novel.
This is only the outline, the sketch. The real story of Chinaman is the emergence of a first-time writer whose style has hooks that draw you very quickly into the narrative, and then keep your attention spiked for the entire duration of W.G.’s journey towards Mathew. Along the way, Karunatilaka reflects on the everyday realities of his hitherto war-torn country and goes deep — without the reader realising — into a raft of issues and problems that simmer below the seemingly benign surface of the beautiful island nation.
“Explain the difference between the Sinhalese and Tamils”, asks W.G.’s Newcastle-born friend, Jonny Gilhooley — later falsely accused and jailed for paedophilia so that a local politician can get his hands on Jonny’s prime property on the outskirts of Colombo. The protagonist is stumped. Much soul-searching later he finds an answer, which is very likely also the novelist’s view.
“Explain the difference between Sinhalese and Tamils?” W.G. asks himself. “I cannot... The truth is, whatever differences there may be, they are not large enough to burn down libraries, blow up banks, or send children onto minefields. They are not significant enough to waste hundreds of months firing millions of bullets into thousands of bodies.”
Yet, there is also bitterness at the dichotomy that rules — and divides — his nation. In the same passage, Karunasena, speaking as always as W.G., says: “If I had to explain it, I would adopt the approach of a famous divide and conquer man, Mr Rudyard Kipling. Sinhalese are sloth bears. Lethargic, cuddly creatures of modest brains who break things if riled. Tamils are carrion crows. Resourceful creatures, resilient and peaceful unless provoked. Forget this nonsense of lions and tigers, neither of which have lived in Sri Lanka for over a millennium.”
In a sense, the deeper you go into Chinaman, the longer the shadow of J.P. Donleavy and his anti-hero Sebastian Dangerfield looms over Karunasena and WeeGee. A lost, often lonely alcoholic, driven by a desperate dream, however small or shabby. But in the end, a winner despite the terrible price paid.