The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

by Shehan Karunatilaka

  He laughs. The way I do when I’m upset.

  ‘No. But she will be soon.’

  ‘And you can support your family playing your music?’

  ‘Musicians make a lot more than journalists.’

  I hand the receiver to Sheila and walk off.

  ‘What did you say?’ she squeals into the line.

  In the room, Ari is smiling, scribbling and looking through the napkins. Sri Lanka is 290 for 8, chasing 377. Donald and Ntini are machine-gunning the tail-enders. The match is all but gone.

  Ari hands me the napkin. I recognise the list that caused a punch-up at a wedding. Hobbs, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Richards, Bradman, Sobers, Akram, Lindsay, Barnes, Lillee, Mathew. I realise that it was almost five years ago. Ari hands me a piece of paper, one he has just written on. It is an all-time Sri Lankan team and to me it borders on the surreal.

  Openers

  Madugalle (80s)

  Jayasuriya (90s)

  Middle Order

  Aravinda (90s)

  Sathasivam (40s)

  Mendis (80s)

  All-rounder

  Goonesena (50s)

  Wicketkeeper

  Navaratne (40s) Bowlers

  Kehelgamuwa (60s)

  Mathew (80s)

  Vaas (90s)

  Jayasundera (40s)

  I drain my glass and snort. ‘Kehel Yaka? Madugalle?’

  ‘Even though Madu was a Royalist, he was class. You know he started as an off-spinner and when he was fifteen he took 8 wickets against …’

  ‘Pakistan, yes. Why no Ranatunga?’

  ‘There are better batsmen, no?’

  ‘No Murali?’

  Ari looks at his shoes. He rises and looks at his watch. I eyeball him.

  ‘Why no Murali in your team?’

  There is a pause. I begin smiling. ‘Did you forget? Useless fellow.’

  Ari looks me in the eye and speaks, but his voice sounds different. ‘No, Wije, I didn’t forget.’

  ‘So? Shall we put him instead of Jayasundera?’

  ‘No, Wije.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  There is a longer pause than before and I know what Ari is going to say before he says it. ‘I’m sorry, Wije, but I think he chucks …’

  Sheila enters about to castigate me for not speaking to my son. She sees the look on my face and backs out of the room, closing the door. I lower my voice. ‘The ICC have cleared him.’

  ‘If he was white, you would’ve asked for his head.’

  ‘What colour is the ICC? Purple?’

  ‘Today the ICC is the same colour as you and me.’

  ‘It is a bloody optical illusion, Ari. You of all people should know that. The wrist …’

  ‘I do not want to talk about this, Wije.’

  And so begins the ugliest argument I’ve ever had. More foul-mouthed than when Ceylon Electricity overcharged me Rs 10,000. Angrier than when my wife found out I had been fired from my third successive job. Louder than when my son told me he was quitting the cricket team.

  I remember every word, but I do not wish to repeat them. I also remember how it ended. With me holding my abdomen and falling to the floor. Feeling paralysis go through my right shoulder and sharp pains stab my stomach.

  As I lie on the floor of my study I can hear Ari shouting for Sheila. I hear footsteps and raised voices. In the distance I hear the last wicket fall and the test being lost. Sri Lanka all out for 306. The last man, run out by Jacques Kirsten, is none other than Muttiah Muralitharan. I can no longer feel below my neck and warm liquid is escaping my lips.

  In my mind, I go through lists of my own. My proudest moments on earth in no particular order. Marrying Sheila at Galle Face Hotel. The birth of Garfield. Watching him hit three sixers against his cousins eight years later. Being awarded Ceylon Sportswriter of the Year in 1969. Winning it again in 1976. Watching Wettimuny at Lord’s in 1984, the first time I realised that a Sri Lankan could be as good as anyone else.

  Someone is shaking me, but I do not feel like waking. I am at Bolgoda. With Ari and Jonny. The lake outside is orange and there is footage of Mathew on the giant screen and scotch in our veins. In a time before powercuts and court cases. I close my eyes. I feel no pain. Only joy.

  Second Innings

  ‘I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again. And that is why I succeed.’

  Michael Jordan, Nike ad

  Chopped Liver

  It is nothing like the films or the books. There is no floating, no white light, no wings or hooves. I’m at my desk, back to the window, face to the typewriter, scene before me. I attempt to hit a key, but the key does not notice. I watch my body shuddering on the floor and witness the hoo-ha it inspires.

  I look smaller and scruffier than I always imagined. My glasses are halfway down my nose, there is vomit forming a bib over my shirt. Ari is directing ambulance men in white smocks and Sheila is wiping my face and blubbering.

  I try to type these words, but these words remain un-typed. My fingers touch objects, but objects fail to respond. The ambulance is only fifteen minutes late, which is not bad. They say ambulances in Sri Lanka barely make it to the funeral.

  My room, my books and my clutter are all blurry edged. The men in white smocks are manhandling my twitching torso. There is no sound. There may be music, but I do not notice. Ah, here comes the white light. You’re late, you bugger. Does even divine light work on Sri Lankan time? And here comes the music. I’m born again, I feel free. Is that my Samyo radio? No longer alone. White light is usually blinding, this makes you want to open your eyes more.

  ‘Centuries of music, WeeGee. Mozart. Sinatra. The Beatles. You have to choose Boney bloody M?’

  And now I am in the SSC pavilion with Jonny Gilhooley. The grass is green, everything else is white. The pavilion, the scoreboard and Pradeep Mathew bowling to a young Ian Chappell. Chappell has his collars up and his shirt open. His chest is hairless and pink, not unlike Jonny’s. Mathew bowls a full toss and is hammered for 4.

  ‘You also died?’

  ‘No, WeeGee. Neither did you. Bite?’

  He hands me a plate of devilled liver. It has the texture of rubber and when I bite I hear screams and feel movement against my teeth. I spit out onto the plate and see that the plate is alive. A mixture of liver, onion and capsicum writhing like maggots.

  ‘Uncle, don’t eat that.’ The words are not called out by Jonny. But by the man about to bowl. None other than … you guessed it. His voice is thin and filled with treble, but it manages to reach us.

  Chappell leg-glances and Mathew sprints after it. The other fielders sit back and let the bowler give chase. At the beginning of his career, Mathew would slouch like an orang-utan as he trundled after the ball. By the early 1990s, however, Mathew’s posture had straightened and he looked less awkward in the field. Today he gallops after the ball and saves it from the boundary with a well-timed dive. The throw is flat and hits keeper Silva’s gloves. Walking back to the boundary, Mathew shouts out, ‘Go home, Uncle. I will visit you.’

  ‘So will I,’ says Jonny, as I hand him back the plate of liver. I walk back through the gates of the SSC.

  Things You Will Never Know

  I am lying on a bed in Nawasiri Hospital. There are tubes attempting to pump death from my body. I open my eyes and know I am to live at least for a while and I am happy. Even though that may seem an obvious emotion, for me it is unusual.

  The nurse adjusts my bedpan while Sheila smothers me in kisses. It is the closest I have come to a ménage à trois in my wretched, uneventful life. Ari is seated in a clean shirt against a dirty wall. No matter what the circumstances, Ari is well turned out. Perhaps the Thomian education has its merits.

  ‘You should have told us you had liver problems,’ he says.

  ‘You should’ve told me you thought Murali was a chuck
er,’ I retort.

  All of us, including the nurse, burst out laughing, and for a moment the fear of death is expelled from the room. Sheila is opening a flask of something likely to be unpalatable. She begins her nagging. ‘What is wrong with you, Gamini? Why are you drinking like this? At least think about me.’

  She starts welling up and I swallow my rebuttal. Tears should be made illegal in domestic squabbles. From where I am lying I can count the greying strands of hair that cover Ari’s scalp. I fix my gaze upon them.

  ‘So tell me, my friend, about Muttiah.’

  ‘Doctor says you shouldn’t get excited.’

  ‘Doctors only say that in your Bogart movies. How long have you felt this way?’

  ‘How long have you been sick?’ asks my wife.

  I pause and sigh. ‘Sheila darling, I will stop drinking when I finish my manuscript. I promise.’

  Sheila gets up and walks out of the room. ‘You are such a b … bloody b … baby. Ari, I can’t when he’s like this.’

  She hands the baton to my drinking buddy, who mumbles something about me and my disease and my responsibility, and my head begins to hurt as much as the rest of me. I decide to change the subject to something harmless. But I can’t think of anything.

  ‘So. You think Murali is a cheat, do you?’

  I catch Ari in mid-lecture and he is shaken by the shift in gears. He takes a breath, cups his hands as if he were explaining friction to his O-level class. ‘Wije. Imagine Muttiah being some random bowler from Transvaal or Bristol. Then what would you say? I know what you would say. You would say his arm bends.’

  ‘But his arm doesn’t bend.’

  ‘Just because he’s from Kandy?’

  ‘Hallo. He has been tested by the ICC …’

  ‘That is everyone’s argument. The ICC are petrified of the subcontinent.’

  ‘How can you argue with science?’

  ‘Putha. What happens in a lab and what happens on the turf are two very different things. I know, no? I have seen him bowl with a straight elbow and I have seen his elbow bend in four. Sometimes to get more spin, he throws …’

  ‘You fool. It is the wrist that turns. Not the bloody elbow. It is an optical illusion.’

  ‘Many people outside Asia think he chucks and his wickets are illegal.’

  ‘Typical. Always giving the arse to people outside Asia.’

  We go on for a few rallies. In the end, as always, Ari backs down.

  He takes another breath and smooths a crease on his sleeve. ‘I admire Murali. I’m glad he’s a Sri Lankan. Even if I bent my neck, I couldn’t do what he does. I may be wrong. But it is my opinion, no?’

  He is right, even though he is wrong. I ask him to go and check on Sheila and I am left with my white sheets and my tubes and my imminent death.

  Ari is a maths professor in everything but name. Maybe he will help calculate the mathematics of my situation. Alcohol Consumption to Proximity of Death ratio. A bottle a day = Two months. Half a bottle = Six. A few shots = A year. Never = Forever?

  Doctors can’t give you this information. Some things are not knowable. If Pradeep Mathew had played for India or England, would he have gone on to be the greatest spinner of all time? Not knowable. How many poor bastards have perished in this bed before me? Not knowable.

  Ari returns, Sheila does not.

  ‘Ari, do you have a name for numbers that can’t be found?’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘For instance, how many bullets have been fired in Sri Lanka’s civil war so far?’

  ‘Nurse put whisky in your saline?’

  If only.

  ‘A figure exists. We will never know it,’ I mumble.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ yawns Ari.

  ‘How many bullets were fired in anger? How many in fear?’

  ‘Sheila will fire bullets into me if I don’t talk sense into you. What are you going to do, Wije?’

  ‘Forget war. Think cricket. Which bowler has got the most wickets off bad balls?’

  ‘That’s easy. Charith Silva.’

  ‘How many geniuses have played test cricket?’

  ‘Genius is a tough thing to quantify, Wije.’

  ‘It is finite and measurable. If you knew which things to measure.’

  Then Sheila enters and there is a discussion in low tones about my health. We do what every pointless committee in this country does and decide to postpone talks till we have more information. We all know that once the chase is cut to, it’ll boil down to me giving up drinking or refusing to do so. Silently knives are sharpened.

  That night I think of other unknowables. How much love does one need in a lifetime? Is there a quantity of brain space that is allocated to love? And for those of us who have loved less, does this space become occupied by something else? Like cricket, or religion, perhaps.

  How many minutes of an average life are spent happy? How many are not? Does the sum of one outweigh the other? By how much?

  Has alcohol brought misery to humanity or kept it at bay?

  I was teetotal in my twenties and wrote clichés. In my thirties, my most prolific period, I began sipping in the afternoons. In my forties, when I wrote wonderful pieces for the Daily News and the Island, I was drunk by the 10 o’clock tea break. Did the drinking make me a thinker or did the thinking make me drink?

  I attempted giving up in the early ’80s. Once for as long as five months. But it is pointless. Once the amber tint leaves your glasses, you are left with unused energy and rage. People’s failings grate on you. Hatchets get harder to bury. You spend your time barking at your son, evaluating your bad luck and worrying about other people’s thoughts. And no matter how much clearer your skin, fresher your breath, or springier your step, you see that you have become a bitter bastard and you reach for the sweetener.

  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 thought cannot cure.

  The next morning, in the presence of Ari, Manouri and Sheila, the doctor announces that my liver has suffered damage, but it is not irreversible. And that unless drinking stops I will be dead in months. This time he does not smile. Sheila squeezes Manouri’s hand and sobs quietly. Ari stares at me, knowing that I would reconsider our friendship if he cried.

  I ask for specifics, ratios, probabilities. I explain the importance of my project and why without alcohol I would find it impossible to complete. Then there is shouting. And then there is silence.

  There are things that Sheila will never know. She will never know how much I regret. She will never know that I disappoint myself more than I disappoint her. She will never know that even though I love her more than anything, I will always hate myself a tiny bit more.

  Newton Rodrigo

  Newton Rodrigo is my seventh visitor in my week at Nawasiri. Seven people who aren’t married to me or Ari come to see this old dog in hospital. Considering the mountain of contempt I have accumulated over the years, I am flattered.

  Newton sits by my bedside and says nothing. He has put on weight and wrinkles, but his hair and moustache are unnaturally jet black. He clutches a white envelope and examines every square inch of the hospital room. My saline, my reports, my bottles of juice, my hamper of inedible food, my view of the harbour. He looks into everything except my eyes.

  ‘How many people did you tell about the Neptune betting scene?’ he asks.

  ‘No one,’ I lie.

  ‘The place went bankrupt after the World Cup. There was a misprint in the odds. Kalu Daniel, the manager, is in hiding. How much did you bet?’

  I tell the truth. ‘Everything I owe.’

  On his lap is not my copy of Bradman’s The Art of Cricket. It is the white envelope he has been holding.

  ‘I forgot your book. I will drop it off tomorrow. But here’s a little present.’

  He hands me what looks like a giant get-well card, but instead has ‘Thank you’ embossed in a
gold flowing hand on its white cover. It isn’t for me.

  Inside is a trite verse also embossed in gold. Below it is handwriting. Spidery and left slanting.

  Dear Newton Sir,

  No matter what misunderstandings there may be, I will always be thankful for your advice and guidance.

  Yours truly, Pradeep.

  Trust Newton to cover a boast in wrapping paper and call it a present.

  Kakka Gangsters

  Jonny Gilhooley is my first visitor. He has a hunch, a droop in his gait, charcoal under his eyes.

  He brings me a CD player and a bag of CDs that I do not listen to. Correction. I listen to one of them because it has the word BAT in the title.

  ‘You look worse than me, Jonny boy.’

  ‘Spoken like a man who has not seen a mirror in a while,’ says Jonny with a smirk.

  ‘How? How? We’re thrashing Zimba, no?’

  ‘Haven’t been watching much cricket,’ says Jonny, looking out of my window at the view of the harbour.

  ‘How’s the case …’

  ‘I sold Bolgoda.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Villagers came and shat in my pool.’

  I am silent and then burst into giggles despite how much it hurts my stomach. Thankfully, Jonny joins in.

  ‘Be careful, Jonny. They may hire a gangster to throw kakka on you. Only 750 bucks.’

  ‘500 if you provide your own turd.’

  The urban myth is that for Rs 750 a man on a motorcycle carrying a lump of excrement in a siri-siri bag would fling it at whoever you took the contract out on. Just because no one had seen it didn’t stop us from believing it.

  We laugh. Even though it tears my stomach. I do not tell him of my dreams. He does not tell me how scared he is.

  When I Curse

  Newton coached softball cricket at the Soysapura Cricket Grounds during the mid-1980s. That is where he is said to have discovered his protégés.

  Softball matches attracted most of Moratuwa’s cricket urchins. Sons of fishermen, carpenters and prostitutes. Newton was one of several Fagins who received a salary from the Sports and Youth Affairs Ministry to run this tournament.