The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards: A Novel Read online

  “My father told me that I had to come to America to see for myself just what the rest of the world wants so badly to be,” he said with a smile. “With all due respect, Professor, how do you know you won’t like Dubai better?”

  “I read a lot,” I said, giving him a warm, authoritative pat on the shoulder. “Enough to know I don’t want to be in the Middle East at this particular historical moment.”

  “But you said yourself in class, Professor. These things are not all the truth. United Arab Emirates is a friendly, peaceful, democratic country, just like America.”

  “Our partners in peace,” I said with a wry smile. He looked back at me—for the first time as a fellow human being and not just my student. And he laughed.

  “My father, perhaps he can talk to a friend? They pay a lot of money for American professors in my country.”

  And that is how I found myself boarding Emirates flight 24, with Timothy Wallace’s American passport in one hand. As I checked the time on my gold wristwatch, I looked up to see a row of polished clocks, each set to different hours around the world. I’d gotten a little drunk—insurance against the long flight ahead—and so I saluted as I passed the men in army fatigues, with guns the size of me. The sight of them was quickly replaced by the vision of my flight attendant, all almond eyes and smooth, coffee-colored skin. Her name tag said SHAHRAZAD, and she graciously ushered me into the first-class cabin. Saiyid’s father had been generous enough to supply the ticket.

  “Professor, please, make yourself comfortable.”

  She pulled open a small divider, and I peered into what was set up as a miniature luxury hotel room. I ran my hands over the swirling walnut burl of the countertop, opening a small compartment to find, to my great relief, a fully stocked minibar. My seat was folded down into what resembled a snug twin-sized bed with 450-thread-count sheets and a silk comforter. A wide flat-panel television invited me to surf hundreds of channels, browse the Internet, or plug an iPod into a smartly concealed receptacle. I set my bags in the spacious storage area and lifted the remote control. Scanning through the guide, I felt like the commander of a futuristic battleship, the world at my fingertips. More a part of the next century than the current one.

  I scrolled through The Buddha Channel, MTV Brazil, Fashion International, Szechuan BabyNet—I froze when I saw the listing for Radio Télévision Luxembourg.

  “Is your suite prepared to your liking?” the attendant asked.

  “Am I still on a plane?” I gasped.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered with a smile.

  “How much does this cost?” I asked.

  “I have no idea, sir,” she replied.

  “About twelve, round trip” came a voice from behind Shahrazad. An adjacent panel slid open and I found myself eye to eye with a harried-looking businessman, already half into a miniature bottle of Scotch.

  “All this for twelve hundred?” I said, looking back at my bedchamber.

  “Twelve thousand,” the man said casually.

  Taking my cue from him, I coolly suppressed my own shock at the statement. “Right. Twelve thousand. That’s what I meant.”

  The man smiled at me as Shahrazad excused herself to board the rest of the passengers.

  “Gene Packard,” the man said, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you, son.”

  I was suddenly wishing I had gotten dressed up for the flight. Mr. Packard was wearing a golden-silk-backed wool vest and a gleaming tie to match. I was wearing my usual teaching gear—a pair of Italian shoes, some dark blue jeans, and my thrift-store blazer, with a shirt I had meant to iron. Packard seemed to note this, for he said, “You know, they’ll press that for you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t press it before. Might as well have it done fresh.”

  “What’s your line?” Packard asked, pouring me a Scotch without asking.

  “I’m in journalism.”

  “Well, you’re headed to the right place,” Packard said with a wink. “The future is in Dubai, sure as I’m standing here before you.”

  After takeoff, over several Scotches, Packard told me the whole story of Dubai. One of seven emirates that banded together when the British left the gulf in the late seventies, Dubai had made its place in the world in the expected way—by peddling shitloads of oil and petroleum to freedom-loving countries such as our own, keeping profits high by relying primarily on underpaid and often-violated South Asian workers. But in recent years the forward-thinking emirate realized the inevitable endgame of the oil business, something that America, despite Al Gore’s admonishments and the recent rash of celebrities espousing greenness, has collectively failed to realize. There’s simply not enough oil to go around forever. So Dubai decided that while the rest of the world continued slaughtering one another over who would get the finite amount of oil that remained, they would begin diversifying their portfolios. Dubai turned into a playground for the wealthy, particularly those in Europe, featuring seven-star hotels, man-made islands, and even indoor ski slopes. If there was one thing that a lifetime in the oil business taught an emirate, said Packard, it was that people are addicted to opulence. A growing number of American businesses came to set up shop in the new Silicon Valley, where Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and the EMC Corporation were merrily cashing in on expansive tax-free zones. Packard assumed I was headed just down the block to where CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press had all set up their offices of late.

  “All these people here,” Packard said, motioning to one of his three cabin windows. I could see the New York skyline clearly against the horizon still, and I silently bid it adieu. “They think they’re living in the center of the universe. But we’re headed to the real McCoy.”

  And it’s funny, but, looking down at all those hard lines of Manhattan, the grids of streets and office windows—all getting smaller and smaller—I felt as if I had evolved, after all. Not just into Timothy Wallace, but into someone cleverer, more confident.

  Up and down Park Avenue and along Canal Street scurried millions who felt they had the grit of the Real World beneath their fingernails. Because they were making it there, they assumed they could be making it anywhere. And in the blare of taxi horns and the roar of subway tunnels, they bought and sold, networked and dialogued, listened to NPR on podcasts and read the headlines off the New York Times website. It was the city where I’d written my first novel and where my first real friendships had flourished, grown ripe, and eventually rotted. I’d come to it as a stranger, only to learn its every avenue and alleyway. But from a few thousand feet up, I could see that it was all just a little island in a vast and unfamiliar landscape. On the plasma screen in my suite, I could see the city I was bound for, Dubai—self-proclaimed land of make-believe—a city with ski slopes in the desert and sheiks in limousines, a city where the hotels kept leopards in cages in their lobbies and gave themselves seven stars out of five. A city where no one expected anything to be true.

  • • •

  But all of that is another story, and I can see you are getting tired. Get your new wife to bed. There is a lot to see and do around here. Maybe we’ll meet again tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll continue with the truth. Maybe I won’t. Would you know either way? Would you care, truly? Or perhaps I’ll be long gone by then; who can say? We’re all just travelers, after all, telling stories, passing time. Get some rest, then. Tomorrow could bring anything. Al Wada’—good-night.

  7

  Outis

  “The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness.”

  —JAMES JOYCE, ULYSSES

  With only ten minutes left before my train leaves toward Sigiriya, I jam down on the Necto-soda-sticky keys of the Internet café co
mputer. As quickly as possible, I pound out the final lines of a truly ponderous conclusive paragraph:

  The essay’s closing image of a young George Orwell laughing with British soldiers and Burmese natives while the man they’ve just executed hangs “a hundred yards away” is surely a haunting vision of the colonial world order: oppressor and oppressed amicably sharing a Lethean drink, while the unnamed voice of dissent swings ominously in the winds.

  I hit Save, double-check my PayMeNow account, and then click Send. In a millionth of an instant, my impenetrable thirty-five-page wall of rhetoric is dissembled into hexadecimal electrons and fired off into the stratosphere—bounced down thirty-five hundred miles clockwise around the globe and into the high-tech library of the Shanghai International Students’ School, where an obese and princely little Chinese boy who goes by “simon/” has been waiting eagerly for his midterm assignment. I’ve never met this particular Simon personally, of course, but after teaching for several years at a school in Dubai, attended primarily by the hashish-addled children of the House of Saud, I’ve come to know his type quite well. During my teaching days I had often wondered how my students managed to turn in shining theses that included words like hegemonic and pedagogical, or even agitprop and autarky. It didn’t take long to figure out that most of them had anonymous Internet ghostwriters cranking out every paper they turned in. So when being a teacher finally lost its charm, I decided that taking up professional plagiarism could grant me decent pay, freedom to travel, and unlimited opportunity to lob my own thought-grenades into the halls of academia. In just a year at it, I’d traveled the Mediterranean, been through Singapore and Hong Kong. I’d visited every single European nation (except for Luxembourg)—all while writing somewhere on the order of two thousand pages of literary criticism, disseminated happily into the thesis collections of universities worldwide.

  I feel a fleeting sense of pride over the Orwell paper. I’d managed to take his tidy essay “A Hanging,” which clocks in at about five pages, and spin out seven times that length in tedious, diligent analysis. Thinking it may be a personal best for me, I take a long sip at my cold tea in self-congratulation. With what Simon was paying me, I’d have enough money to roam north into the central region of Sri Lanka for at least a week. I could drop into Buddhist temples, get lost in Ceylon tea farms, and enjoy the unique charms of this land: Serendib, the Arabs called it, and from there the British colonialists invented the word serendipity, to explain the magical ways in which the invisible cogs of fate itself seemed to turn against one another in this verdant paradise.

  I stretch back. I peer through the glass walls of the café and out into the station. I have always done my best work in crowded transportation hubs. Airports, train stations—a bus stop, one time—these have been like my personal little cafés dotted along the Seine. I’d given up on being a writer, aside from the essays that I sold to my shadowy students around the globe. I’d become accustomed to a certain lifestyle—particularly when it came to traveling through these third-world countries. I’m trying to see the world and as many of its plenty-splendored wonders as I can. I’m trying to stay on the move. I’m not one of these typical Americans, mind you, trying to find myself. No, if anything, it’s just the opposite. I’m trying to get as far away from myself as at all possible.

  Typically, my students are the children of the well-to-do; the heirs apparent of the world, who are too busy spending their parents’ money on the beaches of Ibiza and in the shops of Rodeo Drive to learn how to compose a thesis. And why should they? What possible use will it be to them to be able to deconstruct a Dickens novel when they’re merrily employed by some white-collar firm, overseeing the outsourcing of its customer service department to the east side of Bangladesh?

  Actually, a lot, probably.

  But I digress. Eight minutes left until my train leaves.

  The Colombo Fort Railway Station has truly come alive while I’ve been working my way through the wee hours. I can smell cardamom coffee and moong kavun oil cakes being fried up in the shape of diamonds. Somewhere someone is mixing up some fragrant mutton rolls and I wonder if I’ll have time to grab one on my way over to the train. I still have seven minutes. Anxiously, I tap on the keys as if to summon Simon, so he can confirm receipt of his paper and I can enjoy a week off exploring the Buddhist temples of the Matale region.

  As I wait, I watch the Sri Lankans lining up along the benches in the lobby. I try to make sense of what appears at first to be a single mass of dark hair and skin and eyes. I try to drown myself in the distilled noise of their chirping chitchat. What I realize quickly is that nearly all of them are reading. Reading books. An old man with a paisley necktie dangling beneath his trimmed white beard is absorbed in what looks like a detective thriller. A gaggle of boys in little purple school blazers and shorts are studying cloth-bound readers, their little heads hunched over and the odd golden epaulets on their uniformed shoulders jutting out. They look like a tiny, scholarly fighting force. An older boy with mini-dreadlocks and a tattered black BAD TO THE BONE T-shirt is flipping through an old Penguin paperback while he tries not to stare at a flock of peacock-patterned flight attendants who are picking out magazines at the newsstand nearby. While nearby India continues to slump behind the world literacy averages, the island-dwelling Sri Lankans read more than most anyone in Asia, though perhaps this is because their seventeen measly television channels are so thoroughly unentertaining. Or perhaps it is because now that—thanks to a tidy mass-slaughtering two years ago—the Sinhalese have finally ended their bloody twenty-six-year civil war with the LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka has been rated one of the world’s most promising emerging markets by the Dow Jones and has just been named a 3G country by Citigroup, whatever that means. Looking out at the crowds, I can feel their excitement. They don’t know what it all means, either, just that venture capitalism is coming soon to a theater near them. Perhaps it is because of the promise of all this growth that they are reading—boning up for the return of the imperialists. It reminds me of a T-shirt I saw on a kid a year ago when I was weekending in Turkey. GOD IS COMING the front said in bold letters, while the back warned LOOK BUSY! This is what comes to mind: the Sri Lankans look busy. Soon, perhaps, they’ll all be rich as kings, with important-looking cell phones and Louis Vuitton purses clutching custom-sized chihuahuas. I wonder how much they’ll be reading by then.

  Finally, the computer blips at me.

  simon/: this loks grt!!! Ooooooo shit! U gunna get me an A for sur

  Wincing, I crack my fingers, check the time—only six minutes to go—and nimbly tap back a reply.

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: My pleasure, Simon. Do take care now.

  simon/: wait wait man i gt anuther papr. is do on nxt Saturday, what yu say, huh?

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Like I told you earlier, Simon, I will be gone all week.

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Good-bye, Simon.

  simon/: WAIT dammmti! Im going to pay u doble!

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Double?

  simon/: what i said

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: You said “doble” which is neither an amount of money nor an adjective indicating twice the former quantity of something.

  simon/: whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat????????

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Good-bye, Simon.

  simon/: WAIT

  I’m about to click off the computer screen, satisfied that poor “simon/” more than deserves to fail his next assignment, when suddenly the sweet, high pitch of American English reaches my ear. I glance up and see two female backpackers arguing just outside the door to the Internet café. The first girl is beautiful and tall, with skin that has been methodically browned at the sides of a dozen crystal-clear swimming pools between here and—I’m going to guess—Philadelphia. There’s something self-assured and forlorn about her that reminds me of a Phillies fan. Her long, dark hair has clearly been carefully blow-dried and straightened that morning in one of Colombo’s finer hotels. The way she teeters a little on her cor
k-platform sandals makes me think that she also kicked back a few minibar items while she was preening.

  Her friend is shorter and fairer-skinned—actually, she’s quite pale, white as blank paper—with hair as red as sweet vermouth and eyes so green that I suspect she is only a generation removed from the shores of Galway. While her friend’s clothing is so sheer and sleeveless as to verge on nonexistence, this girl is wearing a high-collared linen dress that looks like it walked off the set of Citizen Kane, and which falls down well past her knees. She must be about a thousand degrees, and she looks miserable and lost, in a hat so ridiculously broad-brimmed that all the flies in the train station seem to think it is a runway strip. They circle around her like landing planes, to her adorable annoyance.

  simon/: where r u anywayy? Hello??

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: I’m in Sri Lanka.

  simon/: whats that

  Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Look it up.

  simon/: ur funny. U going to helpme or not, what?

  “Come on, Tina. Let up! I just want to get this DVD so I have something to do on the train!” barks the dark-haired girl, as her friend with the hat tries to wrench her out toward the main doors.

  “Carsten, we have four minutes to get on the train!”

  I check my watch quickly and verify that I, too, have only four minutes to get on my train, which means that their train is probably also my train. I wonder if they, too, are on their way north toward the ancient city of Sigiriya, the Buddhist mountain monastery known as the Fortress in the Sky.

  “Just let me grab the DVD!” Carsten begs, snatching one of the cardboard-wrapped packages off the rack, which nearly tips over before the newsstand keeper manages to catch it. A barrel-bellied man with little hair left does not even dare to shout at the girls, though he does look around in astonishment toward the other natives.