Kristopher Jansma - The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

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.

Curious, I watch as Tina, the girl in the hat, apologetically hands the man a few hundred rupees more than necessary for the DVD — which I can see from the cover is Surangani, Surangani , currently the country’s most popular Bollywood love story. It’s about a Tamil boy who falls in love with a forbidden Sinhalese girl. There’ve been posters up for it nearly everywhere I’ve been for the past month.

“Jesus, fine. You’ve got the goddamn DVD. So let’s go. ”

Tina stalks away as Carsten follows, clutching her prize to her fairly overexposed chest. With about three minutes left to go, I decide to give “simon/ ” the second-best news of his morning.

Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Send the money to the PayMeNow account. DOUBLE.

simon/ : yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy thank you thank you

Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: Now, Simon, I’m in a hurry.

simon/ : ok ok

Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: What’s the assignment anyway?

simon/ : Papr for Modrn America Lit.

Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: On anything in particular, Simon? Hurry hurry.

simon/ : hold on, just chking the books name now I hve in my email smwhere

Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: You have one minute, Simon, and then I have to go.

These Simons are all alike. A few months ago, before heading to Sri Lanka from Chennai, I’d been doing some Internet research for one of them about the Tamil Tigers and came across a funny story that stuck with me. Allegedly, back in the late 1980s, some government wildlife official had given a televised interview explaining that, despite the name of the rebel group, the tiger was actually not indigenous to Sri Lanka— in fact there were no tigers there at all. Accidentally, the man misspoke and said that the “ ,” which was actually the Sinhala word for “leopard,” was not native to the island.

But, of course there are leopards in Sri Lanka — the Sri Lankan leopard, or Panthera pardus , has been a recognized subspecies since the 1950s. And so, the confused English media translated the word as “tiger” anyway. Somehow, some way, this misnomer had actually stuck. Slowly, the Sri Lankan people just began to use “ ” to mean “tiger.” Nobody wanted to be wrong. They’d seen it on television; it had to be true. Eventually locals began to refer colloquially to the Tamil Tigers as “ koti ,” the plural of “ ,” and, another word, had to be reassigned to mean “leopard” in order to end the confusion.

Spots changed into stripes. All it took was just one serendipitous mistake.

When I look back at the screen I see that thirty seconds have gone by. Finally, blip , I see Simon’s money arrive in my PayMeNow account. Enough to keep me quite comfortable on my journey northward — maybe even enough to make it two or three weeks before I need to be on a computer again.

I count off five, ten, then twenty more seconds, but he still hasn’t sent the assignment over.

Outis/ΟΥΤΙΣ: You’re out of time, Simon. Find someone else.

simon/ : wait wait! its some book. Nothing Sacred. Jeffrey Oakes? U know it?

The flash of that name on the screen stings me more sharply than Simon’s offensively bad grammar. I don’t know why I’m so surprised — the book’s been everywhere for eight years now: an international bestseller, translated into thirty-seven languages. No matter where I have gone, and I’ve gone far, I find remaindered hardcovers and tattered paperbacks in every used-book bin I’ve peered into. From Eastern Europe to Cambodia. But now, somehow knowing that they’re teaching it in schools is an especially great blow. Isn’t that how it happens? Just one tidy step closer to immortality? I continue staring at the little pixilated letters, and I can hear the ticking of my wristwatch. Suddenly my eyes refocus and I catch my reflection in the screen. Hollow, tired eyes. A beard that hasn’t been trimmed in two weeks, maybe three. It hardly looks like me.

Then, before I quite know what has happened, my fingers have flown to the disconnect button and I am running, running to catch my train.

• • •

Our train prowls slowly up out of Colombo, through the slums and then the suburbs, and eventually into the monsoon-swept rain forests to the north. I’ve paid the extra 1,600 rupees, about 14 dollars, to get a seat in the small first-class observation compartment in the rear, where I also find the lovely Carsten and her friend, Tina. The fourth seat in the compartment is empty for a few minutes, until we are joined by, of all people, an old Italian nun in a crisp black habit.

The girls seem just as tickled as I am to be in the nun’s tiny wizened presence. She is reading a little blue-covered Bible, written in Italian from what I can see. I wonder if she ever reads anything else? Does she just read those same best-stories-ever-told over and over? Does she ever take a quick break and dip into, I don’t know, some Calvino or something? I ponder this singular commitment as I flip lazily through a collection of Hemingway stories that I found in my hotel back in Chennai. I haven’t read most of them since my freshman year of college, and it’s nice, if not a little nostalgia inducing, to look over them again.