Bob grew expansive .
One of the things that had attracted me to Bob and prompted me to make the offer of arrack was that his conversation with the largely – and necessarily – silent companion kept returning to the subject of birds. It was clear that the subject consumed him. I had already heard him fix a wake-up call for six the following morning, with a pot of tea, please, so he could get in an hour’s birdwatching before the day got going. I admired this.
Laughing, gesticulating, between serious pulls at his arrack and soda, Bob talked about his travels in Sri Lanka and the birdwatching he had done. In particular, he expanded on the marvellous place he had been to the previous day. It was called Gal Oya. It sounded wonderful. It sounded like paradise. So naturally, I didn’t want to go. I loved hearing about it, loved Bob’s easy familiarity withthe wild world, but there was no way I was going to Gal Oya.
I think now it was because I didn’t want to be disappointed . I didn’t want to see it from the outside: to be there and yet not there, involved yet cut off from the essential meaning of the experience, much as I had been in my 15th-floor flat. I didn’t want to do it wrong. I didn’t know, but I already sensed that it was too important. Too important to risk getting wrong: almost too important to do.
But we went. Cind, who has been right about a million other things since then, said we should go, so we did. We managed to hire a pair of binoculars in Colombo, and then we set out on a small tour of the wild places of Sri Lanka. Starting, because Bob had made it sound so essential, with Gal Oya. A couple of days later, we were making our way towards a small boat, me filled with all kinds of trepidation .
The thought that it might be a false experience was almost too much to bear. The idea that I might be close to what I wanted without actually doing it right overwhelmed me. It was as if I had spent my life dreaming about the perfection of a cathedral, and, having finally arrived at its steps, feared to enter, in case it was filled with impious mobs selling postcards; or had spent years thinking about a great beauty spot but feared to go there in case I found nothing but parked coaches and McDonald’s wrappers.
But it was not really the other people that worried me.It was me. And it. Perhaps I would not respond to the wild world as I had when I was young. Perhaps the wild world was not as wonderful as I had always secretly believed. Perhaps I was not suitable for the wild world; perhaps the wild world was not suitable for me. I remembered the serial disappointments recounted by Proust: how the church in the Turkish style at Balbec was not the brave, wave-lashed cliff-top thing of beauty he imagined but a neat little spot in the middle of town; how Venice was somehow less Venetian that he had always dreamed. For Proust, real life was always a disappointment after the joys of the imagination, or the deeper joys when the past wells up without being summoned and all things fall into place. Perhaps I would be disappointed by the wild world: perhaps I was doomed to an inauthentic experience.
I had always imagined that somehow, all things would fall into place when I at last entered the wild world. It was fear that all things might not do anything of the kind that kept me away for so long. Now Cindy and I were walking with two Sri Lankans, a boat-driver and a spotter, towards the boat that lay moored on the shores of the vast artificial lake: an unreal – in fact man-made – and distinctly Tolkienesque landscape, dominated by a forest of drowned trees. Three rivers had been dammed to create this reservoir : the watery vista, the islands – formerly mere hills – and the landscape of the shores that made up the park.
The unreal nature of the waterscape added to its air ofmystery. The driver yanked the cord, the engine started. God, the sound would drive away every living thing for miles; this was just a
One of the things that had attracted me to Bob and prompted me to make the offer of arrack was that his conversation with the largely – and necessarily – silent companion kept returning to the subject of birds. It was clear that the subject consumed him. I had already heard him fix a wake-up call for six the following morning, with a pot of tea, please, so he could get in an hour’s birdwatching before the day got going. I admired this.
Laughing, gesticulating, between serious pulls at his arrack and soda, Bob talked about his travels in Sri Lanka and the birdwatching he had done. In particular, he expanded on the marvellous place he had been to the previous day. It was called Gal Oya. It sounded wonderful. It sounded like paradise. So naturally, I didn’t want to go. I loved hearing about it, loved Bob’s easy familiarity withthe wild world, but there was no way I was going to Gal Oya.
I think now it was because I didn’t want to be disappointed . I didn’t want to see it from the outside: to be there and yet not there, involved yet cut off from the essential meaning of the experience, much as I had been in my 15th-floor flat. I didn’t want to do it wrong. I didn’t know, but I already sensed that it was too important. Too important to risk getting wrong: almost too important to do.
But we went. Cind, who has been right about a million other things since then, said we should go, so we did. We managed to hire a pair of binoculars in Colombo, and then we set out on a small tour of the wild places of Sri Lanka. Starting, because Bob had made it sound so essential, with Gal Oya. A couple of days later, we were making our way towards a small boat, me filled with all kinds of trepidation .
The thought that it might be a false experience was almost too much to bear. The idea that I might be close to what I wanted without actually doing it right overwhelmed me. It was as if I had spent my life dreaming about the perfection of a cathedral, and, having finally arrived at its steps, feared to enter, in case it was filled with impious mobs selling postcards; or had spent years thinking about a great beauty spot but feared to go there in case I found nothing but parked coaches and McDonald’s wrappers.
But it was not really the other people that worried me.It was me. And it. Perhaps I would not respond to the wild world as I had when I was young. Perhaps the wild world was not as wonderful as I had always secretly believed. Perhaps I was not suitable for the wild world; perhaps the wild world was not suitable for me. I remembered the serial disappointments recounted by Proust: how the church in the Turkish style at Balbec was not the brave, wave-lashed cliff-top thing of beauty he imagined but a neat little spot in the middle of town; how Venice was somehow less Venetian that he had always dreamed. For Proust, real life was always a disappointment after the joys of the imagination, or the deeper joys when the past wells up without being summoned and all things fall into place. Perhaps I would be disappointed by the wild world: perhaps I was doomed to an inauthentic experience.
I had always imagined that somehow, all things would fall into place when I at last entered the wild world. It was fear that all things might not do anything of the kind that kept me away for so long. Now Cindy and I were walking with two Sri Lankans, a boat-driver and a spotter, towards the boat that lay moored on the shores of the vast artificial lake: an unreal – in fact man-made – and distinctly Tolkienesque landscape, dominated by a forest of drowned trees. Three rivers had been dammed to create this reservoir : the watery vista, the islands – formerly mere hills – and the landscape of the shores that made up the park.
The unreal nature of the waterscape added to its air ofmystery. The driver yanked the cord, the engine started. God, the sound would drive away every living thing for miles; this was just a
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