The Cat's Table Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Michael Ondaatje

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Departure

  Mazappa

  C Deck

  An Australian

  Cassius

  The Hold

  The Turbine Room

  A Spell

  Afternoons

  Miss Lasqueti

  The Girl

  Thievery

  Landfall

  Kennels

  Ramadhin’s Heart

  Port Said

  Two Violets

  Two Hearts

  Asuntha

  The Mediterranean

  Mr Giggs

  The Blind Perera

  How Old Are You? What Is Your Name?

  The Tailor

  Miss Lasqueti: A Second Portrait

  The Overheard

  The Breaker’s Yard

  The Key in His Mouth

  Letter to Cassius

  Arrival

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements and Credits

  Thanks

  Copyright

  About the Book

  In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England – a ‘castle that was to cross the sea’. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly ‘Cat’s Table’ with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, ‘bursting all over the place like freed mercury’. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner – his crime and fate a galvanising mystery that will haunt them forever.

  As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy’s adult years, it tells a spellbinding story about the difference between the magical openness of childhood and the burdens of earned understanding – about a lifelong journey that began unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage, when all on board were ‘free of the realities of the earth’.

  With the ocean liner a brilliant microcosm for the floating dream of childhood, The Cat’s Table is a vivid, poignant and thrilling book, full of Ondaatje’s trademark set-pieces and breathtaking images: a story told with a child’s sense of wonder by a novelist at the very height of his powers.

  About the Author

  Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943. In the 1950s he moved to England, and went to school in south London. In 1962 he emigrated to Canada, where he has lived ever since. His books include his memoir, Running in the Family, numerous collections of poetry, and five novels – including The English Patient which won the 1992 Booker Prize.

  ALSO BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE

  PROSE

  Coming Through Slaughter (1976)

  Running in the Family (memoir) (1982)

  In the Skin of a Lion (1987)

  The English Patient (1992)

  Anil’s Ghost (2000)

  Divisadero (2007)

  POETRY

  The Dainty Monsters (1967)

  The Man with Seven Toes (1969)

  The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970)

  Rat Jelly (1973)

  Elimination Dance (1976)

  Claude Glass (1979)

  There’s a Trick with a Knife I’m Learning to Do (1979)

  Tin Roof (1982)

  Secular Love (1984)

  The Cinnamon Peeler (1991)

  Handwriting (1998)

  NON-FICTION

  The Conversations:

  Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film (2002)

  For Quintin, Griffin, Kristin and Esta

  For Anthony and Constance

  And this is how I see the East … I see it always from a small boat – not a light, not a stir, not a sound. We conversed in low whispers, as if afraid to wake up the land … It is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea.

  JOSEPH CONRAD, ‘YOUTH’

  HE WASN’T TALKING. He was looking from the window of the car all the way. Two adults in the front seat spoke quietly under their breath. He could have listened if he wanted to, but he didn’t. For a while, at the section of the road where the river sometimes flooded, he could hear the spray of water at the wheels. They entered the Fort and the car slipped silently past the post office building and the clock tower. At this hour of the night there was barely any traffic in Colombo. They drove out along Reclamation Road, passed St Anthony’s Church, and after that he saw the last of the food stalls, each lit with a single bulb. Then they entered a vast open space that was the harbour, with only a string of lights in the distance along the pier. He got out and stood by the warmth of the car.

  He could hear the stray dogs that lived on the quays barking out of the darkness. Nearly everything around him was invisible, save for what could be seen under the spray of a few sulphur lanterns – watersiders pulling a procession of baggage wagons, some families huddled together. They were all beginning to walk towards the ship.

  He was eleven years old that night when, green as he could be about the world, he climbed aboard the first and only ship of his life. It felt as if a city had been added to the coast, better lit than any town or village. He went up the gangplank, watching only the path of his feet – nothing ahead of him existed – and continued till he faced the dark harbour and sea. There were outlines of other ships farther out, beginning to turn on lights. He stood alone, smelling everything, then came back through the noise and the crowd to the side that faced land. A yellow glow over the city. Already it felt there was a wall between him and what took place there. Stewards began handing out food and cordials. He ate several sandwiches, and after that he made his way down to his cabin, undressed, and slipped into the narrow bunk. He’d never slept under a blanket before, save once in Nuwara Eliya. He was wide awake. The cabin was below the level of the waves, so there was no porthole. He found a switch beside the bed and when he pressed it his head and pillow were suddenly lit by a cone of light.

  He did not go back up on deck for a last look, or to wave at his relatives who had brought him to the harbour. He could hear singing and imagined the slow and then eager parting of families taking place in the thrilling night air. I do not know, even now, why he chose this solitude. Had whoever brought him onto the Oronsay already left? In films people tear themselves away from one another weeping, and the ship separates from land while the departed hold on to those disappearing faces until all distinction is lost.

  I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was. Perhaps a sense of self is not even there in his nervous stillness in the narrow bunk, in this green grasshopper or little cricket, as if he has been smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future.

  He woke up, hearing passengers running along the corridor. So he got back into his clothes and left the cabin. Something was happening. Drunken yells filled the night, shouted down by officials. In the middle of B Deck, sailors were attempting to grab hold of the harbour pilot. Having guided the ship meticulously out of the harbour (there were many routes to be avoided because of submerged wrecks and an earlier breakwater), he had gone on to have too many drinks to celebrate his achievement. Now, apparently, he simply did not wish to leave. Not just yet. Perhaps another hour or two with the ship. But the Oronsay was eager to depart on the stroke of midnight and the pilot’s tug waited at the waterline. The crew had been struggling to force him down the rope ladder, however as there was a danger of his falling to his death, they were now capturing him fishlike in a net, and in
this way they lowered him down safely. It seemed to be in no way an embarrassment to the man, but the episode clearly was to the officials of the Orient Line who were on the bridge, furious in their white uniforms. The passengers cheered as the tug broke away. Then there was the sound of the two-stroke and the pilot’s weary singing as the tug disappeared into the night.

  Departure

  WHAT HAD THERE been before such a ship in my life? A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee harbour? There were always fishing boats on our horizon. But I could never have imagined the grandeur of this castle that was to cross the sea. The longest journeys I had made were car rides to Nuwara Eliya and Horton Plains, or the train to Jaffna, which we boarded at seven a.m. and disembarked from in the late afternoon. We made that journey with our egg sandwiches, some thalagulies, a pack of cards and a small Boy’s Own adventure.

  But now it had been arranged I would be travelling to England by ship, and that I would be making the journey alone. No mention was made that this might be an unusual experience or that it could be exciting or dangerous, so I did not approach it with any joy or fear. I was not forewarned that the ship would have seven levels, hold more than six hundred people including a captain, nine cooks, engineers, a veterinarian, and that it would contain a small jail and chlorinated pools that would actually sail with us over two oceans. The departure date was marked casually on the calendar by my aunt, who had notified the school that I would be leaving at the end of the term. The fact of my being at sea for twenty-one days was spoken of as having not much significance, so I was surprised my relatives were even bothering to accompany me to the harbour. I had assumed I would be taking a bus by myself and then change onto another at Borella Junction.

  There had been just one attempt to introduce me to the situation of the journey. A lady named Flavia Prins, whose husband knew my uncle, turned out to be making the same journey and was invited to tea one afternoon to meet with me. She would be travelling in First Class but promised to keep an eye on me. I shook her hand carefully, as it was covered with rings and bangles, and she then turned away to continue the conversation I had interrupted. I spent most of the hour listening to a few uncles and counting how many of the trimmed sandwiches they ate.

  On my last day, I found an empty school examination booklet, a pencil, a pencil sharpener, a traced map of the world, and put them into my small suitcase. I went outside and said goodbye to the generator, and dug up the pieces of the radio I had once taken apart and, being unable to put them back together, had buried under the lawn. I said goodbye to Narayan, and goodbye to Gunepala.

  As I got into the car, it was explained to me that after I’d crossed the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, and gone through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, I would arrive one morning on a small pier in England and my mother would meet me there. It was not the magic or the scale of the journey that was of concern to me, but that detail of how my mother could know when exactly I would arrive in that other country.

  And if she would be there.

  I HEARD A note being slipped under my door. It assigned me to Table 76 for all my meals. The other bunk had not been slept in. I dressed and went out. I was not used to stairs and climbed them warily.

  In the dining room there were nine people at Table 76, and that included two other boys roughly my age.

  ‘We seem to be at the cat’s table,’ the woman called Miss Lasqueti said. ‘We’re in the least privileged place.’

  It was clear we were located far from the Captain’s Table, which was at the opposite end of the dining room. One of the two boys at our table was named Ramadhin, and the other was called Cassius. The first was quiet, the other looked scornful, and we ignored one another, although I recognised Cassius. I had gone to the same school, where, even though he was a year older than I was, I knew much about him. He had been notorious and was even expelled for a term. I was sure it was going to take a long time before we spoke. But what was good about our table was that there seemed to be several interesting adults. We had a botanist, and a tailor who owned a shop up in Kandy. Most exciting of all, we had a pianist who cheerfully claimed to have ‘hit the skids’.

  This was Mr Mazappa. In the evening he played with the ship’s orchestra, and during the afternoons he gave piano lessons. As a result, he had a discount on his passage. After that first meal he entertained Ramadhin and Cassius and me with tales of his life. It was by being in Mr Mazappa’s company, as he regaled us with confusing and often obscene lyrics from songs he knew, that we three came to accept one another. For we were shy and awkward. Not one of us had made even a gesture of greeting to the other two until Mazappa took us under his wing and advised us to keep our eyes and ears open, that this voyage would be a great education. So by the end of our first day, we discovered we could become curious together.

  Another person of interest at the Cat’s Table was Mr Nevil, a retired ship dismantler, who was returning to England after a patch of time in the East. We sought out this large and gentle man often, for he had detailed knowledge about the structure of ships. He had dismantled many famous vessels. Unlike Mr Mazappa, Mr Nevil was modest and would speak of these episodes in his past only if you knew how to nudge an incident out of him. If he had not been so modest in the way he responded to our barrage of questions, we would not have believed him, or been so enthralled.

  He also had a complete run of the ship, for he was doing safety research for the Orient Line. He introduced us to his cohorts in the engine and furnace rooms, and we watched the activities that took place down there. Compared to First Class, the engine room – at Hades level – churned with unbearable noise and heat. A two-hour walk around the Oronsay with Mr Nevil clarified all the dangerous and not-so-dangerous possibilities. He told us the lifeboats swaying in mid-air only seemed dangerous, and so, Cassius and Ramadhin and I often climbed into them to have a vantage point for spying on passengers. It had been Miss Lasqueti’s remark about our being ‘in the least privileged place’, with no social importance, that persuaded us into an accurate belief that we were invisible to officials such as the Purser and the Head Steward, and the Captain.

  I found out unexpectedly that a distant cousin of mine, Emily de Saram, was on the boat. Sadly, she had not been assigned to the Cat’s Table. For years Emily had been the way I discovered what adults thought of me. I’d tell her of my adventures and listen to what she thought. She was honest about what she liked and did not like, and as she was older than I was, I modelled myself on her judgements.

  Because I had no brothers or sisters, the closest relatives I had while growing up were adults. There was an assortment of unmarried uncles and slow-moving aunts who were joined at the hip by gossip and status. There was one wealthy relative who took great care to remain in the distance. No one was fond of him, but they all respected him and spoke of him continually. Family members would analyse the dutiful Christmas cards he mailed out each year, discussing the faces of his growing children in the photograph and the size of his house in the background that was like a silent boast. I grew up with such family judgements, and so, until I found myself out of their sight, they governed my cautiousness.

  But there was always Emily, my ‘machang’, who lived almost next door for a period of years. Our childhoods were similar in that our parents were either scattered or unreliable. But her home life was, I suspect, worse than mine – her father’s business dealings never assured, and their family lived constantly under the threat of his temper. His wife bowed under his rules. From the scarce amount Emily told me, I knew he was a punisher. Even visiting adults never felt safe around him. It was only children, who were in the house briefly for a birthday party, who enjoyed the uncertainty of his behaviour. He’d swing by to tell us something funny and then push us into the swimming pool. Emily was nervous around him, even when he grabbed her around the shoulders in a loving hug and then made her dance with him, her bare feet balanced on his shoes.

  Much of the time he
r father was away at his job, or he simply disappeared. There was no secure map that Emily could rely on, so I suppose she invented herself. She had a free spirit, a wildness I loved, though she risked herself in various adventures. In the end, luckily, Emily’s grandmother paid for her to go off to a boarding school in southern India, so she was away from the presence of her father. I missed her. And when she returned for summer holidays, I did not see that much of her, for she’d caught a temporary summer job with Ceylon Telephone. A company car picked her up each morning, and her boss, Mr Wijebahu, would drop her off at the end of the day. Mr Wijebahu, she confided to me, was reputed to have three testicles.

  What did bring the two of us together more than anything was Emily’s record collection, with all those lifetimes and desires rhymed and distilled into two or three minutes of a song. Mining heroes, consumptive girls who lived above pawnshops, gold diggers, famous cricketers, and even the fact that they had no more bananas. She thought I was a bit of a dreamer, and taught me to dance, to hold her waist while her upraised arms swayed, and to leap onto and over the sofa so it tilted and fell backwards with our weight. Then she would be suddenly away, at school, far away in India again, unheard from, save for a few letters to her mother, where she begged for more cakes to be sent via the Belgian Consulate, letters her father insisted on reading aloud, proudly, to all his neighbours.

  By the time Emily came on board the Oronsay, I had in fact not seen her for two years. It was a shock to recognise her now as more distinct, with a leaner face, and to be conscious of a grace that I had not been aware of before. She was now seventeen years old, and school had, I thought, knocked some of the wildness out of her, though there was a slight drawl when she spoke that I liked. The fact that she’d grab my shoulder as I was running past her on the Promenade Deck and make me talk with her gave me some cachet among my two new friends on the boat. But most of the time she made it clear she did not wish to be followed around. She had her own plans for the voyage … a final few weeks of freedom before she arrived in England to complete her last two years of schooling.