Running in the Family Read online

  While all these names may give an air of authenticity, I must confess that the book is not a history but a portrait or “gesture.” And if those listed above disapprove of the fictional air I apologize and can only say that in Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts.

  * * *

  Thanks to the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council and Glendon College, York University, for their support. And to the editors of The Capilano Review, periodics, The Canadian Forum, and Brick, who published sections from the work in progress.

  * * *

  Finally, special thanks to three friends who helped me at many stages with the manuscript: Daphne Marlatt, Stan Dragland, and Barrie Nichol, “for my papers ware promiscuous and out of forme with severall inlargements and untutored narrative.”

  Credits

  The stanza from the poem, “Don’t Talk to Me about Matisse,” comes from the book O Regal Blood by Lakdasa Wikkramaisinha, published in Colombo in February 1975.

  The lines from Goethe are from a translation by James Wright in his Collected Poems. Published by Wesleyan University Press, 1971.

  “Sea of Heartbreak” by Don Gibson. Copyright MCMLX and MCMLXI by Shapiro, Berstein & Co., Inc., 10 East 53 Street, New York 10022. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” by Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne, published by Cahn Music Company and Morley Music Company.

  “A Fine Romance” by Dorothy Fields & Jerome Kern. Copyright © 1936 T. B. Harms Company (c/o The Welk Music Group, Santa Monica, CA 90401) Copyright renewed. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  The lines quoted in The Karapothas sequence linking Robinson Crusoe with Robert Knox’s An Historical Relation, published by the Ceylon Historical Association.

  The remarks by W. C. Ondaatje come from his “Report on the Royal Botanical Gardens, Peradeniya” which was published in Ceylon Almanac of 1853.

  An excerpt from Rex Daniels’ journal is used with his kind permission.

  Photograph of the 1947 Nuwara Eliya flood courtesy of Dr Wickrema Weerasooriya.

  Photograph of Sensation Rock from Cave’s Book of Ceylon.

  Every effort has been made to secure clearance for material used within this book.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael Ondaatje is the author of the internationally celebrated novels In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and, most recently, Anil’s Ghost. His other books include Running in the Family, Coming Through Slaughter, The Cinnamon Peeler, Handwriting, and The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, and came to Canada in 1962.

  He lives in Toronto.

  BOOKS BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE

  COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER

  This novel brings to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era; it is the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players, some say the originator of jazz, who was a genius, a guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76785-5

  THE ENGLISH PATIENT

  Winner of the Booker Prize

  During the final moments of World War II, four damaged people come together in a deserted Italian villa. As their stories unfold, a complex tapestry of image and emotion is woven, leaving them inextricably connected by the brutal circumstances of the war.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74520-4

  RUNNING IN THE FAMILY

  In the late 1970s, Michael Ondaatje returned to his native country of Sri Lanka. Recording his journey through the druglike heat and intoxicating fragrances of the island, Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family.

  Memoir/Literature/978-0-679-74669-0

  ALSO AVAILABLE:

  Anil’s Ghost, 978-0-375-72437-4

  The Cinnamon Peeler, 978-0-679-77913-1

  The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, 978-0-679-76786-2

  Divisadero, 978-0-307-27932-3

  Handwriting, 978-0-375-70541-0

  In the Skin of a Lion, 978-0-679-77266-8

  Lost Classics, 978-0-385-72086-1

  Vintage Ondaatje, 978-1-4000-7744-1

  VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL

  Available at your local bookstore, or visit

  www.randomhouse.com

  First Vintage International Edition, December 1993

  Copyright © 1982 by Michael Ondaatje

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, in 1982.

  This edition published by arrangement with W. W. Norton &

  Company, Inc., New York.

  Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ondaatje, Michael, 1943–

  Running in the family / Michael Ondaatje.—1st Vintage International

  ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-679-74669-2

  1. Ondaatje, Michael, 1943—–Biography—Youth.

  2. Authors, Canadian—20th century—Biography.

  3. Sri Lanka—Biography.

  I. Title.

  PR9199.3.05Z47 1993

  818’.5409—dc20

  [B] 93-10494

  CIP

  Vintage ISBN: 978-0-679-74669-0

  www.vintagebooks.com