The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [32]
It seemed like hours before someone nudged me. The storm was still active but calm enough now to send three sailors out to our rescue. They cut the ropes, the swelling knots had fused, and we were carried down a flight of stairs to a dining cabin that was doubling as a medical centre. There had been a few bashes to the head and broken fingers during the last hour or two. We were stripped down and each given a blanket. We were told we could sleep there. I recall that when I was lifted by the sailor, there was such warmth in his body. I remember that when someone removed my shirt he said that all of the buttons had been knocked loose.
I saw Cassius’s face as if all intricacy had been washed away. Then, just before we fell asleep, Cassius leaned over and whispered, “Don’t forget. Someone did this to us.”
A few hours later three officers were sitting across from us. We had been woken and I was now expecting the worst. We would be sent back to Colombo, perhaps, or beaten. But as soon as the officers sat down, Cassius said, “Someone did this to us, I don’t know who…. They were masked,” he added.
This startling revelation meant the interrogation by the officers would take much longer, in order for us to convince them this was the truth, though the burn marks from the ropes partly told them we could not have done this to ourselves. They offered us some ship tea, and we thought we had got away with our story, when a steward came in and said the Captain wished to see us. Cassius winked at me. He had often spoken of wanting to see the Captain’s cabin.
One of the officers, we discovered later, had already gone down to Ramadhin’s cabin, because of his known connection to us. Ramadhin had pretended sleep and when woken pretended a lack of knowledge once he was told we were alive and had not been washed overboard. That must have been around midnight. Now it was two in the morning. We were given bathrobes and marched into the presence of the Captain. Cassius was looking around the room, regarding the furnishings, when the Captain’s hand slammed down on his desk.
We had seen the Captain only look bored or smile falsely when making public announcements. Now he erupted with a performance, as if he had just been released from a cage. The reprimands began with a mathematical precision. He pointed out that eight sailors had been involved in our rescue—for more than thirty minutes. This resulted in at least, at least, four hours of wasted time, and as the average salary of a sailor was X pounds an hour, X times four was what it had cost the Orient Line, plus the Head Steward’s time at another Y pounds an hour. Plus double-time payments that were always made during emergencies. Plus the Captain’s time, considerably more expensive. “Our ship therefore will bill your parents for nine hundred pounds!” he said, signing some formal-looking papers that for all I knew could have been his memo to English Customs to keep us out of England. He slammed the table again, threatened that he would put us off at the ship’s first landfall, and proceeded to blaggard our ancestors. Cassius attempted to interrupt him with what he thought was a remark of courteous humility.
“Thank you so much for rescuing us, Uncle.”
“Shut up you … you”—he was searching—“viper.”
“Wiper, sir?”
The Captain paused and watched Cassius to determine if he was mocking him. He must have felt he was at a secure moral height.
“No. You are a polecat. An Asian polecat, a loathsome little Asian