The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [33]
“I like polecats, sir.”
“You repulsive, wet, snivelling …”
In the silence that followed, as he continued searching for insults, the door to the Captain’s bathroom swung open and we saw his enamel commode. We were no longer interested in the Captain. Cassius groaned and said, “Uncle, I feel sick…. Would it be possible to use your—”
“Get out! You little cunt!”
We were escorted by two sailors to our cabins.
Flavia Prins peered closely at her bracelet as she spoke to me in the slightly damaged Caledonia Room. An abrupt note from her had insisted I meet her promptly. We had by now been processed through various interrogators, and it had been insisted in every case that we never mention what had occurred. Or we would be in more trouble. But we had mentioned it to two of our tablemates during the next morning’s breakfast. The dining room was almost empty, and only Miss Lasqueti and Mr. Daniels were eating with us. When we told them, they did not seem to think it was that serious. “Not for you, but damn serious for them,” Miss Lasqueti said. She was, we would discover, one for the rule books. Besides, she was more impressed by Ramadhin’s knots, which she said had “saved your bacon.” But now, as I approached Flavia Prins, I realized I might be in trouble with my unofficial guardian. She loosened and resnapped her bracelet, ignoring me, then struck like a bird suddenly pecking at the forehead of a dog.
“What happened last night?”
“There was a storm,” I said.
“You thought there was a storm?”
I wondered if she was quite unaware of what we had travelled through.
“There was a terrible storm, Auntie. We were all scared. We were shaking in our beds.”
She said nothing, so I carried on.
“I had to call a steward. I kept falling out of my bed. I walked in the hall till I found Mr. Peters, and asked him to tie me to the bed, and also if he could tie Cassius up too. Cassius had nearly broken his arm when the ship rolled and something fell on him. He has a bandage.”
She gazed at me, not quite with awe.
“I saw the Captain last night, in the hospital, when I took Cassius there. He clapped Cassius on the back and called him a ‘brave fellow.’ Then Mr. Peters came down with us and tied us to our beds. He said there was a man and a woman playing in one of the lifeboats when the storm happened and they hurt themselves when it crashed down onto the deck. They are all right, but his ‘this thing’ is hurt. He had to go to the surgery also.”
“I know your uncle very well….” She paused for tremendous effect. I was wary of this sentence of hers and began to sense she knew more of last night’s events than I thought.
“And I knew your mother, slightly. Your uncle is a judge! How dare you speak such falsehoods to me—who is so concerned about your safety.”
I blurted out, “They told me not to say anything, to say nothing about Mr. Peters. They said Mr. Peters is a ‘rogue sailor,’ Auntie. They said they will put him off at first landfall. When we asked him to tie us to our bunks for safety, instead, he took us up and tied us to the deck with these ropes, to punish us for … interrupting the card game he was having with some drunk men. He said, ‘This is what we do to disobedient boys who keep interrupting us!’ ”
She peered at me. I thought I had her for a moment.
“I never, ever, ever met …” She walked away.
Not much happened during the next day. An eastbound steamer passed us at dusk one evening, all of its lights on, and it was a fantasy among the three of us to row over to it and return with them to Colombo. The chief engineer ordered the engines be slowed while the emergency electrical systems were tested, and for a while it seemed we had stalled in what was now the Arabian Sea. The stillness made us feel we were sleepwalking. Cassius and I went out on the becalmed deck. It was only then, in that peacefulness, that I imagined the full nature of the storm. Of being roofless and floorless. What we had witnessed was only what had been above the sea. Now