The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [37]
Once back on board, the three of us made our way down to Ramadhin’s cabin, where he unfolded his djellaba to reveal the carpet salesman’s dog again.
We came on deck an hour later. It was already dark, and the lights on the Oronsay were brighter than those on land. The ship had still not moved. In the dining room there were loud conversations about the day’s adventures. Only Ramadhin and Cassius and I kept silent. We were so excited by our smuggling of the dog onto the boat we knew that if we spoke just one syllable, we’d slide uncontrollably into the whole story. We had spent the past chaotic hour trying to bathe the animal in Ramadhin’s narrow shower stall, avoiding the swipe of its claws. It was clear the creature had never met carbolic soap in his life. We’d dried the dog in Ramadhin’s bedsheet and left him in the cabin while we went up to eat.
We listened to the stories as we sat at the Cat’s Table, with people interrupting one another. The women were silent. And the three of us were silent. Emily passed by our table and bent down to ask me if I had had a good day. I asked her politely what she had done while we had gone ashore, and she said she had spent the day “carrying things,” then winked at me and went off laughing. One of the things we had missed while walking around Aden was the “Gully Gully man,” who had rowed up to the Oronsay and performed magic tricks. Apparently his canoe was partially boarded up so he could stand on a sort of stage while he made chickens appear from his clothing. By the end of his act there were over twenty chickens fluttering around him. There were many Gully Gully men, we were told, and with luck there would be another at Port Said.
There was a shudder during dessert as the boat’s engines started. We all got up and went out to the railings to watch the departure, our castle slipping away slowly from the thin horizon of lights, back into the great darkness.
WE GUARDED THE DOG THAT NIGHT. He was fearful of our sudden movements, until Ramadhin managed to bring him into his bunk and fall asleep with his arms around him. When the three of us woke the next morning we had already entered the Red Sea, and it was during this passage, on the first day steaming north, that something astonishing happened.
It had always been difficult to penetrate the barrier that separated us from First Class. Two polite and determined stewards either let you through or turned you away. But even they could not stop Ramadhin’s small dog. He had leapt out of Cassius’s arms and bolted from the cabin. We ran up and down the empty hallways looking for him. Within moments the little fellow must have emerged into the sunlight of B Deck and run beside the railings, raced perhaps into the lower ballroom, up its gilded staircase, and past the two stewards into First Class. They managed to grab him, but soon he was free again. He had eaten none of the food we had offered him, which we’d smuggled out of the dining room in our trouser pockets, so perhaps he was looking for something to eat.
No one was able to corner him. Passengers saw him for just a blurred moment. He did not seem at all interested in humans. Well-dressed women crouched down, calling out high-pitched, artificial-sounding greetings, but he charged past them all without a pause and into the cherrywood cave of the library, and disappeared somewhere beyond that. Who could know what he was after? Or what he was feeling, in that no doubt pounding heart? He was just a hungry or scared dog on this claustrophobic ship whose alleyways suddenly became cul-de-sacs, as he ran farther and farther from any sign of daylight. Eventually the creature made his way trotting along a mahogany-panelled, carpeted hall and slipped through a half-open door into a master suite, as someone left it carrying a full tray. The dog jumped up onto an oversized bed, where Sir Hector de Silva