The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [40]
Adults are always prepared for the gradual or sudden swerve in an oncoming story. Like the Baron, Mr. Mazappa would get off the boat when our ship reached Port Said and disappear from our lives—he had been overpowered by something in the few days before reaching Aden. And Mr. Daniels would become aware that Emily had no interest in him or his world of plants. And the millionaire’s death from his second dog bite was more tragic than exciting. Even our unfortunate Captain would continue his journey and find more chaos among his human cargo. They all must have been imprisoned or fated in some way. But for me, in that cabin, it was the first time I looked at myself with a distant eye, just as the neutral eyes of the distant young Queen had watched me all morning.
When I left Emily’s room (and there was to be no repeat of this intimacy), I knew I would always be linked to her, by some underground river or a seam of coal or silver—well, let us say silver, because she has always been important to me. In the Red Sea, I must have fallen in love with her. Though when I pulled away, the magnet of it, whatever it was, had gone.
How long was I in what felt like that sky-high bed with Emily? When we’ve met it is never mentioned. She may not even recall how much of my grief she took away or held on to, or for how long. I had never known the grip of another, or the smell of an arm that had just emerged from sleep. I had never wept beside someone who also excited me in a way I could not fathom. But there must have been an understanding in her as she looked down at me, and in her small courteous gestures.
Writing this, I do not want it to end until I can understand it better, in a way that would calm me even now, all these years later. For instance, how far did our intimacy go? I don’t know. It was, I believe, nothing of much importance to Emily. It was probably a casual if genuine kindness she gave me—and saying that takes nothing away from her gesture. “You should go now,” she said, and rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Broken heart, you
timeless wonder.
What a small
place to be.
“MY DREAMS,” EMILY SAYS, leaning forward across the table that separates us. “You would not want to know them, they are … I am surrounded by their darkness, the incessant danger. Clouds crash against each other, loudly. Does this happen to you?”
We were in London, some years later.
“No,” I say. “I rarely dream. I don’t seem to. Perhaps they emerge as daydreams.”
“Every night I go into them, and I wake up afraid.”
What was strange about this fear, almost guilt, was Emily’s ease with others during the day. It felt to me there was never darkness in her, there was instead the desire to comfort. Who or what caused this darkness in her? Now and then there would be a sense of separateness, when she seemed to give up on the world around her. And at those times she had an unreachable face. So for a while there was her “distance.” But when she returned to you, it was a gift.
Early on she had confessed a pleasure in danger. She was right about that. It was there like a joker, something that did not quite fit in her nature. There were always to be discoveries about her, some of them as small as that wink on the pier in Aden when she wanted me to guess at something. But a good part of her world, as I would come to know later, long after our time on the Oronsay, she kept to herself, and I have come to realize the gentleness of manner I spoke of must have grown naturally out of a disguised life.
Kennels
I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO FIND Mr. Hastie still in bed, reading a novel. “Good morning, young man,” he said, hearing me jump down from my top bunk. “Off with your pals?