The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [42]
Emily had whispered to me that the prisoner’s name was Niemeyer, something like that. It sounded too European, for he was clearly Asian. He looked a mixture of Sinhalese and something else. We overheard him speaking to a guard. It was a deep, calm voice, and he was slow with his words. Ramadhin thought it was a voice that could hypnotize you if you were alone in a room with him. My friend imagined all sorts of dangers. But Emily also mentioned his distinctive voice. She’d been told by someone that it was “convincing” but “scary.” Though when I asked who had told her, she clammed up. I was surprised. I felt I was enough of a confidant to be trusted by her. Then she added, “It is someone else’s secret. Not mine. I can’t give it to you, all right?”
In any case, Niemeyer’s return to our deck for his nocturnal walks made us feel that some order had been restored. And we began to camp in one of the lifeboats, in order to look down at him. We listened to the hellish chains scrape the deck. He would pause at the end of his tether and look into the night as if he could clearly make out what was there, as if there were a person miles away in the black of the desert who was witnessing his every move. Then he’d turn and come back along the same path. Eventually they unpinned the iron collar from his neck. We heard some quiet words back and forth between him and the guards, and he was led below deck to a place we could only imagine.
“ATTENTION STRETCHER PARTY, stretcher party—proceed to badminton court on A deck.” We ran to the source of the urgency. This was one of the more interesting announcements we had heard so far from the loudspeakers. More often they announced afternoon lectures in the Clyde Room about “The Laying of the Undersea Cables Between Aden and Bombay,” or that a Mr. Blackler would speak on “A Recent Reconstruction of Mozart’s Piano.” Before The Four Feathers had been screened, a chaplain had given a talk titled “The Crusades, Pro and Con: Did England Go Too Far?” Ramadhin and Mr. Fonseka went to that lecture and returned to tell us that apparently the speaker felt the English did not go far enough.
A NEW RUMOUR PERCOLATED DOWN that the days-old corpse of Hector de Silva would soon be buried at sea. The Captain wished to wait until we reached the Mediterranean, but the all-powerful de Silva widow was now insisting on a quick, private burial. And so, within the space of an hour everyone had discovered the location and time of the ceremony. Stewards roped off a section of the stern where the service would take place, but gawkers soon assembled behind the rope and crowded the metal stairways, and looked down from the higher-deck levels. A few less impressed souls regarded the proceedings through the windows of the smoking room. As a result, the body—really the first sighting of Hector de Silva for most of us—had to be carried along a very narrow aisle, grudgingly allowed by the crowd. It was followed by his widow, his daughter, his three doctors (one of them dressed in full village regalia), and the Captain.
I had never been to a funeral, let alone one for which I was partially responsible. I saw Emily a few yards away and got a cautious look from her that included a slight shake of the head. I saw the Baron standing quite close to the de Silva family. Everyone from the Cat’s Table was there. Even Mr. Fonseka had left his cabin and come up for the ceremony. He stood next to us dressed in a black coat and tie, something he had probably bought in Kundanmals in the Fort for his English sojourn.
We looked down at the small figures of the entourage, surrounding the trestle table that held the bust of Hector de Silva and some flowers. We were barely able to hear the last rites. The voice of the priest faltered and disappeared in the shuddering winds coming from