The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [43]
Another tea-time lecture was given a few hours later, to prepare us for the Suez Canal: on de Lesseps, and about the thousands of workers who died from cholera during its construction, as well as on the Canal’s present importance as a trade route. Ramadhin and I arrived early and scoured the buffet tables for the best sandwiches, which were supposed to be eaten only when the talk had ended. In mid-lecture I ran into Flavia Prins with two of her card-playing associates, while I was walking away from the food tables with several sandwiches balanced along my arm. She took in everything with a faltering of her eyes and walked past me without saying a word.
WE APPROACHED THE CANAL IN DARKNESS, at the stroke of midnight. A few passengers camped on the decks to take in the experience were half asleep, scarcely conscious of the clangs and bells that guided our ship into the narrow eye of the needle that was El Suweis. We paused to take on an Arab harbour pilot who climbed from his barge up a rope ladder. He walked slowly towards the bridge, ignoring all authority around him. This was his property now. He would be the one to take us into even shallower waters and adjust the angle of the ship so we could slip into the narrower canal on which we would travel the 190 kilometres to Port Said. We could see him in the brightly lit horizontal windows of the bridge beside the Captain and two other officers.
It was the night we never slept.
In less than half an hour we were sidling alongside a concrete dock with crates stacked into giant pyramids and men running with electrical cables and baggage carts alongside the slow-moving Oronsay. Everywhere there was fast, intense work under the pockets of sulphurous light. We could hear shouts and whistles, and in one of the intervals we heard barking that made Ramadhin think it was his dog from Aden, who was now attempting to get back to shore. The three of us hung over the railings, gulping in air, taking it in. This night turned out to be our most vivid memory of the journey, the time I stumble upon now and then in a dream. We were not active, but a constantly changing world slid past our ship, the darkness various and full of suggestion. Unseen tractors were grinding along the abutments. The cranes bent low, poised to pluck one of us off as we passed. We had crossed open seas at twenty-two knots, and now we moved as if hobbled, at the speed of a slow bicycle, as if within the gradual unrolling of a scroll.
Bundles were being flung up onto the foredeck. A rope had been fastened to the railing so a sailor could swing himself down to the passing land to sign territorial papers. I saw a painting leave the ship. In my sidelong glimpse it appeared familiar, I might have seen it in one of the First Class lounges. Why would a painting be removed from the ship? I could not tell whether everything taking place was carefully legal or a frenzy of criminality, for only a few officials oversaw what was going on, and all the deck lights were out and all activity was hushed. There were just the lit windows of the bridge, with the three constant silhouettes, as if puppets guided the ship, following the orders of the harbour pilot. He came out a few times onto the open deck and whistled into the night to instruct a man he recognized onshore. A concurring whistle replied and we’d hear the splash of a dropped chain and the bow of the ship would jerk suddenly,