The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [60]
EXAMINATION BOOKLET: OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS,
Day 12 to Day 18
“Trust me—you can swallow strychnine as long as you don’t chew it.”
“Jasper Maskelyne, the conjurer, set up all the ‘bullshit’ work in the desert during the war. He actually became a magician when the war was over.”
“It is absolutely prohibited to throw anything over the ship’s side, Madame.”
“He’s one of the sexual predators on the ship. We call him ‘The Turnstile.’ ”
“We can’t get the key from Giggs….” “We’ll have to get it off Perera, then.” “But who is Perera?”
THOSE AT THE CAT’S TABLE continued to remain despondent over the departure of Mr. Mazappa, and it was for this reason that Mr. Daniels organized an informal dinner for its members, as well as a few extra guests. I was to invite Emily, who asked if she could bring along her friend Asuntha. More and more Emily appeared to be taking the deaf girl under her wing. The ayurvedic, at loose ends since the death of Hector de Silva, was also invited. He and Mr. Daniels were often seen walking the decks in animated conversation.
We all gathered in the turbine room, and soon we were climbing, one by one, down the metal ladder into the darkness. Only Ramadhin and Cassius and I, as well as the ayurvedic, had taken this journey to the “garden,” but the rest of the group had no idea where they were going and were murmuring to themselves. When we hit the bottom level, Mr. Daniels once again sped away into the hollow and mysterious world of the hold. There was some contained laughter as we passed the mural depicting the naked women. By now Cassius had got to know it well. One day, he had managed somehow to get into the hold alone, pushed a crate in front of the mural, and climbed up onto it so he was level with those vast bodies. All afternoon, he stood there, like that, in the semi-darkness.
Mr. Daniels ushered us on, and turning a corner, we saw in front of us his garden and a table covered with food. All the murmuring stopped. There was even music somewhere. Miss Quinn-Cardiff’s gramophone had been borrowed once more, this time from the watersiders who worked in another section of the hold, so Emily began selecting various 78s from the pile of records. We were told some of them had been left for us by Mr. Mazappa. Some guests walked on the ordered paths, alongside green fronds, the ayurvedic explaining—as if in secret, which was the way he always spoke—that oxalic acid from the star fruit was used to polish brass objects in temples. Emily, longing to dance, took the silent Asuntha in her arms, and swaying to the music, moved down a narrow path in her yellow dress, as if a star herself.
When I think of all our meals on the Oronsay, the first image is never of the formal dining room, where we had been placed so far away from the Captain, in the most unfavourable location, but of that lit rectangle somewhere in the bowels of the ship. We were handed a tamarind drink that I suspect must have had a finger of alcohol in it. Our host smoked one of his special cigarettes, and I noticed Miss Lasqueti, who was bending down to study some ankle-high plant, lift her head and sniff the air.
“You’re a complicated man,” she murmured, coming over to Mr. Daniels. “You could poison a dictator with some of these innocent-looking leaves.” Later, when Mr. Daniels described an antibacterial capsicum and a papaya that could be used to break up blood clots after surgery, she put her hand on his sleeve, and added, “Or Guy’s Hospital could use you.” The tailor, Mr. Gunesekera, drifting like a ghost among us, nodded in agreement, but he did that for any overheard remark, for it saved him from speaking. He watched as our host, standing now with the ayurvedic, pointed out the Madagascar periwinkles (for diabetes and leukemia, he announced), and then plucked several Indonesian sour limes, a “miracle fruit,” he called it, which he would be serving shortly.
And so we sat down to eat at a new Cat’s Table. The hanging lights swayed above us—somehow