The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [65]
She spoke with difficulty, with her already slurring words. She appeared to be in a state of worthlessness, her talent no longer in her. He stayed in her room all evening, not letting her out of his sight, and the next morning he took her, as had been planned, to the prison where her father was being held. He waited outside when they let her in to see him.
Her father leaned forward, and spoke a name. “Oronsay,” he said. “Sunil and others will be on the same ship, to look after me.” The vessel was going to England and they would help him escape. Then he put his face almost between the bars and continued speaking to her.
Outside the prison, she saw the slim figure of Sunil waiting for her. She came up to him, held the back of his neck and spoke into his ear, told him what she felt she had to do, that her life was no longer for herself, but for her father.
The Mediterranean
RAMADHIN POSITIONED HIMSELF in the shadows.
Cassius and I were crouched in a lifeboat that hung in the air. And on deck below us, Emily was whispering to the man named Sunil. We had guessed correctly where they might be, and could hear each word, their whispers magnified within the shell of the lifeboat. Any sound they made filled our darkness, while we waited there in the claustrophobic heat.
“No, not here.”
“Here,” he said.
Some rustling.
“Then let—”
“Your mouth. So sweet,” he was saying.
“Yes. The milk.”
“Milk?”
“I ate an artichoke during dinner. If you eat an artichoke and then drink milk, the milk tastes sweet…. Even if there is wine, I ask for milk. If I have eaten an artichoke.”
We did not understand what they were talking about. Perhaps the conversation was in a special code. There was a long silence. Then a laugh.
“I must go back soon….” Sunil said.
Whatever was occurring was not understood by us. Cassius leaned over to me and whispered, “Where is the artichoke?”
I heard the strike of a match, and soon could smell her cigarette smoke. Player’s Navy Cut.
Suddenly, as if they were now strangers, a more cautious conversation started between them. It was confusing. The artichoke dialogue had left us in a different place. Now it was talk about schedules, how often the night watchman patrolled the Promenade Deck, the hour the prisoner had his meals, and when he was given his walks. “There’s something I want you to do,” Sunil was saying, and then they were whispering quietly.
“Can he even do such a thing?” Emily’s voice was suddenly clear in the darkness. She sounded scared.
“He knows when the guards will be most relaxed, or tired. But he’s still weak from the beating.”
“What beating? When did that happen?”
“After the cyclone.”
We remembered then how the prisoner had missed some of his night walks shortly before Aden.
“They must have suspected something.”
Suspected what?
It was as if Cassius and I could hear each other thinking in the dark, the slow machinery of our young brains attempting to cope with this brusque information.
“You must make sure he will meet you here. Tell us when. We’ll be ready.”
She was silent.
“He will be eager for you.” He said this and laughed. “You must not dissuade him.”
I thought I heard him mention Mr. Daniels’s name, but then he began talking about a man named Perera, and after a while I could barely keep my eyes open. When they left I wanted to sleep where I was, but Cassius shook me and we climbed out of the lifeboat.
Mr. Giggs
THE PRESENCE OF AN ENGLISH OFFICIAL on board the Oronsay had been of little importance to the passengers during the first part of the journey. We would see him wander the decks alone and then climb to the narrow terrace in front of the bridge, where he sat on a canvas chair as if he were the owner of the vessel. But gradually it became known that Mr. Giggs was a high-level army officer who’d been sent out to Colombo and—so rumour had it—was twinned with a person from the Criminal Investigation Department in Colombo, now travelling undercover. Both were in charge of escorting the prisoner Niemeyer to face trial in England. It was said