The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [67]
We spoke often about the mysterious C.I.D. man. Who was he? What did he look like? For one whole afternoon Cassius and I followed any strange-looking personality on the boat, watching for abnormal behaviour. “There are two types of undercover,” Miss Lasqueti explained. “The social and the private. If you are undercover you make your friends quickly, compulsively. You enter a bar and you get to know every waitress and bartender. You sell your invented character, as quickly as possible. You know everyone’s first name. You have to be quick-witted and also think like a criminal. But there are the other undercover workers, who are more devious. Like this Perera, perhaps. He’s probably slithering around. It is just that we don’t recognize him yet. Giggs is the public side. And Perera—who knows?”
Apparently this invisible and “blind” Perera was a master of what was later called the “bump scenario.” This happens when an undercover policeman attaches himself to a criminal, befriending him and simultaneously instilling fear in him by revealing that he, the undercover policeman, is even more manic and dangerous. The gossip was that there had been a case where this Perera, in reality a mild-mannered family man, had walked a suspected gang member into the royal forest in Kandy and made him dig a grave. He insisted it be four feet long and three feet deep, so the body could be folded. There was to be an execution, he said, early the following morning. Assuming from this that Perera was intricately involved with high-level crime, the young gang member revealed his own criminal connections.
This was the kind of work Perera supposedly did on an average day or night for the C.I.D. But we knew none of this back then.
How Old Are You? What Is Your Name?
WHENEVER WE GOT CLOSE ENOUGH to speak with authorities, we found we had to spend our time answering questions. During the interrogation after the storm, while we shivered from cold more than fear, the Captain kept asking us how old we were. And when we answered he took it in, forgot it, and a minute later asked us again. We assumed he was slow or too speeded up, for he was on to that next question before even listening to our replies. Gradually we realized he was saying the line with a syrup of scorn all over it. That it had within it the invisible question: How foolish are you?
We felt we had simply committed a heroic gesture. Weren’t the hours we spent spread-eagled in the cyclone equal to that story where the sinner was blinded on the road to Damascus? Later in life it was comforting to discover that heroes such as Shackleton had been expelled from my school, probably for such things. “How old are you, sir!” barked by the headmaster to that too-ambitious and disobedient boy.
It was clear to us the Captain was not fond of his Asian cargo. For several nights he performed what he felt was a rollicking piece of verse written by A. P. Herbert, about growing nationalism in the East, that ended:
And all the crows in all the trees
cried “Banyan for the Banyanese!”
The Captain was proud of this party piece, and that was probably the time when my distrust of the authority and prestige of all Head Tables began. As well, there was the afternoon with the Baron when my eyes had gone back and forth between the noble bust of Hector de Silva and the seemingly lifeless body asleep on the bed. So that I found myself, shortly after his funeral, approaching the trestle table where the de Silva bust remained, as if forgotten. Cassius and I managed to lift it (he by the ears, me by the nose) and roll it over to the edge of the railing and let the graven image drop overboard to follow the