The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [68]
Perhaps we had by then outgrown our curiosity about the powerful. We were preferring the gentle Mr. Daniels, after all, obsessed with the care of his plants, and the pale figure of Miss Lasqueti, who wore her pigeon jacket replete with cushioned pockets for the transporting of her birds. It would always be strangers like them, at the various Cat’s Tables of my life, who would alter me.
The Tailor
THE MOST RESERVED DINER at our table was Mr. Gunesekera, the tailor. He had introduced himself, when he settled among us that first day, by simply handing out his card. Sew Gunesekera. Prince Street, Kandy. In this way he announced his profession. During all our meals he remained silent and content. He laughed when the rest of us laughed, so there was never awkward silence from his seat at the table. But whether he understood what was being joked about, I don’t know. I suspected not. Still, he was the gracious and courteous one among us, even if he felt we were raucous at times, especially when Mr. Mazappa’s horse laugh got activated. He’d be the first to pull out a chair for Miss Lasqueti, and simply by reading our gestures would pass the salt, or would fan his mouth to warn us the soup was hot. And he always appeared to be interested in what was being said. But so far, during the whole journey, Mr. Gunesekera had not said a word. Even if we spoke to him in Sinhala, he would give a complex shrug and circle his head to excuse his evasion.
He was a slight, thin man. While he ate I’d watch his graceful fingers that could sew up a storm somewhere on Prince Street, where perhaps he was jocular with his chosen company. One evening at dinner, Emily had come over to our table with a livid welt near her eye; she had been hit that afternoon by a badminton racquet. And Mr. Gunesekera, his face showing alarm, swivelled in his seat and put out his hand to touch around the swelling with those delicate fingers, as if searching for the cause of it. Emily, suddenly moved by this, put her hand on his shoulder and then held those fingers briefly. It was one of the rare quiet moments at our table.
Mr. Nevil later pointed out that there appeared to be a more serious wound across Mr. Gunesekera’s throat, which he kept covered with the red cotton scarf he always wore. Now and then, if the scarf slipped, we could sometimes see the scar. After this was noticed we did not bother Mr. Gunesekera with questions. We never asked him why he was going to England, if it was because of the loss of a relative or for some specific medical treatment regarding his vocal cords. It seemed unlikely he would be going there for a vacation in a condition where he would not or could not communicate with anyone.
EACH MORNING, THE SUN BARELY UP, I licked salt off the ship’s railings, believing by now that I could distinguish between the taste of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. I dove into the pool and swam frog-like under the surface, tumbled over at the end of a length and returned underwater, testing the limit of my lungs, my two hearts. I witnessed Miss Lasqueti becoming irritated with the thriller she was rushing through, preparing to fling it into whatever sea we were in. And with the others, I drank in the presence of Emily as she sauntered by and talked with us.
“You must never feel unimportant in the scheme of things,” Mr. Mazappa told me once. Or it may have been Miss Lasqueti. I am not sure who it was anymore, for by the end of our journey their opinions had dove-tailed. Looking back, I am no longer certain who gave me what pieces of advice, or befriended us, or deceived us. And some events sank in only much later.
Who was it, for example, who first described to us the Palace of Ship Owners in Genoa? Or is it possibly a memory of my own from later, when as an adult I entered that building and climbed the stone stairs to each new level? Because there is something about the image that I have held on to for all these years, as if it explains how we approach the future, or look back at the past. A person begins on the ground floor of