The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [74]
Whitland,
Carmarthenshire
Dear Michael,
Please excuse the informality, but I knew you, oh years ago, as a boy. The other night I heard you speak on the radio. And at one point, when you mentioned coming to England on the Oronsay, I quickly focussed more on what was being said, for I too had been on that ship in 1954. So I kept listening, but I still did not know who you were. I could not connect the voice on the radio and the career you have had to who it was on the ship, until you mentioned your nickname, “Mynah.” And then I remembered you three boys, especially Cassius, that always watching child. And I remembered Emily.
One afternoon I invited you and Emily to my cabin for tea. I do not suppose you will remember this. Why should you. I was curious about all of you. The Whitehall in me made me curious I suppose. There was not much else going on during the sea journey, apart from you boys constantly getting into trouble…. But let me continue with my further reason for this letter, apart from sending you a delighted greeting.
It has been a wish of mine for quite some time to get in touch with Emily. I think of her often. For there was something I had wished to say to her during that journey but did not. I had thought that afternoon of simply removing you from the clutches of the Baron. But it was Emily I should have wanted to save. For I had run into her with the Jankla Troupe chap a few times and her relationship with him seemed fraught and dangerous. There was also something I had promised myself to give her that might be useful to her, to help her out, but again I never did. It was hardly apt. It was, shall we say, a future truth, though it was a story from years ago, from my own youth. So I have enclosed in this package that original missive, to be forwarded to your cousin. I did not know Emily well, but she struck me as one who, in spite of her generous self, needed protecting. I would appreciate it if you would send this enclosed package on to her.
I have made copies of some drawings I did on that voyage, perhaps you might enjoy them.
With affection,
Perinetta
It was a two-page letter, but the package she wished me to send on, with Emily’s name on it, was thick with pages, slightly yellowed.
I opened it. Writers are shameless. But let me just say, I had not seen Emily for years, and had no clue as to where she was. The last time we had spoken was at her wedding to a man named Desmond, just before they went abroad. I could not even remember to which country. After a brief hesitation, I opened Emily’s package and began reading the many pages, written in a small cursive script, as if to underline the privacy and intimacy of the letter. And as I read, I felt that this was about the incident in Miss Lasqueti’s past that she had referred to during that afternoon when I had gone to her cabin and found Emily already there. At some point, Emily asked Miss Lasqueti what she’d alluded to, about an earlier moment in her life that had allowed her to save herself. And Miss Lasqueti had said, “I’ll tell you about that some other time.”
I went to Italy in my twenties, for the language. I was fluid with languages and I loved Italian best. Someone suggested I apply to the Villa Ortensia for a job. A wealthy American couple, Horace and Rose Johnson, had bought it and were turning it into a great archive of art. They interviewed me twice and then took me on as a translator—of correspondence as well as for research and cataloguing. I’d cycle to work each day, arriving at the villa to work for six hours, then cycle home to a very small room I was renting in the city.
The owners had a son who was seven years old. He was a sweet boy and funny. He liked to watch me arrive on the bicycle, flustered, for I was nearly always late. He’d stand by the stone gate at the end of the villa’s long drive that was bordered by cypresses. Each day at 9:00 or just after, I’d be coming down the four-hundred-yard driveway and he’d be waving his arms and then pretend to