The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [82]
I sat on the floor of Ramadhin’s cabin with Cassius. It was early, and both of us knew we had to talk to Ramadhin about what we had seen, for he was always the calmest, the clearest about what to do. We told him what we had overheard, and about Emily’s leaving then coming back, and the scene with Mr. Perera, and later seeing the body, hands clutching the cut neck. And our friend sat there and said nothing, gave no advice. He too was overwhelmed. We sat in silence, as we had after the incident of the dog and Hector de Silva.
Then Ramadhin said, “Of course you have to talk to her.”
But I had already gone to see Emily. She could barely get to the door to let me in, and in a minute had sat down in a chair and fallen asleep again, her body loose-limbed in front of me. I leaned forward and shook her. She had been smothered all night, she said, by strange dreams; perhaps she had been poisoned by the food at dinner.
“We all ate the same thing,” I said, “I wasn’t poisoned.”
“Can you give me something? Water …”
I brought her some, and she just held the glass on her lap.
“You were by the lifeboats, remember?”
“When? Let me sleep, Michael.”
I shook her again.
“Do you remember, you were on the deck last night?”
“I was here, wasn’t I?”
“And meeting someone.”
She moved around in her chair.
“I think you did something. Don’t you remember? Do you remember Mr. Perera?”
She propped herself up with difficulty and looked at me.
“Do we know who he is?”
Cassius and I walked to where we had last seen the body of Mr. Perera. We knelt down and looked for any traces of blood, but the deck was spotless.
I RETURNED TO MY CABIN AND STAYED there all day. The three of us had decided to keep to ourselves. There was some fruit Mr. Hastie kept in a cupboard to have during his card games, and I ate that in order to avoid lunch at the Cat’s Table.
I didn’t know if what I had seen was what I thought I had seen. There was nobody I could talk to. If I spoke to either Mr. Daniels or Miss Lasqueti, it would mean betraying what I knew about what Emily had done. My uncle was a judge, I thought. Perhaps he could save Emily. Or we could save her if we kept quiet. For some of the afternoon I went up and was on C Deck alone; then I came back and looked at my traced map to see how much farther we had to go. At some point I must have slept.
I heard the bell signalling dinner, and a short while later heard Ramadhin’s coded knock on my cabin door and opened it. He gestured to me and I went with him and Cassius. There was an alfresco dinner on trestle tables, and we ate where we could be by ourselves. When we walked away, Cassius was carrying a glass of something, full to the brim. “I think it’s Cognac,” he said. Up on the Promenade Deck we found a quiet place, and we stayed there through some bouts of rain, drinking the contents of Cassius’s glass as if we were poisoning ourselves.
The horizon was hazy, cut off, and we could see nothing. Then the rain ended. It meant there was a chance the prisoner’s night walk would not be cancelled. His appearance would mean a small renewal of order for the three of us. So we stayed on the deserted deck as it got darker.
The night watchman made his rounds, pausing at the railings, looking at the swells alongside the ship, then left. And sometime afterwards they brought the prisoner out.
There were only one or two lights on, at this section of the deck, so we were invisible. He stood with the two guards. His hands were still in their manacles, and as he moved forward the chain at his feet slid noisily on the deck behind him. Then he stood without moving, while they attached the heavier deck chain