The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [83]
“Throw down the keys for my feet.” He was now speaking to the other guard. He must have known that each of them had a separate set of keys. Once more he spoke in a quiet voice that gave that powerless man power.
“The key, or I break his neck.”
The other guard did not move and Niemeyer twisted the body and the guard was still, perhaps unconscious. There was a moan. But it was not from the man but from the deaf girl, his daughter, who came out from the shadows. Clouds were beginning to race past the moon, so there was more light reflected on the deck. The horizon had cleared. If the prisoner was hoping to make his escape in darkness, it was not going to happen.
The girl came forward, bent over the stilled guard, and looked at her father and shook her head. Then she spoke to the other guard, in that difficult, unused voice. “Give him the key. For his feet. Please. He will kill him.” The second guard bent towards Niemeyer with the key, and she and the prisoner did not move while the man struggled with the lock. Then Niemeyer rose, his eyes darting and looking over the railing into the distance. Until that moment he must have been conscious only of his given space, the extent of the tether, but now there was the possibility of escape. His legs were free. Only his hands were chained together, with the padlock in front of him. Then the night watchman came out, saw it all, and blew his whistle. And suddenly everything was in motion, the deck filling with sailors, other guards, and passengers. Niemeyer took hold of the girl and ran, looking for some exit. He stopped at the stern railing. We thought he might leap over, but he turned around and looked back. But no one came close to him. We crept out of our corner. There was no use in hiding, there was no use in not being able to see properly.
For a moment everyone was poised there, with the lights of Naples, or was it Marseilles, in the far distance. Niemeyer moved forward with Asuntha, and as he did the crowd shifted back and a narrow path was created, the people not shouting but saying, as if complaining, “The girl! Release the girl! Let her go!” But no one dared block the pathway and contain him in the crowd, this manacled barefoot man with his daughter. And in all that time the girl did not scream. Her face remained the one unemotional thing amid the rage that was building, just her two large eyes watching everything as Niemeyer loped through this tunnel he had been allowed. “Release the girl!”
Then someone fired a pistol and lights went on everywhere, all over the deck, on the bridge above us, and in the windows of the dining room, and this unexpected abundant light spilled off the deck like liquid into the sea. We saw the ashen girl clearly. Someone yelled—it was precisely enunciated: “Do not give him the last key.” And I heard Ramadhin near me say very quietly, “Give him the key.” For all at once it was clear the prisoner was a danger to the girl, to everyone, without whatever key it was. If the girl’s face had no expression, the prisoner’s had a wild quality we had not witnessed during those nights when we had watched him walking the deck. Each time he moved, the narrow corridor widened to let him pass. He was contained in this limited freedom, with nowhere to go. Then he paused, held the girl’s face close to himself, in his large hands. And began to run again, dragging her through that tunnel of men. Suddenly he leapt onto the railing and hauled the girl up into his arms and stood there as if about to jump off the ship into the dark sea.
A searchlight moved slowly onto the two figures.
There was a growing wind we had been unaware of until