Children on a ship, possibly from the cat's table, observing their surroundings, embodying youthful curiosity and adventure.
The rhythmic roar of sea waves was the defining soundtrack of my childhood mornings. Sundays began not with an alarm, but with the ebb and flow of the tide, a constant dialogue between the Bay of Bengal and the shore. Coconut trees, lush and tall, framed my window, obscuring a direct view of the sea. To truly witness the expanse of the bay, a climb up the staircase was required – a Sunday expedition deemed too ambitious for a ten-year-old. Instead, I would lie in bed, sunlight dappled by leaves dancing across my face, and listen. The waves, in my young imagination, spoke a language of presence and absence: I am here, they declared as they crashed onto the sand, and I am gone, they whispered as they retreated.
Years later, a serendipitous moment arrived when I encountered Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The Cat’s Table, a narrative centered on a transformative sea voyage. On that very same day, I also acquired a miniature ship, lovingly handcrafted by a Turkish artist from ocean-salvaged remnants – driftwood, tattered sailcloth, and weathered mooring hooks. This small, found-object vessel resonated deeply, mirroring the journey about to unfold in the pages of Ondaatje’s book and echoing the distant yet vivid memories of my own seaside upbringing.
Setting Sail with the Crew
The handcrafted boat, imbued with coastal memories, shaped my reading of The Cat’s Table. Superficially, the novel recounts a sea journey undertaken by Michael, the protagonist, from Sri Lanka to London. He is en route to reunite with his mother, a figure absent from his life for five years. (Ondaatje, in a note of authorial transparency, clarifies that while the narrative draws inspiration from his own life, it remains unequivocally a work of fiction, despite the protagonist sharing his name.)
However, the anticipation of reaching his destination soon dissolves in young Michael’s mind. The immediate, immersive reality of life aboard the Oronsay ocean liner swiftly captivates his senses and thoughts. He forges an alliance with Cassius and Ramadhin, boys his age, and together they transform into shipboard spies. They lurk in lifeboats, observing a mysterious prisoner during his nightly walks. They become clandestine witnesses to Michael’s cousin Emily’s burgeoning and turbulent romance with a performer from the ship’s entertainment troupe. They share illicit cigarettes on a broken deck chair. They dive into the ship’s pool, retrieving discarded spoons as if on a treasure hunt. In a moment of youthful bravado, they even persuade Ramadhin to lash them to the deck amidst a raging storm, the tempestuous sea and wind swallowing their cries for help in a symphony of natural chaos.
Beyond these boyhood adventures, Michael absorbs the adult world through keen observation. He notices Mr. Daniel, a man who cultivates a secret garden of exotic plants and herbs in the ship’s underbelly. He is intrigued by Asuntha, a deaf girl guarding a critical secret about the onboard prisoner, possessing the uncanny ability to “take the tremor of air and interpret it into sound, then words.” And then there’s Miss Lasqueti, an enigmatic woman who favors a leather jacket and harbors pigeons within its folds. Michael encounters many of these fascinating individuals at the Cat Table, the least desirable dining spot on the ship, relegated to the periphery, furthest from the Captain’s esteemed table. This positioning allows Michael a unique vantage point, an outsider’s perspective from which to observe the intricate social dynamics and hidden stories of the ship’s inhabitants.
Navigating Shifting Perceptions
“The card is the same, but its meaning changes, it shifts according to the position.” This tarot card reading analogy, shared with a client, mirrors the fluid, often contradictory nature of the adult world as perceived by young Michael. Just as the meaning of a tarot card morphs depending on its placement in a reading, the adults around Michael exhibit inconsistent behaviors, complicating his understanding of them.
Miss Lasqueti, seemingly a purveyor of harmless mystery novels, throws more than just paperback thrillers overboard. Her leather jacket conceals not only pigeons but also a gun, hinting at a hidden, perhaps dangerous past. During a visit to her cabin, Michael glimpses a Buddhist figurine marred by a scar, an unexplained detail that adds to her enigmatic persona. The ship’s pianist, Mr. Mazappa, abruptly disembarks, leaving Michael to ponder the reasons behind his departure. Mr. Daniel’s mimicry of his plants’ postures suggests a peculiar connection to the natural world, while Mr. Fonseka remains perpetually secluded in his cabin, shrouded in mystery. Even Hector de Silva, an affluent passenger seemingly burdened by a curse and desperately trying to evade fate, unveils long-held secrets to his wife, secrets previously guarded and unspoken.
Not all these questions find resolution, and not all answers are readily apparent or even necessary. Ondaatje offers subtle clues, enough for the reader to intuit that these characters are shaped, perhaps even damaged, by their pasts, by the people they once were. The cat table becomes a silent witness to these unfolding dramas, a place where fragments of lives intersect and stories are subtly revealed.
Echoes of Time and Memory
The narrative structure of The Cat’s Table gracefully shifts between timelines. The majority of the sections are anchored to the sea journey itself, chronicling the experiences of the child Michael aboard the Oronsay. Interspersed within these are sections set in the present, where Michael, now an adult, reflects on his formative voyage, retrospectively piecing together the significance of what he witnessed as a boy. Child Michael lives the journey in the moment, while adult Michael interprets and understands it through the lens of time and maturity. This dual perspective enriches the narrative, allowing for both immediate experience and thoughtful reflection.
Michael’s most defining childhood relationship is with his cousin Emily. When he smuggles a dog onboard, an act that results in a bite incident involving the wealthy passenger Hector de Silva, it is Emily in whom he confides. A rare moment of tenderness unfolds as he weeps on her shoulder, a gesture of complete vulnerability. This intimacy, however, remains fleeting. Such open vulnerability may not resurface between them until years later, when adult Michael encounters Emily again on an island, a chance reunion with a woman now divorced, no longer the agile girl who once formed the apex of a human pyramid for Sunil and his troupe on the ship.
The adult iterations of his shipmates, encountered later in life, are often depicted as having misplaced loyalties or bearing the weight of past choices. Miss Lasqueti’s revealed past casts a shadow over her earlier shipboard persona. Ramadhin, plagued by an unstable heart, tragically dies while protecting a student. Ironically, Cassius, the most reckless of the trio, emerges seemingly unscathed, pursuing a life as an artist. These contrasting trajectories underscore the unpredictable nature of life’s journey and the lasting impact of choices made, observed from the vantage point of the cat table‘s quiet observer.
A memorable scene depicts a movie screening on the ship, a shared cinematic experience fragmented by the vessel’s structure. Reels are shuttled between the upper deck and the main deck, creating an echo effect where viewers glimpse fragments of the next scene even as they watch the current one. During a storm, the screen is ripped away, becoming a ghostly sail adrift on the sea, while the projector continues to cast its images onto the vast, indifferent sky. This symbolic incident mirrors the novel’s exploration of the “double-sidedness” of people, their pasts constantly reverberating into their present and future selves, creating a sense of vagueness that strives for tangible understanding but never fully grasps it. The cat table participants, much like the fragmented movie audience, experience life in glimpses and echoes.
Anchored to the Past, Adrift in the Present
Michael, a ten-year-old boy, is in transit, leaving his Sri Lankan home permanently to join his mother in London. Aboard the ship, a profound longing for his birthplace surfaces. As an adult reflecting on this pivotal sea voyage, he poignantly observes, “grandeur had not been added to my life but had been taken away. As night approached, I missed the chorus of insects, the howls of garden birds, gecko talk. And at dawn, the rain in the trees, the wet tar on Bullers Road, rope burning on the street that was always one of the first palpable smells of the day.” This deep yearning for the familiar scents and sounds of home draws the child Michael to Mr. Fonseka. The scent of burning hemp rope, an olfactory anchor to his hometown, leads him to Fonseka’s cabin. Fonseka, with his island manners and accent, and his recitations from ancient texts, ignites in Michael a lifelong love for stories and poetry, offering a connection to his past even as he journeys towards an uncertain future. The conversations, perhaps initiated at or inspired by the spirit of observation fostered at the cat table, become formative.
Minor Characters, Major Themes
Ondaatje masterfully populates the Oronsay with a tapestry of minor characters, each offering fleeting yet insightful glimpses into the overarching themes of the novel. There’s the Russian girl, a vision of fleeting grace as she skates across the upper deck in the mornings, and Hector de Silva’s assistant, who loses his glass eye in the storm, a comical yet poignant detail. These “story people,” as Ondaatje terms them, serve to reinforce the novel’s central ideas: the pervasive influence of the past on the present – a “present-continuous” state – and the enduring consequences of choices related to trust, particularly those made in moments of vulnerability. These vulnerabilities, perhaps observed and understood more acutely from the outsider perspective of the cat table, shape the characters’ trajectories.
Years after Ramadhin’s death in London, Michael’s decision to marry Ramadhin’s sister, Massi, is subtly linked to this enduring past. At Ramadhin’s funeral, within the familiar walls of a childhood home, Michael senses Massi’s gaze, feeling she “could have hauled out some perception of me from our past and placed it adjacent to what she was seeing now.” Their marriage, however, is not destined to last. Shortly before their separation, a small gesture from Massi reveals to Michael the inevitable parting, rooted in the poignant realization that “when we are searching for an example of what we no longer have, we see it everywhere.” This sentiment, resonant with the themes explored throughout The Cat’s Table, underscores the novel’s exploration of memory, loss, and the ever-present shadow of the past.
Ports of Call, Pauses for Reflection
The Oronsay makes port in Aden and Port Said, brief interludes in the long sea journey. These sojourns offer more than just glimpses of new locales. They serve to highlight the contrast between Michael’s present life on the ship and his remembered past in Sri Lanka. Upon experiencing the market in Aden, he reflects, “I was used to the lush chaos of Colombo’s Pettah market, that smell of sarong cloth being unfolded and cut…and mangosteens and rain-soaked paperbacks.” Aden, in comparison, feels sterner, less opulent. These port visits, much like the cat table itself, are pauses for observation and reflection, moments to juxtapose present experiences with cherished memories.
These stops also provide distractions for the children. In Aden, they encounter the “Gully Gully man,” who approaches the ship by canoe, producing chickens from within his clothing in a bewildering street performance. Carpet sellers offer the boys a dog, a tempting yet ultimately impractical proposition for shipboard life. Approaching Port Said, a sandstorm arises, “a last gasp from Arabia,” a dramatic, almost theatrical farewell from the desert landscape.
Another symbolic “sojourn” occurs onboard: a special dinner arranged by Mr. Daniel, the botanist, in his plant-filled sanctuary, honoring the departing Mr. Mazappa. In the dim, artificially misted and dimly lit space, the cat table members gather for a meal unlike any other. “It was a meal none of us rushed. Each of us looked shadowed, abandoned, until we leaned forward to be caught in the light.” This carefully constructed, almost theatrical dinner, provides a moment of shared intimacy and reflection for the cat table regulars, a temporary escape from the ship’s routine.
Proust’s Madeleine, Cassius’s Canvas
Miss Lasqueti, recalling a past mentor who revealed the more vibrant colors on the underside of a tapestry, quotes him: “This is where the power is, you see. Always. The underneath.” Years later, adult Michael visits an art gallery exhibiting paintings by Cassius, his childhood shipmate. Through Cassius’s art, Michael discovers the “underside” of their shared past, the unspoken emotional landscape of their time together on the Oronsay. The paintings, depicting the ship’s arrival in Port Said, are rendered from a child’s perspective. Viewing them, Michael feels he is witnessing “where Cassius was emotionally, when he was doing these paintings,” gaining a deeper understanding of his friend’s inner world, a world perhaps only hinted at during their cat table conversations.
“Goodbye,” Michael recalls, “we were saying to all of them. Goodbye.” This sense of farewell permeates the novel, a constant undercurrent of parting and transition.
Reflecting on my own childhood sea-view terrace, I recall a photograph I once took of the morning sea, years before the advent of digital cameras. Scanning and zooming into the details now, I notice previously unseen elements: the ships entering the dock. The morning waves, my childhood alarm clock, were accompanied by the foghorns of ships arriving from distant ports, vessels bringing cotton and departing with coconuts and lobsters. These fleeting thoughts of trade and transaction would briefly surface, mirroring the wave’s dialogue with the shore: Now the ships and goods are there. Now they are not. I am there. I am not there. Just as the cat table offered a transient space for observation and connection on the Oronsay, the ships in port represented fleeting encounters, arrivals and departures, echoing the ephemeral nature of time and memory, themes beautifully explored in Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table.
