The Cat's Table begins with an 11 year old boy being placed, unsupervised, on an immense ship going from Ceylon to England where he will meet his barely remembered mother and start a new life. Since Michael Ondaatje made this same trip at the same age, it begs the question: Just how autobiographical is this tale? From the book:
The three weeks of the sea journey, as I originally remembered it, were placid. It is only now, years later, having been prompted by my children to describe the voyage, that it becomes an adventure, when seen through their eyes, even something significant in a life. A rite of passage.
And an explanation from an interview with the author:
Well, what happened was a few years ago I was talking to my children, who have now grown up, and I said I was put on this ship and there was no parental guidance, nothing. And they were appalled.
And I said, actually, it is appalling.
So I thought, my God, there's a wonderful story here, and I will just invent this adventure that takes place on this ship during that time. So even though I'm using a kind of an element of memoir or seeming autobiography, all the characters in the story and all the adventures in fact are fictional.
Well, that's too bad, because even though the fictional memoirist says that he only sees the voyage as an adventure through his children's eyes in retrospect, The Cat's Table is packed with intrigue and hijinks and I enjoyed the idea of the boy and his two new companions -- bursting all over the place like freed mercury -- spying on the predawn Australian roller skater, aiding the robber Baron, solving the mystery of the prisoner in chains, and in my favourite scene, lashing themselves to the deck as a huge storm approaches:
With each wave it sounded as if the ship was breaking apart, and with each wave the wash covered us until we were tilted upright again. We were aware of a constant rhythm. Whenever the ship ploughed into the oncoming sea, we were swept around within the surf, unbreathing, while the stern rose in the air, the propellers out of their element screaming till they fell back down into the sea, and we on the bow leapt up again, unnaturally.
This is a placid journey? Even when the three boys weren't living up to their pledge (Each day we had to do at least one thing that was forbidden), they were gaining an invaluable education from the Dickensian adults who shared their company in the dining room at the Cat's Table -- the table furthest from the Captain's, and therefore the one with the least prestige -- and by being nearly invisible to these adults, the boys had a front row seat to their mysterious grown up ways.
The writing in The Cat's Table is gorgeous and lyrical, making the quiet moments as interesting as the audacious ones:
There was darkness all around us but we knew how to walk through it. We slid silently into the swimming pool, relit our twigs, and floated on our backs. Silent as corpses we looked at the stars. We felt we were swimming in the sea, rather than a walled-in pool in the middle of the ocean .
And the scene describing going through the Suez Canal at night was beautiful and mysterious:
We were not active, but a constantly changing world slid past our ship, the darkness various and full of suggestion… I could not tell whether everything taking place was carefully legal or a frenzy of criminality, for only a few officials oversaw what was going on, and all the deck lights were out and all activity was hushed.
Beyond an adventure tale, however, The Cat's Table is justifiably called a rite of passage novel, too, by the narrator in later years as he looks back on how the events and relationships on board the ship affected the man that he became. In fact, his friendship with the two boys he met at the Cat's Table -- Ramadhin and Cassius -- along with the time he spent with his lovely but troubled cousin, Emily, might be the most important relationships he was to ever forge, despite losing touch with all of them.
As a curious aside, although it's called "The Cat's Table", there are many, many dogs in this book (33 references). Much is also made of hearts:
We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.
I am someone who has a cold heart.
I once had a friend whose heart "moved" after a traumatic incident that he refused to recognize.
Ramadhin's heart…his unsafe heart…his tentative heart…the heart Ramadhin has protected all his life.
The knifing near to my left heart…I said left heart, for men have two. Two hearts. Two kidneys. Two ways of life.
I listened to an audiobook of this novel, which was narrated by the author. I see some people found his voice to be boring, complain that Ondaatje didn't put on obviously different voices for the different characters, but this to me was not a drawback: I found his level reading tone to be smooth and soothing, like listening to a seasoned storyteller at a campfire. His slight accent is also charming for this experience as it highlights the fact that he actually made this voyage.
What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.
And as a last personal reflection tied to this last quote, this was a very interesting experience for me after having recently read The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold. In that semi-autobiographical book, an Englishman embarks on the reverse trip, from England to Ceylon, in the same time period and on a similar ship (also formerly used by the British Navy during WWII). The biggest difference was, however, that being a famous writer, Gilbert Pinfold is seated at the Captain's Table where he does engage in "familiar rhetoric" with his powerful tablemates. Although Pinfold is dismissive of who he deems to be the low class Indians on his ship, and even though he was definitely not trying to make friends on his voyage, he just may have had a more enjoyable experience if he, too, had found his way to the Cat's Table.
