The Cat's Table

By Michael Ondaatje

A story set to charm about a young boy's voyage on a great ocean liner (A castle carrying with it two chlorinated pools over the ocean) alone to meet his mother. Spare and enjoyable with memorable flashes of images and then sickeningly rich with symbols and portentous actions. The abandoned daughter who chances upon a roving gymnastics troupe and learns enough to vault over to her handcuffed father with the key in her mouth which she passes to him as they plunge off the ship. The governess whose employer seduces her then causes her to stab herself with manicure scissors. Too thick with intent and contrived set pieces- wobbling between Garcia Marquez and Jeanette Winterson, and ending up so overwrought, it was nauseating.

I went outside but something else held me, so I decided to
walk through the gallery again, this time glad there was hardly
anyone else there. And when I understood what it was that drew
me, I circled the gallery once more, to make sure. I read some-
where that when people first celebrated the distinct point of view
of Lartigue’s early photographs, it took a while before someone
pointed out that it was the natural angle of a small boy with a
camera looking up at the adults he was photographing. What I
was seeing now in the gallery was the exact angle of vision Cas-
sius and I had that night, from the railing, looking down at the
men working in those pods of light. An angle of forty—f1ve degrees,
something like that. I was back on the railing, watching, which
was where Cassius was emotionally, when he was doing these
paintings. Good-bye, we were saying to all of them. Good-bye.

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At the Cat's Table they were discussing Italian art. l\/liss Las-
queti, who had lived in ltaly for a few years, was speaking. “The
thing with l\/ladonnas is, they have that look on their faces—
because they know He is going to die when young . . . in spite of
all the hovering angels surrounding the child with the little spurt
of bloodlike flame coming from their heads. Somewhere in the
l\/ladonna’s given wisdom, she can see the finished map, the end
of His life. No matter that the local girl the artist is using cannot
attempt that knowledgeable look. Perhaps even the artist cannot
portray it. So it is only we, the spectators, who can read that face
as someone who knows the future. For what will become of her
is provided by history. The recognition of that woe comes
the viewer.”

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In the great centres of power, you see, competition is based not
so much on winning but on stopping your enemy from achiev-
ing what he or she really wants.