An Excerpt From Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family

Here is an excerpt from Michael Ondaatje's, Running in the Family, that really speaks to me.  I worked for a summer at the National Archives, in their petitions' room, down in the basement, filing and reading under a flickering bulb.  When I read this yesterday, I thought of this sacred time in my life.  I hope you also enjoy it.

"We carry the ledgers out of the church into the last of the sunlight and sit on the vicarage steps to begin reading.  Lifting the ancient pages and turning them over like old, skeletal leaves.  The black script must have turned brown over a hundred years ago.  The thick pages foxed and showing destruction caused by silverfish, scars among the immaculate recordings of local history and formal signatures.  We had not expected to find more than one Ondaatje here but the stones and pages are full of them.  We had been looking for the Reverend Jurgen Ondaatje--a translator and eventual chaplain in Columbo from 1835 until 1847.  It seems, however, as if every Ondaatje for miles around flocked here to be baptized and married.  When Jurgen died his son Simon took his place and was the last Tamil Colonial Chaplain of Ceylon.

Simon was the oldest of four brothers.  Every Sunday morning they came to this church in carriages with their wives and children and after the service retired to the vicarage for drinks and lunch.  Just before the meal, talk would erupt into a violent argument and each brother would demand to have his carriage brought around, climb into it with his hungry family and ride off to his own home, each in a different direction.

For years they tried but were never able to have a meal together.  Each of them was prominent in his own field and was obviously too didactic and temperamental to agree with any of his brothers on any subject of discussion.  There was nothing one could speak about that would not infringe on another's area of interest.  If the subject were something as innocent as flowers, then Dr. William Charles Ondaatje, who was the Ceylonese Director of the Botanical Gardens, would throw scorn on any opinion and put the others in their place.  He had introduced the olive to Ceylon.  Finance or military talk was Matthew Ondaatje's area, and law or scholarship exercised Philip de Melho Jurgen's acid tongue.  The only one who had full freedom was the Reverend Simon who said whatever he felt like during the sermon, knowing his brothers could not interrupt him. No doubt he caught hell as soon as he entered the vicarage next door for what he hoped would be a peaceful lunch.  Whenever a funeral or baptism occurred, however, all the brothers would be there.  The church records show Simon's name witnessing them all in a signature very like my father's.

We stand outside the church in twilight.  The building has stood here for over three hundred years, in the palm of monsoons, through seasonal droughts and invasions from other countries.  Its grounds were once beautiful.  Lights begin to come on slowly below us in the harbor.  As we are about to get in the Volks, my niece points to a grave and I start walking through the brush in my sandals.  "Watch out for snakes!"  God.  I make a quick leap backwards and get into the car.  Night falls quickly during the five minute drive back to the house.  Sit down in my room and transcribe names and dates from the various envelopes into a notebook.  When I finish there will be that eerie moment when I wash my hands and see very clearly the deep gray color of old paper dust going down the drain.

Michael Ondaatje