The Whale Caller (16 page)

Saluni stands there, arms akimbo, displaying a toothless grin.
The Whale Caller’s body moves to the rhythm of the chants despite himself.

The girls clamber on him, and play with his silver-grey beard and marvel at his bushy chest, hunting for little fairies that they claim are hiding there. He in turn is spellbound by their beauty and their angelic voices. But what strikes him most is the wonderful fact that the girls smell like earthworms.

“Your face is glowing,” observes the smaller twin.

This only confirms what he has earlier observed when he was looking in the mirror trimming his beard. Ever since the cleansing rituals his face has acquired a smooth glow. Saluni is not the only one who has a propolis face.

When Saluni and the Whale Caller decide to go, the Bored Twins sing for them. They are transfixed. At the end of the song they try once more to go, but the twins break into another song that transfixes their visitors once more. This happens over and over again until late in the afternoon when the girls either get tired of singing or just get bored. Only then are the visitors able to go.

Saluni and the Whale Caller are euphoric as they walk back home. Euphoria tends to make one almost levitate in the air, but their gait is heavy because of the goat milk that still fills their stomachs almost to bursting point, even when so many hours have gone by since the early morning adventures with the goats. He sees their long shadows and cannot believe that he allowed the Bored Twins to hold him captive for such a long time. It would have been a wasted day if it were not for the reward of euphoria. Now he understands Saluni’s addiction to them. The girls are Euphoriants! This fills him with fear, for he is dead scared of happiness. He makes a deal with himself: he will stay away from the Bored Twins as much as possible. He will imbibe them only occasionally, but will not allow any dependence to develop.

Saluni is babbling effervescently beside him about her folly of having given up the Bored Twins for almost a month. After all, they are just sweet little girls who need her company only in the daytime when their parents are at work. There is no harm in resuming her regular visits to the mansion. There is no need for him to feel so insecure, she advises him, because the Bored Twins will never replace him. There is room in her big heart for him and them.

He is convinced that Saluni has relapsed.

Saluni. It is the final month of winter this year and once more she has become a junkie. She cannot have enough of the Bored Twins. She leaves the Wendy house in the morning and spends several hours with them almost every day. She used to sing only when she was drunk, but now she joins them in full sobriety, and together they belt out hymns that they have heard on the radio. The fact that they do not know most of the words never deters them. They make up their own words as they go along. Words about goats and beetles and tulips and rain and Mama and Papa finally coming home. Saluni has also taught them censored versions of the songs she used to sing in the taverns.

This afternoon, like most afternoons, she returns to the Wendy house babbling in euphoric tongues. The Whale Caller is sitting on the chair moping and feeling sorry for himself. She sweeps him to his feet and dances around him, waving his arms like a bird in flight and then like the dying swan of classical ballet. As she falls to the floor she breaks out laughing and, kicking her legs up, she rides an invisible upside-down bicycle. The Cutex cannot restrain the runs in her stockings and more of them appear as she pedals even harder. Such undignified behaviour always embarrasses the Whale Caller, especially when it goes beyond the
bounds of euphoria into the terrain of trancelike ecstasy, as if she has eaten the petals of the bell-shaped moon flowers that create hallucinations.

“You look ridiculous, Saluni,” he says. “What will people say when they see you like this?”

“Come on, man,” she says, “don’t be such a sourpuss. Do something crazy for once in your life. Take me in your arms and lose yourself in me.”

The Whale Caller is scandalised.

“It is daytime, Saluni!”

“So what? Who says madness is only for the night?”

That is another thing with these visits to the mansion. Euphoria has other side effects on her. It sharpens her appreciation of him and their mutual rituals. It makes her insatiable. It carnalises him to oblivion. To the point that he finds this euphoria too taxing on his robust physique, and he has come to dread the nightly cleansing rituals. Not that he wants to do away with them altogether. No. He would rather die. He merely wants the rate and the pace reduced, so that he can catch his breath, and replenish his body with more strength and more juices for better-quality ritualing next time.

He helps her to her feet.

“Poor man,” she says. “I was only joking. I don’t want to be hard on you. You are such a sweet boy it would not work in my favour if I killed you.”

“I think you must take it easy about going to the Bored Twins,” he says.

“Oh, no! Not again, man. We talked about that, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, but you are overdoing it now. Do spend some days with me, Saluni. I don’t only want to see you at night.”

Saluni agrees not to go to the mansion the next day. And she occupies herself with reviving civilised living. She has been neglecting quite a few things in the house lately, she realises. For instance
the man has gone back to his old eating habits. He does not sit at the table that is covered with a white tablecloth as she has taught him. No candlelight. Sometimes he even sits on the bed holding a bowl of macaroni and cheese to his chest and munching away, quite oblivious of her disgust.

“I must take you to a restaurant, man, so that you can see how people eat there,” she says.

This brings a mocking chuckle from the Whale Caller.

“Since when can we afford eating out?” he asks.

“We go out window shopping for food…”

“We used to, before you took to going to the mansion every day.”

“Hey, we still do when I return early enough.”

“It is not enough,” moans the Whale Caller.

“You never knew that you would end up liking it like this, did you?” she says excitedly. “Then we’ll window shop, hey? We’ll window shop as much as you like. What do you say to that? As much as you like. Then we’ll go to the best restaurants in town and window eat there. I’ll teach you how.”

On Friday evening when the socialites of Hermanus go dining and dancing and theatring, Saluni and the Whale Caller are also getting ready for an evening out. He polishes his black shoes until they reflect the light from the naked bulb that hangs on the ceiling. He wears his tuxedo and is happy for the opportunity. Since Sharisha left it has been lying fallow in the box under the bed. Of course once in a while he takes it out to press it, but the satisfaction from that activity does not come close to the one he derives from actually wearing it for a purpose. Saluni brushes his beard. Then she slips into her green taffeta dress, fishnet stockings and red pencil-heel shoes. Her red hair is held in a black net. Her face is heavily made up with crimson lipstick
and violet mascara. She sprays perfume all over her body—even on her head and legs.

That is one thing that troubles the Whale Caller—Saluni’s strong perfume. Some mornings when she feels particularly like a lady she sprays herself with it, and its strong smell fills the room. It stings his eyes. He coughs, unable to breathe, and then sneezes for a long time. Often he rushes to the door to breathe the fresh air outside. Sometimes he is still in bed. He covers his head with the blanket. But the perfume is so strong that it penetrates the blanket. He is afraid to tell her that her perfume makes him suffer so. At first he thought she was trying to disguise the sweet and mouldy smell. But soon he realised that she was not aware of the fact that her body exuded such an odour. Fortunately the ugly scent of the perfume never lasts for any length of time. Soon the sweet and mouldy smell hangs in the air long after she is gone.

They walk out of the door, and out of the gate. They tread genteelly on the pavement, arm in arm. He inhales the cold breeze from the sea with relish and rejoices in the soft fragrances of rotting kelp. He has fond memories of this ambience because at this time of the year when Sharisha was enjoying the krill in the southern seas the smells became a balm to his yearning soul. He is amazed at himself that he no longer yearns even though Sharisha has been gone for so long. He would not even have thought of her had it not been for the smells from the sea. They have walked only a few yards when Saluni extricates her arm from the genteelness and trots back to the Wendy house.

“It’s locked, Saluni. Please let’s not waste time,” he calls after her.

“Just to make sure, man, just to make sure,” she calls back.

She does this twice or thrice, and he waits patiently. Finally she defies the urge to walk back to check just one more time, and they stroll down the road.

They walk past American-type fast food franchises—the day
calls for something classier than whopping burgers, deep-fried thick-battered chicken and slick pizzas that bear little resemblance to the original Italian peasant fare—and then turn into a street that prides itself on its restaurants. They stop for a while at the window of a hotel restaurant with a sushi bar, and watch the patrons sitting on cushions or mats on the floor like a congregation of some New Age religion, eating delicate oval-shaped balls of rice rolled in fish. On the low tables there are tiny bowls of different dark sauces. Other worshippers are sitting at the bar drinking some whitish sacramental drink and eating similar fare. There are chunks of white, grey, red and pink fish displayed on flat wooden rectangular rice plates. She explains to him that the fish is eaten raw, and he says that is not to his taste. Fish can only be decent when it is coated in spiced batter, fried in plenty of oil, and then eaten with golden brown chips, in the traditional manner of the Western Cape.

“You can talk about macaroni and cheese,” says Saluni, “but you don’t know anything about fish.”

“I used to live on fish when I walked the coast,” he tells her. “I lived in fisherfolk villages where they knew how to fry the fish.”

At this point the maître d’ sees them standing outside looking through the window debating the merits of his food. He goes out and invites them in.

“We have the best nigiri in South Africa,” he adds. “Yes, in this little town of Hermanus we beat top restaurants in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Our secret lies in the fact that our fish is fermented in salt and our rice is seasoned with a sweet vinegar mixture, as sushi originally used to be created in ancient Japan.”

The Whale Caller is looking at him closely, wondering how it is possible for a man to work up so much enthusiasm for mere fish and rice. Saluni declines the invitation for them both and tells the maître d’ that they would rather enjoy his decorative delicacies with their eyes from a distance.

“We also serve sushi that doesn’t include sashimi… that doesn’t include raw fish… if that’s what you are squeamish about,” the man says. He is persuasive, but Saluni explains once more that they are only interested in eating his food with their eyes, if he doesn’t mind. The friendly face changes in a flash.

“Of course I mind. You make my customers nervous watching them like that. Please go and be spectators somewhere else,” he says as he angrily walks back into the restaurant.

“I wouldn’t like to be watched when I eat either,” says the Whale Caller. “Eating should be a private matter. Like sex.”

He startles himself with this last observation. His worst nightmare is becoming a reality: Saluni has debauched him, to the extent that a simile like that can roll out of his mouth unprovoked. But all this is lost on Saluni.

“As if it is something sinful,” says Saluni. “If they want to eat in private they mustn’t come to a restaurant.”

The maître d’ draws the blinds and the remote diners are left facing white kimono-clad outlines of Japanese beauties and leafy bamboos on a red background.

“Oh, man! What did he do that for? I wanted to taste some of that sake,” wails Saluni.

“Sake?” asks the Whale Caller.

“The wine,” she explains. “It is made from rice. I understand it is wonderfully powerful. As strong as the man next to me.”

“Don’t even think about it,” he warns her. “Otherwise I might find you swimming in the bottle again and wasting your life in the taverns.”

“You look so cute when you worry about me,” she says, cackling.

There are other restaurants. Each one boldly advertises some foreign cuisine, ranging from Indian and Chinese to French and Italian. But their curtains are drawn.

“Perhaps we should change our dining strategy next time,”
says Saluni. “We should dine in the daytime. Curtains are bound to be open in the daytime.”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t dine at all,” says the Whale Caller. “We should be sitting in front of a warm heater at home.”

“Don’t give up so easily, man,” she says. “You’ll see, you’ll like it once you get the hang of it. Just like the window shopping.”

They are about to give up despite Saluni’s exhortations when they chance upon a Cape Dutch house at a corner of a nondescript street. It is the only restaurant that unashamedly boasts of specialising in South African cuisine. Everyone knows that in the Western Cape when they talk of South African cuisine they mean the Cape Malay food that is a result of the melting cultures of Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Khoikhoi and Dutch. The same kind of interbreeding that brought into existence the wonderfully coloured people of the Western Cape. As in the rest of the restaurants at this time of the night, this one’s thick maroon velvet draperies are drawn as well. But at one of the windows there has been some carelessness since there is a big gap between the curtains through which Saluni and the Whale Caller can see inside.

The glass reflects their own images because of the glare from the streetlights. Therefore they have to press their faces against the panes in order to have a good look at the chefs standing in a row—the high priest and his acolytes—cutting roast lamb, beef, chicken, pork and venison behind a long buffet counter of crayfish, langoustine, perlemoen, curries, rotis, samoosas, colourful salads, pies, boboties, sosaties, pickled snoek fish, másala fish, rice, and sweetmeats such as temeletjies and the syrupy doughnuts known as koeksisters. The priests do everything in full view of the worshippers, many of whom watch in admiration as they brandish their big knives about, slicing the roasts with pomp and ceremony. Sosaties are braaied over an open fire, while the worshippers ceremonially walk the length of the altar, serving their fancy onto their plates. Then they walk to their tables, also set up
like altars, each one with a candle burning idly. Worshippers are in couples. Youthful upwardly mobile lovers and jaded old-world couples from the houses of retired millionaires that dot the district. There are hardly any tourists at this time of the year.