The Whale Caller (15 page)

In the morning Saluni is still sulking. She announces grandly that she is going to spend the day with the Bored Twins at the mansion. She is fussing over her looks as if she is going to see a lover. She wears the green corduroy pants and black knee-high pencil-heel boots that he bought her at the flea market as a peace offering after he threw her coat away As she brushes her hair she mutters that it is cold outside and some evil person threw her coat into the ocean. She is wearing a flimsy pink sweater and she wonders aloud whether the evil person will now generate some heat around her as she walks all the way to the mansion. And if the evil person thinks that the corduroy pants and the boots make up for the lost coat, then the evil person is quite mistaken. The Whale Caller pretends not to hear any of this. He is surprised at this sudden decision to go to the mansion because since the cleansing rituals took off in earnest she has not even mentioned the Bored Twins. He knows that for some reason he is being punished, and he feels threatened by the Bored Twins. He has always felt uneasy about her relationship with the angelic girls. He is well aware of her previous addiction to their aura. He fears that going back to them will spark her relapse into the addiction. He
nevertheless packs her a lunch of their staple in a “scoff tin,” which is not really a tin but a plastic container. A bright smile replaces the sulks. She gives him a goodbye peck and minces away to the countryside.

Her sweet and mouldy smell lingers in the house, leaving the poor man with further unfulfilled desires.

When Saluni is away he discovers that he no longer knows how to be on his own. He tries very hard to remember what he used to do with himself before Saluni invaded his world. He only knows that during the season of the whales he spent all his time with the whales. But when the whales had migrated to the southern seas what did he do? And why is it impossible to do whatever he used to do now that Saluni’s presence has become his habit? He wanders on the beach like the strandlopers of old. Or perhaps more like a lost oversized urchin. Whereas the strandlopers were beachcombing, his wanderings are quite aimless.

Saluni feels lost too. But she is determined to break the dependence on him that is taking hold of her like a narcotic. She wants to recapture part of her old life—at least that part that will not threaten her relationship with the Whale Caller. The Bored Twins are that part; though she knows that he is not exactly enamoured of them. But surely he will consider them a lesser evil than the taverns of Hermanus. She is so steeped in these thoughts that she does not realise that she has almost passed the mansion.

She is surprised to find the Bored Twins, who are normally high-spirited children, confined to their room.

“You don’t care for us anymore, auntie,” they greet her feebly. “You don’t love us anymore.”

“What gives you that idea?” asks Saluni.

“You don’t come to play with us now,” says one of the girls.

“It is because of what we did to you,” says the other twin. “But we said we were sorry, auntie.”

“It is not because of that. I’ve long forgotten about that. I was
just busy lately. Things are not the same in my life… but, oh, you wouldn’t understand! Tell you what, I promise I’ll come and see you much more often.”

“I know,” says the first twin. “It is because Papa no longer gives you bottles of wine. But it is not his fault… really…”

“Nonsense! I don’t drink wine anymore. Even when I did, I didn’t come to see you for the bottles of wine.”

The room has an unangelic stench of fever. One of the girls is sleeping on the mattress and is sweating so much that the sheet is wet. Their parents have left them alone, despite the fact that the girl is hot and cold and sometimes delirious. The girls tell Saluni that their parents had to go to work in the vineyards even though both the mother and the father also have the flu. It is the fate of all “piece-job” workers, Saluni knows: no work, no pay; no pension; no sick leave; no maternity leave, let alone the luxury of paternity leave; no compassionate leave even if your loved one is dying. The parents had to choose between staying at home to nurse the girl back to health, and then all die of starvation; or going to work and praying the girl will not be dying at home while they harvest the grapes. The consolation, of course, is that it will be one quick death, and not the slow death of the whole family.

Saluni knows immediately what to do. She has seen in the wild garden a minty shrub whose power she learnt from the people of the inland provinces. In the villages and farmlands beyond the mountains every homestead grows this medicinal herb. From the early days of humanity in these parts grandmothers have used this herb to relieve the symptoms of flu and to bring down the temperature. Saluni gets the shrub from the garden and boils it in water on a primus stove—not in the kitchen, but in the girls’ bedroom.

She takes the boiling water from the primus stove and puts it on the floor. The shrub is still in the water. It has turned brown from the cooking. So has the water. She instructs the girl to kneel
over it and covers both the girl and the steaming pot with a heavy blanket. The girl screams and tries to struggle out of the blanket.

“Take it easy,” says Saluni. “Otherwise you’ll scald yourself.”

The girl’s muffled voice can be heard whining under the blanket: “It’s too hot in here… the steam is burning me.”

“You are going to kill her, auntie… you are going to kill her,” screams the twin who is fortunate enough not to have caught the fever from her sister. She is trying to pull Saluni away from the blanket, which she is pressing hard to the floor with both hands and both knees so that neither the steam nor the girl will escape.

“Nonsense,” says Saluni. “This will help her instead. She needs to inhale the mentholated vapours and sweat the fever out. You’ll see, in no time she will be fine again.”

After all the steaming the girl falls into a deep sleep. When the parents return in the evening they are amazed at the improvement in her condition. She is almost her sprightly self again. Saluni teaches them how to prepare the remedy for their own flu, and after inhaling the vapours they feel much better as well. It is too late for her to walk back to the Wendy house, so she decides to sleep with the Bored Twins. This will also help her monitor the sick girl and to steam her some more if the flu becomes stubborn.

When the time for sleeping comes she panics when she remembers that she has not brought her candle with her. She is now used to the electrified luxury of the Wendy house and has become too careless about darkness. There is a candle somewhere in her sequinned handbag, but she left the handbag at the Wendy house because she had not planned to sleep over. The girls’ parents agree to indulge her with a candle since she has helped their little girl so much. As soon as she gets into her bedding she feels something hard and rough touching her body. She screams when she discovers that she is sleeping on a snake. She jumps up, to great laughter from the girls. One of the girls reaches for the snake and dangles it in front of her.

“It’s only a rubber snake, auntie,” she says, still laughing.

“Never again play such tricks on me,” shouts Saluni. “Do you want me to die of a heart attack?”

“We don’t want you to die, auntie,” says the sick twin. “We love you.”

“Sorry, auntie,” says the other twin. “Sorry, auntie.”

When night falls and Saluni hasn’t returned the Whale Caller becomes jittery. He knows that she will not walk in the countryside in the dark. He blames himself for being insensitive to her neuroses. Perhaps that is why she had gone to the Bored Twins. Now, because of him, Saluni might have relapsed to the bottle. She might be spending the night singing rude songs with sailors and layabouts in the taverns of Hermanus. Worse still, she might have deserted him forever, and this sends a cold panic galloping in his guts. He is tempted to go and search for her, but decides against it when he realises that there are hundreds of taverns dotting the district. He would not know where to begin.

The night is too long. The bed that broke its virginity that breathless night of murder and thunder is lumpy and uncomfortable, asserting its own longing.

At dawn his body itches for a waltz, even though in winter there are no songs of the whales. If Saluni were here they would be dancing a cappella. After sunrise he decides to go to the mansion and find out if Saluni did go there. And if she did, he would like to know where she said she was going when she left the mansion. If she did not get to the Bored Twins at all, then she had lied to him. There must be another lover. When and how it happened he has no idea, as Saluni has been with him all the time these past few weeks. Since the first cleansing ritual they have been inseparable.

He has a general idea where the mansion is located. He remembers
seeing it once or twice at a distance many years ago. He follows the road out of town in a westerly direction and trudges on until he sees the white building shimmering in the morning sun. From this distance its dilapidation is not noticeable. As he gets closer, the tulips that are blooming in the wild garden dazzle him with their wild colours. The flowers grow in clusters of deep purple, white, pink, yellow and red. Some petals combine different hues. There are red petals with yellow edges and violet petals with white edges. Saluni has told him the story of how the tulips were cultivated by the ostrich baron in the 1920s. He had inherited the bulbs from his forebears, who had in turn received them from the first in line—the son of the tulip baron who had long ago exiled himself to the Cape of Good Hope after the crash of the tulip market in Holland and the suicide of his father. The first in line had sailed with the bulbs to the Cape for sentimental reasons. He had no intention of starting a tulip business in the “new world,” but instead had secured himself clerical employment with the Dutch East India Company. He planted his bulbs in his little garden, and when his children—both those from his Dutch wife, and from Khoikhoi and Malay slave mistresses—were all grown up they dug out some of the bulbs and planted them in their little gardens. It happened like that over the generations, for almost three hundred years, until the time of the ostrich baron.

Tulips flower in spring, but these have developed erratic habits. They blossom any season they feel like blossoming, and they do it all at the same time, upstaging every other plant in the wild garden. And when they have decided to bloom, sometimes after hibernating for three years without a peep of colour from them, they are relentless. They spread all over the garden and are not deterred by the wild shrubs and grasses and the prickly pear and other cacti that otherwise reign supreme in the garden. But they never grow beyond what used to be the borders of the original ostrich baron’s garden.

The Whale Caller can hear shrieks of laughter from the garden. The voices have hollow reverberations like drops of water dripping from the roof of a cave into a rippling pool on the floor. He is overwhelmed by inexplicable elation. There is a strong scent of peace in the air despite the commotion that he can hear from around the corner. As he walks closer new odours assail him—the pungent smells of history coming in a whoosh from the broken windows of the mansion. The sweet and mouldy smell he knows so well comes floating gently to him, overpowering the variety of smells that permeate the air. And then he hears her voice: “I got it! Don’t let it get away!”

Saluni and the Bored Twins are having a wonderful time chasing goats. These animals occasionally invade the garden since they are partial to the cactus that grows on what used to be rockeries. Saluni has got a goat by the hind legs, letting its big udder dangle indecently. She lifts it up and one of the Bored Twins grabs a teat and squeezes the milk into her mouth. The goat is struggling and trying to escape and milk splatters all over her face. Saluni lets it go and runs to help the second twin, who is chasing another goat that has an even bigger udder. After a relentless chase they catch the goat, overpower it, and successfully milk it into the girl’s mouth.

The Whale Caller watches for a while. Saluni sees him leaning against the wall and shouts excitedly, “Come on, man. There is milk for you too.”

The Whale Caller hesitates a little. She beckons him once more and he joins the chase. He becomes the girls’ hero when he helps them catch and subdue the wildest of the animals. They cheer and applaud and go crazy over its teats. When they have had their fill they spray each other with the milk. He also has his turn suckling the warm milk. This is his first experience of goat milk and he finds the strange taste quite enjoyable. Then the girls spray
him with the milk. Saluni watches all this with a big smile on her face.

“Let us not waste the milk,” the Whale Caller says, with streaks of milk mapping his face. “Remember that these goats have their kids to feed as well as providing the farmer with milk.”

“They are just wild goats,” says one of the twins. “They don’t belong to a farmer.”

“You don’t know that,” says Saluni.

“They belong to someone all right. That is why they don’t have their kids with them,” says the Whale Caller, letting the goat free and jumping out of its way. It kicks violently, throwing one of the twins to the ground. They all laugh at her. They help the fallen girl up and Saluni introduces them to the Whale Caller.

“A whale caller? What does a whale caller do?” asks the smaller twin.

“Is he your husband?” enquires the other one.

“Boyfriend! Remember Aunt Saluni told Mama that she was not married.”

“You ask silly questions,” says Saluni, brushing the dust from the Whale Caller with her hands.

“I came to fetch you, Saluni,” says the Whale Caller. “I waited for you for the whole night. I was worried about you, Saluni.”

“Why did you wait for her, Mr. Whale Caller?” asks the bigger twin. “Why were you worried about her when she was with us?”

“He is her boyfriend, silly!” says the smaller twin. “He is supposed to worry.”

The girls find the notion that Aunt Saluni may have a boyfriend quite funny, and they giggle, jumping about, clapping their sweet little hands and chanting: “Aunt Saluni has a boyfriend… a boyfriend. Aunt Saluni has a boyfriend… a boyfriend.”