The Whale Caller (29 page)

When Saluni finally arrives he is busy sweeping out the sea lice that are crawling all over the place. It was the town’s main problem today, the widower had said. The houses of Hermanus are infested with sea lice.

Saluni and the Whale Caller do not exchange a single word. She just stands there with a mournful look. Then she sits on the bed on the new blankets that have been left there by the widower.

They have not exchanged a word for a week, since their big quarrel where he declared that she was ugly.

They were on their way down the Hottentot Holland Mountains where they had spent several months of idyllic picnicking and dancing. They had been driven down by winter rains and flurries of snow. They were trudging along the road between the towns of Genadendal and Grabouw when night caught up with them. They decided to camp on the roadside near a clump of bushes. He constructed a shelter for them with branches and leaves. He lit the candle and snuffed the flame out as soon as he thought Saluni was fast asleep. As usual she fidgeted, her body quailing in the darkness it had recognised, but she tried to convince herself that it was all in her imagination since he kept assuring her that the candle was still burning.

It was a pitch-black night because of dark clouds that hid the stars. Saluni was more twitchy than usual and had nightmares. She could see the shepherd reading her verses from the Songs of Solomon. He was quite different from the way she had imagined him when they were at his hovel so many months ago. He was very handsome, but seemed to be made of transparent wax. He was naked, except for a woollen cap on his head. The Whale Caller took out a cigarette lighter from his rucksack and set the cap on fire. The flame transformed it into a wick and it burned slowly as the shepherd began to melt like a candle. Yet he just sat there like a confounded Buddha and continued to read the wonderful passages. Molten wax covered the floor until it drowned the wick and his voice. Darkness fell. With it a hollow silence. The Whale Caller then broke into rude laughter which made her sit up. She
reached out for the Whale Caller, felt him there beside her. He was not laughing.

He knew she had woken up from a nightmare and wanted to light the candle quickly, pretending that it had gone out accidentally, but decided against it. He hoped she would soon fall asleep again.

There is light on the horizon; the headlights of an approaching car. “There is a car coming,” whispered Saluni. The Whale Caller wondered how she knew because the sound of the engine had not reached them yet. Vibrations. Blind people are said to be sensitive to the slightest vibrations. But Saluni’s eyes seemed to follow the movement of the light as it kept on flashing across the horizon and then disappeared only to paint the skies again as the road followed by the vehicle twisted and turned.

“Do you see something, Saluni?” he asked.

“I can see the light,” she said, trying very hard to be calm. “But the sky is dark. Where have the stars gone?”

After some time they could hear the sound of the engine. An old truck drove by and soon the light and the sound were lost on the winding mountain roads. There was silence for some time, as both were taking in what had just happened. The Whale Caller jumped up and danced in celebration: “You can see, Saluni. Your sight is back.”

“It is no cause for celebration,” said Saluni. “If it is true that my sight has returned, then I should mourn.”

It had indeed returned. She could see his vague outline in the dark. She could see the darkness too, so she was shaking and breathing with difficulty.

“You should be happy, Saluni. You are free from the bondage of blindness. You can walk without being guided by the rope. You can walk without your goggles.”

“You lied to me,” she said.

He remembered the candle and struck a match. He explained that he had been fearful that wild animals would be attracted by the light, but she did not believe his story. For the first time after many months of peace and harmony and sickness she raised her voice at him: “I trusted you and you lied to me. How do you think I feel to discover that the man I trusted with my life is a liar?”

“It was for our safety, Saluni,” he protested.

“What else have you lied to me about?”

“Nothing, Saluni, nothing.”

Saluni insisted that there must be many other things he had lied about. Obviously, she charged, he must have been lying when he vowed on those mountains that he loved her more than any whale that ever lived and that he dreamt about her.

“Did you or did you not dream about me?” she asked.

When he jibbed she demanded an answer at once. He was unable to lie about it and confessed that he did not dream about her. That was the end of that discussion. Of any discussion.

From there on they walked the road silently. No more Saluni’s song on the kelp horn. No more declarations of love. No more dancing or picnicking on so much prickly pear that it clogged their bowels. No more biblical verses on the delights of physical love. No more breathless days and nights. Just the rhythm of their feet as they pounded the road. He walked in front with the rope tied around his waist snaking its way behind him on the ground. She walked a few metres behind him, determined not to utter a word to him. When a rabbit crossed her path she addressed it with all the terms of endearment that would otherwise have been lavished on him.

Rain failed to break their silence. It pelted them with fat drops as they walked towards the coastal village of Kleinmond. They did not stop to take cover anywhere. They were completely drenched by the time they passed the village, taking the easterly
direction along the coast. In her tattered fur coat she looked like a malnourished half-drowned mouse in dark glasses. He was not a better sight in his threadbare dungarees.

They had caught the tail end of the storm, but the winds were still strong enough to sweep them off their feet from time to time, only to drop them on the muddy earth again where, after struggling to find their balance, they resumed the long walk. People everywhere were talking of the gale-force winds that had hit Hermanus.

It dawned on Saluni that they were walking back to Hermanus. They had gone full circle without realising it. Or at least without Saluni realising it. She suspected that the Whale Caller knew all along that he was leading her back to Hermanus. A man who had spent half his life walking from one coastal town and village to another right up to Windhoek could not claim to have lost all sense of direction all of a sudden.

She broke the silence: “You did it on purpose, didn’t you?”

He did not respond. She ran to catch up with him and stood in front of him.

“It is because you hate happiness,” she accused him. “You did it to destroy the happiness we had on the road.”

“If this be happiness, then I am glad I know nothing about it,” he said, edging around her and resuming the journey.

The villages of Onrus and Vermont had suffered terribly from the winds. The streets were clogged with sand and kelp. The Whale Caller stopped to lend a hand to a family whose car was stuck in the mud. Saluni walked on, hoping that he would plead with her to wait for him. When he did not she stopped and waited, tapping her foot impatiently while he pushed the car. After a long struggle the car was out and the family on its way.

Saluni was fuming: “You care for strangers more than you care for me.”

It was better when there was silence between them, thought
the Whale Caller. Perhaps if he did not respond they would revert to the silence.

“You are good to strangers. You don’t lie to them. Only to me. You lied about the candle and you lied about your dreams and you lied about returning to Hermanus. Liar! Liar! Liar!”

Still he did not react. He hoped that she would soon give up and silence would reign once more.

“Damn it, man, why are you always so good? It’s boring, man. I hate it when you are always so good. What are you trying to do, man; show me up?”

“I am good to you too, Saluni,” he responded at last. “Or at least I try to be. It’s just that you don’t see it.”

Here he was going to make his final stand. He no longer cared what happened after that. He had had it up to here with her, he told her. He took this walk for her. He was always doing things for her but got no appreciation in the end. Hers was only to take. He got nothing in return.

“Nothing?” asked Saluni in bewilderment. “You call washing your little thing inside me nothing?”

Life was not only a series of cleansing ceremonies, he said. He wished for a woman who would take care of him the way his mother used to take care of his father.

“What do you know about women?” she asked. “You don’t look to me like someone who has any experience of women.”

“I have known women in my life… when I used to walk the coast. I have known unkind and uncaring women like you. But I have also known women who made their men feel special… who took care of them and coddled them. When foolish men are pampered like that they behave like arrogant kings … as if it is their God-given right as men to be treated that way. But wise men recognise it as a privilege and an honour. They relish the pampering and pamper their women back. Each pampering the other the best way he or she knows. They will do anything to make such
women happy. If she feels like chocolate in the middle of the night the man will happily wake up to buy her chocolate, even as the woman protests that she was only joking and that the chocolate can still be bought tomorrow morning. I have known women, Saluni, and I have known women.”

This diatribe left Saluni stunned for a while. Then she burst into tears: “I gave up my shepherd… and for what? For you to talk to me like this … to call me names? Don’t you ever talk to me again for the rest of your life.”

“Suits me,” he said.

“It suits you because you don’t care. You never cared.”

“I care, Saluni. I have always cared.”

“If you care, when did you last tell me you love me? When did you last say I am beautiful?”

“How can I say you are beautiful when you are so ugly …”

“I am what?” she screeched, drowning his “… to me.” This was all a huge shock to her because she had never known him to say such horrible things to her. So he did have a cruel streak in him after all. No man had ever told her that she was ugly. Even when she was a baby people used to touch her cheeks in supermarket aisles and comment on her cuteness. As she was growing up in the inland provinces neighbours never forgot to mention that she had inherited her mother’s beauty and boys never forgot to fight over her. In the taverns of Hermanus men who had sailed all the seas of the world praised her beauty and her voice. And here was a mere whale caller calling her ugly. Her hurt was very deep.

Once more the silent walk. In the rain. Sometimes there was a little snivelling from her. Then back to the silence. Until they reached Hermanus.

After sweeping the lice out of the Wendy house the Whale Caller takes out his tuxedo from the trunk under the bed. It is soggy and
muddy from the very fine sand that has found its way through the cracks at the edges of the trunk. He dons it nonetheless, takes his kelp horn and walks out of the house and through the gate. Saluni remains sitting on the bed, not knowing what to do next. He looks like a man of light brown mud and he endures the pain of the grains of sand rubbing against his body as he walks on the streets that are still choked with the sea’s leavings despite the attempts of the municipal workers to clear them. It is an unseasonably warm winter day and soon the mud on his suit is dry and caked. He goes straight to the peninsula, yearning for Sharisha. She who never calls him names or yells at him. Who never demeans or humiliates him. No, not Sharisha. She celebrates his presence and never takes it for granted.

The sea is still black in its rage, although the winds have simmered down. The whole peninsula is covered with mud and seaweed and other flotsam coughed up by the water when it finally receded. He sits on a mud-covered boulder and blows his horn. Sharisha may have gone back to the southern seas for winter. It does not matter. He will blow the kelp horn until it saps the life out of him. Whenever she returns she will feel the vibrations that have been left by his sounds even if he no longer exists. He will just blow and blow until he collapses on the mud. By sheer force of his imagination he will bring Sharisha into being right in front of him and they will dance. Until he can’t dance anymore. Until he collapses on the mud. He must collapse. It is the one thing that remains for him to look forward to. Collapse. He will play until he collapses on the mud and becomes one with it. Future generations will tread on him and no one will remember that he ever lived. No one should remember. Except Sharisha. She will know. She will mourn.

His eyes are tightly closed as he blows Sharisha’s song that he has now adapted into jeremiads. For some time he is not aware that Sharisha herself has come to save him from the death he is
hankering after. As he blows the horn furiously and uncontrollably she comes swimming just as furiously She has been longing for the horn. She has not heard it for a long time. All she wants is to bathe herself in its sounds. To let the horn penetrate every aperture of her body until she climaxes. To lose herself in the dances of the past. She is too mesmerised to realise that she has recklessly crossed the line that separates the blue depths from the green shallows. All the sea is black and not even a whale can distinguish the blue depths from the green shallows. When he opens his eyes from the reverie of syncopation she is parked in front of his eyes, so close that he thinks he can almost touch her if he stretches out his hand. She is not quite that close though. But certainly she is less than a hundred metres from the shoreline. Perhaps less than fifty. Her stomach lies on the sand. He stops playing.

At first he thinks he has conjured her up in his imagination. But when he hears the deep bellows that send tremors to the muddy peninsula he knows she is all too real. And all too close. He has never seen her this close. The black waves recede and she is left lying on the rocky sand. She has beached herself.

“Help!” he screams, running to her. “The whale is stranded!”