The Whale Caller (18 page)

She practically runs home in her stockinged feet since she is carrying her pencil-heel shoes in her hands. She finds the Whale Caller pressing his tuxedo in the kitchen. Although occasionally he occupies himself in this manner, she suddenly suspects that there is a sinister motive for it this time. He must be aware of the return of the southern rights. His ears are keen for their songs. He must have heard them in the night and said nothing about it. Perhaps that is why he is displaying a smug smile.

“You have come from the mansion,” he says, “yet you don’t
bring home any euphoria. Were the Bored Twins not there today?”

“It wore off as soon as I saw what you were up to,” she says, gearing for war.

“I am not up to anything, Saluni,” he says. “What happened to you?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You didn’t tell me that they were back. You were hiding it from me.”

He looks at her suspiciously.

“Did you go to Mr. Yodd today?” he asks. “You look like someone who has come from Mr. Yodd rather than from the Bored Twins.”

“Of course I did.”

“I think you have got the trick, Saluni. Imbibe euphoria from the Bored Twins, and then tone it down with Mr. Yodd’s sombre-ness. Trust you to think of something brilliant like that. I should try it sometime.”

“And I saw your damn whales too!”

“Well, Saluni, it is the season. But that shouldn’t upset you at all. I find it exciting that the whales are back. Now we’ll be able to dance to their songs at dawn.”

He puts the iron on the ironing board and reaches for her, sweeping her away in an impromptu waltz. She resists and pushes him away. There is a smell of anger and resentment in the room.

“Didn’t you miss our morning ballroom at the beach?” he asks amiably, hoping to pacify her. “I know I did.”

“More like you missed your rude nightlong dances with Sharisha.”

“So it is about Sharisha, is it? Was it Sharisha that you saw?”

“How the hell would I know? All whales look the same to me.”

“Were her callosities pure white? Did she have a perfect bonnet? Did she have callosities that look like the Three Sisters? Did she have a baby with her?”

“You are salivating already. You know what? You can go back to your confounded Sharisha for all I care.”

She storms out of the door and out of the gate. She walks for a while, not quite sure where to go. She would go to a movie house if she had the money. She would stay for a double feature so that he panics and goes out searching for her. He would go from tavern to tavern asking drunken sailors if they had seen his lover. None of them, of course, would claim to have seen her. He would walk for the whole night in the cold, searching and weeping. He would catch a terrible cold, flu even, and would be in bed for the whole week sweating and delirious. It would serve him right.

On a lamppost she sees a poster about a healing session that is being conducted by a visiting evangelical pastor from America. She walks to a soccer field where a circus-like marquee has been erected. This is where she is going to while away time until the man at home fries in worry. The hymns are lively and welcoming. Inside the tent a young charismatic preacher is preaching against the sins of the flesh: fornication, incest, sodomy and the like. He reads from Genesis 16 about a woman called Sarai who gave her Egyptian slave to her husband, Abram, to produce children since she herself could not conceive. The slave conceives and becomes arrogant, wanting to usurp the mistress of the house. “In the manner that maids do even today,” he adds this rider, to relate these ancient events to the modern lives of his congregation, some of whom are maids and have surely been involved in some hanky-panky with their masters. There are the madams too—as the employers of the maids are called—for such gatherings where people are healed and saved know no class boundaries. The madams in the congregation feel vindicated by the sermon. The preacher outlines with relish the conflicts between Sarai and the beautiful slave woman, embellishing them from the wealth of his imagination. When he has squeezed all the salacious juices from that story the congregation sings one verse of a hymn about
the wrath of the Lord on all fornicators, and then the preacher turns to the Second Book of Samuel. He elaborates on the adulteries of King David and the children who were born out of them. He sounds like a gossip columnist rejoicing in the carnal lapses of a president. The congregation is fired with divine fervour. He seizes the opportunity to move them even to greater heights by returning to Genesis and reading God’s command to the crowd that has now become so enthralled that many of the men and women are foaming at the mouth: “You shall desire your husband and he will rule over you…” They are screaming and testifying in tongues. After a while Saluni is bored by their antics. The message being propagated here is not the kind she would like to entertain. The night is going to be long. The preacher is sure to find more Old Testament scandals to keep his congregation fired up. He is testifying about Lot’s daughters and their incestuous shenanigans that are graphically recorded in Genesis 19 when Saluni sneaks out of the tent. She seems to be the only one who has not been moved by the spirit. She is well aware of what will soon happen in that tent. Pairs in the congregation are gravitating into each other’s arms, aroused by the sacred texts.

She walks back to the Wendy house and goes straight to bed. The Whale Caller timidly joins her. There is no cleansing ceremony tonight.

The following morning Saluni decides not to go to the mansion so as to make sure that the Whale Caller does not get into any mischief. She does not tell him that. She just follows him everywhere he goes. He finds this rather amusing and enjoys having her around. She follows him for three days—during which he avoids going to the beach lest he exacerbates her suspicions. But soon the urge to see the Bored Twins overpowers her and she goes to the mansion.

It is early in the morning but the girls are already playing in the dirt. She herds them back into the house and insists that they take a bath before they can play outside. She finds that they prepared themselves a breakfast of corn flakes and milk as soon as they woke up, without even first washing their hands and brushing their teeth. No one is ever there to teach them this basic hygiene because the parents leave home very early before the girls wake up and come back late in the evening. Sometimes the girls are already asleep when the parents return. Whenever she can, Saluni tries to teach them some of these rudimentary things—so that they can be ladies, she tells them.

After the bath she gives them a few pointers about the art of making one’s face up. She takes out a lipstick, eyebrow pencil, face powder and mascara from her sequinned handbag and they all have a go at making themselves up. The girls do not take this exercise seriously. They just smear the lipstick on their cheeks and make silly patterns with the mascara and the eyebrow pencil. Saluni sees how much fun they are having and asks them to make her up with a silly face too. They all look like circus clowns.

Then they go to play outside. There are no goats to chase today, but there is always something interesting to do in the wild garden. The tulips are hibernating, just when it is about spring. Saluni finds this erratic behaviour irritating because she had hoped to pick a few to brighten the Whale Caller’s life in the Wendy house. Not a single one of the plants is in bloom.

Saluni and the Bored Twins play hide-and-seek among the rockeries. The girls are not very good at hiding but Saluni pretends that she can’t find them. Hiding behind an aloe, the smaller twin sees a snake slithering out of the house, and then cascading down the three steps of the kitchen door. It tries to gather speed, but cannot move fast enough on the grassless patch between the door and the rockeries. The twin chases it, catches it by the tail and lifts it up. It is quite helpless with its head dangling down.
The bigger twin joins her sister in the excitement, poking the eyes of the snake with a stick.

“Aunt Saluni, look what we found,” cries the bigger twin, as they both go looking for Saluni excitedly. She emerges from where she was hiding and sees the snake, still dangling from the raised hand of the smaller twin.

“Oh, no!” Saluni says, laughing. “You won’t catch me with your pranks this time! I know that is a rubber snake.”

“It is not, auntie,” says the smaller twin.

“It is a real snake, Aunt Saluni,” confirms the bigger twin.

“You wouldn’t be holding it like that if it were a real snake,” says Saluni. “Even a blind person can see that it is a rubber snake.”

The twin throws the snake at Saluni. She catches it, still laughing. It quickly coils itself around her arm. She is paralysed with terror. Then she falls down screaming and rolling on the ground. Her thigh bleeds from a wound that has been caused by a sharp stone on which she fell. The snake slithers away. Fortunately it is a mole snake that feeds on house mice and hasn’t got any venom.

Saluni has fainted on the ground and is bleeding. The twins are now panicking. They try to shake her awake while crying: “Sorry, auntie… sorry, auntie!”

As soon as she regains her senses she jumps up and runs like the wind. She does not even think of picking up her shoes that are lying on the ground. She just runs as if something terrible is chasing her, until she reaches the Wendy house. The door is locked and the Whale Caller is not at home.

She suspects that he has gone to Walker Bay to consort with the whales, and she goes there. And indeed there he is, sitting on the green bench, watching a whale sluggishly working its way to join two other whales at some distance. He is wearing his tuxedo and is holding his horn.

“You locked me out of the house, man!” she screams.

He is startled out of his reverie and gives her an amazed stare.

“What’s with the wild look and a clown’s face? You look like a gorgon.”

“How do you expect me to get into the house when you lock me out?”

“I didn’t expect you back so early,” he says. “You never come back this early when you have gone to the Bored Twins.”

“Yes, I can see that you didn’t expect me this early. So this is what you are up to when I am not there? I suppose that is your fish!”

“It is Sharisha, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then why are you not jumping about playing that stupid horn?”

The Whale Caller just stands up and walks away. Saluni shouts after him, telling him he has no right to walk away when she is still talking to him. But he is not in a mood for an argument. He chooses not to hear Saluni’s shrill voice, even though it comes from only a few feet away, and redirects his thoughts to Sharisha. Sharisha never nags him about anything. He is wondering, though, what could have happened to her. There is something unusual about her.

The song is the same, although it sounds low and tired. That is how he came to the bay this morning. Just after Saluni had left for the mansion he heard the familiar song. He did not think twice about changing into black tie, grabbing his favourite horn and rushing to the bay. Sharisha was there all right. And was alone. He was a bit disappointed. He had expected her to return with a calf, after the pillaging that happened to her months ago, a few days before she left for the southern seas. Perhaps none of the males had been strong enough to plant the seed.

He played the horn. Sharisha responded unenthusiastically.
There was none of her usual breaching and lobtailing. She just floated on the water like a big dirigible that had fallen from the sky only to be tossed about by lazy winds on the surface of the ocean. She didn’t seem to propel herself and depended on the whims of the waves. This purposeless and directionless whale was not the Sharisha he knew. Southern rights are lethargic by nature and are the most buoyant of whales, but at this point Sharisha—the very one who had been the most active of all southern rights in the Whale Caller’s experience—seemed to be taking lethargy and buoyancy to extremes.

Then he saw it. As Sharisha made a feeble attempt to respond to his horn he saw the gaping wound on her side. He knew at once that it had been caused by a ship’s propeller on her way from the southern seas. The law forbids fishing boats from coming closer than three hundred metres to a whale. However, whales are very curious people. They actually take their nosy selves to the trawlers and even to big passenger liners. Many have lost their tails or have died in their encounters with boats. Sometimes they get entangled with fishing gear because they play with it like kelp, using it to remove the irritating lice from their callosities. Perhaps Sharisha did have a baby after all. Perhaps it was entangled or sliced to pieces by the same boat that wounded the mother.

These thoughts are interrupted by Saluni, who is pulling the tail of his jacket in three angry jerks.

“Don’t you dare ignore me, man, when I talk to you,” she screeches. “Your fish is back and now you think you can treat me like rubbish!”

“I don’t treat you like rubbish, Saluni.”

“Then what do you call this… sneaking away to be with your fish? Somebody is bound to do something drastic about that fish. It is bound to end up on someone’s dinner table somewhere in Japan and there’ll be peace in the world.”

“She has been wounded, Saluni. Didn’t you see the gaping wound? You cannot but feel sorry for the poor creature. Don’t be so heartless, Saluni.”

“What about my gaping wound? Who feels sorry for me?”

She lifts up her dress to display the gaping wound on her thigh. He is alarmed.

“What happened to you, Saluni?” he asks anxiously.

“Why would you care what happened to me?”

“And your shoes… where are your shoes?”

“I lost them. I fell and I lost the shoes.”

“Come, let us go home,” says the Whale Caller, holding her hand and trying to help her up the crag. “I have gentian violet and bandages at home. I am going to nurse that wound and you’ll see in no time it will be gone.”

But Saluni pulls away from him.

“Go and use your stupid gentian violet and bandages on your stupid whale, man,” she yells. “Just leave me alone.”

He watches her as she limps down the crag to the sea. She confronts Sharisha, who has now joined two other whales almost two hundred metres away.