Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

“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.”

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.