“Oh, so now you found me again!” she says. “You are not doing badly at this finding business.”
“I was not looking for you this time,” says the Whale Caller apologetically. “I was looking for Sharisha.”
“Oh, Sharisha! The big fish you have named.”
“She is not a fish,” he says emphatically. “A whale is not a fish.”
“A whale… a fish… same difference! You don’t have to get so worked up about it. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it if I were you.”
“Look at her, she is beautiful,” he says with the pride of someone who has a stake in that beauty. “She is the queen of all southern rights. See her white callosities! See the regal wave of her flippers! See the bonnet of callosity on the tip of her snout!”
“How do you know the damn thing is female?”
“She is a woman all right.”
“I can tell you I saw his thingy when he was jumping out of the water causing all that racket and disturbing the peace.”
The Whale Caller chuckles in spite of himself.
“Even if she were male you wouldn’t know where to look for his thingy.”
“You don’t want to admit that you have gone gaga over a male. And you are so big and strong and muscular and… hard… I hope. Nothing camp about you at all.”
“I won’t stand for this kind of talk,” he says angrily “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“It shouldn’t bother you one bit. It is allowed. You were there when I was telling the pastors that it is even in the constitution of the country.”
“I won’t argue with you about Sharisha. I know what I know.”
She goes back to the business of crushing her lice. Sharisha thrusts her massive body up in the air, dives back into the water and doesn’t emerge again. She does this sometimes: dives in the water and stays many metres under the surface for up to half an hour without coming up for a breath.
“Don’t you dare think that I normally go around carrying lice on my body,” she says all of a sudden. “I am a lady, you know? I was sick. For two weeks nobody washed my things. With the damn rash my whole body was in pain. I couldn’t do a damn thing for myself.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Just so you know.”
Salunix. She arrives at the Wendy house. She has come to visit, but has no intention of ever leaving. That is why she is carrying a suitcase with all her worldly possessions. She has taken him up on his offer, made in a moment of weakness, to come over for a thorough sprucing-up that will destroy her lice once and for all. He welcomes her with a hot cup of cream of mushroom soup, and then prepares a hot bath for her. He pours in the water the pungent solution that is usually used as sheep dip.
“Look the other way while I take my clothes off,” she says with a naughty twinkle in her voice.
“Actually, I am leaving,” he says as he dashes out of the room.
“I was only joking! Come back! I don’t have a problem if you watch!”
But he is already out. She curses his cowardice under her breath, strips naked and gets into the enamel bathtub. She screams that the solution is burning her body. He shouts back from the second room — used as a kitchen — that it is all for the best because it will kill all the vermin that is feeding on her body.
“You may come in and scrub my back if you like,” she calls out.
“I would rather not,” he responds.
“You are a shy one, aren’t you?” she observes. “I like that in a man.”
After the bath she spends the rest of the day wrapped up in a blanket because all her clothes — including those that were in the suitcase — have been soaked in the solution, and then hung on the washing line outside to dry. She goes to bed early in the evening, her body still burning from the solution. She finds it difficult to sleep, especially because it has been many years since she slept sober. Well… almost sober… because she did take a secret sip of the methylated spirits that he uses for cleaning his tuxedo. She lies awake for a long time, listening to him pottering about in the kitchen, and wondering when he will sneak into bed. But he never does. He spends the night in a sleeping bag in the kitchen.
The Whale Caller wakes up after midnight to see a light through the cracks of her door. He thinks that she has forgotten to switch off the light. He tiptoes to the bedroom and flicks off the switch near the door. As he tiptoes back to his sleeping bag he is stopped in his tracks by a shrill scream from the bedroom.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” he assures her. “I was just switching off the light.”
“Never do that again! Where is the fuckin’ switch?”
He rushes back into the bedroom to switch on the light. And there she is, standing on the floor, naked, looking quite witless and bewildered.
“Never ever do that again! I hate the dark! I do not sleep in the dark! I do not walk in the dark! I do not do anything in the dark, in case you are the kind of man who does it only in the dark! Do you understand me?”
“I would not want to do anything with you in the dark,” he says defensively. “I was switching off the light because I thought you had forgotten to switch it off”
“Just never switch the light off again, that’s all.”
The Whale Caller apologises, and goes back to his sleeping bag.
When Saluni finally wakes up in the morning the aches of the sheep dip are gone. But her body is racked by something worse than a hangover — the pain of sobriety. A long-forgotten feeling! Her clothes are on the chair next to the bed, all neatly ironed. After a quick wash in the plastic basin, and an application of makeup from her sequinned handbag, she wears her green taffeta dress and her black fishnet stockings and her red pencil-heel shoes and her fawn pure-wool coat. Her wild red hair is restrained in a black net. Once more her former state of elegance has been restored. With it the mouldy yet sweet smell.
It strikes the Whale Caller that she has taken all the fuss over her in her stride, as if being pampered is her birthright. Not a word of gratitude. This does not bother him. It is just an observation for its own sake.
She has been around for three weeks, and he has got used to her presence and to her haunting odour. She has become his shadow, except on Bored Twins days. Once in a while she makes herself useful by collecting seashells and arranging them on the wooden wall, sticking them on with glue as some form of decoration. Or by cooking an early morning millet meal porridge which they eat with milk for breakfast. She cooks only when she is hungry and he is too occupied with other things to cook at that time. At most times she just sits there for the whole day and expects to be fed and groomed and mollycoddled. He enjoys brushing and disentangling her red locks. Sometimes he braids them crudely. This activity always makes her body tingle.
When she has been to the mansion and has brought back a bottle of wine, she spends the day following him doing his rounds with the whales, while she occasionally takes a sip from her bottle, and collects the seashells. She nurses the bottle: the Whale Caller has vowed that he will not buy her wine because he’d rather she stopped drinking.
Occasionally she spends the night at the mansion and comes back the next day quite radiant and euphoric. On such days she never stops talking about the Bored Twins and their beauty and their singing and how they are such angels.
“You are the one who always visits them,” says the Whale Caller. “Why don’t we ever see them coming here to see you?”
“They can’t come to town on their own,” Saluni explains. “Their parents work all day long. Their mother doesn’t want them to come to town anyway, because she thinks someone will steal their voices. I go there to keep an eye on them because they are always all alone.”