“Is there something wrong with me, man?” asks Saluni.
“It is not you.”
“It is that stupid creature, is it not?”
“At least you no longer call her a fish.”
“That stupid fish has castrated you.”
She spits out the word fish as if it were invective. He winces.
“In any case,” says the Whale Caller, “sex is overrated. I don’t need it. I can live without it. Ever since coming back from my travels around the coast I have lost all appetite for it.”
“If that is the case, go back to your sleeping bag and have wet dreams about your bloody fish.”
Even as she says this, she knows that it contradicts her true wishes. However, she does not want his sinewy body to provoke her into utter madness for nothing. He apologetically gathers his clothes from the floor and slinks out of the room.
She realises that the only way she will ever possess this man and restore his manly functions is to get rid of Sharisha. But how do you get rid of a whale? She closes her eyes tightly and a hazy image of the past emerges. She sees genteel women walking on Cape Town’s promenades wearing long colourful dresses. They are perfectly shaped because of the corsets made from baleen. Some are shading their heads from the sun with umbrellas whose ribs are made of baleen. Down on the rocks by the sea men are fishing and their rods are made of baleen. The beautiful corseted women are bringing them picnic baskets. She looks at them longingly, for if she had lived during their time she would have been one of them. She would be there with the Whale Caller. There would be no Sharisha, for her baleen would have been part of her corset and umbrella. Some of it would have been part of the chair-seats in her beautiful seaside cottage.
In today’s world, with all the foolish laws that protect these useless creatures, what do you do with a stubborn whale that refuses to let loose your man’s very soul? You cannot just go to any old whale and kick it around and beat it up with your stiletto-heel, shouting that it must leave your man alone. Whales don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.
She decides to bide her time. In the meanwhile, in the mornings following the nights her body has been raging, she hunts for mating seals on the rocks and sand hills for her own gratification. She sits on a rock and watches them. She finds it titillating that the females can make love to their males only a few weeks after the birth of their babies. Sometimes a couple is mating while another female is giving birth on the rocks, with seagulls waiting to feast on the placenta and the umbilical cord.
The whale caller sits on the green bench and watches Saluni frolic in the shallows. The wind is blowing her hair in all wild directions. She dances with the wind. She raises her arms and flaps them in some imagined flight. She takes off and soars higher than any bird has soared. She soars to the clouds. Her perpetual coat fails to weigh her down. And then from the clouds she dives back into the water to resume her dance with the wind. The shallows are a perfect place to express her elation. There are no whales to mess up her day and all his attention is on her. She is truly beautiful, he observes, in spite of her ravaged face. He grudgingly admits to himself that indeed the village drunk’s presence at the Wendy house and at the seaside has brightened his life, especially during an off-season like this when the whales have migrated to the southern seas.
She has no cares in the world. She does not worry about what the next day will bring. She is a transgressor of all that he holds sacred: moderation, quiet dignity, never raising the voice, avoidance of vulgar vocabulary, never flaunting desires of any kind, frugality. Created in sin, she is such a wonderful sinner. A glorious celebrant of worldliness. He envies her for that. He would like to transgress once in a while… to be as carefree as she is… to be taken over by that wanton spirit! She has often egged him to stop being so stiff and taking himself so seriously. Go out on some hedonistic binge! But his fear is stronger than his desire for pleasure. People were made for different things, he tells himself. Saluni was made to be recklessly happy. He was made to be cautious. And to be patient.
Whereas she always demands instant gratification of life, he would rather have delayed pleasure, for it carries in it something more solid. Momentary pleasure is flimsy and is for the lightheaded ones such as Saluni. True pleasure must be restrained. Whenever Saluni complains of boredom because she thinks there is no variety in their lives or they don’t have much “fun,” except for the waltz and the window shopping, he answers: “Tomorrow is just as good a day as any. We can still be happy tomorrow. You don’t gormandise pleasure as if there is no tomorrow.” She, on the other hand, suspects he is conserving his energy for the return of the whales… for Sharisha.
“Don’t just sit there, man! Come fly with me!” she calls out.
“Those waves don’t look friendly today,” he warns her. “Better be careful.”
“You are just a coward,” she says. “You don’t want to come and play in the water in case you actually enjoy it and become happy! I have never known anyone so scared of happiness!”
She stands on a smooth rock that is surrounded by water. She is looking in his direction and doesn’t see the returning tide.
“Hey, look out!” he shouts.
But it is too late. The tide sweeps her away. Her eyeballs almost pop out in bewilderment, which leaves the Whale Caller in stitches. She disappears in the waves and then pops up again, raising her hand as if she is waving. He waves back, still laughing. As the waves toss her about she reminds him of a breaching whale. Although she is just a speck compared to the smallest whale that ever visited Hermanus, she begins to assume the demeanour of a playful whale. And this sends him into a further paroxysm of laughter. Until he realises that Saluni is not clowning about. She really is in trouble, wrestling with the waves. And they are getting the better of her. For a while he had forgotten that Saluni was not Sharisha and that not all women are at home in the sea like Sharisha. He kicks off his boots and runs in her direction. He dives into the water. He is still laughing when he swims back to shore with her.
She is both angry and puzzled as she gasps for air and throws up the salty water. She has never seen him laugh this much. Come to think of it, she has never seen him laugh at all. At best he chuckles. And here he is, having a good laugh at her expense.
He places her on the sand and takes off her coat. He pumps the water out of her stomach. Thankfully she has not swallowed that much. She vomits bits of the macaroni and cheese that she had for lunch.
“The damnable coat,” he says as he continues to pump. “It almost killed you.”
“You don’t like my drinking,” she says between the heaving and the groaning. “You don’t like my coat. What else don’t you like about me?”
“Your stubbornness,” he says. “You could have died in there. You should have seen yourself. You were quite a sight.”
“You think this is funny, do you?” she asks, and then a stream of curses — mostly about his mother’s genitalia — escapes her beautiful but chapped lips.
“I don’t mind if you call me names,” says the Whale Caller. “But you don’t curse a dead woman who never did you any wrong.”
“And you don’t laugh at a drowning woman who never did you any wrong,” she shouts, spitting out the last morsel in her mouth.
He cannot help laughing one more time at the memory of her helpless body being tossed by the waves. This infuriates her and she breaks out into another round of colourful profanity.
“We are being observed all the time, Saluni,” he says, adopting some measure of seriousness. “We must behave appropriately at all times. Garbage must not come from our mouths.”