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“There is no place you do not know in Hermanus, Saluni,” observes the Whale Caller. He is obviously quite impressed by her command of the politics of Hermanus. “There is nothing you don’t know in this district.”

“People in the taverns talk,” says Saluni. “And I have been to every tavern worth its name in the district. Until you came along.”

“You came along.”

“You searched for me.”

The Whale Caller studies the tiny boy in front of him. The boy is grinning expectantly.

“You sing well, boy,” says the Whale Caller. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A whale caller,” says Saluni impishly.

“An opera singer,” replies the boy.

And he is determined to be one, whatever obstacles may be put in his way. He sings in a school choir. But one day he will surpass his heroes: Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. He then rattles off the history of the three tenors, and tells the Whale Caller about some of their great concerts. The Whale Caller himself has never been one for music, except the songs of the whales.

Lunga Tubu breaks into a rendition of “O sole mio,” and then follows it with “La donna è mobile” There are tears in the Whale Caller’s eyes. Saluni looks at him, shakes her head and smiles.

“That is very sweet,” she says.

The Whale Caller is clearly offended. He gives Lunga Tubu some banknotes without even counting them and abruptly walks away.

“Hey, what’s wrong now?” asks Saluni, running after the Whale Caller. “It is okay, man, you can cry.”

THREE

The whales have been gone for many months, and the taverns of Hermanus miss their love child. She has been gone for almost as long as the whales. Many rumours circulate, ranging from the mundane to the sublime. She stowed away in an oil tanker. She was seen at the Cape Town docks drinking with a bunch of Mediterranean seafaring types who took a fancy to her and persuaded her to sail the world with them, smuggling crude to third-world countries with black-market economies. She is hibernating with a new rash after the Bored Twins placed ten hairy millipedes in her bra — five in each cup. Others saw her in conference with a bevy of water maids — beautiful women with lower bodies of fish — in the deep of the night. She has joined them in their undersea queendom. She is in the process of metamorphosing into a watermaid.

These stories change every day, like the story of her own conception: one day she is seen riding on the back of a dolphin which swims with her to the horizon, and the next day she has joined a cloister of nuns and has taken the vow of chastity, or has been discovered by a talent scout and now she sings the blues on a cruise liner.

There are those who know a different truth. They are the very few who have found reason to venture to the beaches, to Walker Bay and the Old Harbour — areas often shunned by the true-blooded citizens of Hermanus as being too touristy. They have seen Saluni, they claim, waltzing in the morning with a strange man who blows a kelp horn for the whales. No, not Wilson Salukazana the whale crier from Zwelihle, who is employed by the town council to alert whale watchers as to the presence and location of whales. Everyone knows the whale crier. He has been seen in newspapers and on television. Everyone in the world who has a camera has photographed him. The whale man seen with Saluni is a different one, the bald brawny silver-bearded man in blue dungarees or black tie who does not relish an audience when he blows his horn, but merely tolerates it because there is nothing he can do about it. The one who calls whales to himself and spends the nights dancing with them. Saluni is often seen with him. Loitering on the beach like the strandlopers of old. Strolling down supermarket aisles. Smiling broadly. Sometimes even holding hands! Yes, the very Saluni that they thought they knew so well! The love child.

But the habitués of the taverns do not want to believe these rumour-mongers. Their story is pooh-poohed as the most ridiculous ever invented in the Western Cape and beyond. If Saluni were anywhere near Hermanus, they argue, she would not have deserted her eternal greatest haunts — the taverns of Hermanus. A lady who prides herself on elegance — however threadbare and old-time it may be — cannot become a strandloper. There is more romance in joining a noviciate or a band of smugglers, in belting out the blues on passenger ships, in riding dolphins and in transforming into hallowed water beings.

Saluni has indeed transformed into a watermaid of sorts. Her body has not turned into that of a fish, but on sunny days she spends many hours with her feet immersed in the emerald green shallows. Even on a day like this where everything is just a mass of greyness and one can’t tell where the sea ends and the sky begins, she sits on a rock playing with the water and making monotonous splashes with her feet. When days are grey, water also assumes dull colours. Not blue. Not emerald green. Misty purple. Oily brown. Or just grey like the day. The Whale Caller sits on the green bench above and watches her as he used to watch the whales. He can only see her back. The wild wind blows her red hair in wild directions, making it look like the hissing serpents of Medusa. But he knows that from the front her face will not turn every living thing beholding it into stone. It is a ravishing face, though the elements and the wine have taken their toll on it.

He is alarmed at the intensity of his feeling for her, so violent that it wants to burst out of his chest. It has never happened like this before; even with the buxom women in the hamlets he passed through when he used to travel the coast. Those were his happy-go-lucky days. He indulged his youthful fancies and moved on. Sometimes he lingered for a few months or even years when the ambience was convivial enough. But ultimately he moved on because no strong attachments were ever established in his adventures and misadventures with the female folk. This feeling that is actually making him physically ill is a new experience, and in spite of its debilitating effect it illumines his face. His whole body feels light as if he is levitating, though he is actually sitting firmly on the bench.

Saluni is very much aware of his physical illness. She shares a similar malaise, with slight variations, though she sometimes doubts if his is directly related to her. She believes that it is likely to be caused by someone — or rather something — else. Her doubts worsen whenever he sits on that bench and has a faraway look in his eyes. She suspects that on those occasions his mind is populated by images of Sharisha lobtailing and doing all sorts of crude things in the ocean. Although the name of Sharisha has not featured in their conversation for many months, she silently bears a grudge against her. She blames her for the sad fact that she and the Whale Caller have not consummated their union.

Her thoughts are on this lack of consummation as she withdraws from the water to sit on the moist sand a short distance away. Drawing deeply from her historical memory, she chants spells from the binding rituals of those wonderful pagan epochs. She commands through binding hymns that her beloved should be subject to her will and act according to her wishes. With sand she builds an effigy of her beloved, in the manner that the lovesick moulded such effigies in old Egypt and Greece — a male pursuit in those ancient cultures — and still mould them in the enchanting voodoo rituals of some Africans. In her sequinned handbag, which is lying on the sand next to the stilettos, she finds a matchbox. She uses the matchs ticks to pierce the sandman in the arms and the legs and the heart, chanting the binding hymn that the beloved will come to her running, burning with desire, and she will drag him by his beard and even by his genitals, until he surrenders himself completely to her. She tortures the sandman with her “needles” until the Whale Caller feels the pain where he is sitting, and has seizures. He does not know the immediate source of this further violence on his body, except for the fact that the mere sight of Saluni has been giving him feverish outbursts lately