A dying scream joined after a few beats by another dying scream. Then silence. They cannot believe the intensity of what has just happened.
“I bathed myself in you, Saluni,” says a breathless Whale Caller. “Your waters of life mixed with mine to wash our souls. It was a wonderful cleansing ceremony, Saluni, and I am cleansed.”
“It is something you cannot do with Sharisha,” jokes a breathless Saluni.
“You do not know that, Saluni, you do not know that.”
After this breathless murder he declares that he would like to be her slave forever and ever more, world without end, amen.
Many breathless days follow breathless nights. Some are grey like the first day of the cleansing ritual, while others are sunny. Some have the wetness of the source of life; some are as dry as the Karoo. They may be stormy, or sometimes calm. Cold or sweltering. But they are all breathless.
Saluni. She has bloomed like the tulips of the mansion and the cracks on her face have smoothed out. It is as if the bees that are always buzzing around the tulips have filled the crevices with the bee-glue that they collect from buds to patch up their hives. The face has the glow of faces that have been cleansed with the propolis of the bees.
When the Whale Caller first heard her bluesy voice she had three addictions: the wine, the Bored Twins and the Whale Caller. That was in November. In the last seven months she has gradually discarded two vices and has remained with one: the Whale Caller. Of course, it is not quite accurate to say she discarded the Bored Twins. She just found herself needing their opiate presence less and less as the cleansing ceremonies with the Whale Caller became more frantic. When she was still a haunting shadow to his kelp horn rituals with the whales she used to go to the mansion every other day. Every day even. She was highly dependent on them for the elation that even her regular plonk could not give her. After she joined him at the Wendy house and they developed common rituals such as window shopping and dancing to the music of the whales she found herself going to the mansion only once a week. Sometimes once in two weeks. And then carnal desires were satisfied and she forgot to go to the mansion altogether. She wanted to be enveloped in his aura all the time, climaxing every few minutes at the memory of the next cleansing ceremony in the looming night. A memory of an analeptic future! He, on the other hand, seemed to spend his days in a daze. He did not even notice that there were no longer any fresh tulips in the house, and that the last bunch stayed there until it wilted and the water in the vase became slimy green and smelly with the rot.
She gave up wine, a decision that was difficult, but was helped by the fact that even when she had gone to the mansion she rarely came back with a bottle of wine as she used to in the past. Vineyard owners had now adopted a new tendency of paying their workers with actual money instead of bottles of wine. The father of the Bored Twins would only have a bottle of wine when the boss was in a celebratory mood and the market was saturated with the cheap brands of autumn harvests from his vineyard and those of competitors. Saluni was now going to the mansion with very little expectation of wine. She went solely for the elation.
This meant that she had to pester the Whale Caller every time she wanted a bottle of wine. “After all,” she would remind him, “I stopped going to the taverns for you.” She had never found herself in this position before, where she had to beg for a bottle of wine on a daily basis. Back in the old days she would just walk to a tavern, regale them with stories, threaten them with her being a love child, and they would ply her with as much wine as she could imbibe — which was quite a lot considering her small body! On the other hand, the Whale Caller found it unacceptable to feed her habit, which he detested in the first place. But he understood what it was to be addicted, and reluctantly bought a bottle, perhaps once or twice a week, which was still a strain on his meagre resources. And then the cleansing ceremonies! She needed no other intoxicant but him. Of course there were withdrawal symptoms. In the same way that there were some when she gave up the Bored Twins. Irritability mostly. A headache. Nausea. Obsessive behaviour.
Perhaps the latter is not a withdrawal symptom for it continues to this day. Perhaps it is part of her enchantment with ritual. When they went to the beach in the morning — not to waltz, since in June the whales took their song to the southern seas a thousand miles away, but just to walk in the freezing morning breeze — she went back to the house five times to make sure that the door was locked. On the way she elegantly puffed on a cigarette with her long black slender holder. She dropped the butt on the grass and stepped on it. But after walking for fifty metres or so she went back to make sure that the butt was completely extinguished lest it set the grass on fire. She did this three times, until the Whale Caller voiced his irritation.
Now she lies on her back on the bed looking at the ceiling while waiting for the Whale Caller, who is in the kitchen pottering around as he is wont to do every night before he comes to bed. As if he is gathering courage to face another night of untrammelled passion. She does what she does every night before she sleeps: counts the wooden panels on the ceiling of the Wendy house. He walks in and catches her at it. He laughs. She is quite piqued because he continues to laugh even as they snuggle up in the small bed. She starts from the beginning to count the panels, very deliberately this time and very much aloud so that she can be heard above his foolish laughter. Then she turns her back on him and sulks until she falls asleep. For the first time since the cleansing rituals began a month ago it is his turn to be left high and dry in the limbo of unfulfilled desire. He vows to himself never to make fun of other people’s silly compulsive habits again.
In the morning Saluni is still sulking. She announces grandly that she is going to spend the day with the Bored Twins at the mansion. She is fussing over her looks as if she is going to see a lover. She wears the green corduroy pants and black knee-high pencil-heel boots that he bought her at the flea market as a peace offering after he threw her coat away As she brushes her hair she mutters that it is cold outside and some evil person threw her coat into the ocean. She is wearing a flimsy pink sweater and she wonders aloud whether the evil person will now generate some heat around her as she walks all the way to the mansion. And if the evil person thinks that the corduroy pants and the boots make up for the lost coat, then the evil person is quite mistaken. The Whale Caller pretends not to hear any of this. He is surprised at this sudden decision to go to the mansion because since the cleansing rituals took off in earnest she has not even mentioned the Bored Twins. He knows that for some reason he is being punished, and he feels threatened by the Bored Twins. He has always felt uneasy about her relationship with the angelic girls. He is well aware of her previous addiction to their aura. He fears that going back to them will spark her relapse into the addiction. He nevertheless packs her a lunch of their staple in a “scoff tin,” which is not really a tin but a plastic container. A bright smile replaces the sulks. She gives him a goodbye peck and minces away to the countryside.