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.
They walk out of the door, and out of the gate. They tread genteelly on the pavement, arm in arm. He inhales the cold breeze from the sea with relish and rejoices in the soft fragrances of rotting kelp. He has fond memories of this ambience because at this time of the year when Sharisha was enjoying the krill in the southern seas the smells became a balm to his yearning soul. He is amazed at himself that he no longer yearns even though Sharisha has been gone for so long. He would not even have thought of her had it not been for the smells from the sea. They have walked only a few yards when Saluni extricates her arm from the genteelness and trots back to the Wendy house.
“It’s locked, Saluni. Please let’s not waste time,” he calls after her.
“Just to make sure, man, just to make sure,” she calls back.
She does this twice or thrice, and he waits patiently. Finally she defies the urge to walk back to check just one more time, and they stroll down the road.
They walk past American-type fast food franchises — the day calls for something classier than whopping burgers, deep-fried thick-battered chicken and slick pizzas that bear little resemblance to the original Italian peasant fare — and then turn into a street that prides itself on its restaurants. They stop for a while at the window of a hotel restaurant with a sushi bar, and watch the patrons sitting on cushions or mats on the floor like a congregation of some New Age religion, eating delicate oval-shaped balls of rice rolled in fish. On the low tables there are tiny bowls of different dark sauces. Other worshippers are sitting at the bar drinking some whitish sacramental drink and eating similar fare. There are chunks of white, grey, red and pink fish displayed on flat wooden rectangular rice plates. She explains to him that the fish is eaten raw, and he says that is not to his taste. Fish can only be decent when it is coated in spiced batter, fried in plenty of oil, and then eaten with golden brown chips, in the traditional manner of the Western Cape.
“You can talk about macaroni and cheese,” says Saluni, “but you don’t know anything about fish.”
“I used to live on fish when I walked the coast,” he tells her. “I lived in fisherfolk villages where they knew how to fry the fish.”
At this point the maître d’ sees them standing outside looking through the window debating the merits of his food. He goes out and invites them in.
“We have the best nigiri in South Africa,” he adds. “Yes, in this little town of Hermanus we beat top restaurants in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Our secret lies in the fact that our fish is fermented in salt and our rice is seasoned with a sweet vinegar mixture, as sushi originally used to be created in ancient Japan.”