The boy’s enthusiasm gives Saluni ideas. She remembers how she was foiled by the Bored Twins’ mother last year. She could have had her fame as well. Her voice could have ridden the airwaves if it were not for the foolish superstitions of the woman. She vows that this year nothing will stop her. She cannot record alone because she suspects no one will take her seriously. She can’t sing with Lunga Tubu because he sings the kind of music that leaves her cold. In any event, even if she were to convert the boy to a more decent kind of music, the boy would totally hog the mike. He is the kind of person who’d like to grab all the limelight for himself, and wouldn’t give her the least opportunity to break into a solo. She needs the angelic voices of the Bored Twins to give her bluesy voice credibility. Yes, she definitely needs the Bored Twins, and this year she will take them to the studio whether their mother likes it or not.
But first she must try to talk sense into the mother. She makes sure she has a candle and clean underwear in her sequinned handbag, and goes to the mansion. She knows that the parents always return after dark, so she will have to spend the night.
The Bored Twins are not home. They must have gone to the swamps to play with the frogs. She sits on the steps going up to the front door and waits. She occupies her time by counting the ants that have formed two long trails, one composed of fast workers heading in the direction of the rockeries and another of slow workers going in the opposite direction carrying heavy loads of meat carved with their mandibles from a dead lizard. This trail disappears around the corner. She wonders where they are going with all that food and what distance they can cover with loads heavier than their own weight before they get to their abode, but is too lazy to stand up and find out.
The trail gets thinner as the last bits of the rapidly dwindling lizard are carted away, and then there are no more ants to count. Sal uni amuses herself by imagining the panels on the ceiling of the Wendy house and counting them. Then she counts everything in the Wendy house. The bed, the portable electric stove they call the hot plate, the cups, the plates, all the seashells pasted on the wall, the table, the Whale Caller brooding on the kitchen chair. That Whale Caller! He has a lot to learn about women. She is going to make him suffer with her absence until he kicks that behemoth out of his life. Soon he will turn around and ask for her forgiveness and, of course, she will make him plead and beg and pray before she grandly forgives him. And then they will live happily ever after.
It is almost sunset when the girls return. They have been out for the whole day and they smell of the sun. As usual they are excited to see Saluni. They are even more excited when she tells them of the radio man, but their faces fall when they remember that last year their mother did not allow them to record for fear that the machines would steal their voices. Saluni assures them that somehow this year things will work out differently. The girls should not worry their pretty little heads because she will devise a plan. Anyway, it is possible that the mother has since changed her views on the matter, and will allow them to go with her to see the Kalfiefees in town.
The girls cannot contain their joy. They must start rehearsing immediately. They teach Saluni a new song that they have composed at the swamps. It is about croaking frogs in their green and brown colours and how the girls caught them and pierced their eyes with sharp sticks and set them free to hop about in wonderful blindness. It is a haunting melody. They tell Saluni that the song is all about the fun they had at the swamps today. The blinded frogs will live peacefully because now they won’t be bothered by the bright rays of the sun. They won’t have to run away from danger, because they won’t see it. They will therefore be safe since danger catches only those who run away from it. This dissertation on blindness resonates with Saluni, but she does not make any comment to the authors.
She, in turn, teaches them new songs. She would have liked to compose a song lamenting the dying whaling tradition since the seas are polluted with the ugly creatures that are of no use to mankind and expressing the hope that one day they will all strand themselves. Unfortunately, unlike the girls, she is not much of a composer. So she teaches them censored versions of tavern songs and hymns that have been adapted to serve secular desires. The rehearsal goes on into the night under the full moon whose light is so bright it erases the stars.
When the parents finally return in their donkey cart they are pleased to see Saluni. It is gratifying to have a visitor when the father has caught a guinea fowl. Such a delicacy becomes tastier when it is shared with others. He tells them how it happened. “A miracle,” he says. “A gift of gourmet meat falling right into my hands.”
“Who gave you the gift, Papa?” asks one of the twins.
“The farmer, silly,” says the other twin. “The vineyard owner.”
“God!” says the father.
He was shouting at the donkey to get cracking and it was just plodding along in the moonlight, too stubborn or tired to respond even to his whip. Then a car approached, blinding them with its bright lights. It must have disturbed a sleeping guinea fowl because as soon as it had whisked by the big bird flew from the nearby field right into his arms. He does not know how he managed to catch it since his eyes were still blind from the headlights. It must have been blind as well. He had to throw away his whip to catch it. Such night gifts abound on these roads. A rabbit, and once in a while a springbok, that has been foolish enough to run in front of the headlights only to be run over. Usually the roadkill is too messy to take home. Sometimes the game is not mashed into the road but knocked to one side by a bumper and is good enough to skin and take home. But never before has game fallen right into his outstretched hands.
“It just shows how great the Lord is,” says the father.
The mother quickly boils water and Saluni helps her pluck the guinea fowl while the father dunks the girls in a metal bathtub full of cold water and scrubs the mud from their angelic bodies with a sponge. They always rebel at bath time and scream and bite their father’s hands. He in turn slaps their hands until they calm down and realise that the more they make things difficult for him the longer the agony of the bath will last. They giggle and turn the whole thing into a game by lathering the father’s arms and the stubble on his face as he scrubs their bodies. Bath time for the twins is always a messy business with the water ending up all over the floor.
“The Kalfiefees is on again,” says Saluni as she cuts open the guinea fowl and scoops out its intestines with her hand. “It hasn’t lost its magic.”
“We wouldn’t know about that,” says the mother. “We are working people.”
“I could take the twins there while you are at work. How’s that, man?”
“You know I don’t like my girls to go to town. It is not safe for little girls.”
“They roam the countryside … on their own.”
“The countryside is safer than the town.”
“I’ll look after them, man. They will be with me all the time.”
“I know you mean well, Saluni. But I can’t allow it.”
“You know people make a lot of money during the Kalfiefees. They dance… they sing… and the stupid tourists give them money. I know a boy there who is making a lot of money singing for tourists. Lunga Tubu. And his voice is not even angelic. It is a voice of this earth. There is money for the taking in town … especially if you have a beautiful voice like the twins.”