“It can’t be for the pot,” says the Whale Caller. “The law allows you only four perlemoens a day for the pot. You are a poacher.”
“Are you an undercover cop or what? Are you from the Scorpions?”
“Just give him his damn things, man,” says Saluni. “You don’t want to mess with poachers.”
She knows them from the taverns. Stories are told of how poachers can be deadly when they are cornered. The man gains courage from Saluni’s support. He concludes that the two cannot be Scorpions after all. But the Whale Caller is big and the puny man has no intention of tackling him for his bag of stolen goods. He’d better be friendly. He smiles once more and asks the Whale Caller please to give a poor man a break.
“Come on, man,” says Saluni sharply. “Give the man his things.”
The Whale Caller hands the bag to the puny man, muttering as much to himself as to anyone else: “But this is wrong. It is all wrong. Do you know how long it takes for those perlemoens to mature? Eight years. Eight years, I tell you.”
“What do you care if it takes twenty years, man?” asks Saluni. “It is none of your business.”
“We have got to eat, sir,” says the puny man. “We have got to feed our children. Big companies are making money out of these perlemoens. The government gives them quotas. What about us, sir? Do you think if I apply for quotas I will get them? How are we expected to survive?”
He tells them of the woes of the village where the whole economy depends on poaching. Well-known poachers have become rich, building double-storey houses in dusty townships. Why must he be the only one who remains poor for the rest of his life? He invites them to spend the night at his shack so that they can see what he is talking about. After some persuasion from the Whale Caller Saluni agrees that they accept his invitation — not to see what he is talking about, but because they have to sleep somewhere.
He lives in what he refers to as the coloured township of Blompark. And indeed double-storey buildings rise above the shacks and the small state-subsidised houses that dot the township. The puny man still lives in a shack, but he hopes that one day he too will have a double-storey house. He tells them how he started harvesting the rocks on the kelp beds for the precious creatures. It was for the pot. But the temptation was too great. Soon he was harvesting to sell. Now his ambition is to have direct access to the white middlemen who in turn sell to the Chinese syndicate bosses. There are established racial hierarchies in the illegal abalone trade. Coloured folk sell their harvest to white men who pay about two hundred rands a kilogram. The white men sell to the Chinese men for about a thousand rands a kilogram. The Chinese ship the abalone to the Far East where they get about two thousand five hundred rands a kilogram for it. And these are the old prices. The puny man has heard that prices have gone up, although he has not yet benefited from that. He is at the very bottom of the food chain. He sells to better-established coloured poachers who only pay him fifty rands a kilogram. He now wants to deal directly with the white men who pay two hundred rands per kilogram. That would make all the difference to his life. But the rich coloured poachers are not eager to increase the circle of people who have direct access.
As the puny man tells them of his woes a brand-new van stops outside. It is the man who has come to collect the abalone. He weighs it on a basket fish scale and pays the puny man his money. He drives away to collect from other puny men. He used to be a poacher himself. Now he is the middleman between the puny men and the white men. And he has become so rich that he is now a law unto himself. He is respected by the Gansbaai community because he is one of those who keeps the economy of the village going. When the Scorpions tighten the screws, the puny man tells his guests, the whole village suffers. Business in pubs, furniture shops and even video shops falls to the extent that some have to close down only to reopen when poaching activity resumes with the departure of the police, who are obviously unable to tighten the screws indefinitely.
The puny man regales them with poaching stories as he prepares them a meal of rice and fried abalone. As they eat Saluni says to the Whale Caller: “You must eat more of this perlemoen. God knows you need it. You have not touched me since we left Hermanus.”
“I don’t have any more, unfortunately,” says the puny man. “I sell almost all of it. I leave just a little for the pot.”
“Don’t worry,” says the Whale Caller. “I don’t need any more perlemoen.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know why perlemoen is so popular in the Far East,” says Saluni.
“Of course I know; it is an aphrodisiac,” says the puny man.
“Everyone knows that,” says the Whale Caller, rather embarrassed. “You don’t have to sing about it.”
“So now you know why you must eat more of the perlemoen as long as we are here surrounded by it,” she says.
“It is finished, ma’am,” says the puny man apologetically.
The Whale Caller is scandalised. He shifts closer to her on the bench on which they are sitting and whispers in her ear: “You are blind, Saluni. How can you say such things?”
By nine the Whale Caller is bored with poaching stories and Saluni wants to sleep. The puny man prepares a place for them on one side of the shack while he will sleep on the opposite side. The Whale Caller asks if he would allow them to leave the light on all night, but the puny man will have none of that.
“I can’t sleep in the dark,” says Saluni. “If you think we are going to finish your paraffin in the lamp, I have my own candle in my bag.”
It has nothing to do with saving paraffin, the puny man explains. He would not be able to sleep with the light on. It would remind him of prison, where he spent a few months for poaching. The solitary naked bulb was left on for the whole night in his cell, making it impossible for him to sleep. He spent many sleepless nights in that jail and wasted away. That is why he is so thin now. He could steal only a few winks at the work detail. Now that he is king of his own castle he cannot subject himself to that punishment again. The honoured guests must remember that without sleep he can’t harvest the sea the next morning. One needs all one’s energy to dislodge abalone from the rocks on kelp beds.
“She is afraid of the dark,” pleads the Whale Caller.
“She is blind for Christ sake!” the puny man bursts out. “What does she need the light for?”
It is the same question that the Whale Caller had asked her last night when they were preparing to sleep in the deserted house by the sea. She insisted that she could feel the darkness even in her blindness. “I never imagined that darkness would find me even in blindness,” she said. So much for the freedom that she declared she had gained soon after losing her sight! They had the candle burning until daybreak.
“You don’t talk like that about me,” says Saluni.
“We are this man’s guests, Saluni,” says the Whale Caller. “We can’t start fighting him in his own house.”
“He must not be selfish, man, even if it is his house. It is just a shack after all. Nothing like our beautiful Wendy house with electricity and everything.”
The Whale Caller signals to their host not to worry for he will solve the whole problem. The puny man sits in the corner sulking. Saluni can sense his rebellion, and to pre-empt any stupid action on his part she thinks it wise to let him know who is boss even in his house. “Look at him,” she says to the puny man, pointing in the direction of the Whale Caller. “He is going to hit you. See those big strong hands? He’s going to hit you so hard you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“I don’t hit people, Saluni,” says an embarrassed Whale Caller.