He dreads the crowds and would like to take the shortest route possible to his Wendy house. But the mobs are blocking his path. Something is happening here. Placards and an Afrikaans hymn tell him that it is a protest march of sorts. Pastor Pietie le Roux leads a small crowd of dour yet angry Christians. The Whale Caller recognises him — one of the few people he remembers from the old days when he used to play the kelp horn at the Church. Pietie was one of the young people who had remained with the Church while the Whale Caller and others followed His Eminence, the late and lamented Bishop, to form the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn. Pietie is now a grey-head pastor of the Holy Light Ministries and is punching the air with his angry fist.
The Whale Caller tries to slink off.
“You can skulk away all you want, but you cannot hide from the Lord,” says Pastor Pietie le Roux, looking directly into the eyes of the Whale Caller.
“I don’t need to hide from you, Pietie le Roux,” protests the Whale Caller.
“You turned your back on the Lord,” shouts the pastor. “Do you now want to turn your back on your responsibility as a member of this community?”
His followers punctuate this crucial question with a few amens and hallelujahs. On the side of the road dissenters heckle the holy man to the chagrin of his followers. But the holy man will not be deterred. Among the hecklers the Whale Caller sees a woman who has a tendency to pop up everywhere the Whale Caller is. On occasion he has practically run away from her, but like a bad penny she will pop up again somewhere in his vicinity before that day is over. It could be at a supermarket where he buys provisions for the week, mainly his staple of macaroni and cheese; it could be at the beach where he blows his kelp horn for the whales; it could even be outside the gate of the Wendy house where he lives. Whenever the Whale Caller sees her, he changes direction. She never seems to mind him. She usually just stands there, looking at him intently until he disappears. Then she pops up again somewhere else later that day when he is busy minding his own business. Thankfully she has never popped up at his confessions to Mr. Yodd. That would be embarrassing. What would Mr. Yodd think of him? To pre-empt her appearance at Mr. Yodd’s shrine he has mentioned her to him once, by way of seeking advice on how to deal with the pest of a woman who seems to be stalking him. As usual Mr. Yodd had laughed at him. He had left mortified, as often happens after his confessions to Mr. Yodd. He realised only when he reached the top of the cliffs that he had received no counsel from his confessor on how to deal with the stalker.
The woman never says anything. He has never heard her voice. She just stands there and looks at him with questioning eyes. He always averts his eyes. She enjoys this game, for she skips girlishly to the new spot where his eyes are fixed. His best defence is to walk away. Almost running, looking back from time to time to see if she is following. She never follows. She just stands there, arms akimbo, intently staring after him.
On one occasion at the beach he mustered enough courage to glare back at her. She did not flinch. He stood his ground for a while, and occupied his mind with studying her face. It was ravaged by alcohol. Yet he couldn’t help concluding that she was one of those people who continued to be beautiful long after the nights were gone. He studied her red matted hair, restrained from running in all wild directions by a fine black net. She broke into a smile, while still looking him straight in the eye. Four of her upper front teeth were missing, the result of the yesteryear teeth-extracting fashion of the Western Cape that many of its followers regret today. They try to hide the folly of their youth with false teeth. The woman’s teeth that were not missing were brown, perhaps from snuff or even too much alcohol.
He couldn’t bear it any longer. He turned and walked away. Quite briskly. Once more she had won.
Although the woman is with those who are heckling the pastor, she herself is not a heckler. She is staring at the hapless Whale Caller, who is being harangued by the pastor. Fifteen pastors begin to surround the Whale Caller, raising their placards high. Bold letters screaming: Clean Out the Filth from Our Town, Hermanus Is Not Sodom and Gomorrah, Away with Moffies and Their Plays…
The Whale Caller remembers reading in the Hermanus Times that fifteen pastors from various denominations are protesting about the staging of a play titled Have You Heard the Seagull Scream? as part of the Kalfiefees. Apparently what is galling the men of God is that the play features full frontal nudity and explicit gay sex scenes.
“Hey, the play has nothing to do with me, Pietie le Roux,” says the Whale Caller.
“It has everything to do with all decent people of this town,” the pastor says. “It is an affront to all God-fearing townsfolk, and you cannot stand aside in your godless whale-hugging existence and do nothing about it. You must join us in this protest.”
The theatre where the play is to be staged is just across the street and the Whale Caller cannot help noticing that the lines of those who want to buy tickets are getting longer. Those who have not seen the festival programme think they can get more information about the play from Pastor Pietie le Roux.
“Hey, Pastor le Roux, what is this dirty play about?” one of them shouts from the crowd.
“They say it is about fuckin’ moffies,” another one responds.
“Hey, I am asking Pastor le Roux, not you!”
This gives Pietie le Roux the opportunity to sermonise about the play. “We, the pastors of Hermanus, have been placed here by the Lord to look after the morality of this town. The people who attend the play will be affected by it. Plays like these are the cause of all our problems in this town — problems like abalone poaching and drug abuse.”
“What is this play about, pastor, which causes people to steal perlemoen from our seas?” asks another smart-aleck.
“It is about a sailor who is secretly in love with his captain,” says Pietie le Roux.
“Skande! Skande!” shout his followers.
“You don’t think the captain could be a woman?” asks a spoilsport.
“Ja,” agrees another one, “in this new South Africa women are captains.”
“Not in this play,” says the pastor indignantly. “The sailor is a man and the captain is a man.”
“So the pastor has seen this play yet he doesn’t want us to see it so we can make up our own minds about it?” asks the woman. For the first time the Whale Caller hears her voice. It has a husky tinge to it, as if it was made for singing the blues.
“Who is this woman who blasphemes against the messenger of the Word?” asks the holy man.
“She is Saluni the village drunk,” answers a member of the fold helpfully.
“How does the pastor know what the play is about if he has not seen it?” insists Saluni. “How does he know it is bad for the morality of this town?”
“God have mercy on you, my child,” says the pastor, raising his open hand over her head as if to bless her. “I read in the festival programme what the play is about. I have not seen it because these eyes that read the Holy Book for the congregation of the children of God every Sunday cannot feast on such filth. None of us believers have seen this play. None of us will see it. And I would advise the village drunk, who is nevertheless still loved by the Lord, not to see it either.”
“So what if the sailor falls in love with his captain?” asks Saluni, who is fast establishing herself as the unofficial spokesperson of the sinful theatrical production. “After all, the constitution of the new South Africa protects gays. It is against the law to discriminate against anyone just because they are fuckin’ moffies. This is not the old South Africa where somebody else thought for us.”
“So our village drunk is also a lawyer and a politician?” asks Pastor Pietie le Roux to the derisive laughter of his followers. “Before you run to complain to your Human Rights Commission let me tell you that it is not because of homosexuality that we are against the play, though indeed no moffie will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is because of explicit description and full frontal nudity! This is the last resort we are taking here. We did try to negotiate with the festival organiser. And you know what he told us? That Jesus is for everyone, including moffies. How dare he speak the name of Jesus upon his lips?”
Since the focus of Pastor Pietie le Roux is now on the impertinent Saluni, the Whale Caller manages to work his way out of the circle of pastors to the side of the hecklers. The only opening through which he may escape is next to Saluni. And he has no choice but to brush against her. She looks at him and grins triumphantly. Fumes of methylated spirits assail him. He cringes away and manages to stand on the fringes of the crowd. It is already dispersing, with most people rushing to join the line at the box office window of the theatre.
“We have not finished cleaning this town,” says another one of the fifteen pastors, addressing the faithful. “There is yet another scandalous play called Broekbrein. And this one is about a middle-aged man who falls for a younger woman. This isn’t going to do the morals of this town any good. We must think of our daughters, flowers of Hermanus, who may be misled by such drivel. And as usual we spoke to the writer, who is also the actor in this one-man play. We phoned him, warning him to stay away from Hermanus. Unfortunately he did not heed our warning.”
Then he breaks into a hymn in his baritone. The fold takes it up and the march continues on its path of redemption. The Whale Caller walks slowly to his Wendy house. He is disgusted that he has touched the village drunk. It suddenly strikes him that when he brushed against her an image of his long-departed mother flashed before his eyes. He wonders why Saluni reminds him of a woman who died decades ago, when he was still a boy, before he even became an apprentice horn player at the Church. Saluni looks nothing like his mother. She obviously was not yet born when his mother sailed for celestial shores. He reckons there is a fifteen-year gap between Saluni and him, though it is hard to tell with people whose faces have been ravaged by spirits and the elements. Saluni is a village drunk and looks it; his mother was a strict Christian woman who walked a mile from any den of iniquity. Saluni is petite. His mother was a robust woman in corpulent dresses. But something in Saluni does remind him of his mother, and it bothers him no end that he can’t put his finger on it.