He did not respond. She ran to catch up with him and stood in front of him.
“It is because you hate happiness,” she accused him. “You did it to destroy the happiness we had on the road.”
“If this be happiness, then I am glad I know nothing about it,” he said, edging around her and resuming the journey.
The villages of Onrus and Vermont had suffered terribly from the winds. The streets were clogged with sand and kelp. The Whale Caller stopped to lend a hand to a family whose car was stuck in the mud. Saluni walked on, hoping that he would plead with her to wait for him. When he did not she stopped and waited, tapping her foot impatiently while he pushed the car. After a long struggle the car was out and the family on its way.
Saluni was fuming: “You care for strangers more than you care for me.”
It was better when there was silence between them, thought the Whale Caller. Perhaps if he did not respond they would revert to the silence.
“You are good to strangers. You don’t lie to them. Only to me. You lied about the candle and you lied about your dreams and you lied about returning to Hermanus. Liar! Liar! Liar!”
Still he did not react. He hoped that she would soon give up and silence would reign once more.
“Damn it, man, why are you always so good? It’s boring, man. I hate it when you are always so good. What are you trying to do, man; show me up?”
“I am good to you too, Saluni,” he responded at last. “Or at least I try to be. It’s just that you don’t see it.”
Here he was going to make his final stand. He no longer cared what happened after that. He had had it up to here with her, he told her. He took this walk for her. He was always doing things for her but got no appreciation in the end. Hers was only to take. He got nothing in return.
“Nothing?” asked Saluni in bewilderment. “You call washing your little thing inside me nothing?”
Life was not only a series of cleansing ceremonies, he said. He wished for a woman who would take care of him the way his mother used to take care of his father.
“What do you know about women?” she asked. “You don’t look to me like someone who has any experience of women.”
“I have known women in my life… when I used to walk the coast. I have known unkind and uncaring women like you. But I have also known women who made their men feel special… who took care of them and coddled them. When foolish men are pampered like that they behave like arrogant kings … as if it is their God-given right as men to be treated that way. But wise men recognise it as a privilege and an honour. They relish the pampering and pamper their women back. Each pampering the other the best way he or she knows. They will do anything to make such women happy. If she feels like chocolate in the middle of the night the man will happily wake up to buy her chocolate, even as the woman protests that she was only joking and that the chocolate can still be bought tomorrow morning. I have known women, Saluni, and I have known women.”
This diatribe left Saluni stunned for a while. Then she burst into tears: “I gave up my shepherd… and for what? For you to talk to me like this … to call me names? Don’t you ever talk to me again for the rest of your life.”
“Suits me,” he said.
“It suits you because you don’t care. You never cared.”
“I care, Saluni. I have always cared.”
“If you care, when did you last tell me you love me? When did you last say I am beautiful?”
“How can I say you are beautiful when you are so ugly …”
“I am what?” she screeched, drowning his “… to me.” This was all a huge shock to her because she had never known him to say such horrible things to her. So he did have a cruel streak in him after all. No man had ever told her that she was ugly. Even when she was a baby people used to touch her cheeks in supermarket aisles and comment on her cuteness. As she was growing up in the inland provinces neighbours never forgot to mention that she had inherited her mother’s beauty and boys never forgot to fight over her. In the taverns of Hermanus men who had sailed all the seas of the world praised her beauty and her voice. And here was a mere whale caller calling her ugly. Her hurt was very deep.
Once more the silent walk. In the rain. Sometimes there was a little snivelling from her. Then back to the silence. Until they reached Hermanus.
After sweeping the lice out of the Wendy house the Whale Caller takes out his tuxedo from the trunk under the bed. It is soggy and muddy from the very fine sand that has found its way through the cracks at the edges of the trunk. He dons it nonetheless, takes his kelp horn and walks out of the house and through the gate. Saluni remains sitting on the bed, not knowing what to do next. He looks like a man of light brown mud and he endures the pain of the grains of sand rubbing against his body as he walks on the streets that are still choked with the sea’s leavings despite the attempts of the municipal workers to clear them. It is an unseasonably warm winter day and soon the mud on his suit is dry and caked. He goes straight to the peninsula, yearning for Sharisha. She who never calls him names or yells at him. Who never demeans or humiliates him. No, not Sharisha. She celebrates his presence and never takes it for granted.
The sea is still black in its rage, although the winds have simmered down. The whole peninsula is covered with mud and seaweed and other flotsam coughed up by the water when it finally receded. He sits on a mud-covered boulder and blows his horn. Sharisha may have gone back to the southern seas for winter. It does not matter. He will blow the kelp horn until it saps the life out of him. Whenever she returns she will feel the vibrations that have been left by his sounds even if he no longer exists. He will just blow and blow until he collapses on the mud. By sheer force of his imagination he will bring Sharisha into being right in front of him and they will dance. Until he can’t dance anymore. Until he collapses on the mud. He must collapse. It is the one thing that remains for him to look forward to. Collapse. He will play until he collapses on the mud and becomes one with it. Future generations will tread on him and no one will remember that he ever lived. No one should remember. Except Sharisha. She will know. She will mourn.
His eyes are tightly closed as he blows Sharisha’s song that he has now adapted into jeremiads. For some time he is not aware that Sharisha herself has come to save him from the death he is hankering after. As he blows the horn furiously and uncontrollably she comes swimming just as furiously She has been longing for the horn. She has not heard it for a long time. All she wants is to bathe herself in its sounds. To let the horn penetrate every aperture of her body until she climaxes. To lose herself in the dances of the past. She is too mesmerised to realise that she has recklessly crossed the line that separates the blue depths from the green shallows. All the sea is black and not even a whale can distinguish the blue depths from the green shallows. When he opens his eyes from the reverie of syncopation she is parked in front of his eyes, so close that he thinks he can almost touch her if he stretches out his hand. She is not quite that close though. But certainly she is less than a hundred metres from the shoreline. Perhaps less than fifty. Her stomach lies on the sand. He stops playing.
At first he thinks he has conjured her up in his imagination. But when he hears the deep bellows that send tremors to the muddy peninsula he knows she is all too real. And all too close. He has never seen her this close. The black waves recede and she is left lying on the rocky sand. She has beached herself.
“Help!” he screams, running to her. “The whale is stranded!”
He touches Sharisha for the first time, running his hand over and over her smooth skin. She looks scared. “You will be all right,” he says. “I’ll make darn sure that you are all right.”