The Whale Caller Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 impertinentSaluni, 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 hismother, and it bothers him no end that he can’t put his finger on it.

    Saluni. Her life revolves around three rituals: spectating the Whale Caller, singing with the Bored Twins and gulping quantities of plonk from a flask she carries all the time in her sequinned but threadbare handbag. When times are hard the flask is filled with methylated spirits mixed with water. The third ritual usually accompanies the first two. She takes a ceremonial swig as she watches the Whale Caller or between songs with the Bored Twins.
    Saluni was first attracted to the Bored Twins by their beautiful voices two years ago. It was not long after her arrival in the district from inland provinces, an exile from darkness. She was wandering from homestead to office building to farmstead, looking for employment. She was exhausted from traversing the postcard landscape and was chafed by constant rejection. Her toes in her pencil-heel shoes were sore. On the outskirts of town, from a patch of sparse reeds growing in a small swamp, she heard voices singing in two-part harmony. It was a children’s song, the version of which she remembered very well from her jewellery music box, where it was played by what sounded like a harpsichord. The voices from the reeds gave the song new energy that evoked a feeling of nostalgia for a world Saluni had never known. Perhaps a world she had experienced in another life. Her body suddenly felt a surge of something akin to vibrational healing. The pain in her feet was dissipating fast. The tiredness in her body was gone. The voices seemed to connect her to an angelic realm.
    She walked closer to the reeds, eager to satisfy her curiosity about