The Whale Caller

The Whale Caller Read Online Free PDF

Book: The Whale Caller Read Online Free PDF
Author: Zakes Mda
Tags: Fiction, Literary
the source of such ethereal sounds. She saw them for the first time, wading in the mud; their matching white dresses smudged all over. The girls were identical, though one wasslightly bigger. She was later to dub them the Bored Twins. They were about seven years old and were very beautiful. Not only did they sing like angels, they looked as though they would sprout wings and fly to the clouds. She stood there and watched them for some time. She wondered what children of that age were doing playing all alone in a swamp so far away from any houses.
    She tried to attract their attention by coughing. They looked at her. They didn’t seem to be startled at all. She called them to come out of the mud and asked them where they came from. “I’ll take you to your home,” she said. “You shouldn’t be playing so far away from people. I am sure your parents must be worried by now.”
    The Bored Twins merely giggled. It sounded like little pealing bells.
    “You can laugh all you want,” said Saluni. “You are too young to understand the dangers that lurk in isolated places. Even little girls of your age get raped these days.”
    The Bored Twins did not seem to take her seriously. She asked them to direct her to their home, as she wanted to talk to their parents. They said they would do so only when they had finished their game, and then jumped back into the mud. Soon it would be dark and she dared not allow darkness to catch her in the wild. She walked into the swamp and tried to grab their arms. They slipped through her hands like eels. They ran around in circles, shrieking and laughing while she chased them. They were having too much fun at her expense to care that she was becoming infuriated. One of her pencil-heel shoes got stuck in the mud. She muttered a few expletives as she pulled it out, cleaned it on the grass and put it back on her foot. She then sat on the grass, hid her head between her knees and sobbed. The remorseful girls came to comfort her, each one crying: “I am sorry, auntie… I am sorry, auntie!”
    She saw her chance, and pounced on them like a wild cat, grabbing each one by the scruff of the neck, all the while cackling with laughter. For a moment the Bored Twins were astounded by her deceit, and then they screamed and kicked and scratched. But she was too strong for them.
    Sulkily they led Saluni to their home almost three kilometres away—a derelict white Cape Dutch mansion that she had often seen on her wanderings in the district. She had never imagined anyone lived there. She knew of the story that was told in the taverns of Hermanus, that the mansion had been abandoned decades ago after a bankrupt ostrich baron had murdered his family and then committed suicide when the bottom fell out of the ostrich feather market. He was, in fact, taking his cue from a Dutch forebear who had killed himself after the tulip market crashed centuries before. It was during the Thirty Years War and Holland had gone crazy over tulips. Shysters abounded in the tulip trade. The forebear had been one of the speculators who had traded in bulbs that existed only on paper. When the government came up with legislation to curb that practice, he had tried to get out of the tulip market, but it was too late. The bottom had fallen right out. He had lost all his wealth and decided to hang himself. His surviving son, who had been his apprentice in the tulip trade, had sailed to the Cape of Good Hope to join the newly established settlement, then under the Dutch East India Company. His descendants had tried their hand at various trades until they found their niche, two centuries later, in ostrich farming. By the time the baron took over from his father the family had amassed untold riches from feathers that were in great demand by European and American fashion houses. He had built the mansion as a holiday home on the outskirts of the village of Hermanus. It was a replica of his other mansion in the Klein Karoo, where he had his
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