She has been gone for almost as long as the whales. Many rumours circulate, ranging from the mundane to the sublime. She stowed away in an oil tanker. She was seen at the Cape Town docks drinking with a bunch of Mediterranean seafaring types who took a fancy to her and persuaded her to sail the world with them, smuggling crude to third-world countries with black-market economies. She is hibernating with a new rash after the Bored Twins placed ten hairy millipedes in her bra—five in each cup. Others saw her in conference with a bevy of water maids—beautiful women with lower bodies of fish—-in the deep of the night. She has joined them in their undersea queendom. She is in the process of metamorphosing into a watermaid. These stories change every day, like the story of her own conception: one day she is seen riding on the back of a dolphin which swims with her to the horizon, and the next day she has joined a cloister of nuns and has taken the vow of chastity, or has been discovered by a talent scout and now she sings the blues on a cruise liner.
