Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

The Whale Caller changes the tune and Sharisha stops the aerial displays. She moves gently in a circle, the top of her fourteen-metre-long body gleaming in its blackness. The rest of the body below is greyish. Her skin is smooth. She breathes out white vapour from her double blowhole on top of her head and it rises up to five metres high, in a perfect V shape. Then she lies parallel to the water, and performs the tail-slapping dance that is part of the mating ritual. She lobtails repeatedly, making loud smacking sounds that leave the Whale Caller breathing more and more heavily. He blows the horn and screams as if in agony. He is drenched in sweat as his horn ejaculates sounds that rise from deep staccatos to high-pitched wails. Sharisha emits a very deep hollow sound. A prolonged, pained bellow. Then she uses her flippers to steer herself away from the Whale Caller. Breathlessly he watches her wave her flippers as she sails away.

The Whale Caller feels invigorated as he walks back from the peninsula. Even the sight of Saluni, standing near the green bench as if waiting for him, does not rile him. He smiles at her, for he is in a charitable mood today. But she seems to be in a foul mood. For the first time he feels the need to talk to her. But he does not know what to say, or how to begin. He just stands there grinning foolishly She becomes suspicious of his motives. After all, he has never given her the time of day You don’t all of a sudden become friendly towards a village drunk unless you have some mischief up your sleeve.

“Don’t mess with me now,” she warns him. “I won’t stand any nonsense from anyone today. A foolish woman deprived me of fame yesterday. I am pissed off!”

“See how beautiful they are! The whales, I mean. Just see!” says the Whale Caller, oblivious of her anger.

“A stupid superstitious woman.”

“You see that one over there? The one sailing away? That one is Sharisha.”

“You have given them names?”

“Only Sharisha.”

Saluni looks at him questioningly, as if she doubts his sanity. Then she walks away, shaking her head pityingly. He is left only with the sweet mouldy smell that urges him to follow her. But he does not. Instead he decides to visit Mr. Yodd, to express his joy and give his thanks. And perhaps to gloat a little. As he walks down to the grotto the grey doves with black wings and the white seagulls with grey wings, all sporting matching red feet, share his excitement by hovering over him, and defecating on his head.

Hoy, Mr. Yodd! Today you are talking to a fulfilled man. She is back. Sharisha has returned. She has braved man-created dangers to be with me. She has risked ships’ propellers that slice curious whales at this time of the year. She has defied fishing gear entanglements and explosives from oil exploration activity to be here, Mr. Yodd. To be with yours truly. She has returned, Mr. Yodd, she has returned!

The day is grey from an unseasonable summer downpour, and the Whale Caller is relentless in his search for Saluni. He has been at it for days now, sniffing like a dog, hoping to catch her sweet and mouldy odour. The damp soil and the rotting kelp fill the air with smells of their own, making it impossible for him to scent her. He has returned to his old haunts, where Saluni used to materialise from nowhere with the sole aim of annoying him, but she is not there. He has walked the length of Walker Bay, which cradles Hermanus from Danger Point in the east to Mudge Point in the west. He has looked in the lagoons where tourists and adventurous locals carelessly joust with death in throwing themselves from high cliffs into the sea. In the lagoons that don’t have high enough cliffs from which to dive, he has endured the deafening noise from the machines of motorised water sports enthusiasts. He has strolled on the soft white sands of Grotto Beach, the longest and largest of the beaches of Hermanus, stretching all the way eastwards to the mouth of the Klein River. He has visited other beaches as well: the Voelklip with its terraced lawns; the secluded Langbaai, popular with lovers and naturists; the Kammabaai, a haven for surfers; the Onrus, also loved by surfers and body-boarders… the Plankhuis… the Hawston… the string of beaches with white sands. He has even taken his search to the Hoy’s Koppie of his youth, the conical hill with caves, where he used to blow the kelp horn, sending the devout to feats of ballroom dancing on the rocky terrain and to bouts of speaking in tongues. Saluni is nowhere to be found.

He has not confided in Mr. Yodd because he knows that he will laugh at him and ridicule him. His search is mortifying enough without inviting further mortification from Mr. Yodd. He would not know how to answer if Mr. Yodd were to ask why he is looking for Saluni. Most likely Mr. Yodd does not even remember who Saluni is. Even as he trudges all over town and its environs he is not aware what power compels him to search for her with such desperation. Only that when she did not materialise for many days he became unsettled. He felt that something was missing in his life — the same kind of emptiness he felt when Sharisha had not returned from the southern seas. Yet Sharisha’s spectacular breaching still graces the waters of Hermanns. Every morning he still stands on the highest boulder of his peninsula and blows his kelp horn that inspires astounding aerial displays. How can he feel a void when he has Sharisha all to himself? The sweet and mouldy smell!

He begins to blame himself. Perhaps if he had paid some attention to Saluni, if he had not ignored her so, she would not have vanished. He knows nothing about her, where she lives, what she does when she is not stalking him. He does not know where to look for her, save to wait at his own haunts, and at all sorts of touristy places, hoping she will show up. It doesn’t occur to him to search in the taverns of Hermanus. That’s where anyone else would have begun the search. Saluni is famous as a village drunk.

If the Whale Caller had paid a visit to the taverns and pubs of Hermanus — those that are patronised by fisher folk, labourers and layabouts rather than the bars at luxury hotels — he would have known that her disappearance has nothing to do with him. He would have heard the story, told in toothless and frothy mirth, of how Saluni had developed a rash all over her body, as if she had rolled in poison ivy. The rash, however, had not been caused by poison ivy, but by a hairy millipede that the Bored Twins found outside their bedroom window and secretly placed in her bra one morning after she had spent a night of storytelling and celestial singing and snoring with them. In the morning she dressed hurriedly without noticing the millipede snuggling in her B-cup.

As soon as she walked out of the mansion the millipede began to take a walk in her bosom. She jumped up and down screaming. As she spun in the air and landed on the ground with great force the millipede crawled to what it deemed to be safer parts of her body, and tried to take sanctuary in any nook or cranny that it could find. She danced about in blind panic, ripping off her perpetual coat. The twins were standing just outside the kitchen door, laughing their angelic laughter and clapping their sweet little hands as she stripped her blouse, and then her skirt, all the while screaming and cursing the girls with their mother’s genitalia for laughing at her. The millipede was wiggling all over her body since even the nooks and crannies were opening and closing quite violently in her frenzied dance. Soon the petticoat was off, and then the bra. She was waving these garments about, shaking them, hoping that whatever creature was hiding in them would drop off. The shaking became frantic until she collapsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth.