Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

Hoy, Mr. Yodd. Have you ever heard of such an outrage? Too small for her! All of sixteen metres long and more than sixty tons in weight, and yet they are too small for the beauty whose face has been battered by wine. She is the kind that puts a premium on size, I see, and she finds Sharisha wanting. That mountain of a lady with the Three Sisters on her head, she disparages her. She finds every southern right wanting. She may as well find me wanting. You can’t bank on the fact that she has called me a flattering name, which was more on the indecent side, if you ask me. You want to know what she called me, Mr. Yodd? She called me a blue whale. Don’t laugh, Mr. Yodd. You don’t think I have it in me to be a blue whale? Whatever you think, Mr. Yodd, she sees a blue whale in me. Very big and very strong. Pulsating with hot blood. Blue whales are not just the largest mammals on earth; they are the largest mammals that ever lived. Their size is legendary, the stuff of many tales. I bet it was a blue whale that swallowed Jonah. Jonah can’t have been swallowed by anything lesser. Okay, I am a southern right man, as you rightly point out. Everyone knows that. The lady knows that too because she has watched me blow for the southern rights. But I can be a blue whale too if she wants me to be one. I can be her blue whale. And you know what, Mr. Yodd, I was born to be a blue whale, now that I think of it. Blue whales are not common. They are unattainable. Like me… can’t get… can’t buy… can’t deposit! They are not for the land-bound. They are out there, hundreds of miles into the ocean. You don’t toy with a blue whale, Mr. Yodd. Unless you are a Norwegian, a Japanese or an Icelandic whaler. Those whalers don’t care if you are a blue whale or a sperm whale or any kind of whale. In the name of culture and tradition, they harpoon you… just as their forebears killed whales and reduced their blubber to oil in trypots. You can laugh as much as you like, I am a blue whale. Oreas? What are oreas? Killer whales, of course! It is just like you, Mr. Yodd, to bring up something like that just to rain on the blue whale’s parade. Oreas! Ferocious they are, for they devour seals and dolphins without any mercy. Yes, I do know that they themselves are dolphins. Perhaps you stretch it too far when you say they are cannibalistic dolphins for they don’t eat other killer whales. They eat the harmless man-loving dolphins. The trusting ones that man has always betrayed. Killer whales are much smaller than the blue whale, yet they have been known to attack blue whales and tear them to pieces for lunch. So what’s the use of the blue whale’s great size, you ask, if it can be eaten by a dolphin one-tenth its weight? And you say if I am a blue whale, then Saluni is my killer whale? Saluni will never be my killer whale. You can say that about her because you don’t know her. You are right, I don’t know her either. But I have talked to her at least. She is a lady. She doesn’t strike me as a killer whale. You are still laughing! You are laughing at me, Mr. Yodd! I suspect tears are running down your cheeks. And I can tell you, if you are doing what I think you are doing — rolling on the ground — you look undignified. Okay, okay! Maybe it’s not such a great idea after all. Maybe I am not a blue whale at all. She got it all wrong; I am not a blue whale.

The usual mortification after confession. And this time he feels it weighing heavily on his shoulders. When you are carrying a load of mortification it is as if everyone you meet can see it. You want to steer away from people. You want the security of the wilderness. But it is not possible to have that in a town like Hermanus, especially at a place like Walker Bay The eyes of the world are on him. The world has joined Mr. Yodd in his guffaws.

Sharisha. That will be the balm that heals his heart. Sharisha never judges him. Never makes fun of his insecurities. She will bring back his shattered dignity. He feels guilty that she, who is usually the subject of confession to Mr. Yodd, did not feature at all this time. Only Saluni. The whole confession was about Saluni. Once more he is attacked by feelings of guilt. Despite the weight on his shoulders he walks faster. He has a good idea where Sharisha might be at this time of the day. If she is not there he will blow his horn and play her song and she will manifest herself by breaching. Even if she is not that close to shore he will know it is Sharisha because when he plays the horn she breaches rapidly, up to fifteen times in a row, keeping to the rhythm of the horn. She doesn’t have to be close to shore to respond to him because the sound of the horn, like the songs of the whales, carries for many kilometres.

He doesn’t have to walk far, for there is Sharisha rubbing her head against the kelp. She must be irritated by lice. Normally Sharisha’s callosities are free of lice; that is why they are surf white and not pink or orange or even yellow like those of other southern rights. It seems now lice are beginning to infest her, and the Whale Caller suspects it is from the randy males who had their way with her the other day. Although whale lice are quite harmless, they can irritate the joy out of a whale. Sharisha does look annoyed.

He stands there for some time, watching her struggle with the floating kelp. But soon his attention is drawn to a prolonged cough just below the crag. There is Saluni sitting on a rock, her feet in the emerald green water. Her coat is spread on the rock next to her, and her dress is up to her waist. With her thumbnails she is crushing lice from the seams of her petticoat. She seems oblivious of Sharisha, only a hundred metres from her. The Whale Caller walks down to her.

“Oh, so now you found me again!” she says. “You are not doing badly at this finding business.”

“I was not looking for you this time,” says the Whale Caller apologetically. “I was looking for Sharisha.”

“Oh, Sharisha! The big fish you have named.”

“She is not a fish,” he says emphatically. “A whale is not a fish.”

“A whale… a fish… same difference! You don’t have to get so worked up about it. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it if I were you.”

“Look at her, she is beautiful,” he says with the pride of someone who has a stake in that beauty. “She is the queen of all southern rights. See her white callosities! See the regal wave of her flippers! See the bonnet of callosity on the tip of her snout!”

“How do you know the damn thing is female?”

“She is a woman all right.”

“I can tell you I saw his thingy when he was jumping out of the water causing all that racket and disturbing the peace.”

The Whale Caller chuckles in spite of himself.

“Even if she were male you wouldn’t know where to look for his thingy.”

“You don’t want to admit that you have gone gaga over a male. And you are so big and strong and muscular and… hard… I hope. Nothing camp about you at all.”

“I won’t stand for this kind of talk,” he says angrily “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“It shouldn’t bother you one bit. It is allowed. You were there when I was telling the pastors that it is even in the constitution of the country.”

“I won’t argue with you about Sharisha. I know what I know.”

She goes back to the business of crushing her lice. Sharisha thrusts her massive body up in the air, dives back into the water and doesn’t emerge again. She does this sometimes: dives in the water and stays many metres under the surface for up to half an hour without coming up for a breath.

“Don’t you dare think that I normally go around carrying lice on my body,” she says all of a sudden. “I am a lady, you know? I was sick. For two weeks nobody washed my things. With the damn rash my whole body was in pain. I couldn’t do a damn thing for myself.”