Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Just so you know.”

Salunix. She arrives at the Wendy house. She has come to visit, but has no intention of ever leaving. That is why she is carrying a suitcase with all her worldly possessions. She has taken him up on his offer, made in a moment of weakness, to come over for a thorough sprucing-up that will destroy her lice once and for all. He welcomes her with a hot cup of cream of mushroom soup, and then prepares a hot bath for her. He pours in the water the pungent solution that is usually used as sheep dip.

“Look the other way while I take my clothes off,” she says with a naughty twinkle in her voice.

“Actually, I am leaving,” he says as he dashes out of the room.

“I was only joking! Come back! I don’t have a problem if you watch!”

But he is already out. She curses his cowardice under her breath, strips naked and gets into the enamel bathtub. She screams that the solution is burning her body. He shouts back from the second room — used as a kitchen — that it is all for the best because it will kill all the vermin that is feeding on her body.

“You may come in and scrub my back if you like,” she calls out.

“I would rather not,” he responds.

“You are a shy one, aren’t you?” she observes. “I like that in a man.”

After the bath she spends the rest of the day wrapped up in a blanket because all her clothes — including those that were in the suitcase — have been soaked in the solution, and then hung on the washing line outside to dry. She goes to bed early in the evening, her body still burning from the solution. She finds it difficult to sleep, especially because it has been many years since she slept sober. Well… almost sober… because she did take a secret sip of the methylated spirits that he uses for cleaning his tuxedo. She lies awake for a long time, listening to him pottering about in the kitchen, and wondering when he will sneak into bed. But he never does. He spends the night in a sleeping bag in the kitchen.

The Whale Caller wakes up after midnight to see a light through the cracks of her door. He thinks that she has forgotten to switch off the light. He tiptoes to the bedroom and flicks off the switch near the door. As he tiptoes back to his sleeping bag he is stopped in his tracks by a shrill scream from the bedroom.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” he assures her. “I was just switching off the light.”

“Never do that again! Where is the fuckin’ switch?”

He rushes back into the bedroom to switch on the light. And there she is, standing on the floor, naked, looking quite witless and bewildered.

“Never ever do that again! I hate the dark! I do not sleep in the dark! I do not walk in the dark! I do not do anything in the dark, in case you are the kind of man who does it only in the dark! Do you understand me?”

“I would not want to do anything with you in the dark,” he says defensively. “I was switching off the light because I thought you had forgotten to switch it off”

“Just never switch the light off again, that’s all.”

The Whale Caller apologises, and goes back to his sleeping bag.

When Saluni finally wakes up in the morning the aches of the sheep dip are gone. But her body is racked by something worse than a hangover — the pain of sobriety. A long-forgotten feeling! Her clothes are on the chair next to the bed, all neatly ironed. After a quick wash in the plastic basin, and an application of makeup from her sequinned handbag, she wears her green taffeta dress and her black fishnet stockings and her red pencil-heel shoes and her fawn pure-wool coat. Her wild red hair is restrained in a black net. Once more her former state of elegance has been restored. With it the mouldy yet sweet smell.

It strikes the Whale Caller that she has taken all the fuss over her in her stride, as if being pampered is her birthright. Not a word of gratitude. This does not bother him. It is just an observation for its own sake.

She has been around for three weeks, and he has got used to her presence and to her haunting odour. She has become his shadow, except on Bored Twins days. Once in a while she makes herself useful by collecting seashells and arranging them on the wooden wall, sticking them on with glue as some form of decoration. Or by cooking an early morning millet meal porridge which they eat with milk for breakfast. She cooks only when she is hungry and he is too occupied with other things to cook at that time. At most times she just sits there for the whole day and expects to be fed and groomed and mollycoddled. He enjoys brushing and disentangling her red locks. Sometimes he braids them crudely. This activity always makes her body tingle.

When she has been to the mansion and has brought back a bottle of wine, she spends the day following him doing his rounds with the whales, while she occasionally takes a sip from her bottle, and collects the seashells. She nurses the bottle: the Whale Caller has vowed that he will not buy her wine because he’d rather she stopped drinking.

Occasionally she spends the night at the mansion and comes back the next day quite radiant and euphoric. On such days she never stops talking about the Bored Twins and their beauty and their singing and how they are such angels.

“You are the one who always visits them,” says the Whale Caller. “Why don’t we ever see them coming here to see you?”

“They can’t come to town on their own,” Saluni explains. “Their parents work all day long. Their mother doesn’t want them to come to town anyway, because she thinks someone will steal their voices. I go there to keep an eye on them because they are always all alone.”

In the first week at the Wendy house she spent the evenings at the taverns drinking and singing with her mates. She staggered back to the Wendy house, sometimes at three in the morning. She found him asleep in his sleeping bag in the kitchen and never woke him up. Instead she crept into her bed, leaving the lights on. However drunk she might be, she never forgot to leave the lights on. In the morning he would patiently warn her of the dangers of walking alone at night. She would only laugh and say: “You are beginning to behave like a husband… which is rather sweet. It would be sweeter if you did other husbandly things too.”

But by the end of the second week she had stopped going to the taverns, and she made a whole fanfare of it. She announced grandly: “I have stopped for your sake… to make you happy.” So, indeed, he should be grateful for such a wonderful gift. Now she spends all her time between the mansion and the Wendy house, and between the Wendy house and the beach.

He has taught her to waltz to the songs of the whales. These are the most exhilarating moments of his life. Sharisha has gone back to the southern seas, but other southern rights are still here, providing the music. Sometimes a humpback visits and adds its thrilling notes. At dawn the Whale Caller wakes Saluni up and together they go to the Voelklip beach. Sometimes, more often of late, it is Saluni who wakes him up, since now she has got into the spirit of things. If the whales happen not to be there that dawn he calls them with his horn and they respond. He gets hold of Saluni and together they float on the sand as if they are riding the clouds, as he used to float, albeit on a rocky surface, during his days at the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn.

At first Saluni was not too excited about these early morning frolics. But she decided to indulge him, especially after he had deserted her for the whole day and night to be with Sharisha on the eve of her departure.

Saluni had only been staying with him in the Wendy house for about ten days when one night the Whale Caller had a nightmare: Sharisha was being attacked by hordes of killer whales. The deadly oreas were concentrating mostly on the callosities, biting chunks away. The water around her was red. He woke up screaming. He knew at once that Sharisha would be leaving soon. Nightmares were her way of communicating that to him. He rushed to the bedroom and woke Saluni up to tell her of his fears. She was not pleased at all; especially because her head was pounding from a hangover. The previous night she had finished a whole bottle of wine brought from the mansion, while watching the Whale Caller cook his staple of macaroni and cheese. The drinking had continued while they ate the supper and while he washed the plates and pot. He had gone to sleep in the kitchen as usual, leaving her sitting on the bed, pretending to be in some tavern; singing colourful songs and cracking dirty jokes to herself, then rocking the Wendy house with her gruff laughter. To be woken up so early in the morning on account of bad dreams about whales was not something she was ready to entertain.