Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

She has no cares in the world. She does not worry about what the next day will bring. She is a transgressor of all that he holds sacred: moderation, quiet dignity, never raising the voice, avoidance of vulgar vocabulary, never flaunting desires of any kind, frugality. Created in sin, she is such a wonderful sinner. A glorious celebrant of worldliness. He envies her for that. He would like to transgress once in a while… to be as carefree as she is… to be taken over by that wanton spirit! She has often egged him to stop being so stiff and taking himself so seriously. Go out on some hedonistic binge! But his fear is stronger than his desire for pleasure. People were made for different things, he tells himself. Saluni was made to be recklessly happy. He was made to be cautious. And to be patient.

Whereas she always demands instant gratification of life, he would rather have delayed pleasure, for it carries in it something more solid. Momentary pleasure is flimsy and is for the lightheaded ones such as Saluni. True pleasure must be restrained. Whenever Saluni complains of boredom because she thinks there is no variety in their lives or they don’t have much “fun,” except for the waltz and the window shopping, he answers: “Tomorrow is just as good a day as any. We can still be happy tomorrow. You don’t gormandise pleasure as if there is no tomorrow.” She, on the other hand, suspects he is conserving his energy for the return of the whales… for Sharisha.

“Don’t just sit there, man! Come fly with me!” she calls out.

“Those waves don’t look friendly today,” he warns her. “Better be careful.”

“You are just a coward,” she says. “You don’t want to come and play in the water in case you actually enjoy it and become happy! I have never known anyone so scared of happiness!”

She stands on a smooth rock that is surrounded by water. She is looking in his direction and doesn’t see the returning tide.

“Hey, look out!” he shouts.

But it is too late. The tide sweeps her away. Her eyeballs almost pop out in bewilderment, which leaves the Whale Caller in stitches. She disappears in the waves and then pops up again, raising her hand as if she is waving. He waves back, still laughing. As the waves toss her about she reminds him of a breaching whale. Although she is just a speck compared to the smallest whale that ever visited Hermanus, she begins to assume the demeanour of a playful whale. And this sends him into a further paroxysm of laughter. Until he realises that Saluni is not clowning about. She really is in trouble, wrestling with the waves. And they are getting the better of her. For a while he had forgotten that Saluni was not Sharisha and that not all women are at home in the sea like Sharisha. He kicks off his boots and runs in her direction. He dives into the water. He is still laughing when he swims back to shore with her.

She is both angry and puzzled as she gasps for air and throws up the salty water. She has never seen him laugh this much. Come to think of it, she has never seen him laugh at all. At best he chuckles. And here he is, having a good laugh at her expense.

He places her on the sand and takes off her coat. He pumps the water out of her stomach. Thankfully she has not swallowed that much. She vomits bits of the macaroni and cheese that she had for lunch.

“The damnable coat,” he says as he continues to pump. “It almost killed you.”

“You don’t like my drinking,” she says between the heaving and the groaning. “You don’t like my coat. What else don’t you like about me?”

“Your stubbornness,” he says. “You could have died in there. You should have seen yourself. You were quite a sight.”

“You think this is funny, do you?” she asks, and then a stream of curses — mostly about his mother’s genitalia — escapes her beautiful but chapped lips.

“I don’t mind if you call me names,” says the Whale Caller. “But you don’t curse a dead woman who never did you any wrong.”

“And you don’t laugh at a drowning woman who never did you any wrong,” she shouts, spitting out the last morsel in her mouth.

He cannot help laughing one more time at the memory of her helpless body being tossed by the waves. This infuriates her and she breaks out into another round of colourful profanity.

“We are being observed all the time, Saluni,” he says, adopting some measure of seriousness. “We must behave appropriately at all times. Garbage must not come from our mouths.”

“And who is observing us?”

He is rather vague about this, as if the question has caught him off guard.

“Perhaps it is your big fish,” suggests Saluni. “You are always dreaming of your big fish.”

“Whales are not fish!” he moans.

It is her turn to laugh.

“The Bible says they are fish so they are fish.”

“The Bible says no such thing.”

“It says Jonah was swallowed by a big fish.”

To steer Saluni away from insulting Sharisha he decides that the person who is watching them is Mr. Yodd.

“And who is Mr. Yodd? Another one of your whales?”

“Perhaps it is time I formally introduced you to Mr. Yodd,” says the Whale Caller. “But first we need to get rid of this!”

He grabs the coat and drags it across the sand. He rolls it into a big ball and throws it into the water. Saluni yells at him as the waves toss it about until it cannot be seen anymore.

“I want my coat back,” she screams, stamping her feet like a spoilt child. “You go get my coat back!”

“No, I won’t,” he says, with the firmness of a father talking to a naughty child. “You are more beautiful without that coat. Come with me, I want to show you something.”

“No, I won’t, not until you give me my coat back.”

He grabs her arm and drags her along to the Old Harbour and down the crag to Mr. Yodd’s grotto. She is taken by surprise by his firmness, and sulkily she allows herself to be dragged along. He kneels before the grotto, but she refuses to do so. She just stands there and stares at him in defiant mien, her cheeks filled with air like a balloon signalling her anger.

Hoy, Mr. Yodd. She is Saluni. We are just walking the road together, Mr. Yodd. We do not have a destination. We’ll see how far it takes us. We’ll see where it takes us.

As they walk up the crag from the grotto he is wondering why Mr. Yodd did not laugh at him this time. He had only listened to his brief confession without any comment. Was it because of the presence of Saluni, who had refused to kneel down? Such confessions are a self-flagellation, and it doesn’t help if Mr. Yodd decided not to humiliate him. He needs his dose of mortification and is disappointed that none was forthcoming from today’s confession.

Saluni on the other hand is still livid. The water is beginning to evaporate from her clothes and she is shivering from the cold. She wonders why he called her a fellow-traveller without a destination — a slight from the man she regards as the love of her life. What about Sharisha? Does he think he has a destination with Sharisha? She fumes even more when she remembers her coat. She feels naked without her coat.

This is a new side of him she has not seen before: first the laughter, and then the firmness! There is hope yet. Life will be perfect the day he surprises her with another kind of firmness — where it matters most.

Strangely she feels as if a burden has been lifted off her shoulders. She feels free. The freedom of the naked!

Although — ostensibly to get back at him for the coat and the laughter — she ridicules the foolishness of talking to rock rabbits at a nondescript cave, she is curious about the ritual of confession. She is secretly fascinated by the unseen confessor. The Whale Caller professes to hate the rituals she is trying to introduce in his life, yet in his own way he is a creature of ritual. Often she secretly follows him as he goes to confess. He does not know she is there listening. She stands against the wind for she knows he can smell her. Sometimes she doesn’t hear what he tells Mr. Yodd because the wind takes his words in another direction.