Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

One day she decides to take the plunge and confess. She brings with her oblations of tulips from the mansion. She arranges them around the mouth of the grotto as she addresses Mr. Yodd.

Hoy, Mr. Yodd! Harvesting the clouds must be left to those who have big wings. I used to fly, Mr. Yodd. To soar to the highest skies. To live up there in cloudland. Until he brought me back to earth. To walk firmly on the ground. Without staggering. So that the ground knows who I am. The ground needs to respect who I am. Who am I? I am Saluni, and I have taken you over. Maybe not taken you over as such. I just want to have a piece of you too. He does not know it, but I have watched him talk to you. Once he dragged me here and I rubbished the very notion of the confessional. The place, yes, but also the mortifying confessor and the very act of confessing. He does not know that since then I have followed him. I heard him confess all sorts of things about me to you, Mr. Yodd. And about that behemoth he calls Sharisha. In the same breath: me and Sharisha. The eternal triangle: man, woman and whale. I can tell you I am not going to be part of any triangle. The fish must go. Ha! It galls him when I call his whale a fish, so I will call it that until he gets rid of it. I have heard him confess, Mr. Yodd. I said to myself: One day I’ll confess about him to Mr. Yodd too. Then I didn’t know what he gets for his confessions, but I said to myself: If he can confess about me, so can I about him. And here I am, Mr. Yodd, for the first time, kneeling in front of your cave… or grotto, as you prefer it to be called. You know, Mr. Yodd, I have been living with him in his little Wendy house for three months now. I have decided to find rhythm in some of his madness. You are part of that rhythm. That is why I have adopted you. I don’t know what you will do for me, but I have adopted you. I am a lady, Mr. Yodd, and I am beautiful. Why doesn’t he touch me? Why does he turn his back on me? Thanks for the correction: he does not turn his back. It would have been better if he did, for I would still feel his flesh. Why does he insist on wasting his nights in that confounded sleeping bag? Is it because of the light? Some people are fearful of the light. They like to do things in the dark. I, on the other hand, am a child of the light. I am a love child, conceived in the daytime. It had to be daytime because those were stolen moments. The man would have to go back to his wife and the young woman would have to steal back to her parents. I am a child of the day, Mr. Yodd. That is why I am fearful of the dark. That is why I ran away from the Free State farmstead where I was born and spent a lovely carefree childhood. Under the big sky the nights poured themselves on me, and drenched me with darkness. Darkness suffocates me. But it was not only from darkness that I was escaping. I am an exile from thunder. I walked from the Free State through the Karoo because our summer rains over there are accompanied by thunder and lightning. I was fearful of thunder. I had heard that the Western Cape is a place of gentle winter rains. I managed to run away from thunder, but couldn’t escape darkness. Darkness follows day everywhere. Darkness follows me to the end of the earth. I thought I had escaped darkness forever since I knew that there were streetlights in these cities. I remember the freedom I felt when I first came here: with lights in the streets. I could walk from tavern to tavern at all hours of the day and night. But where I lived before I joined him in his Wendy house… they didn’t have such lights. I had to rely on my trusty candle. Oh, so you find this quite hilarious? I have heard of these tricks of yours, Mr. Yodd… the laughter that is intended to mortify. You might as well stop it because it does nothing to me. I refuse to be mortified by you or by anyone else. Instead, your laughter makes me want to laugh back at you, as I am now doing. I do not need the self-flagellation as he does. Mortification will rebound, Mr. Yodd, and hit you between the eyes!

She climbs back from the grotto. Stiletto-heels were not made for crag climbing. She is therefore holding her shoes in her hands and is walking in her stockinged feet. Near the whale-viewing site she finds the Whale Caller waiting. She walks past him, pretending not to see him.

“What were you doing down there?” he asks.

“Oh, nothing!” she says, without stopping. He follows her.

“But you were talking. Who were you talking to?”

“Oh, to no one in particular!”

“You were talking to Mr. Yodd, weren’t you?”

She does not deny it. She just keeps on walking.

Now he has no doubt that this is the woman for him.

She sits on the concrete bench near the war monument to put on her shoes. He sits beside her. There is a silence between them. After a while she stands up again and walks on the tarred road past the big parking lot and away from the Old Harbour area. He follows her. About half a kilometre away she takes off her shoes again and walks down the paved path that leads back to the sea. He follows. She sits on the green bench near the path, a few metres above the water. He sits down too. There is silence again. He is looking straight ahead as if something on the horizon has grabbed his attention. She looks at him intently as if she is studying the contours on his face, and bursts out laughing. He looks at her and bursts out laughing too.

“You laughed,” she says.

“You laughed first,” he says.

“I always laugh. You never do,” she says.

“You have brought laughter into my life,” he says.

There is silence once more. The world is at peace with itself. American armies are not invading third-world countries, making the world unsafe for the rest of humanity; terrorists are not engaging in the slaughter of the innocent in high-rise buildings and at holiday resorts; criminals have ceased their rapes and murders and robberies; dictators of the world have given up dictating; warlords have laid down their arms; politicians have learnt to be truthful and have stopped thieving. The world is at peace with itself. Across a small rift, not far from where the couple is enjoying the peace of the world, a cultus of tourists is engaged in the ritual of gorging quantities of seafood and gallons of wine. They are sitting in the open-air restaurant whose portico juts into the sea on stilts. They are at peace with the world.

A song can be heard among the waves below the restaurant.

“Did you hear that voice?” asks Saluni.

“I didn’t hear anything,” says the Whale Caller.

“You can hear your whales a hundred miles away but you cannot hear a boy only a few metres below us?”

“Human voices are not like the voices of whales,” he says apologetically.

In all fairness, the voice comes only in waves because the wind blows it in the opposite direction, and then suddenly when the wind subsides the voice carries to the couple on the green bench. The Whale Caller strains his ears and finally can hear something.

“It is Lunga Tubu singing to the waves,” says Saluni.

“Who is Lunga Tubu?”

“He is here at least twice a week. But you never see him because you only see whales.”

There he is, Lunga Tubu, standing on a rock and singing to the tourists on the portico above. An occasional offering of a coin is thrown in his direction. He has to catch it before it drops into the water. He has become very adept at it. The tourists seem to enjoy this part of the game most: when he jumps up to catch a coin, without missing a beat. Kindlier souls throw the coins in the clear water on the side of the portico, for him to gather after a few songs.