Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

“It looks like rain,” she says.

“It smells like rain,” he says.

“Perhaps we should go home.”

“You might have to carry me on your back,” he says. “My whole body feels sick.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Somehow we make each other sick. But don’t worry, you will get over it.”

“I don’t want to get over it. It is a beautiful sickness.”

They slowly walk back to the Wendy house.

It is raining in big drops that are typical only of the inland provinces. The kind of drops that leave you with a migraine when they hit your head. Not the gentle rain of the Western Cape. The sound is particularly loud on the pine roof of the Wendy house. The dark clouds make for a premature night. Saluni reaches for the switch. She strips naked and then dives into bed. The Whale Caller sits on a kitchen chair listening to the rhythms of his ailment and of the rain.

Thunder and lightning… another unusual feature of today’s weather! A rolling sound relayed from one possessed drummer to another. In crescendos, segues and diminuendos. Some drummers rumbling in the distance, others clapping rapidly just outside the window. Shaking the Wendy house to Saluni’s utter panic. She buries her head under the blanket and screams. But the head cannot stay covered for long as she is afraid of the darkness. The Whale Caller rushes to the bedroom, sits on the bed and tries to allay her fears by holding her tightly to himself while caressing her back. For a while she is petrified. But soon she becomes animated. And is as breathless as the relentless rain. He is not sure whether it is from the thunder or from the caress that has now turned into a massage.

“Do not be afraid,” he says. “Nothing will happen to you. I’ll stay with you till this whole mayhem is over.”

He kicks off his boots and gets into bed with her.

“Not with your dungarees on,” she says into his ear.

He gets out of bed and takes his clothes off. Not just the dungarees. Everything. On his own volition too! His gigantic nakedness leaves Saluni wide-eyed. He jumps back into bed. She is still stiff with fear but her mischievous bone cannot help tickling him in the armpits. He bursts out laughing. He clings to her to save himself from her tickling; she clings to him to save herself from thunder. The smallness of the wooden single bed works in their favour.

“Is this tickling business supposed to be foreplay?” he asks, raising his voice above the pounding rain. The thunder now sounds quite distant, which seems to loosen her body. She is now more relaxed.

There is hope for humanity yet: the Whale Caller has actually uttered the word “foreplay” without flinching or cringing.

“All my life with you is foreplay,” she says. “By the time evening comes I am dripping wet. I have been waiting for a long time, man. You can only have so much foreplay”

She exudes the smell. Even more so than ever before. The sweet and mouldy smell of his mother. Making love to Saluni would be as disgusting as making love to his mother. The thought gives him the erection of the world even as he recoils from its repulsiveness. As he fumbles around he discovers that every square inch of her body is an erogenous zone. Even the split ends of her hair ignite with his touch. All the gratitude she has been withholding is saturated in her body and now is ready to gush out into his sinews, making them almost explode.

“Today I am really going to make you cry for your mother!” says Saluni.

And she does make him cry. It begins as a whimper that rises into a scream. If it were not for the rain and the distant thunder passers-by would think somebody is murdering him in that Wendy house. He is begging for mercy and pleading with his mother to come and save him. But soon enough another voice — presumably the murderer’s — joins the moans. This second voice begins by singing the blues — a breathless form of scatting. The murderer and the murdered then become indistinguishable as they are both begging for mercy from each other. The poor passers-by would be perplexed to hear the murderer and the murdered babble in tongues, much as the people used to do at the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn when the Whale Caller blew his horn to a climactic frenzy.

A dying scream joined after a few beats by another dying scream. Then silence. They cannot believe the intensity of what has just happened.

“I bathed myself in you, Saluni,” says a breathless Whale Caller. “Your waters of life mixed with mine to wash our souls. It was a wonderful cleansing ceremony, Saluni, and I am cleansed.”

“It is something you cannot do with Sharisha,” jokes a breathless Saluni.

“You do not know that, Saluni, you do not know that.”

After this breathless murder he declares that he would like to be her slave forever and ever more, world without end, amen.

Many breathless days follow breathless nights. Some are grey like the first day of the cleansing ritual, while others are sunny. Some have the wetness of the source of life; some are as dry as the Karoo. They may be stormy, or sometimes calm. Cold or sweltering. But they are all breathless.

Saluni. She has bloomed like the tulips of the mansion and the cracks on her face have smoothed out. It is as if the bees that are always buzzing around the tulips have filled the crevices with the bee-glue that they collect from buds to patch up their hives. The face has the glow of faces that have been cleansed with the propolis of the bees.

When the Whale Caller first heard her bluesy voice she had three addictions: the wine, the Bored Twins and the Whale Caller. That was in November. In the last seven months she has gradually discarded two vices and has remained with one: the Whale Caller. Of course, it is not quite accurate to say she discarded the Bored Twins. She just found herself needing their opiate presence less and less as the cleansing ceremonies with the Whale Caller became more frantic. When she was still a haunting shadow to his kelp horn rituals with the whales she used to go to the mansion every other day. Every day even. She was highly dependent on them for the elation that even her regular plonk could not give her. After she joined him at the Wendy house and they developed common rituals such as window shopping and dancing to the music of the whales she found herself going to the mansion only once a week. Sometimes once in two weeks. And then carnal desires were satisfied and she forgot to go to the mansion altogether. She wanted to be enveloped in his aura all the time, climaxing every few minutes at the memory of the next cleansing ceremony in the looming night. A memory of an analeptic future! He, on the other hand, seemed to spend his days in a daze. He did not even notice that there were no longer any fresh tulips in the house, and that the last bunch stayed there until it wilted and the water in the vase became slimy green and smelly with the rot.

She gave up wine, a decision that was difficult, but was helped by the fact that even when she had gone to the mansion she rarely came back with a bottle of wine as she used to in the past. Vineyard owners had now adopted a new tendency of paying their workers with actual money instead of bottles of wine. The father of the Bored Twins would only have a bottle of wine when the boss was in a celebratory mood and the market was saturated with the cheap brands of autumn harvests from his vineyard and those of competitors. Saluni was now going to the mansion with very little expectation of wine. She went solely for the elation.

This meant that she had to pester the Whale Caller every time she wanted a bottle of wine. “After all,” she would remind him, “I stopped going to the taverns for you.” She had never found herself in this position before, where she had to beg for a bottle of wine on a daily basis. Back in the old days she would just walk to a tavern, regale them with stories, threaten them with her being a love child, and they would ply her with as much wine as she could imbibe — which was quite a lot considering her small body! On the other hand, the Whale Caller found it unacceptable to feed her habit, which he detested in the first place. But he understood what it was to be addicted, and reluctantly bought a bottle, perhaps once or twice a week, which was still a strain on his meagre resources. And then the cleansing ceremonies! She needed no other intoxicant but him. Of course there were withdrawal symptoms. In the same way that there were some when she gave up the Bored Twins. Irritability mostly. A headache. Nausea. Obsessive behaviour.