Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

A voice startles him: “I stopped going to the taverns for you. Now you do this to me? And shame on you, dangling your nakedness for every whale to see!”

Saluni is standing right behind him. Unheard by him, she has walked over the precarious rocks to the point of the peninsula where he is brooding. She is barefoot, like him, and wears a morning gown on top of her nightdress.

“You promised, man… you promised!” cries Saluni.

“I didn’t promise anything, Saluni.”

“Oh yes you did. You promised you would stop your stupid dances with the whales. Whoever heard of a grown man stealing away from the warm bed of his lover to spend the whole night hopping about on the rocks blowing a meaningless song on a kelp horn for some stupid whale he has named Sharisha?”

It is fortunate that Hermanus is asleep and there are no spectators to witness a naked hirsute man being frogmarched home by a wisp of a woman in sleepwear.

In the Wendy house Saluni sits on the bed and weeps.

“I am a love child, man,” she says. “You can’t treat a love child like this.”

Then she spits out the story of her conception. It is the story the Whale Caller has heard before, troubadours and all, except for the fact that in this version her mother dramatically shoots the lover. She never goes to jail because the judge decides that it was in self-defence. The woman was defending her honour and the honour of all the women of the world who have been chewed like bubblegum and then spat out when all the sweetness was gone.

The Whale Caller has never seen her weep before, and this makes him feel very bad about himself. She becomes so lovable when she shows her ability to be vulnerable. It is a new side of her. A desirable side. She is taken by surprise when he lunges at her and rips her sleeping garments off. The Wendy house rocks as it has never rocked before. As they achieve ceremonial ecstasy she is oblivious of the fact that his rigid body has pressed against her wound and it now oozes a pink mixture of blood and pus.

The next day she has lost all her softness and is determined to fight Sharisha on Sharisha’s own turf. While the Whale Caller lingers in bed, savouring the memory of the night’s rituals that continued right up to the morning, she wakes up, cleans her wound with gentian violet, puts on her high-heeled boots and his heavy army-issue coat, and goes to town. She buys a bottle of cheap wine, drinks from it in big gulps and walks to Walker Bay. The place is already teeming with early morning whale watchers. There are some whales, out there in the distance. She walks along the crag until she reaches his peninsula. There is Sharisha floating mindlessly, just as they left her last night. Saluni vows to herself that she is going to show Sharisha something she will never forget. She drank the wine for her, to make this showdown as momentous as only Cape plonk can make it. She is going to defend her mating rights like a ferocious bull seal — especially after the earthshaking rituals of last night.

“I tell you once and for all, stupid fish,” she shrieks at Sharisha, “just leave him alone! You no longer have any stake in him!”

Then she opens the buttons of the coat and flashes Sharisha. She is not wearing anything under the coat. The purple wound glares at the hapless whale. She flashes her one more time. Sharisha only stares at her. A better idea strikes Saluni. She turns her back on the sea, lifts up the coat and moons the whale. Sharisha lazily turns, as if to show Saluni that she too has a wound. She sails away.

“That will show her,” mutters Saluni as she walks off.

The few people who have watched her antics with increasing curiosity reward her with applause. She merely sneers at them and walks back to the Wendy house.

As soon as she enters the Whale Caller smells the fumes of wine.

“You are drunk,” he says, accusingly.

“You would be too if you drank a whole bottle of wine,” she says, giggling.

“After last night, Saluni… I thought we had worked things out.”

“I caught you naked with a fish, man,” says Saluni. “One night of heaving and panting does not erase that… especially because you refuse to repent.”

In the three months that follow the Whale Caller agonises over Saluni’s return to the bottle. She has lost all interest in the waltz at dawn. She has even lost the appetite for the window-shopping expeditions. She comes home drunk every night and sleeps until midday Soon after lunch she leaves the house. She visits the Bored Twins. Or she whiles away time annoying Mr. Yodd with her refusal to be mortified. Or she goes to the taverns — a very sore point with the Whale Caller. She is doing all these things to punish him, since she can no longer make him suffer with her wound. It had finally healed.

The Whale Caller also agonises over Sharishá’s lack of enthusiasm for the dance. He had thought the main reason was the wound. But now it has healed, yet she is as lethargic as ever. And is growing fatter by the day. He has tried every trick in the book to arouse her. When everything has failed he remembers the ritualised eating that is part of the mating game, first introduced to him by Saluni as civilised living. He has participated in Sharisha’s mating games that are in line with whale culture, now she must participate in the human version of the mating ritual. He hopes that by bursting out of his conservative shell and making a public display of public eating Sharisha will be aroused to action once more.

He rents a small round table and a chair from the marketplace stallholders. He bribes a waiter from the restaurant that juts into the sea on stilts to lend him the best silver and crystal just for a few hours. The waiter smuggles the cutlery and the wine glasses out of the premises with the garbage and the Whale Caller pretends to be a dustbin scavenger and fishes these items out. He places the chair and the table on a small rocky island just off his peninsula. He sets the table with the white linen from the Wendy house and with the silverware and crystal wine glasses. He lays a table of seafood and the best of Cape chardonnay bought from the same waiter, and smuggled out of the restaurant wrapped in aluminium foil via the dustbin. It does not matter to the Whale Caller that the seafood may be leftovers from those diners who do not care for doggy bags. As for the wine, he will only use it as libation since he is a teetotaller.

He is in black tie. He looks like the jackass penguins that dot the rocks. He sits on the chair and blows his kelp horn. He blows some of the best mating calls he has learnt over the years. Sure enough Sharisha leaves the company of two other whales a distance away and languidly sails to the Whale Caller. He lights a candle, borrowed from Saluni’s sequinned handbag, and sits down to dine on a meal that has been prepared elegantly in a gourmet manner. Sharisha sails about fifty metres from the island, occasionally waving her fluke. Then she spyhops in big circles. While he eats the seafood, he pours the wine in the glass, sniffs it, and then throws it into the water as an offering to the spirits that rule the sea. The very spirits that ate his father and that must now heal Sharisha from whatever ails her.

The wind is the bearer of Lunga Tubu’s voice. There he is standing below the stilted restaurant singing “Santa Lucia” His voice rises above the waves even when they are at their loudest. The waves strike the rocks, creating white surf that stops at the boy’s feet and becomes the clear water in which he stands. The Whale Caller can see his corrupt waiter from the restaurant shooing the boy away, throwing objects at him. He runs away, but as soon as the waiter returns to his duties at the restaurant, the boy returns to his spot and brazenly serenades the tourists, the Whale Caller and Sharisha once again.