Zakes Mda - The Whale Caller

The receptionist phones the radio man and he swaggers down from his room. He is taken aback to see the motley crew. After the introductions and assurances from Saluni that everyone present has a vested interest in the business at hand (which continues to remain nameless for the mother’s sake) he invites them to his room.

“Where are the girls?” the radio man asks when everyone is settled on his bed, on the dressing table stool and on the two easy chairs.

“Girls?” asks the mother, becoming suspicious. “What girls?”

“The singing girls, of course,” says the radio man. “Saluni and the Bored Twins!”

“They can’t make it today,” says Saluni. “Their parents are representing them. We just want to listen to the CD and hear your plans for making us international stars.”

The radio man gets agitated. He screams: “I need those girls here… now!”

Everyone is puzzled by this sudden loss of temper.

“Calm down, man,” says Saluni. “Just play us the CD.”

“It didn’t work,” says the radio man. “Something I can’t understand happened.”

He takes out a CD from his bag and plays it on a portable machine on the bedside table. The voices of the Bored Twins are distorted. Saluni’s voice comes out clearly in its richness, but the girls’ voices are unrecognisable. They sound like mating cats. The mother angrily turns to the father: “And you knew all this?”

“I only knew this morning,” says the father. “These people deceived me too. They came this morning with their story.”

“I swear I don’t know what happened here,” says the radio man. “I came back to arrange for a new recording. It was wonderful when I was listening to the three of you. I sound-engineered the recording myself and everything was wonderful. I am just as mystified as you are that the CD came out this way. I want to take Saluni and the Bored Twins to a proper state-of-the-art recording studio in Cape Town.”

“Not my children!” the mother bursts out. “They are not going to Cape Town. They are not going to record their voices ever again.”

“But, please, you can’t do this to your children,” Saluni appeals.

“I do not want to have anything to do with you, Saluni,” cries the mother. “Do not talk to me. I do not want to see you near my children ever.”

“If you want to be that spiteful, then you can stay with your children, man. I am going to the recording studios in Cape Town. I am going to be a solo act.”

“I can’t record you on your own, Saluni,” says the radio man. “The girls are the main attraction, not you. If they are not part of this, then there is no deal.”

This hurts Saluni deeply. She looks at the Whale Caller to see if he is gloating. He is not. His head is bowed in embarrassment on her behalf.

“I really don’t know how this happened,” the radio man keeps repeating.

“I told you so,” says the mother, glaring at Saluni. “You are fortunate that the machine failed to steal their voices. It tried and failed. That is why the voices on the recording didn’t come out right. They sound like the voices of ghosts. You nearly destroyed my kids. They should just be happy that they still have their beautiful voices.”

She leaves the room in a huff and her husband follows her. They climb onto their donkey cart and ride away. Saluni tries to plead with the radio man to give her a chance but he is adamant that he would not be able to sell her act. He brutally tells her that there is nothing special about her singing. She has the kind of voice that one can hear in any tavern across the country. The Bored Twins were the act he was really interested in. Sooner or later he would have discarded Saluni for the Bored Twins. They would be a successful international act without her rough voice to mess up their angelic voices.

This is too much for the Whale Caller. He smashes his huge fist into the face of the radio man, who goes crashing to the floor. He lies there seeing multicoloured stars. The Whale Caller grasps Saluni’s and Lunga Tubu’s hands and leads them out of the room and away from the hotel. As they walk along Seventh Street back to the Old Harbour area the Whale Caller expresses his regret that he had to resort to violence. He keeps repeating that he never wanted to hurt anyone.

“Stop whining, man,” says Saluni. “That bastard deserved it. You are the man, man. You don’t let anyone mess with your woman.”

The whole town is excited about the eclipse of the sun, but not Saluni. People are buying dark glasses that will enable them to look at the eclipsed sun. Those who cannot afford the expensive glasses that have been made especially for looking at the sun make their own by blackening glass with fire and smoke. Others look for old negatives of photographs, which are also reputed to be effective in protecting the eyes from the wrath of a sun that is being upstaged by an impertinent moon. When the eclipse happens later in the day they will be ready. Everyone knows that only a fool would look at the eclipse with naked eyes, for that is a surefire way of inviting blindness.

Saluni does not participate in the eclipse madness. Her dreams of Hollywood have been crushed and for days now she has been nursing her bruised feelings. She sinks into the silence of depression. The Whale Caller tends to her and feeds her. She does not care about civilised living anymore. She drinks broth from a mug and survives on that. Then she explodes into a rage, walking up and down Main Road cursing aloud at all those who have betrayed her in the past and those who intend to do so in the future. She counts the whales, particularly Sharisha, among those who will have their day of reckoning sooner than they realise. Days of silence alternate with days of rage. Days of silence fill the Whale Caller with sadness because she becomes such a pitiful figure. At least rage becomes her. Self-pity drains all dignity out of her. The Whale Caller understands that there is nothing personal about these mood swings. He blames it all on the radio man, and this salves his conscience a little for hitting him.

This morning of the eclipse he busies himself with preparing a glass for looking at the sun. At first he hopes the dark brown beer bottles will do the trick. But then he decides it will be much safer to do the tried and tested — he breaks a cold drink bottle and coats it with an even black layer from burning papers just outside the Wendy house. Saluni is standing at the door in her fur coat and red pencil-heel shoes, watching him mournfully.

“I am going to make one for you too, Saluni,” he says.

“I don’t care about it, man.”

“It is a wonder of nature, Saluni. You will see; it will make you feel better. And they say it is going to be a total eclipse this time… just after midday. Hermanus will fall into darkness.”

“I just can’t work myself into an orgasm over darkness, man,” she says, and walks into the house. “I am going to bed. Switch on the lights if your damn eclipse comes while I am asleep.”

His heart bleeds for her. It does become worse when she doesn’t lash out at the world… when the storm rages silently inside her. But there is nothing he can do about it. He has tried to comfort her, to tell her that another radio man — one who will be smart enough to recognise her true talent without the Bored Twins — will come one day. But she only stares at him as if she does not really believe him … as if it does not matter anymore … as if she has resigned herself to a fameless life.

“I am going down to the sea, Saluni,” he says through the doorway. “I’ll be back before the eclipse.”

She does not respond. Maybe she is already napping. All the better if she is because he will feel less guilty about leaving her in this state. But he desperately needs some respite from her sullen-ness.