The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  It was obvious to all that the spirit of Jonah had taken over the baptism. The whale had hijacked the whole ceremony, even though the creature’s tail could now be seen sailing a distance away.

  “It is sailing away!” screeched the Chief Horn Player.

  He blew his horn with great vigour and the whale stopped. Once more it lobtailed. He was convinced that through his kelp horn he had the power to communicate with it. This discovery excited him no end, and he remained at the beach blowing his horn long after the rest of the congregation had gone home.

  He gradually drifted from the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn and spent most of his days at the beach, holding conversations with the whales through his horn. He was determined to refine his skill, and spent many years walking westwards along the coast of the Indian Ocean, until he reached the point where the two oceans met, and then proceeded northwards along the Atlantic Ocean coast right up to Walvis Bay in South West Africa, as Namibia was then called. He survived on fish, some of which he bartered to non-fishing folks for grain and other necessities. He stopped for months at a time in fishermen’s villages that dotted the coastline. In hamlets where women were buxom and welcoming he stopped for a few years. Sometimes he hired himself out as a hand to the trawlers that caught pilchards off the west coast of southern Africa. But he spent every second when he was not sleeping or eking out a living talking to the whales. He was listening to the songs of the southern right, the humpback and the Bryde’s whales, and learning to reproduce them with his horn. He also learnt to fashion different kinds of kelp horns: big horns with deep and rounded tone colours and small horns that sounded like muted trumpets.

  After thirty-five years he returned to his home village of Hermanus and with his meagre pension rented a two-roomed Wendy house in the backyard of a kindly widower. The village had grown into a beautiful holiday resort. But it had not lost the soul of the village of his youth. Many landmarks were as he remembered them—such as the Hoy’s Koppie of his devout days. The village still nestled comfortably between the Kleinriver Mountains and the sea. The mountains still wore their crown of mist on special days. Many things had changed though. Along the coastline there were more houses, mostly white cottages and bungalows, roofed with black or red tiles while others were thatched with grass that had blackened with age, and there were some double-and triple-storey buildings. Many of these, he heard, belonged to rich people from as far away as Johannesburg, who spent part of the year enjoying the spoils of their wealth in the laid-back ambience of the village. Other houses belonged to retired millionaires who had decided to live here permanently. It had now become impossible for an ordinary person to buy property at his childhood paradise.

  Another change was that the village had become popular with tourists. A new fashion had developed, that of watching whales. They seemed to have multiplied tenfold since the days of his youth. September and October were peak whale months, and thousands of tourists from many countries of the world gathered on the cliffs and the beaches every day to watch whales frolicking in the water and performing their antics to the cheers of the spectators. On a good day there would be as many as twenty whales leaping out of the water and falling back in resounding splashes.

  He saw all these things and felt like an intruder both in the lives of the whale watchers and of the local citizens. No one knew him anymore. People wondered who the tall and brawny stranger in blue dungarees was. They marvelled at his big bald head and craggy face, half of which hid in a rich silvery beard. They looked at him curiously as he stood on the cliffs, blowing his horn for the whales, sometimes fully donned in black tie. He did not seem to be friendly towards human beings, so they kept their distance from him. They were strangers to him. Almost all the people he used to know had either left this world altogether or had left the village in search of a better life in the cities of South Africa. Even His Eminence the Bishop of the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn had long departed Nineveh for celestial shores.

  He saw the official whale crier, who was employed by the tourist office. A gracious gentleman from Zwelihle Township a few kilometres away, he was dubbed the world’s only whale crier. The Whale Caller did not begrudge the whale crier his world title. The Whale Caller was not in competition with the whale crier. The Whale Caller was not a whale crier but a whale caller!

  He saw how popular the whale crier was, both with the tourists and the locals. He watched the whale crier, resplendent in his beautiful black and white costume and strange hat, blowing his kelp horn to alert whale watchers to the presence and location of the whales. Sometimes whales surfaced at the Grotto or the Voelklip beaches. At other times they might surface at Kwaaiwater or Siever’s Punt. The whale crier blew his kelp horn in a particular code that was interpreted on the sandwich board that he wore, and whale watchers knew exactly where to go to see the whales, and how many there were. Sometimes the whale crier acted like a tourist guide, showing the visitors sites of interest in the village.

  Although at first the Whale Caller envied the attention and the fame that the world’s only whale crier received, he soon realised that his mission in life was quite different from the whale crier’s. The whale crier alerted people to the whereabouts of whales, whereas the Whale Caller called whales to himself, much like the shark callers of New Ireland.

  The comparison with the shark callers had once been made by a sailor who had watched him call whales. The sailor told him that the shark callers of New Ireland—a province of Papua New Guinea—use their voices and rattles of coconut shells under water to attract sharks. The sharks swim to the boat where they can be speared or netted. Sometimes the rattling noise attracts the shark through a noose. A rope attached to the noose is connected to a wooden propeller that is spun around to tighten the noose while pulling in the rope. The shark is then unable to move.

  When the Whale Caller first heard of the shark callers he hated the comparison. He did not call whales in order to kill them. Eating them would be tantamount to cannibalism. He called them because they gave him joy and he gave them as much in return. And if he could help it, he preferred to call them when he was alone, so as to have intimate moments with them. He was not a showman, but a lover. Since returning to Hermanus he has hardly any privacy because the place is always teeming with tourists during the whale season. He has, however, been able to continue with his conversations and singalongs with the whales unobstructed by the activities of the village and its whale-watching culture. And has managed to stay out of the way of the official whale crier.

  He has owned hundreds of kelp horns since his first. But this one that he holds so lovingly against his chest is the best of them all, for it is the horn that first introduced him to Sharisha. He closes his eyes and is sucked by a whirlpool into a dreamless sleep.

  When he wakes up the next morning there is already a trickling of whale watchers on the cliffs above him. They are watching the horizon with their binoculars. He is slightly embarrassed that he became hysterical in his confession to Mr. Yodd last night. What will Mr. Yodd think of him? He promises himself that despite the feeling of wounded rejection and his fears for Sharisha he will maintain his calm dignity at all times. He will swallow whatever pride he might have and go back to Mr. Yodd to apologise. He stands up. His muscles are stiff. He takes the few uneasy steps back to Mr. Yodd’s grotto.

  Hoy, Mr. Yodd! It was a joke… last night. You thought I was being serious, did you? You thought I meant it. Last night. All the hysteria about the Japanese eating Sharisha. And all the insecurities about her deserting me. I must have sounded pathetic. I admit I was a bit rash last night, Mr. Yodd. Accusing you of things you are not capable of… such as twisting the knife in my back! I am sorry. Fortunately you do not hold a grudge. That is what is beautiful about you. A grudge can take its toll on your health. It is like a parasite that feeds on you. At first it gives you a feeling of warmth. The thought that you will get even gives you comfort. Then the ungrateful guest begins to eat your insides. It gets fatter while y
ou are gradually reduced to a bag of bones. It destroys you. That’s what a grudge does to one, Mr. Yodd. You thought I had lost control of myself, hey Mr. Yodd? It was the kind of night that brought hallucinations to the sanest of minds. To the soberest. It must have been the fumes of death that permeated the air. Decay. Death. I could smell it from the sea. The wind brings it from the western coast. Yes, you told me many times before, Mr. Yodd. These are not today’s smells. They have lingered for more than two hundred years. A two-hundred-year-old stench from the slaughter of the southern rights by French, American and British whalers at St. Helena Bay in 1785. Five hundred southern rights in one season! They harpooned the calves in order to get their mothers who would come to the rescue of their little ones. Seasons of mass killings! The smell still haunts these shores. Yes, they are protected now, Mr. Yodd. But only since 1935. The whales have come back since then but I cannot presume that Sharisha will be safe on her voyage from the southern seas. There are pirates and poachers! What if… There I go again with what you refer to as hysteria. I apologise, Mr. Yodd. It was not me talking last night. All right, Mr. Yodd. Go ahead and laugh. I don’t mind at all. Laugh at me as much as you like.

  He is mortified as he walks on the pavement near the parking lot. And it shows in his gait. The crowds have already gathered. They are the usual tourists with floral shirts and funereal faces. As if someone forced them to come here. Binoculars and cameras weighing down their necks. Sandals flip-flopping like soft coronach drumbeats as the feet trudge in different directions. Fat Americans, timid as individuals, but boisterous and arrogant in groups. Puny Japanese, excitable and fascinated by the most mundane of things. Inland South Africans who look apologetic and seem to be more out of place than the Americans and Japanese. All clicking away at the slightest provocation. Following everything that moves on land and sea with camcorders.

  They are in greater numbers today, the whale-watching invaders. The town is celebrating its annual Kalfiefees—the whale calf festival. The locals, who don’t usually care much for whale watching, are also out in throngs. Some are out to flog their wares. The parking lot has been taken over by stalls and tables displaying Cape Malay delights, candyfloss machines, ostrich biltong, citrus preserves and whalebone jewellery and toys. Spicy and sweet aromas intermingle with the compound smell of salt and dead kelp that is brought by the heat from the sea.

  Many have come just to watch the spectacular street performances of jugglers, mimes, banjo-strumming buskers and dancers in grotesque whale costumes. Or to hold their collective breath as adrenalin junkies bungee-jump down awesome cliffs only to be pulled back seconds before their bodies hit the rocky shallows of the sea. Pallid boys from Zwelihle Township perform the haka, the ceremonial Maori war chants accompanying a fearsome dance learnt from the New Zealand rugby team. Others sing Shosholoza, the work song that has been adopted by the South African rugby team as its anthem, while performing an out-of-step gumboot dance. Processions of tourists go through the ritual of dropping coins into enamel bowls or cold drink cans without paying much attention to the performances of the boys. There are those who prefer to make offerings of fruit and sweets, ever suspicious that the boys may use the cash for such narcotics as glue, benzine or even mandrax pills.

  The Whale Caller negotiates his way among the rainbow people. People of what is fashionably referred to as the new South Africa, even though it is ten years old. Ten years is a second in the life of a nation. Rainbow people sport rainbow hairstyles. Heads looking like frosted birthday cakes. Black hair with silver stripes. Orange and blue hair with golden stripes. Peroxide blondes with black polka dots. Leggy model-types and stout granny-types. Broad-shouldered bare-chested men in wet Bermuda shorts, wearing green, blue, black, purple and yellow serpent or dragon tattoos on golden brown tans.

  Hair. It is a blight they must carry on their heads, exposing the position each head occupied in the statutory hierarchies of the past. The troubles of humanity are locked in the hair. Yet the people have managed to disguise their shame by painting it in the colours that designate them all a people of the rainbow. Without exception. Without a past. Without rancour. Without hierarchies. Only their eyes betray the big lie. In these eyes you can see a people living in a daze. Rainbow people walking in a precarious dream that may explode into a nightmare without much warning.

  He looks at the colourful hair of his compatriots and he is thankful that he was liberated from his quite early on in life—in his mid-thirties—long before there was any notion of a rainbow people, when his hair fell out, at first gradually as he brushed it, then furiously even as he slept. He was still a wanderer from one fishing hamlet to the next on the west coast when the rude Cape-of-Storms storms blew strands of it away. Until his pate was smooth and shiny. He compensated with a rich crop of beard and a bushy chest. Silvery grey.

  The whales do not disappoint. It is as if they know that the citizens of Hermanuspietersfontein—as the town was originally known—and their visitors from all over the world are out celebrating their return from the southern seas. Incidentally, the lazy tongues that have reduced his town to Hermanus irritate the Whale Caller. He resolves that from now on he will call it nothing but Hermanuspietersfontein. Even when its name is changed, as it is bound to in keeping with the demands of the new South Africa, he will continue to call it Hermanuspietersfontein. The southern rights don’t bother with the politics of naming. Two thousand of them will migrate annually from the sub-Antarctic to the warmth of South African waters whether the whale-watching town is called Hermanus, Hermanuspietersfontein or something new South African. Five hundred of them will converge along the south coast, and some of these will be seen from the shores of this town, as they are seen on this day of the Kalfiefees. They congregate here in greater numbers than anywhere else because this is a sheltered place. They stay for long periods here because the sea is quiet. There is not much activity of ski boats or even whale-watching boats. Almost all whale watching is done from the land. The boerewors-roll-chomping tourists, mustard and ketchup dripping from their fingers and chins, train their binoculars in the direction of a group of southern rights—mothers and calves languidly sailing in the grey distance. The Whale Caller does not need binoculars to know that none of them is Sharisha.

  He dreads the crowds and would like to take the shortest route possible to his Wendy house. But the mobs are blocking his path. Something is happening here. Placards and an Afrikaans hymn tell him that it is a protest march of sorts. Pastor Pietie le Roux leads a small crowd of dour yet angry Christians. The Whale Caller recognises him—one of the few people he remembers from the old days when he used to play the kelp horn at the Church. Pietie was one of the young people who had remained with the Church while the Whale Caller and others followed His Eminence, the late and lamented Bishop, to form the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn. Pietie is now a grey-head pastor of the Holy Light Ministries and is punching the air with his angry fist.

  The Whale Caller tries to slink off.

  “You can skulk away all you want, but you cannot hide from the Lord,” says Pastor Pietie le Roux, looking directly into the eyes of the Whale Caller.

  “I don’t need to hide from you, Pietie le Roux,” protests the Whale Caller.

  “You turned your back on the Lord,” shouts the pastor. “Do you now want to turn your back on your responsibility as a member of this community?”

  His followers punctuate this crucial question with a few amens and hallelujahs. On the side of the road dissenters heckle the holy man to the chagrin of his followers. But the holy man will not be deterred. Among the hecklers the Whale Caller sees a woman who has a tendency to pop up everywhere the Whale Caller is. On occasion he has practically run away from her, but like a bad penny she will pop up again somewhere in his vicinity before that day is over. It could be at a supermarket where he buys provisions for the week, mainly his staple of macaroni and cheese; it could be at the beach where he blows his kelp horn for the whales; it could even be outside the g
ate of the Wendy house where he lives. Whenever the Whale Caller sees her, he changes direction. She never seems to mind him. She usually just stands there, looking at him intently until he disappears. Then she pops up again somewhere else later that day when he is busy minding his own business. Thankfully she has never popped up at his confessions to Mr. Yodd. That would be embarrassing. What would Mr. Yodd think of him? To pre-empt her appearance at Mr. Yodd’s shrine he has mentioned her to him once, by way of seeking advice on how to deal with the pest of a woman who seems to be stalking him. As usual Mr. Yodd had laughed at him. He had left mortified, as often happens after his confessions to Mr. Yodd. He realised only when he reached the top of the cliffs that he had received no counsel from his confessor on how to deal with the stalker.

  The woman never says anything. He has never heard her voice. She just stands there and looks at him with questioning eyes. He always averts his eyes. She enjoys this game, for she skips girlishly to the new spot where his eyes are fixed. His best defence is to walk away. Almost running, looking back from time to time to see if she is following. She never follows. She just stands there, arms akimbo, intently staring after him.

  On one occasion at the beach he mustered enough courage to glare back at her. She did not flinch. He stood his ground for a while, and occupied his mind with studying her face. It was ravaged by alcohol. Yet he couldn’t help concluding that she was one of those people who continued to be beautiful long after the nights were gone. He studied her red matted hair, restrained from running in all wild directions by a fine black net. She broke into a smile, while still looking him straight in the eye. Four of her upper front teeth were missing, the result of the yesteryear teeth-extracting fashion of the Western Cape that many of its followers regret today. They try to hide the folly of their youth with false teeth. The woman’s teeth that were not missing were brown, perhaps from snuff or even too much alcohol.