The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  He couldn’t bear it any longer. He turned and walked away. Quite briskly. Once more she had won.

  Although the woman is with those who are heckling the pastor, she herself is not a heckler. She is staring at the hapless Whale Caller, who is being harangued by the pastor. Fifteen pastors begin to surround the Whale Caller, raising their placards high. Bold letters screaming: Clean Out the Filth from Our Town, Hermanus Is Not Sodom and Gomorrah, Away with Moffies and Their Plays…

  The Whale Caller remembers reading in the Hermanus Times that fifteen pastors from various denominations are protesting about the staging of a play titled Have You Heard the Seagull Scream? as part of the Kalfiefees. Apparently what is galling the men of God is that the play features full frontal nudity and explicit gay sex scenes.

  “Hey, the play has nothing to do with me, Pietie le Roux,” says the Whale Caller.

  “It has everything to do with all decent people of this town,” the pastor says. “It is an affront to all God-fearing townsfolk, and you cannot stand aside in your godless whale-hugging existence and do nothing about it. You must join us in this protest.”

  The theatre where the play is to be staged is just across the street and the Whale Caller cannot help noticing that the lines of those who want to buy tickets are getting longer. Those who have not seen the festival programme think they can get more information about the play from Pastor Pietie le Roux.

  “Hey, Pastor le Roux, what is this dirty play about?” one of them shouts from the crowd.

  “They say it is about fuckin’ moffies,” another one responds.

  “Hey, I am asking Pastor le Roux, not you!”

  This gives Pietie le Roux the opportunity to sermonise about the play. “We, the pastors of Hermanus, have been placed here by the Lord to look after the morality of this town. The people who attend the play will be affected by it. Plays like these are the cause of all our problems in this town—problems like abalone poaching and drug abuse.”

  “What is this play about, pastor, which causes people to steal perlemoen from our seas?” asks another smart-aleck.

  “It is about a sailor who is secretly in love with his captain,” says Pietie le Roux.

  “Skande! Skande!” shout his followers.

  “You don’t think the captain could be a woman?” asks a spoilsport.

  “Ja,” agrees another one, “in this new South Africa women are captains.”

  “Not in this play,” says the pastor indignantly. “The sailor is a man and the captain is a man.”

  “So the pastor has seen this play yet he doesn’t want us to see it so we can make up our own minds about it?” asks the woman. For the first time the Whale Caller hears her voice. It has a husky tinge to it, as if it was made for singing the blues.

  “Who is this woman who blasphemes against the messenger of the Word?” asks the holy man.

  “She is Saluni the village drunk,” answers a member of the fold helpfully.

  “How does the pastor know what the play is about if he has not seen it?” insists Saluni. “How does he know it is bad for the morality of this town?”

  “God have mercy on you, my child,” says the pastor, raising his open hand over her head as if to bless her. “I read in the festival programme what the play is about. I have not seen it because these eyes that read the Holy Book for the congregation of the children of God every Sunday cannot feast on such filth. None of us believers have seen this play. None of us will see it. And I would advise the village drunk, who is nevertheless still loved by the Lord, not to see it either.”

  “So what if the sailor falls in love with his captain?” asks Saluni, who is fast establishing herself as the unofficial spokesperson of the sinful theatrical production. “After all, the constitution of the new South Africa protects gays. It is against the law to discriminate against anyone just because they are fuckin’ moffies. This is not the old South Africa where somebody else thought for us.”

  “So our village drunk is also a lawyer and a politician?” asks Pastor Pietie le Roux to the derisive laughter of his followers. “Before you run to complain to your Human Rights Commission let me tell you that it is not because of homosexuality that we are against the play, though indeed no moffie will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is because of explicit description and full frontal nudity! This is the last resort we are taking here. We did try to negotiate with the festival organiser. And you know what he told us? That Jesus is for everyone, including moffies. How dare he speak the name of Jesus upon his lips?”

  Since the focus of Pastor Pietie le Roux is now on the impertinent Saluni, the Whale Caller manages to work his way out of the circle of pastors to the side of the hecklers. The only opening through which he may escape is next to Saluni. And he has no choice but to brush against her. She looks at him and grins triumphantly. Fumes of methylated spirits assail him. He cringes away and manages to stand on the fringes of the crowd. It is already dispersing, with most people rushing to join the line at the box office window of the theatre.

  “We have not finished cleaning this town,” says another one of the fifteen pastors, addressing the faithful. “There is yet another scandalous play called Broekbrein. And this one is about a middle-aged man who falls for a younger woman. This isn’t going to do the morals of this town any good. We must think of our daughters, flowers of Hermanus, who may be misled by such drivel. And as usual we spoke to the writer, who is also the actor in this one-man play. We phoned him, warning him to stay away from Hermanus. Unfortunately he did not heed our warning.”

  Then he breaks into a hymn in his baritone. The fold takes it up and the march continues on its path of redemption. The Whale Caller walks slowly to his Wendy house. He is disgusted that he has touched the village drunk. It suddenly strikes him that when he brushed against her an image of his long-departed mother flashed before his eyes. He wonders why Saluni reminds him of a woman who died decades ago, when he was still a boy, before he even became an apprentice horn player at the Church. Saluni looks nothing like his mother. She obviously was not yet born when his mother sailed for celestial shores. He reckons there is a fifteen-year gap between Saluni and him, though it is hard to tell with people whose faces have been ravaged by spirits and the elements. Saluni is a village drunk and looks it; his mother was a strict Christian woman who walked a mile from any den of iniquity. Saluni is petite. His mother was a robust woman in corpulent dresses. But something in Saluni does remind him of his mother, and it bothers him no end that he can’t put his finger on it.

  Saluni. Her life revolves around three rituals: spectating the Whale Caller, singing with the Bored Twins and gulping quantities of plonk from a flask she carries all the time in her sequinned but threadbare handbag. When times are hard the flask is filled with methylated spirits mixed with water. The third ritual usually accompanies the first two. She takes a ceremonial swig as she watches the Whale Caller or between songs with the Bored Twins.

  Saluni was first attracted to the Bored Twins by their beautiful voices two years ago. It was not long after her arrival in the district from inland provinces, an exile from darkness. She was wandering from homestead to office building to farmstead, looking for employment. She was exhausted from traversing the postcard landscape and was chafed by constant rejection. Her toes in her pencil-heel shoes were sore. On the outskirts of town, from a patch of sparse reeds growing in a small swamp, she heard voices singing in two-part harmony. It was a children’s song, the version of which she remembered very well from her jewellery music box, where it was played by what sounded like a harpsichord. The voices from the reeds gave the song new energy that evoked a feeling of nostalgia for a world Saluni had never known. Perhaps a world she had experienced in another life. Her body suddenly felt a surge of something akin to vibrational healing. The pain in her feet was dissipating fast. The tiredness in her body was gone. The voices seemed to connect her to an angelic realm.

  She walked closer to the reeds, eager to satisfy her curiosity a
bout the source of such ethereal sounds. She saw them for the first time, wading in the mud; their matching white dresses smudged all over. The girls were identical, though one was slightly bigger. She was later to dub them the Bored Twins. They were about seven years old and were very beautiful. Not only did they sing like angels, they looked as though they would sprout wings and fly to the clouds. She stood there and watched them for some time. She wondered what children of that age were doing playing all alone in a swamp so far away from any houses.

  She tried to attract their attention by coughing. They looked at her. They didn’t seem to be startled at all. She called them to come out of the mud and asked them where they came from. “I’ll take you to your home,” she said. “You shouldn’t be playing so far away from people. I am sure your parents must be worried by now.”

  The Bored Twins merely giggled. It sounded like little pealing bells.

  “You can laugh all you want,” said Saluni. “You are too young to understand the dangers that lurk in isolated places. Even little girls of your age get raped these days.”

  The Bored Twins did not seem to take her seriously. She asked them to direct her to their home, as she wanted to talk to their parents. They said they would do so only when they had finished their game, and then jumped back into the mud. Soon it would be dark and she dared not allow darkness to catch her in the wild. She walked into the swamp and tried to grab their arms. They slipped through her hands like eels. They ran around in circles, shrieking and laughing while she chased them. They were having too much fun at her expense to care that she was becoming infuriated. One of her pencil-heel shoes got stuck in the mud. She muttered a few expletives as she pulled it out, cleaned it on the grass and put it back on her foot. She then sat on the grass, hid her head between her knees and sobbed. The remorseful girls came to comfort her, each one crying: “I am sorry, auntie… I am sorry, auntie!”

  She saw her chance, and pounced on them like a wild cat, grabbing each one by the scruff of the neck, all the while cackling with laughter. For a moment the Bored Twins were astounded by her deceit, and then they screamed and kicked and scratched. But she was too strong for them.

  Sulkily they led Saluni to their home almost three kilometres away—a derelict white Cape Dutch mansion that she had often seen on her wanderings in the district. She had never imagined anyone lived there. She knew of the story that was told in the taverns of Hermanus, that the mansion had been abandoned decades ago after a bankrupt ostrich baron had murdered his family and then committed suicide when the bottom fell out of the ostrich feather market. He was, in fact, taking his cue from a Dutch forebear who had killed himself after the tulip market crashed centuries before. It was during the Thirty Years War and Holland had gone crazy over tulips. Shysters abounded in the tulip trade. The forebear had been one of the speculators who had traded in bulbs that existed only on paper. When the government came up with legislation to curb that practice, he had tried to get out of the tulip market, but it was too late. The bottom had fallen right out. He had lost all his wealth and decided to hang himself. His surviving son, who had been his apprentice in the tulip trade, had sailed to the Cape of Good Hope to join the newly established settlement, then under the Dutch East India Company. His descendants had tried their hand at various trades until they found their niche, two centuries later, in ostrich farming. By the time the baron took over from his father the family had amassed untold riches from feathers that were in great demand by European and American fashion houses. He had built the mansion as a holiday home on the outskirts of the village of Hermanus. It was a replica of his other mansion in the Klein Karoo, where he had his ostrich farms. And then the tragedy happened, and the house remained unoccupied, until it became a ruin because it was reputed to be haunted by the ostrich baron’s ghost and the vengeful spirits of his murdered family.

  The girls’ parents didn’t seem unduly worried when Saluni brought them home.

  “They like to wander around,” said the father, as if talking of straying chickens.

  “It can be dangerous out there,” said Saluni.

  “What can we do?” asked the mother. “These children get bored. We cannot look after them all the time because we are working people.”

  “We are casual vineyard workers,” explained the father. “We took over this house a few months back when everyone was afraid of it. It is our base… our home. But we still have to travel to the vineyards in search of work.”

  “The twins know how to look after themselves,” the mother assured Saluni. “Of course they do get bored sometimes.”

  They asked Saluni to stay for the night, since it had become too dark for her to walk home. The Bored Twins, excited at having a visitor, took her on a tour of the house. Each one was holding a candle. Saluni was amazed at the number of rooms. Yes, the mansion, though dilapidated, did look imposing from the outside. But she couldn’t have imagined that inside it was such a maze. However, the Bored Twins knew their way around. They took her to all the bedrooms. Saluni counted eight of them, most with bathrooms en suite. But there was no water in the bathrooms, the girls told her. There was no running water anywhere in the house. The family drew their water from a communal tap almost a kilometre away. There were many other rooms whose original function Saluni could not determine. All devoid of furniture. All with rococo ceilings that used to be white. The ornate ceilings looked out of place in the simplicity of Cape Dutch elegance. Most of the rooms had spiders and other crawling creatures as permanent residents. It was obvious that the family only used three rooms: the kitchen, the parents’ bedroom and the Bored Twins’ bedroom. The rest of the rooms were full of dust and spiders’ webs that ran from one wall to the other. The only other clean room was the wine cellar in the basement. Even the empty wine racks that lined its walls were dust-free. The Bored Twins told her that it was their secret room, which they used when they wanted to hide from their parents.

  After a supper of snoek fish and rice, Saluni helped the mother clean the plates. Then it was time for bed. The girls became excited when Saluni offered to sleep in their room. Sponge mattresses were spread on the floor. The Bored Twins insisted on reading her their favourite bedtime story: Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book.

  “But first we must put out the light,” said the smaller girl.

  “No, don’t!” screamed Saluni. The Bored Twins were taken aback by her sudden anxiety. But she gave them a reassuring smile and asked, “How will you read me the story if it is dark?”

  “We read it in the dark,” said the bigger twin.

  “We know the whole book by heart,” explained the smaller twin.

  “Please don’t put out the light,” pleaded Saluni.

  “But Mother will be mad at us,” said the bigger twin. “She says we must not waste candles.”

  Saluni took out a candle from her sequinned handbag. She lit it from the twins’ candle before putting the twins’ candle out.

  “You carry a candle in your handbag?” asked the smaller twin.

  “All the time,” said Saluni. “Let’s hear your story then.”

  “The news/Just came in/From the County of Keck/That a very small bug/By the name of Van Vleck/Is yawning so wide/You can look down his neck,” began the smaller twin.

  The bigger twin took over: “This may not seem/Very important, I know/But it is. So I’m bothering/Telling you so/A yawn is quite catching, you see. Like a cough/It just takes one yawn to start other yawns off.” At this point the girls started yawning, so did Saluni. This tickled them no end. So it was true that yawning was infectious!

  The story never came to an end though. The girls kept on adding their own silly details to Dr. Seuss’s well-crafted story, which made it much longer than it really was, and left Saluni in stitches. By the time the girls reached the part with the sleepwalking creatures the story trailed off and soon both girls were snoring. Saluni couldn’t help noting that even their snores sounded like distant pealing bells.

  Before Saluni left the
next morning, she promised the parents that she would occasionally come to check on the Bored Twins.

  That was two years ago. To this day she continues to check on them, although sometimes she vows she will stop visiting their mansion as they have developed a new habit of playing silly pranks on her. She stays away for two or three days, and then finds that she misses them. She goes back to the mansion and indeed the Bored Twins have become sweet again. They sing for her. More than ever before they sing like angels. She sends them to the nearest tavern to buy her wine. After a few gulps she joins them in song. She has to be tipsy before she can open her mouth in song. Her husky voice blends well with the beatific voices. The parents are happy that an adult eye, however drunk it may often be, watches over their little angels. They reward Saluni with more bottles of cheap wine that they get from vineyard owners as part-payment for their labour.

  The sun and the moon pull in unison, and the tide rises.

  The Whale Caller can hear the sounds of the sea from his Wendy house. His mind wanders to the events of the day as he prepares his late lunch of macaroni and cheese. He didn’t have the best of days. What with his concerns for the safety of Sharisha! And the harassment by the pastors! Why did the pastors have to drag him into things about which he did not care? He had not even been aware of the plays that have caused so much upheaval in the town. He is of course aware of the festival, but it is not his business. He does not need a festival to celebrate the whales.