The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  She climbs back from the grotto. Stiletto-heels were not made for crag climbing. She is therefore holding her shoes in her hands and is walking in her stockinged feet. Near the whale-viewing site she finds the Whale Caller waiting. She walks past him, pretending not to see him.

  “What were you doing down there?” he asks.

  “Oh, nothing!” she says, without stopping. He follows her.

  “But you were talking. Who were you talking to?”

  “Oh, to no one in particular!”

  “You were talking to Mr. Yodd, weren’t you?”

  She does not deny it. She just keeps on walking.

  Now he has no doubt that this is the woman for him.

  She sits on the concrete bench near the war monument to put on her shoes. He sits beside her. There is a silence between them. After a while she stands up again and walks on the tarred road past the big parking lot and away from the Old Harbour area. He follows her. About half a kilometre away she takes off her shoes again and walks down the paved path that leads back to the sea. He follows. She sits on the green bench near the path, a few metres above the water. He sits down too. There is silence again. He is looking straight ahead as if something on the horizon has grabbed his attention. She looks at him intently as if she is studying the contours on his face, and bursts out laughing. He looks at her and bursts out laughing too.

  “You laughed,” she says.

  “You laughed first,” he says.

  “I always laugh. You never do,” she says.

  “You have brought laughter into my life,” he says.

  There is silence once more. The world is at peace with itself. American armies are not invading third-world countries, making the world unsafe for the rest of humanity; terrorists are not engaging in the slaughter of the innocent in high-rise buildings and at holiday resorts; criminals have ceased their rapes and murders and robberies; dictators of the world have given up dictating; warlords have laid down their arms; politicians have learnt to be truthful and have stopped thieving. The world is at peace with itself. Across a small rift, not far from where the couple is enjoying the peace of the world, a cultus of tourists is engaged in the ritual of gorging quantities of seafood and gallons of wine. They are sitting in the open-air restaurant whose portico juts into the sea on stilts. They are at peace with the world.

  A song can be heard among the waves below the restaurant.

  “Did you hear that voice?” asks Saluni.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” says the Whale Caller.

  “You can hear your whales a hundred miles away but you cannot hear a boy only a few metres below us?”

  “Human voices are not like the voices of whales,” he says apologetically.

  In all fairness, the voice comes only in waves because the wind blows it in the opposite direction, and then suddenly when the wind subsides the voice carries to the couple on the green bench. The Whale Caller strains his ears and finally can hear something.

  “It is Lunga Tubu singing to the waves,” says Saluni.

  “Who is Lunga Tubu?”

  “He is here at least twice a week. But you never see him because you only see whales.”

  There he is, Lunga Tubu, standing on a rock and singing to the tourists on the portico above. An occasional offering of a coin is thrown in his direction. He has to catch it before it drops into the water. He has become very adept at it. The tourists seem to enjoy this part of the game most: when he jumps up to catch a coin, without missing a beat. Kindlier souls throw the coins in the clear water on the side of the portico, for him to gather after a few songs.

  The Whale Caller can now hear his song very clearly: Softly a serenade, whispers I love you, Santa Lucia, Sa-a-anta-a-a-a-a Lucia-a-a-a-a. It is a boy’s voice, and has not yet broken. Yet it is so canorous that it lifts the Whale Caller to his feet. He applauds and shouts: “Bravo! Bravo!”

  Unlike the Bored Twins, whose voices are those of angels, Saluni explains, Lunga Tubu’s voice is of this earth. It is a voice of a humble twelve-year-old boy from Zwelihle Township who comes down to the sea on weekends and public holidays to sing for his supper.

  It seems to the Whale Caller that Saluni’s influence has now made him hear the songs of humans as well. It has also made him see things that he has never noticed before, although they have been around him all the time.

  The head waiter appears on the portico and shoos Lunga Tubu away. But the boy continues his song. Saluni has seen this ritual many times before and finds it quite funny. The Whale Caller, on the other hand, is disgusted that a boy with such a pleasant voice is being driven away so unceremoniously.

  “He says the boy steals his tips,” explains Saluni.

  “But the boy didn’t even get within ten metres of the restaurant. Does he think the poor boy has long invisible hands?”

  “He thinks that if the tourists didn’t have to throw some coins at Lunga he and the other waiters would be getting bigger tips.”

  The head waiter disappears into the kitchen and returns with a fat man who is either the owner or the manager of the restaurant. The man walks down the wooden steps on the side of the portico, shouting abuse at Lunga Tubu. He picks up pebbles and throws them at the boy, who is now running away.

  “Run this way, Lunga, he won’t dare come to bother you here,” shouts Saluni.

  The boy runs to the green bench. He is tiny and emaciated.

  “What did you do to that man?” asks the Whale Caller.

  “Nothing,” says the boy. “He doesn’t want me to sing near his restaurant.”

  Saluni explains to the Whale Caller that Lunga Tubu’s presence here destabilises the serenity of Hermanus—a sanctified playground of the rich. Lunga Tubu is disturbing the peace of the world. His tiny frame nags the delicate souls with what they would rather forget: that only a few kilometres away there is another world that is not at peace with itself—a whole festering world of the disillusioned, those who have no stake in the much-talked-about black economic empowerment, which is really the issue of the black middle class rather than of people like Lunga Tubu. While the town of Hermanus is raking in fortunes from tourism, the mothers and fathers of Zwelihle are unemployed. It is a world where people have lost all faith in politicians. Once, they had dreams, but they have seen politicians and trade union leaders become overnight millionaires instead. Only tiny crumbs trickle down to what used to be called “the masses” in the heyday of the revolution.

  Of course only a liar can claim that things are as bad as they were during the days of apartheid, Saluni is emphatic about this. More people have been housed than ever before. Even shacks in informal settlements here and in the inland provinces have been electrified. Services such as telephones and water have been provided even in the remote villages. But in a country with such high unemployment, this has come with new problems. People are unable to pay for these services.

  One little “empowerment” that exists in Zwelihle is the indigent tariff. Poor families that qualify for this tariff are relieved of paying for utilities and municipal services. But the city fathers and mothers are quick to disqualify a family as soon as it owns a fridge, a geyser or some other appliance that may be deemed a luxury. If they can afford a fridge, common wisdom dictates, they can afford to pay their utilities bills. The inspectors of the municipality discovered once that Lunga Tubu’s family owned a range of electrical appliances and gadgets. The family was immediately disqualified from the indigent tariff. It did not matter to the bureaucrats that these appliances were hand-me-downs from his mother’s employer in “the kitchens.” Hence he has to sing, not only for his supper and his fees at Lukhanyo Primary School, where he is doing Grade Six, but for service arrears as well. And this is the most crucial of his expenses. Many citizens of Zwelihle have had their houses auctioned away because of service arrears.

  “There is no place you do not know in Hermanus, Saluni,” observes the Whale Caller. He is obviously quite impressed by her command of the politics o
f Hermanus. “There is nothing you don’t know in this district.”

  “People in the taverns talk,” says Saluni. “And I have been to every tavern worth its name in the district. Until you came along.”

  “You came along.”

  “You searched for me.”

  The Whale Caller studies the tiny boy in front of him. The boy is grinning expectantly.

  “You sing well, boy,” says the Whale Caller. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A whale caller,” says Saluni impishly.

  “An opera singer,” replies the boy.

  And he is determined to be one, whatever obstacles may be put in his way. He sings in a school choir. But one day he will surpass his heroes: Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. He then rattles off the history of the three tenors, and tells the Whale Caller about some of their great concerts. The Whale Caller himself has never been one for music, except the songs of the whales.

  Lunga Tubu breaks into a rendition of “O sole mio,” and then follows it with “La donna è mobile” There are tears in the Whale Caller’s eyes. Saluni looks at him, shakes her head and smiles.

  “That is very sweet,” she says.

  The Whale Caller is clearly offended. He gives Lunga Tubu some banknotes without even counting them and abruptly walks away.

  “Hey, what’s wrong now?” asks Saluni, running after the Whale Caller. “It is okay, man, you can cry.”

  THREE

  The whales have been gone for many months, and the taverns of Hermanus miss their love child. She has been gone for almost as long as the whales. Many rumours circulate, ranging from the mundane to the sublime. She stowed away in an oil tanker. She was seen at the Cape Town docks drinking with a bunch of Mediterranean seafaring types who took a fancy to her and persuaded her to sail the world with them, smuggling crude to third-world countries with black-market economies. She is hibernating with a new rash after the Bored Twins placed ten hairy millipedes in her bra—five in each cup. Others saw her in conference with a bevy of water maids—beautiful women with lower bodies of fish—-in the deep of the night. She has joined them in their undersea queendom. She is in the process of metamorphosing into a watermaid.

  These stories change every day, like the story of her own conception: one day she is seen riding on the back of a dolphin which swims with her to the horizon, and the next day she has joined a cloister of nuns and has taken the vow of chastity, or has been discovered by a talent scout and now she sings the blues on a cruise liner.

  There are those who know a different truth. They are the very few who have found reason to venture to the beaches, to Walker Bay and the Old Harbour—areas often shunned by the true-blooded citizens of Hermanus as being too touristy. They have seen Saluni, they claim, waltzing in the morning with a strange man who blows a kelp horn for the whales. No, not Wilson Salukazana the whale crier from Zwelihle, who is employed by the town council to alert whale watchers as to the presence and location of whales. Everyone knows the whale crier. He has been seen in newspapers and on television. Everyone in the world who has a camera has photographed him. The whale man seen with Saluni is a different one, the bald brawny silver-bearded man in blue dungarees or black tie who does not relish an audience when he blows his horn, but merely tolerates it because there is nothing he can do about it. The one who calls whales to himself and spends the nights dancing with them. Saluni is often seen with him. Loitering on the beach like the strandlopers of old. Strolling down supermarket aisles. Smiling broadly. Sometimes even holding hands! Yes, the very Saluni that they thought they knew so well! The love child.

  But the habitués of the taverns do not want to believe these rumour-mongers. Their story is pooh-poohed as the most ridiculous ever invented in the Western Cape and beyond. If Saluni were anywhere near Hermanus, they argue, she would not have deserted her eternal greatest haunts—the taverns of Hermanus. A lady who prides herself on elegance—however threadbare and old-time it may be—cannot become a strandloper. There is more romance in joining a noviciate or a band of smugglers, in belting out the blues on passenger ships, in riding dolphins and in transforming into hallowed water beings.

  Saluni has indeed transformed into a watermaid of sorts. Her body has not turned into that of a fish, but on sunny days she spends many hours with her feet immersed in the emerald green shallows. Even on a day like this where everything is just a mass of greyness and one can’t tell where the sea ends and the sky begins, she sits on a rock playing with the water and making monotonous splashes with her feet. When days are grey, water also assumes dull colours. Not blue. Not emerald green. Misty purple. Oily brown. Or just grey like the day. The Whale Caller sits on the green bench above and watches her as he used to watch the whales. He can only see her back. The wild wind blows her red hair in wild directions, making it look like the hissing serpents of Medusa. But he knows that from the front her face will not turn every living thing beholding it into stone. It is a ravishing face, though the elements and the wine have taken their toll on it.

  He is alarmed at the intensity of his feeling for her, so violent that it wants to burst out of his chest. It has never happened like this before; even with the buxom women in the hamlets he passed through when he used to travel the coast. Those were his happy-go-lucky days. He indulged his youthful fancies and moved on. Sometimes he lingered for a few months or even years when the ambience was convivial enough. But ultimately he moved on because no strong attachments were ever established in his adventures and misadventures with the female folk. This feeling that is actually making him physically ill is a new experience, and in spite of its debilitating effect it illumines his face. His whole body feels light as if he is levitating, though he is actually sitting firmly on the bench.

  Saluni is very much aware of his physical illness. She shares a similar malaise, with slight variations, though she sometimes doubts if his is directly related to her. She believes that it is likely to be caused by someone—or rather something—else. Her doubts worsen whenever he sits on that bench and has a faraway look in his eyes. She suspects that on those occasions his mind is populated by images of Sharisha lobtailing and doing all sorts of crude things in the ocean. Although the name of Sharisha has not featured in their conversation for many months, she silently bears a grudge against her. She blames her for the sad fact that she and the Whale Caller have not consummated their union.

  Her thoughts are on this lack of consummation as she withdraws from the water to sit on the moist sand a short distance away. Drawing deeply from her historical memory, she chants spells from the binding rituals of those wonderful pagan epochs. She commands through binding hymns that her beloved should be subject to her will and act according to her wishes. With sand she builds an effigy of her beloved, in the manner that the lovesick moulded such effigies in old Egypt and Greece—a male pursuit in those ancient cultures—and still mould them in the enchanting voodoo rituals of some Africans. In her sequinned handbag, which is lying on the sand next to the stilettos, she finds a matchbox. She uses the matchs ticks to pierce the sandman in the arms and the legs and the heart, chanting the binding hymn that the beloved will come to her running, burning with desire, and she will drag him by his beard and even by his genitals, until he surrenders himself completely to her. She tortures the sandman with her “needles” until the Whale Caller feels the pain where he is sitting, and has seizures. He does not know the immediate source of this further violence on his body, except for the fact that the mere sight of Saluni has been giving him feverish outbursts lately

  Although the fever has caused him great discomfort in the general area of his groin, he would like to believe that it has nothing to do with carnal desires. His position since his return from his wanderings and the discovery of the pleasures that can be derived from whales is that there are things that are more beautiful and less messy than copulation. The most important is just being at the same place at the same time with the object of your affections,
breathing the same air and smelling the same smells. Doing little things for each other rather than to each other. He loves doing little things for Saluni although she never seems to notice them. He does all the giving and she is a thankless receiver. He rejoices in generosity and has stopped being puzzled at her lack of any expression of gratitude.