The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  “It’s locked, Saluni. Please let’s not waste time,” he calls after her.

  “Just to make sure, man, just to make sure,” she calls back.

  She does this twice or thrice, and he waits patiently. Finally she defies the urge to walk back to check just one more time, and they stroll down the road.

  They walk past American-type fast food franchises—the day calls for something classier than whopping burgers, deep-fried thick-battered chicken and slick pizzas that bear little resemblance to the original Italian peasant fare—and then turn into a street that prides itself on its restaurants. They stop for a while at the window of a hotel restaurant with a sushi bar, and watch the patrons sitting on cushions or mats on the floor like a congregation of some New Age religion, eating delicate oval-shaped balls of rice rolled in fish. On the low tables there are tiny bowls of different dark sauces. Other worshippers are sitting at the bar drinking some whitish sacramental drink and eating similar fare. There are chunks of white, grey, red and pink fish displayed on flat wooden rectangular rice plates. She explains to him that the fish is eaten raw, and he says that is not to his taste. Fish can only be decent when it is coated in spiced batter, fried in plenty of oil, and then eaten with golden brown chips, in the traditional manner of the Western Cape.

  “You can talk about macaroni and cheese,” says Saluni, “but you don’t know anything about fish.”

  “I used to live on fish when I walked the coast,” he tells her. “I lived in fisherfolk villages where they knew how to fry the fish.”

  At this point the maître d’ sees them standing outside looking through the window debating the merits of his food. He goes out and invites them in.

  “We have the best nigiri in South Africa,” he adds. “Yes, in this little town of Hermanus we beat top restaurants in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Our secret lies in the fact that our fish is fermented in salt and our rice is seasoned with a sweet vinegar mixture, as sushi originally used to be created in ancient Japan.”

  The Whale Caller is looking at him closely, wondering how it is possible for a man to work up so much enthusiasm for mere fish and rice. Saluni declines the invitation for them both and tells the maître d’ that they would rather enjoy his decorative delicacies with their eyes from a distance.

  “We also serve sushi that doesn’t include sashimi… that doesn’t include raw fish… if that’s what you are squeamish about,” the man says. He is persuasive, but Saluni explains once more that they are only interested in eating his food with their eyes, if he doesn’t mind. The friendly face changes in a flash.

  “Of course I mind. You make my customers nervous watching them like that. Please go and be spectators somewhere else,” he says as he angrily walks back into the restaurant.

  “I wouldn’t like to be watched when I eat either,” says the Whale Caller. “Eating should be a private matter. Like sex.”

  He startles himself with this last observation. His worst nightmare is becoming a reality: Saluni has debauched him, to the extent that a simile like that can roll out of his mouth unprovoked. But all this is lost on Saluni.

  “As if it is something sinful,” says Saluni. “If they want to eat in private they mustn’t come to a restaurant.”

  The maître d’ draws the blinds and the remote diners are left facing white kimono-clad outlines of Japanese beauties and leafy bamboos on a red background.

  “Oh, man! What did he do that for? I wanted to taste some of that sake,” wails Saluni.

  “Sake?” asks the Whale Caller.

  “The wine,” she explains. “It is made from rice. I understand it is wonderfully powerful. As strong as the man next to me.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” he warns her. “Otherwise I might find you swimming in the bottle again and wasting your life in the taverns.”

  “You look so cute when you worry about me,” she says, cackling.

  There are other restaurants. Each one boldly advertises some foreign cuisine, ranging from Indian and Chinese to French and Italian. But their curtains are drawn.

  “Perhaps we should change our dining strategy next time,” says Saluni. “We should dine in the daytime. Curtains are bound to be open in the daytime.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t dine at all,” says the Whale Caller. “We should be sitting in front of a warm heater at home.”

  “Don’t give up so easily, man,” she says. “You’ll see, you’ll like it once you get the hang of it. Just like the window shopping.”

  They are about to give up despite Saluni’s exhortations when they chance upon a Cape Dutch house at a corner of a nondescript street. It is the only restaurant that unashamedly boasts of specialising in South African cuisine. Everyone knows that in the Western Cape when they talk of South African cuisine they mean the Cape Malay food that is a result of the melting cultures of Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Khoikhoi and Dutch. The same kind of interbreeding that brought into existence the wonderfully coloured people of the Western Cape. As in the rest of the restaurants at this time of the night, this one’s thick maroon velvet draperies are drawn as well. But at one of the windows there has been some carelessness since there is a big gap between the curtains through which Saluni and the Whale Caller can see inside.

  The glass reflects their own images because of the glare from the streetlights. Therefore they have to press their faces against the panes in order to have a good look at the chefs standing in a row—the high priest and his acolytes—cutting roast lamb, beef, chicken, pork and venison behind a long buffet counter of crayfish, langoustine, perlemoen, curries, rotis, samoosas, colourful salads, pies, boboties, sosaties, pickled snoek fish, másala fish, rice, and sweetmeats such as temeletjies and the syrupy doughnuts known as koeksisters. The priests do everything in full view of the worshippers, many of whom watch in admiration as they brandish their big knives about, slicing the roasts with pomp and ceremony. Sosaties are braaied over an open fire, while the worshippers ceremonially walk the length of the altar, serving their fancy onto their plates. Then they walk to their tables, also set up like altars, each one with a candle burning idly. Worshippers are in couples. Youthful upwardly mobile lovers and jaded old-world couples from the houses of retired millionaires that dot the district. There are hardly any tourists at this time of the year.

  “I find this worshipping of food obscene,” the Whale Caller whispers.

  She gives him an acid glare and says, “You should count your blessings and taste every dish instead of complaining.”

  “After all, sooner or later it will be digested and will surely become stools. Then it will be scorned and despised. People forget that only a few hours back they were venerating it.”

  “You are the only human being outside the doctor’s rooms who talks of stools. Normal people talk of shit, man. Not stools. Not faeces. Not waste matter. Pure unadulterated shit !”

  “Ja, whatever you call it, Saluni… whatever you call it.”

  “You didn’t rebel like this when I taught you window shopping. You ended up liking it.”

  “Because it was private, Saluni. Not like here where people have built special temples for the ritual of eating… where eaters enact pagan rites of mating.”

  “Now you are getting carried away, man,” says an astounded Saluni. “No one is mating anybody here. You are beginning to have wonderfully dirty thoughts… like me. People are just eating, that’s all.”

  “It’s not just eating, Saluni. You and I know that with these people eating is part of lovemaking… part of…” He cannot bring himself to say it.

  “Foreplay? You once uttered that word, man. What went wrong now? I thought you had got over your primness.”

  “In private, Saluni. It was uttered between you and me… in the privacy of our bedroom.”

  “I still don’t see the difference, man. We eat at supermarkets with our eyes…”

  “Here, my dear Saluni, we are voyeurs of an orgy. This is where I put the full stop, Saluni. I am not going t
o be part of this window eating anymore.”

  He steps aside. Saluni continues to stand at the window and to gormandise each of the dishes. But there is no fun in it if she can’t share the experience with him. The food tastes like paper. She is disappointed in him, and says so. He apologises and explains that this deification of food is a new experience for him. He eats to sustain himself, because if he does not eat he will die. His habits of eating are quite rudimentary. When he used to walk the coast he only needed to get fish, braai it on the open coal with maize on the cob and eat it. There was no ceremony. When he returned from the coast it became easier and cheaper to boil macaroni, sprinkle it with shredded cheese and eat. Again there was no ceremony

  “You hate ceremony then, do you?” mocks Saluni. “But you are a creature of ritual. Like me, you are prone to ceremonial actions. You cannot pretend otherwise.”

  The evening has been a disaster, and they walk home without a word to each other. She walks in front, almost trotting, and he follows leisurely behind. He is beginning to regret his outburst. Perhaps he should have just gone along with the ritual. It never hurts to be accommodative. But if he did Saluni would have expected them to visit the restaurants every weekend. Just as they visit the supermarkets at least once a week. He enjoys those visits. No one knows that they are eating from the displays of canned and boxed food. It is therefore private. Supermarkets are not temples built for the purpose of worshipping food. One buys the food and takes it to the privacy of one’s home. He can never bring himself to enjoy the vulgarities of public eating. He will just have to find a way of making it up to Saluni.

  The next morning, after their ablutions, he brushes her hair and braids it into two long ropes. He files her nails and polishes them with Cutex. While he is at it he uses some of the nail polish to stop the runs on her nylon stockings. Indeed on the following days he pampers Saluni even more. In the mornings he goes to the flower market and buys her a flower—whatever flower is the cheapest that day. He takes her to the town centre to listen to blind buskers playing love standards on their violins, guitars or saxophones.

  Nights rock the Wendy house, even on red days.

  Although she never outrightly expresses gratitude to the Whale Caller for anything, she claims she is the happiest she has ever been, but he can see that something is missing in her life. She mopes around and is down-spirited. She looks depressed, and he knows why. The Bored Twins.

  “Why don’t you go and see them,” he asks out of the blue one day. “I think they are missing you too.”

  “And then you are going to bitch about it? No, I am not going.”

  “When did I bitch about anything, Saluni?”

  “I know you don’t like them, and God knows what those little angels ever did to you.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like them, Saluni. I just don’t want you to be so dependent on them. I don’t mind if you see them once in a while. Not every day. I need you too, Saluni, you know that. Some days I need to spend the whole day with you.”

  She goes to the mansion. And euphoria returns to her. He continues to pamper her, which depletes his financial resources—especially the daily flower that he insists on buying despite the abundance of tulips and the offerings on the collection plates of the blind musicians. But he does not mind. What matters is that they are both happy and many days pass without a single quarrel between them. She indulges him by talking to him sweetly, in a bluesy musical voice, and by being generally pleasant to him even when she thinks he is being stiff and stupid.

  One afternoon on her way home from the mansion she visits Mr. Yodd. It is not a spur-of-the-moment decision. She has been planning the visit the whole day. And for the whole day a conflict has been brewing in her head as to whether to go or not to go. She brings with her a bunch of tulips from the mansion and walks down the crag to the grotto. This time she kneels down on some jagged stones and arranges the tulips around the small entrance as a propitiation rite. The stones under her knees are far from comfortable, and she wonders how the Whale Caller managed to kneel here—sometimes for hours on end. Perhaps it was part of his mortification: the very quest to put the flesh to death that made him deny himself the pleasures of fish, even though he could afford it, and live on an unchanging insipid diet. He may not frequent Mr. Yodd anymore, but he is still a flagellant at heart. The quest that today makes him deny himself the Bored Twins, despite himself.

  Saluni can hear some squeaking and rustling sounds inside. Perhaps the rock rabbits are fighting. Or nursing babies. Or just enjoying one another. All these may sound the same to the uninitiated. A rock rabbit peeps out to see what has cast a shadow at the entrance of their abode. It sees the tulips, grabs some of them and dashes back into the grotto without paying any attention to Saluni. These are the woes of winter. In the absence of tourists the dustbins are empty and the rock rabbits have been reduced to the indignities of eating unseasonable flowers.

  Hoy, Mr. Yodd! It is true. We forget about you when our boat is sailing in calm seas. We remember you only in times of storms. That is why we create deities in the first place, Mr. Yodd. To remember them in times of upheaval. We conjure them into existence so that they can explain our own existence—and therefore our troubles—away. Where is he? He does not need you anymore. He is a fulfilled man and can survive without mortification. He wakes up every morning, reaches for the mist and wraps himself with it like a blanket of the mountain people. He is ensconced in the comfort of the mist and his body has forgotten its previous need for your flogging laughter. I have taken you over because I feel that you cannot just sit in your little hole going to waste. Pardon me, Mr. Yodd… in your grotto. Someone must confess to you and I am here to do just that. I am not just doing you a favour, perhaps feeling sorry for you now that he has given you up. I need to confess. He won’t like it when he finally gets to hear of it. There is no reason for him to be insecure about it. Sometimes he can be such a big baby. But I do want to nurse his sensitivities. He claims now you belong to me. I never knew this selfish streak in him. He thought he was going to hog you to himself, and when I discovered you and decided that you can serve my purposes as well he throws all his toys out of the cot and vows he will have nothing to do with you. Is this the real reason he no longer comes? It is the real reason. I do not go around inventing reasons for him. Okay, it is not the mist. This is the real reason. Perhaps you are right when you say he didn’t really mean it. There were upheavals in our lives when he said it. We were snapping at each other. You may be right, I was the snapper. We were still trying to find each other, that is why. Now that peace and harmony reign I do not want to upset the delicate situation. Yet I feel that a confession is necessary. And it is a simple one: we are too happy to survive each other. There is no anguish in our lives. That is the reason I am here. I worry myself sick because there is no anguish. True love is supposed to be accompanied by profound pain. Yet in our lives things seem to be so easy and smooth. What happened to the pain that used to rack us? Perhaps I am beginning to lose him. That must be it. I am beginning to lose him… to Sharisha, as you suggest. You had to bring the big fish into the picture. We are at the door of August and the southern rights will soon return. Now that you have done me the favour of bringing the matter up, this thought brings anguish into my life. What is left for me to do is to bring anguish into his life too. Then we’ll both wallow in anguish. You are right, Mr. Yodd. My anguish is enough to cause him anguish. I can feel our relationship gathering anguish on both sides already It is indeed true love. You are a genius, Mr. Yodd. Laugh as you may, I knew you would do the trick. Laugh as you may, I am going home to smother him with love. Laugh as you may, I am going to drag him out of the mist and suffocate him with love and therefore with anguish until he has his fill of it.

  Saluni. She is laughing mockingly as she walks up the crag, imitating the confessor’s derisive laughter. Poor Mr. Yodd. He lost his temper because his laughter did not bruise her. He tried to rub salt on her self-inflicted anguish
by chanting over and over: “Sharisha will be back soon! Sharisha will be back soon!” Chanting in the same rhythm as the Bored Twins when they tease her about something. About having a boyfriend, for instance. His voice, however, had the swishing harshness of a cat-o’-nine-tails. His efforts became pathetic when she chanted back: “Saluni fears nobody! Saluni will crush your little Sharisha to pieces!” When he broke into a laughter that would have shamed a stone she cackled back at him. That’s when he lost his temper and asked her to vacate his sacred grounds once and for all.

  His laughter is a flagellum. But this woman is so thick-skinned that she does not bleed at all. Not a single weal appears after the hardest flagellation. His efforts are wasted on her. Her indifference disempowers his laughter. He would rather have the Whale Caller anytime. The Whale Caller knows how to glory in penance. Not only does the flagellum send him into fits of mortification, even mere chastisement does the trick. Flagellation had become an addictive drug to the Whale Caller, until this arrogant woman featured in his life and took it over. How did Mr. Yodd lose his hold on him? Mr. Yodd still puzzles over how Saluni became such a compelling drug that she was able to replace him.

  She cackles on until she reaches the top, where she stands and faces down the crag challengingly. She will be back, she assures herself. Mr. Yodd has not heard the last of her. Her eyes stray past the emerald green shallows to the blue depths. Then she sees it. Something that brings shivers to her body. Not shivers of fear. Shivers of anger. There is the head of a whale at some distance sticking out of the surface of the blue depths. It is spyhopping, searching as if it has lost sight of its companions. From the callosities on the snout, the so-called bonnet, Saluni can tell that it is a southern right.

  So, they are back! Mr. Yodd must have known that the southern rights were back. It is the end of July and they are gradually returning, until they peak in September and October. They will have her to contend with. Especially those that have wicked designs on her man. Who knows? It might be Sharisha herself who is crudely spyhopping out there. Saluni is prepared for a battle. She wanted some anguish in her life, but this is an overdose of it. She has always known that this day would come, but realises now that she has not prepared herself for it.