The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  Despite these disturbances, the Whale Caller lives inside the song of whales. It is soothing inside the song, with fresh aromas that heal. He remembers telling Saluni once, long ago, when she was expressing her fear of the dark, that it is never night inside a song.

  FOUR

  Another season. Once more they return. The ZJ whales. They find Sharisha still nursing her calf near the estuary; the Whale Caller still spending many hours of the day entranced by them; and Saluni still sneaking about, trying very hard to catch his attention, then sauntering past him only to smother whoever happens to be within reach with excessive friendliness. Lunga Tubu is often the victim of these displays, which are really performed for the Whale Caller’s benefit. The boy is not particularly fond of being fussed over by Saluni, and looks forward to the hours the Whale Caller is not in sight, for he has observed that it is only then that he gets some respite.

  In one of these mothering sessions Lunga Tubu tells Saluni that the radio station people have returned and are now setting up a makeshift recording studio at the Market Square. It is, of course, Kalfiefees time again and the festivities have begun. Lunga Tubu will take his Pavarotti, Carreras, Domingo and Lanza to the festival at the Market Square, where he will earn more money from the tourists than the few coins he gets from the diners at the restaurant on stilts. But most importantly, this year he will get his voice recorded and the whole of the Western Cape will then know of his “tenor” that he renders in an unbroken contralto or even soprano voice.

  The boy’s enthusiasm gives Saluni ideas. She remembers how she was foiled by the Bored Twins’ mother last year. She could have had her fame as well. Her voice could have ridden the airwaves if it were not for the foolish superstitions of the woman. She vows that this year nothing will stop her. She cannot record alone because she suspects no one will take her seriously. She can’t sing with Lunga Tubu because he sings the kind of music that leaves her cold. In any event, even if she were to convert the boy to a more decent kind of music, the boy would totally hog the mike. He is the kind of person who’d like to grab all the limelight for himself, and wouldn’t give her the least opportunity to break into a solo. She needs the angelic voices of the Bored Twins to give her bluesy voice credibility. Yes, she definitely needs the Bored Twins, and this year she will take them to the studio whether their mother likes it or not.

  But first she must try to talk sense into the mother. She makes sure she has a candle and clean underwear in her sequinned handbag, and goes to the mansion. She knows that the parents always return after dark, so she will have to spend the night.

  The Bored Twins are not home. They must have gone to the swamps to play with the frogs. She sits on the steps going up to the front door and waits. She occupies her time by counting the ants that have formed two long trails, one composed of fast workers heading in the direction of the rockeries and another of slow workers going in the opposite direction carrying heavy loads of meat carved with their mandibles from a dead lizard. This trail disappears around the corner. She wonders where they are going with all that food and what distance they can cover with loads heavier than their own weight before they get to their abode, but is too lazy to stand up and find out.

  The trail gets thinner as the last bits of the rapidly dwindling lizard are carted away, and then there are no more ants to count. Sal uni amuses herself by imagining the panels on the ceiling of the Wendy house and counting them. Then she counts everything in the Wendy house. The bed, the portable electric stove they call the hot plate, the cups, the plates, all the seashells pasted on the wall, the table, the Whale Caller brooding on the kitchen chair. That Whale Caller! He has a lot to learn about women. She is going to make him suffer with her absence until he kicks that behemoth out of his life. Soon he will turn around and ask for her forgiveness and, of course, she will make him plead and beg and pray before she grandly forgives him. And then they will live happily ever after.

  It is almost sunset when the girls return. They have been out for the whole day and they smell of the sun. As usual they are excited to see Saluni. They are even more excited when she tells them of the radio man, but their faces fall when they remember that last year their mother did not allow them to record for fear that the machines would steal their voices. Saluni assures them that somehow this year things will work out differently. The girls should not worry their pretty little heads because she will devise a plan. Anyway, it is possible that the mother has since changed her views on the matter, and will allow them to go with her to see the Kalfiefees in town.

  The girls cannot contain their joy. They must start rehearsing immediately. They teach Saluni a new song that they have composed at the swamps. It is about croaking frogs in their green and brown colours and how the girls caught them and pierced their eyes with sharp sticks and set them free to hop about in wonderful blindness. It is a haunting melody. They tell Saluni that the song is all about the fun they had at the swamps today. The blinded frogs will live peacefully because now they won’t be bothered by the bright rays of the sun. They won’t have to run away from danger, because they won’t see it. They will therefore be safe since danger catches only those who run away from it. This dissertation on blindness resonates with Saluni, but she does not make any comment to the authors.

  She, in turn, teaches them new songs. She would have liked to compose a song lamenting the dying whaling tradition since the seas are polluted with the ugly creatures that are of no use to mankind and expressing the hope that one day they will all strand themselves. Unfortunately, unlike the girls, she is not much of a composer. So she teaches them censored versions of tavern songs and hymns that have been adapted to serve secular desires. The rehearsal goes on into the night under the full moon whose light is so bright it erases the stars.

  When the parents finally return in their donkey cart they are pleased to see Saluni. It is gratifying to have a visitor when the father has caught a guinea fowl. Such a delicacy becomes tastier when it is shared with others. He tells them how it happened. “A miracle,” he says. “A gift of gourmet meat falling right into my hands.”

  “Who gave you the gift, Papa?” asks one of the twins.

  “The farmer, silly,” says the other twin. “The vineyard owner.”

  “God!” says the father.

  He was shouting at the donkey to get cracking and it was just plodding along in the moonlight, too stubborn or tired to respond even to his whip. Then a car approached, blinding them with its bright lights. It must have disturbed a sleeping guinea fowl because as soon as it had whisked by the big bird flew from the nearby field right into his arms. He does not know how he managed to catch it since his eyes were still blind from the headlights. It must have been blind as well. He had to throw away his whip to catch it. Such night gifts abound on these roads. A rabbit, and once in a while a springbok, that has been foolish enough to run in front of the headlights only to be run over. Usually the roadkill is too messy to take home. Sometimes the game is not mashed into the road but knocked to one side by a bumper and is good enough to skin and take home. But never before has game fallen right into his outstretched hands.

  “It just shows how great the Lord is,” says the father.

  The mother quickly boils water and Saluni helps her pluck the guinea fowl while the father dunks the girls in a metal bathtub full of cold water and scrubs the mud from their angelic bodies with a sponge. They always rebel at bath time and scream and bite their father’s hands. He in turn slaps their hands until they calm down and realise that the more they make things difficult for him the longer the agony of the bath will last. They giggle and turn the whole thing into a game by lathering the father’s arms and the stubble on his face as he scrubs their bodies. Bath time for the twins is always a messy business with the water ending up all over the floor.

  “The Kalfiefees is on again,” says Saluni as she cuts open the guinea fowl and scoops out its intestines with her hand. “It hasn’t lost its magic.”

  “We wo
uldn’t know about that,” says the mother. “We are working people.”

  “I could take the twins there while you are at work. How’s that, man?”

  “You know I don’t like my girls to go to town. It is not safe for little girls.”

  “They roam the countryside … on their own.”

  “The countryside is safer than the town.”

  “I’ll look after them, man. They will be with me all the time.”

  “I know you mean well, Saluni. But I can’t allow it.”

  “You know people make a lot of money during the Kalfiefees. They dance… they sing… and the stupid tourists give them money. I know a boy there who is making a lot of money singing for tourists. Lunga Tubu. And his voice is not even angelic. It is a voice of this earth. There is money for the taking in town … especially if you have a beautiful voice like the twins.”

  “So that is what you want, Saluni, to make money from my children?”

  “I don’t want their money, man. I just want to record with them. You heard us singing just now, when you came home. You heard how good we are together. We can be world famous, man. The twins and I can be world famous. You have read about the children who become stars. They build houses for their mothers. They buy cars for their mothers. They take their mothers overseas for holidays. You won’t have to go to the vineyards again, man. You won’t have to hawk scrap metal and bones.”

  “I forbid it, Saluni! I forbid it,” screams the mother almost hysterically. “They will steal my children’s voices.”

  This is the second full moon in the same month—it only happens once every three years. It is a blue moon. The Whale Caller is as blue as the moon. Even though there is very little communication between him and Saluni these days, he does miss her when she is not there. Especially when she spends the night away from the Wendy house. Perhaps at the mansion. Or even at the taverns. She comes and goes without telling him where she has been or where she is heading. He surmises from the wine fumes that she has been to the taverns, or from euphoria that she has been to the mansion. The euphoria, of course, is never shared with him. She becomes euphoric alone in the corner, giggling to herself and sighing repeatedly, and then gets into bed, turning her back on him. Sometimes she is gloomy and he suspects that she has been to Mr. Yodd. Even though she manages to defy Mr. Yodd’s attempts at flagellation, she cannot but be gloomy after confessing at the grotto. He knows that Mr. Yodd never gives up. As long as she continues to go there bearing oblations of fruit and flowers Mr. Yodd hopes he will finally manage to humiliate her with his laughter.

  On this blue night the Whale Caller sits under the blue moon at the tip of his peninsula. He is bathing his body in the smells of the night while waiting for dawn to bring Sharisha and the child from the estuary to the open sea. In the meantime he blows his kelp horn softly, practising a new song he has composed for the mother-and-child dyad. It is a variation on Sharisha’s song, but now with trills and warbles that are repetitive enough to make an impression on the young one. His only audience is a lone dolphin that is digging out prey in the sand under the water with its bottle nose. It must be the blue moon, the Whale Caller concludes, that has deceived the dolphin into foraging in the deep of the night. The blue moon does many strange things. Hopefully it will bring watermaids frolicking on the surface of the water, dancing to his kelp horn. Saluni. She used to be a water maid during their happy moments. He used to watch her playing in the sea. Saluni. Where could she be on this blue night?

  At sunrise the Whale Caller sees a distant silhouette of a whale followed by a calf. It can only be Sharisha. The child is eleven months old and Sharisha no longer indulges it by carrying it on her back. Instead it has learnt to keep up with her. He blows his new song and the whales slowly sail towards the peninsula. They take their time, occasionally stopping to play with the floating kelp, pushing it and tossing it back and forth. And then touching and nudging at each other. The Whale Caller enjoys it immensely when the child mimics everything that Sharisha does. When she sails with her mouth open, exposing the baleen that looks like long piano keys, the child does the same. For some time the two sail towards him displaying these broad smiles.

  When they get close enough Sharisha teaches the child a new trick: tail-sailing. Although this is a display especially for the Whale Caller, it is quite different from the tail-slapping, the mating ritual that used to be a crucial form of bonding between the Whale Caller and Sharisha. In tail-sailing Sharisha stands on her head in the water with her tail sticking above the surface. The child does likewise, and it is as though they are in competition to see who will remain in that position the longest. The Whale Caller stands up and laughs, clapping his hands, with his kelp horn under his arm. And then he whips it out and blows it in a celebratory flourish.

  Saluni arrives and catches him at this unguarded moment when he is so carefree and jubilant with only the two whales as his audience now that the dolphin has left the space to them. She wonders why this man is never so carefree with her. What is it that she is supposed to do to make him prance about as he is doing for the stupid whales? She finds the effect they have on him pathetic and she hates them even more for doing what she has failed to do. The Whale Caller sees her and suddenly stops in embarrassment and sits down on a rock. The whales take their cue from him and stop their tail-sailing antics. Instead they float about, now communing with their perfectly V-shaped blows. There are hollow sounds in two-part harmony as mother and child produce clouds of vapour by expelling air and tiny drops of mucus from their lungs through each pair of blowholes. There is no way the child can outdo Sharisha’s big and prolonged blows.

  Saluni gingerly crosses the treacherous neck of the peninsula, coming very close to where he sits. He longs to talk to her but on previous occasions when he has taken the initiative to open up dialogue she has lashed back either with chilly silence or some hurtful remark that is directed at whatever object is in sight but is really meant for him. He expects her to do her usual thing, walk by flaunting her slim figure, and then smother someone else with love. But it is too early in the morning and there is no Lunga Tubu to mother. There will not be any Lunga Tubu for the whole day. For the whole week even, since he spends all his time at the Kalfiefees where there are better pickings.

  The Whale Caller pretends he is oblivious to her presence and focuses on the blows of the whales. She has a brilliant idea. Although it now comes as her own original idea, it was first suggested to her by Mr. Yodd at one of her regular confessions. Change the tactics. If you accommodate his obsession with the whales, you might beat Sharisha at her own game. From now on she won’t show any hostility towards Sharisha in the presence of the Whale Caller. She will wage a subtle war. Psywar! She will make life difficult for the behemoth when no one is watching, and be friendly towards it when he is around. She will not utter another word against Sharisha to the Whale Caller.

  She stands in front of the Whale Caller and smiles. He is not sure whether it is safe to smile back. This may be a trap. She may be inviting him to smile back in order to mow him down with her tongue. He shifts his position and focuses on the two whales. She playfully skips to a new position so that once more she stands in front of him, smiling.

  “Come on, man,” she says. “Don’t be such a sourpuss. It is a beautiful day.”

  “You’ve come from the Bored Twins then and not from the taverns?”

  “What has anything got to do with it? It is a beautiful day and your two whales are beautiful. I like the water spouting out of their heads.”

  “Beautiful? Since when, Saluni? You scare me when you say such things.”

  “Since I decided there is no point in fighting you about your Sharisha. After all she is only a fish. I am all woman. Sooner or later you will realise that you need a woman in your life more than you need a fish.”

  “A whale is not a fish, Saluni. It is a mammal… like you and me.”

  “Like you, maybe, but not… Okay, like you and me. I am not going
to argue about it, man. I am not going to argue about your whale ever again.”

  The Whale Caller finds this hard to believe. But, naturally, he is pleased.

  “They mean you no harm, Saluni,” he says. “And you are right. They are beautiful. Their blows are like a synchronised dance.”

  Then he tells her about the origins of the whale’s blow. It is a story from across the vast Indian Ocean, from a people who share their love for southern rights with the Khoikhoi people who lived along the shores of the present-day Hermanus way back then when everything here was young and just as young in the continent of Aboriginal Dreaming. It was all so young that the ice was still melting and water was rising, covering the land and threatening to drown all the creatures. They wanted to escape but did not have any canoes to cross the vast expanse to the other side. They heard of Whale Man, who was the only one who had a canoe.

  But Whale Man was very selfish. He did not want anyone to use his canoe.

  “Let us just take the canoe,” suggested Starfish Man. “Otherwise all we animals will perish in the water.”

  “Whale Man is very big and strong,” said Koala Man. “Who do you think among us here would dare take his canoe without his permission?”

  “Leave everything to me,” said Starfish Man.

  And there was Whale Man pulling his canoe with a rope!

  “Hey, Brother Whale Man,” said Starfish Man. “I see on your callosities that you are being bothered by lice. I can help you. Come over here, Brother Whale Man, and put your beautiful head on my lap. I’ll scratch it and you’ll feel very good. I’ll get rid of all the lice on your head.”

  “You are a good neighbour, Brother Starfish Man,” said Whale Man, tying the rope of his canoe to his leg and settling his head on Starfish Man’s lap. Starfish Man scratched his head and massaged it until Whale Man was drowsy. He felt very good. In the meantime Koala Man had cut the rope, tied it to a boulder and dragged the canoe away. All the animals climbed into it and rowed away, with the muscular Koala Man doing most of the paddling.