The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  This diatribe left Saluni stunned for a while. Then she burst into tears: “I gave up my shepherd… and for what? For you to talk to me like this … to call me names? Don’t you ever talk to me again for the rest of your life.”

  “Suits me,” he said.

  “It suits you because you don’t care. You never cared.”

  “I care, Saluni. I have always cared.”

  “If you care, when did you last tell me you love me? When did you last say I am beautiful?”

  “How can I say you are beautiful when you are so ugly …”

  “I am what?” she screeched, drowning his “… to me.” This was all a huge shock to her because she had never known him to say such horrible things to her. So he did have a cruel streak in him after all. No man had ever told her that she was ugly. Even when she was a baby people used to touch her cheeks in supermarket aisles and comment on her cuteness. As she was growing up in the inland provinces neighbours never forgot to mention that she had inherited her mother’s beauty and boys never forgot to fight over her. In the taverns of Hermanus men who had sailed all the seas of the world praised her beauty and her voice. And here was a mere whale caller calling her ugly. Her hurt was very deep.

  Once more the silent walk. In the rain. Sometimes there was a little snivelling from her. Then back to the silence. Until they reached Hermanus.

  After sweeping the lice out of the Wendy house the Whale Caller takes out his tuxedo from the trunk under the bed. It is soggy and muddy from the very fine sand that has found its way through the cracks at the edges of the trunk. He dons it nonetheless, takes his kelp horn and walks out of the house and through the gate. Saluni remains sitting on the bed, not knowing what to do next. He looks like a man of light brown mud and he endures the pain of the grains of sand rubbing against his body as he walks on the streets that are still choked with the sea’s leavings despite the attempts of the municipal workers to clear them. It is an unseasonably warm winter day and soon the mud on his suit is dry and caked. He goes straight to the peninsula, yearning for Sharisha. She who never calls him names or yells at him. Who never demeans or humiliates him. No, not Sharisha. She celebrates his presence and never takes it for granted.

  The sea is still black in its rage, although the winds have simmered down. The whole peninsula is covered with mud and seaweed and other flotsam coughed up by the water when it finally receded. He sits on a mud-covered boulder and blows his horn. Sharisha may have gone back to the southern seas for winter. It does not matter. He will blow the kelp horn until it saps the life out of him. Whenever she returns she will feel the vibrations that have been left by his sounds even if he no longer exists. He will just blow and blow until he collapses on the mud. By sheer force of his imagination he will bring Sharisha into being right in front of him and they will dance. Until he can’t dance anymore. Until he collapses on the mud. He must collapse. It is the one thing that remains for him to look forward to. Collapse. He will play until he collapses on the mud and becomes one with it. Future generations will tread on him and no one will remember that he ever lived. No one should remember. Except Sharisha. She will know. She will mourn.

  His eyes are tightly closed as he blows Sharisha’s song that he has now adapted into jeremiads. For some time he is not aware that Sharisha herself has come to save him from the death he is hankering after. As he blows the horn furiously and uncontrollably she comes swimming just as furiously She has been longing for the horn. She has not heard it for a long time. All she wants is to bathe herself in its sounds. To let the horn penetrate every aperture of her body until she climaxes. To lose herself in the dances of the past. She is too mesmerised to realise that she has recklessly crossed the line that separates the blue depths from the green shallows. All the sea is black and not even a whale can distinguish the blue depths from the green shallows. When he opens his eyes from the reverie of syncopation she is parked in front of his eyes, so close that he thinks he can almost touch her if he stretches out his hand. She is not quite that close though. But certainly she is less than a hundred metres from the shoreline. Perhaps less than fifty. Her stomach lies on the sand. He stops playing.

  At first he thinks he has conjured her up in his imagination. But when he hears the deep bellows that send tremors to the muddy peninsula he knows she is all too real. And all too close. He has never seen her this close. The black waves recede and she is left lying on the rocky sand. She has beached herself.

  “Help!” he screams, running to her. “The whale is stranded!”

  He touches Sharisha for the first time, running his hand over and over her smooth skin. She looks scared. “You will be all right,” he says. “I’ll make darn sure that you are all right.”

  Straggling whale watchers have seen what has happened. Soon a crowd has gathered around Sharisha. They try to push her back into the water. The Whale Caller is fearful that they will hurt her. He helps to push while admonishing those he thinks are being rough. Among those who are watching from the shoreline he can see Saluni. She must be rejoicing, he thinks. Is this not what she has always prayed for?

  “We need more hands,” shouts a man. “The whale is too heavy”

  “You’ll all be in trouble,” responds another from the shore. “The law forbids you to touch a whale.”

  An official, obviously from some environmental agency, takes pains to explain that it is indeed unlawful to touch, disturb, kill or harass whales, or come closer than three hundred metres to them. But this does not include bona fide efforts to render assistance to a stranded or beached whale.

  By late afternoon they still have not been able to move the whale. The place is now teeming with police officers and bureaucrats from various government departments that deal with fisheries and nature conservation. Emergency rescue teams have been flown in from Cape Town. They spray Sharisha with water to keep her skin moist. An official suggests that a shelter be erected to provide her with shade. The rescuers decide against it. Although it is still quite hot, the sun will soon set. The whale will have some respite. In the meantime they try to keep her flippers and tail flukes cool with more water.

  Sharisha is not helping much with her own struggling. She almost rolls onto her side. The rescuers have to push her and then prop her up so that the blowhole is facing upwards. The blowhole must always face upwards if the whale is to be saved from certain death. The onlookers have become too noisy and the rescuers try to keep them at a distance. Even the men who have initially helped are told to move as far back as possible and not to make any noise, for that will only agitate the stranded whale and make things worse. The Whale Caller is offended that he too is told to move away. He tries to resist. An official pushes him away. He pretends to walk away but sneaks back to a different part of the whale. This infuriates the emergency workers. One loses patience with him and tells him to get the hell out of here or they are going to arrest him for interfering with the rescue effort. He reluctantly moves away, silently lamenting the fact that people who know nothing about Sharisha have taken over and her life is in their hands.

  He goes back to where he had been sitting when he played the horn and lured Sharisha to such danger. She will be rescued though. These arrogant people seem to know what they are doing. They will rescue her. He finds his kelp horn lying between two rocks. He wonders how it escaped being trampled to pieces by the gawpers.

  The emergency workers use spades and shovels to build a sandbank near Sharisha. It collects water to keep her wet. And it also prevents her from further rolling towards the shoreline. Already there are patches of blood on her fins as a result of rolling that one time when the workers had to prop her up so that the blowhole would face upwards.

  The voyeurs have thinned. Night has fallen and they gradually drift off to their homes and hotels until only a small team of emergency workers and scientists from the aquarium and whale museum is left. And the Whale Caller. He vows that he will not budge from that place until Sharisha is rescued. He watches the emergency
workers as they place sisal sacks on her and then occasionally splash buckets of water on them. They are very careful not to cover the blowhole with the sacks or with anything else. More water is splashed on the flippers and flukes.

  He is tempted to blow his horn but thinks better of it. He does not want to annoy the rescuers, who claim that any noise will make things worse for the whale. He just sits in silent vigil. He looks like a raw clay statue.

  Under his breath he tries to sing her away from the beach. Away from the shallows to freedom. To the southern seas. If only she had migrated to the southern seas she would not be lying here helpless, stripped of all dignity. If he fails to sing her away he will try to sing giant waves into coming and sweeping her into the depths of the ocean. He remembers the Dreaming that he heard from the same sailor who told him about the shark callers of New Ireland and about Starfish Man and Whale Man. Way way back in the Dreamtime of Australian Aborigines the stranding of whales and dolphins attracted people to binges of feasting, as it did with the Khoikhoi of old in what later became the Western Cape. Their Strong Men used to attract whales to the shore with songs and rattles and medicines. However, in the Ramindjeri clan, whose totem was the whale, Kondoli nga:tji, there was one Strong Man who could sing to make a female whale and her calf escape the shallow waters. The Ramindjeri, who produced canoes and nets and fished at a place called Yilki before the eons and dimensions of Dreamtime came to pass and Yilki became Encounter Bay, loved and respected the Strong Man for his power to save the female of the species and the future generations that would replenish the seas. He will become the Strong Man of Hermanus.

  The Whale Caller prays for the powers of the Ramindjeri Strong Man and tries to sing Sharisha away from the danger. His voice cannot be heard for the plea for her life is uttered only inside him. He focuses his mind on Sharisha, looking her in the eye, hoping to send his messages of salvation to her mind. He beams them out in vain. He can’t reach her. He can never acquire the powers of those whose totem is Kondoli nga:tji. Perhaps he should just leave everything to the experts from Cape Town. They will save Sharisha. They will surely save her.

  His night is haunted by the sweet and mouldy smell.

  Saluni. She is squatting behind a mud-covered bush watching him grieve. She watches over him the whole night. Like a guardian angel. Behind the bush. He sits motionless for the whole night, and does not even stand up to relieve himself. She wonders how he managed that because usually he goes out to pass water up to three times a night. It is strange how grief can shut down the body’s pumps of life. Sometimes it shuts down even the ultimate pump, and the griever lives only in obituaries. It will not happen to him though. He is a strong man. He will get over it. It is just a fish after all. How she wishes she could go to him, and hold him in her arms, and keep him warm now that the temperature has plummeted overnight, and tell him that everything will be fine. On many occasions throughout the night she is tempted to go to him, to tell him that they still have a chance to start on a new page. She is willing to forgive and forget if he is. But she does not have the courage to walk the few steps down the cliff path. She suspects he will not hear her because his mind is with the beached whale. Once more that whale is coming between them.

  Now the sun is up and the busybodies are streaming back. She regrets that she failed to take the opportunity presented by the silence of the night. Perhaps there will be another night. Once more everyone will leave and she will have her chance. Provided they have not saved the whale by then. Otherwise she will meet him at the Wendy house and she will tell him the words she wanted to tell him last night. Reconciliation won’t quite be the same at the Wendy house. At this place of grief her overtures would acquire sincerity. They would show that she is not the uncaring woman he thinks she is.

  She watches him watching the rescuers, who are trying once more to keep Sharisha cool as the winter sun returns with a repeat performance of yesterday’s heat. They tie a rope to her tail and all pull in unison, attempting to drag her out of the shallow water to freedom. “A boat,” a man suggests. “Its engine will cause a racket but it will save the whale.” People remember how a humpback that had beached itself near Van Staden’s River Mouth in the Eastern Cape was saved that way. In no time the engine of a pilot boat is revving about sixty metres offshore. The rope tied to the whale’s tail is connected to the boat by swimmers. The boat then tries to drag the whale away from the shore into the surf. But this southern right is too heavy. And the rough sea has no intention of cooperating with the pilot boat. The rescuers have to stop the attempt when they realise that the only thing they will achieve is to inflict further injury on the whale. Already they can see blood oozing out where the rope has dug deep into the flesh.

  A young southern right is wistfully watching all this activity from what would be the blue depths if the sea was not so black. No one knows where it came from or why it is watching a beached whale. It is just curiosity, a scientist explains. Southern rights are known for their curiosity. But Saluni can see the callosities that the Whale Caller has always been so proud of. The little Three Sisters Hills just like the mother’s. It is Sharisha’s calf.

  Politicians arrive: city fathers and mothers; mayors and members of Parliament from rival political parties; hacks and hangers-on. They all want a photo opportunity with the whale. Cameras click away. Television crews interview the politicians instead of the emergency workers and scientists who have spent the night trying to rescue the whale. Politicians make better sound bites and will not mess up the news programmes with facts. The rescuers are irritated by the flurry of activity that contributes nothing to saving the whale. Unfortunately politicians like to think that they were created for some useful purpose on earth. They hog the spotlight and make sure that the newspaper reporters are noting down their views on how the whale can be saved. One even brings a box of tubes of suntan lotion that he suggests should be spread on Sharisha’s back.

  “That is the worst thing you can do to a beached whale,” says a scientist.

  An onlooker wonders aloud why politicians are such a dumb lot, as if they have all come from the same dysfunctional womb. Another spectator thinks she has the answer: “Any moron can be a politician. You only have to declare yourself one to be one. But to be a scientist you need some measure of intelligence.” This generates guffaws from those who are within earshot. Saluni observes that the Whale Caller does not join in the laughter. He is looking fixedly at Sharisha. And then after some time he turns his eyes to the calf. And then back to Sharisha. Each gets about five minutes of his gaze at a time.

  New waves come and break on the rocks near Sharisha and on her body There are cheers all around. There is hope yet for Sharisha. But the water recedes again and she is more naked than ever. There has been no change in her position.

  A member of the provincial legislature wants to know how the stranding happened. It is as if he expects somebody to be held responsible and that heads should roll, in the parlance of his trade.

  “There are many reasons for stranding,” explains a scientist from the whale museum. “Sometimes whales just become disorientated and end up on the beach. It is likely that this is what happened in this case. Poor navigation because she was disorientated by the storm. Who knows? Loss of orientation can even be due to parasites and diseases and interference by ships.”

  Although the Whale Caller betrays no emotion, Saluni is well aware that he can hear all this, and that he must be feeling terribly guilty. Scientists are not as intelligent as the onlooker thought they were after all.

  The scientists and emergency workers confer in a huddle. Saluni cannot hear what they are saying. The discussion is very animated. She notes that the politicians don’t seem too pleased to be left out of the conference. They wait expectantly and surge forwards when one of the scientists leaves his group to make an announcement. Even the onlookers are attentive. “We have decided to kill the whale,” he says.

  The Whale Caller breaks the silence: “She is stil
l alive, surely she can be saved. You people can’t be that cruel.”

  All eyes turn to the muddy vagrant. No one recognises him as the man who used to play a kelp horn for the whales.

  “It is an act of kindness and not cruelty,” says the scientist. “The whale is still alive but weak and barely breathing. Its lungs are partially collapsed. We must end its suffering once and for all. We are going to use explosives… probably trigger an internal implosion.”

  “What about an injection?” asks a mayor of a neighbouring town. “It would be humane to use an injection.”

  The local politicians glare at him angrily as if to say: Go strand your own whale. This one belongs to Hermanus. You can’t partake in our glory.

  The scientist patiently explains to him, obviously for the benefit of everyone else, that the whale is too big to be killed by a lethal injection or shooting. Explosives will save the whale from further agony and will ensure a quick death. The politicians from the national legislature are more concerned about South Africa’s image in the international community. “They will accuse us of savagery and barbarism,” says a member of Parliament. “The markets will react negatively. The rand will go down.”

  “The rand will go down if we stand here and do nothing,” says the scientist, beginning to lose patience.

  “The rand will go down in any case,” says a sceptic. “Someone farts in Bolivia and the rand comes tumbling down.”

  This brings about another round of guffaws, which the member of Parliament interprets to be at his expense. He leaves in a huff, his entourage in tow.

  Saluni watches as they rig Sharisha with dynamite. The insolent fish was bound to come to a sticky end. At last there will be peace in the world. And in the Wendy house. She can see the Whale Caller’s pain as the emergency workers place more than five hundred kilograms of dynamite in all the strategic places, especially close to Sharisha’s head. He will get over it. When he realises the folly of his infatuation with the fish he is sure to get over it.