The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

  Along the highway the walking becomes routine. To relieve the monotony that is biting on her she decides to walk backwards. For a long distance she walks facing where she has come from, with him facing ahead and tugging her with the rope that he has now tied around his own waist as well. He is struck by a brilliant idea: read the Song of Songs for her. If the presumptuous shepherd thinks he is the only one who can captivate her with biblical poems written in the voices of a maiden and her lover, he is mistaken. He too can sing about the biblical delights of physical love: How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince’s daughter! The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a skilful workman. Tour navel is a rounded goblet; it lacks no blended beverage. Tour waist is a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Tour two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Tour neck is like an ivory tower, your eyes like the pools in …

  His voice is swallowed by thundering motorcycles. A big group of very fat men with greying beards and faded jeans and leather jackets sitting on proud Honda and Harley-Davidson monsters. Most have girlfriends or wives on the pillions. They stop to witness the strange sight and start laughing, calling them names and throwing empty cans of beer at them. He rallies around Saluni, protecting her with his body from the raining cans. And then the bikers happily ride away, leaving them wounded and mystified. Although the N2 is generally busy, motorists have up to now ignored them. They do not understand what they did to the drunken bikers to deserve this. The Whale Caller suggests that as soon as they get to Riviersonderend they should branch off from the highway and head north over the Hottentot Holland Mountains to escape such insults from those who have been rendered arrogant by wealth.

  “It is the arrogance that has taken them to where they are today,” he says, consoling a badly shaken Saluni. “It does that, arrogance. It propels you to great heights and then leaves you crashing down. I am not sure whether these louts are on an upward whirl or a downward spiral. It does not matter. Arrogance will be their demise.”

  They resume their interrupted walk. He turns once more to the Song of Songs: How fair and how pleasant you are, O love, with your delights! This stature of yours is like a palm tree, and your breasts like its clusters. I said, “I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of its branches. “Let now your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breasts like apples, and the roof of your mouth like the best wine. The wine goes down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of sleepers. I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth to the field; let us lodge in the villages.

  With this they repair to the field on the side of the road. This becomes his favourite passage and he reads it whenever he feels the need to repair to the vineyards, and to the apple orchards and to the dongas and to the bushes.

  The Hottentot Holland Mountains are arduous. There is some respite in breathlessness. What the Whale Caller used to refer to as the cleansing rituals back at the Wendy house. Soon breathlessness becomes routine. And boring. Even the Bible fails to arouse them to new fervour. But Saluni knows exactly how they can add excitement to what is fast becoming an obligation. She suggests that the Whale Caller should talk dirty in the middle of the cleansing ritual. At the first experiment he utters a few mild sentences that are not dirty at all: something about the laundry that must be done at the next stream. She is not pleased, and demands: “How can you expect to send me floating in the stars if you can’t talk dirty?” She asks him to repeat after her as she recites crude and pet names of male and female genitalia in all the eleven official languages of South Africa and their slang and dialects, most of which he has never even heard spoken by anyone. Although this sends her into a frenzy, the names sound so strange and funny that he breaks out laughing, losing his concentration and his precious erection. After the botched ritual she promises that at the next town she will buy him a book that will teach him how to talk dirty. He just laughs the whole thing off, for he knows he’ll never be able to talk dirty even if he were to go to the university for a degree in it.

  On the mountain bridle-paths the Whale Caller is fearful that their nighttime candles will invite wild animals. He snuffs the candle out and pretends that it is still burning. When she begins to feel the darkness he assures her that it is just her imagination. The flame is still flickering. She fidgets her way to sleep under the fur coat that they both use as a blanket. Invariably when there is no light she has nightmares. The Whale Caller is bound to strike the match and light the candle once more. When he is sure that she has gone into a restful sleep he quickly smothers the life out of the flame with his fingers, lest he be betrayed by the smell of the smouldering wick. This becomes his on-and-off game for the whole night. The fear of legendary mountain lions!

  When the moon is full Saluni is in her element. She sings and dances on the mountain cliffs. The Whale Caller is always fearful that she will fall. But the energy of the moon gives sight to her feet. He blows his horn and plays Saluni’s song. And they both dance until they are absolutely exhausted. Then they picnic on red prickly pears to which they have helped themselves on the mountainside prickly pear farms. In the valleys between high mountains they play on the skeletons of tractors and harvesters that died on the dirt roads many years ago. They plough vast tracts of the lands of their minds and harvest a stack of golden wheat that reaches to the clouds.

  FIVE

  It was a freak wave that hit Herman us. It had all started on Friday morning with heavy winter rain and storms that lasted for the whole day. Gale-force winds rampaging at one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour lashed the town, leaving a trail of dejected debris. The next morning the seventeen-metre-high wave smashed down on the town. Houses were waterlogged; chairs, books and tables were seen floating out of broken windows. Fifteen minutes later a second wave vomited more jetsam from the first onslaught back into the streets of the town that prided itself on its orderliness. The water hurled massive rocks through the houses, bringing down their walls.

  On the Sunday morning the Whale Caller walks among the ruins. Almost all the houses closest to the sea are damaged. He is dragging his rope along the Main Road, which is strewn with seaweed and sand. The rope is no longer tied around Saluni’s waist. She follows a few metres behind, now and then stopping to prod with her toes piles of bits of shattered trees and refuse that lie scattered on the gardens, road and pavement. Sometimes she stops to talk to the municipal workers who have started cleaning up the mess. They tell her that the storms attacked their Zwelihle Township on the outskirts of Hermanus as well. The Whale Caller does not stop. He wades on through the sodden sand until he reaches his house.

  The Wendy house is no longer where it used to be at the far corner of the back garden. It now nestles lopsidedly against the gaping hole to one side of the front door of widower’s house, but none of its wooden panels is broken. The widower has sought refuge here because his house is uninhabitable. The Whale Caller can see the fridge, the television, the stove, the washing machine and other household gadgets scattered all over the backyard where the Wendy house used to be. The widower tells him that things were so bad that even he himself was floating in the kitchen and had calmly resigned himself to certain death. It proved not to be so certain after all, thanks to the fact that as soon as he was thrown out of the door he grabbed hold of a floating tree. He had then seen the Wendy house bobbing about, now and then seeming to be engulfed by the raging wave. He was amazed that it escaped serious damage when even brick and concrete walls had tumbled down.

  He vacates the Wendy house for the Whale Caller. He is going to book into a bed-and-breakfast place in the less damaged inner suburbs of the town until his house has been rebuilt. He is confident that he’ll be able to get a place since there are very few tourists in town because it is not the whale-watching season. The gales have at least chosen the right time to destroy the town. The reconstruction of Hermanus starts tomorrow. The insurance companies are pissing their pants. Asse
ssors and investigators are already sniffing around, trying very hard to find any excuse not to pay.

  When Saluni finally arrives he is busy sweeping out the sea lice that are crawling all over the place. It was the town’s main problem today, the widower had said. The houses of Hermanus are infested with sea lice.

  Saluni and the Whale Caller do not exchange a single word. She just stands there with a mournful look. Then she sits on the bed on the new blankets that have been left there by the widower.

  They have not exchanged a word for a week, since their big quarrel where he declared that she was ugly.

  They were on their way down the Hottentot Holland Mountains where they had spent several months of idyllic picnicking and dancing. They had been driven down by winter rains and flurries of snow. They were trudging along the road between the towns of Genadendal and Grabouw when night caught up with them. They decided to camp on the roadside near a clump of bushes. He constructed a shelter for them with branches and leaves. He lit the candle and snuffed the flame out as soon as he thought Saluni was fast asleep. As usual she fidgeted, her body quailing in the darkness it had recognised, but she tried to convince herself that it was all in her imagination since he kept assuring her that the candle was still burning.

  It was a pitch-black night because of dark clouds that hid the stars. Saluni was more twitchy than usual and had nightmares. She could see the shepherd reading her verses from the Songs of Solomon. He was quite different from the way she had imagined him when they were at his hovel so many months ago. He was very handsome, but seemed to be made of transparent wax. He was naked, except for a woollen cap on his head. The Whale Caller took out a cigarette lighter from his rucksack and set the cap on fire. The flame transformed it into a wick and it burned slowly as the shepherd began to melt like a candle. Yet he just sat there like a confounded Buddha and continued to read the wonderful passages. Molten wax covered the floor until it drowned the wick and his voice. Darkness fell. With it a hollow silence. The Whale Caller then broke into rude laughter which made her sit up. She reached out for the Whale Caller, felt him there beside her. He was not laughing.

  He knew she had woken up from a nightmare and wanted to light the candle quickly, pretending that it had gone out accidentally, but decided against it. He hoped she would soon fall asleep again.

  There is light on the horizon; the headlights of an approaching car. “There is a car coming,” whispered Saluni. The Whale Caller wondered how she knew because the sound of the engine had not reached them yet. Vibrations. Blind people are said to be sensitive to the slightest vibrations. But Saluni’s eyes seemed to follow the movement of the light as it kept on flashing across the horizon and then disappeared only to paint the skies again as the road followed by the vehicle twisted and turned.

  “Do you see something, Saluni?” he asked.

  “I can see the light,” she said, trying very hard to be calm. “But the sky is dark. Where have the stars gone?”

  After some time they could hear the sound of the engine. An old truck drove by and soon the light and the sound were lost on the winding mountain roads. There was silence for some time, as both were taking in what had just happened. The Whale Caller jumped up and danced in celebration: “You can see, Saluni. Your sight is back.”

  “It is no cause for celebration,” said Saluni. “If it is true that my sight has returned, then I should mourn.”

  It had indeed returned. She could see his vague outline in the dark. She could see the darkness too, so she was shaking and breathing with difficulty.

  “You should be happy, Saluni. You are free from the bondage of blindness. You can walk without being guided by the rope. You can walk without your goggles.”

  “You lied to me,” she said.

  He remembered the candle and struck a match. He explained that he had been fearful that wild animals would be attracted by the light, but she did not believe his story. For the first time after many months of peace and harmony and sickness she raised her voice at him: “I trusted you and you lied to me. How do you think I feel to discover that the man I trusted with my life is a liar?”

  “It was for our safety, Saluni,” he protested.

  “What else have you lied to me about?”

  “Nothing, Saluni, nothing.”

  Saluni insisted that there must be many other things he had lied about. Obviously, she charged, he must have been lying when he vowed on those mountains that he loved her more than any whale that ever lived and that he dreamt about her.

  “Did you or did you not dream about me?” she asked.

  When he jibbed she demanded an answer at once. He was unable to lie about it and confessed that he did not dream about her. That was the end of that discussion. Of any discussion.

  From there on they walked the road silently. No more Saluni’s song on the kelp horn. No more declarations of love. No more dancing or picnicking on so much prickly pear that it clogged their bowels. No more biblical verses on the delights of physical love. No more breathless days and nights. Just the rhythm of their feet as they pounded the road. He walked in front with the rope tied around his waist snaking its way behind him on the ground. She walked a few metres behind him, determined not to utter a word to him. When a rabbit crossed her path she addressed it with all the terms of endearment that would otherwise have been lavished on him.

  Rain failed to break their silence. It pelted them with fat drops as they walked towards the coastal village of Kleinmond. They did not stop to take cover anywhere. They were completely drenched by the time they passed the village, taking the easterly direction along the coast. In her tattered fur coat she looked like a malnourished half-drowned mouse in dark glasses. He was not a better sight in his threadbare dungarees.

  They had caught the tail end of the storm, but the winds were still strong enough to sweep them off their feet from time to time, only to drop them on the muddy earth again where, after struggling to find their balance, they resumed the long walk. People everywhere were talking of the gale-force winds that had hit Hermanus.

  It dawned on Saluni that they were walking back to Hermanus. They had gone full circle without realising it. Or at least without Saluni realising it. She suspected that the Whale Caller knew all along that he was leading her back to Hermanus. A man who had spent half his life walking from one coastal town and village to another right up to Windhoek could not claim to have lost all sense of direction all of a sudden.

  She broke the silence: “You did it on purpose, didn’t you?”

  He did not respond. She ran to catch up with him and stood in front of him.

  “It is because you hate happiness,” she accused him. “You did it to destroy the happiness we had on the road.”

  “If this be happiness, then I am glad I know nothing about it,” he said, edging around her and resuming the journey.

  The villages of Onrus and Vermont had suffered terribly from the winds. The streets were clogged with sand and kelp. The Whale Caller stopped to lend a hand to a family whose car was stuck in the mud. Saluni walked on, hoping that he would plead with her to wait for him. When he did not she stopped and waited, tapping her foot impatiently while he pushed the car. After a long struggle the car was out and the family on its way.

  Saluni was fuming: “You care for strangers more than you care for me.”

  It was better when there was silence between them, thought the Whale Caller. Perhaps if he did not respond they would revert to the silence.

  “You are good to strangers. You don’t lie to them. Only to me. You lied about the candle and you lied about your dreams and you lied about returning to Hermanus. Liar! Liar! Liar!”

  Still he did not react. He hoped that she would soon give up and silence would reign once more.

  “Damn it, man, why are you always so good? It’s boring, man. I hate it when you are always so good. What are you trying to do, man; show me up?”

  “I am good to you too, Saluni,” he responded at last. “Or at lea
st I try to be. It’s just that you don’t see it.”

  Here he was going to make his final stand. He no longer cared what happened after that. He had had it up to here with her, he told her. He took this walk for her. He was always doing things for her but got no appreciation in the end. Hers was only to take. He got nothing in return.

  “Nothing?” asked Saluni in bewilderment. “You call washing your little thing inside me nothing?”

  Life was not only a series of cleansing ceremonies, he said. He wished for a woman who would take care of him the way his mother used to take care of his father.

  “What do you know about women?” she asked. “You don’t look to me like someone who has any experience of women.”

  “I have known women in my life… when I used to walk the coast. I have known unkind and uncaring women like you. But I have also known women who made their men feel special… who took care of them and coddled them. When foolish men are pampered like that they behave like arrogant kings … as if it is their God-given right as men to be treated that way. But wise men recognise it as a privilege and an honour. They relish the pampering and pamper their women back. Each pampering the other the best way he or she knows. They will do anything to make such women happy. If she feels like chocolate in the middle of the night the man will happily wake up to buy her chocolate, even as the woman protests that she was only joking and that the chocolate can still be bought tomorrow morning. I have known women, Saluni, and I have known women.”