The Whale Caller (19 page)

“Don’t mess with me, man,” she shouts at her. “I tell you, don’t piss on my parade!”

August is the month of peach blossom. It is the month of sugar-birds and sunbirds. It is the beginning of the whale-watching season, though if one is fortunate one can see a whale or two even in the middle of winter. Whale watchers and sundry tourists are beginning to trickle back into Hermanus. They will peak in two months, although one can already feel the presence of the few who are already in town. One feels their presence in the prices that suddenly rocket through the roofs of the stores and restaurants even before one sees their funereal figures wandering in a
daze with binoculars and digital cameras weighing heavily on their necks. They look like reliquary figures of a sadistic deity.

The Whale Caller grieves. Not because of the tourists. He is used to them at this time of the year. He can tolerate them for the next seven months, until the pilgrimage comes to an end in January and February. He has always carried on with his business of living even when they crowded around him, scrutinising him as though he was some curiosity. He grieves because of the new ways of watching whales. Despite the fact that the town is well suited for watching whales from its many cliffs, some entrepreneurs have introduced boat-based whale watching. Although the first permit for this kind of whale watching was issued by the government some six years ago, the Whale Caller has only just become aware of this activity since the boat operators had focused their business in open waters that were a distance away from his bluff haunts. This year for the first time he notices a mission of tourists in a boat sailing towards a whale. He has heard that there are strict regulations governing boat-based whale watching. For instance, the boat is not allowed to follow a whale at a speed of more than three and a half kilometres per hour. It must not get closer than fifty metres to a whale (no longer the three hundred metres of fishing boats), although if a whale inquisitively approaches the boat, then the fifty-metre rule no longer applies. The Whale Caller has seen tourists getting off the boat and excitedly boasting of how they actually touched a whale when it came alongside a boat and peered at the passengers. The boaster knew that touching whales was strictly prohibited, but people do it all the same on those boats. People enjoy it when they agitate the whales, even though they know that they are not allowed to do that. This troubles the Whale Caller. He has never touched a whale. He has never even touched Sharisha, except with his spirit—with his horn. There is no doubt in his mind that soon this boat-based whale watching will be abused. And no one will be
out there at sea to enforce the regulations. Soon the ultimate prize for a boat trip will be the touching of a whale. And the entrepreneurs will claim that they did keep the fifty-metre distance but the whale approached them. They will blame it all on the whale. As far as he is concerned these boat-based whale watchers are no different from the whalers of old. They might as well carry harpoons and trypots in those boats.

The Whale Caller is grieving on the home front too. Saluni is giving him a hard time about Sharisha, though he tries every day to demonstrate to her that she—Saluni—is the most important person in his life. He has nursed her wound even as she rebelled against it. She is bent on punishing him by not letting it heal. When he has taken the trouble to clean it, and to apply gentian violet to it so that it doesn’t become septic, she tries to wash the medicine off. Gentian violet is very stubborn though, and the wound remains purple for days, until he applies the medicine to it again.

When her lost shoes miraculously materialised one day when she returned from the mansion, a heel was broken. He took them to the shoemaker even though she rebelled against that too. She wanted to see him suffer as she hobbled along with one heelless shoe and one with a long pencil heel. Such is her displeasure with him. Even the effect of the Bored Twins doesn’t seem to last that long on her anymore. By the time she gets home all the euphoria has dissipated. His mere silence is provocation to her because it means he is thinking of Sharisha. A simple question from him, such as: “Did you have something to eat at the mansion? Should I prepare some food for you?” invites a deadly glare and the response: “Why don’t you go and ask your stupid fish?”

He is caught between two hard places. Sharisha does seem to have a yearning for the carefree romps of the past. Yet something is stopping her. The yearning is only in the eyes. Even her lobtailing, once a vigorous mating dance, is languid. Her whole demeanour
is listless. Saluni on the other hand is castrating him with her tongue, to the extent that even the nightly cleansing rituals have fizzled out. They are now a fading memory, another source of irritation on her part. She says they don’t happen anymore because Sharisha is back. His mind is full of dirty thoughts about whales throughout the day, to the extent that he is left enervated when the night demands action. He says Saluni’s own words and not Sharisha should take the blame. “How do you expect a meaningful performance from me when there are these tensions between us?” he asks.

“I forbid you to see that whale again,” says Saluni, in her best edictal tone.

But the Whale Caller does not respond.

“If you want us to go back where we were,” she says, now pleadingly, “promise me you will never see that whale again.”

The Whale Caller is unable to make such a promise. But he does not say so. He keeps quiet instead. His silence means consent to Saluni.

At night he lies awake, without the benefit of even the smallest cleansing rite, and therefore without the wonderful exhaustion that sends the celebrant into a cataleptic slumber. Saluni is in deep sleep. He wonders what Sharisha could be doing at that hour. He hears the songs of the whales at some distance. He listens hard for the slightest hint of Sharisha’s voice, but he can’t catch it. He wakes up and drapes a heavy blanket around his naked body. He tiptoes out of the house, and heads for Walker Bay The moon is shining and he can see dark specks on the horizon. The whales are too distant for him to identify Sharisha. He didn’t bring his horn; otherwise he would be calling her.

The following night he drapes his blanket around himself again, without wearing any clothes lest their rustle wakes Saluni up. He tiptoes out of the Wendy house. It is too easy. Saluni sleeps like a hibernating mole, especially when she has been running
around with the Bored Twins all day long. He takes his horn with him. This time he goes to his peninsula. He cannot see any whales. He blows his horn. At first he blows it softly. Cautiously When nothing happens he blows it a little louder. He can see a speck on the horizon, which becomes bigger as he continues to blow the horn. It takes a long time for the speck to become a whale, and a longer time for the whale to become Sharisha. He tries a few steps of their dance, but Sharisha’s response is a feeble lobtailing. There is no spectacular breaching. No display of baleen in a gigantic smile. He performs his usual dance, blowing the horn with as much vigour as he can muster. His blanket falls off. It is blown into the water and the waves sweep it away. He continues to dance naked. Sharisha just floats there, looking at him wistfully. He stops the dance. He is exasperated. He squats on a rock and just watches her.

A voice startles him: “I stopped going to the taverns for you. Now you do this to me? And shame on you, dangling your nakedness for every whale to see!”

Saluni is standing right behind him. Unheard by him, she has walked over the precarious rocks to the point of the peninsula where he is brooding. She is barefoot, like him, and wears a morning gown on top of her nightdress.

“You promised, man… you promised!” cries Saluni.

“I didn’t promise anything, Saluni.”

“Oh yes you did. You promised you would stop your stupid dances with the whales. Whoever heard of a grown man stealing away from the warm bed of his lover to spend the whole night hopping about on the rocks blowing a meaningless song on a kelp horn for some stupid whale he has named Sharisha?”

It is fortunate that Hermanus is asleep and there are no spectators to witness a naked hirsute man being frogmarched home by a wisp of a woman in sleepwear.

In the Wendy house Saluni sits on the bed and weeps.

“I am a love child, man,” she says. “You can’t treat a love child like this.”

Then she spits out the story of her conception. It is the story the Whale Caller has heard before, troubadours and all, except for the fact that in this version her mother dramatically shoots the lover. She never goes to jail because the judge decides that it was in self-defence. The woman was defending her honour and the honour of all the women of the world who have been chewed like bubblegum and then spat out when all the sweetness was gone.

The Whale Caller has never seen her weep before, and this makes him feel very bad about himself. She becomes so lovable when she shows her ability to be vulnerable. It is a new side of her. A desirable side. She is taken by surprise when he lunges at her and rips her sleeping garments off. The Wendy house rocks as it has never rocked before. As they achieve ceremonial ecstasy she is oblivious of the fact that his rigid body has pressed against her wound and it now oozes a pink mixture of blood and pus.

The next day she has lost all her softness and is determined to fight Sharisha on Sharisha’s own turf. While the Whale Caller lingers in bed, savouring the memory of the night’s rituals that continued right up to the morning, she wakes up, cleans her wound with gentian violet, puts on her high-heeled boots and his heavy army-issue coat, and goes to town. She buys a bottle of cheap wine, drinks from it in big gulps and walks to Walker Bay. The place is already teeming with early morning whale watchers. There are some whales, out there in the distance. She walks along the crag until she reaches his peninsula. There is Sharisha floating mindlessly, just as they left her last night. Saluni vows to herself that she is going to show Sharisha something she will never forget. She drank the wine for her, to make this showdown as momentous as only Cape plonk can make it. She is going to defend her mating rights like a ferocious bull seal—especially after the earthshaking rituals of last night.

“I tell you once and for all, stupid fish,” she shrieks at Sharisha, “just leave him alone! You no longer have any stake in him!”

Then she opens the buttons of the coat and flashes Sharisha. She is not wearing anything under the coat. The purple wound glares at the hapless whale. She flashes her one more time. Sharisha only stares at her. A better idea strikes Saluni. She turns her back on the sea, lifts up the coat and moons the whale. Sharisha lazily turns, as if to show Saluni that she too has a wound. She sails away.

“That will show her,” mutters Saluni as she walks off.

The few people who have watched her antics with increasing curiosity reward her with applause. She merely sneers at them and walks back to the Wendy house.

As soon as she enters the Whale Caller smells the fumes of wine.

“You are drunk,” he says, accusingly.

“You would be too if you drank a whole bottle of wine,” she says, giggling.

“After last night, Saluni… I thought we had worked things out.”

“I caught you naked with a fish, man,” says Saluni. “One night of heaving and panting does not erase that… especially because you refuse to repent.”

In the three months that follow the Whale Caller agonises over Saluni’s return to the bottle. She has lost all interest in the waltz at dawn. She has even lost the appetite for the window-shopping expeditions. She comes home drunk every night and sleeps until midday Soon after lunch she leaves the house. She visits the Bored Twins. Or she whiles away time annoying Mr. Yodd with her refusal to be mortified. Or she goes to the taverns—a very sore point with the Whale Caller. She is doing all these things to punish
him, since she can no longer make him suffer with her wound. It had finally healed.

The Whale Caller also agonises over Sharishá’s lack of enthusiasm for the dance. He had thought the main reason was the wound. But now it has healed, yet she is as lethargic as ever. And is growing fatter by the day. He has tried every trick in the book to arouse her. When everything has failed he remembers the ritualised eating that is part of the mating game, first introduced to him by Saluni as civilised living. He has participated in Sharisha’s mating games that are in line with whale culture, now she must participate in the human version of the mating ritual. He hopes that by bursting out of his conservative shell and making a public display of public eating Sharisha will be aroused to action once more.

He rents a small round table and a chair from the marketplace stallholders. He bribes a waiter from the restaurant that juts into the sea on stilts to lend him the best silver and crystal just for a few hours. The waiter smuggles the cutlery and the wine glasses out of the premises with the garbage and the Whale Caller pretends to be a dustbin scavenger and fishes these items out. He places the chair and the table on a small rocky island just off his peninsula. He sets the table with the white linen from the Wendy house and with the silverware and crystal wine glasses. He lays a table of seafood and the best of Cape chardonnay bought from the same waiter, and smuggled out of the restaurant wrapped in aluminium foil via the dustbin. It does not matter to the Whale Caller that the seafood may be leftovers from those diners who do not care for doggy bags. As for the wine, he will only use it as libation since he is a teetotaller.

He is in black tie. He looks like the jackass penguins that dot the rocks. He sits on the chair and blows his kelp horn. He blows some of the best mating calls he has learnt over the years. Sure enough Sharisha leaves the company of two other whales a distance
away and languidly sails to the Whale Caller. He lights a candle, borrowed from Saluni’s sequinned handbag, and sits down to dine on a meal that has been prepared elegantly in a gourmet manner. Sharisha sails about fifty metres from the island, occasionally waving her fluke. Then she spyhops in big circles. While he eats the seafood, he pours the wine in the glass, sniffs it, and then throws it into the water as an offering to the spirits that rule the sea. The very spirits that ate his father and that must now heal Sharisha from whatever ails her.