The Whale Caller by Zakes Mda

with the sweet and mouldy smell, even though tonight it is quite subdued. He tries very hard to obliterate both the smell and the whales from his mind, and focus more on the warmth and the softness of her body. For some time it seems things will work. But at a crucial moment the image of Sharisha appears. His weak manhood becomes even weaker until it dies completely as Sharisha lobtails in the sea of his mind.
    “Is there something wrong with me, man?” asks Saluni.
    “It is not you.”
    “It is that stupid creature, is it not?”
    “At least you no longer call her a fish.”
    “That stupid
fish
has castrated you.”
    She spits out the word
fish
as if it were invective. He winces.
    “In any case,” says the Whale Caller, “sex is overrated. I don’tneed it. I can live without it. Ever since coming back from my travels around the coast I have lost all appetite for it.”
    “If that is the case, go back to your sleeping bag and have wet dreams about your bloody fish.”
    Even as she says this, she knows that it contradicts her true wishes. However, she does not want his sinewy body to provoke her into utter madness for nothing. He apologetically gathers his clothes from the floor and slinks out of the room.
    She realises that the only way she will ever possess this man and restore his manly functions is to get rid of Sharisha. But how do you get rid of a whale? She closes her eyes tightly and a hazy image of the past emerges. She sees genteel women walking on Cape Town’s promenades wearing long colourful dresses. They are perfectly shaped because of the corsets made from baleen. Some are shading their heads from the sun with umbrellas whose ribs are made of baleen. Down on the rocks by the sea men are fishing and their rods are made of baleen. The beautiful corseted women are bringing them picnic baskets. She looks at them longingly, for if she had lived during their time she would have been one of them. She would be there with the Whale Caller. There would be no Sharisha, for her baleen would have been part of her corset and umbrella. Some of it would have been part of the chair-seats in her beautiful seaside cottage.
    In today’s world, with all the foolish laws that protect these useless creatures, what do you do with a stubborn whale that refuses to let loose your man’s very soul? You cannot just go to any old whale and kick it around and beat it up with your stiletto-heel, shouting that it must leave your man alone. Whales don’t take kindly to that sort of thing.
    She decides to bide her time. In the meanwhile, in the mornings following the nights her body has been raging, she hunts for mating seals on the rocks and sand hills for her own gratification. She sits on a rock and watches them. She finds it titillating thatthe females can make love to their males only a few weeks after the birth of their babies. Sometimes a couple is mating while another female is giving birth on the rocks, with seagulls waiting to feast on the placenta and the umbilical cord.

    The whale caller sits on the green bench and watches Saluni frolic in the shallows. The wind is blowing her hair in all wild directions. She dances with the wind. She raises her arms and flaps them in some imagined flight. She takes off and soars higher than any bird has soared. She soars to the clouds. Her perpetual coat fails to weigh her down. And then from the clouds she dives back into the water to resume her dance with the wind. The shallows are a perfect place to express her elation. There are no whales to mess up her day and all his attention is on her. She is truly beautiful, he observes, in spite of her ravaged face. He grudgingly admits to himself that indeed the village drunk’s presence at the Wendy house and at the seaside has brightened his life, especially during an off-season like this when the whales have migrated to the southern seas.
    She has no cares in the world. She does not worry about what the next day will bring. She is a