Love affairs get complicated when they cross the species line, even in the land of make-believe. How, for example, should a writer convey a woman cuddling up to an ape? Danish novelist Peter Hoeg gave it a try in “The Woman and the Ape,” and the result was a strange and bizarre piece of fiction, right up to the moment that the two lovers consummated their passion.
In his new novel, “The Whale Caller,” South African-born novelist Zakes Mda taps into all the occult themes of a man in love with a female creature-
woman from the deep, but he manages to keep the proceedings on the mild side of an R-rating. The result is a humorous, but mournful novel that tells the story of an innocent man in a beautiful, though fallen, world.
The novel takes place in the Western Cape resort town of Hermanus, a prime whale-watching spot that has thrown its post-Apartheid hopes into the basket of tourism. The novel’s hero is a whale caller, a man with a kelp horn who has been calling out to sea long before bands of wealthy travelers began hiring out his compatriots to do the same.
Slowly, in prose so delightful one reads more gently to savor it more, Mda brings this town to life, describing the whale caller’s daily confession rituals, the plangent way he circles back and back to the sea in hopes of catching a glimpse of one particular whale, whom he has dubbed Sharisha.
This is a life lived in harmony with nature, and Mda writes elegantly about such a world without belittling its simplicity. The whale caller does not worry about his appearance, or his shiny bald head. “He decides to spend the night in the company of the stars,” Mda writes of his sleeping arrangements one night. “He holds his horn close to his heart. He dare not press it too hard against his chest, lest it break.”
Painting fablelike tones upon a backdrop of natural splendor, Mda sketches a romance of unusual dimensions. The whale caller dresses in a tuxedo to welcome Sharisha when she comes into the bay to breach. Mda cheekily fixates on descriptions of the man’s horn. And of course the whale caller frets with jealousy when a group of male whales have their way with his beloved. “They have done it!” he cries. “They have ravaged Sharisha!”
Eventually, the whale caller meets a woman who walks on two feet, and he gives in to her civilizing ways – even if she is the town drunk. She teaches him to how to set aside his meals of macaroni and cheese and yearn for supermarket food. Together they dance. She even begins to chip away at his not-so-secret love: “You and that ugly fish!” she cries out. “I hope it goes away – forever! Maybe we’ll have some peace when it’s gone.”
Unlike Hoeg, who wrote his novel in purely realistic tones, Mda fills in the margins of this story with other mystical elements. When not ducking out to drink, the whale caller’s paramour visits a rundown mansion where two twins live. She tells them stories, and they in turns play tricks on her. Another boy hangs around the beach with yearnings to be an opera singer along the lines of Pavarotti.
All of this signifies a world in the midst of transformation, the outside universe rushing and putting normal relationships – and dreams – into a colorful jumble. Perhaps Mda, who has been in exile for three decades now, hasn’t the curbside knowledge of life in South Africa to paint this passage realistically.
In the end, “The Whale Caller” shows how little anxious specificity counts for when it comes to storytelling. There are things we need not see to understand – like love – and there are others we can see, but do not understand – like a nation’s tumultuous change. In trusting his reader to appreciate this paradox, Mda has written a fable of uncommon grace.
John Freeman lives in New York.
The Whale Caller
By Zakes Mda
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 230 pages, $23
