Books
Love affairs get complicated when they cross the species line, even in the land of make-believe. In his new novel, The Whale Caller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 230 pp.), South African-born novelist Zakes Mda taps into all the occult themes of a man in love with a female creature from the deep, but he manages to keep the proceedings on the right 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. The novel’s hero is a whale-caller, a man with a kelp horn who circles back and back to the sea in hopes of catching a glimpse of one particular whale, which he has dubbed Sharisha. This is a life lived in harmony with nature, and Mda writes elegantly about its simplicity. The whale caller does not worry over his appearance, or his shiny bald head: “He decides to spend the night in the company of the stars. He holds his horn close to his heart. He dare not press it too hard against his chest, lest it break.”
Mixing fable-like undertones with a backdrop of natural splendor, Mda backs us into a romance that is laugh-aloud funny. 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, how it blows and “ejaculates” its sounds. 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 yearn for supermarket food, and how to 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.” This has to be one of the strangest love triangles in recent literature. And that’s not the strangest part of this tale: Mda fills in the margins of his 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 play tricks on her. Another boy hangs around the beach, yearning to be an opera singer.
All of this signifies a world in the midst of transformation. 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. 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.
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|