He stands up and attempts to walk up the crag. He has plodded only a few steps when he slips and falls on his knees. He is too tired to stand up again. Or perhaps too despondent. His confession to Mr. Yodd has failed to perform its intended function of lifting his spirits. He touches his left knee. His fingers are wet with warm blood. He hopes the lacerations are not too deep. In the sunshine of the day these rocks are beautiful in their bright yellow, grey, metallic brown and white. But they are sharp and at night, in the emaciated light of the half-moon, they can easily be deadly. He thanks his stars that he was not wearing his new tuxedo today. It would have been torn at the knees like the blue dungarees he is wearing. He is pleased with himself that he does not feel any pain. But he is even happier that he was able to save his horn. His options were clear: to fall on his hands and save the rest of his body, or to fall on his knees and save the horn. In the first option the horn would surely have broken into pieces since he was holding it. He sacrificed his knees for his horn. He chuckles at the silliness of it all. He can always get a new horn by making it. He cannot get new knees. But perhaps it is not silly at all. He has a sentimental attachment to this horn among all others that he owns. He has used this particular horn for the last three years. It has a special timbre that strikes a tingling chord for Sharisha. No two horns can sound exactly the same.
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. He remembers how he created it out of the fronds of the kelp that grows among the rocks of the sea. Storms brought it to the shoreline. He took the wet fronds from the water and placed them on the roof of his house in the crooked and twisted shapes suited to producing the deep and hollow sounds of the whales. The seaweed dried up to become pipes. He has fashioned a number of horns this way.
The little waves break with a monotonous rhythm on the rocks, bringing with them more kelp. He remembers his first kelp horn.
It was forty years ago. He was a strapping young man in his early twenties. He loved the Church — as it was officially known — and looked forward to the Sundays when he and the other congregants would be dancing to the beat of the drums and the music of the harps and tambourines. For him the most heavenly part of the service, besides the snow white robes of the worshippers, was the kelp horn that an old man blew to accompany the hymns. He was so fascinated by the deep and hollow sounds of the horn that he asked the old man to teach him how to play it. He became so adept at it that His Eminence the Bishop made him official horn player after age had stolen the old man’s breath. Fíe inherited the old man’s horn. That was his very first kelp horn. And he played it so celestially that His Eminence decided to do away with harps and tambourines, for they seemed to dilute the innocence of the horn. This caused an argument whose proportions had never been seen before at the Church. The Elders of the Church said that harps were by nature heavenly. Angels sang to harps and tambourines. To do away with them was playing into the hands of the Prince of Darkness. But His Eminence stood his ground. A kelp horn, he said, was a natural musical instrument that took the congregation back to its roots. It was an instrument that celebrated the essence of creation. God would lend a sharper ear to the prayers of those who praised Him to the accompaniment of an instrument that was shaped by His own hand through the agency of the seas. This led to a schism in the Church. The Elders appointed a new bishop among themselves, and His Eminence led his followers to a new church that would worship God in its own creative way. It became known as the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn, and the Whale Caller — who had not learnt to call whales then — was anointed Chief Horn Player.
The Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn met every Sunday at Hoy’s Koppie, a conical hill in the middle of the village. The flock and its shepherd sang and danced for the Lord among the fynbos that grew in front of the Klipgat Cave, which used to be the home, variously, of the Khoikhoi and the San peoples long before the village came into being. In their white robes — with blue sashes to distinguish themselves from the members of the Church — the worshippers waltzed and tangoed among the trees. When the winter rains came the service was conducted in the cave, which was too small for ballroom dance. The congregants itched for the foxtrots and rumbas of sunny Sundays.
Like His Eminence, the Chief Horn Player felt that the new church brought the worshippers closer to nature, and in greater communion with the spirits of the forebears that were hovering above the tall cliffs and in the cave. He blew the horn, sometimes to accompany the hymns, or just to arouse the spirits and to stir the members of the congregation into a climactic frenzy until they spoke in tongues.
The most exciting times for the Chief Horn Player were the Sundays when the sea became a baptistery. The worshippers stood on the white sands and sang their praises to the Lord. His Eminence led those who were to be christened further into the sea. The Chief Horn Player followed, blowing the sacred sounds of baptism. His Eminence then immersed each one into the water and out again three times, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Chief Horn Player accompanied each immersion with bellows that caused tremors on the land under the water. It was on one such occasion that a whale surfaced about a hundred metres from the baptism. It swam closer to take a curious look. It seemed to be attracted by the sound of the horn. The whale stole the attention of the congregation from the baptism. The Chief Horn Player himself was fascinated by this big creature of the sea, which he had never seen at such close quarters. It might have been a humpback or even a killer whale. In those days he did not know the difference. A whale was a whale was a whale. What intrigued him most was the notion that it was his horn that had drawn it to the baptism.
It submerged and waved its tail above the water. It began to lobtail — slapping the water repeatedly with its tail. The congregation cheered. The Chief Horn Player blew the horn to the rhythm of the splashing water. His Eminence was struck by a brilliant idea for an instant sermon on Jonah and the whale.
“We are being sent to Nineveh, my children,” he boomed above the din. “Like Jonah of the Bible, God is sending us to Nineveh.”
He asked for a Bible from those who were standing on the beach. A saved woman waded in the water, raising her robe above the knees with one hand, and lifting the Bible to the sky with the other hand. She gave it to His Eminence and waded back. He turned the pages to the Book of Jonah. He raised his hand, demanding silence. And there was silence. Even the whale stopped lobtailing. He read from the Book of Books: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.’ God is speaking through this whale, my children, sending us to cry for Nineveh! Are we going to heed the call or are we going to flee to Tarshish?”
“But where is Nineveh, Your Eminence?” asked one of the worshippers.
“Out there in the sinful world,” responded His Eminence. “In this very village. Wickedness is everywhere and God demands that we cry against it.”
The congregation broke into moans and wails and screams, crying against Nineveh’s wickedness. The whale began to sail away.
“I think Nineveh is in Cape Town,” suggested the Chief Horn Player, remembering the trip to Cape Town that the congregation had been planning and postponing for the past three years. When the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn broke away from the Church, the carrot His Eminence dangled to attract more followers — in addition to the introduction of ballroom dance as an integral part of the rites of worship — was a bus trip to Cape Town, to evangelise the multitudes that gathered on the beaches indulging in worldly joys and that wasted the summer nights away in nightclubs and strip joints.