“If we flee to Tarshish,” continued His Eminence, “God will send His whales to swallow us, for it is written, ‘Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.’ Of course today we know what the writers of the Bible did not know; that a whale is not a fish. After all those days and nights living inside a whale, it vomited him out on dry land, and he ran straight to Nineveh to preach to the glory of the Lord! We must not be like Jonah; whales must not first swallow us before we can work for God. The sceptics among you will ask, how is it possible to survive in the stomach of a whale without being digested? But I ask you, my children, if Jesus himself believed in the story of Jonah and the whale, who are we to question it? In Matthew 12 verse 40 Jesus says, ‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’ What more proof do we need that the story of Jonah is true?”
It was obvious to all that the spirit of Jonah had taken over the baptism. The whale had hijacked the whole ceremony, even though the creature’s tail could now be seen sailing a distance away.
“It is sailing away!” screeched the Chief Horn Player.
He blew his horn with great vigour and the whale stopped. Once more it lobtailed. He was convinced that through his kelp horn he had the power to communicate with it. This discovery excited him no end, and he remained at the beach blowing his horn long after the rest of the congregation had gone home.
He gradually drifted from the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn and spent most of his days at the beach, holding conversations with the whales through his horn. He was determined to refine his skill, and spent many years walking westwards along the coast of the Indian Ocean, until he reached the point where the two oceans met, and then proceeded northwards along the Atlantic Ocean coast right up to Walvis Bay in South West Africa, as Namibia was then called. He survived on fish, some of which he bartered to non-fishing folks for grain and other necessities. He stopped for months at a time in fishermen’s villages that dotted the coastline. In hamlets where women were buxom and welcoming he stopped for a few years. Sometimes he hired himself out as a hand to the trawlers that caught pilchards off the west coast of southern Africa. But he spent every second when he was not sleeping or eking out a living talking to the whales. He was listening to the songs of the southern right, the humpback and the Bryde’s whales, and learning to reproduce them with his horn. He also learnt to fashion different kinds of kelp horns: big horns with deep and rounded tone colours and small horns that sounded like muted trumpets.
After thirty-five years he returned to his home village of Hermanus and with his meagre pension rented a two-roomed Wendy house in the backyard of a kindly widower. The village had grown into a beautiful holiday resort. But it had not lost the soul of the village of his youth. Many landmarks were as he remembered them — such as the Hoy’s Koppie of his devout days. The village still nestled comfortably between the Kleinriver Mountains and the sea. The mountains still wore their crown of mist on special days. Many things had changed though. Along the coastline there were more houses, mostly white cottages and bungalows, roofed with black or red tiles while others were thatched with grass that had blackened with age, and there were some double-and triple-storey buildings. Many of these, he heard, belonged to rich people from as far away as Johannesburg, who spent part of the year enjoying the spoils of their wealth in the laid-back ambience of the village. Other houses belonged to retired millionaires who had decided to live here permanently. It had now become impossible for an ordinary person to buy property at his childhood paradise.
Another change was that the village had become popular with tourists. A new fashion had developed, that of watching whales. They seemed to have multiplied tenfold since the days of his youth. September and October were peak whale months, and thousands of tourists from many countries of the world gathered on the cliffs and the beaches every day to watch whales frolicking in the water and performing their antics to the cheers of the spectators. On a good day there would be as many as twenty whales leaping out of the water and falling back in resounding splashes.
He saw all these things and felt like an intruder both in the lives of the whale watchers and of the local citizens. No one knew him anymore. People wondered who the tall and brawny stranger in blue dungarees was. They marvelled at his big bald head and craggy face, half of which hid in a rich silvery beard. They looked at him curiously as he stood on the cliffs, blowing his horn for the whales, sometimes fully donned in black tie. He did not seem to be friendly towards human beings, so they kept their distance from him. They were strangers to him. Almost all the people he used to know had either left this world altogether or had left the village in search of a better life in the cities of South Africa. Even His Eminence the Bishop of the Church of the Sacred Kelp Horn had long departed Nineveh for celestial shores.
He saw the official whale crier, who was employed by the tourist office. A gracious gentleman from Zwelihle Township a few kilometres away, he was dubbed the world’s only whale crier. The Whale Caller did not begrudge the whale crier his world title. The Whale Caller was not in competition with the whale crier. The Whale Caller was not a whale crier but a whale caller!
He saw how popular the whale crier was, both with the tourists and the locals. He watched the whale crier, resplendent in his beautiful black and white costume and strange hat, blowing his kelp horn to alert whale watchers to the presence and location of the whales. Sometimes whales surfaced at the Grotto or the Voelklip beaches. At other times they might surface at Kwaaiwater or Siever’s Punt. The whale crier blew his kelp horn in a particular code that was interpreted on the sandwich board that he wore, and whale watchers knew exactly where to go to see the whales, and how many there were. Sometimes the whale crier acted like a tourist guide, showing the visitors sites of interest in the village.
Although at first the Whale Caller envied the attention and the fame that the world’s only whale crier received, he soon realised that his mission in life was quite different from the whale crier’s. The whale crier alerted people to the whereabouts of whales, whereas the Whale Caller called whales to himself, much like the shark callers of New Ireland.
The comparison with the shark callers had once been made by a sailor who had watched him call whales. The sailor told him that the shark callers of New Ireland — a province of Papua New Guinea — use their voices and rattles of coconut shells under water to attract sharks. The sharks swim to the boat where they can be speared or netted. Sometimes the rattling noise attracts the shark through a noose. A rope attached to the noose is connected to a wooden propeller that is spun around to tighten the noose while pulling in the rope. The shark is then unable to move.
When the Whale Caller first heard of the shark callers he hated the comparison. He did not call whales in order to kill them. Eating them would be tantamount to cannibalism. He called them because they gave him joy and he gave them as much in return. And if he could help it, he preferred to call them when he was alone, so as to have intimate moments with them. He was not a showman, but a lover. Since returning to Hermanus he has hardly any privacy because the place is always teeming with tourists during the whale season. He has, however, been able to continue with his conversations and singalongs with the whales unobstructed by the activities of the village and its whale-watching culture. And has managed to stay out of the way of the official whale crier.