In A Strange Room: Three Journeys

by Damon Galgut

  It’s hours before they get going again, and then another hour or so to Maseru. She drops him at the outer edge of the city, she is heading off somewhere else and can’t be bothered to run him further, but he is effusive in his thanks. Goodbye, goodbye. Then with his rucksack on his back he goes walking the length of the endless main street again.

  By the time he gets through the two border crossings it is late afternoon. Now suddenly he is thrown back on the physical realities of his situation, which are not comforting or good. At some point in the last day he has decided to go back north, up to Pretoria where his mother lives, because it’s closer and easier than Cape Town. But now that he is finally stranded at the roadside with the red sun going down ahead of him it makes no difference what his destination is. He has used up twenty rand on campsite and food, he has thirty rand with which to travel six hundred kilometres. And this is not the benevolent deserted landscape of Lesotho, this is a border crossing in South Africa, cars and vans continually pass him by, streams of people go up and down the road, he is a curious and isolated figure, vulnerable in his solitude. He half-expects to see Reiner there.

  He tries to hitch a ride but nobody will stop. There aren’t many black people in cars and they barely glance at him anyway, but even the white families or couples or single women in jewels and tall hairstyles, come from Bloemfontein to the casinos for a wild night or two of gambling, glare at him with mistrust or contempt as they sail past with uptilted chins. Maybe he looks dirty or unkempt, he certainly doesn’t look like them, a halo of danger rings him round. By the time it’s dusk and the temperature is dropping, his despair is like another layer of clothes. There is nowhere to sleep, nowhere safe to pitch his tent, he would re-cross the border if this would help, but he’d be just as alone on the other side.

  At the point when it is almost completely dark a minibus taxi comes by, the driver shouting his destination out the window, Jo’burg Jo’burg. Johannesburg is close to Pretoria, he has friends he can stay with, it’s as good as home, yes please, he shouts, yes. The driver looks at him and stops. How much.

  Seventy rand.

  I’ve only got thirty.

  He shakes his head. I can’t help you.

  Please.

  Sorry.

  He is starting to change gears to pull away when I say, will you take thirty rand and my watch.

  The driver looks at him again, who is this mad whitey, he holds out his hand. He slips off his watch and passes it through the window. He has a suspicion the man might just pull away, what could he do to stop it, but he examines the watch and shrugs, get in.

  The minibus is empty, but the driver, whose name is Paul, takes him a little way down the road to a big dead tree under which all the other passengers are waiting. He is the last one and the only white person amongst them. This is not like the taxis from the city that he’s used to, where everybody mixes and is convivial, he is the odd person out here, nobody speaks to him. But Paul takes a liking to him, come and sit up in the front, he says, the road rushes blue and violent towards them through rain all the way.

  At midnight he is climbing out onto a pavement in Hillbrow, the lights of the city like a heatless yellow fire around him. He shakes hands with Paul, who is driving straight back to Lesotho to pick up another load of passengers. He watches the minibus disappear, tail lights merging with all the other random moving lights, then the passengers disperse in various directions, among the crowds, lives joined together for a little while and then unjoined again.

  He stays up in Pretoria for a few weeks. Only sometimes does he think of Reiner. Then he wonders where he is and what he might be doing. Somewhere in his mind he assumes that Reiner must have done what he did, walked hard and fast to get out of the mountains, and then travelled back down to Cape Town. The journey in Lesotho was one they were making together, he surely wouldn’t want to continue alone.

  One day, on impulse, he phones various friends down in Cape Town. He wants to know whether they’ve seen Reiner, has he reappeared, has he passed through. No, nobody has seen him, nobody’s heard a word. But what happened, his friends want to know, what went wrong. He tries to explain but all of it clots and curdles on his tongue. Till now he hasn’t had pangs of real conscience but he feels them begin when he hears the incredulity in the voice of one of these friends, that’s what you did, you walked away from him in the mountains. Yes that’s what happened but you don’t understand.

  Yes that is what happened. Now he feels exquisite agonies of unease, maybe the failure wasn’t the mutual one he’s constructed in his head, maybe it belongs to himself alone. If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn’t do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.

  After about a month he goes back to Cape Town. He has no place of his own down there and must begin looking all over again. Meanwhile he stays with different friends, living in spare rooms once more, moving around. His attention has shifted from recent events to the problems of the present. He doesn’t think of Reiner that often now. By this time he presumes he must be back in Germany, leading the life he was so secretive about, hating me from afar.

  But Reiner appears again suddenly, without warning, one arbitrary day. During all this time, while he was up in Pretoria and then trying to resettle himself in Cape Town, Reiner was in Lesotho. He stayed committed to their project. He has lost a lot of weight, his clothes hang loosely on him, he is weak and depleted. He has spent the time walking, he says, though where he went exactly and what he did will never be revealed.

  Even this much comes in second-hand, through indirect reports. Before they left he had introduced Reiner to a friend of his who was living in the same block of flats. Now this friend calls to say that Reiner arrived on his doorstep the day before, looking haggard and terrible, with nowhere to go. He wanted to know if he could stay there for a week, till his flight back home. Of course he had said yes, it’s only for a few days.

  He stays for three months. He sleeps on the couch in the lounge, hardly going out, barely moving around the flat at first. He’s in a very bad state. He is afflicted by various illnesses with alarming symptoms, he has very high fevers, he has swollen glands, he has some kind of fungal infection on his tongue. The friend takes him to two doctors, who prescribe antibiotics. But the illnesses don’t seem to clear up and Reiner shows no interest in leaving.

  All of these reports come through his friend, over the telephone or in person. In the whole time that Reiner’s there he never once goes over to the flat, he doesn’t want to see Reiner, he doesn’t want to speak to him. In truth he’s shocked that he has appeared again, in his mind this episode has already been relegated to the past, this return feels almost personally directed at him. But he has a fascination with his presence so close by, he makes constant enquiries about him, he would like to know what happened since he saw him. Very little is forthcoming. But he gathers from his friend that Reiner is just as fascinated with him. He asks about me, where did I go to, where am I now. Sometimes he rails against me. Why, he wants to know, why did I storm off, things were so good between us, what got into his head.

  He finds himself protesting, ask him, he knows why it happened, the friend listens sympathetically but also with doubt, he can see in his face that he has heard another version of things from Reiner, the second story unwritten here. The two stories push against each other, they will never be reconciled, he wants to argue and explain till the other story disappears.

  Sometimes it feels that Reiner will never leave. He will occupy the couch in the corner of the lounge, so as to occupy a corner of his life, forever. But eventually he does gather himself together. He shakes off some of the illness, starts to eat properly, puts on a bit of weight. He goes out and about again, walking in the streets. Then money arrives for him mysteriously from overseas, and he finally confirms a date for his ticket home.

  In all this
time, he spends a great deal of effort and energy avoiding the German. But there are two occasions on which they run into each other. The first happens one ordinary day, in the most ordinary of places. By now he has moved into a flat on his own, not far from where Reiner is staying. He goes to the local post-office one morning to send some letters, but as he is approaching the outside entrance he has a sudden clear perception that Reiner is inside. Don’t go in, he’s there. He stops dead, but then he wants to know whether his premonition was correct. Of course he goes through the door and they stare at each other for the first time in months. Reiner is in the queue, waiting, and though he falters for a moment he goes to the back of the line. His heart is hammering and his palms are sweating. The queue loops back on itself at a hundred and eighty degrees and Reiner is in the other half of the line, so that the two of them are moving towards each other one place at a time. A step, a step, another step. When the next person is served they will be opposite each other, an arm away, as close as they were when lying in the tent. He wants to run but he doesn’t dare.

  Then Reiner turns on his heel, steps over the rope and walks out. I tremble with a weird sense of victory.

  The second and last occasion is a few weeks afterwards, in the evening, in the street. He has been visiting friends and is walking back home alone. He is next to a long curved wall and he sees two people walking towards him. He realizes that the one on the outside, closest to him, is Reiner, he is with a woman he doesn’t know. The woman is talking, deep in conversation, while Reiner listens, but shock registers in his body when he looks up. If they were both alone perhaps one of them would cross the street to get away, or perhaps this time they would stop to speak. Well. Hello. Hello. How are you. But the foreign presence of the woman is like a distance and a silence between them and they only watch each other as they draw slowly closer on their curved trajectory, and when they are almost level Reiner smiles. It is the old sardonic smile, saying everything by saying nothing, the corners of the mouth lifting in the rigid mask of the face, and then they pass. He doesn’t look back and he is almost certain Reiner doesn’t either.

  Then he’s gone. My friend calls to say, well, Reiner left last night, and with that single sentence the whole story is over. He waits for some further event, he doesn’t know what, a phone-call, a letter, to resolve things, even though he doesn’t want to make contact himself. Then at some point he realizes that the silence, the suspension, is the only form of resolution this particular story will ever have.

  Maybe when two people meet for the first time all the possible variations on destiny are contained in their separate natures. These two will be drawn together, those two will be repulsed, most will pass politely with averted gaze and hurry on alone. Was what happened between him and Reiner love or hate or something else with another name. I don’t know. But this is how it ends. Some time afterwards, clearing out his desk when he is moving house again, he finds the notebook in which Reiner had written his name and address years ago in Greece, and after looking at the tiny narrow handwriting for a while he throws it away. Then he takes out Reiner’s letters too, a big bundle of them, and drops them into the bin. It isn’t revenge and nothing else will follow on. But although he will hardly think of Reiner again, and when he does it is without regret, there are still times, walking on a country road alone, when he would not be surprised to see a dark figure in the distance, coming towards him.

  TWO

  THE LOVER

  A few years later he is wandering in Zimbabwe. No particular reason or intention has brought him here. He decides on impulse one morning to leave, he buys a ticket in the afternoon, he gets on a bus that night. He has it in mind to travel around for two weeks and then go back.

  What is he looking for, he himself doesn’t know. At this remove, his thoughts are lost to me now, and yet I can explain him better than my present self, he is buried under my skin. His life is unweighted and centreless, so that he feels he could blow away at any time. He still has not made a home for himself. All his few belongings are in storage again and he has spent months in that old state of his, wandering around from one spare room to another. It has begun to feel as if he’s never lived in any other way, nor will he ever settle down. Something in him has changed, he can’t seem to connect properly with the world. He feels this not as a failure of the world but as a massive failing in himself, he would like to change it but doesn’t know how. In his clearest moments he thinks that he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things, most of all the person and place and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.

  In this state travel isn’t celebration but a kind of mourning, a way of dissipating yourself. He moves around from one place to another, not driven by curiosity but by the bored anguish of staying still. He spends a few days in Harare, then goes down to Bulawayo. He does the obligatory things required of visitors, he goes to the Matopos and sees the grave of Cecil John Rhodes, but he can’t produce the necessary awe or ideological disdain, he would rather be somewhere else. If I was with somebody, he thinks, with somebody I loved, then I could love the place and even the grave too, I would be happy to be here.

  He takes the overnight train to Victoria Falls. He lies in his bunk, hearing the breathing of strangers stacked above and below him, and through the window sees villages and sidings flow in out of the dark, the outlines of people and cattle and leaves stamped out in silhouette against the lonely light, then flowing backward again, out of sight into the past. Why is he happiest in moments like these, the watcher hiding in the dark. He doesn’t want the sun to rise or this particular journey to end.

  In the morning they come to the end of the line. He gets out with his single bag and walks to the campsite. Even early in the day the air is heavy and humid, green leaves burn with a brilliant glow. There are other travellers all around, most are younger than himself. He pitches his tent in the middle of the camp and goes down to look at the falls.

  It is incredible to see the volume and power of so much water endlessly dropping into the abyss, but part of him is elsewhere, somewhere higher up and to the right, looking down at an angle not only on the falls but on himself there, among the crowds. This part of him, the part that watches, has been here for a while now, and it never quite goes away, over the next few days it looks at him keeping busy, strolling through the streets from one curio-shop to another, going for long walks in the surrounding bush, it observes with amazement when he goes white-water rafting on the river, it sees him lying in the open next to his tent to keep cool at night, staring up into the shattered windscreen of the sky. And though he seems content, though he talks to people and smiles, the part that watches isn’t fooled, it knows he wants to move on.

  On the third or fourth day he goes for a swim at one of the hotel pools. Afterwards he sits at a table near the bar to have a drink and his attention is slowly drawn to a group of young people nearby. They all have their rucksacks with them, they are about to depart. They’re a strange mixture, a bit uneasy with each other, a plump Englishman with his girlfriend, a blond Danish man, two younger dark girls who sit close together, not speaking. He recognizes a burly Irish woman who went rafting with him two days ago, and goes over to speak to her. Where are you all off to.

  Malawi. We’re going through Zambia. Maybe she sees something in my face, because after a moment she asks, do you want to come along.

  He sits thinking for a few moments, then says, I’ll be right back.

  He runs madly from the hotel to the campsite and takes down his tent. When he gets back he sits among his new companions, panting, feeling edgy with doubt. Soon afterwards the man they’re waiting for, an Australian called Richard, arrives, and they all stir themselves to leave. He has gathered already that these people don’t know each other well, they have banded together by chance to make this journey safely. Hence the unease. He doesn’t mind, in fact the general mood suits him, he doesn’t feel a pressure to fit in. With the other
s he loads his bag onto the back of an open van and climbs up. They have paid somebody to drive them to the other side of the border.

  It’s getting dark when they arrive at the station. They are late and the queue for tickets is long, they can only get third-class seats, sitting amongst a crowd in an open carriage in which all the lights are broken. Almost before they can find a place the train lurches and starts to move.

  There is a moment when any real journey begins. Sometimes it happens as you leave your house, sometimes it’s a long way from home.

  In the dark there is the sound of breaking glass and a voice cries out. They have been travelling for perhaps an hour, the darkness in the carriage is total, but now somebody lights a match. In the guttering glow he sees a hellish scene, on one of the seats further down a man clutches his bloodied face, a pool of blood on the floor around him, rocking from side to side with the violent motion of the train. Everybody shrinks away, the light goes out. What’s happening, the Irish girl says to him.

  What’s happening is that somebody has thrown a rock through the window. Almost immediately it comes again, the smashing glass, the cry, but this time nobody is hurt, the cry is one of fear. They are all afraid, and with good reason, because every time the train passes some town or settlement there is the noise, the cry, or the deep thudding sound of the rock hitting the outside of the train. Everybody sits hunched forward with their arms over their heads.