In a Strange Room

by Damon Galgut

  They walk to the bus-station through streets filled with early light and litter blowing aimlessly. Somebody has a map and knows which way to go. Even at this hour, five or six in the morning, the place is full of people standing idly and staring. They are the focus of much ribald curiosity, he’s glad he’s not alone. On one corner an enormous bearded man steps forward and, with the perfunctory disinterest with which one might weigh fruit, squeezes the Irish woman’s left breast in his hand. She hits his fingers away. You not in America now, the man shouts after them, I fuck you all up.

  The bus-station is a mad chaos of engines and people under a metal roof, but they eventually find their bus. When they get on the first people he sees are the three white travellers from the train, sitting in a row, very quietly looking ahead of them, and as he passes they don’t look up. The woman and the one man are young, in their early twenties, and the other man is older, perhaps his own age. He passes them and takes a seat at the very back of the bus. The rest of his group is scattered around. He hasn’t interacted or spoken with them much, and at the moment he’s more interested in the other three travellers a few rows ahead, he can see the backs of their heads. Who are they, what are they doing here, how do they fit together.

  It takes eight hours to get to the border. They disembark into the main square of a little town, where taxi drivers clamour to take them to the actual border post. While they’re negotiating a price he sees from the corner of his eye the three travellers get into a separate car and leave. They’re not at the border post when he gets there, they must have gone through. There is a press of people, a long wait, by the time their passports have been stamped and the taxi has driven them on through the ten kilometres or so of no-man’s land it is getting dark.

  When he enters the Malawian border post, a white building under trees, some kind of dispute is in progress. A uniformed official is shouting at the three travellers, who look confused, you must have a visa, you must have a visa. The older man, the one his own age, is trying to explain. His English is good, but hesitant and heavily accented. The embassy told us, he says. The embassy told you the wrong thing, the uniformed official shouts, you must have a visa. What must we do. Go back to Lusaka. They look at him and then confer among themselves. The official has lost interest, he turns to the new arrivals, give me your passports. South Africans don’t need visas, he is stamped through. He pauses for a second, then goes up to the three. Where are you from.

  I am French. It’s the older man speaking. They are from Switzerland. He points to the other two, whose faces are now as neutral as masks, not understanding or not wanting to talk.

  Do you want me to speak to him for you.

  No. It’s okay. Thank you. He has thick curly hair and round glasses and a serious expression which is impassive, or perhaps merely resigned. The younger man has from up close a beauty that is almost shocking, red lips and high cheek-bones and a long fringe of hair. His brown eyes won’t meet my gaze.

  What will you do now.

  I don’t know. He shrugs.

  They languish for a few days in Lilongwe, a featureless town full of white expatriates and jacaranda trees, killing time while somebody in their party tries to organize a visa to go somewhere. He is bored and frustrated, and by now he is irritated with the other travellers in the group. They are completely content to sit around drinking beer for hours, they go out in search of loud music at night, and some of them show an unpleasant disdain for the poverty they encounter. The two young women in particular, who turn out to be Swedish, have stopped being silent and go on in loud voices about their terrible trip through Zambia. The rocks, oh, it was just horrible, and the bus-station, oh, it was so dirty, it smelled, oh, disgusting. The shortcomings and squalor of the continent have let them down personally, it never seems to occur to them that the conditions they found horrible and disgusting are not part of a set that will be struck when they have gone offstage.

  But things improve a little when they get to the lake. It’s the destination he’s had in mind since leaving Zimbabwe, everything he’s ever heard about Malawi has been centred on that long body of water running up half the length of the country. Take a look at him there a few days later, standing on the beach at Cape Maclear. He is staring at the water with an amazed expression, as if he can’t believe how beautiful it is. Light glitters on the tilting surface, the blond mountains seem almost colourless next to the intense blue of the water, a cluster of islands rise up a kilometre from the shore. A wooden canoe passes slowly in perfect profile, like a hieroglyph.

  As the day goes on his wonder only grows, the water is smooth and warm to swim in, under the surface are schools of brightly coloured tropical fish, there is nothing to do except lie on the sand in the sun and watch fishermen repairing their nets. The pace of everything here is slow and unhurried, the only sound of an engine is from the occasional car on the dirt road high up.

  Even the local people take up their appointed place in this version of paradise, they are happy to drop everything when called and go out fishing for these foreign visitors, or prepare a meal on the beach for them in the evening and clean up when they’re gone. They will row you out to the islands for the price of a cooldrink, or go running for miles over the hot sand to fetch some of the famous Malawi cob, even carving you a wooden pipe to smoke it in. When they’re not needed they simply fade into the background, going back to their natural tasks, supplying peaceful lines of smoke from the picturesque huts they live in, or heading across your line of vision at an appropriate moment in the distance.

  Only someone cold and hard of heart could fail to succumb to these temptations, the idea of travelling, of going away, is an attempt to escape time, mostly the attempt is futile, but not here, the little waves lap at the shores just as they always have done, the rhythms of daily life are dictated by the larger ones of nature, the sun or moon for example, something has lasted here from the mythical place before history set itself in motion, ticking like a bomb. It would be easy to just stop and not start again, and indeed a lot of people have done that, you can see them if you take a little walk, here and there at various points on the beach are gatherings that haven’t moved in months. Talk to them and they’ll tell you about themselves, Sheila from Bristol, Jürgen from Stuttgart, Shlomo from Tel Aviv, they’ve been here half a year, a year, two years, they all have the glazed half-shaven look of lethargy, or is it dope. This is the best place in the world, they say, stick around you’ll see, you can survive on next to nothing, a bit of money sent from home once in a while, we’ll go back again one day of course but not just yet.

  And already after a day, two days, three, the massive gravity of inertia sets in, the effort of walking from your room to the water is already more than it seems necessary to expend. Swim, sleep, smoke. The people he came here with can’t believe their luck. This is the real Africa to them, the one they came from Europe to find, not the fake expensive one dished up to them at Victoria Falls, or the dangerous frightening one that tried to hurt them on the train. In this place each of them is at the centre of the universe, and at the same time is nowhere, surely this is what it means to be spiritually fulfilled, they are having a religious experience.

  And at first he himself partakes of it, look at him now, lying on the beach and then getting up and stumbling to the water for a swim. Later when he’s too hot he goes back to his room to sleep, or retreats to the bar for a drink. When a joint is passed around he puffs along with everybody else, his face relaxes into the same befuddled grin that makes everyone around him look stupid. He’s as hedonistic as the rest of them. Towards evening he wanders with some of the others in the group, they are all talking and laughing like old friends, to a clearing behind the village where some bearded itinerant hippie is offering sunset flights in a micro-light. Although he won’t go up he watches Richard ascend for a long looping meandering cruise above the lake, and the gentle suspension of the little machine in the last light contains something of the unreal weightlessness of bei
ng here.

  But the truth is that even in the first sybaritic day or two there is that same blue thread of uneasiness in him, no amount of heat or marijuana will quite sedate the restlessness. He is outside the group, observing. They have been around each other now for long enough for connections and tensions to develop, they all carry on like old companions. Everybody is called by nicknames, there is a lot of laughter and joking. Between Richard and the Irish woman a romance has sprung up, one evening on the beach he notices them shifting closer to each other, smiling coyly and watching one another sidelong, shortly afterwards they retire to Richard’s room nearby and emerge later glowing warmly. It’s all touching and happy, but he’s the odd one out here, he keeps a distance between himself and them, no matter how friendly they are. Once when all of them are walking on the beach he listens to a conversation behind him, one of the Swedish girls is talking to the Danish man, how did you like South Africa when you were there, oh, he says in reply, the country was beautiful, if only all the South Africans weren’t so fucked-up. Then everyone becomes aware of him at once and silence falls, of all of them he is the only one smiling, but inwardly.

  Then one day someone in their party has this wonderful idea, let’s hire a boat and go out to that island for the day. One of the local men is conscripted to row them there for a small fee, over which the plump Englishman haggles, he will let them use his goggles and flippers to go snorkelling with. These are among the few things he owns, the boat and oars, the mask and flippers, but while he rows he talks earnestly about how he is saving to go to medical school in South Africa, he would like to be a doctor. He’s a young man of twenty three with a wide gentle face and a body toned and hardened by fishing for a living. Nobody else in the party is interested in speaking to him, but he tells me later, on the island, about how they go night-fishing, rowing for miles and miles into the far deep centre of the lake, each boat with a torch burning in the prow, and how they row back at dawn weighed down by a pyramid of fish. Would you take me with you one night, I would like to see that. Yes, I will take you.

  Through glass the bottom of the lake is the surface of an alien planet, huge boulders are piled on each other in the sunlit depths, glowing fish float and dart like birds. The day is long and languid and everybody is happy when at last they climb into the boat to be rowed back again. But their oarsman is looking around, worried. What’s the matter. One of the flippers has gone. The visitors sigh and chatter in the boat, while I get out to help him look. The price of the flipper is worth maybe a week or two of fishing to this man. We search in the shallow water, between the crevices in the rocks. Hurry up, one of the Swedish girls calls crossly, we’re waiting for you. But now the anger finally touches the surface of his tongue, you get out of there, he cries, his voice rising, get out of there and help us look. One of you has lost the flipper, we’re not going back till you find it again. There is muttering and resentment, let him buy a new one, but they all troop out onto the shore and pretend to cast around. In the end the flipper is found and everybody gets back into the boat and in a little while the frivolous conversation resumes, but he knows that his outburst has confirmed what they suspect, he is not the same as them, he is a fucked-up South African.

  Something has changed for him now, he finds it difficult to make innocent conversation with these people. The next day he goes off alone on a long walk down the beach. At the far end, where the local village is, where the tourists never go, is a rocky headland, he thinks he would like to climb round it. But when he gets there he discovers that people have shat among the rocks, everywhere he tries to climb he finds old smelly turds and wreaths of paper. He can imagine the shrill voices of the Swedish girls, oh how disgusting, and it is, but now another notion comes to him, that if people are using these rocks for a toilet it’s because they don’t have an alternative. He climbs back down, his head hurting, his feet in pain on the hot sand. Nearby there is some kind of marina for wealthy expatriates, expensive yachts lift their silken sails like standards, but he passes it by and goes into the village. He tells himself he’s doing it for the cool of the shade between the huts, but really a curiosity drives him. On the long hot walk back to his room he sees properly for the first time the ragged clothes on the smiling children, the bare interiors of the smoky huts with their two or three pieces of broken furniture, the skeletal dogs slinking away at his approach, and for the first time he chooses to understand why people who live here, whose country this is, might want to run errands for these foreign visitors passing through, and catch fish and cook for them, and clean up after them. It may only be the heat but his headache is very bad, and through the haze of pain the beautiful landscape has receded and broken into disparate elements, the water here, the mountain there, the horizon in another place again, and all of these into their constituent parts too, a series of shapes and textures and lines that have nothing to do with him.

  When he gets back the Irish girl is sitting outside her room in the courtyard, smoking a cigarette. I’m feeling upset, she tells him, I just lost my temper with somebody, I think I was a bit extreme. The person she lost her temper with is an old man who works at the guest-house, she paid him, she says, to do her washing for her, but when he’d finished he hung it up on the line and neglected to take it down and fold it. Is it too much to expect, she wonders aloud, when you pay somebody to do your washing that they should fold it when it’s dry. She smiles and asks, did I go too far.

  He can’t contain it any more, the anger that fuelled his little outburst yesterday is now a rage. Yes, he tells her, you went too far. She looks startled and confused. But why. Because he’s an old man maybe three times your age. Because he lives here, this is his home, and you’re a visitor. Because you’re lucky enough to have the money to pay this old man to wash your clothes, your dirty underwear, while you lie around on the beach, you ought to feel ashamed of yourself instead of being so certain that you’re right.

  He says all of this without raising his voice but he sounds choked and vehement, he himself is startled at how furious he is. She blinks and seems about to cry, such anger for such a little thing, but his anger is not just at her or even at the others in their party, the hottest part of it is for himself. He is as guilty as any of them, he too is passing through, he too has luck and money, all his self-righteousness will not absolve him. After she has gone scurrying off he sits in the twilight outside his room, while his anger cools into misery. Even before she comes back to tell him that she went to the old man and apologized, so everything is all right now, he knows that the spell is broken and he can’t be one of the lotus-eaters any more, he has to move on, move on.

  He leaves the next morning early, as the sun is coming up. Everything is fixed and still in the glassy air, the mountains of Mozambique are visible across the turquoise water of the lake. Talking to the man at the front desk of the guest-house last night, he learned that a ferry will be leaving from Monkey Bay this morning, going up the whole length of the lake. This sounds good to him, he’ll travel north to some other town where nobody knows him. He waits up on the dirt road for the bus.

  When he gets to Monkey Bay the ferry is already at the dock, a rusting agglomeration of metal listing badly to one side. He buys a ticket to Nkhata Bay, halfway up the lake. There is a small crowd of passengers, mostly local people with crates and boxes.

  When the boat starts to move he goes and stands at the rail, in a little while he sees the islands of Cape Maclear floating by. It feels good to be alone in the cool early morning on the lake. After an hour or so the ferry moves in towards the shore again and docks at Salima, where passengers get off and on. He waits till they move out into the middle of the lake again before he starts to wander around. The boat is a whole little world on its own, with passages and stairs and limits and rules, and a slowly increasing population. He stops to watch a crowd pressing in on the hatch where food is served. There are limbs and feet and faces moving, all anonymous and tangled, but when he glances to one side they are st
anding there. The three travellers from the bus. Where have you been.

  They have been back to Lusaka to get their visas. They have had a terrible time. They managed to get a lift with a local man, who was very keen to take them in his car. It turned out that somebody had been using this car to sleep in in the bush and had been murdered in it two nights before, so the back seat was covered in dried blood on which two of them had to perch for the whole long drive. They got to Lusaka on Friday afternoon to discover that the Malawian embassy was closed till Monday, so they sat around in a hotel room to wait. Now they have their visas and are not stopping to linger, they are trying to get up to Tanzania as soon as they can, from where they are hoping to find a boat or a cheap flight that will take them back to Europe. Two of them, the two men, have been travelling in Africa for a long time, nine months or more, and they are eager to get home.

  All this he finds out in little bits and pieces through the day. Soon after he meets up with them, they come out to join him on the front deck. The boat is filling up at every stop and the only way to claim a place is to put your bag down somewhere. Sitting out there in the sun, chatting idly, he discovers that the Swiss travellers are twins. Their names are Alice and Jerome. The Frenchman, Christian, is the only one at all fluent in English. It’s through him that most conversation goes. He tells me that he and Jerome met each other in Mauritania and went on from there through Senegal, Guinea and Mali to the Ivory Coast, from where they flew to South Africa. They have been there a couple of months, in which time Alice joined them, and now they’re on their way home.

  Jerome listens attentively to this account, and now and then he interjects in French with a question or a comment. But when I ask him something, his face stiffens in confusion and he turns to the others for help.