In a Strange Room (3 page)

 

 

N
ow that Reiner is here he takes the atlas down and they both pore over it anxiously. They are looking for a country full of open space, with few cities. In the time they've spent talking about the trip they have agreed on the sort of conditions ideal for them. Neither of them is looking for lots of people or busy roads or built-up areas. So there is Botswana. There is Namibia. There is Zimbabwe.

 

And what is this place here.

 

Lesotho.

 

What do you know about this place.

 

He doesn't know much, he's never been there, nor have any of his friends. He knows it's full of mountains and very poor and surrounded entirely by South Africa, but apart from this the country is a mystery to him. They both sit looking at it.

 

Maybe we should go there.

 

Maybe we should.

 

These might not be the words they use, but the decision is as light and unconsidered as this, one moment they don't know where they are going, the next they are off to Lesotho.

 

They make their way to a government office in town the next day and are given a map, on which all the roads and settlements and altitudes are clearly marked. To me this map looks ideal, but Reiner studies it dubiously.

 

What's the matter.

 

Don't you think we should get bigger maps. With more detail. Four or five of them for the whole country.

 

But what for.

 

Then we can plan every part of the walk.

 

But we can plan with this.

 

But not enough.

 

They look at each other, this is the first time they're out of step. But the man behind the desk says that he doesn't have more detailed maps anyway, this is the best he can do. It's fine, I say, we'll take it. But later in the day Reiner says, we must look when we get up to Lesotho.

 

Look for what.

 

For maps with more detail.

 

These contradictions are confusing, here is a man who finds a proper bed unnecessary but for whom a perfectly good map is insufficient. The next day Reiner takes himself off to the local library to read up on Lesotho. This is a relief, at least we will know something about where we're going, but when he gets back it turns out he hasn't found out about the history of the country at all. Instead he's researched the climate, the terrain and topography, everything coded into numbers.

 

Numbers are some form of security for Reiner. When he is offered coffee in the evening he says no, I've had two cups already today, I don't drink more than two cups every twelve hours. When they go walking anywhere he wants to know how many kilometres it is. If he doesn't know, or if he doesn't know exactly, then Reiner looks displeased.

 

So even in the first few days I become aware of certain differences between them. But there is no time to worry about this. There are still two weeks before they leave and he has a lot to do, he must settle his accounts and put all his things into storage. He is feeling harried and under pressure and in this state he would prefer to be alone. But he is hardly ever alone. Even when he leaves his flat on the most mundane errand Reiner is always with him. He is worn down by the constant presence, like some kind of dark attendant angel, ironic and brooding, his face almost petulant. And Reiner in his turn seems irritated by all these tasks and duties, the requirements of a normal life are beneath him.

 

Why must you do all these stupid things.

 

I have to. They have to be done.

 

Why, Reiner says, smirking.

 

It is a mystery who attends to all the mundane necessities of Reiner's life at home. When he thinks about it, he knows nothing about Reiner, but if he asks he doesn't get anywhere. He finds out that his parents are deeply religious, but beyond that he has no idea about his family or his background. Though he is genuinely interested, he senses a deep reluctance on the other side to respond.

 

Once he asks Reiner, what do you do for money.

 

What do you mean, what do I do.

 

How do you earn it. Where does it come from.

 

Money comes. You shouldn't worry about it.

 

But you have to work for money.

 

I got paid in Canada. For planting trees.

 

And before that.

 

I am a philosopher, Reiner says, and the conversation stops there, he is silenced by the idea, a philosopher, what does this mean. Are philosophers exempt from work, who supports them, what do they do exactly. He supposes that philosophers have no time for the ordinary errands of the world, and perhaps this is why Reiner is irritated by all his running around.

 

What would you prefer to be doing.

 

Walking.

 

We do walk.

 

Not enough. We should be in training for this trip. We must get into a routine, I can see you aren't fit.

 

Once Reiner makes them go on a long hike. We need a challenge, he says. To prepare us. They take a bus to Kloofnek, they walk along the pipe track past Camps Bay and almost to Llandudno, the landscape here with its grey stone and turquoise sea is very like Greece, the past echoes in concentric rings through time, they climb up over the top of the mountain and down the other side at Constantia Nek and from there through forest all the way back to Rondebosch, six or seven hours have gone by, their feet are blistered, they are dizzy with hunger. I feel faint, he says, I must eat. I also feel faint, Reiner says, it is an interesting feeling, I don't want to eat.

 

This is another difference between them, what is painful to the one is interesting to the other. The South African also loves to walk, but not constantly and obsessively, he is also drawn to extremity, but not when it becomes dangerous and threatening, he is incapable of examining his own pain like a spore on a slide and finding it interesting, interesting. If your own pain is interesting to you, how much more detached will you be from somebody else's pain, and it's true that there is something in Reiner that looks at all human failings with dispassion, maybe even with disdain. What has given rise to this coldness in him I don't know.

 

What Reiner wants is to be preparing with single-mindedness for this trip, he would like to dispense with all external trivia, the words he used on the balcony that night express some basic truth for him, people need too many things it is not necessary. He sits studying that map of Lesotho for hours, he has traced out in it a series of possible routes in red pen. I look at these thin lines with fear, they are like veins going through some strange internal organ, it feels at times that for Reiner this country is only a concept, some abstract idea that can be subjugated to the will. When he talks it's in terms of distances and altitudes, spatial dimensions that can be collapsed into formulas, there is no mention of people or history, nothing matters except himself and the empty place he's projecting himself into. What about the politics, I say, we haven't looked at the human situation, we don't know what we're getting into. Reiner stares at him with bemusement, then waves a contemptuous hand. Even here in South Africa, where he has never been, Reiner has no interest in what is happening around him, when he goes on his long walks through the streets he has a pair of earplugs that he pushes into his ears, he doesn't want external noises to intrude, his dark intense stare goes out ahead of him but is in reality turned inward.

 

But at this point there are only dim intimations of unease. He is excited about the trip. The little bit of friction between Reiner and himself will go, he is sure, when they are out of the city and alone together on the road. Neither of them was made for sedentary living.

 

He borrows a tent from a friend. Reiner insists that they put it up in the garden outside the flat. It takes a long time, the poles and pegs are like a strange new alphabet they have to learn. Everything must be borrowed or bought, gas-stove and cylinders water-filter torch knives and forks plastic plates a basic medicine-kit, he has never travelled in this way before, the strangeness of everything scares him, but it thrills him too, the thought of casting away his normal life is like freedom, the way it was when they met each other in Greece. And maybe that is the true reason for this journey, by shedding all the ballast of familiar life they are each trying to recapture a sensation of weightlessness they remember but perhaps never lived, in memory more than anywhere else travelling is like free-fall, or flight.

 

At some time in those last two weeks the question of money comes up. There are practical questions to be considered, such as how they will pay for themselves along the way. Reiner says that he has Canadian dollars that he wants to use up and so it's best if he is in charge of money. But what about me, I say.

 

You can pay me back later.

 

So I should write down what I spend.

 

Reiner nods and shrugs, money is trivial, it is not important.

 

Now everything is prepared. He finds himself saying goodbye to people with an edge of uneasiness, as if he might not be coming back. In every departure, deep down and tiny, like a black seed, there is the fear of death.

 

 

T
hey take a train into the city. At the station they get onto a bus and ride through the night. It's difficult to sleep and they keep jolting awake to see the metallic grey landscape sliding past outside. They arrive in Bloemfontein at first light on a Sunday and walk through the deserted streets till they find a taxi rank from where they can get a minibus taxi to the Lesotho border. They have to wait for hours until the taxi is full. Reiner sits on the back seat, his rucksack on his knees and his head on his rucksack, earplugs wedged into his ears.

 

I wander around and come back, then wander again. A large part of travelling consists purely in waiting, with all the attendant ennui and depression. Memories come back of other places he has waited in, departure halls of airports, bus stations, lonely kerbsides in the heat, and in all of them there is an identical strain of melancholy summed up in a few transitory details. A paper bag blowing in the wind. The mark of a dirty shoe on a tile. The irregular sputter of a fluorescent bulb. From this particular place he will retain the vision of a cracked brick wall growing hotter and hotter in the sun.

 

When they leave it is already afternoon. The drive isn't far, a little over an hour, and they pass through a flat country of farmland, dirt roads going off on either side. They are the focus of unspoken curiosity in the crowded vehicle. Reiner is palpably unhappy at this enforced proximity to people, he has the air of someone holding his breath.

 

At the other end they get out into queues waiting to go through customs, the uniforms and dark glasses and barricades and discoloured rooms the elements of all border crossings. They pass through and over a long bridge across a river and are stamped through again on the other side. Now they have crossed a line on a map and are inside another country, in which the potentialities of fate are different from the ones they've left behind.

 

Where they go and what they do from here is unknown, he had some idea that they would simply set out, the road unrolling before them, but what they are confronted with instead is a sprawling border city, hotels and casinos on both sides of a dirty thoroughfare, crowds milling idly on the pavements, and it is already late in the day. They consult and decide that they will take a room for the night. Tomorrow they will abandon rooms for good. One hotel is as bad as another, they settle for the first one on the left, they are given a room high up over the street.

 

To pass the time they go walking around this city, Maseru. They go up and down the main street, they look at shops, they go to a supermarket and buy some food. Between them there is an excitement made partly from fear, they are committed to a situation of which the outcome is unknown, travel and love have this much in common. He doesn't love Reiner but their companionship does have the shape of a dark passion in it.

 

When they get back to the hotel they walk around there too. They go down the back steps into the garden. There is a wooden shed in the corner. A sign on the door says sauna. Inside is a woman of about fifty, something in her eyes is worn-out and finished, she is feverishly pleased to see them. Come in, come in, have a sauna. The sauna is tepid with no steam, the walls are just the wooden walls of the shed. No, no, we were just looking, maybe later. No, come now, have a massage, I give you a good massage. She is actually holding onto our arms.

 

When we get outside he says to Reiner, she was selling herself.

 

Reiner says nothing, but something in his expression is an answer nevertheless. He is silent and brooding all the way through supper in the dining room and upstairs again in the room. It's still early, but the rest of the evening stretches pointlessly away.

 

I think I will go out, Reiner says.

 

Where to.

 

Maybe I will have a sauna.

 

He goes out and I stand at the window for a long time, thinking. The lights of the city spread in every direction, but a deep darkness rings them round. He waits for Reiner to come back, but he doesn't come and doesn't come, and eventually he goes to bed.

 

When he wakes again it's morning and Reiner is on the other bed with only the cover over him. The cloth has fallen down and he isn't wearing anything underneath. The German is always delicate and fastidious about covering his body, and this careless abandonment feels like an announcement of some kind. The long brown back narrows down to the place where the buttocks divide, where paler skin makes fur and shadow stand out in relief, now Reiner turns, there is the briefest flash of an erection before his sleeping hand pulls up the cover, I get up in a turmoil of longing and revulsion, did he really do that last night.

 

Yes, he says.

 

You went back and slept with that woman.

 

Yes. He is smiling again, a thin supercilious smile, this is later in the day, he is sitting on the edge of the bed with a towel around his waist. Some part of Reiner is perpetually balanced on a high rocky crag, looking down on the moral confusion of the plain. When I was in Canada I started sleeping with whores.

 

Why.

 

I have a lot of tension. Sex helps me to get rid of tension.

 

This isn't an answer to the question but he doesn't ask again, it's obvious that he is perturbed and somehow this has made him weak, he nods and changes the subject but in his mind he cannot let go of the lined exhausted face of the woman in the sauna, the way she held onto our arms.

 

They dress and pack up and go. Only now are they truly departing, all the rest has been preparation. With the rucksacks on their backs they walk, the height and nature of the surrounding buildings change, but the city continues and continues. They are heading towards a high ridge at the eastern edge, hours go by but they seem to get no closer, it begins to appear that they will spend their second night here too.

 

But then they are on the long dirt road that climbs the ridge and slowly the tin roofs and gardens drop away till they are ascending the final slope with brown rocks and scrub on either side. When they reach the top they pause for one last look back into the simmering miasmic pot from which they've climbed and then go on. There is another ridge behind the first and now they are in a different place.

 

Mountains go on and on, the world of right angles and rigid lines has been subsumed into one of undulations and dips, graphs that chart moods in striations of colour, browns deepening into shades of blue that almost blur into the sky. It is late afternoon. But hot. Objects at the roadside, a tree, a broken plough, wax and wane in the fuming air. At first the landscape is empty, untilled and unworked, but over the next rise, or perhaps the next, there are fields, maybe tiny human figures toiling, a hut or a house in the distance. They stop and rest in a shady spot, it is incredible to him, perhaps to both of them, that they are here, what was an unconsidered line in a letter months ago has come to pass.

 

They walk and walk, all the motion latent in the vast curves of the earth somehow contracted into the dynamics of this movement, one leg swinging past the other, each foot planted and uprooted in turn, the whole surface of the world has been trodden down just like this over time. The rucksack is heavy, the belt cuts into his hips and shoulders, his toes and heels are chafing in his boots, his mouth is dry, all the loose and disconnected thoughts of his brain cohere around the will and impulse to go on. Alone he would not. Alone he would sit down and not move again, or alone he would not be here at all, but he is here and this fact in itself makes him subservient to the other, who pulls him along in his wake as if on thin threads of power.

 

They do not talk. There is, yes, an occasional conversation, but about practical things, where will we sleep, should we have a rest, otherwise they walk, sometimes next to each other, sometimes apart, but always alone. It's strange that all this space, unconfined by artificial limits as it spills to the horizon, should throw you back so completely into yourself, but it does, I don't know when I was last so intensely concentrated into a single point, see me walking on that dust road with my face washed clean of all the usual emotions, the strains and strivings to link up with the world. Maybe deep meditation makes you feel that way. And maybe that is what Reiner means when he says that night that walking has a rhythm that takes you over.

 

What do you mean.

 

If you walk and walk for long enough, the rhythm takes over.

 

There is a vagueness to the way he says this that makes you want to leave the topic there, this is often the case with Reiner, he offers a thought that's interesting or profound and perhaps not his own, and on the other side of it you sense a blankness that he can't fill up, there are no further thoughts to follow on. He waits in silence for you to speak. Sometimes you do, but not tonight, I am too tired, they are sitting side by side in a small cave, an overhang in the rock.

 

It is almost dark. This is hours and hours after they left the city, he would have liked to stop long ago but Reiner wanted to continue, only after the sun has set does he finally concede that it's time to pitch the tent, but now there is nowhere that looks hospitable, there are fields on one side and a bare ridge on the other, this is too exposed, it feels wrong, let's just go over the ridge and take a look. And there by chance they find the cave, Reiner has the calm triumphant look of someone who knew all the time, what his look implies is that he is attuned to the rhythms of the universe, the rhythms of walking no different to those of living, go bravely to extremes and everything will be provided. See, no need to put up the tent. I am less enthusiastic, are we really going to do this, sleep out in the open like a pair of tramps, he is spoiled and soft, he lacks the fatalism of his hard companion, and shepherds have shat in little piles around the cave. But as it gets darker and the world contracts to the size of the tiny overhang, it is more pleasant to be here, in the circle of firelight they've made with their hands.

 

In front of the cave the earth drops away into a vast valley, in the light the hugeness of this space was frightening but now it has become consoling, far far below are the tiny isolated fires of herdsmen, the distant sound of cowbells carries up in quavering echoes, when they have boiled water and eaten a sense of well-being descends, all the rifts and ruptures of the world knitted up and healed, hours of sleep ahead.

 

He spreads his sleeping bag and lies down on one side, staring out into the dark. After a moment Reiner comes over and crouches down behind him. They say nothing, the silence thickens into tension and then Reiner says, in one of your letters.

 

Yes.

 

You said you were looking forward to seeing me again.

 

Yes.

 

What did you mean by that.

 

He doesn't know what he meant by that but he knows what Reiner means by this. He can't help it, but all day on the road his mind has conjured images it doesn't want, he keeps seeing that woman from last night, filled to the brim with such febrile desperation, he sees Reiner on top of her, bending her into plastic poses with his brown hands. What Reiner wants now would be no different than with the woman, a ritual performed without tenderness or warmth or sensual pleasure.

 

But the truth is also that there is an answering impulse of subservience in him, part of him wants to give in, I see shadows thrown up in grappling contortions on the roof of the cave.

 

I don't know what I meant.

 

You don't know what you meant.

 

I was looking forward to seeing you.

 

Nothing else.

 

Not that I can think of.

 

Reiner nods slowly. Neither of them is quite the person that by mutual agreement they have been till now, the rules will be different from tonight. He can smell the smoky sweat of the other man, or perhaps it is his own, not a bad smell, and then Reiner gets up and moves away to the far side of the cave to settle himself. They don't speak again. The fire slowly subsides, the shadows fade, the sound of bells continues in the air.