In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Read online

  In this dangerous state we head off, leaving Jean and Goa behind. I have some misguided notion that movement might be good for her, that the feeling of life passing by might suspend her internal clamour. And things are all right at first. There are a few days in Cochin, a cruise on the Kerala backwaters. But by the time they arrive in Varkala, a clifftop town far to the south, the strain between them is beginning to tell. Anna has to be ceaselessly attended to or she lapses into depression. She can’t sit still for even a few minutes without becoming profoundly agitated. She’s always breaking things or bumping into furniture or falling down. The talk about Jean is incessant and insane. Likewise the unpacking and repacking of her rucksack, which has long since lost its amusement value. When she’s left alone for even a short while she gets into potentially harmful interactions with strangers along the way. On one occasion, for example, she has a physical fight with a peculiar Swiss woman who’s mistreating a kitten on the beach, and another time she allows a shifty-looking older man, staying at the same hotel, to give her a body massage in his room.

  In all of this he is constantly running behind, anxiously cleaning up or checking on her. He has begun to feel like a querulous maiden aunt, always worried and unhappy, and she has started to play the other part, of the innocent unfairly put upon, her wide eyes startled at the upset. Under the actual words they speak another dialogue is in progress, in which she is somehow a victim and I the nagging bully. I don’t like this role, I try to pull back from it, and there are times when I am genuinely unsure which of us is out of touch. Besides which, he’s afraid of a moment of truth, because he has no real power over her. If he tries to exert his authority and she refuses to obey, well, what could he do about that. If she walks out the door with her bag, telling him to get lost, he would have no recourse but to plead. Then they might both see where the power lies.

  It’s begun to feel to him as if a stranger has taken up residence in her, somebody dark and reckless that he doesn’t trust, who wants to consume Anna completely. This stranger is still cautious, still biding her time. Meanwhile the person that he knows is visible, and sometimes in the ascendant. Then he can speak reasonably to her and feel that she is hearing, or laugh with her about something funny, or enlist her on his side. But the dark stranger always appears again, peering slyly over her shoulder, doing something alarming, and the softer Anna shrinks away. At moments the pair of them are there together, the sister-Anna and her scary twin, and they jostle each other for the upper hand. It’s an uneven battle, the stranger is certainly stronger, but I keep hoping the pills will vanquish her.

  I’m not a patient man by nature and the struggle is exhausting. My tolerance reaches a tipping point one afternoon when she wanders in from the beach, her face slack and empty. I stare at her for a moment, then ask quietly, are you stoned.

  Yes, she says, smiling. Some guy out there offered me a toke.

  He loses his temper. There has been irritation and upset till now, but this is something else, an explosion fuelled by despair. That’s it, I tell her, you’ve broken every promise you made, you’ve broken our trust in you. This wasn’t supposed to be a holiday, you were supposed to be working on yourself, now look what’s happened. I’m taking you to Bombay tomorrow and sending you home.

  The anger is real but the words are a bluff, even as he speaks he knows that he can’t follow through. This is high season, the flights are very full, there is almost no chance she’d get a seat. But even if it could be arranged he can hear the nagging aunt in himself again, how churlish and unreasonable it sounds, sending her home two weeks early for puffing on a joint.

  She weeps like a child, but his heart stays closed to her, the reserves of empathy are running out. When this raw exchange is over both of them feel empty, and it’s still in a state of hollowness the next morning that he decides to make her an offer. No drugs of any kind, except those that have been prescribed for her, and only one drink a day. Any deviation from this agreement and he will carry out his threat. Is it a deal, he asks.

  Her numb face nods slowly. It’s a deal.

  Shake on it, I say, and we clasp hands. This is not a renewal of friendship, it’s a formal gesture of commitment, a contract that binds them both. But it feels as if he’s claimed a victory, however small, over the bad other person inside her.

  They go on to Madurai, where there is a spectacular temple he imagines she might like to photograph. He’s seen the temple and all the other stops on their journey before, he has planned this route only for her, he wants to give her an enjoyable time and distract her from herself. But an increasing desperation underlies this enterprise, nothing holds her attention for long. She rushes through the temple and almost immediately falls into frenzy again. This is making me depressed, she says, let’s go somewhere else. They visit a flower market and move on to a museum, but the effect is the same. Eventually he can’t take it any more. I can’t run around like this, he says, you go where you want to, I’ll meet you at the station later.

  They are booked on an overnight train to Bangalore. They have left their luggage at the station cloakroom that morning, and when he meets her there in the late afternoon she’s repacking her rucksack and crying. We have to talk about what’s happening between us, she says. I don’t have anything to say, he answers wearily, and for the first time this is true. There is a fatal coldness in him towards her by now, he makes murmurous gestures of support, but his heart is vacant and she knows it. For some reason this tiny incident undoes her, she cries and cries without stopping, while he stares into space. He is just very tired, too tired to comfort her right now, perhaps tomorrow he will be strong enough again, and this is a crucial difference between them, he thinks in terms of tomorrow and the day after that, but for her there is only now, which is eternity.

  Even on the train she continues to cry. Then she seems to reach a point of resolution and pulls herself together. She takes out her rucksack and starts her rummaging around. None of this is unusual, until she suddenly turns to him with panic in her eyes.

  What is it.

  My pills, she says. They’re not here. They’re gone. Somebody’s stolen them.

  What do you mean, they must be there, look again.

  She’s unpacking the rucksack now, the whole carriage is watching the scene. No, they’re not here, somebody’s stolen them, and she glares around wildly as if the culprit is right there.

  The absurdity of the idea only strikes me by degrees. Who would steal your medicine, Anna. What would be the point.

  I don’t know, but. Then her face changes shape as something else occurs to her. Wait. No, I remember now. I took them out at the station while I was packing my bag.

  You left them there.

  I think so. In the cloakroom.

  They stare at each other, while the tremendous mass of the train rushes on, every click of the wheels putting more distance between Anna and the medicine that has been holding her life together. This is a disaster, and the knowledge spreads across her face in a fresh upwelling of tears. Oh my God what will we do now.

  The gulf between them has closed, he is joined with her in a flurry of high emotion. If she did leave the pills in the cloakroom there is a slim chance they might still be there. You’re sure, Anna, you’re sure that’s where they are.

  Yes, yes, I’m certain. She is wailing now, a spectacular display of distress, and everybody in the compartment has gathered around. There is jabbering and commotion. Somebody calls the conductor. He listens gravely to the story, then throws up his hands, nothing he can do about their problem.

  But Anna is insistent, she won’t let up. I will die without my medicine, she cries dramatically, and this persuades the hapless conductor to stop the train. At some nameless siding in the middle of the night the whole chain of carriages comes juddering to a halt and Anna descends with the uniformed man in tow and they go down the platform to find a phone, while I sit guarding the luggage. People hang out of the windows, watching and commenting. Others c
ome to question me, what is the problem, why is your lady friend crying. It’s as if her chaos has leaked out somehow and touched the physical world, throwing people and objects into disarray.

  When she comes back there is still no clear answer. The cloakroom has been closed for the night, perhaps the medicine is there, perhaps not. As if to underline their uncertainty, the train starts to move again, a slow and noisy acceleration into the dark. I sit, pondering. Maybe it would be better to jump out at the next station and try to retrace our steps. Or maybe it would be better to go all the way to Bangalore, which is a major centre, and try to get some help there. What’s not in doubt is that she’s dependent on that little assortment of pills and if this is how mad she’s been when she’s taking them he doesn’t want to think about how she’ll be without them.

  At this point a kindly avuncular man, who’s been sitting opposite them since the start of the journey, speaks up. He is Mr Hariramamurthy, he tells us, and perhaps he can be of assistance. He is going to a station near Bangalore but he will come to the last stop with us and speak to the railway police there, he’s sure they’ll be able to help.

  No doubt these are merely polite words, when we get to the other end Mr Hariramamurthy will have disappeared. But when we pull in to Bangalore the next morning there he is, standing by, ready to assist. Like helpless children we trail along behind him as he bustles from office to office, having complicated conversations with various functionaries, none of whom want to be bothered with our case. But Mr Hariramamurthy is not deterred. There are retiring rooms upstairs at the station, he tells us, take one of these rooms and call me in two hours on this number. He hands us his card.

  We manage to get a room. It seems like a reasonable option, the next train back to Madurai is this evening, if we have no solution by then we will make the journey. But when I ring Mr Hariramamurthy later in the morning he tells us he has good news. His cousin works for the railways in some capacity, and has managed to track down the medicine. It will be sent on the train tonight and we have only to wait in our room, it will be delivered to the door.

  This seems too good to be true, I am full of unworthy suspicion, surely we’re being set up somehow. But we have no choice except to wait. We will be vigilant, whatever the scam is we won’t fall for it, at the very worst we’ll have lost a day, we can always go back tomorrow.

  In the meanwhile they go into Bangalore and wander around. Anna is more manic than he has ever seen her, she fizzes and fiddles without stopping, her conversation jumping from one topic to another, how she’s not ready to go back to South Africa yet, how she’s almost sure her relationship at home is over, everything depends on Jean now, if she asks him maybe he’ll come back to Goa and meet her before she goes home. Anna, I say, that’s crazy, he’s only just got back to France himself. She looks at me with wide, confused eyes, and in her stare I can see that she’s lost all sense of time.

  At some point in that long day, perhaps in the street, perhaps when they get back to the room, she says it. The revelation comes casually, without weight or significance, but it wipes out the surrounding world. You know, I was going to kill myself on the train.

  What.

  That’s why I was looking for the medication. I was going to take all of it, then lie down to sleep.

  You’re not serious.

  Yes, I am.

  We look at each other and I see how serious she is.

  But why, I say, why.

  She shrugs and laughs. Since this crisis broke some of their old closeness has returned, in their room upstairs at the station they have guffawed uproariously at the sound of the train timetables being broadcast over speakers downstairs, it’s all too absurd to be taken seriously. That morning in town she’d bought him a book in which she’d written, I love you very much my friend, and the words had felt renewed and true. Everything that has weighed them down has lifted, there is a lightness to their companionship that goes back many years, so that both of them seem stunned by the announcement she’s just made. I don’t know, she says, puzzled.

  I suddenly felt like dying.

  He can’t answer this immediately, perhaps he never can. Ever since he’s known her there’s been this talk about killing herself one day. It never comes up in a dramatic way, more as a casual aside in conversation. He remembers asking her, for example, how she imagines she might look when she grows old, to which she immediately replies that she never will be old. She is always planning her funeral, telling her friends to play this piece of music, or to have the service in that particular church, and her tone at these moments suggests that she herself will be present, a spectator at the event. It’s hard not to feel manipulated when she speaks like this, and it’s hard, too, to feel constantly alarmed by a threat you’ve heard so many times over. Besides which, why would somebody like Anna, in perfect physical health, loved and admired and desired by so many people, want to die. There’s no plausible reason, so that even now, when he can see that she means it, he can’t quite get a hold on what she says. And in any case she’s instantly off on some fresh upheaval, knocking over the lamp or losing the keys to the room, and it all becomes one ongoing crisis he’s trying to contain. That’s how it is with Anna, death at one moment, farce the next, and it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between the two.

  It’s a couple of days before he can bring himself to speak about it and even then he does so tentatively, approaching the question in a circle. Did you think about what you were doing to me, he asks her. Did you think about what it would be like for me to be left alone with your dead body in India.

  She considers the matter seriously for a while, then nods. Point taken, she says.

  Incredibly, the medicine arrives in the morning. There’s a knock on the door and a man is standing outside, holding the little black bag. Anna seizes it from him, her relief is like joy, the means of her death feels like life to her today.

  Now they can resume their journey and after leaving effusive messages of thanks for Mr Hariramamurthy they travel on to Hampi. This is a day away from their starting point in Goa, to which they still intend to return, but meanwhile they plan a short sojourn in this extraordinary site. The ruins of an ancient Hindu empire spread across a massive landscape of boulders and weird hills, like a kind of ruin in itself. You could spend days here, just wandering, but almost immediately the recent equanimity starts to unravel. Anna can’t cope with the setting, the desolation echoes something in her, she’s soon back in her familiar pattern. No sooner have they arrived at one spot than she wants to rush on to the next, nothing contains her, nothing holds her in. This place is shit, she tells him, I want to go back to Goa.

  There’s nothing for it but to cut the stay short. He books tickets on the train for the next day. They’re only due to leave at nine in the morning, but she’s already up at five o’clock, making a racket as she tries to open the door, and he loses his cool with her. For God’s sake, why don’t you take your sleeping pills at night. Because I don’t need them. But obviously you do.

  The train is a slow one, stopping at every station, and the long, hot hours pass mostly in silence, not the silence of companionship any more but of exhaustion, of some deep reserve that’s been used up. There are two weeks left of this trip and he’s resolved that they’ll spend all of it in one spot, close to the beach, where she seems to feel more calm than elsewhere. After that he’ll be free again, pursuing his own travels for another four months.

  They arrive in the village after dark. The mood in the downstairs restaurant at the hotel is festive and the merriment infects them. They have dinner with some of the other guests and it’s as if they never left. That night they sleep in the same room upstairs, in the same bed, and the big looping journey they’ve made is just one more completed circle, bringing them back to exactly the same point.

  The next morning she wakes him before dawn again, banging around in the dark. It’s a repeat of the previous day, though only he remembers it. What do you want me to do, she cries
, if I’m awake I’m awake. I want you to take your sleeping pills, he says, that’s why you’ve got them, isn’t it. He’s too cross to sleep again, so he gets up, scratchy with tiredness, and goes for a long walk on the beach. When he gets back she’s sitting downstairs having breakfast, but he doesn’t join her, why exactly I can’t say. Would it make any difference to what follows, perhaps it would, perhaps everything comes down to one silence too many. He sits at a table by himself, like a stranger, and when he’s done he comes over. I’m going to Margao, I tell her. To do some shopping.

  She nods, I still recall the blue stare of her eyes.

  He catches a bus into Margao and spends an hour at the shops. When he gets back to the room at mid-morning the door is locked from the inside. She opens when he knocks and then retreats to the bed. He notices that she’s wearing her nightdress over her bikini and next to her is a half-finished bottle of beer, as well as a small teddy bear she’s carried everywhere with her for comfort.

  Were you sleeping.

  I had a swim earlier, I feel tired.

  There’s a curious feeling in the room, the spiky angles of confrontation that filled their earlier exchange have gone, she seems soft and somehow younger, as if she’s retreated into childhood. The curtains have been drawn and there’s a stillness over everything, completely at odds with the time of day. In retrospect these signs are obvious, so obvious that they constitute a signal, and it’s an indication of how worn out he is, how lost in the endless repetitions of the scenario, that he doesn’t understand. Afterwards he will blame himself, he blames himself even now, for his failure to see what is plainly in front of him.