In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Read online

  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.

  He doesn’t understand, Christian says. Ask me.

  So the question has to be repeated to Christian, who translates it, and then translates the reply. The same happens in reverse when Jerome questions me, we look at each other but speak to Christian. This gives the whole conversation a weird formality, through which no personal quality can break. I can never ask what I would like to, what is your relationship with Christian, what bond has kept you going all the way from West Africa. Once the most basic facts have been exchanged there seems nothing more to say.

  Later in the day a wind comes up and the surface of the lake turns choppy. Then the ship starts to pitch and roll, drawing a thin line of queasiness under everything. When the sun goes down it turns suddenly very cold. He is on the other side of the raised middle section of the deck to them, lying head to head with Jerome, and as he settles himself for the night he rolls his eyes up and finds Jerome in exactly the same position, looking back, and for a long arrested moment they hold each other’s gaze before they both look away and try to sleep.

  In fact he doesn’t sleep much, the boat is lurching and the deck is hard and uncomfortable. Dangling above them is a huge metal hook on a crane and all his latent uneasiness becomes focused on this hook, what if it comes loose, what if it falls, he keeps waking from jagged dreams to see that dark shape punched out on the sky. The night is starry and huge, despite this one concentration of dread at the very centre of it, above him.

  In the morning all the bodies stagger up stiffly from the deck, yawning and rubbing their necks. It takes a long time for conversation to start up, but even when everybody around him is talking he doesn’t much feel like words today. He is tired and sore and looking forward to being on land again. They dock at Nkhata Bay soon afterwards. By now the heat is already building and he doesn’t envy them the long voyage to the north, they will only arrive tomorrow. He says goodbye on the deck and this time he knows he won’t see them again. He gets off in a dense press of bodies, the ship’s horn bellows mournfully.

  He shoulders his pack and sets out in the hot sun, heading to a guest-house ten kilometres out of town. By the time he finds the place a few hours have gone by. The setting is lovely, a series of communal bamboo houses on stilts along the edge of the beach. He lays out his sleeping bag at one end of a row of others and changes into shorts and goes out for a swim. He leaves his towel on the beach and swims far out into the lake. The waves are strong and rough here, by the time he comes back to shore he feels replenished and renewed.

  Jerome, Alice and Christian are standing next to his towel, grinning. Hello, they say. It’s us again.

  They changed their minds at the last moment and decided to get off the boat. They thought they would rest here for a day or two and then continue overland. They are staying in a bungalow at the far end of the beach, half-hidden among trees.

  He spends that day with them on the beach. All their towels are laid out in a row, they drift in and out of the water or sprawl in the sun. He gives himself completely to the pagan pleasures of idleness and heat, what wasn’t possible for him with the other travellers down south is perfectly possible here, but underneath his tan he feels troubled. The way in which this mysterious threesome has threaded through his journey bothers him, there is almost the shape of a design to it, in which none of them has a say. Like this little reunion, for instance, it’s purely by chance that they’ve also come to stay at this place, if they’d taken a room in town they would probably not have seen each other again. Or perhaps he wants to see it like this, it’s only human, after all, to look for a hint of destiny where love or longing is concerned.

  He is never alone with Jerome. Once or twice, when Christian has gone off to swim and Alice gets up to join him, it seems he and Jerome will be the only ones left there on the sand. But it doesn’t happen. Christian appears at the last moment, coming up dripping and panting from the lake, throwing himself down on his towel. But if he’s laying claim to the younger man he doesn’t show it, in fact it’s Christian who suggests, sometime in that day or in the one following, that he come along with them to Tanzania. If you feel like it, why not, it will be fun. All of them seem pleased at the thought, there is no resentment or reluctance. Well, he says, I might, let me think about that.

  He does have to think about it, the answer isn’t simple. Apart from the complications of the situation, which will only thicken and grow, there are practical questions to be considered, he meant only to visit Zimbabwe, now he’s in Malawi, does he want to go on to Tanzania. While he tries to make up his mind, he continues to pass the days with the three of them at the lake edge. It is a restful time, the substance of it made of warmth and moving liquid and grains of sand, everything standing still and at the same time pouring and flowing. At the centre of it, the only solid object, is Jerome, lying on his side in his shorts, skin beaded with water, or throwing his hair back out of his eyes, or diving into the waves. He has become relaxed with me now, the questions he sometimes flings out at me through Christian have become more personal in nature. What do you do. Where do you live. But even here he is outside the group, looking in. In the way the three of them talk and joke and gesture there is also the weight of a private history that will always be impervious to him. Things have happened between them that he can never be party to, so that their lives have become subtly joined. Even if he could speak French he could never close up the gap. This sets him apart, making his loneliness resound in him with a high thin note, like the lingering sound of a bell.

  In the evenings they eat their meals together in the restaurant at the top of the hill, after which they say goodnight and go their separate ways. Then he sits alone on the top step outside the hut and watches the lights of canoes in a long row far out. Lightning flares above the lake, like the signature of God.

  On the evening of the second day, or is it the third, when they say goodnight on the beach Christian mentions in an off-hand way that they will be leaving in the morning. They are taking a bus up to Karonga in the north, and going to Tanzania the next day. Almost as an afterthought he adds, have you decided, are you interested in coming.

  He finds himself taking the same tone, his voice surprises him by its flatness. Hmm, he says, yes, I think I will come with you. I’ll go as
far as the border and see if they’ll let me in.

  In the crowd waiting for the bus the next morning is another white traveller, a thin man with black hair and an unconvincing moustache, wearing jeans and a loud purple shirt. After a while he comes sauntering over.

  Where are you going.

  To Tanzania.

  Ah. Me too. He smiles toothily under his moustache. Me, I am from Santiago. In Chile.

  They shake hands. The newcomer’s name is Roderigo, he’s been working in Mozambique but now he’s on his way up to Kenya, somebody has told him that there are cheap flights from Nairobi to India, where for some reason he wants to go before he returns home. He volunteers all this information in the forthright way some people have on the road, he has the melancholy of certain travellers who want to cling, and though nobody feels especially drawn to him they allow him to drift into the group.

  By the time they get to Karonga, far to the north, they are all quiet and withdrawn, the air is smoky with twilight. The bus-station is at the edge of town and they have to walk in with their packs along the drab main road. They take a while to find a place to stay. Karonga is nothing like the villages down south, it’s big and unappealing with that quality of border towns, of transitoriness and traffic and a slightly scuffed danger, even though the border is still sixty kilometres away. In the end they find two rooms in an inn on an untarred back street, the place is made of concrete and filthy inside, the bathrooms furred over with mould. The ugliness stirs a sadness in him, which grows when he is left in one room on his own.

  He has always had a dread of crossing borders, he doesn’t like to leave what’s known and safe for the blank space beyond in which anything can happen. Everything at times of transition takes on a symbolic weight and power. But this too is why he travels. The world you’re moving through flows into another one inside, nothing stays divided any more, this stands for that, weather for mood, landscape for feeling, for every object there is a corresponding inner gesture, everything turns into metaphor. The border is a line on a map, but also drawn inside himself somewhere.

  But in the morning everything is different, even the mud streets have a sort of rough charm. They hitch a lift to the border and go through the Malawian formalities together. Then they walk across a long bridge over a choked green riverbed to the immigration post on the other side.

  It’s only now that he starts to really consider what might happen. Although he’d said airily that he’d see if they would let him in, it didn’t seriously occur to him that they might not. But now, as the little cluster of sheds draws closer, with a boom across the road on the far side, a faint premonition prickles in his palms, maybe this won’t turn out as he hopes. And once they have entered the first wooden shed, and all the others have been stamped through by the dapper little man behind his counter, his passport is taken from him and in the pause that follows, the sudden stillness of the hand as it reaches for the ink, he knows what’s coming. Where is your visa. I didn’t know I needed one. You do.

  That is all. The passport is folded closed and returned to him.

  What can I do.

  The little man shrugs. He is neat and compact and clean, his chin impeccably shaven. Nothing you can do.

  Isn’t there a consulate somewhere.

  Not in Malawi. He turns away to tend to other people, people flowing in and out of the border, people who don’t need visas.

  The little group gathers sadly outside. Cicadas are shrieking on some impossible frequency, like a gang of mad dentists drilling in the tree-tops. The metal roof is humming in the heat. They feel bad on his behalf, he can see it in their faces, but he doesn’t want to meet their eyes. He sits down on a step to wait while they go next door to the health office and customs. He can’t quite believe this is happening. In a sudden flurry of emotion he gets up, goes back inside.

  I heard of somebody who visited Tanzania, he says. A South African. He didn’t need a visa, he got a stamp here.

  Where this memory has come from I don’t know, but it’s true, I did meet such a person. The man’s eyebrows go up. And what did he pay, he says, for this stamp.

  He is stupefied. He doesn’t know what the man paid, he doesn’t know what it has to do with anything. He shakes his head.

  Then I can’t help you.

  Again he turns away to help somebody else. Vibrating with anguish and alarm, he waits for the little man to finish, please, he says, please.

  I told you. I can’t help you.

  Everything that he desires in the world at this moment lies in a space beyond this obtuse and efficient public servant whom he will do anything, anything, to overthrow. What is your name, he says.

  You want my name. The man shakes his head and sighs, his face has yet to yield up an expression, he pulls a black ledger across the counter towards him and opens it. Your passport please.

  Now hope flickers briefly, he saw the names of the others inscribed in a big book too, he gives over his passport. When his name and number have been written down he asks, what is that for.

  You have been refused entry, the little man says, giving his passport back to him, this is the list of names of people who may not enter Tanzania.

  What is your name, he says, you can’t treat me like this. He hears the idiocy of the threat even as he makes it, who would he report this man to and for what, there is nothing he can do, in the world of metaphor and in the real world too he has arrived at a line he cannot cross. He goes back out into the sun, where the others are waiting, commiserative, did you talk to him again, what did he say. No, it’s no good, I can’t come with you. They stand around in the aimless awkwardness of sympathy, but already they’re casting their eyes towards the road and rocking from foot to foot, it’s past the middle of the day.

  We’d better go, Christian says. I’m sorry.

  They write down each other’s addresses. The only piece of paper he has is an old bank statement, he gives it to each of them in turn. Now years later as I write this it lies in front of me on my desk, folded and creased and grubby, carrying its little cargo of names, its different sets of handwriting, some kind of impression of that instant pushed into the paper and fixed there.

  He walks with them to the boom across the road. He may not go further than this. On the other side are flocks of young boys on bicycles, waiting to ferry passengers the six kilometres to the nearest town, where other transport begins. This is where they have to say goodbye. He looks down at his shoes. He finds it difficult to speak.

  Have a good journey, he says eventually.

  Where will you go now.

  I think I’ll go home. I’ve had enough.

  Jerome says, you will come in Switzerland, yes.

  The last word is a question, he answers with a nod, yes I will.

  Then they are gone, climbing onto the bikes, wobbling tentatively into motion and speeding away, such a surreal departure, he stands staring but none of them looks back. Roderigo’s shirt is the last vivid trace of them, the flag of the usurper, the stranger who came to take his place. Meanwhile other boys on bikes are crowding around him, blocking his view, let me take you sir you want a lift me sir me. No, he says, I’m not going with them. He looks down the road a last time, then shoulders his bag and turns. The bridge is long and lonely in the midday heat. He walks.

  When he gets back to the Malawian side he finds himself dealing with the same white-uniformed official who stamped him through. There is a second or two of confusion before the man works it out, weren’t you here half an hour ago.

  Yes, they won’t let me through. They say I need a visa. I don’t have one.

  The man looks at his passport, looks at him, then beckons him closer. Offer him money, he says.

  What.

  That’s what he wants. A little bit of money. Who did you speak to.

  A small guy. Very neat.

  Yes, I know him, he’s a friend of mine. Offer him money.

  He stares back at the man, beginning to understand the conversat
ion he had on the other side of the bridge. That cryptic statement, what did he pay for this stamp, suddenly makes sense, how could he not have seen. I am a fool, he thinks, and not only because of that.

  I was nasty to him, he says. Things turned unpleasant.

  But this man is losing interest too, he opens his palms and shrugs. I go back outside and stand in the sun for a long suspended moment while various possibilities arc past and return. With every second Jerome and Alice and Christian are getting further and further away, even if the little man lets him through is he going to try to catch up with them, they could be anywhere by now. But when he turns and looks back into Malawi, down the long blue road shimmering away into the distance, the prospect of retracing his steps seems just as impossible. He feels as if he’ll never move again.

  Then suddenly he is running over the bridge, his pack jouncing on his back. When he comes to the shed he is pouring sweat and panting, please, he says, there is something I remembered.

  The little man seems unsurprised to see him. His attention is on the starched cuffs of his shirt.