In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Read online

  The South African I told you about. The one who got the stamp. I just remembered what he paid.

  No. The tidy little head shakes sadly. Your name is in the book. When your name is in the book it can’t come out.

  Twenty dollars.

  No.

  Thirty.

  I thought you wanted my name. I thought you wanted to report me.

  I made a mistake. I was upset. I’m very sorry about it. I apologize.

  You were rude to me. It is a pity. You said you wanted my name.

  I said I was sorry.

  I am also sorry. It is not possible.

  The circular discussion goes on and on. He feels as if he is doing battle with some mythical doorkeeper whom he has to overcome, but he doesn’t have the right weapons or words. After a while another man comes in, also in uniform, but completely unlike the first man, this one is slovenly and unkempt, chewing a stick between his teeth. Hello hello hello, he says, what’s the problem here.

  No problem. We’re just talking.

  I’m the boss here, talk to me.

  He looks warily at the new man. He has a gun and handcuffs on his belt and the sort of hearty bonhomie that might conceal a zealous devotion to duty. He ought to be careful, but there isn’t time. He clears his throat. I don’t have a visa, he says, but I need to get into Tanzania. Can you help me.

  Now a long conversation ensues between these two officials, in which the black book is opened and examined, his passport is perused, much deliberation goes back and forth. Every word of their two encounters, it seems, is being repeated and examined. At the end of this process the boss man starts to upbraid him. You have been rude to my friend. You have upset him.

  I apologized to him. I said I was sorry.

  Say it again.

  My friend, I’m sorry for being rude. I wasn’t thinking.

  That’s better, the boss man says. Now everybody is polite.

  His name, indelibly inscribed in the great black book, is crossed out, and all things become possible again. Now that the door is opening at last, he is frantic to catch up. But neither of these two men is prepared to rush, they must see to the details at their own leisurely pace. The boss in particular wants to explain the ethics of this transaction to him, if you want a man to break the law, he says, if you want him to risk his job, then you must make it worthwhile for this man.

  Forty dollars makes it worthwhile.

  The rest of the informalities are concluded, have you got a yellow fever vaccination, a cholera vaccination, no, then don’t go to the health office, just pass through. The stamp you’re getting isn’t a visa, it’s an entry stamp, so you’re not legal, if you get caught it’s your own problem, all right. All right. Come, I’ll walk with you over the border.

  In the end both of them come to see him off, standing at the boom like a pair of friendly relatives, waving. Have a nice time. Instantly the flocks of bicycle boys are around him, take me sir, me sir, take me. He chooses one who looks sturdy and strong. I have to try to catch my friends, I’ll pay you double if you go as fast as you can. Yes sir, very fast. He climbs on, the boy has wired an extra seat onto the cross-bar for himself, they go toiling down the road.

  It was Christian’s plan, he knows, to catch a bus to Mbeya, a town about three hours away, from where there is a train to Dar es Salaam tonight. He has to find them before they leave, in the big city he will never see them again. He still has hopes that they might be waiting to catch the bus. Faster, he calls to the pedalling boy, can’t you go faster. The scene feels bizarre. There are bicycles going in both directions, some with passengers, some without. The road goes up and down between green rolling hills, the sun beats down. The boy works frantically, pouring sweat, and every now and then turns his head to blow a jet of snot out of his nose. Sorry, he calls back over his shoulder. Don’t be sorry, just go faster.

  But when they come to the first little town the roadside is bare and deserted. He gets down and looks around, as if they might be hiding nearby. Where are my friends, he asks, but the boy shakes his head and grins. The friends of this peculiar man are no concern of his.

  So he waits for the next bus to come. It’s as if he’s arrived at a place outside time, in which only he feels its lack. He paces up and down, he throws pebbles at a tree, he watches a file of ants going into a hole in the ground, all in a bid to summon time again. When the interval is over perhaps an hour and a half has passed. By then a small crowd is swelling next to the road and everybody clambers on board the bus at once. He ends up without a seat and has to hang on to roof racks in the aisle. Outside there is a mountainous green countryside quilted with tea plantations. Banana trees clap their broad leaves in applause.

  It’s a full three hours or more before the road begins to descend from this high hilly country and the edges of Mbeya accrete around him. By now the sun is setting and in the dwindling light all he can see are low, sinister buildings, made mostly of mud, crouching close to the ground. He climbs down at the edge of a crowded street swirling with fumes. He asks a woman nearby, do you know where the station is. Somebody else overhears him and repeats it to somebody else, and he finds himself escorted by a stranger to a group of men loitering nearby. He saw them when he got off the bus, an expressionless and hard-looking bunch wearing caps and dark glasses, exuding menace. One of them says that he will take him to the station for five dollars. He hesitates for a few seconds in renewed panic, he’s afraid of this man in dark glasses whose car, he sees, has dark windows too, is he really going to drive off into these anonymous streets walled in by so much dark glass. But he’s come this far and he doesn’t know what else to do.

  The man drives very fast in complete silence and then pulls up in front of a long building that is completely in darkness. By now it’s night. There is a chain on the front door and not a living soul in sight. Five dollars, the man says.

  I want you to wait for me. I might need a lift somewhere else.

  The man waits, brooding and watchful, while he fumbles his way up and down the length of the building, calling and knocking. Eventually he finds a window behind which a light is burning. He raps and raps on the glass until somebody comes, peering out suspiciously at him.

  Yes.

  Excuse me. Is there a train to Dar es Salaam tonight.

  Not tonight. In the morning. It’s dangerous around here. You should go back into town. Come in the morning.

  He returns to the car and his surly driver, could you drive me into town. I’ll give you another five dollars.

  The man takes him to a hotel close to the point at which he got off the bus. You’re lucky, the woman at the desk tells him, you’ve got the last room. But he doesn’t feel lucky at all as he sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the various shades of brown and beige that surround him. He can’t remember when he last felt so alone. He decides that he will return to the station in the morning. If he doesn’t find them there he will go back home. With this much resolved he tries to sleep, but he tosses and turns, he wakes continually into his strange surroundings to stare at a weird patch of light on the wall. At dawn he dresses and leaves the key in the door.

  Opposite the hotel is an open patch of ground where the taxi-rank is. As he comes to the bottom of the driveway he sees Jerome and Christian getting into a taxi. He stops dead still and then he starts to run.

  The reunion is delighted all round, lots of clamour and slapping of shoulders. In the space of five minutes the whole world has changed shape, this town that looked mean and threatening to him is suddenly full of vibrancy and life.

  They go by taxi to the station. This building too is no longer the empty darkened mausoleum of last night, it’s been transformed into a crowded public space filled with noise and commotion. Their train has been delayed and while they wait he goes for a long walk with Roderigo into the surrounding streets to find something to drink. A rusted Coca-Cola sign takes them into the dusty inner courtyard of a house, where they are served under a faded beach umbrella a
t a plastic table while chickens peck around their feet. Roderigo is still wearing his purple shirt, with a gaudy scarf tied around his neck. While we sip our drinks he tells me a story about my country. Before he went to work in Mozambique, he says, he stayed in South Africa for a few weeks, living in a hostel in Johannesburg. One day a young American traveller arrived and was put into the same room with him and they became friendly. On the second or third night Roderigo and this American went out drinking and landed up much later in a bar in Yeoville, very drunk. Roderigo wanted to go home to bed, but the American had started speaking to a black man he’d just met, who invited him to go somewhere else for another drink. The American was full of sentiment and goodwill about the country, talking to Roderigo about racial harmony and the healing of the past. He went away with his new friend and he never came back.

  Roderigo went to the police to report him missing and a week later he was called to say that they’d found a body and would he come to identify it. The last time he saw his friend was through a window at the morgue. He’d been found stabbed in the back outside a big block of flats in the city, lying in the gutter. A day or two later a man in the building was arrested, who confessed to killing him for his watch and forty rand. Soon afterwards Roderigo left for Mozambique.

  Why he tells this story I don’t know, but there seems to be some kind of accusation in it. They finish their drinks in silence and go slowly back to the station. By now it’s almost midday and the train is due to leave.

  An hour or two into the journey they hear for the first time that Tanzania is about to hold its first multi-party elections in two days’ time. The newspapers are full of stories of possible violence and upheaval, the rumours on the train are edged with nervousness. But none of this touches them, there is a new festive feeling amongst them all, as if they’re going to a party.

  But he lies awake that night for a long time after the others have drifted off, listening to the slow sound of breathing all around, the throbbing of the tracks. He worries about what he is going to do with himself when they leave in a few days, he will be alone in Tanzania in a politically unstable time, without a visa, with the prospect of retracing his route, step by step. Returning along the same path in any journey is depressing, but he especially fears how he might feel on this occasion.

  The part of him that watches himself is still here too, not ecstatic or afraid. This part hovers in its usual detachment, looking down with wry amusement at the sleepless figure in the bunk. It sees all the complexities of the situation he’s in and murmurs sardonically into his ear, you see where you have landed yourself. You intended to visit Zimbabwe for a few days and now you find yourself weeks later on a train to Dar es Salaam. Happy and unhappy, he falls asleep in the end and dreams about, no, I don’t remember his dreams.

  In the morning they are in a different landscape, out of the soft green hills and moving across a flat plain of bushveld. As they get closer to the coast they leave behind the yellow grass and thorn trees, now there is greenery outside again, the lush and verdant green of the tropics. The air is humid and hot, smelling of salt.

  They arrive close to midday. There is no warning or announcement, the train simply comes to a stop at a siding and people get off. They can see the city a little distance away, clustered against the sky. They wonder where they might find a taxi, but a passing couple offers them a lift. The man is driving a new Range Rover and, while he negotiates the traffic, he tells them that he and his wife are both diplomats. He points to the little groups of people that are everywhere visible on the pavements, crouched down around radios on the ground, they are listening to reports on the elections, he says, there’s been trouble on Zanzibar. What sort of trouble. Zanzibar voted two days ago, ahead of the rest of the country, now the results there have been announced but some of the parties have rejected them, there has been some fighting, some people throwing stones. And what about everywhere else, is there going to be trouble too. I don’t think so, the man says, there’s a lot of talk but nobody’s going to do anything.

  The couple drive them to a cheap hotel near the harbour. The place is almost full but they manage to get two rooms. Alice and Jerome and Christian are in one, Roderigo and I in the other. Everybody by now is becoming irritated by Roderigo, he is endlessly dissatisfied with everything and strident about announcing it. The prices of things are too high, the service is too poor, nothing measures up to his standards. Under his garish exterior he is endlessly fretful and unhappy. Now his anxiety is focused on the question of money. Back in Mbeya, it turns out, they discovered they have a problem. Aside from me, the others are all travelling with Visa cards, which no bank or business will accept here. It is ridiculous, Roderigo fumes, who has heard of such a thing, what a terrible and backward place this is.

  On the train Christian has already approached me to borrow money, in Dar es Salaam he is sure they will be able to work something out. Now they all set off to try to find a place where they can draw money. He trails along in their wake, looking around at the city, while they go from one bank to another. But it’s the same story, none of them accepts Visa cards. Some banks say that the card will not be usable anywhere and others tell them that certain banks will take it, just not this one. It’s a long hot search. They have walked for blocks and are starting to feel dispirited and low when they are told to try one last place. This is up three flights of stairs in a narrow building close to their hotel. The bank is behind two massive wooden doors, outside which, in the dim stairwell, a guard lounges at a desk, wearing dark glasses. I’ll wait here, he says, and sits down on the stairs. Christian and Alice and Roderigo go in through the wooden doors and suddenly he is left outside with Jerome.

  This is the first time they’ve ever been alone together. Now that the moment is upon him so unexpectedly, he doesn’t know what to do with it. He is sitting on the stairs, facing the guard, while Jerome moves up and down the darkened vestibule, looking uneasy. Then he turns and very quickly comes over to sit next to me on the step.

  Only the speed at which he does this betrays how nervous he is. He takes hold of my arm in his hand.

  With great difficulty, finding the words, he says, you want come in Switzerland with me.

  I am astounded. Nothing has prepared the way for this question. My palms are sweating, my heart is hammering, but from the swirling behind my forehead only one question, the most stupid and irrelevant one possible, comes winding out, but what, I say, what will I do there.

  You can work, he says.

  Then the doors of the bank open, the others come out, he and Jerome pull away from each other, and they will never be alone again on this journey.

  It’s no good, Christian says. They won’t take the card.

  It’s like being struck by lightning. Or like being pushed over an edge, on which, he now realizes, he’s been balanced for days. Nothing is quite the same as before. When he follows the others down the stairs and out into the street he is looking at everything through a strange pane of glass, which both distorts and clarifies the world.

  By now it’s too late to go on searching, all the banks are closing for the day. But by now it’s also clear that there’s no solution to the problem. In the morning they will go to the French embassy, perhaps they will get help and advice there.

  The rest of the day passes aimlessly, they go to the hotel next door to theirs to swim, they lie around, they talk. From Jerome there is not the slightest trace of the strange feverishness that gripped him on the stairs. That night I go with them to the front desk of an expensive hotel nearby to phone. Alice and Jerome want to call their mother at home, it’s been months since they spoke to her. It takes a long time to make the connection, they have to wait and wait in that vast echoey foyer. While he listens to this half of a conversation around the world, ah Maman, il est si bon d’entendre ta voix, the syllables of a language he doesn’t understand convey an intimacy and affection that he does, and he can half-imagine this other life they come from, far to the north, wh
ich he’s been invited to join. Should I go. Can I. His own life has narrowed to a fork, at which he dithers in an indecisive rapture.

  He doesn’t have to decide now, there is always tomorrow, tomorrow. But in the morning nothing has changed. He goes with them to the embassy to ask advice. We will lend you money, the people at the embassy say, go up to Kenya where you’ll be able to use your card. There is a brief discussion but in fact there is no choice, without money there’s nothing more they can do. They will go to Kenya the next morning. He knows already that they will ask him, they know already what he will say. Yes, I will come to Kenya with you.

  I don’t remember what they do the rest of that day. The next memory he has is of waking up in the middle of the night with the beam of a light-house flaring intermittently across the ceiling and the sound of Roderigo furtively masturbating under the sheets.

  The next day is the election, but from the dusty windows of the bus the city looks the same as it did yesterday. It takes more than an hour to drive through the intricate alleys and little streets near the bus-station. The complicated shop fronts with their myriad steps and tiny windows put him in mind of the innards of some enormous animal, through which they’re creeping like a germ.

  But once they’re free of the city and on the open road the bus accelerates to alarming speed. They are being driven by a psychopathic Indian apparently bent on killing them all, overtaking on blind rises, racing some other bus to settle an old score, hurtling into corners without slowing down. A sort of dull terror comes down over him, he grips the seat and watches the outside world spill past like a dream. The road runs up in sight of the coast, across a broad green plain the flat water continually reappears, palm trees lagoons mangroves all the detritus of the tropics, little villages and settlements flash past, quick glimpses of other lives that glance off his in a tiny collision of images.