In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Part 4

Sorry.

He is starting to change gears to pull away when I say, will you take thirty rand and my watch.

The driver looks at him again, who is this mad whitey, he holds out his hand. He slips off his watch and pa.s.ses it through the window. He has a suspicion the man might just pull away, what could he do to stop it, but he examines the watch and shrugs, get in.

The minibus is empty, but the driver, whose name is Paul, takes him a little way down the road to a big dead tree under which all the other pa.s.sengers are waiting. He is the last one and the only white person amongst them. This is not like the taxis from the city that he's used to, where everybody mixes and is convivial, he is the odd person out here, n.o.body speaks to him. But Paul takes a liking to him, come and sit up in the front, he says, the road rushes blue and violent towards them through rain all the way.

At midnight he is climbing out onto a pavement in Hillbrow, the lights of the city like a heatless yellow fire around him. He shakes hands with Paul, who is driving straight back to Lesotho to pick up another load of pa.s.sengers. He watches the minibus disappear, tail lights merging with all the other random moving lights, then the pa.s.sengers disperse in various directions, among the crowds, lives joined together for a little while and then unjoined again.

He stays up in Pretoria for a few weeks. Only sometimes does he think of Reiner. Then he wonders where he is and what he might be doing. Somewhere in his mind he a.s.sumes that Reiner must have done what he did, walked hard and fast to get out of the mountains, and then travelled back down to Cape Town. The journey in Lesotho was one they were making together, he surely wouldn't want to continue alone.

One day, on impulse, he phones various friends down in Cape Town. He wants to know whether they've seen Reiner, has he reappeared, has he pa.s.sed through. No, n.o.body has seen him, n.o.body's heard a word. But what happened, his friends want to know, what went wrong. He tries to explain but all of it clots and curdles on his tongue. Till now he hasn't had pangs of real conscience but he feels them begin when he hears the incredulity in the voice of one of these friends, that's what you did, you walked away from him in the mountains. Yes that's what happened but you don't understand.

Yes that is what happened. Now he feels exquisite agonies of unease, maybe the failure wasn't the mutual one he's constructed in his head, maybe it belongs to himself alone. If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.

After about a month he goes back to Cape Town. He has no place of his own down there and must begin looking all over again. Meanwhile he stays with different friends, living in spare rooms once more, moving around. His attention has s.h.i.+fted from recent events to the problems of the present. He doesn't think of Reiner that often now. By this time he presumes he must be back in Germany, leading the life he was so secretive about, hating me from afar.

But Reiner appears again suddenly, without warning, one arbitrary day. During all this time, while he was up in Pretoria and then trying to resettle himself in Cape Town, Reiner was in Lesotho. He stayed committed to their project. He has lost a lot of weight, his clothes hang loosely on him, he is weak and depleted. He has spent the time walking, he says, though where he went exactly and what he did will never be revealed.

Even this much comes in second-hand, through indirect reports. Before they left he had introduced Reiner to a friend of his who was living in the same block of flats. Now this friend calls to say that Reiner arrived on his doorstep the day before, looking haggard and terrible, with nowhere to go. He wanted to know if he could stay there for a week, till his flight back home. Of course he had said yes, it's only for a few days.

He stays for three months. He sleeps on the couch in the lounge, hardly going out, barely moving around the flat at first. He's in a very bad state. He is afflicted by various illnesses with alarming symptoms, he has very high fevers, he has swollen glands, he has some kind of fungal infection on his tongue. The friend takes him to two doctors, who prescribe antibiotics. But the illnesses don't seem to clear up and Reiner shows no interest in leaving.

All of these reports come through his friend, over the telephone or in person. In the whole time that Reiner's there he never once goes over to the flat, he doesn't want to see Reiner, he doesn't want to speak to him. In truth he's shocked that he has appeared again, in his mind this episode has already been relegated to the past, this return feels almost personally directed at him. But he has a fascination with his presence so close by, he makes constant enquiries about him, he would like to know what happened since he saw him. Very little is forthcoming. But he gathers from his friend that Reiner is just as fascinated with him. He asks about me, where did I go to, where am I now. Sometimes he rails against me. Why, he wants to know, why did I storm off, things were so good between us, what got into his head.

He finds himself protesting, ask him, he knows why it happened, the friend listens sympathetically but also with doubt, he can see in his face that he has heard another version of things from Reiner, the second story unwritten here. The two stories push against each other, they will never be reconciled, he wants to argue and explain till the other story disappears.

Sometimes it feels that Reiner will never leave. He will occupy the couch in the corner of the lounge, so as to occupy a corner of his life, forever. But eventually he does gather himself together. He shakes off some of the illness, starts to eat properly, puts on a bit of weight. He goes out and about again, walking in the streets. Then money arrives for him mysteriously from overseas, and he finally confirms a date for his ticket home.

In all this time, he spends a great deal of effort and energy avoiding the German. But there are two occasions on which they run into each other. The first happens one ordinary day, in the most ordinary of places. By now he has moved into a flat on his own, not far from where Reiner is staying. He goes to the local post-office one morning to send some letters, but as he is approaching the outside entrance he has a sudden clear perception that Reiner is inside. Don't go in, he's there. He stops dead, but then he wants to know whether his premonition was correct. Of course he goes through the door and they stare at each other for the first time in months. Reiner is in the queue, waiting, and though he falters for a moment he goes to the back of the line. His heart is hammering and his palms are sweating. The queue loops back on itself at a hundred and eighty degrees and Reiner is in the other half of the line, so that the two of them are moving towards each other one place at a time. A step, a step, another step. When the next person is served they will be opposite each other, an arm away, as close as they were when lying in the tent. He wants to run but he doesn't dare.

Then Reiner turns on his heel, steps over the rope and walks out. I tremble with a weird sense of victory.

The second and last occasion is a few weeks afterwards, in the evening, in the street. He has been visiting friends and is walking back home alone. He is next to a long curved wall and he sees two people walking towards him. He realizes that the one on the outside, closest to him, is Reiner, he is with a woman he doesn't know. The woman is talking, deep in conversation, while Reiner listens, but shock registers in his body when he looks up. If they were both alone perhaps one of them would cross the street to get away, or perhaps this time they would stop to speak. Well. h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo. How are you. But the foreign presence of the woman is like a distance and a silence between them and they only watch each other as they draw slowly closer on their curved trajectory, and when they are almost level Reiner smiles. It is the old sardonic smile, saying everything by saying nothing, the corners of the mouth lifting in the rigid mask of the face, and then they pa.s.s. He doesn't look back and he is almost certain Reiner doesn't either.

Then he's gone. My friend calls to say, well, Reiner left last night, and with that single sentence the whole story is over. He waits for some further event, he doesn't know what, a phone-call, a letter, to resolve things, even though he doesn't want to make contact himself. Then at some point he realizes that the silence, the suspension, is the only form of resolution this particular story will ever have.

Maybe when two people meet for the first time all the possible variations on destiny are contained in their separate natures. These two will be drawn together, those two will be repulsed, most will pa.s.s politely with averted gaze and hurry on alone. Was what happened between him and Reiner love or hate or something else with another name. I don't know. But this is how it ends. Some time afterwards, clearing out his desk when he is moving house again, he finds the notebook in which Reiner had written his name and address years ago in Greece, and after looking at the tiny narrow handwriting for a while he throws it away. Then he takes out Reiner's letters too, a big bundle of them, and drops them into the bin. It isn't revenge and nothing else will follow on. But although he will hardly think of Reiner again, and when he does it is without regret, there are still times, walking on a country road alone, when he would not be surprised to see a dark figure in the distance, coming towards him.

TWO.

THE LOVER.

A few years later he is wandering in Zimbabwe. No particular reason or intention has brought him here. He decides on impulse one morning to leave, he buys a ticket in the afternoon, he gets on a bus that night. He has it in mind to travel around for two weeks and then go back. few years later he is wandering in Zimbabwe. No particular reason or intention has brought him here. He decides on impulse one morning to leave, he buys a ticket in the afternoon, he gets on a bus that night. He has it in mind to travel around for two weeks and then go back.

What is he looking for, he himself doesn't know. At this remove, his thoughts are lost to me now, and yet I can explain him better than my present self, he is buried under my skin. His life is unweighted and centreless, so that he feels he could blow away at any time. He still has not made a home for himself. All his few belongings are in storage again and he has spent months in that old state of his, wandering around from one spare room to another. It has begun to feel as if he's never lived in any other way, nor will he ever settle down. Something in him has changed, he can't seem to connect properly with the world. He feels this not as a failure of the world but as a ma.s.sive failing in himself, he would like to change it but doesn't know how. In his clearest moments he thinks that he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things, most of all the person and place and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.

In this state travel isn't celebration but a kind of mourning, a way of dissipating yourself. He moves around from one place to another, not driven by curiosity but by the bored anguish of staying still. He spends a few days in Harare, then goes down to Bulawayo. He does the obligatory things required of visitors, he goes to the Matopos and sees the grave of Cecil John Rhodes, but he can't produce the necessary awe or ideological disdain, he would rather be somewhere else. If I was with somebody, he thinks, with somebody I loved, then I could love the place and even the grave too, I would be happy to be here.

He takes the overnight train to Victoria Falls. He lies in his bunk, hearing the breathing of strangers stacked above and below him, and through the window sees villages and sidings flow in out of the dark, the outlines of people and cattle and leaves stamped out in silhouette against the lonely light, then flowing backward again, out of sight into the past. Why is he happiest in moments like these, the watcher hiding in the dark. He doesn't want the sun to rise or this particular journey to end.

In the morning they come to the end of the line. He gets out with his single bag and walks to the campsite. Even early in the day the air is heavy and humid, green leaves burn with a brilliant glow. There are other travellers all around, most are younger than himself. He pitches his tent in the middle of the camp and goes down to look at the falls.

It is incredible to see the volume and power of so much water endlessly dropping into the abyss, but part of him is elsewhere, somewhere higher up and to the right, looking down at an angle not only on the falls but on himself there, among the crowds. This part of him, the part that watches, has been here for a while now, and it never quite goes away, over the next few days it looks at him keeping busy, strolling through the streets from one curio-shop to another, going for long walks in the surrounding bush, it observes with amazement when he goes white-water rafting on the river, it sees him lying in the open next to his tent to keep cool at night, staring up into the shattered windscreen of the sky. And though he seems content, though he talks to people and smiles, the part that watches isn't fooled, it knows he wants to move on.

On the third or fourth day he goes for a swim at one of the hotel pools. Afterwards he sits at a table near the bar to have a drink and his attention is slowly drawn to a group of young people nearby. They all have their rucksacks with them, they are about to depart. They're a strange mixture, a bit uneasy with each other, a plump Englishman with his girlfriend, a blond Danish man, two younger dark girls who sit close together, not speaking. He recognizes a burly Irish woman who went rafting with him two days ago, and goes over to speak to her. Where are you all off to.

Malawi. We're going through Zambia. Maybe she sees something in my face, because after a moment she asks, do you want to come along.

He sits thinking for a few moments, then says, I'll be right back.

He runs madly from the hotel to the campsite and takes down his tent. When he gets back he sits among his new companions, panting, feeling edgy with doubt. Soon afterwards the man they're waiting for, an Australian called Richard, arrives, and they all stir themselves to leave. He has gathered already that these people don't know each other well, they have banded together by chance to make this journey safely. Hence the unease. He doesn't mind, in fact the general mood suits him, he doesn't feel a pressure to fit in. With the others he loads his bag onto the back of an open van and climbs up. They have paid somebody to drive them to the other side of the border.

It's getting dark when they arrive at the station. They are late and the queue for tickets is long, they can only get third-cla.s.s seats, sitting amongst a crowd in an open carriage in which all the lights are broken. Almost before they can find a place the train lurches and starts to move.

There is a moment when any real journey begins. Sometimes it happens as you leave your house, sometimes it's a long way from home.

In the dark there is the sound of breaking gla.s.s and a voice cries out. They have been travelling for perhaps an hour, the darkness in the carriage is total, but now somebody lights a match. In the guttering glow he sees a h.e.l.lish scene, on one of the seats further down a man clutches his bloodied face, a pool of blood on the floor around him, rocking from side to side with the violent motion of the train. Everybody shrinks away, the light goes out. What's happening, the Irish girl says to him.

What's happening is that somebody has thrown a rock through the window. Almost immediately it comes again, the smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.s, the cry, but this time n.o.body is hurt, the cry is one of fear. They are all afraid, and with good reason, because every time the train pa.s.ses some town or settlement there is the noise, the cry, or the deep thudding sound of the rock hitting the outside of the train. Everybody sits hunched forward with their arms over their heads.

Late in the night the ordeal winds down. Inside the train the mood becomes lighter, people who would otherwise never have spoken strike up conversations. Somebody takes out bandages for those who've been hurt. At the far end of the carriage are three women travelling with little babies, their window has been broken and the wind is howling through, do you mind, they ask, if we come and sit with you. Not at all. He is with the Irish woman on a seat, the rest of their group is elsewhere, they move up to make s.p.a.ce. Now the dark smells warm and yeasty, there is a sucking and gurgling all around. The women are travelling to Lusaka for a church conference on female emanc.i.p.ation, they have left their husbands behind, but a couple of them are holding a child and the other woman has triplets. She is sitting opposite him, he can see her in the pa.s.sing lights from outside. Now a weird scenario begins. The triplets are all identically dressed in white bunny suits, she starts to breast-feed them two at a time. The third one she hands to him, would you mind, no not at all, he holds the murmuring weight in his hands. Occasionally she changes them over, he hands on a little bunny-suited baby and receives an exact copy in exchange, this seems to go on for hours. Sometimes one of her nipples comes free, a baby cries, then she says, please could you, the Irish woman leans over to rearrange her breast, sucking starts again. The women talk softly to the white travellers and among themselves, and sometimes they sing hymns.

By the next morning his head is fractured with fatigue and swirling with bizarre images. Under the cold red sky of dawn Lusaka is another surreal sight, shanty towns sprouting between the buildings, tin and plastic and cardboard hemmed in by brick and gla.s.s. They climb out among crowds onto the platform. The three women say goodbye and go off with their freight of babies to discuss their liberation. While he waits for the little group to gather he looks off to one side and sees, further down the train, at the second cla.s.s compartments, another little group of white travellers disembarking. Three of them, a woman and two men. He watches but the crowds close around him.

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 f.u.c.k 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sports 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 emba.s.sy told us, he says. The emba.s.sy 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 pa.s.sports. 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 gla.s.ses and a serious expression which is impa.s.sive, 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 cl.u.s.ter of islands rise up a kilometre from the sh.o.r.e. A wooden canoe pa.s.ses 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 succ.u.mb 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 sh.o.r.es 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, Jurgen 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sed 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 being 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 f.u.c.ked-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 fis.h.i.+ng for a living. n.o.body else in the party is interested in speaking to him, but he tells me later, on the island, about how they go night-fis.h.i.+ng, 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 gla.s.s 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e 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 f.u.c.ked-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 t.u.r.ds 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 const.i.tuent 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.sy 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 sh.o.r.e again and docks at Salima, where pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sages 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 standing 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 emba.s.sy 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p'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 sh.o.r.e he feels replenished and renewed.

Jerome, Alice and Christian are standing next to his towel, grinning. h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d.

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 s.h.i.+rt. 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 n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cl.u.s.ter of sheds draws closer, with a boom across the road on the far side, a faint premonition p.r.i.c.kles 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 pa.s.sport 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.