In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Part 6

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.

When they get to the border post he becomes anxious, what if they notice he has no visa. But he is out almost faster than the others, an exit stamp planted like a bruise next to the entry stamp he bought a few days ago. As they drive into Kenya it's dark already and a steady drizzle starts to fall. Nearing Mombasa, there are more and more people at the side of the road. The final approach is by ferry, on which they move across open water to the city, he stands outside at the rail and watches the yellow lights through the rain. The hotel they find is the most depressing one yet, two flights of stairs climb to their floor, the whole place seems made of untreated concrete, in the middle of each room a ceiling fan shudders and turns. The building doubles as a bordello, the floors underneath them are occupied by prost.i.tutes who hang around in the foyer and on the pavement in front, h.e.l.lo my darling are you looking for me kssk kssk. They are in two rooms again, he and Roderigo apart from the rest, but a narrow balcony outside connects them. From this balcony there is a view across the street to a similar building facing them, in the different rooms of which they can see various s.e.x acts in progress, each in its little lit cube.

This time the invitation doesn't come from Jerome, but from Alice. At lunch the next day there is a little moment of seriousness at the table, would you like to come with us, we have found a cheap flight to Athens, my mother has a house in a village in Greece. We are going there for a few weeks before we go home. He looks to Jerome, who says, come. But there is no echo of the last invitation on the stairs, this is a formal offer he could easily turn down.

And then, after Greece, he says. What will I do. Let me think, I will tell you later.

He goes walking through the old city, between high and fantastic facades, movement has always been a subst.i.tute for thought and he would like to stop thinking now. Wandering around, he finds himself in an antique shop full of cool dark air and oriental carpets and bra.s.s lamps, his eye slides off this material world until a human figure pulls it back. Where are you from. The man is in his fifties, white, with a big lined face and a lugubrious air. He has an improbable English accent, very overdone. South Africa, goodness me, how did you get up here. Through Malawi, my word, I'm off to Malawi in a few days. Look around, yes please, be my guest. What did you say your name was.

For some reason this lanky expat stays in his mind even when he gets back to the hotel, in all this grimy and half-decayed city he is the only other person, aside from his companions, who knows my name. He sits on the balcony as it gets dark, staring out into the hot rainy street, where a taxi pulls up and a prost.i.tute gets out, one of the brightly dressed women from downstairs, along with a bearded white man his own age. They kiss lingeringly next to the car, their tongues flicker in the humid air, then the man gets back into the taxi and glides away.

When they all go out that night to eat, the mood around the table is glum. The others are weighed down by different thoughts, the end of nine months in Africa, maybe, the prospect of going home. But somewhere in the intermittent bits of conversation the question comes up again, have you decided what to do. No, not yet, in the morning.

That night he hardly sleeps. He throws himself around on the bed, he stares up at the fan as it turns and turns, he keeps getting up and wandering out onto the balcony and then wandering back again. His brain is boiling over, he can't make it cool down.

In the morning everybody is up early. There is a lot of commotion and activity, and it's a while before Jerome comes in to ask with raised eyebrows, good decision.

He shakes his head, his voice won't come out properly. I must go back.

Jerome doesn't answer, but his face goes tight.

So the journey ends with four little words. n.o.body argues with him, they are all caught up with what they have to do, sorting through their things and packing their bags. He doesn't want to sit around watching, so he tells Christian he's going out for a walk.

We must go by ten.

I'll be back by then.

He goes out through the crowded streets, he wanders without any plan clear to himself, but he's not surprised when he finds himself back at the dark antique shop. The seedy expat is there again, balanced with a cup of coffee on a pile of carpets. I was here yesterday, I tell him.

Oh yes, he says vaguely.

You mentioned you were going to Malawi in a few days.

Yes. Yes. I am thinking of doing that.

I wondered whether you might want a companion on the trip.

At this the dark eyes lighten a little, oh yes, he says, that would be good. Why don't you come by tomorrow and we can make plans. What is your name again.

Damon. My name is Damon.

The man repeats his name. He goes back to the hotel by half past nine, but there's no sign of the others. At first he a.s.sumes they're out somewhere having breakfast, but then it dawns on him that they've gone, when Christian said ten he must've meant the time at which the bus actually left, they are at the bus-station by now.

He thinks he must hurry over to say goodbye. But by the time he's downstairs again another conviction comes slowly over him. Isn't it better this way, let them go quietly without seeing them. So he starts to wander through the streets again, but in the wrong direction, away from the bus-station, looking at people, at shops, at any detail he pa.s.ses that might distract his mind. He can already feel the next few days stretching away in these aimless and awful walks of his, there is nothing more sordid than having to use up time.

But then suddenly he is off, running the other way through the crowds. Where does this movement come from, it takes even him by surprise, he is looking for a taxi but none appears out of the dense traffic. He arrives at the bus-station with only minutes to spare and then he has to look for the bus. When he finds it the engine is already running, a man at the door tells him there's still s.p.a.ce. Go in, get a seat, I give you a ticket now. No, no, I want to say goodbye to my friends.

They all get off, a.s.sembling at the edge of the road with a dejected air, none of them quite looking at each other. He would like to say something, the perfect single word that contains how he feels, but there isn't any such word. Instead he says nothing, he makes half-gestures that die before he can complete them, he shakes his head and sighs.

Goodbye, he says.

You will come in Switzerland, yes, Jerome says again.

All of this is spoken flatly, there is no trace of feeling in the whole little scene, and by now the driver is hooting impatiently at them. We have to go, Christian says. Yes, I say, goodbye. I lean forward and grip Jerome by the upper arm and squeeze hard. I promise you I will see you again.

Goodbye.

He and Alice smile at each other, then she turns and goes up the steps. Roderigo reaches out to embrace him, my friend take care of yourself, the odd one out is the most effusive of all.

He walks slowly back through the racket and chaos. It hasn't dawned on him yet what's happened. When he gets back to the hotel he pays the proprietor downstairs for another night, and while he's fumbling through his wallet for change he feels a furtive hand tugging at his fly. He jumps back in fright, the hand belongs to one of the prost.i.tutes, perhaps the same one he saw kissing in the street last night, her vivid lips smile at him in the gloom. I'm just trying to help you, she says.

I don't need help.

The vehemence of his tone is startling, she makes an ooing noise to mock him, he breaks away and goes up the stairs. Somehow this incident has set his feelings free, a thin column of grief rises in him like mercury. He goes into his room and stares around, then goes out along the balcony to their room. It's all as it was, the three beds, the fan turning listlessly overhead. He sits down on the edge of a chair. There are bits of paper crumpled on the floor, envelopes, notes, pages from a book, which they dropped while cleaning out their bags, and these solitary white sc.r.a.ps, drifting in the wind from the fan, are sadder to him than anything else that's happened.

Jerome, if I can't make you live in words, if you are only the dim evocation of a face under a fringe of hair, and the others too, Alice and Christian and Roderigo, if you are names without a nature, it's not because I don't remember, no, the opposite is true, you are remembered in me as an endless stirring and turning. But it's for this precisely that you must forgive me, because in every story of obsession there is only one character, only one plot. I am writing about myself alone, it's all I know, and for this reason I have always failed in every love, which is to say at the very heart of my life.

He sits in the empty room, crying.

He's not prepared for how bad the next few days turn out to be. He spends a lot of time lying on his back on the bed, staring up at the fan on the ceiling. Then he suddenly can't take it any more and jumps up and goes out into the streets, striding along as if he has a purpose and a destination, but these walks always peter out at some point, often in an alley at the edge of the sea, where he stares into the haze, at a dhow going past.

He goes back to the antique shop a couple of times. The expat, whose name is Charles, is always vague about his plans, but he insists that, yes, he will be going to Malawi. He just wants to wait a day or two, he says, till this election thing is over in Tanzania, you can never be sure, you know, this is Africa after all. In these conversations he always has to ask my name at some point, before immediately forgetting it again.

Meanwhile he prepares for his return, he goes to the consulate and gets a proper visa for Tanzania. Then he goes to the health office down at the harbour to get the vaccinations he needs. The Indian doctor he speaks to tells him smilingly how much they will cost, then leans forward confidentially and says, do you actually want these vaccinations.

I don't understand.

You can pay and have the vaccinations, or you can pay and not have the vaccinations, I don't mind, it's up to you.

He pays and doesn't have the vaccinations, he is learning the way things work. As long as the stamp on the paper is correct, what the stamp is supposed to signify doesn't matter to anyone.

The third time he goes back, Charles is more animated than usual. We can leave the day after tomorrow, he says, how does that suit you. The results of the Tanzanian election have come out, but the whole process has been denounced as highly irregular, it has to be started again from the beginning. It doesn't look like there's going to be trouble, Charles says, they're behaving themselves. There is only one thing, I stay out of town, come and spend the day there tomorrow.

He is there in the morning and they drive out soon after in Charles's battered van. They go back on the ferry and along the road to the coast. He spends his last day in Kenya at a resort on the beach near to where Charles lives with his family.

This is also the day on which the others are leaving Kenya, he knows the time of their flight. So at two that afternoon, while he stands on a deserted beach of glimmering white sand, gazing out into an ocean that stretches in gradations of deepening colour towards a line of surf that marks the reef far out, he looks at his watch and feels their departure almost as a physical change in himself. His heart missing a beat, say. You are going down the runway, you are lifting into the air, you are banking slowly to the north and moving away, away.

It's about now that he realizes he has made a mistake. He should have gone with them, of course he should. Why is he going home. It's only a couple of days later, but already his decision is senseless. He sees clearly what he's going back to in South Africa, the same state of nothing, the drifting from place to place. Never has this condition so obviously been what it is, an absence of love. He feels sick with the meaning of what he's done.

But it isn't too late. What rises in him now is an urge to make the largest and most dramatic gesture of all, he will chase them not for a few hundred kilometres but halfway across the world. He spends the afternoon walking up and down the beach, crossing and recrossing his own tracks between the palm trees, while he works out what to do. It's entirely possible. He must get back down to South Africa as quickly as he can, he must sc.r.a.pe some money together, he must fly to Greece in a few days. On the piece of paper from the Tanzanian border he has Jerome's home number, where his mother is. He must phone her and find out where they are, how to get to this holiday house. He will make his way there from Athens, he will arrive one night out of the dark, out of the recent past, with his hands open, smiling. It's me again, I came here to find you.

He's still knotted up when he and Charles set off the next morning. Charles is wearing shorts and sandals and a big straw hat on his head. He is a good-looking man in a loose, big-boned sort of way, but if you study him closely you begin to see the signs of decay. His nails are dirty, he has nicotine stains on his teeth, around his eyes the lines are as deep and dark as old bruises. There is something in his spirit that resembles an overripe fruit, soft and pulpy at the centre. Just before they get to the border he pulls over in a cane-field and lights up a huge joint. To calm me down, he says, before I deal with these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

It turns out he's smuggling twenty thousand dollars' worth of Afghan rugs under two oil drums in the back. These are destined, he tells me afterwards, for one or another official at the American emba.s.sy in Dar es Salaam, they are one of the reasons he's making this trip. Charles sweats and trembles like a junkie as they go across the border, but afterwards he affects a bored composure. No problem if they were found, he says breezily, a quick fifty dollars and they'll look the other way. I know these chaps, I speak the lingo.

When they arrive at Dar es Salaam in the evening he takes them to a vast house in one of the more exclusive suburbs, with a metal fence and a security guard outside. It's the residence of some high-up official in the emba.s.sy, a plump middle-aged woman with gla.s.ses who comes out to meet them, smiling broadly.

She agrees to let them stay over, and he finds himself in a luxurious bedroom, drapes and thick carpets and a bathroom tiled to the ceiling. It's unreal to him, but not as unreal as dinner that night, which they have with the Romanian amba.s.sador to Tanzania. For some bizarre reason there is a portrait of Lenin on the wall and the amba.s.sador makes a sign of the cross in self-defence when he sees it. I am silent under the weight of this surreal situation, and glad to be alone in bed not long after. In the pa.s.sage outside the door a radio crackles and burps all night, leaking American voices talking in code.

The next day they drive to Mbeya and put up in a hotel. Since leaving Kenya Charles hasn't called me anything, but that night, in the bar, I hear him saying, Noel, Noel, and when I look around Charles is speaking to me. Why he's fixed on this name it's hard to tell, but I feel too weary to correct him. By this time there is a high level of irritation between them and being called Noel is just part of the deal.

By the next day, when they enter Malawi, the irritation is teetering on the edge of argument. When they miss a turning somewhere Charles starts to berate him, you're supposed to be watching the road signs, Noel, and he has to force himself to stay silent. Later Charles expatiates on what lies beneath the Malawians' smiles, they're pretending to be innocent but they're a crafty lot, I've seen this before. Don't be fooled, Noel, I've got their number.

It's time to move on and the next morning, when they get to the lake, he says goodbye. Charles is alarmed, why don't you hang around for a while, he doesn't want to be left alone with the crafty Malawians. But the South African shakes his head, in two days he can be back at home, his mind wanders constantly northward, to Greece. Oh all right, Charles mutters defeatedly, go then. But write your address in my book, in case I ever come to Cape Town.

I hesitate with the book in hand, not knowing what to write. But after a moment I print my new name, Noel, and an old telephone number, I will never hear from Charles again.

From here the return journey goes swiftly, Noel jumps from one bus to another, only pausing to overnight in Blantyre. In another two days he is back in South Africa, in Pretoria. It has taken him six days to get back from Mombasa, half the length of the continent.

The whole way home he has thought of nothing but what it is he wants to do, he has been consumed by the desire to get to Greece. But now something happens to him. Back among familiar things again, the objects and faces that are the icons of his usual life, a kind of apathy comes over him. It's as if he's in shock. Did I really do that, he thinks to himself, did I really go chasing them all that way. And instead of rus.h.i.+ng out in a continuation of his old momentum to book tickets and make plans, he finds himself sitting in the sun, brooding about what's happened. He feels even less sure than before about the meaning of it all.

By imperceptible degrees, then, he accepts the notion that the journey is over, and that he's back where he started. The story of Jerome is one he's lived through before, it is the story of what never happened, the story of travelling a long way while standing still.

In dreams he is constantly looking at maps, in which there are continents and countries, but they don't resemble the actual world. In these maps real countries are joined together in peculiar new configurations, Mexico at the top of Africa, next to Borneo. Or else countries have mythical names and shapes which evoke a longing in him. He has always been drawn by the strangeness of places, by what he doesn't know instead of what he does.

Four months later he goes to Europe. Spring has only just started and the streets of Amsterdam are cold as he walks and walks. He takes a bus to Brussels, he goes by train to Strasbourg. He visits a friend in the Black Forest for a while and then, on a bright morning with the first trace of warmth in the air, he takes a train south, to Switzerland.

He has written to say he's coming and from Germany, a few days before, he made a call. Jerome was not at home and when Alice came to the phone she sounded startled but happy. Yes, she said, please come to visit, we are waiting for you. But now, as the train slides and turns through the mountains, emerging at last into the bright open sky over the lake, he has a faint memory again of the fear that gripped him in Africa. He stands at the window, looking at the houses and little streets flas.h.i.+ng past at the edge of the water, and feels doubt like a coldness in him.

He has to change trains and take a smaller local line along the lake. He climbs out on the fifth or sixth stop and descends the stairs into a stone square, from which narrow streets slope down towards the water. The lake is silvery-grey in colour, with hardly a crease on its surface, and on the other side, far away, mountains rise to sharp and jagged crests.

Now that he has waited so long and come so far, he is in no hurry to arrive. He sits on the sh.o.r.e for a long time, thinking. He would like this moment to suspend itself indefinitely, so that he need never stir himself again.

But as the afternoon goes on he takes up his pack and walks back along the lake, in the direction from which the train came. The path narrows and goes under trees, past jetties. There are swans gliding in the water, supported on their own reflections. After half an hour he comes to a little street running up away from the lake, and its name is the one written on that sc.r.a.p of paper from Malawi.

The house is a largish one, set back from the corner, with a garden behind it. He knocks and after a while there are footsteps and the door opens. h.e.l.lo, we have been waiting for you. Jerome's mother has short hair and a wide welcoming smile, come in, come in. She seems genuinely pleased to see him, she holds out her hand. My name is Catherine.

While they shake hands they look appraisingly at each other. He has no idea what she has been told about him or what she expects. Jerome has just come home, she tells him, it is a surprise. He was supposed to come only tomorrow. He will be so glad to see you. She calls to a young girl hovering nearby, go and find Jerome.

While they wait they go to sit on a stone veranda behind the house. In the garden there is a tree, a swing, and through a screen of leaves at the bottom, a view of the water. Alice comes out, smiling. There is the awkward happiness of h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, how are you, looking at each other while they also look away.

When Jerome comes out he is wearing a blue military uniform and his hair is cut brutally short. They shake hands, smiling shyly, under the eyes of his mother and Alice. Ah h.e.l.lo yes excellent. Jerome, I'm glad to see you. The dialogue and the gestures are tinny and false, like some kind of bright paper wrapped around the meaning of the moment.

They all settle down uneasily around the outdoor table. The girl who was sent off to find Jerome is his younger sister. She is fourteen or fifteen with a chubby, cheerful face. An older sister arrives soon afterwards. Conversation flickers back and forth, returning continually to him, he can sense how curious they are about him. But at the same time he is also an observer, watching Jerome in this circle of women, while the light fades away.

Why don't you go for a walk, Catherine says. Before supper.

He goes with Jerome across the gra.s.s to a gate at the bottom of the garden. Through a narrow alley to the edge of the lake. They are alone again for the first time since that minute or two outside the wooden doors of the bank. But everything is different now. The artificial awkwardness of that first moment up at the house continues, they don't know what to say to each other.

So this is where you live.

Yes. Yes.

It's beautiful here.

Ah. Yes. I like.

Only once does the mask of tension crack briefly, when I ask him, is it hard to be back.

Yes. Yes. His mouth works to find the words. In my head I am travelling, travelling.

I know what you mean.

Jerome is doing a session of military service, he is only home for the weekend. While he's here they share his room, the visitor sleeps on a mattress on the floor. Although this section of the house is apart from the rest, a separate little flat on its own, they are never away from the rest of the family. It's pleasant to sit in the sun behind the house, talking with Catherine, or wander to the shops with Alice or one of the other sisters. Jerome is always kind and solicitous, he invites him wherever he goes and introduces him to his friends, and he lets himself be taken along on outings and play the part of a contented guest.

On the Sunday Jerome's father comes to visit. He has lived apart from them, at the other end of the lake, for some years now, and in the family his departure has left the lingering trace of a loss. So on this day, when they make a fire to cook in the yard, and knock a ball back and forth over a net, there is a feeling of completion and unity among them, to which I can only be a witness. He sits on the swing, pus.h.i.+ng himself to and fro, watching as if from a great distance this scene that in Africa would be unimaginable to him.

He has come to like all of them, so when Jerome leaves again that night, going by train to some military base at the other end of the country, he is not alarmed at being left with his family. He spends a lot of time walking along the lake, he takes the train into town and wanders there too. He spends a day in a gallery of outsider art, paintings and sculptures made with the vision of the mad or the lost, and from this collection of fantastic and febrile images he retains a single line, a book t.i.tle by a Serbian artist whose name I forget, He Has No House.

On the next weekend Jerome is back again, but if he was hoping that the gap of five days would change something between them, it doesn't happen. They are pleasant and polite with each other, but their interaction has something of the quality of a letter which Jerome sent him, the studied and careful presentation of words that have been translated and copied from a dictionary. It isn't only Jerome who makes things this way, he brings his own painful awkwardness to bear. He isn't himself, he is a guarded version of his own nature, nor does he recognize in the cropped hair and military terseness of the person whose room he shares the soft and gentle young man he travelled with four months ago.

There are hints, perhaps, that it might be possible to move past this state. Jerome makes some tentative conversation about plans he has for the future, how, when he's finished with this stint in the army, he would like to travel overland down to Greece. But this will only be in a couple of months from now. The possibility of another shared journey floats in the air, both of them consider it, but neither of them has the courage to say anything more.

He knows already that he must move on. On the night before Jerome gets back that next weekend, he takes a walk along the water. Mist is rolling in from the other side, smudging the outlines of the little boats at their moorings. When he comes to a jetty that projects a long way into the lake he walks out on the wooden planks to the end. From here there is no sh.o.r.e any more, no edge to anything he can see. He is adrift in the white mist, with the water slapping softly below, cold air rolling across his face. He leans on the railing and stares into the whiteness and thinks about everything that's happened.

When Jerome returns this time, he finds a moment to let him know, I will be going on Monday. To London. I can't stay here for ever. I'm sure your family must be getting tired of me.

No, no. Jerome is vehement in his protest. You can stay.

He shakes his head gently and smiles, I have to go, I can't keep standing still.

Later Jerome comes back to him again, bringing a friend who lives a few houses away. This friend speaks fluent English and has come along, he says, to translate.

Jerome says you must stay.

No, really. Tell him thank you. But I can't. Maybe I will come back.

When, Jerome says.

Later. When I've gone travelling for a while.

And it's true, he tells himself, maybe he will come back. There is always another time, next month, next year, when things will be different.

But after these flickers of feeling, that last weekend is much like the others. Jerome is friendly but distant, he makes no special effort to talk or be alone. At one point he says, we talk with Christian, yes, and picks up the phone. But the number just rings and rings. Jerome says, later, and puts it down again, but they never do try later.

On the Sunday evening when Alice drives her brother to the station, he goes along to say goodbye. Jerome is in uniform again, with all his b.u.t.tons gleaming, his black shoes reflecting the light. He is proud of how he looks, although he pretends that he isn't. They all go into the bar together to wait. There are two friends of his there, also in uniform, with whom he'll be travelling, there are introductions and handshakes and murmured pleasantries all round.