In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Part 2

He borrows a tent from a friend. Reiner insists that they put it up in the garden outside the flat. It takes a long time, the poles and pegs are like a strange new alphabet they have to learn. Everything must be borrowed or bought, gas-stove and cylinders water-filter torch knives and forks plastic plates a basic medicine-kit, he has never travelled in this way before, the strangeness of everything scares him, but it thrills him too, the thought of casting away his normal life is like freedom, the way it was when they met each other in Greece. And maybe that is the true reason for this journey, by shedding all the ballast of familiar life they are each trying to recapture a sensation of weightlessness they remember but perhaps never lived, in memory more than anywhere else travelling is like free-fall, or flight.

At some time in those last two weeks the question of money comes up. There are practical questions to be considered, such as how they will pay for themselves along the way. Reiner says that he has Canadian dollars that he wants to use up and so it's best if he is in charge of money. But what about me, I say.

You can pay me back later.

So I should write down what I spend.

Reiner nods and shrugs, money is trivial, it is not important.

Now everything is prepared. He finds himself saying goodbye to people with an edge of uneasiness, as if he might not be coming back. In every departure, deep down and tiny, like a black seed, there is the fear of death.

They take a train into the city. At the station they get onto a bus and ride through the night. It's difficult to sleep and they keep jolting awake to see the metallic grey landscape sliding past outside. They arrive in Bloemfontein at first light on a Sunday and walk through the deserted streets till they find a taxi-rank from where they can get a minibus taxi to the Lesotho border. They have to wait for hours until the taxi is full. Reiner sits on the back seat, his rucksack on his knees and his head on his rucksack, earplugs wedged into his ears.

I wander around and come back, then wander again. A large part of travelling consists purely in waiting, with all the attendant ennui and depression. Memories come back of other places he has waited in, departure halls of airports, bus-stations, lonely kerbsides in the heat, and in all of them there is an identical strain of melancholy summed up in a few transitory details. A paper bag blowing in the wind. The mark of a dirty shoe on a tile. The irregular sputter of a fluorescent bulb. From this particular place he will retain the vision of a cracked brick wall growing hotter and hotter in the sun.

When they leave it is already afternoon. The drive isn't far, a little over an hour, and they pa.s.s through a flat country of farmland, dirt roads going off on either side. They are the focus of unspoken curiosity in the crowded vehicle. Reiner is palpably unhappy at this enforced proximity to people, he has the air of someone holding his breath.

At the other end they get out into queues waiting to go through customs, the uniforms and dark gla.s.ses and barricades and discoloured rooms the elements of all border crossings. They pa.s.s through and over a long bridge across a river and are stamped through again on the other side. Now they have crossed a line on a map and are inside another country, in which the potentialities of fate are different from the ones they've left behind.

Where they go and what they do from here is unknown, he had some idea that they would simply set out, the road unrolling before them, but what they are confronted with instead is a sprawling border city, hotels and casinos on both sides of a dirty thoroughfare, crowds milling idly on the pavements, and it is already late in the day. They consult and decide that they will take a room for the night. Tomorrow they will abandon rooms for good. One hotel is as bad as another, they settle for the first one on the left, they are given a room high up over the street.

To pa.s.s the time they go walking around this city, Maseru. They go up and down the main street, they look at shops, they go to a supermarket and buy some food. Between them there is an excitement made partly from fear, they are committed to a situation of which the outcome is unknown, travel and love have this much in common. He doesn't love Reiner but their companionship does have the shape of a dark pa.s.sion in it.

When they get back to the hotel they walk around there too. They go down the back steps into the garden. There is a wooden shed in the corner. A sign on the door says sauna. Inside is a woman of about fifty, something in her eyes is worn-out and finished, she is feverishly pleased to see them. Come in, come in, have a sauna. The sauna is tepid with no steam, the walls are just the wooden walls of the shed. No, no, we were just looking, maybe later. No, come now, have a ma.s.sage, I give you a good ma.s.sage. She is actually holding onto our arms.

When we get outside he says to Reiner, she was selling herself.

Reiner says nothing, but something in his expression is an answer nevertheless. He is silent and brooding all the way through supper in the dining room and upstairs again in the room. It's still early, but the rest of the evening stretches pointlessly away.

I think I will go out, Reiner says.

Where to.

Maybe I will have a sauna.

He goes out and I stand at the window for a long time, thinking. The lights of the city spread in every direction, but a deep darkness rings them round. He waits for Reiner to come back, but he doesn't come and doesn't come, and eventually he goes to bed.

When he wakes again it's morning and Reiner is on the other bed with only the cover over him. The cloth has fallen down and he isn't wearing anything underneath. The German is always delicate and fastidious about covering his body, and this careless abandonment feels like an announcement of some kind. The long brown back narrows down to the place where the b.u.t.tocks divide, where paler skin makes fur and shadow stand out in relief, now Reiner turns, there is the briefest flash of an erection before his sleeping hand pulls up the cover, I get up in a turmoil of longing and revulsion, did he really do that last night.

Yes, he says.

You went back and slept with that woman.

Yes. He is smiling again, a thin supercilious smile, this is later in the day, he is sitting on the edge of the bed with a towel around his waist. Some part of Reiner is perpetually balanced on a high rocky crag, looking down on the moral confusion of the plain. When I was in Canada I started sleeping with wh.o.r.es.

Why.

I have a lot of tension. s.e.x helps me to get rid of tension.

This isn't an answer to the question but he doesn't ask again, it's obvious that he is perturbed and somehow this has made him weak, he nods and changes the subject but in his mind he cannot let go of the lined exhausted face of the woman in the sauna, the way she held onto our arms.

They dress and pack up and go. Only now are they truly departing, all the rest has been preparation. With the rucksacks on their backs they walk, the height and nature of the surrounding buildings change, but the city continues and continues. They are heading towards a high ridge at the eastern edge, hours go by but they seem to get no closer, it begins to appear that they will spend their second night here too.

But then they are on the long dirt road that climbs the ridge and slowly the tin roofs and gardens drop away till they are ascending the final slope with brown rocks and scrub on either side. When they reach the top they pause for one last look back into the simmering miasmic pot from which they've climbed and then go on. There is another ridge behind the first and now they are in a different place.

Mountains go on and on, the world of right angles and rigid lines has been subsumed into one of undulations and dips, graphs that chart moods in striations of colour, browns deepening into shades of blue that almost blur into the sky. It is late afternoon. But hot. Objects at the roadside, a tree, a broken plough, wax and wane in the fuming air. At first the landscape is empty, untilled and unworked, but over the next rise, or perhaps the next, there are fields, maybe tiny human figures toiling, a hut or a house in the distance. They stop and rest in a shady spot, it is incredible to him, perhaps to both of them, that they are here, what was an unconsidered line in a letter months ago has come to pa.s.s.

They walk and walk, all the motion latent in the vast curves of the earth somehow contracted into the dynamics of this movement, one leg swinging past the other, each foot planted and uprooted in turn, the whole surface of the world has been trodden down just like this over time. The rucksack is heavy, the belt cuts into his hips and shoulders, his toes and heels are chafing in his boots, his mouth is dry, all the loose and disconnected thoughts of his brain cohere around the will and impulse to go on. Alone he would not. Alone he would sit down and not move again, or alone he would not be here at all, but he is here and this fact in itself makes him subservient to the other, who pulls him along in his wake as if on thin threads of power.

They do not talk. There is, yes, an occasional conversation, but about practical things, where will we sleep, should we have a rest, otherwise they walk, sometimes next to each other, sometimes apart, but always alone. It's strange that all this s.p.a.ce, unconfined by artificial limits as it spills to the horizon, should throw you back so completely into yourself, but it does, I don't know when I was last so intensely concentrated into a single point, see me walking on that dust road with my face washed clean of all the usual emotions, the strains and strivings to link up with the world. Maybe deep meditation makes you feel that way. And maybe that is what Reiner means when he says that night that walking has a rhythm that takes you over.

What do you mean.

If you walk and walk for long enough, the rhythm takes over.

There is a vagueness to the way he says this that makes you want to leave the topic there, this is often the case with Reiner, he offers a thought that's interesting or profound and perhaps not his own, and on the other side of it you sense a blankness that he can't fill up, there are no further thoughts to follow on. He waits in silence for you to speak. Sometimes you do, but not tonight, I am too tired, they are sitting side by side in a small cave, an overhang in the rock.

It is almost dark. This is hours and hours after they left the city, he would have liked to stop long ago but Reiner wanted to continue, only after the sun has set does he finally concede that it's time to pitch the tent, but now there is nowhere that looks hospitable, there are fields on one side and a bare ridge on the other, this is too exposed, it feels wrong, let's just go over the ridge and take a look. And there by chance they find the cave, Reiner has the calm triumphant look of someone who knew all the time, what his look implies is that he is attuned to the rhythms of the universe, the rhythms of walking no different to those of living, go bravely to extremes and everything will be provided. See, no need to put up the tent. I am less enthusiastic, are we really going to do this, sleep out in the open like a pair of tramps, he is spoiled and soft, he lacks the fatalism of his hard companion, and shepherds have shat in little piles around the cave. But as it gets darker and the world contracts to the size of the tiny overhang, it is more pleasant to be here, in the circle of firelight they've made with their hands.

In front of the cave the earth drops away into a vast valley, in the light the hugeness of this s.p.a.ce was frightening but now it has become consoling, far far below are the tiny isolated fires of herdsmen, the distant sound of cowbells carries up in quavering echoes, when they have boiled water and eaten a sense of well-being descends, all the rifts and ruptures of the world knitted up and healed, hours of sleep ahead.

He spreads his sleeping bag and lies down on one side, staring out into the dark. After a moment Reiner comes over and crouches down behind him. They say nothing, the silence thickens into tension and then Reiner says, in one of your letters.

Yes.

You said you were looking forward to seeing me again.

Yes.

What did you mean by that.

He doesn't know what he meant by that but he knows what Reiner means by this. He can't help it, but all day on the road his mind has conjured images it doesn't want, he keeps seeing that woman from last night, filled to the brim with such febrile desperation, he sees Reiner on top of her, bending her into plastic poses with his brown hands. What Reiner wants now would be no different than with the woman, a ritual performed without tenderness or warmth or sensual pleasure.

But the truth is also that there is an answering impulse of subservience in him, part of him wants to give in, I see shadows thrown up in grappling contortions on the roof of the cave.

I don't know what I meant.

You don't know what you meant.

I was looking forward to seeing you.

Nothing else.

Not that I can think of.

Reiner nods slowly. Neither of them is quite the person that by mutual agreement they have been till now, the rules will be different from tonight. He can smell the smoky sweat of the other man, or perhaps it is his own, not a bad smell, and then Reiner gets up and moves away to the far side of the cave to settle himself. They don't speak again. The fire slowly subsides, the shadows fade, the sound of bells continues in the air.

They leave again before it's light, the road still blue and indistinct. The sore places from yesterday ache with fresh intensity, but after half an hour of walking the pain has become dispersed and general. He hurts pleasantly all over. The sun comes up and on every side the mountains rise up out of the dark.

They are walking in a big circle that will end in a place close to the city again, from where they will begin a second and larger circle ending in almost the same place, from where they will begin a third. In this way they will traverse the country in three growing loops, the last of which will take them into the highest mountains of the Drakensberg, far off in the east. By then they hope to be fit and strong, more used to the hardships of this kind of travel, though he has his doubts. It is Reiner who has planned their journey this way, marking it out in coloured ink on his map.

They stop at a little roadside shop to buy food for the day. The tiny room is full of tins and boxes and packets, pasta and sweets and vegetables and soap. The packs are heavy and it seems sensible to get light things, some rolls maybe, some rice. But Reiner stalks around the dim interior of the shop, selecting heavy items from the shelves, he chooses tins, a bag of potatoes, bars of chocolate.

But why.

I feel like it.

Chocolate.

I like chocolate. I read an article about a man who lived for a year on chocolate and water.

It isn't possible.

Reiner looks at him, smirking, of course it's possible. In the days to come he will break off little pieces of chocolate and eat delicately, savouring some essence in it that will nourish him beyond the laws of biology. For Reiner the complexities and contradictions of the world are a distraction, and the truth is always stark and simple, a rule that must be followed rigidly if all the confusion is to be overcome, it is possible, he believes, to survive on will-power and chocolate, and every time he offers any to his companion that little smirk returns to Reiner's face.

The money that pays for this food, as well as for everything else, is Reiner's. In Maseru he changed some of his Canadian dollars into rands, he carries the money in a pouch around his waist, and this is what they're living on now. Although I note down each item diligently in a little notebook, and will repay every cent at the end of the trip, what becomes clear even now, on the second day of this journey, is that Reiner will decide what they may or may not have along the way.

So they take the tins and potatoes and chocolate, they distribute them evenly, but their weight feels disproportionately heavy when they set out again, he feels pulled down by a strong resentment, he walks more slowly than before. By noon the sun is intensely hot, both of them are pouring sweat. They are near some ugly modern buildings, a little village of some kind, there is an old ruined church. I think we should stop and rest for a bit, Reiner says.

Over the top of the ridge on the right there is a steep drop, halfway down is a cave larger than the one they slept in last night, Reiner wants to climb to it. But it's a long way down. So what. So we have to climb back up again. So what. There is another moment of unspoken conflict, the sardonic mockery in the dark eyes of the one man wins over the reluctance of the weaker man, they pick their way down between boulders and aloes, loose pebbles scattering under their feet. When they come to the cave his anger cools in the shade of the stone, the calm vista of the valley that unrolls at their feet. It's beautiful here. Yes. What he means by that one syllable of agreement is that he is right again.

They throw themselves down on the rock. He falls asleep and when he wakes hours have gone by and it is starting to storm. The sky is black and blue with cloud, ladders of lightning drop down, thunder shakes the stone. When the rain comes it is almost solid, a door closing off the world. They sit under the ceiling of rock, water pouring down, with cool scents leaking up out of the ground. It is like last night, now that he is rested and refreshed, now that the heat has gone, the rawness of his extreme emotions is also soothed, he can almost love this strange place he finds himself in, and his strange companion too.

I think, Reiner says, we should travel every day like this. We should get up early and walk and then stop in the middle of the day. Then we go again.

Yes, he says.

At this moment he is in full agreement with Reiner, he doesn't know how he could have been angry with him, against the stormy sky his solemn face is beautiful.

When the storm clears the light comes through and they go out into a world rinsed clean and dripping with colour. These afternoon storms happen almost every day, the heat will build in intensity till it finally breaks, afterwards there is always this feeling of regeneration, in the landscape but also between themselves.

They are truly on the road now. Until they spent their first night in the open this whole trip was still a mad idea, one they could abandon at any time, but somehow they have pa.s.sed a point and gone from one world into another. In the old world they had their usual life, with its habits and friends, its places and choices, but now all that has been left behind. In this new life they have only each other and the selection of objects that they carry on their backs. Everything else, even the people they stop and speak to at the roadside, is pa.s.sing by.

In this curious union, this bizarre marriage, a new set of habits must spring up to keep them alive. There are tasks that must be seen to, the most basic, the most necessary, that on certain days can be luminous with almost religious significance, and on others can feel like the most tedious of ch.o.r.es. The tent, for example, must be put up and taken down. Two or three times a day a meal must be prepared, then the pots and pans must afterwards be cleaned. In the beginning, for the first few days, these jobs are shared equally between them. They help each other lay out the poles and insert them through the limp canvas, cast around together for stones to knock the pegs into the ground. Or they trade, why don't you put up the tent, I'll make the supper. Okay, I'll help you wash up later. And although they are wary of each other, and the little moments of conflict do recur, there is a symmetry and balance to the running of things, they could continue like this for some time.

In these early days there is a lot of talking between them still, they find their way into interesting conversations, they exchange ideas and disagree with respect. And if they avoid personal topics, if there is no discussion of their most intimate lives, it is because they have left those intimate lives behind. In their place is this new intimacy, the practical one between them, in which they lie next to each other and b.u.mp against each other in the dark, and look into each other's faces first thing in the morning, and in a certain sense it's this intimacy that is the engine of their journey.

The day becomes organized around little rituals of collapse and renewal. Every morning they get up very early before it's light.

One of them makes a fire to boil water for coffee while the other takes down the tent. Then they set out, trying to cover a certain distance before it gets too hot. After an hour or two they stop to have breakfast. Then they wash up, if there is water, or store the dirty pots and plates till later, and set out again.

By the middle of the morning, when it becomes too hot, they find a place to rest for a few hours. In this country of peaks and valleys, threaded with rivers, there is often a shady spot near water, with a view out into blue distances, they become used to sleeping in these soft and lush surroundings, bees drone, the shadows of clouds move silently, gra.s.s waves.

Now the heat is building towards a storm. The edges of mountains take on a sharp electric sheen, in the high air thunderheads mount up, eventually a hot dry wind begins to blow. Either they will wait where they are, sometimes even putting up the tent again until the storm has come and gone, or they will take shelter in a hut or cave. Their greatest fear at these times is lightning. In this dislocated state, in which death is a constant presence beneath the skin, it is a grotesquely plausible idea that they will be struck down from the sky. He has never seen such brilliant fire, or heard such terrifying thunder.

Then there is the last walk of the day, the final push of energy and effort, trying to cover a particular distance before the night comes down. Around sunset they find a place to sleep. Most of the time they pitch the tent. If they are near a village they go to ask permission from the chief, this is invariably granted, once or twice they are offered a room to sleep in. Then there are the evening rituals, the fire and food, perhaps a little reading, the walk out into the dark with a toilet-roll in hand. Before it is very late they sleep, stretching out side by side, exhaustion erases the mind in seconds, even the hardest ground is soft.

So the days go on. The road takes them past houses, or little cl.u.s.ters of huts, and everywhere people stop what they're doing to watch them go past. Sometimes greetings are shouted, stock English phrases they must have learned at school, h.e.l.lo how are you yes no I am also fine goodbye. In many places crowds of children swarm around them, following with singing and laughter this pair of pied pipers who draw them in their wake. In one village the mayor puts them up in his house, he is a huge gap-toothed man who smokes marijuana incessantly in rolls of newspaper, he insists on giving them his own bed to sleep in while he spends the night somewhere else. At a roadside store two schoolgirls chat shyly, they also try out their litany of English phrases, h.e.l.lo h.e.l.lo what is your name, then one blurts out I love you and both of them collapse in giggles.

Reiner finds the schoolgirls amusing, I could have a fat wife in Lesotho, I would like that ho ho ho, but to most of these friendly overtures he responds with irritation. He doesn't want to be bothered with smiling and talking, he sees no need for interaction of this kind. He puts in his earplugs when he sets out in the morning, he keeps his eyes fixed ahead of him on the road. He is happy to be offered a room, but he doesn't want to pay for it, and he doesn't want to ask permission to camp. Why should we. It's the custom. Their custom, not mine. This is their country we're in. Their country, I don't believe in countries, that's just lines on a map. Sometimes I don't know what you do believe in, Reiner. To this the sulky face only smiles.

Most of the time they follow the road, but sometimes they go across country. This happens when Reiner sees a place on his map where they can cut across, look here, from this point to there. But there are mountains inbetween. Yes, I see them. Often it seems he chooses these routes precisely because of the obstacles, mountains, rivers, escarpments, they present an interesting challenge, we must overcome nature with the same dispa.s.sion it shows us, so they walk out into the wilderness.

I don't like leaving the road, my sense of vulnerability deepens, a sort of primal nervousness descends. But this is also one of the most compelling elements in travel, the feeling of dread underneath everything, it makes sensations heightened and acute, the world is charged with a power it doesn't have in ordinary life.

After about a week they complete the first loop of their journey. In the little town of Roma they camp in the grounds of a deserted seminary, the long sandstone building with its pillars and arches, a dark row of poplar trees behind it, like something out of Italy.

In Roma too there is the very old man in the pavement restaurant at lunchtime, where are you from, smiling toothlessly all the time, ah South Africa you people think we are monkeys you keep Nelson Mandela in prison. When he tells him that Nelson Mandela is out of jail, three years ago already, the old man laughs uproariously, throwing his head back, you think we are monkeys, Nelson Mandela is locked up. But he isn't, he isn't, I promise you, somehow he almost wants to cry. The old man laughs at him, hating him, leave it, Reiner says, looking panicked, he doesn't know, n.o.body's told him, leave it.

The next day they walk out of Roma and follow roads that take them into high mountains. Till then they have been in the foothills of the Drakensberg, now the peaks climb around them in weird fantastic lines against the sky. The road rises and falls like a boat on rough seas, it pinches into hairpin bends and goes into elaborate loops to cover short distances. In the afternoon there is a bad storm. The sky above the long valley closes over, the lightning is spectacular. They shelter outside a house and afterwards push on, looking for a flat place to pitch the tent, but there is none, the road is halfway up the side of the valley with steep walls above and below. As darkness falls they come to a mission station, it turns out that the priests are German, Reiner has a long and amiable conversation, smiling and nodding, he is like another person completely. The priests say they have no s.p.a.ce but send them to the chief of the local village, they sleep that night on the mud floor of a hut, mysterious rustlings from the thatch overhead.

Reiner says that the priests have told him the road they are on comes to an end not far ahead. From there they will have to walk across rough country to the next road. Reiner has a plan, look, he says, we can do it, he wants to try a long hike next day, the longest they've done so far, all the way to Semonkong.

By now even the most trivial events conceal some kind of groping for power. In the very beginning, two years ago, when they first saw each other in Greece, they thought of themselves as the same. On that lonely road they looked like mirror images of each other. Perhaps each of them thought of real communication as unnecessary, words divide by multiplying, what was certain was the oneness underneath the words. But now they refrain from talking because it might reveal to them how dangerously unlike one another they are. An image in a mirror is a reversal, the reflection and the original are joined but might cancel each other out.

So underneath the journey is a conflict, almost another journey in itself, a struggle for ascendancy, which as the days go by begins to push through to the surface. When they get up in the morning Reiner has taken to bathing himself, either in a river, if there is one, or in water from the water-bottles. Then he dries himself and sits on a rock, rubbing creams and lotions into his skin, which he dispenses from a selection of little jars and vials. Then he takes out a wooden hairbrush and runs it through his long hair, stroke after stroke, till it shines. Although this ritual gets longer every day, until it takes up half an hour or more, Reiner is always careful to be willing to do his share, just wait a little while and I will help you, leave the tent I'll do it, but his companion can't bear watching, it is better to keep busy, to make coffee, to put away the tent, while Reiner preens. When they set out a little later he is often choked with anger or irritation, and Reiner is full of smug satisfaction, brown locks bouncing on his shoulders.

A second point of conflict is money. He has been keeping meticulous records in his little book, to which Reiner is apparently indifferent. But whenever they stop to buy something there is a silent battle about what they will choose and who will be allowed to have it. Reiner continues to buy his chocolates, for example, but if I want something there is often a dispute, hmm I don't know about that what do we need that for. And sometimes Reiner will buy something for himself, a box of sweets or a bottle of water, and wait for his companion to ask. The asking is humiliating, which Reiner knows. Money is never just money alone, it is a symbol for other deeper things, on this trip how much you have is a sign of how loved you are, Reiner h.o.a.rds the love, he dispenses it as a favour, I am endlessly gnawed by the absence of love, to be loveless is to be without power.

So at this point of the journey there are the moments of unity and the other moments of conflict, and the long separate s.p.a.ces of walking inbetween, in which each of them is alone. But even in this activity they cannot agree. It is not enough that they should go from A to B, but they have to do it in a certain time, it's not enough that they should follow the road, they must always be going up to that rock or down to that cave, something is always being measured, something is always being pushed. At night Reiner is forever crouched over his map with a torch, adding up the kilometres they've covered, checking the distance against the time.

So when he says he wants to do the long hike tomorrow, it means something different to both of them.

How far is it.

About sixty kilometres.

In one day.

We can do it.

But why.

Because I want to get better.

He understands that Reiner is pitting himself against certain odds, the limitations of himself, the adversity of conditions, in this scheme of things he is one more resistance to be overcome, he doesn't like to be seen this way and so he says, yes, well, we can try.

They get up long before sunrise. By the time it starts to become light they have long since quit the mud house of the chief and are on the road. For much of yesterday they were above the forested floor of the valley, but now as the mountains draw in on either side the road drops down, till they come to a village. The road ends here. They sit for a while among the houses and rough gardens, goats grazing amiably in the flowers, chickens pecking in the dirt. Then they set off, striking out in a general direction, this must be the way. They have to climb out of the valley, over the mountains, the route goes up and up. These are the steepest slopes they've had to deal with, no road could ascend like this, they are scrabbling for a foothold much of the time, there are paths occasionally, which they follow, the paths take them to villages, yes even here in the precipitous wastes there are the congregations of round huts with the area of packed dry soil between them, the faces peering out in curiosity or amazement as they go by, people living out their whole lives in one small portion of the earth, oblivious to anything beyond. Memory is patchy and intermittent again, why are certain vistas, certain stretches of a path, so deeply impressed in recollection, so vividly evoked, and others disappear without a trace, I see the two of them at last climbing up a final slope to the bare crown of a hill, there are other villages on top, fields of maize, but off in the distance higher up there is the line of the road, a car perhaps pa.s.sing like a toy on a track, we made it, look look, we're here.

It takes another hour to reach the road. A deep fatigue has already settled in, they sit outside a house to rest. Cars pa.s.s from time to time, they could hitch a ride, but this would defeat the purpose, in a little while they go on. The sky today is flawless, a huge heat presses down. They come to a shop on the shoulder of a hill, now there is no longer the will or energy to continue, they sit on the concrete stoep outside, he pa.s.ses out for a while, and they are only halfway there.