In A Strange Room: Three Journeys Part 3

When they go on it's along a rural country track that lifts out of this populous plateau, then they are on a high deserted heath with distances devoid of people, nothing moves except themselves, and then barely. They are very tired by now. The relentless uphill since the morning has depleted them, although they are gently descending now their muscles are strained to breaking point, there is no pleasure in this movement at all. Not even Reiner is happy. There are no signposts or settlements, the map can't tell them where they are, I keep my eyes ahead, looking for Semonkong, we must almost be there, surely by now we must be there, but around every bend the road continues, unrolling ahead of them like fate. A man on a donkey in an enormous Basuto hat and blanket goes past, he pays them no mind. The road drops down more steeply, they are lowering again from the highest point in this range, the sun slides down behind the peaks.

On the other side of exhaustion there is a state of weakness so acute that it ceases to matter where you are or what you are doing. This state comes down over him in the evening, he feels a la.s.situde like sleep, it is difficult to balance. He pa.s.ses a horse in a field under a full moon. No other image from this journey is so rare and brilliant for him, the green of the gra.s.s like glossy plumage, the animal dreaming quietly in profile, the white circle up above like G.o.d. Surely now they must be there. But full night comes down, not a light anywhere, they go on.

This is enough, he says to Reiner. Why don't we stop.

Here. Reiner looks around, even his drawn and fractured face is tempted, but he won't give in. We must be so close, we've come so far already.

At the base of the mountains the road flattens out, surely now, surely now, they walk without stopping because if they rested they would not get up, they pa.s.s a dam, birds fly up shrieking at their pa.s.sage, the wild cries in the night are like the voice of the ground calling stop now stop, but they don't stop, the landscape pa.s.sing on either side is moving now of its own volition, it has nothing to do with their walking, far above the stars wheel imperceptibly in their cryptic patterns, the perfect circle of the moon rolls like a lost hoop and disappears, sometime towards midnight they come over a rise and ahead of them are the low flat shapes, the scattered sullen lights of the town. A dog begins to bark, another takes it up, on a wave of snarls and yelps they are buoyed through the streets, who are these wanderers come in out of the dark.

There is a sign. They follow. Through the town and out the other side. The road drops down into a gorge and crosses a river, they come to a campsite at the bottom with bungalows spread out, all is in darkness. They ring a bell, someone comes, they are too tired to put up the tent so they take a room, they get into bed. We did it, Reiner says, we have succeeded, but he knows without thinking it that the thread has been stretched too far.

They rest there for a couple of days. In the morning they move out of the bungalow and pitch their tent on the gra.s.s. There is a belt of trees and then the river, flowing brown as beer between the rocks.

They hardly speak now. Both of them have been hit hard by the long hike, their feet are blistered, their muscles ache, there are raw patches that the rucksacks have worn down on their skin. But their responses to this experience are very different. Reiner seems rejuvenated, the point for him was to overcome his weakness and the point has been achieved, already he is planning the next stage of their journey. He announces that they can walk for perhaps a day on a good road, which goes up to a certain place. Between this place and the end of the second loop of the walk is a range of mountains with no road going through. If they alter their course, if they travel south a little way, they will come to a road that would take them directly to where they're trying to go, but this is too easy, let's walk across, Reiner says. Two days, three days, we'll be there.

I stare dully at the map.

I would like to do more long hikes, Reiner says. Like this last one. What do you think. We build up, then we do a big walk, then we rest for a few days.

He nods, he turns away, something inside him is finished. The tiredness of the long walk will not leave his body, a numbness has crept into his bones. He wanders around the campsite, trying to revive, he thinks about everything and resolves nothing, he washes his clothes in the river and drapes them over the rocks to dry. Then he sits in the sun, listening to the water, reading. In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. The words come to him from a long way off. He puts the book down and stares at peculiar long-legged insects on the surface of the river, they dart frantically back and forth, living out their whole lives in a s.p.a.ce of one or two metres, they know nothing about him or his troubles, even now they're unaware of him watching, their otherness to him is complete.

The owner of the campsite is a fat man called John. He tells them about a spectacular view an hour and a half's walk away, don't miss it, he says, it's really something. When they get there it turns out to be true, the view is truly astonishing, the same river they're camped beside falls over a cliff and disappears into s.p.a.ce. He lies down on his stomach and peers over the edge. The drop goes on and on, dizzying, vertiginous, in it gravity is compounded with a secret longing for death.

When he crawls away and stands he sees Reiner a little way off, on a boulder at the edge of the cliff, leaning against the abyss. What pa.s.ses across his mind then, fleetingly, wordless, is the urge to push, one tiny movement of my hands and he is gone. Where does it come from, this thought of murder surfacing so casually amongst the everyday debris of my brain and then sinking away again.

This is the way we have to walk, Reiner says. Tomorrow.

Oh.

When we go on, I would like to do a night-hike. We leave when it gets dark, we go on all night.

We can try that, he says.

So the next afternoon they set off together in the last light as a fine rain starts to fall. They disappear into darkness, and into a hole in memory too, the next picture I have is of the two of them, in stark daylight again, climbing through the mountains. They have left the road and are heading roughly west. On this hot ordinary day, the two tiny figures wend their way up, up, between creva.s.ses and fissures and fields and koppies, pa.s.sing villages and little streams, dense copses and woods of trees, heading towards the top of the range, from where they will be able to begin their descent. Reiner is driving them on. It rains in the afternoon, a brief intense downpour, but the heat doesn't go away. Steam rises on every side, as if the earth is smouldering, and in the late afternoon the air is taut and electric and hot.

Then everything seems to happen very quickly, converging towards a point. They come out on what feels like the roof of the world just as dusk is falling, with a precipitous gorge directly in front of them and line upon line of mountains rippling away. The dark is coming down unnaturally fast and when they look out ahead of them they see why. Rolling in from separate points on the horizon are two ma.s.sive storms, their paths set to collide roughly where they are standing. The black fronts of cloud are impenetrable, already the sun is obscured.

It's too late now to retrace their steps, or to find a place lower down to shelter. There are only a few minutes left before the storms will hit, just enough time to put up the tent, and they start fumbling frantically with poles and pegs and straps. The wind is rising and there is a strange smell, like metal, on the air. The sound of thunder comes again and again. They get the tent up and the rucksacks inside and then they rush around finding rocks to weigh down the canvas.

By now the outlines of the world are bending and wavering, and it feels as if they're rushing through s.p.a.ce. With a calm eye somewhere in his brain he observes how very exposed and isolated they are, this one little b.u.mp standing up on the bald crown of the mountain.

The lightning, he thinks, we must get rid of the metal. For the next minute or two they rummage through the bags, collecting all the metal they can find. Laden with cutlery and pen-knives and bracelets they rush out again and throw the little pitiful heap of silver down in the roiling undergrowth and rush back. Would it make any difference, this ridiculous precaution, there are still the pegs in the ground, also metal, too late to do anything about those. They climb back inside as the storms strike.

No human force has prepared him for a violence so impersonal or strong. Wind and rain and noise. The ground shakes. Between the lightning and the thunder the interval is tiny and getting smaller. Then there is no interval and the centre of power is above them.

Somehow this image sums it up, this is the moment it has all led to, he lies face down towards the back of the tent, like a piece of wood, a stone, his head pressed into the ground and his hands over his ears. Now, he thinks, it will happen now, now, now, while Reiner lies the other way, his head up, holding the flaps of the entrance slightly apart so that he can look out, with that sulky expression of an angry child, at the roaring world lit up like noon.

The morning dawns perfect and cloudless. He wakes early and crawls out into calm. The bushes are silver with moisture, the mountains are crisp and clear against the blue. In the clean air the eye travels with telescopic power to the tiny details of the horizon. They are very high up.

Reiner emerges a while later and looks around. Hmm, he says. I think I will take a little walk. He wanders off in the direction of the gorge.

While he waits for Reiner he lights the stove to make some tea and then inspects the damage of last night. Some of the ropes have come loose, and some of the rocks have rolled, but otherwise the tent is secure. More than anything, their weight must have held it down.

Reiner is still not back, so he busies himself by dragging the rucksacks out of the tent. Then he starts to pack it all up. This takes more time than usual because of all the mud and dirt, and when the plastic has been rolled up and stowed he can't find some of the pegs. They've sunk into the wet ground and disappeared.

Reiner reappears, striding in through the undergrowth. His silence says that he is truly in his element here, on the steeple of the world, among storms and peaks.

I can't find all the pegs.

Hmm, Reiner says. He helps himself to tea and goes to sit on a rock, staring out intensely into the distance.

He digs in the mud for a bit, then wanders off to look for the metal they threw away last night. He can't remember where they put it, nothing looks today the way it did in the dark. Eventually the glint of silver catches his eye and he carries it back in a bristling pile to put away. Reiner watches him and says, you were scared of the lightning.

Yes. Weren't you.

He shakes his head and sips his tea.

I make breakfast. Reiner throws out the last of his tea and comes over to eat. They don't talk and there is a deep tension, some remnant of the electric thrill of the storm, between them. Reiner eats slowly, thinking and staring, and he's still busy when his companion finishes. He is impatient with waiting and goes off again to look for the missing pegs. When he next looks Reiner is perched on a rock, his shirt off, rubbing cream into his skin.

Don't you want to help me look.

I'm busy, Reiner says.

Busy.

He comes back and collects the dirty plates and cutlery together. He stows them in his bag and by then Reiner has finished rubbing and has started brushing his hair. The brush flickers, the strokes go on, repet.i.tive and infuriating.

He goes off to clean his teeth. When he gets back Reiner has finished brushing and is putting his shirt on. Then he also squeezes out toothpaste onto his toothbrush and wanders off.

He comes back a few minutes later at a quick, efficient pace. Ready, he says, let's go.

We haven't found all the pegs yet.

What.

The pegs.

Reiner clicks his tongue in irritation, he sighs. He comes over to the flattened patch where the tent was pitched and peers around at the trampled ground. After a few moments he says, leave them.

What.

Leave them. We'll use something else.

It's not my tent. I have to take care of it.

Well, they're gone. I can't see them. Come on, we've wasted a lot of time this morning.

He looks at him and from a long way inside words travel up through great resistance, he says, you haven't done anything.

What.

You haven't done anything. I've done everything this morning. I want to look for the pegs.

Reiner gives again that impatient click, he tosses his long hair expressively. Without a word he picks up his rucksack and sets off along the footpath they've been following. The one left behind stares in amazement as he strides off, his dark figure shrinking rapidly till it disappears. Then he puts the tent away in his bag and starts to follow.

The path goes at first through lots of twists and turns, following the contour of the hill, he can't see far ahead, but as he comes around the side of the mountain the slope opens out and the path unravels a long way into the future. Now he can see Reiner in the distance, a tiny figure, moving fast and not looking back. He tries to speed up, but he is tired and heavy. He is also carrying more than his share, it is Reiner's job to carry the tent but he strode off without it, everything in the end is coming down to a few lost pegs and the weight of a tent.

After a while he stops trying to catch up. But when they are on the other side of the mountain he gets a full view of the path going on, then taking a sharp turn to the left and descending towards a river. Reiner is far along, approaching the turn. The path doesn't travel a direct route, and he sees that if he leaves the track here and cuts across a steep slope he can come out ahead of Reiner at the river.

He goes off down to the left, scrabbling between little scrubby bushes and loose rocks, trying to keep his balance. From the corner of his eye he watches Reiner, he sees him speed up when he realizes what's going on, trying to keep his lead, then slowing down again when he realizes he can't do it. All this happens without mutual acknowledgement.

Lurching and struggling, he comes to the bottom of the dip and rejoins the path ahead of Reiner. Now he can afford to relax. He takes a leisurely walk to the river and removes his pack and sits down to wait. The water is shallow but fast. Stones have been positioned so that you can hop from one to another to get across. Just over the crest of a rise on the far side are the pointed roofs of huts, a thin line of smoke cracking open the sky.

In a few minutes Reiner arrives. They don't look at each other. He stands, gazing around, then also takes his pack off and sits down. They don't speak. They both stare silently in the same direction, a little way apart from each other. The noise of water underscores the scene. Both of them are calm, and it is understood that they will proceed together from this point.

When they set off again it is Reiner who moves first, standing and stretching and busying himself with his pack. Then he also stands and prepares himself, mirroring Reiner. It's as if they're in different places, not a word has been spoken.

Halfway across, he slips on a stone and falls. He isn't hurt, only wet and humiliated. Reiner has already gone across safely and he turns to look back briefly. He doesn't laugh but it's as if he's laughing. He doesn't wait, he doesn't pause, he leaves me kneeling in the water and goes on, in half a minute he's disappeared over the rise.

I get up, walk across to the other side. Stare for a second at the empty path, thinking, he's gone again, he's gone again. Then follow. Powered now by a fury that makes him glacially calm, all the unsaid words swirling in his mouth like smoke, limbs hot with all the things he didn't do.

Over the rise he sees Reiner sitting in a dip, on a log, smiling as he watches children from the village playing in long gra.s.s around him. Smiling and smiling.

He comes up and says, why didn't you wait.

Reiner looks up, eyebrows raised, an expression of patient enquiry on his face.

When I fell just now. In the water. Why didn't you wait. I waited for you.

We will discuss it, Reiner says. But later.

We will discuss it now.

The last word, the now, is charged with a voltage that surprises everybody. The children, who haven't understood the meaning of this quiet exchange, suddenly go silent and move watchfully away.

We will discuss it, Reiner says, but not in that tone of voice.

His own tone is disdainful and bored, it's as if a bad smell has pa.s.sed under his nose, he looks at his companion then back at the children and smiles.

What happens next I too am watching, I am a spectator of my own behaviour, opening the rucksack and taking things out and throwing them. Words are coming from my mouth too, also plucked out and thrown, incoherent and mismatched, their trajectories colliding, you think I enjoy walking with you I don't I don't enjoy it you can walk on your own from now on you're alone do you hear me how can you treat me here take this you'll need this and this and this, throwing the gas canisters, the bed-roll, knives and forks, toilet-rolls, tins of food, and this and this and this.

The objects fly and hit the ground and bounce. Reiner watches them with an amused detachment, oh dear look at all this madness how unfortunate. He doesn't move. He appears to have been awaiting this moment from the outset, although the truth is probably that it's the last thing he expects.

Then the frenzy is finished, he closes his pack and picks it up, he starts to walk away. It is difficult to believe that he's doing this, part of him wants to be recalled, so when he hears Reiner's voice he stops.

Hey.

He turns. Reiner is walking towards him. If he offers one word of apology, if he concedes even the smallest humility, then I will relent. But Reiner is too rigid and too proud. Though what he does do is somehow even stranger.

Here, he says. You'll need this.

He is holding out a fifty rand note.

He has no money of his own, not a single cent, but in his fury was prepared to walk away penniless, and even now he hesitates. But then his hand comes out, he takes the money, this is a bitter farewell.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Or maybe there are no goodbyes, nothing spoken, yes it is more likely that way, the last glance pa.s.ses between them and they turn their backs on each other. He starts to walk in a direction he hopes, judging by the sun and his instinct, is east. When he comes to the top of the ridge he looks back and Reiner has gathered all the objects and bits and pieces together and is going in the other direction, west. So they walk away from each other in the high mountains one morning, watched by the children in the gra.s.s.

In half an hour he starts to feel regret. He acted pa.s.sionately, he didn't think, it wasn't fair to abandon somebody like that. But immediately answering voices clamour, what else should you have done, he deserved to be abandoned. He stops and sits and thinks, holding his head in his hands. He tries to consider his options. But what point is there, even if he tries to catch up with Reiner there is no way of knowing where he is in these mountains, and if he does find him how likely is it that this fight can be resolved. He knows in his bones that Reiner does not forgive.

So he shoulders his pack and goes on, walking faster and more lightly now than he has in days. He continues to head east, trying to get back to Semonkong. Whenever he comes to a settlement of any kind, a shop or a village, he stops and asks, and there is invariably somebody who knows the way. At one place a serene young man in blue overalls insists on coming along to be his guide, walking for miles next to him, not talking, just smiling shyly whenever he is asked something. He leads him to the mouth of a ravine that cuts down through the mountains. There is a footpath descending and he points, this way Semonkong, smiling and bobbing his head.

There is no money to give him, only the fifty rand note, but the young man doesn't seem to expect payment, he accepts a handshake happily and watches the strange traveller depart. The walls of rock mount up on either side, the ravine seems empty of people, but a little way on a shepherd, invisible high up above somewhere, starts calling to him, the same phrases he's heard before, learned by rote at school, h.e.l.lo h.e.l.lo how are you. He looks but can see nothing. h.e.l.lo I love you, the big voice shouts, echoing surreally down the gorge, I love you I love you h.e.l.lo.

Asking and wandering, he finds his way back to Semonkong by evening. This is an achievement, he's covered two days' journey in one, but maybe his route is more direct, and his pack is certainly lighter. The fat man John seems confused to see him again so soon, didn't you leave two days ago, and where is that other guy, the German. We had a fight in the mountains, we parted company. John allows him to camp for the night at half the usual cost, he is helpful but suspicious, maybe he murdered his companion in the hills. But in the morning he comes and suggests, you see that girl there, she's driving to Maseru today, maybe she'll give you a lift.

The girl is a woman of twenty four or five, an American working on some relief programme in Lesotho. She isn't happy to help, he can see from her expression, but she agrees, he will have to ride in the back with some of her co-workers and a pile of boxes she has to unload. Yes yes anything that will be fine. He climbs in with the others and listens to them bicker and squabble among themselves. They have been here too long with each other, he can hear a certain note in their voices, it is time for them to go home.

Today he himself is feeling stunned and empty, he can't quite credit the rapid end to events, he keeps playing that scene of yesterday in his mind. He closes his ears to the conversation around him and looks out through the window at the countryside pa.s.sing by. It's strange to be seeing in reverse the whole extended panorama of the long walk they did just days ago, here is the spot where we rested, there's the place where I saw the horse, that's where we joined up with the road.

They come to Roma in the late morning. This is where the boxes have to be unloaded, he goes with the others to the compound where they're housed, he helps them carry the boxes and waits in the shade for them to finish their other business. He can tell that they find him odd and aloof, his silence is an eccentricity to them, but he can't engage in all the right social cues, he is alone.

It's hours before they get going again, and then another hour or so to Maseru. She drops him at the outer edge of the city, she is heading off somewhere else and can't be bothered to run him further, but he is effusive in his thanks. Goodbye, goodbye. Then with his rucksack on his back he goes walking the length of the endless main street again.

By the time he gets through the two border crossings it is late afternoon. Now suddenly he is thrown back on the physical realities of his situation, which are not comforting or good. At some point in the last day he has decided to go back north, up to Pretoria where his mother lives, because it's closer and easier than Cape Town. But now that he is finally stranded at the roadside with the red sun going down ahead of him it makes no difference what his destination is. He has used up twenty rand on campsite and food, he has thirty rand with which to travel six hundred kilometres. And this is not the benevolent deserted landscape of Lesotho, this is a border crossing in South Africa, cars and vans continually pa.s.s him by, streams of people go up and down the road, he is a curious and isolated figure, vulnerable in his solitude. He half-expects to see Reiner there.

He tries to hitch a ride but n.o.body will stop. There aren't many black people in cars and they barely glance at him anyway, but even the white families or couples or single women in jewels and tall hairstyles, come from Bloemfontein to the casinos for a wild night or two of gambling, glare at him with mistrust or contempt as they sail past with uptilted chins. Maybe he looks dirty or unkempt, he certainly doesn't look like them, a halo of danger rings him round. By the time it's dusk and the temperature is dropping, his despair is like another layer of clothes. There is nowhere to sleep, nowhere safe to pitch his tent, he would re-cross the border if this would help, but he'd be just as alone on the other side.

At the point when it is almost completely dark a minibus taxi comes by, the driver shouting his destination out the window, Jo'burg Jo'burg. Johannesburg is close to Pretoria, he has friends he can stay with, it's as good as home, yes please, he shouts, yes. The driver looks at him and stops. How much.

Seventy rand.

I've only got thirty.

He shakes his head. I can't help you.

Please.