In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,15

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 hoards 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 spaces 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