In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,17

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 grass. 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 space 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 space. 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 passes 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