In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,22

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 pass 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 nobody 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.

Sorry.

He is starting to change gears to pull away when I say, will you take thirty rand and my watch.

The driver looks at him again, who is this mad whitey, he holds out his hand. He slips off his watch and passes it through the window. He has a suspicion the man might just pull away, what could he do to stop it, but he examines the watch and shrugs, get in.

The minibus is empty, but the driver, whose name is Paul, takes him a little way down the road to a big dead tree under which all the other passengers are waiting. He is the last one and the only white person amongst them. This is not like the taxis from the city that he’s used to, where everybody mixes and is convivial, he is the odd person out here, nobody speaks to him. But Paul takes a liking to him, come and sit up in the front, he says, the road rushes blue and violent towards them through rain all the way.

At midnight he is climbing out onto a pavement in Hillbrow, the lights of the city like a heatless yellow fire around him. He shakes hands with Paul, who is driving straight back to Lesotho to pick up another load of passengers. He watches the minibus disappear, tail lights merging with all the other random moving lights, then the passengers disperse in various directions, among the crowds, lives joined together for a little while and then unjoined again.

He stays up in Pretoria for