In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,24

his face that he has heard another version of things from Reiner, the second story unwritten here. The two stories push against each other, they will never be reconciled, he wants to argue and explain till the other story disappears.

Sometimes it feels that Reiner will never leave. He will occupy the couch in the corner of the lounge, so as to occupy a corner of his life, forever. But eventually he does gather himself together. He shakes off some of the illness, starts to eat properly, puts on a bit of weight. He goes out and about again, walking in the streets. Then money arrives for him mysteriously from overseas, and he finally confirms a date for his ticket home.

In all this time, he spends a great deal of effort and energy avoiding the German. But there are two occasions on which they run into each other. The first happens one ordinary day, in the most ordinary of places. By now he has moved into a flat on his own, not far from where Reiner is staying. He goes to the local post-office one morning to send some letters, but as he is approaching the outside entrance he has a sudden clear perception that Reiner is inside. Don’t go in, he’s there. He stops dead, but then he wants to know whether his premonition was correct. Of course he goes through the door and they stare at each other for the first time in months. Reiner is in the queue, waiting, and though he falters for a moment he goes to the back of the line. His heart is hammering and his palms are sweating. The queue loops back on itself at a hundred and eighty degrees and Reiner is in the other half of the line, so that the two of them are moving towards each other one place at a time. A step, a step, another step. When the next person is served they will be opposite each other, an arm away, as close as they were when lying in the tent. He wants to run but he doesn’t dare.

Then Reiner turns on his heel, steps over the rope and walks out. I tremble with a weird sense of victory.

The second and last occasion is a few weeks afterwards, in the evening, in the street. He has been visiting friends and is walking back home alone. He is next to a long curved wall and he sees two people walking towards him. He realizes that the one on the outside, closest to him, is Reiner, he is with a woman he doesn’t know. The woman is talking, deep in conversation, while Reiner listens, but shock registers in his body when he looks up. If they were both alone perhaps one of them would cross the street to get away, or perhaps this time they would stop to speak. Well. Hello. Hello. How are you. But the foreign presence of the woman is like a distance and a silence between them and they only watch each other as they draw slowly closer on their curved trajectory, and when they are almost level Reiner smiles. It is the old sardonic smile, saying everything by saying nothing, the corners of the mouth lifting in the rigid mask of the face, and then they pass. He doesn’t look back and he is almost certain Reiner doesn’t either.

Then he’s gone. My friend calls to say, well, Reiner left last night, and with that single sentence the whole story is over. He waits for some further event, he doesn’t know what, a phone-call, a letter, to resolve things, even though he doesn’t want to make contact himself. Then at some point he realizes that the silence, the suspension, is the only form of resolution this particular story will ever have.

Maybe when two people meet for the first time all the possible variations on destiny are contained in their separate natures. These two will be drawn together, those two will be repulsed, most will pass politely with averted gaze and hurry on alone. Was what happened between him and Reiner love or hate or something else with another name. I don’t know. But this is how it ends. Some time afterwards, clearing out his desk when he is moving house again, he finds the notebook in which Reiner had written his name and address years ago in Greece, and after looking at the tiny narrow handwriting for a while he throws it away. Then he