In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,26
day he goes for a swim at one of the hotel pools. Afterwards he sits at a table near the bar to have a drink and his attention is slowly drawn to a group of young people nearby. They all have their rucksacks with them, they are about to depart. They’re a strange mixture, a bit uneasy with each other, a plump Englishman with his girlfriend, a blond Danish man, two younger dark girls who sit close together, not speaking. He recognizes a burly Irish woman who went rafting with him two days ago, and goes over to speak to her. Where are you all off to.
Malawi. We’re going through Zambia. Maybe she sees something in my face, because after a moment she asks, do you want to come along.
He sits thinking for a few moments, then says, I’ll be right back.
He runs madly from the hotel to the campsite and takes down his tent. When he gets back he sits among his new companions, panting, feeling edgy with doubt. Soon afterwards the man they’re waiting for, an Australian called Richard, arrives, and they all stir themselves to leave. He has gathered already that these people don’t know each other well, they have banded together by chance to make this journey safely. Hence the unease. He doesn’t mind, in fact the general mood suits him, he doesn’t feel a pressure to fit in. With the others he loads his bag onto the back of an open van and climbs up. They have paid somebody to drive them to the other side of the border.
It’s getting dark when they arrive at the station. They are late and the queue for tickets is long, they can only get third-class seats, sitting amongst a crowd in an open carriage in which all the lights are broken. Almost before they can find a place the train lurches and starts to move.
There is a moment when any real journey begins. Sometimes it happens as you leave your house, sometimes it’s a long way from home.
In the dark there is the sound of breaking glass and a voice cries out. They have been travelling for perhaps an hour, the darkness in the carriage is total, but now somebody lights a match. In the guttering glow he sees a hellish scene, on one of the seats further down a man clutches his bloodied face, a pool of blood on the floor around him, rocking from side to side with the violent motion of the train. Everybody shrinks away, the light goes out. What’s happening, the Irish girl says to him.
What’s happening is that somebody has thrown a rock through the window. Almost immediately it comes again, the smashing glass, the cry, but this time nobody is hurt, the cry is one of fear. They are all afraid, and with good reason, because every time the train passes some town or settlement there is the noise, the cry, or the deep thudding sound of the rock hitting the outside of the train. Everybody sits hunched forward with their arms over their heads.
Late in the night the ordeal winds down. Inside the train the mood becomes lighter, people who would otherwise never have spoken strike up conversations. Somebody takes out bandages for those who’ve been hurt. At the far end of the carriage are three women travelling with little babies, their window has been broken and the wind is howling through, do you mind, they ask, if we come and sit with you. Not at all. He is with the Irish woman on a seat, the rest of their group is elsewhere, they move up to make space. Now the dark smells warm and yeasty, there is a sucking and gurgling all around. The women are travelling to Lusaka for a church conference on female emancipation, they have left their husbands behind, but a couple of them are holding a child and the other woman has triplets. She is sitting opposite him, he can see her in the passing lights from outside. Now a weird scenario begins. The triplets are all identically dressed in white bunny suits, she starts to breast-feed them two at a time. The third one she hands to him, would you mind, no not at all, he holds the murmuring weight in his hands. Occasionally she changes them over, he hands on a little bunny-suited baby and receives an exact copy in exchange, this seems to go on for hours. Sometimes one of her nipples